A cargo ship carrying 36,000 bushels of rye wheat, headed from Chicago to Buffalo via the Straits of Mackinac, went down in a November storm in 1878 off Rogers City, Michigan. Some of the rye seeds surfaced in 2024 to become an experiment in agricultural science. As in many areas of scientific research, serendipity plays …
Rye seeds in shipwreck are treasure for distiller and science Read More »
My hiatus from “Notes” is ending after rethinking how this space fits in with my writing. During the pandemic, I set out on a journey from my home office, in lockdown, like Fra Mauro, the Venetian cartographer who entertained stories of journeys from merchants and travelers in his cloistered monastery. For me, it was an …
I was struck by this headline in a Twitter feed: “How journalists can become cartographers and track the impact of the climate crisis.” It referenced an article published by the Reuters Institute, University of Oxford, in May 2021, suggesting that reporting on climate change can map out the regions where climate change is occurring. Journalists …
It was a little more than a year ago that I set out on a journey to understand the Third Coast, an inland ocean of lakes and northern culture, that was inspired by the fictional character Fra Mauro in A Mapmaker’s Dream. Based on the actual Venetian cartographer, James Cowan’s Mauro, was sequestered in a …
The Third Coast is an permeable border shared by Canada and the United States. Both have East and West Coasts. Canada has the Far North, and the U.S. has the Gulf. But the Great Lakes region is their common coast, shared with the indigenous people. The coast is marked by border towns that have (until …
By Dennis Archambault The voice of the indigenous people in the Great Lakes has a place in federal government. Bryan Newland, former chairman of the Bay Mills Indian Community (Ojibwe) on Lake Superior, has been appointed Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Indian Affairs in the U.S. Department of Interior. He previously served as counselor and …
We watched the sturgeon moon rise last evening, heralding the harvest season, so the indigenous people of the Great Lakes region would say. Actually, according to the Old Farmer’s Almanac, it won’t reach its fullness until 8:02 a.m. EST on Sunday, Aug. 22. The Algonquin tribe named this full moon after the sturgeon. August is the …
The French explorer LaSalle entered a large body of water from the straits known as “Detroit,” on August 12, 1679. He named the lake, “St. Clair,” after Saint Clare of Assisi, the Roman Catholic patron saint of fair weather. He was traveling in Le Griffon, the first European-styled ship built in New France and the …
There are thousands of islands in the Great Lakes region. Most of them are uninhabited, but those that are define the term “remote.” Pelee Island, a 16 square mile island in the middle of Lake Erie, is a place that feels, at first, like other small towns in Ontario. When we first started going there …
How will enhanced digital connectivity affect island life? Read More »
When the movie, “A Perfect Storm,” came out with its all-star cast in 2000, I was overcome by a wave of PTSD as I thought of a storm a few decades earlier in Lake St. Clair on an otherwise pleasant Sunday afternoon. During that summer, I crewed on a 27-foot sailboat owned by my friend, …