9/08/11 EVEN IF IT IS A THOUSAND FEET LONG

RUNNING FOR A LEE

DON'T GIVE UP THE SHIP

Thursday, 8:00 AM.  59 degrees, wind W, calm.  The sky is clear, the barometer is up, and it feels like fall.
    There is no fool like an old fool, and this one feels mighty foolish, having spent the Labor Day holiday in hospital in Duluth due to an allergic reaction to an antibiotic I probably didn’t need to take and was told specifically to discontinue.
    In any case I survived and at least had the opportunity to watch lake traffic from a sixth floor hospital window for a while.
    Lake Superior and indeed the rest of the chain of inland seas we call the Great Lakes, along with the Welland Canal and the Saint Lawrence River are indeed a relatively pristine and somewhat rare ecosystem.  But the view from the window also reemphasized to me that it is a great route of commerce, important to America’s history but more important even to its future.  Like the Mediterranean Sea, the Black Sea and all the seas and canals associated with them, it has been used for trade and transportation by humans for thousands of years.  Ships are still the least expensive and most environmentally acceptable method of transporting bulky and heavy goods…grain, coal, oil, iron ore, heavy manufactured goods…and to deny human commerce reasonable access to it is to depress human activity, commercial and social, and there are many environmental extremists who would, and indeed do their best to do, just that.
    Watching the giant ore boats leave the Duluth harbor to ports national and international, some loaded and low in the water, some empty and riding high, plowing straight white lines on blue, wave tossed water, actually made me feel excited…adventure, profit, human interaction…all there in reality, not just in imagination…I can easily see a young person wanting to get on board and ply the seas with their cargo to places perhaps strange and far away.  And yet the Lake is so vast that those giant ships disappeared into the mist and fog quickly, slipping away like wraiths at midnight.  There could have been twice, thrice as many and all would still have been emptiness. These lakes are a multiple resource for human use, and I am confident that with cooperation and the best use of science and engineering, these resources can be used for the long, long term benefit of society as well as the “environment.”  One last quote, from where I don’t recall,  “Oh God, Thy sea is so great and my boat is so small,” (even if it is a thousand feet long).