The Dynamic Great Lakes is a critically acclaimed book

There are reviews of the Dynamic Great Lakes on the Amazon.com and a look inside feature. It's like browsing in a brick and mortar bookstore only you don't have to drive in the terrible weather we have been getting lately. http://www.amazon.com/Dynamic-Great-Lakes-Barbara-Spring/dp/1588517314 The book is also available at Barnes & Noble and many other bookstores such as the Bookman in Grand Haven, MI etc. etc.

Playing Around the Great Lakes

I’m told that children learn through play. From what I have experienced, I believe that adults learn through play also. Our family has been playing in, on and around the Great Lakes most of our lives. We have learned a lot while we swam, boated, fished and beach combed. The lakes engaged all our senses: the splash of cold water, the sound of the waves, the silence of fog, hot sand underfoot and the way it sings when you drag your toes across it, the ever changing colors and rhythms of waves, the times fish bite the best. The Great Lakes have many lessons to teach if we pay attention. Family vacations took us to all of the Great Lakes; the majesty of Niagara Falls; to the rocky shores of Lake Superior where we hunted for agates; to many embayments and open waters of the lakes to fish. My husband Norm, a gung ho fisherman, has caught nearly every kind of fish in the lakes: walleye from Lake Erie and the embayments of the upper Great Lakes, deep water fish such as lake trout and burbot, and the annual runs of white fish and perch from the pier at Grand Haven. When Pacific salmon were planted he found a bonanza of fish. Sometimes the rest of the family fishes with him: myself, our daughters and our grand children. When he took our first grand daughter, age three, fishing for salmon, he let her pull in a big coho...almost as big as she was. Then he asked her later if she had told the kids in the neighborhood about it. She said, ”No. They would never believe it.” We have all learned so much from the Great Lakes; their ever changing colors, their beaches of stone or sand, waterfalls, fishes and birds, wetlands , and dunes with their succession of plants. In our play around the Great Lakes, we are always learning something new.

The Gales of November

The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald  Gordon Lightfoot's song commemorates those who went down in Lake Superior during a November storm.

The Great Lakes are powerful.  Many lives have been lost on these lakes. Read more about the Great Lakes in The Dynamic Great Lakes.

National Geographic Link to New Information

National Geographic maps of Great Lakes Threats 
 Click on the link above.

The Dynamic Great Lakes Reviews

The Great Lakes inspired me to write this book.  It is widely available on the www at stores such as Amazon.com and bn.con plus many other places.  It has been critically acclaimed by those who want information about the freshwater seas and their living webs of life.  

Praise for The Dynamic Great Lakes

 In her cautionary book, environmental activist and professor Spring enthusiastically explores the Great Lakes, and clearly explains why they should be protected. —Book Sense Nov 22 2003

This is intriguing stuff for adults, but the straightforward presentation also lends itself to use in schools. —Peter Wild U.S. Water News

 Every library should have this book. —Stan Lievense, retired fish biologist MDNR

Pacific salmon

What do the Columbia River and and Great Lakes have in common?

Fishing for salmon.

Just back from a National Geographic cruise on the Columbia and Snake Rivers.  The Columbia River has been dammed for electric power and the Pacific salmon that used to crowd the Columbia River are not found above the locks and dams in any good numbers.

I took the video below the locks and dams.  I also took a trip up the wild Snake River where white sturgeon are found and the steelhead run.  The steelhead were not running yet.  The water was too warm I was told. But they were expected in spite of invasive species of fish in these waters.

We went through Hell's Canyon and I could see how it got that name.  My imagination went wild there seeing all sorts of figures in the convoluted rocks.  We came to the confluence of the wild Salmon River (The River of No Return).

I am pleased that Pacific salmon are living in the upper Great Lakes.  This was an idea that has worked. To learn more about how Pacific salmon happened to be planted in the Great Lakes read my book, The Dynamic Great Lakes.  This critcally acclaimed book is widely available on the www and in many bookstores.

2013 09 11 22 29 18 Columbia River Cruise

Video about Great Lakes Research

Learn about the Great Lakes in The Dynamic Great Lakes, a critically acclaimed non-fiction book about the Great Lakes system available at Amazon.com, bn.com, Books a Million and many other fine bookstores.

Great Lakes Video from the Travel Channel

Lake Huron's Sink Holes and Their Ancient Life

Click on the link below for a fascinating article about sink holes in Lake Huron with ancient forms of life near Alpena in Michigan.

http://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/rock-water-microbes-underwater-sinkholes-in-lake-24270250

Annis Water Resources Institute GVSU  Click here for more infomation

The Lakes are Always Changing

Read about natural and man made changes in the Great Lakes in The Dynamic Great Lakes.

They are truly freshwater seas.

http://www.amazon.com/Dynamic-Great-Lakes-Barbara-Spring/dp/1588517314

Live Current Map: NOAA

Great Lakes Currents: NOAA

 The wind changes lake currents rapidly on the Great Lakes.  Click the link to see which way the wind is blowing.

A Walk on the Beach of Lake Michigan

 This morning I saw and heard a Caspian_Tern/sounds flying, a young herring gull trying to eat a wad of bubble gum--it kept sticking to its beak--a lot of zebra mussel shells (an invasive species to the Great Lakes) some finger nail clam shells,  and I saw the way the waves had carved scallops in the sand.  I walked out to the place where the
 Grand River empties into Lake 
Michigan and there were people
 catching perch and some were
going out in boats for salmon.

Look What They've Done to Our View

Too many power poles get in the way of a lovely sunset.  It would make a lot of sense if the wires were underground.

Some places have the foresight to put the wires underground.  I'm told it would be too expensive.

Interview of Barbara Spring by Dave Dempsey

Interview of Barbara Spring by Dave Dempsey

What prompted you to write The Dynamic Great Lakes?
I was inspired by a speech I heard while at a writer’s conference in Aspen, Colorado. N. Scott Momaday, Pulitzer Prize winning author of The House Made of Dawn, gave a speech on the importance of landscape. When I came home, it occurred to me that my landscape is a waterscape–the Great Lakes system. With this thought, I began to work on The Dynamic Great Lakes. The importance of the Great Lakes is not always appreciated. I wanted people to appreciate them.

Who is the intended audience for the book and who might enjoy reading it?
I wrote The Dynamic Great Lakes with a general audience in mind. I spent a lot of time searching for and up-to-date book about the Great Lakes and I could not find one. I believe my book is important because it shows the Great Lakes and their connecting waters in relation to each other; it shows the lakes in relation to their unique dunes and wetlands and to their biota. The Great Lakes are about 20% of all the fresh surface water on this planet. I wanted to make people aware of how precious this freshwater is and how vulnerable. I want people to feel concerned about how these lakes and their web of life is faring.

Do you think Michiganians generally are knowledgeable about the Great Lakes?
Someone who has lived by Lake Michigan all of his life read my book and said, “I have been taking these lakes for granted.” I believe that people in Michigan and the other Great Lakes states and provinces need to know more about the Great Lakes so they will be in a better position to make good decisions about them. The Great Lakes will become more and more important as our population grows and the people are asked to vote for candidates who will either understand the issues and care for the lakes with future generations in mind, or those who would exploit them for short term gains.

What are your earliest memories of the Lakes?
My earliest memory of the Great Lakes–I must have been about 7–was a trip with my family around Lake Superior’s rocky shore. I still remember how awed I felt when I first viewed the largest of the Great Lakes and felt its icy water. My father woke us all up one morning proudly displaying a string of brook trout he had caught from a tributary stream to Lake Superior. We had them for breakfast. Just delicious.

If you were czar(ina) of the Great Lakes, what is the single most important thing you would do for them?
I would develop energy sources that do not threaten the environment. I would phase out the 37 aging nuclear power plants in the Great Lakes watershed and find a way to store atomic wastes in a place where it has no chance of getting into water. That would be my decree. I would hire the best minds to work on this daunting problem and I would tell them to do it will all haste. 

Palisades Should Have Been Shut Down Long Ago.

Please Click on the link for more information:

http://grist.org/news/nuclear-plant-spills-radiation-into-lake-michigan/

Read more about Palisades Nuclear Power Plant in my book, The Dynamic Great Lakes, available at Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble and many other bookstores.

Between Sweetwater and Sand by Barbara Spring

Now available at Barnes & Noble and Amazon.com

Moon

Big misty bright

slice of sweet melon

a light

in the southwest

a sheen in the lake.

symbol to some.

To me

only the moon—

soon to be occluded

Moon.

excerpted from Between Sweetwater and Sand

Between Sweetwater and Sand: a book of poems

Barnes & Noble has my book

Between Sweetwater and Sand: Poetry

Between Sweetwater and Sand is a book of love poems for Planet Earth and her living tapestries of plants, birds, fish and animals that live on sands, forests, in airstreams and living waters.

Barbara Spring lives on the shoreline of Lake Michigan.  She has published articles and poems in numerous newspapers and magazines and on the www.  She taught poetry to gifted children and taught writing classes and liberal studies at Grand Valley State University. 

Her published books include: The Dynamic Great Lakes, a critically acclaimed a non-fiction book about changes in the Great Lakes; The Wilderness Within, a book of poems and essays about wild places; and Sophia’s Lost and Found: Poems of Above and Below. This book celebrates wisdom and mourns the times when Sophia is lost.  

Playing Around the Great Lakes

    

Hands On Outdoor Learning

 I’m told that children learn through play.  From what I have experienced, I believe that everyone can learn through play. Our family has been playing in, on and around the Great Lakes most of our lives. We have learned a lot while we swam, boated, fished and beach combed.  The lakes engaged all our senses: the splash of cold water, the sound of the waves, the silence of fog, hot sand underfoot and the way it sings when you drag your toes across it, the ever changing colors and rhythms of waves, the times fish bite the best.   The outdoors have many lessons to teach if we pay attention.

     Family vacations took us to all of the Great Lakes; the majesty of Niagara Falls; to the rocky shores of Lake Superior where we hunted for agates; to many embayments and open waters of the lakes to fish.  My husband  Norm, has caught nearly every kind of fish in the lakes: walleye from Lake Erie and the embayments of the upper Great Lakes, deep water fish such as lake trout and burbot, and the annual runs of white fish and perch  Pacific salmon that were planted to control alewives.

     We have all learned so much from our outdoor adventures;  changing colors, their beaches of stone or sand, waterfalls, fishes and birds, wetlands , and dunes with their succession of plants.  In our play around the Great Lakes, we always learn something new.

     With all of this hands-on experience I wrote a non-fiction book, The Dynamic Great Lakes, a non-fiction primer.  I had wanted a book like this to read, but I never found one so I decided to write a book with information that people could use to make sound decisions about the Great Lakes.

    I am also the published author of three poetry books: The Wilderness Within and Sophia’s Lost and Found: Poems of Above and Below and Between Sweetwater and Sand. The last book will be released July 30, 2013( These poems are drawn directly from observations of nature.   

     At Grand Valley State University, I developed writing classes based upon environmental studies. This gave students important topics to work with. I did not want papers recycled from high school.  I assigned books such as The Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold and Blue Highways by William Least-Heat Moon and Thoreau.  We discussed the topics and writing techniques used by these authors.

  I asked my students to go outdoors and use observation and to use the five senses. They kept journals based on what they saw and even how they felt about what they saw.   I brought things from nature such as feathers and plants indoors for students to hold in their hands and then describe in concrete detail. They played with the downy feathers, blowing on them and closely observing them.

I asked them to use metaphor and to use as many of the five senses as they could in their descriptions.  Student writing becomes grounded in reality when using these sorts of exercises. 

Our lives become grounded when playing outdoors.

    

Don't Do It In the Lake

The Dynamic Great Lakes Updated

When I think of the 500 year old white pines that used to be where I live, I feel a sadness. White pines were called white gold and used for the masts of ships, and in West Michigan, these trees rebuilt Chicago after the great fire.

When I think of the sturgeon that were killed and burned like cord wood because they fouled fishermen’s nets, I want to cry.

Glacial relics remain in the dunes and wetlands such as the arctic primrose. The names of flowers are lovely: grass pink, lady’s tresses, ramshead ladyslipper. The fragrances of these flowers are in my imagination. Very few are really found.   Few are found because dunes and wetlands have been leveled.

When Jaques Cartier reached the Great Lakes, his men had scurvy. The Native Americans taught the French how to get vitamin C by making arbor vitae tea. The tea was made by pouring hot water over the leaves of this tree. They learned of a natural pesticide from the aroma of white spruce.

Now harmful chemicals are found in the air, water and soil and this is really something to grieve. This was my motivation for writing The Dynamic Great Lakes. I care about the environment so much that I had to do something. This book shows what some people working on grassroots committees have been able to do. It is a hopeful book. It is a beginning. Without basic knowledge about the Great Lakes it is impossible to make the right decisions about them.

The book is updated and is available at bn.com and Amazon.com and also is available on Amazon’s Kindle for $9.95.

Nothing Stays the Same

The sunsets are lovely over Lake Michigan.  Last night just after the sun went down we could see Venus, Mercury and Saturn in the nw.  They formed a triangle in the evening sky and then a dark cloud covered the planets.

I painted this picture of the pier in Grand Haven a few years ago.  Now the tree is gone and the pier, battered by the lake's powerful waves, is showing its age.  The light still shines at night but the fog horn no longer blows its mournful sound.  People use other navigation systems now. Nothing stays the same.

Powerful Winds of Lake Michigan

Lake Michigan has the wind power for all sorts of sports: wind surfing, kite boarding, kite flying, sailing and the like.



Prevailing winds have built sand dunes on the eastern shores of Lake Michigan.  Some of the best sand dunes in the world are found here.  Read more about dunes in The Dynamic Great Lakes.

A New Map about Nuclear Hotspots around the Great Lakes

Great Lake United has released a new map about nuclear hot spots around the Great Lakes.

http://www.glu.org/en/announcement/great-lakes-nuclear-hotspots-map-released

More information in my book, The Dynamic Great Lakes.

The Dynamic Great Lakes is available on Amazon's Kindle reader and in paperback at Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble and many independent bookstores.

Books by Barbara Spring

The Dynamic Great Lakes is a critically acclaimed non-fiction book about changes in all five interconnected Great Lakes in the United States and Canada.

The Wilderness Within is a book of poetry and essays drawn from wild places on Planet Earth.

Sophia's Lost and Found: Poems of Above and Below is a book of poems.

Many fine bookstores carry these books including Schuler Books and Music, Barnes & Noble, Amazon.com and Amazon's Kindle for the Dynamic Great Lakes.

Soon to be published is Between Sweetwater and Sand, a book of poems.

Lake Superior

Living Waters

            The north woods ring—the waters gather dripping from the tops of pines, running, running, running over ancient rocks.  The veerys trill up and down the scales, the warblers chime their notes through still bare twigs and the water runs, it runs down to Lake Superior swirling downstream, plunging over waterfalls just freed from ice curtains.  Curious deer come to drink from the pool below lifting their heads, standing motionless to sense the air.  Is it bear?  Wolf? Lynx?

            Sun dapples down through bare forest trees—sun streams, the ground steams, wet leaves tilt insisting on light, thrust new spikes.  Water flows through mobile root hairs, roots, stems, vaporizes into air.

Wild geese weave the wind, skid along black marsh water among tangles of cat tail.  Further downstream waves curl onto a rock shore polishing stones to oval and the small stones roll chinking and chunking.  They assume their flat round shapes over years of grinding, finding their ease in the wave rhythms, rolling rolling, rolling.  While caps bubble foam and the jade water is a dancing goddess in the middle distance between shore and horizon.

Children arrive to pick up fossils of ancient coral and to find stones to skip on a quiet day.  They chase sea gulls and try to become airborne by leaping and spreading their arms.  Cormorants and sooty terns rise and cleave the air.  The red cheeked kids leap in the early spring breezes, their knuckles chapped.  What do they care?

The bones of whales and sailors roll in the currents—some finding their way out to sea, some becoming, becoming, becoming a diatom’s shining, becoming the bones of an emerald shiner, becoming limestone shale in the loving exchange between the living and the living.  The islands of Lake Superior bear greenstones and jewel like snakes.  Sturgeon and trout spawn leaving pearls and coral in the crevices of rocks.  A moose stands chin deep in and island lake.  The islands of Lake Superior are quiet, remote and cold, bereft of copper, littered with bones.

Curled underground, water drawn up through squeaky pumps splashes into enamel buckets—water clear and cold and tasting of iron.  The iron flows through the veins of the moose and in the red cheeked children.

Loons quiver their greetings and as twilight falls, bullfrogs groan their love songs—they bellow all night long.  I lay awake listening to the water lapping the night and its creatures.

     

                                                                   --Barbara Spring

Animated Map of Current in the Great Lakes

Link to Currents in the Great Lakes from NOAA

Global Warming

Global Warming

A huge curved tusk in the muck of a pond
a stone spear point and mastodon bones
dug up in suburbia:
bones and tools from ancient days
lie under our freeways
football stadiums and homes.

After Ice Age glaciers melted away
mammoths and mastodons browsed the land
pursued by humans with stone spears.
Surely the people gazed up at the North Star,
traveled, gathered, hunted, survived.
Their children laughed and played in
parkas, leggings, boots
their mothers sewed for them
with bone needles: in short,
survival gear.

Trout-teeming melt water from glaciers
gushed and gashed the land and
tranquil mastodons grazed
Michigan’s lush green landscape.

Our mitten holds memories
of ancient times.
If only stones could speak.

Sophia's Lost and Found: Poems of Above and Below may be found many places on the www: Barnes and Noble, Amazon.com and independent bookstores such as Schuler Books and Music

Sophia's Lost

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/sophias-lost-and-found-barbara-spring/1018903022?fb_action_ids=10151010745266910&fb_action_types=og.likes&fb_source=aggregation&fb_aggregation_id=246965925417366

Lake Michigan video

Lake Michigan and one sea gull reflected in the wet sand as waves roll in. 

In the distance the pier with its lighthouse marks the channel where the Grand River flows into Lake Michigan.

I have canoed the Grand River and I have seen the places where fish lurk. I have seen them rise to the surface and splash down.  I have sailed and fished in Lake Michigan as well as the other Great Lakes.

Read about the Great Lakes and their living webs of life in The Dynamic Great Lakes, a non-fiction book available on the www and in bookstores such as Barnes & Noble, Schuler Books and Music, The Bookman and many other places.

Lake Erie and Walleye Fishing

The first time I saw a walleye I thought it was blind.  They are not but their eyes are made for seeing in dark waters.
Walleye fishing will be starting soon on Lake Erie and other places where the fish make their runs. 

 They are excellent on the dinner table.

Short term profits vs. long run necessities

“Each generation must deal anew with the raiders, with the

scramble to use public resources for private profit and with the

tendency to prefer short run profits to long run necessities.”

                                                 –John F. Kennedy

In his wisdom, our late president saw the problem clearly.  

Of all long run necessities, water is right on top.  Water is life.

Profile of the 5 Great Lakes

Geologically Lake Huron and Lake Michigan are the same lake since they are the same sea level

The Great Lakes are Stressed

• Aquatic habitat alterations: Changes to aquatic habitat from diverse causes, such as shoreline hardening and erosion control structures, port and marina development, and tributary dams
• Climate change: Changes to seasonal, average, and extreme temperature, precipitation, and ice cover
• Coastal development: Land-based human development near lake margins, such as residential and commercial development and industrial activities
• Fisheries management: Changes to Great Lakes ecosystems resulting from fishing pressure, stocking activities, and aquaculture
• Invasive species: Changes to Great Lakes ecosystems from invasive and nuisance species in abundances not previously seen
• Nonpoint source pollution: Nutrients, sediments, and waterborne contaminants transported from watersheds to the Great Lakes by streams and rivers and atmospheric deposition
• Toxic chemical pollution: Chemical pollutants from industrial and agricultural sources

West Michigan Beach in Winter

Pictured is a snow fence to keep sand and snow from blowing across the road.  Fierce winter winds whip the snow and snow plows try to keep up with clearing the roads.  There is so much snow today that school was cancelled in many areas of West Michigan.

Read about weather and the Great Lakes in my book, The Dynamic Great Lakes.   Available at bn.com, Amazon.com, Amazon's Kindle reader and many fine bookstores.

Look Inside The Dynamic Great Lakes

Link below goes to Amazon.com:


http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=sr_nr_p_n_feature_browse-b_mrr_0?rh=n%3A283155%2Ck%3Athe+dynamic+great+lakes%2Cp_n_feature_browse-bin%3A2656022011&bbn=283155&keywords=the+dynamic+great+lakes&ie=UTF8&qid=1360073901&rnid=618072011


The Dynamic Great Lakes has a Look Inside feature on Amazon.com.  This book is available in paperback and on Kindle.

Barbara Spring's Amazon page