Birds of the Great Lakes Shores

I sold some paintings yesterday at an art market, but not the one above.

The birds love the cherry tree in our yard.  Orioles, cat birds, robins.  They are gobbling up the cherries so I do not think there will be any left for us.  This morning I saw chickadees in the little birdhouse I painted.  There are a pair of wrens in another birdhouse hanging from a tall conifer and a pair of mourning doves raising a second brood in the bushes in front of our window.  Ruby throated hummingbirds visit our yard and if their feeder is not filled, they peer in our window knowing someone indoors fills it.

We hear the herring gulls and crows talking constantly and we see hawks and eagles flying over our house. This is a delightful time of year and the birds know it.

Persephone Brings warblers, catbirds, mayflies, foam flowers

 

Persephone Emerges

Under willows’ first fuzz

Eden green

goats graze

feeding unborn kids.

The warbler haunted woods

flickers green fire—

the river brims a billion suns.

Persephone burst

from under earth covered with leaf mold

and blinking in the fawn spotted dawn

in the cool wooded dunes.

Above her head, flecks of foam

flowers, bloodroot and trillium

splash the dark soil,

spilled milk

at a sacrificial rite.

Persephone emerges.

Morning light veils her body

darts through her jewels

her crown of diamonds, rubies, emeralds.

She carries sweet spring

time in her

with the vision of night.

On the mirror still surface of a lake,

mayflies suffer breech births,

wiggle out of wetsuits

nymphs no longer

and with wings clear as water

they wobble into flight

rise like clouds of smoke

in golden light.

A catbird speaks in tongues

its throat bubbles out ineffable delights.

Bees spin in dusty pollen,

melt water burbles,

rises through red veins of leaves,

Persephone’s footprints fill with water.

--Barbara Spring

Excerpted from The Wilderness Within

This book is widely available in bookstores and on the web at Amazon.com, bn.com etc.

Flower Pot Island in Georgian Bay is named for the limestone feature pictured.  I enjoyed a boat trip where I saw many islands and I was so impressed that I painted this watercolor.  The color of the water is very beautiful and its clarity allows views of sunken ships from glass bottom boats.

I visited The Bruce Peninsula while researching my book, The Dynamic Great Lakes.

This painting is now on display in Grand Haven Michigan's Community Center Lakeland Artists Show.

My book is available at Barnes & Noble, Amazon.com and many other fine independent bookstores such as The Bookman in Grand Haven, MI.

Red Flag: Please Take Care at the Beach

Grand Haven Kite Festival

If someone told me to go fly a kite, I would.  It's lots of fun.

M Live Story by N Reens: Directional Drilling

I thought this was settled.  We cannot endanger the Great Lakes freshwater.

GRAND RAPIDS, MI – Sen. Debbie Stabenow wrote the bill that banned drilling for oil on the Great Lakes, but Republican candidates seeking to challenge her in November are making it a campaign issue to out one of their own.
Holland Republican Pete Hoekstra, who lives about two miles from Lake Michigan, is under fire from his GOP opposition and Democrats alike for the alleged shifting tide on his oil drilling position.
In a stop last week in Clarkston, Hoekstra told tea party members that he supports directional drilling from onshore sites around the Great Lakes. That’s the opposite stance he took in 2001 and 2005, when he voted for a ban on the practice while in the U.S. House.
Hoekstra clarified Monday that he believes the issue belongs to states to decide, not Washington, and that advances in technology have made it a safer practice than before.
But it didn’t take long for Hoekstra’s Republican primary opponents Gary Glenn and Clark Durant, environmentalists, and state and national Democrats to seize on the apparent misstep.

File photoGary Glenn is an underdog running against Pete Hoekstra for the Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate seat held by Debbie Stabenow.

Glenn, while trying to draw a distinction between himself and Hoekstra at a Monday candidates forum in Grandville, said that he supports the practice. Energy independence and domestic production are poised to be key issues in races across the country and Great Lakes drilling could be an $8 billion industry, Glenn said.
“Pete said he favored directional drilling under the Great Lakes, and then Pete ran for cover under (scrutiny) from environmentalists,” Glenn said Monday.
Clean Water Action, Sierra Club, and Progress Michigan, on Monday, all called for Hoekstra to reverse his drilling position, but none mentioned Glenn’s admitted “drill, baby, drill,” drive.

Hoekstra pushed back on Glenn’s allegation, contending no one wants people without an interest in the Great Lakes making decisions for those in the water basin. He likened it to attempts to divert water to others states, an idea quickly rejected under the Great Lakes Compact.
“That decision better be made here in the state,” Hoekstra said. “If you let that decision be made in Washington, they’ll tell you where to drill. If you call that running from accountability, you can do that. Or you can say, OK, that’s pretty smart. I’d rather trust the people (here) over the people in Washington to make that decision.”
Durant, considered by pundits to be Hoekstra’s primary competition, drew his line in the sand, taking the opposite tack as Glenn and backing Stabenow’s position of a Great Lakes drilling ban.
“I’m not going to let one driller go into the water of the Great Lakes,” Durant said. “It’s a tremendous asset. We do not need to put that at risk to drill, baby, drill. There are plenty of places to drill. Don’t put the Great Lakes at risk. That’s one of the things that makes Michigan special.”
Democrats criticized Hoekstra’s alleged drilling flip-flop, and Glenn’s position by association, by saying federal studies indicate there are about 312 million barrels of oil under the water. That would provide 16 days of energy and have virtually no impact on world markets, Democrats said.
"Hoekstra's desire to end the federal ban on drilling the Great Lakes for oil is totally out of the mainstream and completely outrageous,” said Mark Brewer, the chair of the state party. “Even most Republicans have supported the ban on drilling in the Lakes because they recognize that a disaster like the BP spill in the Gulf or the Enbridge spill in Michigan could destroy the Great Lakes - and the jobs and industries that depend on them.”
Follow Nate Reens on Twitter at www.twitter.com/natereens

The Day Before May