I just watched a film about shipwrecks in the Great Lakes. Two years ago, our family visited the Shipwreck Museum (http://www.exploringthenorth.com/shipmus/shipmuseum.html) and learned the story behind Gordon Lightfoot’s “Wreck of the Edmond Fitzgerald”, a popular song during my youth in the late 1970s. It was my second trip to the museum, as I had gotten ropped into going the year before as a chaperon during a fourth grade field trip. Why is this a topic for a social/political rant page? Because of the questions and thoughts that arouse in me as I experienced all three events.
I have lived near and around the Great Lakes all of my life, first in Chicago (can’t get any closer than right on Lake Michigan itself) and now in Detroit, yet I knew little to nothing about the vast, beautiful bodies of water that gave the states outlining them life and livelihoods. The show and the tours told me of an interesting and illustrious history of my local area that heretofore I had little knowledge (and even though my daughter was on a field trip that included the Shipwreck Museum, the trip’s focus was Michigan ecology). My partner, Mr. Grumpy (he’s the kind that answers correctly all the questions on Jeopardy), even learned a thing or two. This is disturbing. We should be acquainted with key periods in history, like the Civil War, important points during the Rome Empire, and the development of humanity from the hunter-gatherers to town dwellers. But we should also know the history of area where they live. Did you know how important the Great Lakes were to the survival and growth of the United States? Do you think the Edmond Fitzgerald sank sometime in the mid 19th century? What was the role of the French in the formation of Michigan and the Detroit areas? Maybe we would litter less if we had some pride through knowledge in the area directly around us. Maybe, appreciative knowledge of local history wouldn’t have stopped the War in Iraq but would have gotten our leaders to do more digging about where they were invading because they would have figured those people loved their homes as much as we love ours and would have a mix of gratitude and shame that someone else had to come over to fix things (and maybe, just maybe, those same leaders would have at least planned better before going in the first place!).
Yet, here is another, albeit, naïve question: Why are these shipping lanes no longer so valuable? Mr. Grumpy says that trucking items across large chunks of land is cheaper, primarily because our rail system is so shabby and unreliable (we’ll get into the rationale for high speed rail some other time). Well, I’m no economist but considering the price of gas these days (actually, year plus!), I can hardly believe that the use of trucks is all that cheap about now. And considering the horrid economic crisis Michigan has been, is, and looks like will be facing, maybe while raising taxes to feed recently laid off autoworkers we should also raise taxes to reinvest in shipping connected with high speed rail. Moving Mr. Johnson from Alpena to Lansing for his business meeting on the same train line that also pulls a car full of Chinese made sweaters for Wal-Mart doesn’t sound like a bad idea to me.
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