Great Lakes Echo (https://greatlakesecho.org/tag/catch-of-the-day/page/138/)
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency gave us a peek this weekend at what groups vying for Great Lakes Restoration Initiative cash hope to do with it. The deadline for the EPA’s first request for proposals under the GLRI was Jan. 29. The agency reports that it took in 1,057 proposals for $946 million worth of projects. A list of every proposal is available here, though there isn’t much to learn besides the first five to 10 words of each proposal’s title.
Social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn make reaching sources a breeze for journalists. Navigating handlers to secure an on-the-record interview with a source, however, isn’t always so easy. While reporting a story for Great Lakes Echo about illicit marijuana production on public lands, I ran into a federal roadblock that stymied my work as a journalist and as a government watchdog. It’s a barrier that shows President Barack Obama has a lot of work to do to square his campaign promise of transparency with his administration’s actions. As the old adage says, the proof’s in the puddin’.
As if overeating wasn’t already a problem, now we are offered the option to eat our dishes. Large, hollowed out loaves of bread known as “bread bowls” have become a trendy addition to the menu of a startling amount of chain restaurants. They are fully operational bowls, filled with soup, pasta, chili, dip, quiche and even salad, and customers love it. I once watched a woman practically throw her tray back at the cashier after her broccoli and cheese soup was served in ceramic. However, after the meal was returned to her in the sourdough she requested, she ate the soup, leaving the bowl that had caused so much controversy, on the tray.
One of my sources, a scientist at the Annis Water Resources Institute in Muskegon, Mich., recently chided me for writing about the Great Lakes from the middle of Michigan here in East Lansing. How could we properly relate to the Lakes when we are so far away, he wondered. It got me thinking. Does he have point? The Great Lakes Echo is hardly on the beach. According to Daft Logic’s handy Google Maps distance calculator, the Echo newsroom is 71 miles from Lake Huron, 82 miles from Lake Erie, 88 miles from Lake Michigan, 236 miles from Lake Ontario and 258 miles from Lake Superior as the crow flies. And as long we we’re being honest, in the six years I’ve lived here, I’ve only been to two of the Great Lakes. But do you have to be on a Lake to feel connected to it? They influence state policies, provide research opportunities for our universities, influence our weather patterns, draw tourists and their cash, and make this region of North America just a little more unique. I don’t have to be on the beach to remember that I’m surrounded by massive freshwater seas. But Michigan is unique. We have more Great Lake shoreline than any other state. How connected do the folks in Indiana feel to their tip of Lake Michigan? What about Minnesota, with a side-swipe of Lake Superior? Or Pennsylvania, the state with the least amount of Lake shoreline? We’re all in the same basin, we share invasive species and federal policies, but does everyone feel a connection to the Lakes?