Visionary Art or Over the Top?

Photo: Christo, 2010

Red flag or wet rag? The Wall Street Journal ran an article this week about artist Christo's latest proposed project: to suspend fabric over 42 miles of the Arkansas River in Colorado. The 72-year old Christo and his late wife Jeanne-Claude, are famous for their larger-than-life installation art projects which involve wrapping entire buildings in fabric (like the Reitestag in Germany) and creating over 23 miles of fabric panels in Central Park, NY.

Now, Christo, 72, is trying to convince locals to come around to his $54 million dollar swan song: to unfurl a mirror-like fabric over the Arkansas in southern Colorado to mimic the twists and turns of 43 miles of this ancient river. The project is so immense it's had to undergo an environment impact statement under National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), a gauntlet of studies usually reserved for things like mining, dam building and highway construction. Supporters contend that a project like this can bring welcome attention, tourism and revenue to the area. In fact, the Bureau of Land Management estimated this project could draw more than 300,000 tourists to the river and generate over $120 million in economic impact. Opponents fear short-term damage to the ecosystem, traffic snarls and too many people tromping around their quiet communities. Still others feel like the idea of this project is a desecration of the majesty of mother nature.

Me, I'm on the proverbial 23-mile long fence on this one.

What do you think? Leave a comment and share your perspective.

posted by the River Rat

Real Wild Rice is Very Nice

The River Alliance is pleased to have Tina Van Zile, a member of the Sokaogon band of Lake Superior Chippewa, as a member of our board of directors. Not only because we have common cause in healthy waters with the Sokaogon Chippewa and other Indian communities, but also because of what that connection can mean for our organization to learn about native ways.

Tina Van Zile (right) and Marcia Kraus (center) learn from Tina’s father, Charlie Polar, how seamlessly he moves from traditional to modern materials to sift and winnow wild rice.

Like wild ricing, for example. (Please know that the “wild rice” you buy in the industrial food system is not really the wild rice that is the heart Wisconsin’s Great Lakes Indian tribes – the Chippewa, the Menominee and the Potawatomi.)

You’ll know real wild rice by its price (around $12 per pound) and where you can buy it. (Look for it at convenience stores on reservations, but there are other outlets.) Getting native wild rice to the dinner table is a painstaking process, deeply rooted in tradition. Most of us have seen the traditional harvesting of the rice, where people slowly poling canoes in shallow lakes and rivers use one stick to bend the rice into the boat and another to knock the kernels from the stalks.

Tina gave us an insight to the culture and lore of native wild rice recently at the Sokaogon reservation near Mole Lake, Wisconsin. She explained that the source of much of the tribe’s wild rice is the aptly named Rice Lake, whose rice production has increased substantially because the tribe is managing it carefully.

Tina Van Zile shows Brad Werntz and other River Alliance board members Rice Lake, a source of pride of the Sokaogon Chippewa community for the prolific and full-grained wild rice the lake produces.

But perhaps harvesting it is the easy part. The hard part –getting it ready to cook and eat – may be why the wild rice tradition is fading for her own and other Chippewa communities. Tina took us to her parents’ place near Crandon, where her brothers Roy and Norm, sister Marie and father Charlie Polar were getting the rice from its raw stage to something you can cook. Dad Charlies was clearly in charge of the cleaning process – winnowing the chaff, heating the rice in a metal tub over an open fire, and then a final step of swishing the rice around with this fabulous Goldbergian contraption of belts, PVC pipe and a vacuum cleaner to separate grains from husks.

Tina observed that very few families are willing to do the work to keep the tradition alive. “My dad is one of the last elders to keep this going, and I don’t know what will happen to it if he can’t do it anymore.”

Tina’s tip for cooking real wild rice – soak it overnight before you cook it for 20 minutes or so. If you don’t soak it, you won’t like what you get.

Denny Caneff

The Niger: Flowing Vitality

There are a handful of great, grand rivers in the world – the Yangtze, the Amazon, the Mississippi, the Congo, the Yukon, the Danube.

Their flowing waters tell the stories of the continents through which they flow and the human transactions – peaceful, violent, mercantile, poetic – those rivers have stimulated and enabled.

I would put the Niger River, in that pantheon of great, grand rivers. Most African rivers confounded the colonial explorers who used those rivers to first understand, then exploit, the continent, but the Niger, Africa’s third longest, confounded even more. Its origins are in the rain forest highlands of Guinea, not far from the coast of West Africa, to which you’d expect it to flow.

But it actually flows northeast and away from the ocean, heading right for the foot of the Sahara Desert, in modern-day Mali, before angling southeasterly on its voyage through Niger and Nigeria before it expires at the Gulf of Guinea.

I have always imagined traveling a good length of the Niger. But it’s not very practical, unless you have a constitution of steel. I settled for a one-day pilgrimage to the river during a 10-day visit to the country of Mali in August of 2010. (My daughter was doing a research project in Mali’s capital, Bamako, a sprawling Third World city sharply defined by the Niger.)

That one day – strolling its banks, plying its brown tide in a poled pirogue (hand-made wooden canoe) and enjoying beer and pizza at a riverside café at sunset – was just enough time to take in and savor the mystique of this great river.

The many functions that the river serves for Malians will surprise, and may disturb, Westerners with an appetite for pristine rivers. People are doing their laundry just downstream from the guys digging sand out of the river to build cement blocks. And just upstream from that are people bathing in the river, next to a young herdsman cooling the heels of his cattle in the river.

But it’s the vitality of the Niger for the people living along its banks that makes it great. The Niger is lifeblood for this very dry part of the world. For hundreds of years it has been a connecting thread of culture and language and music for several empires in that part of Africa. Cell phones and buses have replaced its transport and communications functions, but modern Malians know how it defines their country.

They are river people, proud of the natural heritage the Niger River has given them.

Denny Caneff

Finding Love in a Ditch....

There’s a commonly held belief that floats around our great badger state that enviros and farmers are always at loggerheads and that’s just the way it is. Never the tilled soil and the hugged tree should meet, so to speak. Too often, this is a damned accurate assumption….especially amongst the more commercially focused members of the agribusiness community and even the more rigid members of the tree-hugging society. “Oh lack-a-day,” some will say, “it’s just the way of things…best to accept it and prepare for scuffling.”

This last Saturday, a group of folks said “Pish!” to that idea and gathered at Justin (on the right) and Lynn Isherwood’s farm near Plover for the River Alliance’s second annual BBQ on the Banks. It’s important to note that the Isherwoods are not your 15-acre and a quaint barn type of gentleman (or gentlewoman) farmer…they’re an honest to goodness commercial operation farming several hundred acres of potatoes and canning vegetables in the unique central sands region of the state. And they’re true stewards of the land….and the water. They understand the dangers of turning a blind eye to the level of water usage needed to grow a potato in Wisconsin’s central region, and work hard to find a balance between their usage and the groundwater needs of the area.

And don’t worry reader…there’s a river connection too. As with most of the farmland in that area, the Isherwoods’ fields are bordered by “laterals,” otherwise known as drainage ditches. What many folks don't know is that these ditches once were fine cold water streams teeming with trout. Seems that about 100 years ago, town planners thought the drainage capabilities of these streams would be greatly enhanced by dredging and straightening them. Maybe, maybe not. But nowadays there are those who envision a return of these trout havens to their natural, meandering courses. J. Isherwood is one of those, and river rats who attended BBQ on the Banks on July 17 got to see his efforts to do just that.

As with most River Alliance events, this outing mixed lessons with lively fun, treating the attendees to Justin and Lynn’s “earthy” wisdom and sound farming techniques while sampling some of the area’s nicest products. Offerings included beer from Central Waters Brewing, salads from Adventure 212 Bistro and Café 27 (who threw in some very fine croissants too), as well as the Isherwoods’ version of the famous (infamous?) Moore Barn pulled pork sandwich (it’s difficult to dislike a sandwich with its own mythology…even if there is suspicion that said mythology was cooked up by Justin himself). The highlight of the feast, though, was some of our hosts’ red potatoes, fresh from the ground. Lynn suggested a bit of butter, salt and pepper for the melt in your mouth tubers, but to be truthful, those windows needed no curtains.

A good time was had by all, hay wagons were boarded, corn silk was tasted and perhaps some current mythology was dented. As they (almost) say in the song…"The River Rat and the Farmer should be friends…”

With more folks like Justin and Lynn, that might just happen.




Want to see more pics from the event? Head to http://picasaweb.google.com/dpausch/IsherwoodWebAlbum#5496014787028126626 . All photos by Lia Vellardita.

a little Friday frivolity...

courtesy of The Onion:


"EPA Study: Rivers Shouldn't Smell Like Shit"

Rat Seeks Carp

You’d think the most exotic and controversial animal trap in the entire country would be more exciting to look at. It wasn’t. As a connoisseur of traps, this Rat was most curious about an electric fish trap. And from this Rat’s perspective, this fish (trap) story is a dandy tale -- about human beings, the illusions you harbor about controlling nature, and the immutable law of unintended consequences.

The aforementioned animal trap is actually not a trap but an electric fish barrier, wired to the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal. It is the last line of defense keeping the marauding Asian carp from wreaking havoc in Lake Michigan, and no doubt beyond. (But as a fellow low-life, bottom-feeding critter, Rat does harbor some sympathy for the much disparaged Asian carp.)

The site of the electric fish barrier, on the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal.

You’ll see pictured here some interested souls getting a tour of this fish barrier, found near Lockport, Illinois and operated by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Essentially the barrier is a bunch of thick wires in the water just above the bottom of the canal that emit electric waves that repel the fish. Even though you weren’t supposed to actually see fish fleeing , very few of the people on this tour shared the Corps’ sanguine view of the effectiveness of this device.

The weird plumbing Chicago area rivers can be seen at this site (called Bubbly Creek at one time because of the decaying refuse gassing off in the stream, located about a mile from the Loop).

So far, only one Asian carp has found upstream from the barrier that we know about, but plenty of Asian carp DNA has been detected. Experts believe if the carp gets past the barriers, they have a free shot to Lake Michigan, and eventually Wisconsin’s rivers. (Asian carp can get to Wisconsin via the Mississippi River too, of course.)

Equally fascinating on this tour was getting to see firsthand the elaborate and massive plumbing job that is the river and surface waterway system for Chicago. The whole thing has been engineered to look nothing like it looked before settlement, and its dual purpose is to move cargo and send polluted water down to the Mississippi River (150 miles away) instead of to Lake Michigan (which is right there). Trying to manipulate this system to keep Asian carp out of the Great Lakes, as some are proposing, will be enormous engineering, hydrologic and – especially – political undertaking.

Time is totally on the carp’s side on this one.

Festivities, Fireworks and Flying Fish

No matter how many times I see it, it still sends chills up my spine. Check out this stunning video taken last week of salmon running Dagger Falls, on the Middle Fork of the Salmon River, Idaho, 700 miles from the sea.:




Save Our Wild Salmon are asking people to take action and let the Obama Administration know that protecting these incredible animals and this awesome journey is something we all care about. Take a minute to send a letter to the Administration here (actually, it takes less than a minute).

Then go be awestruck by this beautiful country.

Now THAT's patriotic!

posted by the River Rat