January 27, 2010.  Great news about the news.  January has seen a surge in interest for the trip and there have been articles in Moose Lake, Askov, Sandstone, and Two Harbors newspapers in MN plus an article in Marquette, MI and Sault Ste Marie, Canada.  There will be a feature article in the upcoming Duluth Sunday paper and we just interviewed with Kim Ode at Minneapolis Star Tribune.  A short article in MinnPost, the state e newspaper can be found at
http://www.minnpost.com/markneuzil/2010/01/22/15122/love_affair_with_lake_superior_leads_to_major_expedition.

We are also pleased that WTIP radio in Grand Marais, MN, and KTCZ - cities97 - in the Twin Cities will have on the air updates before and throughout our travels. 

You would think that Dayton Ohio would have nothing to do with an expedition around Lake Superior; the closest great lake is Lake Erie, on the other side of the state. But on November the 24th just as I was driving through Cincinnati rush hour traffic on our way to a family visit, curtains of blood washed across my right eye without warning.

On Thanksgiving I was diagnosed with a tear in the retina and a partial detachment. Thanks to the Retinal Eye Surgery Clinic in Dayton I went through a series of procedures that ended with a big bubble inside my eye and a period of having to hold my head at an angle to keep the bubble in the right place.

The process is working; After two weeks of downtime I can begin to be active again and in a month I will be back up and running.

This expedition has many aspects and our bodies remain the single most important resources. Episodes like this and their recoveries are important to the record and success of the entire project. I won't let this even slow me down.

The average water use for every person on Earth is 328,366 gallons of freshwater a year and Americans use almost double the average (not a surprise, but a reason to be concerned and to take action).  Check out www.waterfootprint.org to learn more details.

New York Times | SCIENCE / ENVIRONMENT

National Briefing | Michigan: Fear Over Asian Carp Brings Request to Close Waterways
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
 
Fears that the voracious Asian carp will enter the Great Lakes and wipe out other fish have led to demands that the government close the waterways connecting the lakes and the Mississippi River. Gov. Jennifer M. Granholm and environmental groups asked Michigan’s attorney general to take legal action to force the Army Corps of Engineers to temporarily shut down three shipping locks near Chicago. This comes after new evidence shows the carp may have breached an electrical barrier that is supposed to hold them back from the lakes. The environmental groups went further than the governor and said that the Great Lakes and the Mississippi should be permanently separated to avert what Ms. Granholm called “ecological disaster.”

Star Tribune | LOCAL

3-year study reveals Lake Superior's ancient past
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
 
MARQUETTE, Mich. - Thousands of years of human activity along the Upper Peninsula's Lake Superior shoreline have come into sharper focus after three years of research. Scientists from Northern Michigan University's geography department recently completed a project at Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore that located 23 new archaeological sites. The researchers also helped define the shoreline as it existed 4,500 years ago.