The Red Brick Times

Back from Alpena, Michigan (hold up left hand, look at back of hand, point to right side of index finger, near the first knuckle) located about here. The Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary and Underwater Preserve just opened a new HQ facility, the Great Lakes Maritime Heritage Center, in Alpena last September. They took over part of the closed Fletcher Paper Mill, built in 1898 and operational through 2004, and converted it to museum, display, store and interpretive space. The Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary encompasses a several-hundred-square-mile area of Lake Huron around Thunder Bay in which hundreds of ships have come to rest over the past two centuries. There are about 65 known wreck sites and archives suggest that there may be nearly 200 in total. A film shown at the Heritage Center has old photos, history and current underwater footage of some of the ships. The cold fresh water has preserved wood and even rope rigging on some of the older sailing vessels. Here is a link to the Shipwrecks, known and suspected, in the preserve. The displays in the Center include some large scale models of ships, photos, and recovered artifacts from some of the vessels. Thunder Bay is only one of 14 NOAA National Marine Sanctuaries.

And, since this is all owned and sponsored by NOAA (the weather bureau people), there is a dynamic display unlike any I have seen before. Imagine a white reflective movie screen shaped into an 6-foot diameter sphere. Now envision four computer video projectors spaced equidistantly around it. Now consider what happens when a flat Mercator projection of a global map is re-projected on to a sphere. The result is a full-color, pole-to-pole, walk-around planet, tilted axis and all. There is a 360-degree view of Mars with a narrative comparing geological features with those of Earth. Then the view switches to Earth. There, suspended in space, is a turning Earth with color-coded topography and bathymetry, from the Himalayan peaks to the Marianas trench. That segues into a rotating globe of day and night earth, with nighttime lights color-coded as to electrical (white) and fires (yellow). I was surprised to see how much of sub-Saharan Africa is being burned for agricultural use. Our commercial and residential development along the Interstate Highway System makes the US road network visible from space. The ocean temperatures are also displayed by color, illustrating el Nino and la Nina events that occur in the Southern Pacific off the West coast of S. America. They show the hurricane season in 2004, visually highlighting all the storm activity around the globe over a period of several months. The narrative points out the four major hurricanes that struck Florida that year, from storm genesis off the coast of Africa to rain-out over the Southeastern US. Finally, they show carbon dioxide increase projections and the resulting color-coded global temperature increases for the next 500 years. With a conservatively small (1%-2%) annual CO2 increase for the next 120 years, global temperatures rise and maintain averages from 25 to 30 degrees higher than at present. Within a couple of centuries, the polar ice caps have completely vanished, and the entire globe is a solid mass of red (25 degrees higher) shading to black (30 or more degrees higher) at the poles. Think global desertification. Think plant and animal extinctions. Think human species endangerment. We're toast if we don't do something drastic that hasn't been invented yet. I was mesmerized and entranced by this exhibit, and want one of my own. It is called NOAA Science on a Sphere and was unveiled in Alpena in early July. Here are some of the data sets and video clips used for the SOS exhibit. I downloaded the one for the 2004 hurricane season. It doesn't have the same impact on the monitor as it does glowing on a 6-foot three-dimensional planet hanging in space.

The old paper mill building itself has been made "greener" by the use of geothermal heating and cooling, low flow and waterless restroom facilities, insulation and infrared relective roofing. There is an online PDF brochure about the Great Lakes Maritime Heritage Center .

A firm calling itself Alpena Marc LLC has plans to convert the Fletcher Paper Company site into a hotel, shopping, dining, boardwalk and community showplace (the link jumps to a Powerpoint presentation for that project). The timeline puts them two years behind already. I see no evidence of any work other than the NOAA facility. There is supposedly a microbrewery operating somewhere in the other parts of the building, and I see some Yellow Freight trucks and signs that they are operating a small shipping terminal there. No boardwalk, no restaurants.

There are lots of empty retail spaces in Alpena. The small local mall has about 30% vacancy inside, and even the K-Mart has few cars in the lot. The only hopping place in town was the (you guessed it) Wal-Mart. As blue-collar jobs have vanished, and family tourism and travel is curtailed, Alpena, long a summer lake-shore and vacation rental destination, will languish. There are many, many for sale signs on houses. I understand that local property taxes have recently gone up, and that is also driving sales of vacation cottages.

In any case, I spent an interesting week on the shores of Long Lake near Alpena, Mi., which is not navigably connected to Lake Huron. No visible evidence of Zebra Mussels yet. Most of the boats on Long Lake are pontoon, fiberglass or aluminum open-tops of 18 feet or less powered by outboards. They arrive on trailers having dried and baked in the summer sun, killing possible mussel spawn. The lake visibility is about 6-7 feet, and turbid beyond that depth. The shore is heavily built up with houses and cabins built since the 1940's, and aging septic systems add to the water cloudiness. Max depth of Long Lake is 25 feet. They were catching largemouth bass (up to 12") and some smaller walleye last week. There are supposedly some pike lurking deep, but they are usually caught by ice fishermen in the winter. The lake usually freezes over with a 2-foot ice cap in most areas. Cormorants, Herons, three or four duck species with their nearly fledged young following in flotilla, gulls and the random tern falling out of the sky in a fish-plummet. Bats flicker overhead at dusk scooping up the bugs. I rowed a couple of miles each morning in an 8-foot aluminum skiff, and sat and read books in the lake breeze. If this is what retirement is like, I better hurry up and get there. Actually, one week was sufficient to practice slug-like behavior. Got to get back to projects and stuff.
Posted 1:15 PM by Andy (0) comments

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