Gitchigumi

I've never slept well on airplanes. It may have something to do with sitting up or the fear that my purse is going to walk off or whatever, but it's rare that I actually sleep in transit. However, if I'm really tired, I will hit a semi-out-of-it dream state sometimes. I've been battling a cold and cough for the last week and a half and haven't been sleeping well, so I hit the semi-out-of-it dream state pretty quickly on the flight down to San Antonio from Milwaukee, Wisconsin last Sunday. Sometimes in this state, I'll hear music or visualize images from my past, some meaningful, others, not particularly.

Last Sunday, as I was drifting off on the plane, I heard Gordon Lightfoot's song, The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, a song he wrote about the 1975 sinking of a freighter in Lake Superior during a winter storm. My family was living in the Village of Superior in 1975 at the time 'Big Fitz' sunk, losing all crew. Therefore, Lightfoot's song has always had a special, although morbid, meaning for my family and the Superior community. I hadn't heard the song on the radio in some time, possibly years, as I usually only listen to a station that plays 'oldies' when I drive up to northern Wisconsin to visit my parents. The song always makes me sad. Not only is the story true and tragic, but Lightfoot's song was written in Dorian mode, a medieval tonal pattern, which I find unnerving. It's also a song about unpredictability, loss and death.

I live in the Village of Whitefish Bay, Wisconsin these days, a community just north of Milwaukee, on Lake Michigan. Lightfoot also mentions Whitefish Bay in his song about the SS Edmund Fitzgerald.

Edmund Fitzgerald, for whom the ship was named, was born in Milwaukee in 1895 to an immigrant Irish shipbuilding family. When I went digging for a biography on him, I read that he had many reservations about a ship being named after him while he was still alive. However, his wife was adamant as he headed the insurance company that owned the ship.

I have no idea why Lightfoot's song came to mind on Sunday, but since then, the Great Lakes shipping industry has been on my mind. I've just spent a lot of time in the past, mentally, this week, and I needed something to bring my thinking back to the present and the future.

I got that something this afternoon.

Wisconsin Senator Herb Kohl distributed an email about his successful negotiation for ship construction contracts with Congress and the U.S. Navy to build five LCS, or Littoral Combat Ships, at Marinette Marine, a northern Wisconsin shipbuilding company. Senator Kohl laid the keel of the first ship, the USS Milwaukee, during a ceremony earlier today. I got a lump in my throat when I read the email as it signifies a commitment to a brighter economic future and to progress, despite past losses. I get pretty emotional about these things some times. That news brought tears to my eyes. It really made my day.

So, this week has been bittersweet. Lake Superior, or 'Gitchigumi' as the Ojibwe call it, will always have a special place in my heart with its sad history. However, we're still committed to progress, and I look forward to seeing the USS Milwaukee in sea service for the U.S. Navy in the near future.