- emily.sekine
Hampton, Illinois, USAabout 5 years ago
There's quite a lot of dancing and singing on the river, sometimes across species. - emily.sekine
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA
over 5 years ago
Meanwhile, in Pittsburgh, I went to a Defend the Water protest outside of the Shale Insight conference this week. While Trump prepared to speak in front of reps from the gas and petrochemical industry, Native leaders led protestors in a water blessing at the confluence of the Allegheny, Monangahela, and Ohio rivers. Some of them had come all the way from Standing Rock. "We're here because your water is in trouble," one of them told the crowd.
From that point in Pittsburgh, the Ohio - consistently ranked one of the most polluted rivers in America - meanders its way to the Mississippi. And the river is about to get even more polluted. There's a plastics boom in Appalachia, which depends on fracking, pipelines, and ethane cracker plants. People are starting to make connections between what's happening here and what's already been happening for decades in the Gulf. As we marched through downtown Pittsburgh, someone started chanting: "No Cancer Alley/In the Ohio Valley!" - emily.sekine
Genoa, Wisconsin, USAover 5 years ago
For some, living along the river signals privilege: freedom, respite, recreation. For others (especially further downriver), it represents precarity: risk, instability, toxicity. How do we make sense of these uneven geographies - and all of the shifting, contradictory gradients in between? - emily.sekine
Bloomsdale, Missouri, USAover 5 years ago
-Shooting turtles is prohibited.
-Turtles are no threat to game fish.
-Missouri has 17 kinds of turtles; all are protected as either game or non-game species.
-Only the common snapping turtle and softshells are considered game and may be taken by approved methods.
-It is illegal to capture, sell or trade Missouri’s turtles for the pet trade.
-Turtles are beneficial scavengers; they eat water plants, dead animals, snails, aquatic insects and crayfish.
-Swimmers should not fear turtles; they won’t bite unless they are picked up.
—From the pamphlet “Missouri’s Turtles,” produced by the MO Dept. of Conservation - emily.sekine
St. Louis, Missouri, USAover 5 years ago
There’s the Big Muddy we kept hearing about. Just past the confluence where the silt-laden Missouri flows for 2,341 miles before joining forces with the Mississippi. - emily.sekine
Genoa, Wisconsin, USAover 5 years ago
Dinosaur egg or styrofoam? Found floating in the Mississippi River, then carried by canoe and disposed of in a trash can near Lock and Dam 8. - emily.sekine
Hannibal, Missouri, USAover 5 years ago
Visiting Mark Twain’s Cave with the River Semester. According to our guide, the cave used to be home to so many bats that they would form columns stretching from the ceiling to the floor when they slept. Today we didn’t see a single one - just the traces of their presence on the underground walls. Their absence is partly due to the installation of electricity in the cave for tourism. More recently, White Nose Syndrome has been wiping out hibernating bat populations across Norh America. Estimates suggest that at least 80% have been lost. - emily.sekine
Winona County, Minnesota, USAover 5 years ago
Red buoys, called “nuns,” and green buoys, called “cans,” serve as navigational markers along the river. They demarcate the edges of the 9-foot channel for barge traffic. This nun went rogue and escaped somehow into the backwaters near Richmond Island, likely carried off by flooding.
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