Fifteen Minutes of Fame

What do Asian Carp and the Salahis have in common? Well for one thing, they are both gate crashers. In truth, only carp DNA has crossed the barrier erected to keep the fish from invading the Great Lakes, but the carp and the crashing couple had their 15 minutes of fame this month and for a few days both were headline news.

Then there was Copenhagen – another 15 minutes of headlines. Did anything real come of all the talk over there? Maybe, maybe not, but like the Asian carp, climate change is more than a media event. It’s an ongoing problem. It’s not going to be solved with one, or even a series of meetings and neither is the problem of invasive species. It’s easier to deal with the immediacy of the White House party invaders – security will be beefed up and a few people may be fired, or put on administrative leave, but then the problem will be solved. However, we will probably still be arguing about carp and carbon emissions long after the Salahi’s are just another playing card in Trivial Pursuit. (Do people still play that game?)

There is no headline news about the Great Lakes today- unless you want to count the $13M the EPA allocated for fighting those carp late last week. There are no beautiful sunsets to write about either, and even if I had gotten up to the sunrise on this day of the Winter Solstice, I wouldn’t have seen anything. Thick clouds masked the annual event, and so I don’t feel bad that I was still in bed at 7:20 AM. It’s gray, cloudy, and very dull around here, not a great time to be writing about the Great Lakes. However, I have confidence that will change, maybe even tomorrow.

So, what about that Tiger Woods, anyhow?