[Stuart Carlton]
Teach me about the Great Lakes. Teach me about the Great Lakes. Welcome back to Teach Me About the Great Lakes, a twice monthly podcast in which I, a Great Lakes novice, ask people who are smarter and harder working than I am to teach me all about the Great Lakes.

My name is Stuart Carlton. Glad to be back in this fresh new year, the year 2026.

[Megan Gunn]
Yes.

[Stuart Carlton]
2026. And I'm joined today by Megan, the lake lover Gunn. Nobody knows her job title because it's very lengthy.

But Megan, we're going to start. We have a question from the great Lee, one of our listeners, L-E-I-G-H, like Lee Raymond. And that is this, Megan, Megan, what is something that you enjoy that most people don't know about?

[Megan Gunn]
One of the things that I really enjoy is walking around museums and zoos and aquariums and like reading all of the signs. Like I know a lot of people just rush through all the things, but I want to read every single word. And people took a lot of time to put those signs together.

So I want to know everything about it.

[Stuart Carlton]
Everything about it.

[Megan Gunn]
Everything.

[Stuart Carlton]
Everything. When I go to museums, I just steal the jewels. Well, funny you should say that, Megan.

In an amazing coincidence, we can go ahead and jump straight to today's guest. It's museum related. You as a museum lover.

That's what the M.

[Megan Gunn]
That's what the M in my first name stands for. It's not Megan.

[Stuart Carlton]
Museum lake lover Gunn.

[Megan Gunn]
Yes.

[Stuart Carlton]
Anyway, as you know, museum lover.

Today's guest is Bill Pringle. He's the curator of collections at the Detroit, or as they say, Detroit, Detroit Historical Society and the Dawson Great Lakes Museum. Bill, welcome.

Thank you for coming on to teach us about the Great Lakes.

[Bill Pringle]
Hello. Thank you so much for having me. I'm very excited.

I kept wanting to jump in because, first of all, thank you for reading every single word on the labels in the museums as someone who writes those. I very much appreciate that. And striking that balance between having enough information and not putting too much on there so people don't walk away is probably the hardest part of my job.

[Megan Gunn]
I believe it. There's so much that can be said, but.

[Bill Pringle]
I also want to make it clear.

I am also a Great Lakes novice. Because I think we all can learn more about the Great Lakes. So I might know a little bit more than some people, but I'm always learning.

[Stuart Carlton]
There's a lot to learn. There is a lot to learn. So interesting.

So I know science. So you write the science. I did some interpretation work when I was in grad school, but it was like environmental interpretation.

My major advisor was an expert in that. And so we had to do an interpretation project, but nobody looked at it.

[Megan Gunn]
That's a shame I would have.

[Stuart Carlton]
Yeah. What is the process for writing? I've already gotten us off track. I apologize.

But what is the process for writing one of these signs?

[Bill Pringle]
Yeah. Gosh. So it's really just a process of condensing information about whatever topic it is you're exploring.

And, you know, sometimes that can be a very granular topic or sometimes it can be incredibly broad. For an exhibit that we've got over at the Detroit Historical Museum, so not our Maritime Focus Museum, we have one that talks about early Detroit history. And it covers a pretty colossal span of time, you know, thinking about it.

And every sentence in that exhibit could be somebody's term paper or a book. So, like, it's so hard to condense that information down sometimes into a manner that is both interesting and also legible and not legible, but what's the word I'm looking for? Into a way that is digestible to not only adults, but also school kids that are maybe learning about this topic for the first time.

And so I kind of, the way I do it, and this is sort of the mental image I have of it, is like, and this is going to sound really pretentious, but starting with like a block of marble. And your block of marble is everything that you could possibly know about the subject. And then you're slowly chiseling it down to the things that your guests critically need to know about that subject.

And then slowly filing that down to, you know, tightening up your sentences and maybe, you know, getting rid of the extraneous material. And so I kind of think of it like that, like it's a process of slowly working from this huge amount of material and really boiling it down to its most basic parts.

[Stuart Carlton]
So you say slowly, but really within that, what you're having to do is become a quick expert on a lot of different things, right?

[Bill Pringle]
Oh yeah. It's a sprint sometimes. And we at the Detroit Historical Society, so speaking broadly about two different museums here, the Detroit Historical Museum and the Dawson Great Lakes Museum, and honestly, also a lot of offsite stuff that we do.

We do plenty of exhibits that are out elsewhere in the community. So we stay very busy. I think we've done over 20 exhibits this year, which is really kind of unheard of.

That's definitely a feather in our cap, but it really does keep us busy and sprinting. So yeah, there are plenty of times where I've had to really come up to terms with, you know, a particular topic in a very fast manner. And I like to think that I'm a quick study.

So I guess I need to be sometimes. But it's one of my fears whenever we open up a new exhibit is, I left something out that's completely critical to the conversation. Or we're going to get a comment from a guest that says, how could you not talk about this or this is wrong?

That keeps me up at night. But that's just part of the job. And I've slowly been building up my armor as far as that goes.

And we can change these things too. It's not the end of the world if we have to alter something on a panel. But we try to get it right the first time.

[Stuart Carlton]
Yeah, sure. So in the Dawson, that's like a focus on maritime history, right in the Great Lakes. Is that correct?

[Bill Pringle]
Correct. Yes.

[Stuart Carlton]
So then how do you decide what to feature?

Do you just go out looking for shipwrecks? Or that's what we do when it comes to podcast guests. We've had an alarming amount of shipwreck content.

But is that what you do? Or how do you decide what is Dawson worthy?

[Bill Pringle]
Yeah, well, we come across new exhibits in a broad range of ways. So the Dawson, compared to the Detroit Historical Museum, is smaller. We only have one rotating exhibit space there, as well as a rotating space where we switch in and out ship models from our pretty big collection of model ships.

But so we generally have one rotating exhibit in the Dawson every year. Sometimes we extend that a little bit. And so we really only have to worry about one space there.

And we have a little bit of time to percolate on what that's going to be. But for both of the museums, you know, we look to things like anniversaries. I think that's a really easy way to talk about any particular subject in a way that's relevant to, you know, that particular year, you know, it's been 150 years since whatever.

In the current exhibit that we've got up at the Dawson, we're talking about the J.W. Westcott Company. I don't know if you're familiar with them.

[Megan Gunn]
No, tell us more.

[Bill Pringle]
Oh, wow. You, you definitely should try to get them on your show. Because they, the J.W. Westcott Company is the only floating zip code in the United States. They are the mail delivery service on the Detroit River that takes mail to the freighters coming up and down the Detroit River. Not only mail, but you know, packages and pizzas, they take food to them. They take pilots to ships coming up and down the Detroit River because any foreign ship coming in to the Great Lakes using the St. Lawrence Seaway system needs to have a North American pilot on board. Someone who's familiar with the region.

[Megan Gunn]
We don't want any more accidents.

[Bill Pringle]
Right.

And so the Westcott is one of the agents that that takes the pilots out to these boats. So I bring them up because it was recently their 150th anniversary last year. So they were founded in 1874.

So that was a really great opportunity to talk about this uniquely Detroit, uniquely Great Lakes, really unique to the country business that would have deserved an exhibit on its own no matter what year it was. But having that anniversary sort of provided us with a launching pad to talk about it. But it could be, we could come across an exhibit just because it's a particular interest of one of us on staff.

I have a colleague who had been banging the drum for years about how he wanted to do an exhibit about Detroit's role in comic books and pop culture and that sort of thing. And we finally got that on display. So he really got to run wild with that one.

You know, suggestions from guests, you know, why don't you do an exhibit talking about this or that popular topics? Or it could come from a particular artifact donation that we have gotten recently. A couple of years ago, we did an exhibit called Dining on the Inland Seas that came out of a massive donation of ship china, like dinnerware, from these freighter companies.

You know, what the crew was eating on board, you know, so that provided us with an opportunity to talk about, you know, how life is lived on a freighter, what kind of food you were having, and that sort of thing. And so we had this really great wall full of plates, you know, with monogrammed flags from each shipping company. So that was pretty fun.

But it really is, it runs the gamut for how we come up with ideas. And you never know what particular thing we will land on.

[Megan Gunn]
And I'm assuming this is all part of the curation of what you're putting together. How does one become a curator of collections of all these plates?

[Bill Pringle]
Sure. Well, first of all, I think it's going to be a little bit different for everybody. Because no museum really does things the same way.

No position in every museum is going to be exactly the same. So talking about like, the distribution of roles, and what a curator does at one exhibit might be completely different from what a curator does at another museum, rather. You know, they might just be the ones researching the initial topic, and you have a team that is going to be taking that information and turning it into labels, and another team that is putting together the artifacts that are going to be in the exhibit, etc, etc.

You know, I would consider us to be sort of a mid-sized museum. We're not gigantic, but we're not a small historic house. But because of that, the lines between our departments, between curatorial collections, exhibits, we all tend to have a hand in a lot of those different things.

So, you know, it helps to have really a diverse set of experience in the museum to help make our exhibits better. But if we're talking about how I specifically came to this role, I feel extremely lucky, or privileged, or blessed, however you want to put it, to be where I am now. Because I didn't really see myself in a position like this when I was like eight years old, you know, as some people know from the time they're very little what they want to do.

But I was very fortunate growing up to have had a series of really fantastic history teachers. A lot of kids often don't like history because, you know, they don't like memorizing dates or learning about old people, you know, like what does that have to do with me? But I was very fortunate to have some teachers that really helped the topic come to life, coming dressed in period costume or having us make candles in class, that sort of thing.

You know, that was what I was interested in. And, you know, math and science didn't quite resonate as much with me. But still at that point, I didn't really anticipate making a career out of it.

When I went to university, I went to school at the University of Detroit Mercy. And initially I was, what do you call it when you don't know what you want?

[Megan Gunn]
Undecided?

[Bill Pringle]
Yes. I sort of had the idea of going into journalism at the time because I enjoyed writing. And I thought I was pretty good at it.

Did pretty well on writing tests and that sort of thing. For a little while I wrote for the school newspaper. But the same thing happened where, you know, I signed up for history courses because I had an interest in history.

And again, I just had these fantastic history teachers who were able to relate these topics to, you know, your own life and really help you see the broader picture and how everything connects and just made it so fascinating. And that's when I got the idea of, well, is this something I can do? Like, I love sitting in these classes.

Like, how can I make this part of my life? And so I officially declared history as my major. But I really didn't know what I was going to do with a history degree.

I'm sure my parents were terrified. But luckily, as part of the coursework in the history program at UDM, there was a class that was, you know, here's the things you can do with a history degree. I think a lot of people assume that if you're going into history, you're going to either be teaching or you're going to be writing books, that sort of thing.

Right. Yeah. But, you know, I could never be a teacher.

I'm far too soft. My students would make me cry every day, I'm sure. But one of those options was public history, museums and historic houses and national parks, that sort of thing.

And that's when it really clicked in my brain, because I'd always loved museums my whole life, but it never occurred to me that there were people making museums happen. Right. And so that's what really set me on the course that I'm on now.

And while I was in school, I did several internships at some great institutions around this area, one of which being the Detroit Historical Society, where I did some work on an exhibit that's a permanent exhibit at the Detroit Historical Museum about Detroit's role in the Underground Railroad. Because, of course, for those of you who don't know, Detroit, we're on an international boundary between the U.S. and Canada. They're right across the Detroit River from us, actually south of us, believe it or not.

Canada is to the south of Detroit. So I got some experience in the curatorial world. In that internship, I did collections internships elsewhere and an internship in a registrar's office as well, which is pretty technical, but something I enjoy as well.

[Stuart Carlton]
I want to go back to life or the career path because you're interested, but it's funny that you mentioned the Underground Railroad, because Megan is actually an expert on this to a certain extent.

[Megan Gunn]
Expertish?

[Stuart Carlton]
Expert, expertish. She's actually talked to experts about this. She was instrumental to a team developing what we call the Freedom Seekers Curriculum.

Do you want to tell a little bit about that?

[Megan Gunn]
Yes. So we have a Freedom Seekers Curriculum, which is the goal of the curriculum is to show how freedom seekers weren't just enslaved peoples, they were also environmentalists and scientists, and that part of their story has been erased. And so the curriculum walks through how they were able to utilize nature, but also the Great Lakes to get through freedom.

And obviously Detroit is one of our locations that we mentioned. And I mean, also highlighting how they cross through Illinois and Indiana and New York and all of these other Great Lakes states to get over to Canada most of the time.

[Bill Pringle]
Yeah. Yeah. Midnight.

That was Detroit's codename.

[Megan Gunn]
I did not know that. Thank you.

[Bill Pringle]
Yeah. So that was on the railroad, the codename for Detroit was Midnight. This is probably a tangent, but you get folks coming to the museum or even just people I talked to that weren't aware that slavery was an issue in the North.

It's like, no, we had slavery in Detroit. And it comes as such a shock to people, but that's part of our job is to help tell those stories that have been buried for so long. So I really appreciate that work because broadening the scope of what we talk about in terms of subjects like that, I think is really important.

So I applaud that work.

[Megan Gunn]
Thank you. I applaud your work.

[Bill Pringle]
Oh, thanks.

[Stuart Carlton]
So then I want to hear about how you moved into curation and then over into the maritime side, particularly. And then also I'm interested in hearing, so if you want to touch on that, also I'd be interested in hearing, all right, let's think about our visitors. They're going to go to Detroit, right?

And they're going to have the pizza, which I've had, thanks to Sandy Savota, the buddies, buddies, I've been to buddies. Oh, yeah. And so, but then they're going to want something to do.

And so anyway, but so yeah, how did you move into curation? How did you get involved in the Great Lakes Museum specifically?

[Bill Pringle]
Sure. So I graduated with my bachelor's degree in history with a minor in museum studies after doing a handful of internships. And I was working at the front desk of the Detroit Institute of Arts, which is a world-class art museum here in Detroit.

Definitely recommend visiting if you're in the area, in addition to our wonderful museums. Absolutely. And I was there about a year as I was contemplating going to grad school.

And it was right about the time I was about to begin applying. I got an email from the curator at the time who I was an intern for. And he said, hey, there is a position open here.

You should, you should apply. He remembered my work and recommended that I apply for the position, which was for a curatorial assistant and ended up getting it. Thank you.

And so I sort of paused my pursuit of a master's degree because I was doing what I wanted to do. And that's sort of history. I've been at the Detroit Historical Society for 12 years now.

And in that time, my title and role has both shifted. But as I mentioned, we have a lot of crossover in terms of how we do things at the museum. So when I started, I was really working under our senior curator.

So the one really developing the content of exhibits and our curator of collections who has more of a focus on the physical objects of the Detroit Historical Society collection. And in that time, you know, I've shifted. I think I flipped the words from assistant curator to curatorial assistant to curator and now curator of collections, which probably really just minimal changes in what I'm actually doing day to day.

You know, I'm researching. I'm writing the words that appear on panels like we were talking about earlier. I'm determining what from our collection will help support this topic.

What do people want to look at? You can't have an exhibit without stuff for people to look at. And that includes both physical objects, but images, video, that stuff from our collection, or if we need to borrow artifacts from other institutions, we do that as well.

And that's also part of my role. I help facilitate loans to other institutions who are looking to put on their own exhibits that might be that might benefit from having something from our collection on display. So it's really a cornucopia of different things that I get to do.

I'm even down there helping install, you know, pulling old panels off the wall, tacking stuff up, making sure things look right. So in times like that, it's really an all hands on deck situation. But I love that part of the job.

I love being able to wear so many hats. It does get a little hectic at times having to, you know, have all these things in the back of your mind, spinning so many plates at once. But I do find it rewarding when everything comes together.

And so I personally, for me, I think the size of the museum that I work at is like perfect because our staff is small enough where you get to know everybody pretty personally. And there's a lot of crossover in our day to day. And I really appreciate that about where I work.

[Stuart Carlton]
Excellent. So then, all right, I'm going to go visit this museum. What is the thing I should be most excited about seeing in there?

[Bill Pringle]
Oh, man. So if you're coming to the Dawson, we have some highlight things that are always on display. I mentioned we have one rotating space that always has a really cool story in it.

But if you're coming to the Dawson, you're going to see some really cool stuff. As you're walking from the parking lot to the museum, you're going to pass by the bow anchor of the Edmund Fitzgerald. So that should hopefully perk some ears up.

I don't know if it would be inappropriate to throw us into a time loop here. I know this is going to be very in 2026.

[Stuart Carlton]
But I bet y'all did a bunch for the big anniversary that happened last year. That's right.

[Bill Pringle]
Yeah.

[Stuart Carlton]
In November, because that's when the gales are. And one of the gales of November. Yeah.

So yeah. So did y'all do a thing? Is it still up or is the thing over?

[Bill Pringle]
We did. So we actually have an event every year on November 10th, which is the day that we lost the Edmund Fitzgerald. We call it the Lost Mariner's Remembrance.

We use November 10th as the date to hold this event because it's when we lost the Edmund Fitzgerald. But it also provides us with an opportunity to talk about and remember all mariners whose lives have been lost on the Great Lakes. And typically, when it's not 2025, we dedicate that night to a particular shipwreck.

It's different every year. Obviously, last year was the Edmund Fitzgerald. Because it was the 50th anniversary.

But we have a really great ceremony, which is international in scope. We have the U.S. and Canadian Coast Guards. We have the Detroit Police and Fire Department.

We have the RCMP, the Ontario Provincial Police. We have all these different organizations that are so important to the Detroit River, both in-house and on the river. We've got an honor flotilla that comes and picks up a memorial wreath and takes it out into the river and releases it at 7.10 p.m., which is when we lost the Edmund Fitzgerald. So we host that event every year. And last year, we had a set of extended programming. We had stuff going on all weekend, including a brunch where we had a chef from an actual freighter appear.

And we ate chicken paprikash, which is supposedly the last meal they ate on the Fitzgerald.

[Stuart Carlton]
How are they cooking that? Never mind. That's a different conversation.

They had a whole paprika store, like a barrel of paprika on the thing. Anyway, this was a recent shipwreck that I'll stop there, because there are still some people for whom it's kind of real. But anyway, interesting.

[Bill Pringle]
Yeah, it's true. We cut together a documentary or a mini-documentary to play during that evening's event. We usually have a historical presenter in-house that day talking about whatever shipwreck it is we're talking about.

But we wanted to bring in as many perspectives as possible. And so we had the idea that everyone else had, and that was to make a documentary about the Edmund Fitzgerald. But doing so was a lot of fun, and I think it came out really nicely.

We mostly wanted to talk about what has happened in the 50 years since the tragedy, what technologies have changed, what protocols have changed, how attitudes have changed, and really exploring the Fitzgerald's place in popular culture, you know, in the Great Lakes, but also beyond that. I think it had a moment last year during the 50th anniversary where people were talking about it more often than we do here in the Great Lakes region, and especially us at the Dawson, because we have an event for it every year. But there are a number of institutions around the Great Lakes that hold remembrance ceremonies around that time.

The Shipwreck Museum up at Whitefish Point in the Upper Peninsula, down in Toledo, there's a number of places. So it's pretty top of mind for us in the maritime museum world. But we're lucky enough to have that anchor right there as people come in.

It's not from the shipwreck. I think I would feel a little uncomfortable if it was from the shipwreck, to be honest. But the Fitzgerald lost that anchor in the Detroit River the year before it sank, actually.

It was waiting. It was anchored, waiting, I think, for a storm to pass or some ice to clear up. And when it pulled up anchor, a link in the chain broke and it lost the anchor there.

But it wasn't recovered until the 90s. There was a whole televised event where it was brought up, divers going down to the bottom.

[Stuart Carlton]
They had like Geraldo Rivera and everything there ready for the big reveal.

[Bill Pringle]
Oh, yeah, there was the view from the barge. We had underwater cameras. It was a whole thing.

[Stuart Carlton]
That's fun to get a chance to do that, too, because, yeah, in our sorts of careers, there's not much chance to be diving on public TV. Well, Bill, this is really fascinating to hear about the maritime museum and all the great work you do, the anchor, of course. We didn't even get to the webcam.

Everybody check out the webcam. It's really cool. But that's actually not why we invited you here on Teach Me About the Great Lakes this week.

The reason we invited you on Teach Me About the Great Lakes is to ask you two questions. The first of which is this. If you could choose to have a great donut for breakfast or a great sandwich for lunch, which would you choose?

[Bill Pringle]
This is the most difficult question I've been asked all month, I think, because nothing, nothing brightens my day more than coming into the office and seeing someone has brought donuts. I become like a kid. I'm so happy.

And, you know, I spend five minutes picking out which donut I want.

[Megan Gunn]
That was me this morning.

[Bill Pringle]
But I will always take a donut.

There was a time when I would probably take two donuts, but I am becoming older and I realize I can't quite afford that anymore. But, you know, where a donut might make my day, a really great sandwich might make my week.

[Megan Gunn]
We've never had this before.

[Stuart Carlton]
You've never had a week-making sandwich?

[Megan Gunn]
No, I've never.

[Bill Pringle]
Oh, yeah, you gotta come to Detroit.

[Stuart Carlton]
Well, no, people try to choose both all the time. He's saying, no, you gotta focus, Megan.

He's saying donuts are fine. Love a good donut. But, he said but.

And then, yeah.

[Bill Pringle]
Yes.

[Stuart Carlton]
Anyway, great.

This is super. Everybody chooses a sandwich because it's better. But tell me, I'm going to go to Detroit because I'm going to be driving to Windsor because at Windsor they have the casino where I get carded despite being well into my 40s.

And so, I just go to that casino, you know, because I kind of want to feel good. It's worth whatever, right. So, I'm going to go to that casino.

Obviously, for dinner, I'm going to go to Buddy's, but I'm going to want to get a sandwich at lunch. Where, Bill, should I go in Detroit to get a sandwich for lunch?

[Bill Pringle]
Holy smokes. I can think of so many places, but the one that comes to mind, there is a deli in Corktown in the southwest part of Detroit called Mudgee's. And they have a litany of amazing sandwiches there.

And you really can't go wrong with anything. I'm trying to remember the name of the one I like. The Barrett.

My favorite sandwich is probably a Reuben with nice tender corned beef and grilled bread is just perfect. That's a sandwich that'll make your week. But check out Mudgee's for sure.

They're very good. We've got a new restaurant opening every week around here. So, there's probably some great ones out there that I don't even know about yet.

And that makes me excited.

[Megan Gunn]
My question for you is what is a special place in the Great Lakes that you like to share with our audience? And what makes it special?

[Bill Pringle]
Uh, this feels a bit like cheating, but I'm going to say Belle Isle in the Detroit River. It's where the Dawson Great Lakes Museum is. But there's also so much to see and do on the island.

It's an island park just offshore of Detroit, sandwiched between Detroit and Windsor, Ontario. We have the oldest operating aquarium in America on the island.

[Stuart Carlton]
Really?

[Bill Pringle]
Yes. A very old conservatory designed by the same architect, Albert Kahn. We have the only fully marble lighthouse in the country on the island.

Belle Isle is actually bigger than Central Park in New York, believe it or not. There's so much to see and do on the island. It's such a great place in the summertime.

There's beaches. We have a giant slide. We have beautiful scenery and wetlands and you can canoe and kayak and swim.

There's so much to do, not to mention all the history of the Detroit River. If not for the Detroit River, Detroit wouldn't be here. You know, we have so much to thank for the Detroit River to the development of really humanity in this area.

I'm going back thousands of years to the point when this area's first people settled here. You know, the Detroit River is a highway. It's a food source.

It's a place of recreation. It's an international boundary. The Detroit River, you know, it connects the Great Lakes all together.

So I think it's a really great area to stop and appreciate this great network that the region has, you know, from so many different perspectives.

[Stuart Carlton]
Well, dang, now I'm ready to run through the wall for the Detroit River. That's amazing. Oh, Bill Pringle, I've lost our thing because I'm too busy.

We have a notes thing, listener, but I'm too busy looking at sandwiches at this Mudgee's. I've lost my tab. But this Tempe burger, I might have to door dash that all the way to West Soffiette.

And I'm not even a vegan.

[Megan Gunn]
And then order two, please, because I want one as well.

[Stuart Carlton]
Anyway, so where was I?

[Bill Pringle]
You won't be disappointed.

[Stuart Carlton]
Bill Pringle, curator of collections at the Detroit Historical Society in the Dawson Great Lakes Museum. Go right now and do the do the webcam. It's fun.

They have a Detroit River cam that you should check out.

[Bill Pringle]
Can I just mention something real quick? So the river cam is great because, you know, obviously we get a lot of traffic coming up and down the Detroit River. So if you pay attention to ship tracking sites, you can see what's coming and click into our camera and see a ship that's coming down or up river.

But a fun fact is a couple of years ago we had a freighter get stuck in the Detroit River right next to Belle Isle, right next to the Dawson Museum. So we had people lined up on the webcam trying to use it to look at the freighter that was stuck. But my favorite part about this is that day or that couple of days is when Google took their satellite image for Google Maps of that area.

So if you go into Google Maps satellite view of Belle Isle and the Dawson Museum, you'll see a freighter stuck wedged right next to it.

[Megan Gunn]
That's fantastic. I mean, not fantastic for the freighter, but fantastic.

[Bill Pringle]
They got it unstuck. It was fine, but it was a fun little thing for people to go see at that time.

[Stuart Carlton]
Sorry, I'm lost on that. What was that ship, the Nassau Canal? Do you remember that?

The Ever Given. You had your own Ever Given situation.

[Bill Pringle]
We did. And you know, I feel like it wasn't that long after that. So we kind of had our own situation there.

[Stuart Carlton]
Excellent. Well, Bill Pringle, thank you so much for coming on and teaching us all about the Great Lakes.

[Bill Pringle]
It has been my absolute pleasure. I could have talked for two more hours about all of this.

[Stuart Carlton]
Come back on. That's no problem. Everybody's welcome.

[Megan Gunn]
I think it's really cool how teachers just really make an impact on their students in ways that they hope to happen, but they don't see that ever because unless they contact them later.

[Stuart Carlton]
Yeah, it's a big turnaround, too, right? In the sense that it's like you're talking, yeah, decades later. Yeah, I hear him.

I taught middle school for a couple of years.

[Megan Gunn]
Yeah.

[Stuart Carlton]
And I was the world's worst, like I was too soft, as he put it. Because they just walked all over me. They made fun of me.

They made MySpace pages dedicated to me. Oh, it's bleak. I started hating children. That's why I quit. I was like, if you're hating children, maybe it's not the job for you. Yeah. No, but you got to be ready for this double donut sandwich situation.

[Megan Gunn]
I will in the future.

[Stuart Carlton]
People always try to weasel their way out. But no, you got to pick.

[Megan Gunn]
They have to make a decision.

[Stuart Carlton]
If you could pick both, which would it be? That's not the question.

[Megan Gunn]
Yeah.

[Stuart Carlton]
Anyway, this is great. Got to go see this museum. Yes.

[Megan Gunn]
I will say, I was hoping he was going to say that one of his teachers dressed up as a lake sturgeon or some other critter from the Great Lakes. And that is what got him.

[Stuart Carlton]
Yeah. Some Great Lakes cosplay.

[Megan Gunn]
Yes. Yes, absolutely. Teach me about the Great Lakes.

It's brought to you by the fine people at Illinois Indiana Sea Grant. We encourage you to check out the cool stuff we do at IIseagrant.org and at ILINSEAGrant on Facebook, Blue Sky, and other social media.

[Stuart Carlton]
Our senior producers, Carolyn Foley and Teach Me About the Great Lakes is produced by Megan, Museum Lover, Lake Lover Gun, and Reni Miles. Ethan Chitty is our associate producer, Fixer, and our coordinating producer. We haven't got a lot of titles.

[Megan Gunn]
Yes.

[Stuart Carlton]
You know why a lot of people help us with this show?

[Megan Gunn]
Yeah.

[Stuart Carlton]
We get a title.

[Megan Gunn]
Yeah.

[Stuart Carlton]
Listener, you too could have a title.

Probably not. Our super fun podcast artwork is by Joel Davenport. The show is edited by formerly from the Detroit area.

Maybe she still lives there. I don't know. I don't track where people live.

Sandy, Sandra.

[Megan Gunn]
If you have a question or a comment about the show, we'll give you a title. You can tell us what you want your title to be. When you email it to us at teachmeaboutthegreatlakes at gmail.com or leave us a message on our hotline at 765-496-4474. Or if you want to send us a postcard, we love postcards.

[Stuart Carlton]
Do it.

[Megan Gunn]
About as much as we love webcams.

Live webcams that are shooting shipwrecks in.

[Stuart Carlton]
Shooting. Shootings. Yes. Let's enunciate. No, that's fine.

[Megan Gunn]
Filming.

[Stuart Carlton]
I don't want to see a webcam that's doing the other thing with shipwrecks. Just constantly coming out. It's a real digestive issue.

But anyway, if you want to send us a postcard, this is why I got so excited that I had to interrupt you.

[Megan Gunn]
I'll give you the address.

[Stuart Carlton]
It's 195 Marsteller Street, West Lafayette, Indiana. 47907.

[Megan Gunn]
Yes. Or six, but they both get to us. So it doesn't matter.

[Stuart Carlton]
Nope.

[Megan Gunn]
Anyways, thanks for listening and keep grading those lakes.