Log in

No account? Create an account
04 June 2010 @ 02:04 pm
the BP oil spill  

Cherie Priest says it all about the BP oil spill, a disaster of such magnitude I couldn’t hear anything about it for two weeks after Young Indiana was born because just knowing it had happened/was happening was enough to break my fragile-from-exhaustion mental state. I can still barely stand to hear about it, which is why I’m grateful for Cherie’s beautiful, poignant response: I couldn’t have written it myself.

(x-posted from the essential kit)
Current Mood: sadsad
rhenarhena on June 5th, 2010 01:50 am (UTC)
35 miles directly south of where I've lived since I was 12 is Holly Beach. It's not like the pretty beaches you find in Florida or south Texas but on a dark starlit night you can't tell that the water is more brown than blue. The waves crash, the wind blows off the water and the beige sand feels just as gritty as white while the moon shines down lighting a dark night. I earned my driver's license at age 15 and Holly Beach is where I'd run when I needed think or just be. Sometimes as I aged I'd chance westerly to Galveston or easterly to Sanibel Island but most times it's just straight south to the water and sand I know best.

The oily blackness creeping toward the coastline is coming. When broken down to it's most basic...it doesn't matter who's to blame. It'll be folk like my friends who are fishermen with no where to fish who lose their way of life. Marshes and wildlife are dying if not dead already.

Some things can't be changed no matter how badly we wish, hope, pray that they hadn't happened. What will happen is the same thing that did during Hurricane Rita...folks will be gathering tomorrow morning on Holly Beach, Constance Beach, Johnson Bayou, Cameron coasts to do clean ups. The one thing we can do is go out and make sure that the coast is as clean as we can make it before the black goop arrives. It's our hope that this will allow easier clean up once it does. We won't wait for the government, BP or anyone else to clean up because this is our home, our coast and it's too important to leave to others. And we all pray that the predictions of an active hurricane season will prove wrong this year...not to avoid the hurricanes but to avoid more massive damage from the spill.

Edited at 2010-06-05 12:03 pm (UTC)