Migrant Shorebirds arrive in the Gulf

It's here, what we've been fearing. Birds are starting their annual migration through the Gulf Coast and coming into contact with the oiled shorelines.

from a "birding blog" (linked above), an excerpt:
Today on Grand Isle Beach, where it is open to swimming, fishing and crabbing, the beach was strewn with new tarballs, and not one person was cleaning any of it. These tarballs warm in the sun and soak into the sand, or become gooey and can directly oil bird's plumage, especially Sanderlings and Plovers that forage along the beach front.

The scale of this disaster is so huge, that many people seem to be ok with the amount of oil that is being left on the beaches now, and will likely never be cleaned. The fact of the matter is, if the amount of oil just on Grand Isle right now were to wash in on a New England Beach, or in San Francisco it would be a major environmental disaster. The apathy towards this catastrophe is very dis-heartening, and is directly affecting our nation's avi-fauna, and there seems to be no outcry for better handling.

The USFWS seems to be content with all of the oil on the shores, even on the Chandeleur Islands, and Raccoon Island. I can bring a shovel to any beach now and find lots of oil under the sand from Waveland, MS to Terrebonne Bay, Louisiana. On the east end of Grand Isle alone, a thick mat 50 meters by 10 meters wide, and 6 inches thick blankets the shoreline. That is 18,500 gallons worth of weathered oil on the shores, which goes uncleaned even today. The amount of fresh oil represented by that number is likely double the figure! Now extrapolate that along the entire southeastern Louisiana Coast where oil of this type is everywhere. Is that OK?

Those that don't "get it"

from nolanotes blog an entry about memories of deciding to return home to New Orleans after Katrina. She writes about an encounter in Thanksgiving of 2005 with a person who shares the feelings a seemingly large number of people in this country have:


That Thanksgiving, we traveled to Taos, NM. We were still bruised from Katrina but brave enough to venture out. A clerk in a store inquired where we were from. “New Orleans?” he snarled with a sneer, “I don’t know why they are bothering to rebuild. It’s not worth my tax dollars.”


I don't think I'll ever be able to understand how so many still hold so much malice towards their own countrymen.

But read the total post here. Her answer to that shallow minded clerk is worth the read.

Katrina Memory

From "gris-grits" blog, memories of walking thru Bay St. Louis, Ms. 4 months post-K

gris-grits: Katrina Memory #4

Real Americans, Please Stand Up

One of my favorite "talk show" people from the 70's thru the 80's - Dick Cavett - opines on the silly "mosque" to do going on.

Here is the link to the whole piece and here
is a piece of it, hoping you read it all


These are not proud moments in my heritage. But now, I’m genuinely ashamed of us. How sad this whole mosque business is. It doesn’t take much, it seems, to lift the lid and let our home-grown racism and bigotry overflow. We have collectively taken a pratfall on a moral whoopee cushion.


I'm a person of few words and I am at awe at the UNNECESSARY too wordy replies to this post. I feel like yelling: tell it in 30 words or less!!!! But that's just me.

Scuzzbucket of the Week

This scuzzbucket comes for a "I know tragedies of all kind and yours aren't as bad as mine" from California. (read his letter at the link)

NOLA blogger Michael Homan penned a heart-felt editorial which made it to the Sacramento Bee about the man-made disaster in New Orleans after Katrina.

But "James" still carries the anger within his heart as do a number of people about what they percieve as "New Orleans wants a handout" with this quote:


I have a question for you. Why is it that 5 years after Katrina people in New Orleans are still unable to cope with the aftermath of Katrina? After billions of dollars have been poured into New Orleans, why are we still hearing from the people of Louisiana, "We need more money?"

Why can't you let go of your anger, James? If you've been thru all that you have you would understand.

I will stop my post here because I'm about to launch into a line of obcenities I don't want to release.

Have a great day, Mr. Scuzzbucket James.

Katrina: Before-AFter and Now

 Here’s a link to a gallery from the Gulf Coast of Mississippi that shows pictures of homes before and after Katrina and what the properties look like five years after the storm

http://www.sunherald.com/2010/08/21/2420601/202-st-charles-bay-st-louis.html

 

 

Dan Baum on NOLA

From a Washington Post article by Dan Baum

"The longer I spent there, the clearer it became that what makes New Orleanians so different from other Americans is that they are experts at the lost art of living in the moment. They're less deadline-driven and less money-obsessed than the rest of us. Their identities are more rooted in their neighborhoods, second line clubs, and Mardi Gras krewes and Indian tribes than in their personal achievements. They don't squeeze friends and family into busy lives; they build their lives around them. Sharing a beer on the porch is not something a New Orleanian must schedule two weeks in advance."

amen to dat!!

forgotten stretch of Grand Isle Beach

Audubon Magazine has a great article detailing a section of Grand Isle that hasn't been touched since the oil came ashore due to political reasons


Leanne Sarco (left), an educator at Grand Isle State Park, and Audubon's Melanie Driscoll dig through thick oily goop on a stretch of Grand Isle that never got cleaned. (Photo by Justin Nobel/Audubon Magazine)


excerpt:

"The strange goopy objects stuck in the muck are hermit crabs, oiled beyond recognition. They are food for the terns and gulls which flock nearby. Heavy oil is gone from much of the Gulf but on this stretch of Louisiana beach it remains. Park managers, worried the large machines being used to clean beaches would trample bird nests insisted that BP use alternative methods here. This never happened; instead the area was missed completely."

Adopted Pelicans

About 3 months ago several people pooled their money
to pay for rehabilitation of oiled pelicans. Blog First Draft has posted an adoption certificate and a picture of one of the adopted pelicans here

Eat it to Save it: America Voting with Forks

 

Eat it to Save it: America Voting with Forks Posted: 18 Aug 2010 10:17 PM PDT New Orleans food activist Poppy Tooker is mad as hell. New Orleans food activist Poppy Tooker is mad as hell and she's not going to take it anymore. In June, she was asked to write a blog entry in response to the BP oil spill for Slow Food USA, an organization in which she thought was in line with her belief in preserving culinary traditions and endangered flavors – so much so that she had pioneered the New Orleans chapter over a decade ago. Yet the organization made an editorial decision to add a question mark to the title, demonstrating to Tooker a lack of support for her and the article's message. "It infuriated me," says Tooker. "I was skewered and put on the bar-b-cue pit. That's a monthly newsletter sent out to all national members." Tooker's article, entitled "Eat Gulf seafood" – but listed in the online newsletter as "Support Gulf Fishermen – By Eating Gulf Seafood?" – quickly began a heated debate one step above children's taunts on the school playground. This is incredibly stupid advice, wrote a reader named Katherine Welsh. How does eating seafood help clean up the oil spill? And who would want to eat seafood from the Gulf? Another individual, identified only as "SP" thought fishermen in the Gulf should give up their way of life altogether: Wouldn't it be better to support Gulf fishing families by funding a retraining program or a small business incubator just for them? Or perhaps a relocation program? The damage to the Gulf cannot be reversed in the near future, and these people have to do something to support their families in the meantime. When Kate Walsh the publication's director of communications was reached by phone and asked about the blog entry, the editorial decision to add the question mark, and Slow Food USA's position on the consumption of Gulf of Mexico seafood, she had no comment. Walsh said that Josh Viertel the President of Slow Foods USA would send a statement by e-mail but no such document arrived. The only written statement on Slow Food USA's position is an online comment in response to Tooker's article on June 11th, from Emily Vaughn, the Biodiversity Program Manager. "It infuriated me," says Tooker. "I was skewered and put on the bar-b-cue pit. That's a monthly newsletter sent out to all national members." Like you, Slow Food USA strongly values the conscientious sourcing of food, especially seafood, where the methods of harvesting can be especially devastating if done the wrong way. That's why we provided links to groups of fishermen (White Boot Brigade, Louisiana Seafood Board) whose practices are in line with our values, and who are every bit as interested in staying away from plumes and solvents as the rest of us. So while there are certainly a different set of considerations and criterion, the Committee feels that the eater-based conservation method can still be ethically and successfully applied to wild-caught foods. Tooker feels that her experience with the online blog reflects the national debate over seafood safety. "The problem is the public perception," says Tooker. "I know a lot of chefs who have and will continue to call it [Gulf seafood] by name on their menu, but the customer isn't buying it. So what do you do about that?" Tooker's answer, like any good New Orleanian, is to educate and share the pleasures of the table, a view she expresses weekly on her radio show on NPR affiliate WWNO, Louisiana Eats! "Your tongue and your heart are tied together by what my grandmother used to call heart strings," says Tooker. The concept of preserving endangered flavors through education and publicity via the Arc of Taste, a virtual Noah's Arc where endangered foods are nominated because of their cultural ties to a place, because they are endangered, and because they taste good is what interested Tooker to the slow food movement in the first place. After Katrina, Creole Cream Cheese, heirloom Louisiana strawberries, the citrus fruit satsuma and Louisiana wild caught shrimp were all accepted on the Arc of Taste – a acknowledgement of their importance and deliciousness. Now disenchanted with Slow Food USA, Tooker is following her personal mantra – eat it to save it – and voting with her fork. She continues to eat and enjoy the fresh Louisiana seafood that inspired her career and life's passions.

 

 

There is no Ground Zero Mosque