Save the Date - October 30, 2010

From the website Beyond Katrina


On Saturday, October 30, from Houma, Louisiana to Pensacola Florida, all along the waterways affected by the oil spill of April 20, 2010, people will gather together in a spirit of appreciation for their beautiful, damaged home and their own determination to thrive. On that day school students, church groups, birdwatchers and fishermen, artists and musicians, families and friends will get together to talk about how the oil spill has affected their lives, and who and what has given them strength. They will sing, reflect, play music, read poems, eat good food, drum or whatever feels right. Each group will create a simple picture out of ordinary materials—a bird, a shrimp, a human figure or anything else that represents the vitality of life in the Gulf—and take a photograph of themselves with their image. Groups that create a picture fifty feet long or larger will be considered for inclusion in a special, limited number of aerial photos to be taken that day by the award winning New Orleans photographer, Matthew D. White. The photographs will be combined and every group will receive a presentation of the images on digital disc.

Radical Joy For Hard Times, the organization sponsoring the event, is calling for Gulf Coast citizens, groups and organizations to support the effort by either organizing or participating in an event. Groups can sign up for an event via the website at http://www.radicaljoyforhardtimes.org. It is not necessary for groups to have their plans finalized at the time of sign up as the information can be self updated at any time.

Radical Joy for Hard Times, http://www.radicaljoyforhardtimes.org is a non-profit 501c3 organization whose mission is to find and make beauty in wounded places. On June 19, for their Global Earth Exchange, people on all the seven continents of the Earth went to clear-cut forests, polluted rivers, damaged beaches, the sites of coal and gas mining, and other places to gather, tell their stories, and make simple acts of beauty. The Gulf Coast Rising Project is the latest venture in the organization’s effort to introduce a new, more intimate environmentalism for all citizens of the Earth.

Oilspill Bird Data

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologists   has compiled an expanded report of the birds rescued and collected during the response to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

This report, which will be provided regularly moving forward, outlines a species-by-species breakdown and maps of where the birds were collected.

 

The initial report released by the Fish and Wildlife Service today showed that as of Sept. 14, 2010, a total of 3,634 dead birds and 1,042 live birds have been found in areas affected by the Deepwater Horizon spill. These numbers are subject to verification and cannot be considered final. Of the dead birds, the largest numbers are laughing gulls, followed by brown pelicans and northern gannets.

 

These numbers will be updated as the team of biologists continues the verification process which can take several weeks. Until the response to this environmental disaster is complete and birds are no longer being captured alive or collected dead, any numbers regarding birds must be considered preliminary.

 

About 1.5 percent of the current total represents birds collected live that later died. As data continues to come in, the Service will report on the number of live birds that have died.

 

In the meantime, the unverified preliminary numbers will continue to be updated daily to provide a glimpse into the spill impacts on birds that depend on the northern Gulf Coast.

 

The verified information will be updated every week. Verified species-by-species data, along with maps showing where birds were captured or collected, are posted on the Service's oil spill web page (www.fws.gov/home/dhoilspill) and the Restore the Gulf web site (www.restorethegulf.gov).

 

To view Weekly Bird Impact Data and Consolidated Wildlife Reports, visit http://www.fws.gov/home/dhoilspill/collectionreports.html

 

Ken took too big of a bite

Mr. Feinberg seems to have bit off more than he could chew in the BP case.

Here's an article about his performance in Orange Beach, Alabama.....pretty p.o.'d people there.

Why? Because Ken - who seems to think that by just saying something will happen will make it happen - is learning the truth about dealing with a behemoth of a corporation that has the ability to control the US Government, including the EPA, Fish and Wildlife, Coast Guard and a host of others.

Mister Ken was the "pay czar" for the victims of Nine-Eleven, which must have been easier to deal with than the current situations involving a mega corporation who has raped the Gulf of Mexico from Florida to Louisiana and is currently trying to sneak out of town.

Here's a link to an audio from WWL radio interviewing Mr. Fineburg on the mess that is the BP compensation fund.

More to come as it becomes available.

Death Comes To Louisiana - a BP Protest Song by MOTU @ The 2010 Barrier ...

End of an Era

An article at this link ( http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewnews.html?id=1436) details the activities of mating the Space Shuttle’s orbiter to the External Tank (ET) and Solid Rocket Boosters (SRBs). At the end of the story are some excellent pictures. Below are the author’s closing remarks

STS 133 is the 39th and last scheduled flight of Discovery .

It's a melancholy moment for the Discovery shuttle team. Everyone is excited to be processing the orbiter for launch. But at the same instant, excitement is mixed with great sadness. Because barring a miraculous extension this is the last launch for Discovery.

The shuttle program is being terminated for lack of money from the Federal Government in Washington, DC - not because of safety concerns. Top shuttle managers have told me that the shuttle has never been safer to fly than now during its 30 year history of operations.

In the midst of the Great Recession, about 8000 shuttle workers at KSC will be laid off and about another 10,000 to 20,000 jobs are expected to evaporate in the local economy in the communities surrounding the Kennedy Space Center. 900 layoffs are set to occur at KSC on Oct. 1. Thousands more layoffs will occur across the US at the Johnson Space Center, Michoud Assembly Facility, ATK and elsewhere as the shuttle program is prematurely shutdown at the height of its operational capabilities.

Much of this technological know-how will be dispersed or lost. America's manufacturing capacity will be further dismantled. And America will have no capability to launch people into space on American rockets for many years to come. NASA will have no choice but to pay Russia more than $50 million per seat to launch American astronauts aboard Soyuz rockets to the ISS.

James Carville: “We Have Been Greatly Wronged”

James Carville: “We Have Been Greatly Wronged”

Oil is STILL coming ashore.....day 145

"Everyone thinks this is over, but it's not - not if we can still get soakings like this."

Quote for an article in the sports section of the times picayune Headline "New Wave of Oil Comes Ashore West of the Mississippi". Read more here

Sealife returns to site of Deepwater Horizon

Native Orleanian dot com blogs about a trip taken last week by plane to photgraph the state of the Gulf.

They encountered leatherback and loggerhead sea turtles, whale sharks feeding, and a sperm whale. Click here to view more of the photos from that day, taken out the window of a moving airplane, but sharp and clear.

FUN WATCHING

Jackson Square Cam….a lot going on

 

http://www.nola.com/jacksonsquarecam/

 

 

The BP Crud

The Locust Fork News-Journal : "Thousands of People Along the Gulf Coast Suffer ‘BP Crud’"

An excerpt from the story:


The Washington Post was given an opportunity for first, exclusive rights to publish this story today, but took a pass “because of the complicated nature of this story and our concerns that it’s too early to judge the real health effects.”

bastards

When the Deepwater Horizon oil rig blew up in the Gulf of Mexico on April 20, Robin Young, a 47-year-old director of guest services for a property management company in Orange Beach, Alabama, was gearing up for what promised to be the best tourist season on the coast in years. From the city of New Orleans to the Florida panhandle, communities were finally starting to feel like they were recovering from the devastation left in the wake of Hurricanes Katrina and Ivan.

Since suffering a debilitating bout of what locals are calling the “BP Crud,” however, like thousands of other people along the coast due to their exposure to the oil and chemical dispersants, she is now part of a growing community of activists along the coast who are worried about their health.

Just a few days after BP’s oil made landfall along the Alabama Gulf Coast in June, Ms. Young’s symptoms started with “a fiery, burning sore throat,” she said. Then came the horrible, constant cough, followed by an achy feeling much like a severe flu virus — and a lethargy that kept her in bed for two weeks solid. Her memory started playing tricks on her, and her motor skills and even hand-to-eye coordination went south.


She started communicating with other sick folks over the Internet, and attending local meetings with corporate and government officials. At one meeting early on, she asked for a show of hands in a room of maybe 400 people to see how many had suffered symptoms similar to hers.

“Half the people in the room raised their hands,” she said in an interview at her cottage right next to the Intercoastal Waterway, which was polluted with oil and chemicals at the height of the disaster. Clearly, this was not some isolated event unrelated to the oil rig blowout.

Boston dot com photography

 Here’s a link to photographs taken by Boston dot com that covers Katrina-then and now.

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/08/remembering_katrina_five_years.html