I am in mourning for the people of my home state of Louisiana. Although I grew up in the northern part of the state, populated mostly by folks who moved west from Georgia and Louisiana, I have some roots in the south.
And I have developed a love for the generous, warm spirited people who make up the broad swathe of South Louisiana that is called Cajun Country. I like the strong sense of family. I like to sit in a café and watch people enjoying themselves and each other. Grandfather and grandmother, mother and father, and the kids, treating their meal as a celebration and not a refueling stop, getting up to dance to music that makes it hard to keep your feet still.
I like the fact that people are not too busy to stop and visit. The clock is not their master.
I like the slow movement of the bayou and the sunlight filtered through Spanish moss. And I like the marshes, where a single tree stands out like a beacon. And I don’t even have to talk about the food.
The Cajun culture has had an endangered existence. Years ago there were efforts to stamp out the French spoken in so many homes, much as there was an attempt to do away with the native languages of American Indians.  Fortunately, reason finally prevailed.
Then came the oil industry.
It brought jobs and some prosperity to what had been to largely subsistence economy. At the same time, it began slowly killing the place that is home to that unique culture. Oil exploitation required the cutting of canals, and swamps that had seen only trappers and fishermen became hosts for barges and drilling platforms.
The canals changed water flows and accelerated the loss of coastline.
Now the BP disaster.
It is like going from slowly poisoning a victim to garroting him.
I am not sure that most people understand the magnitude of the disaster that is unfolding.
It is one that will affect all of us for years to come.
But in South Louisiana, a unique way of life is dying.
If there is any justice – and I have very little confidence that there is – criminal charges will come out of this disaster.
I would like to add one: Murder of a culture.
Contact the writer at
billatthelake@gmail.com
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
I've Gotten Away With It Before
The following was written Sunday, but I could not post it for lack of an internet connection: I am writing this with one hand while sitting in a room in UAB Hospital in Birmingham.The other hand, swathed in bandages, is being held vertically higher than my heart to keep fluids from building up in the thumb doctors sewed back on Friday night.
It was a near thing. The surgery resident who was attending me had consulted with his boss and was already numbing the area around my dangling left thumb, preparing to amputate right there in the emergency room, His pager summoned him. His boss apparently had taken another look at the X-rays and decided it might be possible to save the thumb. I don't know whether he knew that I am left handed.
The upshot was that a surgical team spent four or five hours putting back together nerves and blood vessels, and I am tethered to an IV pole that is infusing me with antibiotics and blood thinner to try to prevent the vessels and capillaries from getting plugged up. The surgeon stopped by earlier this afternoon and said things are looking pretty good, though nothing is certain. He explained that he could not save the nail bed and that he pulled a flap of skin up to cover the missing nail. If it works, the thumb will be a little shorter with the first joint fused.If the flap fails, the thumb will be shorter still. As so often is the case, there was no indication that disaster was looming, On Friday morning, I was working alone in my neighbors shop on some Adirondack chairs for our front deck. I have worked with tools and wood almost all of my life. I know the safety rules, and like many others, I have skirted the safety rules from time to time without suffering consequences.
Until Friday. A moving saw blade, a hand too near it, and a mangled thumb. No one was around, so I wrapped my T-shirt around my hand and walked home. My wife was not at home and I couldn't reach her on her cell phone, so I found some gauze and tape and wrapped my hand and drove to the Russell Medical Center emergency room. They quickly determined that I needed to go to UAB and made arrangements. I had plenty of time during the ambulance to reflect on my own folly, and I am no less chagrined by hearing the doctors stories about power tool accidents much more catastrophic than mine. I've had time to consider, too, that it is not just guys with tools who grow dangerously complacent after years of getting by. Recent reports about inattention in airline cockpits have stirred concern. And I suspect that the many of the people aboard that oil-drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico were doing things they've done for years. The consequences of my complacency were great enough. Complacency on a larger scale can be truly catastrophic.
Contact the writer at billatthelake@gmail.com
It was a near thing. The surgery resident who was attending me had consulted with his boss and was already numbing the area around my dangling left thumb, preparing to amputate right there in the emergency room, His pager summoned him. His boss apparently had taken another look at the X-rays and decided it might be possible to save the thumb. I don't know whether he knew that I am left handed.
The upshot was that a surgical team spent four or five hours putting back together nerves and blood vessels, and I am tethered to an IV pole that is infusing me with antibiotics and blood thinner to try to prevent the vessels and capillaries from getting plugged up. The surgeon stopped by earlier this afternoon and said things are looking pretty good, though nothing is certain. He explained that he could not save the nail bed and that he pulled a flap of skin up to cover the missing nail. If it works, the thumb will be a little shorter with the first joint fused.If the flap fails, the thumb will be shorter still. As so often is the case, there was no indication that disaster was looming, On Friday morning, I was working alone in my neighbors shop on some Adirondack chairs for our front deck. I have worked with tools and wood almost all of my life. I know the safety rules, and like many others, I have skirted the safety rules from time to time without suffering consequences.
Until Friday. A moving saw blade, a hand too near it, and a mangled thumb. No one was around, so I wrapped my T-shirt around my hand and walked home. My wife was not at home and I couldn't reach her on her cell phone, so I found some gauze and tape and wrapped my hand and drove to the Russell Medical Center emergency room. They quickly determined that I needed to go to UAB and made arrangements. I had plenty of time during the ambulance to reflect on my own folly, and I am no less chagrined by hearing the doctors stories about power tool accidents much more catastrophic than mine. I've had time to consider, too, that it is not just guys with tools who grow dangerously complacent after years of getting by. Recent reports about inattention in airline cockpits have stirred concern. And I suspect that the many of the people aboard that oil-drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico were doing things they've done for years. The consequences of my complacency were great enough. Complacency on a larger scale can be truly catastrophic.
Contact the writer at billatthelake@gmail.com
Thursday, May 13, 2010
Mind Your Butts
We paid a brief visit to Charlottesville, Va., recently. One thing we noted in our meandering around the countryside was how well kept everything seemed. I’m not talking about houses or buildings so much as the countryside itself.
We theorized that spring later arrival in that latitude meant that there had been less time for weeds to grow. Perhaps, we thought, the vegetation is different and grows less rampantly.
It wasn’t until after we were back home and taking a long walk that another difference came to mind: litter. (Caution: this is a purely anecdotal observation. We did not walk as much as we do at home, and perhaps the places where we did walk were particularly neat.
Nonetheless, when we set out for a walk the other day, we saw the evidence of spring in our little corner of the world. When the water rises and the weather warms up, the litter along Old Susanna Road grows more quickly than the weeds.
I’d like to blame the boaters who use the boat ramp near the end of the road, and I’m sure they are responsible for a good bit of it. But they are not alone in using the roadside as a garbage can. Since the road deadends into the lake, and since there is litter along side roads leading off Old Susanna, it seems safe to assume that residents and service people contribute.
The plastic bottles and aluminum cans are bad enough, but most infuriating are the cigarette butts.
I’m a former smoker, but I am not one to lecture folks about their own smoking. I do, however, find it infuriating that smokers use the roadsides as their ashtray.
On our stroll, we came across a mound of cigarette butts. Someone had obviously stopped his or her car and emptied the ashtray. From the size of the mound, the ashtray must have been so full that it was in danger of creating a fire. Just around the corner, there was a line of cigarette butts, as if someone had just rolled down the window and emptied the ashtray while the car was moving.
It’s not just that the cigarette butts are ugly; they’re downright dangerous.
Consider this: Since 1998, approximately 470 billion cigarettes have been consumed in the United States. Ninety-seven percent of those cigarettes had filters.
I don’t know how many wind up along the roadside, but each cigarette butt is a miniature hazardous waste dump. The tobacco clinging to the butt is dangerous enough; tobacco is, after all, a member of the nightshade family. And the filter, which can take up to 15 years to disintegrate is a toxic chemical warehouse: arsenic, acetone, ammonia, benzene, cadmium, formaldehyde, lead and toluene.
When rain falls on those cigarettes, the chemicals are leached out and eventually find their way into the water.
A single cigarette butt seems so small, but think of billions and billions of them being flicked out of a car window or ground out on the sidewalk or parking lot.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration estimates that cigarette debris is responsible for killing at least one million sea birds and 100,000 mammals annually.
An article on the Discover web site reports: Even with a small amount of unburnt tobacco clinging to it, a single cigarette butt soaked for a day is enough to turn a liter of water a sickly yellow brown and kill 50 percent of fish swimming in it. Without tobacco, it takes about four smoked filters to do the same job.
There are many liters of water in a stream or a lake or an ocean. But there are billions of cigarette butts lying around, too.
I really don’t care if people choose to smoke, but if they can’t refrain from discarding their butts so carelessly, I’m beginning to think there ought to be a deposit on cigarettes to pay for cleaning up after them.
Contact the writer at billatthelake@gmail.com
We theorized that spring later arrival in that latitude meant that there had been less time for weeds to grow. Perhaps, we thought, the vegetation is different and grows less rampantly.
It wasn’t until after we were back home and taking a long walk that another difference came to mind: litter. (Caution: this is a purely anecdotal observation. We did not walk as much as we do at home, and perhaps the places where we did walk were particularly neat.
Nonetheless, when we set out for a walk the other day, we saw the evidence of spring in our little corner of the world. When the water rises and the weather warms up, the litter along Old Susanna Road grows more quickly than the weeds.
I’d like to blame the boaters who use the boat ramp near the end of the road, and I’m sure they are responsible for a good bit of it. But they are not alone in using the roadside as a garbage can. Since the road deadends into the lake, and since there is litter along side roads leading off Old Susanna, it seems safe to assume that residents and service people contribute.
The plastic bottles and aluminum cans are bad enough, but most infuriating are the cigarette butts.
I’m a former smoker, but I am not one to lecture folks about their own smoking. I do, however, find it infuriating that smokers use the roadsides as their ashtray.
On our stroll, we came across a mound of cigarette butts. Someone had obviously stopped his or her car and emptied the ashtray. From the size of the mound, the ashtray must have been so full that it was in danger of creating a fire. Just around the corner, there was a line of cigarette butts, as if someone had just rolled down the window and emptied the ashtray while the car was moving.
It’s not just that the cigarette butts are ugly; they’re downright dangerous.
Consider this: Since 1998, approximately 470 billion cigarettes have been consumed in the United States. Ninety-seven percent of those cigarettes had filters.
I don’t know how many wind up along the roadside, but each cigarette butt is a miniature hazardous waste dump. The tobacco clinging to the butt is dangerous enough; tobacco is, after all, a member of the nightshade family. And the filter, which can take up to 15 years to disintegrate is a toxic chemical warehouse: arsenic, acetone, ammonia, benzene, cadmium, formaldehyde, lead and toluene.
When rain falls on those cigarettes, the chemicals are leached out and eventually find their way into the water.
A single cigarette butt seems so small, but think of billions and billions of them being flicked out of a car window or ground out on the sidewalk or parking lot.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration estimates that cigarette debris is responsible for killing at least one million sea birds and 100,000 mammals annually.
An article on the Discover web site reports: Even with a small amount of unburnt tobacco clinging to it, a single cigarette butt soaked for a day is enough to turn a liter of water a sickly yellow brown and kill 50 percent of fish swimming in it. Without tobacco, it takes about four smoked filters to do the same job.
There are many liters of water in a stream or a lake or an ocean. But there are billions of cigarette butts lying around, too.
I really don’t care if people choose to smoke, but if they can’t refrain from discarding their butts so carelessly, I’m beginning to think there ought to be a deposit on cigarettes to pay for cleaning up after them.
Contact the writer at billatthelake@gmail.com
Thursday, April 8, 2010
Spring is Really Here, Sniff, Sniff
Letter to a friend in Minnesota:
Fortner:
Funny you should write today that you love the Master’s because of the azaleas. I’ve been mentally composing a note letting you know that after several false starts, Spring arrived here in earnest over the Easter weekend.
One day it was winter, and the trees were forlorn, almost lifeless; the next day, the dogwoods were in blossom, and the native azaleas couldn’t be outdone. Even the oak-leaf hydrangeas put out tender green leaves. (Our cultivated azaleas have buds that will open up any day now).
Along the roadsides, red bud trees are showing off, and on my walk the other day, I noticed that the violets have come out.
Perhaps the surest sign of spring was the snake I saw slithering across the highway just south of Walnut Hill the other day. And the carpenter bees. There has been a super-abundance of them. A friend gave me some desiccant powder that is supposed to kill the larvae, if I can find all the holes the bees have made and pump the powder into them. Meanwhile, I’ve been swinging away at the bees with an old tennis racket. I don’t know whether I’m getting better or the bees are getting dumber. Either way, I’m doing in a bumper crop.
I don’t know whether it has anything to do with Spring, but a mature bald eagle sat in the white oak tree just outside our bedroom window for five or six minutes one day last week. We have several nesting pairs on the lake, but that’s the closest that I have every been to one. And since our bedroom is on the second floor, we were at eye level, so to speak. It was a most impressive sight. Meanwhile, the gold finches, which had been packing away the bird seed at a prodigious rate, seem to have disappeared.
The blooming things include the pine trees, with their pollen that covers every surface with gold dust. It is amazing how the pollen can find its way into the most remote parts of the car. I have to hose off the windshield every day so I can see to drive, There is no point in giving the cars a thorough washing until the pollen stops falling.
There has been pollen floating in the lake, and rain today washed more of it in, and the wind formed it into windrows.
The oaks are putting out pollen, too. You don’t really see it, but it’s the kind that works its way into your sinuses and lungs. I’ve been snuffly for the past couple of days, and it's small comfort that the TV news reported tonight that it is an unusually heavy pollen season. Soon, the trees will begin dropping catkins, and it will be time to haul the blower out again.
I have been madly trying to get the place looking presentable. I’ve replaced some rotted cedar, and cleaned some of the decks and the flagstone on the landing and steps that lead down to the dock. The decks have just gotten a power washing the past few years, but every now and then they need a thorough cleaning. That means, in some places, tackling the ground in dirt with a bucked of TSP solution and a brush. Fortunately, we’re having the place painted this year, so the painting contractor will clean the mildew from the siding and soffits.
While I was scrubbing, the temperature was in the 80s, more like July than April. Today’s rain, though, was the harbinger of a cool front, and when I went down to the lake side to watch the sunset, it was considerably cooler than a day earlier.
I watched the first round of the Master's, too, and thought about our trip with you and Jerilyn to Callaway Gardens. You'll be envious to know that Adelaide's church group is talking about making a trip to Callaway soon. You just need to come for another spring.
Regards,
Brown
Contact the writer at billatthelake@gmail.com
Fortner:
Funny you should write today that you love the Master’s because of the azaleas. I’ve been mentally composing a note letting you know that after several false starts, Spring arrived here in earnest over the Easter weekend.
One day it was winter, and the trees were forlorn, almost lifeless; the next day, the dogwoods were in blossom, and the native azaleas couldn’t be outdone. Even the oak-leaf hydrangeas put out tender green leaves. (Our cultivated azaleas have buds that will open up any day now).
Along the roadsides, red bud trees are showing off, and on my walk the other day, I noticed that the violets have come out.
Perhaps the surest sign of spring was the snake I saw slithering across the highway just south of Walnut Hill the other day. And the carpenter bees. There has been a super-abundance of them. A friend gave me some desiccant powder that is supposed to kill the larvae, if I can find all the holes the bees have made and pump the powder into them. Meanwhile, I’ve been swinging away at the bees with an old tennis racket. I don’t know whether I’m getting better or the bees are getting dumber. Either way, I’m doing in a bumper crop.
I don’t know whether it has anything to do with Spring, but a mature bald eagle sat in the white oak tree just outside our bedroom window for five or six minutes one day last week. We have several nesting pairs on the lake, but that’s the closest that I have every been to one. And since our bedroom is on the second floor, we were at eye level, so to speak. It was a most impressive sight. Meanwhile, the gold finches, which had been packing away the bird seed at a prodigious rate, seem to have disappeared.
The blooming things include the pine trees, with their pollen that covers every surface with gold dust. It is amazing how the pollen can find its way into the most remote parts of the car. I have to hose off the windshield every day so I can see to drive, There is no point in giving the cars a thorough washing until the pollen stops falling.
There has been pollen floating in the lake, and rain today washed more of it in, and the wind formed it into windrows.
The oaks are putting out pollen, too. You don’t really see it, but it’s the kind that works its way into your sinuses and lungs. I’ve been snuffly for the past couple of days, and it's small comfort that the TV news reported tonight that it is an unusually heavy pollen season. Soon, the trees will begin dropping catkins, and it will be time to haul the blower out again.
I have been madly trying to get the place looking presentable. I’ve replaced some rotted cedar, and cleaned some of the decks and the flagstone on the landing and steps that lead down to the dock. The decks have just gotten a power washing the past few years, but every now and then they need a thorough cleaning. That means, in some places, tackling the ground in dirt with a bucked of TSP solution and a brush. Fortunately, we’re having the place painted this year, so the painting contractor will clean the mildew from the siding and soffits.
While I was scrubbing, the temperature was in the 80s, more like July than April. Today’s rain, though, was the harbinger of a cool front, and when I went down to the lake side to watch the sunset, it was considerably cooler than a day earlier.
I watched the first round of the Master's, too, and thought about our trip with you and Jerilyn to Callaway Gardens. You'll be envious to know that Adelaide's church group is talking about making a trip to Callaway soon. You just need to come for another spring.
Regards,
Brown
Contact the writer at billatthelake@gmail.com
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