Educational TV

You may be wondering what's going on in the live video embedded above. It's live feed of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico that resulted from the explosion and sinking of the Deepwater Horizon rig about a month ago. Eleven men working the rig were killed.

I've already posted my opposition to offshore drilling. This isn't the first spill - how inadequate a word, no? - and it won't be the last. Someone on the news noted that if we were serious about ending spills we would ban shipping oil in tankers, since they are the source of most spills, which I thought was an interesting point. Though I grew up on the Atlantic coast in Florida, I've spent plenty of time on the Gulf. With family in Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas, I know some of the areas that are making the news each night. My own state is holding its collective breath since our economy is pretty much entirely based on service industries and tourism, to say nothing about our seafood industry. Since I've been home, we've already had relatives cancel a planned trip because they thought the beaches here were affected (they aren't, nor the majority of Gulf beaches!). We're still waiting word on whether the latest attempt to stop the geyser of oil, the "top kill", have worked. I hope so, but we already have oil in the marshes of Louisiana that likely can't be cleaned out (image gum in your hair), brown pelicans and their eggs coated in oil not long after leaving the endangered list, gallons of chemicals being dumped into the Gulf with no real idea of the long-term effects, and the possibility of losing generations-old family businesses. And to think, just a few days ago BP CEO Tony Hayward was saying he thought the impacts of the rig disaster and spill would be "minimal." For starters, tell that to those eleven families who lost loved ones, Tony. Tell that to all the businesses along the Gulf linked to fishing. Hell, go try to scrub all that oil off those pelicans flailing about, unable to fly. And it's only been about a week since the US government told BP to cut back on dumping Corexit 9500 disperse the oil, due to concerns about environmental and health impacts, and the company all but blew government officials off and just kept dumping, creating a soupy mess that was highlighted by a news crew diving into the mess with Jacques Cousteau's grandson this week. Add to that the fact that members of Congress had to demand BP loosen their control on the video feed of the spill and provide access to the feed, even during this attempt to plug the well.

To claim that the Gulf was pristine prior to this would be a lie. There are red tides, dead zones and all sorts of man-made messes. But for about a day's worth of US oil consumption, we gambled with all this and lost. And we won't know everything that's lost tomorrow or the next day...some losses will take years.

Again, I hope this worked. I hope they stopped the flow of oil. Unfortunately, just as people stopped asking about and lost interest in New Orleans post-Katrina, people will lose interest in this story as they do all others when the drama fades, but the story will carry on for so many. Just don't let anyone fool you into thinking that protecting the environment is a choice between jobs and nature.
Anyway, enjoy the show.
Peace/سلام

Sort of like going to Turkey...or not

It seems the nearby city of West Palm Beach is now a sister city (and undoubtedly BFFs) with the city of Mersin.

Hoşgeldiniz, Mersin. You're a lovely city, so don't let too much of the Florida crazy rub off on you.
Peace/سلام

Sand in my toes, water over my gills

Listening to: Celia Cruz; Los Van Van; Warren; old Buffett; Rhythms and Songs for the Orishas
Reading: On the Beaten Track by Lippard; Ecosystems of Florida ed. by Myers & Ewel
RE-reading: The Everglades: River of Grass by Stoneman Douglas

Good morning and salutations. Writing this over tea and toast before heading back across the street to the beach for a swim. Yes, I am back in the banana republic that is my home state of Florida for a few months this summer. Plans abroad didn't shake out, no summer classes to take and after a very long academic year in which I oh-so-typically overloaded, nearly three months in the tropics sounded pretty good. Awaiting word on where I might be for my final internship come January. This time next year I'll have finished graduate school and be moving on to who knows what.

For the first time in a long time there are no plans...well, few plans, for the immediate future. I have to be back in Austin for my final semester of classes by 24 August. It's an odd feeling and I haven't quite adjusted yet. I got to meet a friend's amazing baby girl last weekend. I'm reading and rereading for pleasure, kayaking, swimming in the Atlantic, diving, fishing, camping, gardening...all the stuff I've been cut off from for a long time. And trying very hard to just be. I'll let you know if I figure that last one out. Maybe I can figure out this "balance" thing I hear so much about. And, like so many others, I'm keeping a wary eye on the spill in the Gulf.

Stone crab season just closed. It's sea turtle nesting season. Atlantic hurricane season starts on 1 June. Supposedly, once you get sand in your toes you'll always come back. I truly have a love/hate relationship with this place, which I'll probably write about here since most of what drives me mad are some of the same socio-econo-political issues plaguing a lot of places.

Right now, I need to get back in the water and wet my gills.
Peace/سلام

11. 5,000! 3,000.

UPDATE: NOAA just revised their figures today in light of the discovery of an additional leak. 5,000 barrels a day spilling into the Gulf, or 210,000 gallons/day. Projected to make landfall in two days, despite today's burn off efforts. This is serious.

Shrimp and crab seasons are about to open in the Gulf. It's oyster spawning season. The Mississippi delta, barrier islands and wetlands are full of birds on their northward migration. Right now the slick is about 20 miles off the Louisiana coast, but nobody really knows where all this oil will end up. There's talk if conditions were right the oil could make it as far as the Keys. Today there was talk of burning the slick, but nobody seems to be able to answer what unintended consequences that might lead to, the impact on marine life. And, just like with the recent Massey coal mine disaster, there was industry pushback on safety regulations in the months leading up to this explosion. All of this on top of the already hurting Gulf's dead zone and red tides.

The Deepwater Horizon blew just after the Obama administration announced a plan to open more of the coasts to drilling. Certain groups in this country like to chant "Drill baby! Drill!" Damn the consequences and full steam ahead and what not.

11 dead, about 1,000 barrels leaking from the sea floor every day, over 3000 km of the Gulf already tainted and threats that, if they can't figure out how to cap this leak (about a mile under water), this could be one of the worst oil spills in US history. This isn't a choice between the environment or jobs, wildlife or people. This very much about jobs and worker safety. This is very much about coastal communities, currently holding their collective breath. And, yes, it's also very much about warblers, whales, dolphins, sea turtles, pelicans, grouper, jacks, tarpon, Mahi and cobia...

Surely we can do better.
Peace/سلام

Fight Like a Girl #3

photo: AP

Dorothy Height

Fight Like a Girl #2

Marjorie Stoneman Douglas
I'll be back in the Glades, one of my favorite places on Earth, soon.

Before I go off to collect dubloons in the sewer...

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
That's Tariffic
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party

Pretty good description of trickle down econ. Of course they missed a chance to highlight the fact that in the U.S. the largest group in poverty are children, with the numbers for very young children (under 6) increasing rapidly.
Click on the post title if you have trouble with the embed.
Peace/سلام

Rube Goldberg & Selection Bias

David Roodman, from the Center for Global Development, was the guest professor for my Development Econ class last week. Great session and here's the post to his CGD microfinance blog (good read) about some of it including his fun example of selection bias:

Roodman said NASA engineers worked on this video. To which I say, "Excellent, but where are my Martian colonies and hyperdrives?"
Peace/سلام

Fight Like a Girl #1

Lalla Fatma N'Soumer

One That's Stuck With Me

From a little paperback anthology of American women poets found on a dusty shelf in a second-hand bookshop years ago...this one has stuck with me.
The Poet's Wife Makes Him a Door So He Can Find the Way Home
by Nancy Willard

Nobody else makes doors like a poet's wife.

If she made a revolving door,
summer and winter would run like mice in a wheel.
If she made a door for the moon,
the dead would cross over alive.

Each door is a mirror.

So when the poet loses his way,
crossing the desert in search of his heart,
his wife hoists her lintels and straw on her back
and sets out, feeling his grief with her feet.

She calls up a door that shimmers like water.

She unfolds her palm trees and parrots.
And far away, his belly dredging the dunes,
the poet hears his heart spinning
straw into gold for the sun.

The palms bow. The parrots are calling his name.

He remembers the way home.

The More Things Change...

Nefarious War
by Li Po (c.750)
Translated from the Chinese by Shigeyoshi Obata
Last year we fought by the head-stream of the So-Kan,
This year we are fighting on the Tsung-ho road.
We have washed our armor in the waves of the Chiao-chi lake,
We have pastured our horses on Tien-shan’s snowy slopes.
The long, long war goes on ten thousand miles from home.
Our three armies are worn and grown old.

The barbarian does man-slaughter for plowing;
On his yellow sand-plains nothing has been seen but blanched skulls and bones.
Where the Chin emperor built the walls against the Tartars,
There the defenders of Han are burning beacon fires.
The beacon fires burn and never go out.
There is no end to war!—

In the battlefield men grapple each other and die;
The horses of the vanquished utter lamentable cries to heaven,
While ravens and kites peck at human entrails,
Carry them up in their flight, and hang them on the branches of dead trees.
So, men are scattered and smeared over the desert grass,
And the generals have accomplished nothing.

Oh, nefarious war! I see why arms
Were so seldom used by the benign sovereigns.

Remembering Namir and Saeed

“We talked about photography and what we would do after the war. Namir was good, he was a kind man, he was brave.”
Namir Noor-Eldeen was the Reuters photojournalist killed by U.S. forces, along with his driver, Saeed Chmagh, and ten others, in the shooting documented in a classified military video recently released by the Web site Wikileaks. Lens, the photography blog at the NYTimes Website has this remembrance that includes some of his amazing work. And here are the tributes from colleagues and friends on Reuters' blog from the day after the shooting in 2007.
Peace/سلام

Progress?

I grew up by the ocean in south Florida. I learned to swim early enough that it's been said I spent nine months in the water (the womb), nine months out, and hopped right back in. Another friend once said God must have screwed up in the lab because I obviously should have been born a fish. I've been a diver since I was a kid and even spent a stretch working as an instructor after college. Even these days, when I'm away from the ocean for far longer than I'd care to be, I find ways to surround myself with little reminders - a bowl full of grain of rice-sized cowrie shells and quarter-sized sand dollars I picked up on dives back home, some paper-thin, deep purple shells I collected in southwestern Turkey, an intact seagull skull scavenged from the beach near my mom's, and lots of sea glass and sea beans. These days it may be a year or more between dives for me instead of the six or eight a day routine I kept up while working on dive boats, but the feeling is always the same when I hit the water and swim straight for the bottom - like going home.

Given all that, you can imagine my reaction to Pres. Obama's announcement on the expansion of offshore drilling. It's not a solution to anything and including it in climate change legislation is insulting. We've still only managed to explore about five percent of the world's oceans and seem intent on destroying them, one way or another, before we can even get a glimpse at the rest.
Oceanea
Surfrider







(images from the Surfrider Foundation, map from NYTimes)
Peace/سلام

"Collateral murder" and Langston Hughes

Wikileaks reveals video showing U.S. air crew shooting down Iraqi civilians

Let America Be America Again (1938)
by Langston Hughes

Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed--
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There's never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek--
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one's own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean--
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today--O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That's made America the land it has become.
O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home--
For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore,
And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa's strand I came
To build a "homeland of the free."

The free?

Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we've dreamed
And all the songs we've sung
And all the hopes we've held
And all the flags we've hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay--
Except the dream that's almost dead today.

O, let America be America again--
The land that never has been yet--
And yet must be--the land where every man is free.
The land that's mine--the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME--
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose--
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath--
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain--
All, all the stretch of these great green states--
And make America again!

Happy National Poetry Month

OK, I'm five days late, but...April is National Poetry Month in the U.S. Unfortunately, the way most people are introduced to poetry in school seems to lead to them swearing off it forever for fear of not getting it. I keep poetry books by my bed the way some drunks stash a bottle. Gets me through. I'll try to share some of the good stuff over the next few weeks. Loosen up, read a little, and try to stop worrying about "getting it" and focus on feeling it. Also try this in front of certain works of art and at the opera or ballet. I've converted more than a few in my time.

Eating Poetry
by Mark Strand

Ink runs from the corners of my mouth.
There is no happiness like mine.
I have been eating poetry.

The librarian does not believe what she sees.
Her eyes are sad
and she walks with her hands in her dress.

The poems are gone.
The light is dim.
The dogs are on the basement stairs and coming up.

Their eyeballs roll,
their blond legs burn like brush.
The poor librarian begins to stamp her feet and weep.

She does not understand.
When I get on my knees and lick her hand,
she screams.

I am a new man.
I snarl at her and bark.
I romp with joy in the bookish dark.