Grand Isle, LA, May 25th, 2010

*Wordpress wanted 60 bucks a year to post videos, screw em, this video contains footage from the central beach area, as well as the stae park at the end of the island (which is one cleanup hub on the island, there are several all along the beach), and the west end of the islad (where you see the rock berm and boom combo, behind which there is a lot of oil residue and digging activity):



After making 150 feet of homemade boom from prepackaged hair in nylon stockings that Andrea Sorrenti and her husband Hyme brought up from Naples Florida (see www.naplesorganichairstudio.com for Andrea's site, and matteroftrust.org for the greater coordinating organization for the hair and natural fiber based booms), we decide to take a ride out to Grand Isle to see some slick. Jordan Fish, whose making a documentary with VBS.tv, on the oil spill, came along for the ride, and we subsequently gathered some footage, as well as getting our feet wet in oil slick and learning how to be part of the independent media.

Grand Isle: 3.30 pm
At a public beach access point we pull off and go over the dunes. Another older local man is down the beach, but otherwise we see nobody. As we approach the water, a line of oily sludge, about six inches wide appears at the high tide line. Where the water is receding, more crude oil residue, including a sort of granular tar, is building up. Plovers, Whimbrels and Sandpipers are foraging amidst the muck, and farther out to sea, Pelicans are diving amongst the light slick. The layer of oil stretches as far as the eye can see, and appears light but uniform.

From the current NOAA observed spill data (available online at http://www.google.com/crisisresponse/oilspill/#earth), Grand Isle isn't even being hit, but it is well within the zone of uncertainty surrounding projections for the spill. The Sawdust Bend Bayou, southeast of Venice, LA, is getting absolutely hammered. The whole situation is a mess that I can't encapsulate here, but things will develop.

Out at sea, I count more than 30 offshore rigs within a mile of the beach. This is oil country. Boats move amongst them, apparently the ocean isn't closed.

State Park: 4.00 pm
The woman working at the gate named Linda was initially very nervous when we said we were doing a documentary on the spill and its effects. She calmed down when we started asking about what the park had to offer, as well as the bird list for the park, and she happily showed us pictures of birds she had seen, as well as the encroaching oil slick. Linda's maiden name is Boudreau, and her family's been in the Bayou for generations, live oaks on Grand Isle saved her great grandparents from being washed out to sea during the hurricane of 1893. Those live oaks are absent in the stick village of modern Grand Isle, where the houses seem to be getting higher and higher, and the trees, fewer and farther between.

The state park does have a nice observation tower, from where you can get a good look up and down the beach, as well as out to sea, into Barataria Bay and across the inlet, where the Grand Ecaille side of land is just visible through a heavy haze to the Northeast.

On this friday, the 28th, the Grand Isle Beach will have been closed for two weeks, making it 13 days that oil slick has been washing up on shore, some days more and some days less, but there, nevertheless.

Grand Isle residents seem to be sleeping, and largely absent as their beach is closed. Shrimp boats idly dance across the sea, passing back and forth, some are returning, boom hanging from their trawling arms. High powered golf carts make their rounds over the beach, patrolling for people and oil.

Outside the main staging area in town, we ask two men where the state park is, they say they don't know, they're not from around there. I ask if they're involved in the cleanup effort, they reply "yeah, something like that." They tell us to ask some folk down the way, and we drive past the main compound, where men are coming in off of boats, and where a bit further on, there's a van marked Jefferson Parish Temporary Command Center.

At the state park, men in white suits with neon green hats are unloading plastic bags loaded with what looks like sandy debris and oil into large dumpsters.
Four of them sitting underneath a shade canopy. They count them off as they toss them in the dumpster, about six of them working at a time. There's two dumpsters there, one may be full, the one being loaded is about half full. When they are done they cover them up and cinch them down. The dumpsters have an EPA permit on them as Non RCRA regulated watt for oil spill cleanup licensed to BP Exploration and PRoduction, 299 Westlake Blvd. Houston TX, 77079.

From the observation tower we can see thick inflatable boom covering the mouth of the lagoon that goes into the state park, where a lone great white egret stalks its prey. Other scraps of boom are arranged at the end of the beach, in a fishhook shape that may be there to capture oil, the efficacy of which is unknown.

The general impression I'm getting is that they are trying to minimize visibility of the slick on the beach.

There a culture of stifling the independent media, where only "legitimate" news organizations receive authorization to get on the beach, conduct interviews and have access to information. When we asked the folks loading the dumpsters, some of them completely ignored us, while their crew boss started to answer questions in a friendly way, but quickly clammed up when we became even more inquisitive. Part of his terseness could be his 12 hour workday, but there seemed to be officialdom at work when he said he'd really like to answer questions, but he's got orders not to.
the beach on may 22nd:


the beach on may 25th:


We did manage to meet some folks working for the blog firedoglake.com, as well as some other indie media people, Nathan and Lindsey, who make up 18thstreetmedia.com, also working on documenting the spill. Disasters like these are a form of shock treatment social networking, with exchanges of contacts, business cards and other information is rampant. Its an exciting time to be alive, but just on the media side of things, its frustrating to watch this disaster unfold and just be able to document document document.

american dream, american nightmare

I'm sitting here in the aquatic plant biology laboratory filing away teaching specimens, and it just so happens that I stumble across an editorial from February of 1991 in the Daily Campus, written by Colman McCarthy, on the words of Colin Powell and Barbara Bush influencing the nightmares of small children.

McCarthy's theme stemmed from Powell's statements that we needed to isolate Iraq's army and kill it" a concept that was "very, very simple". McCarthy went on to reflect upon Washington D.C.'s ranking in homicides per capita, which at them time was highest in the world for "industrialized nations."

Additionally, McCarthy skewered Barbara Bush on her statements regarding parents needing to make sure that children understood the content of the news, in order to avoid having nightmares.

As a person whose own nightmares usually revolve around war and concentration camp like settings, I could wholeheartedly agree with McCarthy's statements that it was precisely because children could subconsciously understand the content of the news that they would have nightmares: our world has yet to eliminate the brutality and misguided logic of violence that perpetuates wars among individuals and nations alike.

And then I pinch myself, Wait! What the f**!! It's 2009, McCarthy's writing about operation desert storm, 18 years have gone by! and what's changed? Not much except for a shifted focus towards a shadowy Al Qaeda and "insurgents" who are rationally responding (according to the same misguided logic of violence) to a foreign enemy has been militarily involved in their country for 18 years (directly), and to a cultural force insensitive to its own traditions (since the creation of the Iraqi state in 1920).