I had a dream the other night in which my late colleague and best friend, SM, who died in January, appeared. She was angrily directing volunteer efforts for the Gulf oil spill from her sick bed, talking on the phone, sending angry emails. In my dream, she and I cried about it together. I woke up feeling sad and tired.
I find myself overwhelmed with competing emotions about the horrific disaster at the Deepwater Horizon rig in the Gulf of Mexico. I get enraged and scream at the radio and the TV when I hear reports of the testimony of officials from BP (which rented the rig that exploded), Halliburton (which did the work of cementing the rig -- or maybe I should say *didn't* do the work of cementing the rig), Cameron (the company that made the blowout preventer device for the rig that clearly didn't work), and Transocean (the company that owned the rig and employed the workers on it, who blew off basic procedures, thus either causing the blow-out or at least facilitating it). The four companies are all finger-pointing at each other, and, from what was said at the Congressional hearing, there was no governmental oversight at all -- just so-called "self-regulation." Self-regulation?? As far as I can see, self-regulation = NO regulation. My least-favorite quote was from the BP exec who said (of a giant, multi-million dollar containment device that turned out to be totally useless), "I won't say it failed, but it didn't work." Say what?? I am really working hard on the spiritual discipline of not hating them.
I am selfishly depressed at the thought of no more Louisiana seafood (or outrageously expensive seafood due to scarcity), and at the idea that I won't be able to just blithely get away any time I want to relax at a nearby pristine beach. I grieve over all the wildlife affected, even if the ones that are not edible. (My heart just about broke when I saw the aerial shot in the Times-Picayune of a shark appearing to bravely confront the huge oil slick all by himself -- it reminded me of the lone man bravely facing down the tank in Tiannenmen Square. See the photo at http://photos.nola.com/tpphotos/2010/05/oil_spill_gulf_of_mexico_2010_28.html.
The thought of the thick black goo on the edges of our fragile, disappearing marshland and coastal areas -- like we needed another insult to the Louisiana coast line! -- just sickens me. (To look at updated NASA satellite photos -- if you can bear it -- go to http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/oilspill/index.html.)
I worry about all the many, many people whose livelihoods and ways of life will be negatively impacted. Our friend the happy Shrimp Man on Claiborne Avenue is just one example of a whole class of people who have shrimped the Gulf waters for generations. Shrimpers, fisher folks, oyster folk, the restaurants all along South Louisiana who depend on that fresh catch, the oyster bars, the mom-and-pop po boy sandwich places, the little and big beach resort areas from Texas to Florida that are bracing for impact and facing cancellations of bookings, the private middle-class owners of non-luxurious beach houses that are paid for only through vacation rentals, the people whose businesses supply the boats that usually ply the Gulf waters -- the list of those affected goes on and on. All these people, all these families. Multi-generational ways of life threatened. It is too horrible to contemplate and yet we must think about it.
I'm mad at the federal government which is clearly complicit over several administrations -- and this new one gets no pass from us in Louisiana -- which is currently only offering *loans* to people whose small businesses are already marginal, and which are already carrying new loans post-Katrina. Loans? Is that the best we can do for all these folks??
I'm feeling betrayed by the markets and stores and restaurants in other states who are putting up signs bragging that they don't carry Louisiana seafood. Thanks so much for your support. I guess y'all thought we would purposely send out *bad* seafood for y'all to eat?? I'm still eating Louisiana crabmeat and shrimp, and if you care about us and our people, you'll eat it too.
I must admit I also feel implicated, guilty, responsible. Yes, I still drive my car, and sometimes, for convenience sake or just in order to save a few extra minutes, I confess I drive when I could have/should have walked. And believe me, I use air conditioning in my house, my car, and at the church, and I'm dependent on it. (It's only May, and it's already 90 degrees in New Orleans, for Pete's sake! I have trouble figuring out how people ever lived here without air conditioning.) Maybe I ought to be, but I am not yet prepared to call for an end to all offshore drilling.
But if we gonna do it, it ought to be safe. I can demand -- and all of you, wherever you live can demand -- that such drilling be done with adequate safeguards, with redundant safety procedures, with scrupulous inspections overseen by the federal government. We can demand that the state and federal governments require and strictly enforce such safeguards, processes, procedures, and redundancies. We can demand that this be declared a national disaster emergency, and allow the people most affected to get grants, not more loans, in order to get them through economically. We can support them through our consumer spending as well as our donations. We can call our hair salons, barbers and pet grooming places to keep collecting hair and fur clippings for the oil-soaking booms that are still needed. (These can be labeled and packaged and sent to Matter of Trust; see their website at http://www.matteroftrust.org/.)
And we can express our emotions -- our anger, depression, grief, exhaustion, worry, sense of complicity, and feelings of helplessness -- in our religious community, in our worship, in our small groups. We can help each other. There are no easy answers to this, and we must help comfort and support one another as we find our way through it.
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