"THE OCEANS CAN'T TAKE ANY MORE"

Philippe Cousteau, the grandson of French explorer and ecologist Jacques-Yves Cousteau, to Bill Maher:

The Florida Keys, third longest barrier reef in the world, is a dead zone. Ninety percent of the big fish, the tuna, the sharks, and other things, are already gone in the oceans. There's a dead zone in the Gulf Of Mexico every summer the size of New Jersey, where there's not enough oxygen for things to live. So it's not a question of 'Can the oceans take any more?' The oceans can't take any more. They couldn't take any more fifty years ago. The question is, when are we going to stop?

From the The Huffington Post:

THE CHORDETTES - "LOLLIPOP"

Because I feel silly, sad, addled, tired, a jumbled mixture of emotions, I take you back to 1958 to the Chordettes singing a good jitterbug song. A lively jitterbug session would shake all that stuff right outta my head.

And there's Andy Williams doing the "pop".

STORY OF THE DAY - FUNNY WORLD

He told me about Jesus & Arizona & the
best way to make beer & I said you're a
funny kind of preacher & he said it's a
funny kind of world & I still remember
his eyes clear as a desert morning.


From StoryPeople.

READ AND WEEP

From Yahoo News:

Perhaps you saw news footage of President Obama in Grand Isle, La., on Friday and thought things didn't look all that bad. Well, there may have been a reason for that: The town was evidently swarmed by an army of temp workers to spruce it up for the president and the national news crews following him.

Jefferson Parish Councilman Chris Roberts, whose district encompasses Grand Isle, told Yahoo! News that BP bused in "hundreds" of temporary workers to clean up local beaches. And as soon as the president was en route back to Washington, the workers were clearing out of Grand Isle too, Roberts said.

"The level of cleanup and cooperation we've gotten from BP in the past is in no way consistent to the effort shown on the island today," Roberts said by telephone. "As soon as the president left, they were immediately put back on the buses and sent home."

So much for BP putting forth its best efforts in the clean-up.

H/T to The Huffington Post.

NOT GOOD NEWS - PLEASE PRAY

Ann Fontaine informed me that her brother, Steve, for whom we prayed several days ago for a illness in his lungs, has been diagnosed with lung cancer, adenocarcinoma to be specific, with a prognosis of only six months or so.

Please pray for Steve, his wife and children, and all the family, including our friend, Ann.

Heavenly Father, giver of life and health: Comfort and relieve your sick servant Steve, and give your power of healing to those who minister to his needs, that he may be strengthened in his weakness and have confidence in your loving care; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
(Book of Common Prayer, p. 459)


GOD'S AID

God to enfold him,
God to surround him,
God in his speaking,
God in his thinking.

God in his sleeping,
God in his waking,
God in his watching,
God in his hoping.

God in his life,
God in his lips,
God in his soul,
God in his heart.

God in his sufficing,
God in his slumber,
God in his ever-living soul,
God in his eternity.


From the Carmina Gadelica. (Edit.)

AN IMPROVEMENT?

This:

 

From this:

 

My daughter at the age of one year. The portrait was originally beautiful and colorful, but it faded and yellowed over the years. I brought the picture home with me last time I visited my daughter, and today, with my quite limited photo-shopping program, I fiddled and fixed and came up with what I think is an improvement, but, by no means, is the result as good as was the original. I printed the copy on picture-quality paper and put the copy in the frame which held the original. The yellowed, faded version should be put away in a dark place to insure that it doesn't fade further.

PUNCTUATION!

An English professor wrote the words: "A woman without her man is nothing" on the chalkboard and asked his students to punctuate it correctly.

All of the males in the class wrote: "A woman, without her man, is nothing."

All the females in the class wrote: "A woman: without her, man is nothing."

Punctuation is powerful.


Don't blame me. Blame Lisa.

"WE ARE ALL CONNECTED" - BP. KATHARINE JEFFORTS SCHORI

A young heron sits dying amidst oil splattering underneath mangrove on an island impacted by oil from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in Barataria Bay, just inside the the coast of Lousiana, Sunday, May 23.

The original peoples of the North American continent understand that we are all connected, and that harm to one part of the sacred circle of life harms the whole. Scientists, both the ecological and physical sorts, know the same reality, expressed in different terms. The Abrahamic traditions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) also charge human beings with care for the whole of creation, because it is God's good gift to humanity. Another way of saying this is that we are all connected and there is no escape; our common future depends on how we care for the rest of the natural world, not just the square feet of soil we may call "our own." We breathe the same air, our food comes from the same ground and seas, and the water we have to share cycles through the same airshed, watershed, and terra firma.

The still-unfolding disaster in the Gulf of Mexico is good evidence of the interconnectedness of the whole. It has its origins in this nation's addiction to oil, uninhibited growth, and consumerism, as well as old-fashioned greed and what my tradition calls hubris and idolatry. Our collective sins are being visited on those who have had little or no part in them: birds, marine mammals, the tiny plants and animals that constitute the base of the vast food chain in the Gulf, and on which a major part of the seafood production of the United States depends. Our sins are being visited on the fishers of southern Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida, who seek to feed their families with the proceeds of what they catch each day. Our sins will expose New Orleans and other coastal cities to the increased likelihood of devastating floods, as the marshes that constitute the shrinking margin of storm protection continue to disappear, fouled and killed by oil.

The oil that continues to vent from the sea floor has spread through hundreds of cubic miles of ocean, poisoning creatures of all sizes and forms, from birds, turtles, and whales to the shrimp, fish, oysters, and crabs that human beings so value, and the plankton, whose life supports the whole biological system -- the very kind of creatures whose dead and decomposed tissues began the process of producing that oil so many millions of years ago.

We know, at least intellectually, that that oil is a limited resource, yet we continue to extract and use it at increasing rates and with apparently decreasing care. The great scandal of this disaster is the one related to all kinds of "commons," resources held by the whole community. Like tropical forests in Madagascar and Brazil, and the gold and silver deposits of the American West, "commons" have in human history too often been greedily exploited by a few, with the aftermath left for others to deal with, or suffer with.

Yet the reality is that this disaster just may show us as a nation how interconnected we really are. The waste of this oil -- both its unusability and the mess it is making -- will be visited on all of us, for years and even generations to come. The hydrocarbons in those coastal marshes and at the base of the food chain leading to marketable seafood resources will taint us all, eventually. That oil is already frightening away vacationers who form the economic base for countless coastal communities, whose livelihoods have something to do with the economic health of this nation. The workers in those communities, even when they have employment, are some of the poorest among us. That oil will move beyond the immediate environs of a broken wellhead, spreading around the coasts of Florida and northward along the east coast of the U.S. That oil will foul the coastal marshes that also constitute a major nursery for coastal fauna, again a vital part of the food chain. That oil will further stress and poison the coral reefs of Florida, already much endangered from warming and ocean acidification. Those reefs have historically provided significant storm protection to the coastal communities behind them.

The dispersants that are being so wantonly deployed will have consequences we're not yet cognizant of, and the experience of gold and silver mining in the West is instructive. The methods used in those old mining operations liberated plenty of arsenic, mercury, other heavy metals, left cyanide and acids, all of which have significant health effects on those who live in the immediate area of mines and tailings, as well as those who use water downstream and breathe downwind air.

There is no place to go "away" from these consequences; there is no ultimate escape on this planet. The effects at a distance may seem minor or tolerable, but the cumulative effect is not. We are all connected, we will all suffer the consequences of this tragic disaster in the Gulf, and we must wake up and put a stop to the kind of robber baron behavior we supposedly regulated out of existence a hundred years ago. Our lives, and the liveliness of the entire planet, depend on it.

And they all said, "Amen!"


Image from MSNBC.

Thanks to AmyJ for the link to the essay at The Huffington Post.

"IT AIN'T MY FAULT" - MOS DEF & LENNY KRAVITZ

May 21, 2010, New Orleans, LA - The Gulf Relief Foundation announced Today that last Sunday's Gulf Aid Benefit Concert raised $300,088.65 The Foundation will be distributing the funds in the coming weeks.

"This was truly an 8-day wonder," said David Freedman, General Manager of WWOZ and a member of the board of the Gulf Relief Foundation. "The Foundation's first distribution will be to the fishing community most impacted by the shutdown of activity in St. Bernard and Plaquemines Parishes.

Consulting with the United Commercial Fishermen's Association, the Louisiana Seafood Promotion and Marketing Board and the United Way, Gulf Relief Foundation officials will be traveling to the area next week to talk to people on the ground about their needs. In the following two weeks, working with Tulane School of Social Work we'll begin triage activities, followed by case management and financial support," Freedman said.

"Last Sunday's Gulf Aid benefit concert is just the first in a series of food and music events planned by the Gulf Relief Foundation to raise additional relief funds," said Sidney D. Torres, owner of SDT and Foundation board member. "Donations are still coming in and we expect a boost in donations from tomorrow night's documentary airing on Fuse TV," Torres said. Fuse is carried in New Orleans on Cox channel 359, DirecTV channel 339 and DISH channel 158.

Plaquemine and St. Bernard Parishes were devastated by Katrina and the federal flood, and now comes the oil.

Thanks to Ginny S, who brought the video to the attention of MadPriest.

MAXINE SAYS...

 

Thanks to Lisa.