Po Boy Views
By
Phil LaMancusa
Katrina Fifth Anniversary VI
Or
No Rest For The Weary
Could I get away without finishing the epic adventure? Probably. But I wouldn’t have believed that the tale had ended so I’ll go on (and on and on) with the suspicion that someone in the future will want to know what happened after chapter five.
Okay, where were we? We made it up to Shreveport and our asylum where we had respite for two nights and a day. They, the folks that took us in, were a lovely couple in a large house in an upscale suburb and they opened themselves and their home to us as if we were better than kin. We were asked (and received) whatever we needed and we showered and shaved and shampooed like royalty. Kevin, it turned out was somewhat of an introvert; it took him a bit to come out, but with a couple of beers and non-threatening company, who wouldn’t. They even threw a cook-out for us and some other refugees that had landed in their neighborhood. They really went all out for us, no questions asked. Food, clothing and shelter.
We had Molly, the yellow Labrador, with us and Gallivan’s girlfriend was coming to pick her up. Little Trey, the bitty dog that was given to us by some evacuees in N.O. was taken to a refugee shelter where people and pets were treated with respect and he was almost immediately adopted by one of the workers. That left us with five of our own critters and Kevin.
We didn’t want to overstay our welcome and besides, Kevin’s sister in law, the one who had said we could keep the car, was threatening to call the authorities on us and have us arrested for car rustling, so we set up a time to be in Dallas to return the Toyota to her and took our leave of Shreveport (after finding that scamp Bob the cat wandering off in the neighborhood, obviously ready to relocate on his own) and headed to Texas.
We had agreed to rendezvous at the Dallas airport, where we had decided to rent another car for the trip to the west coast. Debbie was adamant that we have a car before returning the Toyota and I readily agreed that our baggage and pets should not and would not be left by the side of the road just because an ex alcoholic was reneging on a promise made in haste; that promise being that we could keep the car, her car (that we got out of New Orleans) as long as we needed it. In our heart of hearts we really couldn't blame her, but it was sort of a pain in the ass. We arrived on schedule and got a bigger and better car and waited and waited and waited for her to show up; we were wasting daylight at the edge of nowhere, and our nerves and patiences were fraying further than they already were.
Well, the sister in law finally shows up. It seems that she was so stressed about the ordeal that she had to go to a meeting before she could get her act together; by the time she showed up Debbie was fit to be tied and I believe that she wanted to rip this woman’s lungs from her body, and, to make things more complicated, she had brought Kevin’s spouse, Kathy, with her, who was there to plead with Kevin to stay in Dallas and not make the trip to California. All the time, it’s hotter than hell and no shade to speak of.
After a tearful reunion, Kevin decided to stay with Kathy and we hugged and left the lot of them and continued off on our own.
The drive to the coast was pretty much of a blur with us getting a motel room for the night wherever, and whenever we were to pooped to continue the driving. We would invariably order a pizza and get some beer and get the critters situated and zone out on television that we, again invariably, had tuned to the disaster reports from New Orleans; we had become media junkies and disaster ghouls. We would sleep and wake up to the awful motel coffee service, get a bite and head on out again, day after day, through Texas, Arizona and up into California. In the back of my head I was dreading the drive through Los Angeles, having had that experience before and not liking it one bit.
We drove up the coastal route, along the beach communities, keeping to our motel, pizza, beer, coffee breakfast, driving routine, never stopping for very long; burning gas and rubber and the demons from my brain.
While I was in New Orleans, I would wake up in the morning and have to wrap my head around the disaster and being there; on the road, I would wake up and it would take me a moment to realize that I was not still in New Orleans. Debbie kept me going and took real care of our charges: Ginger and Rosie the canines, and Phil, Pepper and Bob the felines. For the most part we talked little and I’m sure that I wasn’t good company. Like I explain to people: I really, really needed a long drive to clear my head and so I drove and drove, my copilot and our crew of critters reaching the southern outskirts of Los Angeles, where we rested overnight to get up the energy to go through that most horrid of stretches of highway, the L.A. freeway. I think that I had tried to warn Debbie of the rigors that we were about to face, as it turns out neither one of us were fully prepared for that ride.
If you’ve never driven through Los Angeles in the years around 2005, you have missed the most nerve wracking, patience and driving ability trying experiences of a lifetime and I wish you well. We started out at day break and drove six lanes to four and back top six as fast as we could, mostly to keep from being over run by the other cars, trucks and busses that were hell bent for leather to get wherever they were going ahead of the person behind them and in front of them; it took us until 9:30 in the morning to get through L.A. and in the middle of all that, Phil the cat decided to lean on the power window switch and almost jetison himself; and if that weren’t enough, he and Pepper decided to kill eachother, in the car, on the freeway at eighty miles per hour. I was practically in a froth by the time we reached sane driving conditions and this hero stuff was wearing a bit thin, I don’t know how I knew it or what those around me thought of my demeanor, but I was holding all of my emotions in check for the last week and they needed out. I had rationally explained to myself that I needed to be the strong one, in charge, when I felt the weakest of the lot of us; I wouldn’t have wanted to be in that car with me driving if I were anyone else but me, and maybe not even then.
We stopped, I think that it was in Capistrano, for the night and then up to San Francisco where we had a safety net in place; however, we never did need to strain any of the relationships that I had up there. The Red Cross was set up in town and they got us (with pets) accommodations at an art deco motel on the beach, gave us meals as well as food stamps and bus passes and people were right friendly. The Red Cross had expected tens of thousands of refugees and got less than nine hundred, so we had almost too much attention lavished upon us with Social Security, FEMA and disaster money and volunteers galore, plus we had a brand new luxury size Buick to tool around the area with.
There is one moment that I will never forget; as we were driving into town we had the radio tuned to the public station and they were broadcasting a benefit for New Orleans musicians. We were just getting in, with the San Francisco skyline above us and feeling pretty good about being at the end of our trip and the song that they happen to play at that moment was: “Do you know what it means to miss New Orleans?” I think that we were crying so hard that I had to pull over because I could not see the road for the tears that we both were crying. We both literally had our long overdue breakdowns, in traffic, sobbing for our lost city. I guess that that kind of took the wind out of our sails and I believe that at that point we both knew without speaking that we could not but return home, no matter what San Francisco or any other place might show us in the form of hospitality. At that point we fully knew what it meant to be orphans of the storm.
So ends part six. That was our journey out of the hell and high water and it got to be only better and better from there until we returned back to New Orleans. Five weeks in California.
Oh, Kevin did make it to California, to his relatives, without Kathy.
Saturday, July 31, 2010
Thursday, July 29, 2010
halloween in New Orleans 2010
Po Boy Views
By
Phil LaMancusa
Lucky Stiff
Or
All Hallows Eve
Are you awake? Well, c’mon take a trip with me down the lazy Mississippi, the river that’s too thick to drink and too thin to plow. Let’s take Old Man River on down to that easy, sleepy, ne’er do well crescent city…New Orleans. Nowhere, in this country, will you find a city that is more likely to take any excuse or occasion and transform it into a celebration; and that’s what this missive is about.
First off: Our forbearers, in their infinite and ultimately misguided wisdom, transmuted pagan ritual days into religious holidays on a particular purpose and, I think, with the likes of us in mind. They figured that if the kids were going to be jazzing and jamming with the changing of the seasons, (and other natural occurrences) that they could capitalize on it by relating it to the church and to their infinite and ultimately misguided religion. In the course of that, they hoped to somehow rein us in. It is not totally a coincidence that Mardi Gras corresponds with spring plantings as well as Halloween the conclusion of harvest; the church will have us believe a connection to Easter and All Saints day; WELL, fat (Tuesday) chance, we know better. Consequently we celebrate these holidays with abandon. Both Carnival and Halloween call for costuming, consuming and canoodling; how pagan is that? “We need to fete the dearly departed saints and sinners…"THIS BUD'S FOR YOU!! Or…. It’s getting’ time to knock it off for forty days until good old whatshisname rises... "BREAK OUT THE BOOZE!!!" So it goes, and…
That being said, consider that there’s a certain fascination and fixation with death that is pervasive here. Our thing with death is also something that goes un-witnessed in other parts of this country; certainly not to the lengths that we go to in our near obsession. In fact, in New Orleans death is celebrated, revered and as we all know, easy to come by; it’s not uncommon for a spat to escalate into a homicide here, is it? We’ll cry on the way to the graveyard and we’ll dance on our way back; the brass band leads the way and we form a second line behind it. Visitors love to gawk at our cemeteries, we love to light candles on people and we read the obituaries religiously (pun intended). We pay little attention to dying; it’s death itself that intrigues us most. AND…
Compounding that, New Orleans is as welcoming and as friendly a city as you’ll find anywhere, consequently, it’s easy to make comrades here. Something as trivial as a gap in a generation or the diversity of a background never stands in the way of close bonds that allow the symbiosis of personal philosophies to come together like ticks on a hound.
And, until somebody pisses somebody else off, you’re pretty much good to go in the pals, peeps and buds department in any area of this city. However; leave it to me not to point out that there’s always an occasion that the best of us will cop an attitude over nothing and alienate a playmate, but what can you do? That’s the exception to the rule; c’est la vie, laissez faire and laissez le bon temps roulez. To make friends is to lose them, albeit briefly. C’est le guerre.
So what do we get when we mix up that metaphoric gumbo? Bone Shakers on Mardi Gras, black folks dressed as Indians singing “jockimo findo hondo in de mawnin”, vampires, devils, ghouls and demons dressed on Halloween, men dressed as sexy women and women dressed even sexier. We also get twenty-four hour drinking in the streets, red dress runs, swashbucklers, strip clubs, our own running of the bulls (where you get chased by a babe on roller skates with a bat) and the parading of hearses backed by blaring brass bands; all in the thinly disguised demeanor of danger, debauchery and death. Boy, aint we sumthin’?
Our fascination with death comes in different forms: the death of a celebrity (i.e. Lena Horne), the death of an eccentric (i.e. Ruthie the Duck Girl), or of a celebrity and eccentric (i.e. Ernie K. Doe). You’ll read in the news a freak accident and be mesmerized, you’ll see on the telly a disaster that took innocents and your eyes will widen. You’ll hear of animals thoughtlessly killed and become tearily outraged. A death in the family, of a friend and add to that the deaths of strangers, soldiers or someone that you just see in the newspaper and you pretty much have it. A real Spoon River Anthology.
I believe that this addiction to death has to do with the realization that our own time is divided between the days that we’ve had and the days that we have left: our personal mortality. It’s something that we can do nothing about, weaving a spell of finality toward a mirror at the end of the road. If you live long enough, you get old; if you stay old long enough… you die. AND as your days pass you will see people that you know, people that are your friends and people that you are related to… pass The O-bits will call the process “entering into eternal peace or rest, called home, transitioned or departed this life”. Gene Wilder in Young Frankenstein quips succinctly: “What difference does it make? Dead. Is. Dead!!”
The difference is that perhaps at some point you’ll realize that you are not dead…yet, and death will become a personal issue; and so will your life. Death will become something that you will not be able to escape or avoid. Life will be something that you think about and cherish. At some point when you hear someone say that they are blessed by being alive another day, your heart will answer ”I know that’s right!”.
And perhaps you will start living like you mean it, like you want to make it last or make it matter. Not that it will make much of a difference.
But, in conclusion, when you costume up this, or any other, season, remember that life is short, fun is the best way of having a good time, loving is as natural as breathing and courtesy is contagious.
And when I die you better second line!
By
Phil LaMancusa
Lucky Stiff
Or
All Hallows Eve
Are you awake? Well, c’mon take a trip with me down the lazy Mississippi, the river that’s too thick to drink and too thin to plow. Let’s take Old Man River on down to that easy, sleepy, ne’er do well crescent city…New Orleans. Nowhere, in this country, will you find a city that is more likely to take any excuse or occasion and transform it into a celebration; and that’s what this missive is about.
First off: Our forbearers, in their infinite and ultimately misguided wisdom, transmuted pagan ritual days into religious holidays on a particular purpose and, I think, with the likes of us in mind. They figured that if the kids were going to be jazzing and jamming with the changing of the seasons, (and other natural occurrences) that they could capitalize on it by relating it to the church and to their infinite and ultimately misguided religion. In the course of that, they hoped to somehow rein us in. It is not totally a coincidence that Mardi Gras corresponds with spring plantings as well as Halloween the conclusion of harvest; the church will have us believe a connection to Easter and All Saints day; WELL, fat (Tuesday) chance, we know better. Consequently we celebrate these holidays with abandon. Both Carnival and Halloween call for costuming, consuming and canoodling; how pagan is that? “We need to fete the dearly departed saints and sinners…"THIS BUD'S FOR YOU!! Or…. It’s getting’ time to knock it off for forty days until good old whatshisname rises... "BREAK OUT THE BOOZE!!!" So it goes, and…
That being said, consider that there’s a certain fascination and fixation with death that is pervasive here. Our thing with death is also something that goes un-witnessed in other parts of this country; certainly not to the lengths that we go to in our near obsession. In fact, in New Orleans death is celebrated, revered and as we all know, easy to come by; it’s not uncommon for a spat to escalate into a homicide here, is it? We’ll cry on the way to the graveyard and we’ll dance on our way back; the brass band leads the way and we form a second line behind it. Visitors love to gawk at our cemeteries, we love to light candles on people and we read the obituaries religiously (pun intended). We pay little attention to dying; it’s death itself that intrigues us most. AND…
Compounding that, New Orleans is as welcoming and as friendly a city as you’ll find anywhere, consequently, it’s easy to make comrades here. Something as trivial as a gap in a generation or the diversity of a background never stands in the way of close bonds that allow the symbiosis of personal philosophies to come together like ticks on a hound.
And, until somebody pisses somebody else off, you’re pretty much good to go in the pals, peeps and buds department in any area of this city. However; leave it to me not to point out that there’s always an occasion that the best of us will cop an attitude over nothing and alienate a playmate, but what can you do? That’s the exception to the rule; c’est la vie, laissez faire and laissez le bon temps roulez. To make friends is to lose them, albeit briefly. C’est le guerre.
So what do we get when we mix up that metaphoric gumbo? Bone Shakers on Mardi Gras, black folks dressed as Indians singing “jockimo findo hondo in de mawnin”, vampires, devils, ghouls and demons dressed on Halloween, men dressed as sexy women and women dressed even sexier. We also get twenty-four hour drinking in the streets, red dress runs, swashbucklers, strip clubs, our own running of the bulls (where you get chased by a babe on roller skates with a bat) and the parading of hearses backed by blaring brass bands; all in the thinly disguised demeanor of danger, debauchery and death. Boy, aint we sumthin’?
Our fascination with death comes in different forms: the death of a celebrity (i.e. Lena Horne), the death of an eccentric (i.e. Ruthie the Duck Girl), or of a celebrity and eccentric (i.e. Ernie K. Doe). You’ll read in the news a freak accident and be mesmerized, you’ll see on the telly a disaster that took innocents and your eyes will widen. You’ll hear of animals thoughtlessly killed and become tearily outraged. A death in the family, of a friend and add to that the deaths of strangers, soldiers or someone that you just see in the newspaper and you pretty much have it. A real Spoon River Anthology.
I believe that this addiction to death has to do with the realization that our own time is divided between the days that we’ve had and the days that we have left: our personal mortality. It’s something that we can do nothing about, weaving a spell of finality toward a mirror at the end of the road. If you live long enough, you get old; if you stay old long enough… you die. AND as your days pass you will see people that you know, people that are your friends and people that you are related to… pass The O-bits will call the process “entering into eternal peace or rest, called home, transitioned or departed this life”. Gene Wilder in Young Frankenstein quips succinctly: “What difference does it make? Dead. Is. Dead!!”
The difference is that perhaps at some point you’ll realize that you are not dead…yet, and death will become a personal issue; and so will your life. Death will become something that you will not be able to escape or avoid. Life will be something that you think about and cherish. At some point when you hear someone say that they are blessed by being alive another day, your heart will answer ”I know that’s right!”.
And perhaps you will start living like you mean it, like you want to make it last or make it matter. Not that it will make much of a difference.
But, in conclusion, when you costume up this, or any other, season, remember that life is short, fun is the best way of having a good time, loving is as natural as breathing and courtesy is contagious.
And when I die you better second line!
Friday, July 9, 2010
See you in September
I was going to publish Katrina Fifth Anniversary part 2 but hey, isn't there enough bad stuff out there? So I wrote something a little lighter than storms and seas and sludge and fumes. Bless me, Father for I have sinned.
Po Boy Views
By
Phil LaMancusa
From The Heart
Or
Game over
Okay, enough of this gloom and doom; enough, enough, I say! If you don’t have anything light and airy to say… put it on a blog (I did) and away from the public domain and sensitive eyes.
I know, let’s give presents! What better time of year to give gifts than this; a time of year that nobody gives gifts, unless it’s your birthday? What better time of year to celebrate than the time of year when we still haven’t been flooded or crudded off the planet? Let’s celebrate that we still are living in New Orleans, unless of course, we are not.
Five years ago I wrote the September article that got flooded out of print, and, oh boy, aren’t you glad that that hasn’t happened this year?
So now, I humbly suggest that we all turn to our partners and give gifts that coincide with our anniversaries together. One, two, three, four and more; c’mon work with me here, chose your side of the relationship, back off ten paces and give from the heart. This ought to be fun, right? Here are some suggestions.
After Six months: Surprise them with a roll of duct tape and a bottle of Nyquil; and a card that says “use your imagination, Dear”.
First year: a slab of ribs is an excellent gift because if they don’t know what to do with them then, there is no use going any further in the relationship, is there?
Second year: give your Honey a pet. You should always wait until the second year to adopt a critter. Why? Because the first year should be about you and yourselves. This applies only to the couple who didn’t already have pets upon the initial canoodling and/or cohabbing; in that case then, just bring something alive home and work it out, or you are ready and able to skip the second year gifts and go directly to:
Third year: In the third year (and NOT before) it should be time to talk about the ‘C’ word (no, not that ‘C’ word). The “C” word that I’m talking about here is CHILDREN!
Yeah, you’ve been shakin’ the covers long enough to now discuss the possibility of increasing your personal population; and believe you me, I wouldn’t blame you for deciding not to have any part of procreation. I have a theory that all young things (birds, cats, puppies, chirren) are cute for the sole reason that if they weren’t just darling, there would be more drownings around here than on the Titanic; whatever YOUR perspective, it’s time for the talk.
Fifth year: yes, after you make it the first three years you can skip to the big numbers (five, ten, eleven, fifteen etc.). After all, if you make it past the ribs, the cat and the kid talk… Plus, the fourth year isn’t all that anyway, is it? On the fourth it’s a quiet dinner, asleep by nine, you know who you are.
So, on the fifth year give something big, like say, a hundred square feet of sod, full camping gear and a reservation for a week in Okefenokee or a country turkey roaster (a broomstick, a steel garbage can, fifty pounds of charcoal and a quart of gasoline). Onward.
Year Seven: the seventh year is a tricky one and you’re apt to opt for separate vacations and that would not be a bad thing; after all, how can you miss them if they won’t go away? But better yet, a vacation to a place that neither one wants to go is just the ticket to test your already testy relationship. I recommend shared accommodations at a fat farm, a visit to an insect infested ashram (with no electricity) or two weeks at Betty Ford’s.
Tenth Year: are you still here? Well shucks, here’s a couple of suggestions just to keep things lively; renovate your house orrrrr… go into business together! See, thus far y’all get to go your separate ways for a portion of each day: your jobs, shopping, sporting events and/or quilting bees. Now’s the time to take the plunge and either be at each other’s sides and throats for a really large percentage of each and every day, or put up with contractors, electricians and third world laborers, twenty-four seven, just for kicks and grins. Take my word for it, trips to Home Depot three or four times a week and wondering how you’re going to pay for it all or spending endless hours talking shop and wondering how you’re going to pay for everything are exactly the situations that will make or break a couple’s mettle and cohesiveness. Tenth year… push the envelope; after ten it’s all clear sailing or downhill, one or the other.
Fifteen years: how old are you now and would anybody else want you? Well, if you are still with the same person for fifteen years then now it’s time to do big things for eachother. I call this ‘the year of daring’. After fifteen years, give eachother the gifts of new and challenging things to do, like a Bucket List but younger. Listen, if you’ve made it with another human being for this long, you already know everything about them that they are going to share with another human being; you know the dirty laundry, you’ve accepted the baggage and you are aware of the skeletons in the closets; now’s the time for mid-life crisis gifts: dueling pistols, an electric guitar, tango lessons, a course in Swahili or a cooking class on how to cook ribs. See, at this point it is love or ignorance; and either way, you’ve proven to all your friends, and anyone else that cares to view you, that it is possible to maintain a friendship for a long period of time or that the both of you are full blown bat shit crazy and have found solace in each other’s company mostly because no one else could possibly put up with either one of you.
Better yet, now is the time, yes, right now is the time to turn to that person that you are betting your life and future on and tell them how worthwhile they have made your very valuable time. It’s either that or what?
See you in October….. I hope.
Po Boy Views
By
Phil LaMancusa
From The Heart
Or
Game over
Okay, enough of this gloom and doom; enough, enough, I say! If you don’t have anything light and airy to say… put it on a blog (I did) and away from the public domain and sensitive eyes.
I know, let’s give presents! What better time of year to give gifts than this; a time of year that nobody gives gifts, unless it’s your birthday? What better time of year to celebrate than the time of year when we still haven’t been flooded or crudded off the planet? Let’s celebrate that we still are living in New Orleans, unless of course, we are not.
Five years ago I wrote the September article that got flooded out of print, and, oh boy, aren’t you glad that that hasn’t happened this year?
So now, I humbly suggest that we all turn to our partners and give gifts that coincide with our anniversaries together. One, two, three, four and more; c’mon work with me here, chose your side of the relationship, back off ten paces and give from the heart. This ought to be fun, right? Here are some suggestions.
After Six months: Surprise them with a roll of duct tape and a bottle of Nyquil; and a card that says “use your imagination, Dear”.
First year: a slab of ribs is an excellent gift because if they don’t know what to do with them then, there is no use going any further in the relationship, is there?
Second year: give your Honey a pet. You should always wait until the second year to adopt a critter. Why? Because the first year should be about you and yourselves. This applies only to the couple who didn’t already have pets upon the initial canoodling and/or cohabbing; in that case then, just bring something alive home and work it out, or you are ready and able to skip the second year gifts and go directly to:
Third year: In the third year (and NOT before) it should be time to talk about the ‘C’ word (no, not that ‘C’ word). The “C” word that I’m talking about here is CHILDREN!
Yeah, you’ve been shakin’ the covers long enough to now discuss the possibility of increasing your personal population; and believe you me, I wouldn’t blame you for deciding not to have any part of procreation. I have a theory that all young things (birds, cats, puppies, chirren) are cute for the sole reason that if they weren’t just darling, there would be more drownings around here than on the Titanic; whatever YOUR perspective, it’s time for the talk.
Fifth year: yes, after you make it the first three years you can skip to the big numbers (five, ten, eleven, fifteen etc.). After all, if you make it past the ribs, the cat and the kid talk… Plus, the fourth year isn’t all that anyway, is it? On the fourth it’s a quiet dinner, asleep by nine, you know who you are.
So, on the fifth year give something big, like say, a hundred square feet of sod, full camping gear and a reservation for a week in Okefenokee or a country turkey roaster (a broomstick, a steel garbage can, fifty pounds of charcoal and a quart of gasoline). Onward.
Year Seven: the seventh year is a tricky one and you’re apt to opt for separate vacations and that would not be a bad thing; after all, how can you miss them if they won’t go away? But better yet, a vacation to a place that neither one wants to go is just the ticket to test your already testy relationship. I recommend shared accommodations at a fat farm, a visit to an insect infested ashram (with no electricity) or two weeks at Betty Ford’s.
Tenth Year: are you still here? Well shucks, here’s a couple of suggestions just to keep things lively; renovate your house orrrrr… go into business together! See, thus far y’all get to go your separate ways for a portion of each day: your jobs, shopping, sporting events and/or quilting bees. Now’s the time to take the plunge and either be at each other’s sides and throats for a really large percentage of each and every day, or put up with contractors, electricians and third world laborers, twenty-four seven, just for kicks and grins. Take my word for it, trips to Home Depot three or four times a week and wondering how you’re going to pay for it all or spending endless hours talking shop and wondering how you’re going to pay for everything are exactly the situations that will make or break a couple’s mettle and cohesiveness. Tenth year… push the envelope; after ten it’s all clear sailing or downhill, one or the other.
Fifteen years: how old are you now and would anybody else want you? Well, if you are still with the same person for fifteen years then now it’s time to do big things for eachother. I call this ‘the year of daring’. After fifteen years, give eachother the gifts of new and challenging things to do, like a Bucket List but younger. Listen, if you’ve made it with another human being for this long, you already know everything about them that they are going to share with another human being; you know the dirty laundry, you’ve accepted the baggage and you are aware of the skeletons in the closets; now’s the time for mid-life crisis gifts: dueling pistols, an electric guitar, tango lessons, a course in Swahili or a cooking class on how to cook ribs. See, at this point it is love or ignorance; and either way, you’ve proven to all your friends, and anyone else that cares to view you, that it is possible to maintain a friendship for a long period of time or that the both of you are full blown bat shit crazy and have found solace in each other’s company mostly because no one else could possibly put up with either one of you.
Better yet, now is the time, yes, right now is the time to turn to that person that you are betting your life and future on and tell them how worthwhile they have made your very valuable time. It’s either that or what?
See you in October….. I hope.
Saturday, July 3, 2010
Oil Spill in the Gulf part 3
Po Boy Views
By
Phil LaMancusa
Not My Problem
Or
Let Them Drink Oil
Okay, here we are on day seventy-five of the awful, awful miscarriage of oil in the Gulf and now the estimates are up to 80,000 barrels a day.
Remember last oil blog’s arithmetic lesson? Well, here’s another lesson: in today’s newspaper it was revealed that thus far BP has set 238,000 barrels of oil on fire. The quote was “Controlled burns have collectively removed…”. That is to say, if you took that quart of oil that you put in your car’s engine poured it in your filled bathtub and set it on fire, here comes the math part (ready?), you would need to do that 533,120 times a day to keep up with them. You can trust me on this, or you can divide the number of barrels thus burned (238,000) by the number of days (75), multiply by the number of gallons per barrel (42) and then multiply by the number of quarts there are in a gallon (4). Viola! Or Voila! Or whatever; that’s a lot of friggin’ oil. Wouldn’t you say?
Environmentalists worry about the hazards the plumes of noxious smoke may have on wildlife. What are the chances? “The fires burn 2 to 3 millimeters of oil every sixty seconds, rising as high as 100 feet and generating massive plumes of smoke”. Environmental groups are suing BP because they have found that the fires are burning sea turtles alive in the process.
So, now we have the spill, the chemical dispersants AND the fires; I’m telling you out there that we sure are having a time way down yonder in New Orleans. Oil is already in the mouth of the Mississippi River, 100 miles away. They’re predicting oil on Miami’s beaches and into the Florida Keyes by mid August and who knows how many storms we’ll have by then. The spill is now the size of the state of New Jersey. Break out the flags and sparklers, it’s July 4th weekend and business in the French Quarter could be worse, but I cannot imagine how. At least we’re eating regularly, but not the local seafood..
So, who’s fault is this anyway? This whole disastrous tragedy? Hmmm. Let’s start by taking into consideration that our dependency on oil and petroleum based products is the culprit. Let’s see. Plastic containers, Styrofoam containers and ‘peanuts’ for packing, my after shave lotion bottle, disposable razors, sanitizer bottles, plastic cups, ball point pens, cheap flashlights, colored markers, the keyboard that I’m typing on, the computer parts as well as printer (and ink cartridges), packing tape, spice jars, soda bottles and mailing envelopes and I haven’t even gotten to my car’s usage and consumption yet. My credit cards and identification are made of plastic, foods that I buy are packed in plastic and I’m sent from the store with my purchases in plastic bags. In New Orleans, where it’s illegal to carry alcoholic beverages in the streets in glass or metal cans, we have plastic ‘go cups’, drink containers shaped like glasses and even plastic beer bottles. AND WE HAVE NO RECYCLING!!!!!
We had an old air conditioner at home that just was not doing it’s job efficiently; when we called around to have it serviced, we were told that it was cheaper to buy a new one and that, anyway, no one worked on residential units any longer. I’m talking about a big steel, electricity-eating thing that was an example of machinery the likes that you will not see again. Our option was to swelter or purchase new. We purchased and indeed the new unit was not expensive (relatively speaking) and when it came time to install the option was to send the old unit to the landfill. The new unit is made of… guess. The unit was not manufactured in this country.
BP is not the bad guy… or are they? Political conservatives would have us believe that if the political liberals had not objected to drilling on land or in shallow water (it obscures the views) that BP would not have been FORCED to drill in deep water. As a student of capitalism I would say that profit oriented businesses (such as BP) would drill on the moon if they thought that they could make a buck and that brings up the theory that BP WANTS to keep the well flowing so that they would have the first crack at harvesting the well’s output with their ‘relief drillings’. What, after all, would happen if the well was closed for well and good? Perhaps a moratorium on the drilling site? How do we know? We don’t know NOTHING (double negative intended) and nothing is clear except that the oil keeps coming out of the well.
Is BP the only miscreant? The only scoundrel? The only reprobate? The only villain? The only criminal? Not on your tintype.
Shell Oil in Nigeria has the populace wading in oil spills, their environment in ruins, their economy nonexistent, their natural resources gone. No fishing and very little agriculture as the result of oil spills the size of the Gulf that are a regular occurrence on their land. Protesters have been beaten and murdered.
Does a poor citizen give a flip about the white man’s oil spill except where it impacts their employment or food sources? As a rural disenfranchised American in northern Mississippi, do I care about a sea turtle or my food stamps? If I get my seafood from the Missouri River do I really care about gulf shrimp?
Do investors put their money behind those that would do good or behind those that will give them the highest return on their investment no matter what their products produce or the effect that that company, in producing that product, has on the environment that we all collectively live in? Would a sane and rational person take a job with a company based on its integrity or it’s pay scale? Therein lies the rub.
Does a working stiff think about making plowshares from oil shares? Do the oil company executives give a flip if a well blows up, workers die and the environment is fouled past their lifetimes as long as it does not affect their bottom line and income? Do you want to bet that behind every great fortune that there is not a great crime perpetrated by great criminals, and in the case of a great oil spill; as Dr. John so rightly pointed out, are not the criminals then put in charge of the crime scene?
Make no mistake that poor people are impacted; they work the rigs, they fish the gulf, they work for the oil company that allows the spill to continue BUT they are also the one who get to clean up the gobs of crude oil that washes up on our shores and can turn a living doing that, wearing plastic suits. Or use their fishing boat to skim oil from their once fished waters using expensive fuel. Or wait in line for handouts from relief groups, in their cars, burning gasoline. As Pogo so succinctly put it in 1974 “we have met the enemy and he is us”.
By
Phil LaMancusa
Not My Problem
Or
Let Them Drink Oil
Okay, here we are on day seventy-five of the awful, awful miscarriage of oil in the Gulf and now the estimates are up to 80,000 barrels a day.
Remember last oil blog’s arithmetic lesson? Well, here’s another lesson: in today’s newspaper it was revealed that thus far BP has set 238,000 barrels of oil on fire. The quote was “Controlled burns have collectively removed…”. That is to say, if you took that quart of oil that you put in your car’s engine poured it in your filled bathtub and set it on fire, here comes the math part (ready?), you would need to do that 533,120 times a day to keep up with them. You can trust me on this, or you can divide the number of barrels thus burned (238,000) by the number of days (75), multiply by the number of gallons per barrel (42) and then multiply by the number of quarts there are in a gallon (4). Viola! Or Voila! Or whatever; that’s a lot of friggin’ oil. Wouldn’t you say?
Environmentalists worry about the hazards the plumes of noxious smoke may have on wildlife. What are the chances? “The fires burn 2 to 3 millimeters of oil every sixty seconds, rising as high as 100 feet and generating massive plumes of smoke”. Environmental groups are suing BP because they have found that the fires are burning sea turtles alive in the process.
So, now we have the spill, the chemical dispersants AND the fires; I’m telling you out there that we sure are having a time way down yonder in New Orleans. Oil is already in the mouth of the Mississippi River, 100 miles away. They’re predicting oil on Miami’s beaches and into the Florida Keyes by mid August and who knows how many storms we’ll have by then. The spill is now the size of the state of New Jersey. Break out the flags and sparklers, it’s July 4th weekend and business in the French Quarter could be worse, but I cannot imagine how. At least we’re eating regularly, but not the local seafood..
So, who’s fault is this anyway? This whole disastrous tragedy? Hmmm. Let’s start by taking into consideration that our dependency on oil and petroleum based products is the culprit. Let’s see. Plastic containers, Styrofoam containers and ‘peanuts’ for packing, my after shave lotion bottle, disposable razors, sanitizer bottles, plastic cups, ball point pens, cheap flashlights, colored markers, the keyboard that I’m typing on, the computer parts as well as printer (and ink cartridges), packing tape, spice jars, soda bottles and mailing envelopes and I haven’t even gotten to my car’s usage and consumption yet. My credit cards and identification are made of plastic, foods that I buy are packed in plastic and I’m sent from the store with my purchases in plastic bags. In New Orleans, where it’s illegal to carry alcoholic beverages in the streets in glass or metal cans, we have plastic ‘go cups’, drink containers shaped like glasses and even plastic beer bottles. AND WE HAVE NO RECYCLING!!!!!
We had an old air conditioner at home that just was not doing it’s job efficiently; when we called around to have it serviced, we were told that it was cheaper to buy a new one and that, anyway, no one worked on residential units any longer. I’m talking about a big steel, electricity-eating thing that was an example of machinery the likes that you will not see again. Our option was to swelter or purchase new. We purchased and indeed the new unit was not expensive (relatively speaking) and when it came time to install the option was to send the old unit to the landfill. The new unit is made of… guess. The unit was not manufactured in this country.
BP is not the bad guy… or are they? Political conservatives would have us believe that if the political liberals had not objected to drilling on land or in shallow water (it obscures the views) that BP would not have been FORCED to drill in deep water. As a student of capitalism I would say that profit oriented businesses (such as BP) would drill on the moon if they thought that they could make a buck and that brings up the theory that BP WANTS to keep the well flowing so that they would have the first crack at harvesting the well’s output with their ‘relief drillings’. What, after all, would happen if the well was closed for well and good? Perhaps a moratorium on the drilling site? How do we know? We don’t know NOTHING (double negative intended) and nothing is clear except that the oil keeps coming out of the well.
Is BP the only miscreant? The only scoundrel? The only reprobate? The only villain? The only criminal? Not on your tintype.
Shell Oil in Nigeria has the populace wading in oil spills, their environment in ruins, their economy nonexistent, their natural resources gone. No fishing and very little agriculture as the result of oil spills the size of the Gulf that are a regular occurrence on their land. Protesters have been beaten and murdered.
Does a poor citizen give a flip about the white man’s oil spill except where it impacts their employment or food sources? As a rural disenfranchised American in northern Mississippi, do I care about a sea turtle or my food stamps? If I get my seafood from the Missouri River do I really care about gulf shrimp?
Do investors put their money behind those that would do good or behind those that will give them the highest return on their investment no matter what their products produce or the effect that that company, in producing that product, has on the environment that we all collectively live in? Would a sane and rational person take a job with a company based on its integrity or it’s pay scale? Therein lies the rub.
Does a working stiff think about making plowshares from oil shares? Do the oil company executives give a flip if a well blows up, workers die and the environment is fouled past their lifetimes as long as it does not affect their bottom line and income? Do you want to bet that behind every great fortune that there is not a great crime perpetrated by great criminals, and in the case of a great oil spill; as Dr. John so rightly pointed out, are not the criminals then put in charge of the crime scene?
Make no mistake that poor people are impacted; they work the rigs, they fish the gulf, they work for the oil company that allows the spill to continue BUT they are also the one who get to clean up the gobs of crude oil that washes up on our shores and can turn a living doing that, wearing plastic suits. Or use their fishing boat to skim oil from their once fished waters using expensive fuel. Or wait in line for handouts from relief groups, in their cars, burning gasoline. As Pogo so succinctly put it in 1974 “we have met the enemy and he is us”.
Saturday, June 26, 2010
Hurricane Katrina Fifth Anniversary part 5
Po Boy Views
By
Phil
LaMancusa
Beethoven’s Fifth
Or
Away We Go
I reckon that it’s only fitting that I squeeze a fifth installment out of this subject; after all, I’m sitting in the shop that we opened five years ago without the benefit of customers or cash, just me and my computer.
Business in The Big Easy is anything but easy; Summertime and the livin’ is anything but easy, there are no fish jumpin’ unless they’re already heavily oiled.
After the ‘event’, naturally business was bad enough, prospects were dim enough and economic hopes were not springing eternal enough so, the light at the end of the tunnel was extinguished. We came back to more than half of businesses closed and moved or moving away. The city was a shadow of its former shadow and rather than picking up the pieces and moving on a lot of folks just pulled up their pants and moved out. It didn’t help that landlords were doubling rents and in some cases people came back to find their belongings on the street; FEMA worker’s rent money was being planted in town and the landlords were eager to harvest. The bars and restaurants that were able to open quickly enough did very, very well. When I called from our exile to see about re-employment the question that I had was about whether the beer trucks were delivering; when I was assured that they were, I knew that I could come home and that the city’s recovery was a possibility.
Yes, we did make it out of New Orleans after the storm and flood, albeit six days afterwards, and we left like the proverbial bats out of hell. Literally.
On that Saturday morning after Kevin had it settled in his mind that he could leave his three dogs with a friend that was determined to stay here and after Kevin gave me the keys to the car, Debbie, he and I set off to see if the cars actually existed and whether it was able to be driven as an escape vehicle.
We reached the garage where the gates had been left unlocked and on the first four levels we saw cars that had been vandalized. At the fifth level with Debbie waving and yelling that we were not looters to unseen forces we found some cars left intact and among them was the 2005 Corolla which opened with the keys that Kevin had provided, the engine started right up and the gas tank read full. Getting the car out of there was going to be an ordeal of different magnitude, the street was littered with debris and the water was calf deep all the way to the Canal St. median.
We walked back to Canal St. thinking possibly that we could push the car through the water if worse came to worser and let the engine dry off enough to eventually start it.
I had noticed a water line on the walls of the buildings higher than the level of the standing level and I was assuming that the water was in fact receding; we were told that the level of the water rose and fell with the tide in the lake, ‘swell’, I said, ‘all we have to do is wait for low tide’. A policeman informed us that this was, in fact, ‘low tide’.
We went back to the car and plan b. The pushing plan. I drove the car down to the first level and to the sidewalk wondering if I could just drive the sidewalks where it was more shallow. Too narrow. I put the car into drive and took my foot off the gas. I racked my brain for someone reliable to send up prayers to.
As we all know, the depth of a street is lower by the curb and higher in the center so that rainwater might travel from the street to the drains. The car, with me at the wheel and Kevin and Debbie scooting debris out of the way ( to prevent tire punctures) dipped into the street up to the grill and my heart sank from my chest to my stomach and I felt the need to void my bladder. With still my foot off the gas petal and the car in gear and moving on impulse power alone, she came out of the water and kept on going, like a frigging ship of state at sea. Tears came to my eyes; and ever the pessimist, I allowed the car to roll, on its own, to the middle of the street where it sloshed through water that was higher than the hubcaps, up to Canal St. onto the median where Kevin and Debbie got in and we drove to Royal St. and up Royal, the wrong way, to Conti where we let Kev out so that he could pack and then up to Dauphine where we were already set to get going. My heart had re-inhabited my chest and was singing the Ode To Joy.
We stashed the car behind the locked driveway fence to pack the trunk; the day before we had been warned by police not to be on our bicycles because of jackings taking place aimed at anything with wheels for transportation out of town, and we were taking no chances. Wouldn’t you know it that at that precise moment the National Guard finally made it into our neck of the woods.
Animals are easy to pack, all seven of them, critter food was ready as were our belongings and we were wearing the traveling clothes with the money sewn into the waistbands; we bid adieu to our sanctuary within twenty minutes, picked Kev up and headed down Decatur towards the bridge to freedom with the National Guard waving us toward our destination which was anywhere but where we were. It was then that I knew that if we had been young and black we might not have had such an easy way out. On the way out we saw the body bags.
We were headed towards Shreveport where the safe house had been set up for us by Gallivan and where we would reunite him with his dog; I was following any road sign the said that we were headed north and west. We were dirty, we were weary, we were motley. We were crowded. We were ecstatic. Kevin wanted a Carl’s Jr. burger, Debbie wanted to use a lavatory. We stopped at a filling station and Kevin got something in a large cup that had ice in it, he had the smile of a child as he enjoyed ice for the first time in almost a week. Debbie took a long time in the rest room and I was beginning to worry until she emerged with the explanation that she had been mesmerized by the flushing and re-flushing of the toilet, and that she had washed and rewashed her hands just to feel the running water.
We eventually, that night, made our destination, which was only the first leg of our exile that took us all the way to San Francisco; on the way we had many more adventures that some day over a couple of cold ones, if you get me in the mood, I’ll relate. Right now, I’m exhausted just finishing this thus far… say goodnight, Gracie.
ANYBODY OUT THERE???
By
Phil
LaMancusa
Beethoven’s Fifth
Or
Away We Go
I reckon that it’s only fitting that I squeeze a fifth installment out of this subject; after all, I’m sitting in the shop that we opened five years ago without the benefit of customers or cash, just me and my computer.
Business in The Big Easy is anything but easy; Summertime and the livin’ is anything but easy, there are no fish jumpin’ unless they’re already heavily oiled.
After the ‘event’, naturally business was bad enough, prospects were dim enough and economic hopes were not springing eternal enough so, the light at the end of the tunnel was extinguished. We came back to more than half of businesses closed and moved or moving away. The city was a shadow of its former shadow and rather than picking up the pieces and moving on a lot of folks just pulled up their pants and moved out. It didn’t help that landlords were doubling rents and in some cases people came back to find their belongings on the street; FEMA worker’s rent money was being planted in town and the landlords were eager to harvest. The bars and restaurants that were able to open quickly enough did very, very well. When I called from our exile to see about re-employment the question that I had was about whether the beer trucks were delivering; when I was assured that they were, I knew that I could come home and that the city’s recovery was a possibility.
Yes, we did make it out of New Orleans after the storm and flood, albeit six days afterwards, and we left like the proverbial bats out of hell. Literally.
On that Saturday morning after Kevin had it settled in his mind that he could leave his three dogs with a friend that was determined to stay here and after Kevin gave me the keys to the car, Debbie, he and I set off to see if the cars actually existed and whether it was able to be driven as an escape vehicle.
We reached the garage where the gates had been left unlocked and on the first four levels we saw cars that had been vandalized. At the fifth level with Debbie waving and yelling that we were not looters to unseen forces we found some cars left intact and among them was the 2005 Corolla which opened with the keys that Kevin had provided, the engine started right up and the gas tank read full. Getting the car out of there was going to be an ordeal of different magnitude, the street was littered with debris and the water was calf deep all the way to the Canal St. median.
We walked back to Canal St. thinking possibly that we could push the car through the water if worse came to worser and let the engine dry off enough to eventually start it.
I had noticed a water line on the walls of the buildings higher than the level of the standing level and I was assuming that the water was in fact receding; we were told that the level of the water rose and fell with the tide in the lake, ‘swell’, I said, ‘all we have to do is wait for low tide’. A policeman informed us that this was, in fact, ‘low tide’.
We went back to the car and plan b. The pushing plan. I drove the car down to the first level and to the sidewalk wondering if I could just drive the sidewalks where it was more shallow. Too narrow. I put the car into drive and took my foot off the gas. I racked my brain for someone reliable to send up prayers to.
As we all know, the depth of a street is lower by the curb and higher in the center so that rainwater might travel from the street to the drains. The car, with me at the wheel and Kevin and Debbie scooting debris out of the way ( to prevent tire punctures) dipped into the street up to the grill and my heart sank from my chest to my stomach and I felt the need to void my bladder. With still my foot off the gas petal and the car in gear and moving on impulse power alone, she came out of the water and kept on going, like a frigging ship of state at sea. Tears came to my eyes; and ever the pessimist, I allowed the car to roll, on its own, to the middle of the street where it sloshed through water that was higher than the hubcaps, up to Canal St. onto the median where Kevin and Debbie got in and we drove to Royal St. and up Royal, the wrong way, to Conti where we let Kev out so that he could pack and then up to Dauphine where we were already set to get going. My heart had re-inhabited my chest and was singing the Ode To Joy.
We stashed the car behind the locked driveway fence to pack the trunk; the day before we had been warned by police not to be on our bicycles because of jackings taking place aimed at anything with wheels for transportation out of town, and we were taking no chances. Wouldn’t you know it that at that precise moment the National Guard finally made it into our neck of the woods.
Animals are easy to pack, all seven of them, critter food was ready as were our belongings and we were wearing the traveling clothes with the money sewn into the waistbands; we bid adieu to our sanctuary within twenty minutes, picked Kev up and headed down Decatur towards the bridge to freedom with the National Guard waving us toward our destination which was anywhere but where we were. It was then that I knew that if we had been young and black we might not have had such an easy way out. On the way out we saw the body bags.
We were headed towards Shreveport where the safe house had been set up for us by Gallivan and where we would reunite him with his dog; I was following any road sign the said that we were headed north and west. We were dirty, we were weary, we were motley. We were crowded. We were ecstatic. Kevin wanted a Carl’s Jr. burger, Debbie wanted to use a lavatory. We stopped at a filling station and Kevin got something in a large cup that had ice in it, he had the smile of a child as he enjoyed ice for the first time in almost a week. Debbie took a long time in the rest room and I was beginning to worry until she emerged with the explanation that she had been mesmerized by the flushing and re-flushing of the toilet, and that she had washed and rewashed her hands just to feel the running water.
We eventually, that night, made our destination, which was only the first leg of our exile that took us all the way to San Francisco; on the way we had many more adventures that some day over a couple of cold ones, if you get me in the mood, I’ll relate. Right now, I’m exhausted just finishing this thus far… say goodnight, Gracie.
ANYBODY OUT THERE???
Friday, June 25, 2010
More on the oil spill 6/25/10
Po Boy Views
By
Phil LaMancusa
Greasy Kid Stuff
Or
So Who's Counting?
Okay, now it’s over two months and the oil is still vomiting into the Gulf of Mexico as rapidly and at such a great rate and in such the volume as it ever has or ever will. It, the oil, is spewing out of the well at such a rate that there is now oil within the oil and more oil to come and the toxic rain of oil and dispersants to follow.
Yes, we have rumors abounding here in River City and all that oil to back them up. Over 1,250,000 gallons of dispersant laid out over and under the spill, the reports posing as rumors posing as reports ask us to consider that this dispersant when warmed will become acid rain that will affect the east coast of the country as well as us here; and the effects will be with us for years if not decades. Some fun, eh?
How many gallons of oil in a barrel? Forty-two. How many barrels have been noted as gushing into the Gulf? BP says that the flow rate was never important; “its focus is stopping flow, not estimating it, exec says” –our newspaper further goes on to say that “estimates have steadily grown- starting at zero in the wake of the spill, and inching up to an early estimate of 1,000 barrels per day, then 5,000 and most recently up to 60,000 barrels a day” !!!!!!!
Pilgrim, that’s over two and a half million gallons a day. Want to see that in numbers? 2,520,000 GALLONS A DAY!!!
If you want to measure that in the familiar size of the quart of oil that you put in your engine to keep it running smoothly…. How does ten million of those puppies sound? Ten million quarts per day.
You’re probably not privy to be close enough to get accurate information because the press is not allowed within five miles of the site; however, if you worked in a restaurant and a couple instances of off duty Coast Guarders in uniform were to tell you that you have absolutely no clue as to the extent of the spill, it might give you great pause. You may ask yourself ‘where is that ten million quarts of oil a day going?’
The answer, of course is, it aint going nowhere but up our coasts, in our marshes, on our beaches and even some into the air that we breath. It’s killing organisms from the microscopic to the sea porpoises and turtles and air birds and nesting sites and it goes on and on. And BP never considered the flow rate important?
On the news earlier this week a reporter broadcast from five miles away and added to his report that even at that distance it was difficult to breath.
What BP IS interested in is capturing and processing oil from the well and there in lies the rub. When we asked why we couldn’t just blow the sucker up we were told that if we damaged to well it may just fall apart and explode with oil, for years into the waters. Hmmmm. What is more prudent, they told us, since nothing else has worked, is to wait (and wait and wait) for the relief wells to be completed. Then they will be able to capture it all, if it works, and it’ll be back to business as usual.
In the meantime, there is hue and cry against a moratorium on deep-water exploration and drilling for more oil costing jobs and I suppose if we can no longer put our fishermen to work we might as well put the offshore drilling teams to work and damn the consequences.
Do you know about Nigeria where this type of spill is commonplace and that protesters are beaten and sometimes lose their lives, all thanks to Shell Oil Company?
Are you following this at all or is the oil crimes and criminality only dredging up in your mind a ‘better in their yard than mine’ attitude?
Here’s what I’d like you to do for me: go purchase a quart of oil, the same kind that you put in your car engine, and pour it into your bathtub which you’ve filled with water. Now picture yourself cleaning that up ten million times a day. What, you say that you cannot do that all in a day? Well, give some to your neighbor to clean up and his neighbor and the cute couple that has just moved in across the street. Would you believe that you could give everybody that lives in New York City that task and still have enough to put the entire city of New Orleans to work also... every day. Think if it then as BP thinks of it; it’s not 10,000,000 quarts a day, it’s not even 2,520.000 gallons a day. It’s 60,000 barrels a day, except that it might be 35,000 barrels a day or maybe there is so much oil going into our life, livelihood and lives than we could never hope to shake a stick at it. BP has not considered that worth measuring.
Here’s more from the Times Picayune: “Ultimately, the flow rate will be important to the company, whether it wants to focus on it or not. The federal government is charged with imposing fines under various environmental laws on parties responsible for spills, and those fines will be based on total barrels spilled and range from $1,100.00 to m$4,300.00 per barrel.” Maybe it is time for them to count the barrels, what do you think?
And, this in the other day, one of their little robot submarines ran into the little thingy that was in place to capture spewing oil and knocked it off so that the flow of oil was unabated.
Oh, I tell you, it’s a barrel of laughs down here, or is that forty-two gallons?
LEAVE A COMMENT
By
Phil LaMancusa
Greasy Kid Stuff
Or
So Who's Counting?
Okay, now it’s over two months and the oil is still vomiting into the Gulf of Mexico as rapidly and at such a great rate and in such the volume as it ever has or ever will. It, the oil, is spewing out of the well at such a rate that there is now oil within the oil and more oil to come and the toxic rain of oil and dispersants to follow.
Yes, we have rumors abounding here in River City and all that oil to back them up. Over 1,250,000 gallons of dispersant laid out over and under the spill, the reports posing as rumors posing as reports ask us to consider that this dispersant when warmed will become acid rain that will affect the east coast of the country as well as us here; and the effects will be with us for years if not decades. Some fun, eh?
How many gallons of oil in a barrel? Forty-two. How many barrels have been noted as gushing into the Gulf? BP says that the flow rate was never important; “its focus is stopping flow, not estimating it, exec says” –our newspaper further goes on to say that “estimates have steadily grown- starting at zero in the wake of the spill, and inching up to an early estimate of 1,000 barrels per day, then 5,000 and most recently up to 60,000 barrels a day” !!!!!!!
Pilgrim, that’s over two and a half million gallons a day. Want to see that in numbers? 2,520,000 GALLONS A DAY!!!
If you want to measure that in the familiar size of the quart of oil that you put in your engine to keep it running smoothly…. How does ten million of those puppies sound? Ten million quarts per day.
You’re probably not privy to be close enough to get accurate information because the press is not allowed within five miles of the site; however, if you worked in a restaurant and a couple instances of off duty Coast Guarders in uniform were to tell you that you have absolutely no clue as to the extent of the spill, it might give you great pause. You may ask yourself ‘where is that ten million quarts of oil a day going?’
The answer, of course is, it aint going nowhere but up our coasts, in our marshes, on our beaches and even some into the air that we breath. It’s killing organisms from the microscopic to the sea porpoises and turtles and air birds and nesting sites and it goes on and on. And BP never considered the flow rate important?
On the news earlier this week a reporter broadcast from five miles away and added to his report that even at that distance it was difficult to breath.
What BP IS interested in is capturing and processing oil from the well and there in lies the rub. When we asked why we couldn’t just blow the sucker up we were told that if we damaged to well it may just fall apart and explode with oil, for years into the waters. Hmmmm. What is more prudent, they told us, since nothing else has worked, is to wait (and wait and wait) for the relief wells to be completed. Then they will be able to capture it all, if it works, and it’ll be back to business as usual.
In the meantime, there is hue and cry against a moratorium on deep-water exploration and drilling for more oil costing jobs and I suppose if we can no longer put our fishermen to work we might as well put the offshore drilling teams to work and damn the consequences.
Do you know about Nigeria where this type of spill is commonplace and that protesters are beaten and sometimes lose their lives, all thanks to Shell Oil Company?
Are you following this at all or is the oil crimes and criminality only dredging up in your mind a ‘better in their yard than mine’ attitude?
Here’s what I’d like you to do for me: go purchase a quart of oil, the same kind that you put in your car engine, and pour it into your bathtub which you’ve filled with water. Now picture yourself cleaning that up ten million times a day. What, you say that you cannot do that all in a day? Well, give some to your neighbor to clean up and his neighbor and the cute couple that has just moved in across the street. Would you believe that you could give everybody that lives in New York City that task and still have enough to put the entire city of New Orleans to work also... every day. Think if it then as BP thinks of it; it’s not 10,000,000 quarts a day, it’s not even 2,520.000 gallons a day. It’s 60,000 barrels a day, except that it might be 35,000 barrels a day or maybe there is so much oil going into our life, livelihood and lives than we could never hope to shake a stick at it. BP has not considered that worth measuring.
Here’s more from the Times Picayune: “Ultimately, the flow rate will be important to the company, whether it wants to focus on it or not. The federal government is charged with imposing fines under various environmental laws on parties responsible for spills, and those fines will be based on total barrels spilled and range from $1,100.00 to m$4,300.00 per barrel.” Maybe it is time for them to count the barrels, what do you think?
And, this in the other day, one of their little robot submarines ran into the little thingy that was in place to capture spewing oil and knocked it off so that the flow of oil was unabated.
Oh, I tell you, it’s a barrel of laughs down here, or is that forty-two gallons?
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Fifth Anniversay Hurricane Katrina part 4
Po Boy Views
By
Phil LaMancusa
Waltzing Matilda
Or
Escape from Dogpatch
In the six days that we had post Katrina, there was one thing that we had plenty of. Time.
We had time to walk and bike the near empty streets, to view where tornados had ripped up fences, taken off roofs and knocked down walls. We had time to hurry past looters breaking into a convenience store by ramming the door with a newspaper vending machine while a police car sat idly by, the officer inside busy looking everywhere but where the action was. We had time to marvel at a city bus abandoned after not being able to make a turn on a street that it definitely wasn’t supposed to be on.
Time to walk streets where rubble abounded and witness enough foliage down on Esplanade Avenue that it resembled an abandoned lumber camp. We talked, or rather listened to the ravings of citizens, some armed, about the collective confusion as to exactly what the hell was going on: police snipers stationed to prevent looters from torching the French Quarter as they had Saks on Canal St. after looting Gucci, Brooks Bros and Pottery Barn, the possible deliberate flooding of the Quarter to alleviate the Ninth Ward and the rantings of the mayor yelling over the AM airwaves to anyone who was listening to get their ass down here, about him being pissed off at the Feds response- or lack of one- and about how we had a city of people “off their meds”. I was wishing for some meds myself.
Some time during each day was allotted to the sweeping of our all but abandoned street, foraging for supplies and fortifying our small balcony facing the street to look like a dangerous place for trespassers to consider. At night we would bang on sheet metal to simulate gunfire, hopefully keeping bogeymen at bay. Oh, what a time we had.
When I went to release a Pit Bull in the Treme armed with nothing but a screwdriver and a hammer I naively assumed that we were talking about a regular dog leash type chain. What greeted me after wading into an alleyway, was a male Pit Bull chained by the neck with the type of chain used to secure chain link fences and park gates. He was chained to a metal spiral stairway and was perched on a milk carton to keep him out of the water.
Surprisingly the dog did nothing but regard me with anxious eyes while I tried, with no success, to put the screwdriver through chain or padlock. After accomplishing nothing but the denting of the screwdriver and the working of the poor dog’s nerves, with heavy hearts, we returned to Dauphine Street; defeated.
On reaching Dauphine St. we passed one of our remaining neighbors, a young saloon owner with resources, who asked about our mission; when I relayed our impotence against the shackle, he called back: “why didn’tchu SAY somethin’? I got a bolt cutter!” Debbie and I waded back, found the woman who let us back in the alley and snipped the animal free. The cur shook itself, gazed up at us and without animosity or appreciation walked calmly away. We, of course, were too late for cocktails.
It seemed to us, at the time that there had been no contingency on any level for the care of pets and critters. Debbie, on Canal St., on a couple of occasions tried to get media to pay attention to the plight of animals that had been abandoned or left behind. It’s interesting to note that the SPCA here has a policy in effect to evacuate all in their charge thirty-six hours in advance of an impending storm. It’s also interesting to note that they had no contingency to leave anyone behind to help any animals that had been overlooked or left here in need of care.
Debbie likes to tell people that we had to leave because we had run out of wine. That is making light of the facts and our emotions at the time, it’s a good way to gloss over and cut short the need for full disclosures and explanations. The simple reason that we stayed is because we didn’t have a way to go and did not consider that it could and would get as scary as it did. The reason that we left was that we were presented with a way out.
Neighbors upon leaving left us food and keys to their apartments; for access to land-line telephones, rubbing alcohol, peroxide or other supplies to be foraged. One neighbor left us his battery powered radio, another left us a fast warming cooler with foodstuffs that perished before we could eat them. Our saloonkeeper neighbor sent over hot soup one night. The family run grocer down the block stayed open for a couple of days before calling it quits and leaving. Another grocer opened his doors and let people take whatever they needed and only asked that they consider paying for stuff when they returned; he remarked that he considered the circumstances were god’s way of getting him to stop drinking and smoking. One friend that was leaving gave us a key to a courtyard where five-gallon jugs of water were stashed.
The man around the corner told us that he had been to the Convention Center where looters had set up tables to sell their ill gotten goods and that the mood was festive, needless to say, that was going to change as the numbers of refugees rose, heat, thirst and conveniences dwindled and security got tighter.
There were reports of bodies left to rot in the streets, one just around the corner from us; naturally Debbie refused to go gawk with me, so I didn’t see it myself. We found some adult diapers in our landlady’s apartment and tried to donate them to the old folks home that had not been evacuated, thinking that they could use them. We were met at the door by a petite elderly woman that carried a shotgun taller than herself and were told that nothing was needed and that we should leave the premises.
One afternoon on the radio, two commentators were talking at each other when one of them says: “you know, these people have been crowded up on that overpass for thirty hours in the hot sun and I suddenly thought to myself: ‘they have no food, no water, no shade and no bathroom facilities’; where are they going to the bathroom?” No one would answer that question, we all knew.
Actually, after the first twenty-four hours, we all became campers in the waste elimination department and we went where we could, when we could; with no water to flush a toilet, we went wherever we could.
TIME TO LEAVE COMMENTS, QUESTIONS, GOSSIP?
By
Phil LaMancusa
Waltzing Matilda
Or
Escape from Dogpatch
In the six days that we had post Katrina, there was one thing that we had plenty of. Time.
We had time to walk and bike the near empty streets, to view where tornados had ripped up fences, taken off roofs and knocked down walls. We had time to hurry past looters breaking into a convenience store by ramming the door with a newspaper vending machine while a police car sat idly by, the officer inside busy looking everywhere but where the action was. We had time to marvel at a city bus abandoned after not being able to make a turn on a street that it definitely wasn’t supposed to be on.
Time to walk streets where rubble abounded and witness enough foliage down on Esplanade Avenue that it resembled an abandoned lumber camp. We talked, or rather listened to the ravings of citizens, some armed, about the collective confusion as to exactly what the hell was going on: police snipers stationed to prevent looters from torching the French Quarter as they had Saks on Canal St. after looting Gucci, Brooks Bros and Pottery Barn, the possible deliberate flooding of the Quarter to alleviate the Ninth Ward and the rantings of the mayor yelling over the AM airwaves to anyone who was listening to get their ass down here, about him being pissed off at the Feds response- or lack of one- and about how we had a city of people “off their meds”. I was wishing for some meds myself.
Some time during each day was allotted to the sweeping of our all but abandoned street, foraging for supplies and fortifying our small balcony facing the street to look like a dangerous place for trespassers to consider. At night we would bang on sheet metal to simulate gunfire, hopefully keeping bogeymen at bay. Oh, what a time we had.
When I went to release a Pit Bull in the Treme armed with nothing but a screwdriver and a hammer I naively assumed that we were talking about a regular dog leash type chain. What greeted me after wading into an alleyway, was a male Pit Bull chained by the neck with the type of chain used to secure chain link fences and park gates. He was chained to a metal spiral stairway and was perched on a milk carton to keep him out of the water.
Surprisingly the dog did nothing but regard me with anxious eyes while I tried, with no success, to put the screwdriver through chain or padlock. After accomplishing nothing but the denting of the screwdriver and the working of the poor dog’s nerves, with heavy hearts, we returned to Dauphine Street; defeated.
On reaching Dauphine St. we passed one of our remaining neighbors, a young saloon owner with resources, who asked about our mission; when I relayed our impotence against the shackle, he called back: “why didn’tchu SAY somethin’? I got a bolt cutter!” Debbie and I waded back, found the woman who let us back in the alley and snipped the animal free. The cur shook itself, gazed up at us and without animosity or appreciation walked calmly away. We, of course, were too late for cocktails.
It seemed to us, at the time that there had been no contingency on any level for the care of pets and critters. Debbie, on Canal St., on a couple of occasions tried to get media to pay attention to the plight of animals that had been abandoned or left behind. It’s interesting to note that the SPCA here has a policy in effect to evacuate all in their charge thirty-six hours in advance of an impending storm. It’s also interesting to note that they had no contingency to leave anyone behind to help any animals that had been overlooked or left here in need of care.
Debbie likes to tell people that we had to leave because we had run out of wine. That is making light of the facts and our emotions at the time, it’s a good way to gloss over and cut short the need for full disclosures and explanations. The simple reason that we stayed is because we didn’t have a way to go and did not consider that it could and would get as scary as it did. The reason that we left was that we were presented with a way out.
Neighbors upon leaving left us food and keys to their apartments; for access to land-line telephones, rubbing alcohol, peroxide or other supplies to be foraged. One neighbor left us his battery powered radio, another left us a fast warming cooler with foodstuffs that perished before we could eat them. Our saloonkeeper neighbor sent over hot soup one night. The family run grocer down the block stayed open for a couple of days before calling it quits and leaving. Another grocer opened his doors and let people take whatever they needed and only asked that they consider paying for stuff when they returned; he remarked that he considered the circumstances were god’s way of getting him to stop drinking and smoking. One friend that was leaving gave us a key to a courtyard where five-gallon jugs of water were stashed.
The man around the corner told us that he had been to the Convention Center where looters had set up tables to sell their ill gotten goods and that the mood was festive, needless to say, that was going to change as the numbers of refugees rose, heat, thirst and conveniences dwindled and security got tighter.
There were reports of bodies left to rot in the streets, one just around the corner from us; naturally Debbie refused to go gawk with me, so I didn’t see it myself. We found some adult diapers in our landlady’s apartment and tried to donate them to the old folks home that had not been evacuated, thinking that they could use them. We were met at the door by a petite elderly woman that carried a shotgun taller than herself and were told that nothing was needed and that we should leave the premises.
One afternoon on the radio, two commentators were talking at each other when one of them says: “you know, these people have been crowded up on that overpass for thirty hours in the hot sun and I suddenly thought to myself: ‘they have no food, no water, no shade and no bathroom facilities’; where are they going to the bathroom?” No one would answer that question, we all knew.
Actually, after the first twenty-four hours, we all became campers in the waste elimination department and we went where we could, when we could; with no water to flush a toilet, we went wherever we could.
TIME TO LEAVE COMMENTS, QUESTIONS, GOSSIP?
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