The Black Gulf

The big happening in American news these days is the big gusher of oil in the Gulf of Mexico. No one is getting rich off this, though. It is at the bottom of the sea, a mile deep. The oil-drilling operation of British Petroleum (BP) blew up. No one has been able to stop that free gushing of oil. No one knows how. This oil has been spewing into the gulf from the ocean floor throughout the entire month of May - with no end in sight!

Who needs good regulation of big business, right? Ah, the magic of the marketplace! Besides, even when we do have good regulations in place, as in this case, they just get ignored anyway, by both regulators and big business.

Poor gulf.

I remember pretty, blonde Lane at the LBJ school, those graduate school days twenty years ago. She was not from Texas, and she related to me how some Texans were trying to claim that the bottom south is “the third coast”. I laughed, which she appreciated, because they were apparently a little serious, a little prideful - and a little silly to a sophisticated Connecticut girl. And now it is more than a little tragic.

I remember, too, how Mother, even late in her life, could not resist the urge to eat shrimp taken from those foul gulf waters, regardless of how many times she got ghastly sick afterward. I suppose it was a habit that stuck in her childhood when she lived directly on the gulf. In the 1940s and early 50s, it might not have been a bad idea, but by the time of my own childhood days, it was offensively clear to nose and eye, unclouded by nostalgia, how bad those waters had become.

I wonder if those waters were called the Gulf of Florida or the Gulf of Louisiana, whether Americans might have taken better care of the area. Since it is called the Gulf of Mexico, we were probably more inclined to treat the waters like sewage, like a toilet - something belonging to the Third World.

And now the gulf is becoming a sludge pit. I tend to see it as just another sign of the end of the world. We were not able to take care of this miraculous planet, no more than we have been able to learn to love each other. But maybe this speaks more to my own decline rather than that of the world. There should be more game in the world than is left in me. I hope so.

The Black Gulf

The big happening in American news these days is the big gusher of oil in the Gulf of Mexico. No one is getting rich off this, though. It is at the bottom of the sea, a mile deep. The oil-drilling operation of British Petroleum (BP) blew up. No one has been able to stop that free gushing of oil. No one knows how. This oil has been spewing into the gulf from the ocean floor throughout the entire month of May - with no end in sight!

Who needs good regulation of big business, right? Ah, the magic of the marketplace! Besides, even when we do have good regulations in place, as in this case, they just get ignored anyway, by both regulators and big business.

Poor gulf.

I remember pretty, blonde Lane at the LBJ school, those graduate school days twenty years ago. She was not from Texas, and she related to me how some Texans were trying to claim that the bottom south is “the third coast”. I laughed, which she appreciated, because they were apparently a little serious, a little prideful - and a little silly to a sophisticated Connecticut girl. And now it is more than a little tragic.

I remember, too, how Mother, even late in her life, could not resist the urge to eat shrimp taken from those foul gulf waters, regardless of how many times she got ghastly sick afterward. I suppose it was a habit that stuck in her childhood when she lived directly on the gulf. In the 1940s and early 50s, it might not have been a bad idea, but by the time of my own childhood days, it was offensively clear to nose and eye, unclouded by nostalgia, how bad those waters had become.

I wonder if those waters were called the Gulf of Florida or the Gulf of Louisiana, whether Americans might have taken better care of the area. Since it is called the Gulf of Mexico, we were probably more inclined to treat the waters like sewage, like a toilet - something belonging to the Third World.

And now the gulf is becoming a sludge pit. I tend to see it as just another sign of the end of the world. We were not able to take care of this miraculous planet, no more than we have been able to learn to love each other. But maybe this speaks more to my own decline rather than that of the world. There should be more game in the world than is left in me. I hope so.