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If this is your boat at your marina, all things are still possible. If it’s “your marina” somewhere on the Gulf coast and what looks a lot like an “oil sheen” on the water IS an oil sheen on the water compliments of the oil company that doesn’t know how to shut the valve off, then you’ve got trouble Cap’n and I mean TROUBLE spelled in big capital letters that way! We all see the daily reports on the news about the latest theory that will be tried today from people who are supposed to know more about the oil drilling business than anyone else on the planet, but the frustration just continues as we all watch scenes and circumstances unfold that will impact all of us in one way or another for years to come.
Sure our boats manage to sink sometimes and it’s a tragic issue to deal with but with lives lost, property threatened to the point of being an “oil rich marsh (starting at the top of it) with wildlife and the economy of an entire region being put in jeopardy, we should all stop and try to put our own little daily nuisances in perspective. We may not live on the perimeter of this disaster, but we probably all know someone who does and those people have no better choices to take, no way out of town to avoid these issues. They deserve a kind word, an e-mail or even a hand written letter to offer what little condolences that we can. Lives will be changed and people will be as well by having what was theirs taken away without an option to resist.
To the people of the Gulf Coast areas, every sailor dreams of clean waters to slide thru and coral reefs to watch below the surface, and some sort of rum based refreshment while you watch the sun go down. In this case, I believe we’re “all in the same boat” simply because the oil companies and our government cannot find a way to fix this issue in an “impressively responsible” way or timeframe. Expecting to recover in a short time is a dream that won’t happen - expecting politicians to solve mechanical issues is like waiting for Ed McMann to knock on your door with pleasant news! It ain’t going to happen in this century. If we continue the way we are now, we’ll all be on one boat (aptly named the ARK) looking for (TWTHNS as the government would label it) - the water that has no sheen.
I have nothing but empathy for the fishermen and local people in the Gulf area that make their living on those waters. We cannot imagine the abrupt change they are going to have to endure and the futile word games they will have to listen to from those who believe “it’s not their fault” or “it’s not their job to question this or fix that.” Watching what we will have to see on TV in the coming months will be like getting free tickets to a “used car salesmen’s convention.” They have to make a living too, but going to their convention is not on my “bucket list.” The point is that even though this entire issue looks like might only impact the Gulf of Mexico, that’s something like a gazillon acres, hectares and cubic feet of water, so what makes you think it can’t happen to your back yard?
What are you going to do in the next few months to try to effect some sort of change for off shore drilling, oil companies that can’t possibly dream of scenarios like this and have responsible and productive countermeasures in place. Do we continue to put our trust in the elected officials that put more priorities on getting their haircuts for free than they do in creating laws that protect people and their ability to make a living. Is there a lesson here worth losing sleep over even if it’s not in our backyard! I think there is and as you get older, you become even more aware of how long it takes sometimes to do the right thing for the right reasons and how much of a pawn we still are on this earth that has to persist each day to continue to exist. (Maybe that word should have been “prawn.”)
All I’m asking you to do is to think about it and then do something about it in some small way and encourage others to do the same. If you’ve read this far - My thanks to you. L. May
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