And the Envelope Please....

WHAT! You've got to be kidding me!

TIME announces it has selected facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg for Person of the Year - move over Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., yes, even you Stalin, Hitler and Ayatollah Khomeini.

"But then again, perhaps Time's selection is a perfect fit for a nation of passive consumers in love with themselves and bored and addicted to mind-numbing entertainment. In a rich post-military and on-the-verge-of-collapsing-empire, who can blame most Americans for wanting to seek an impersonal, isolated and virtual outlet to get away from the realities and perplexities of their leaders domestic and foreign policies? After all, self-censorship and egotism is at a all time high, as are doses of self-love and madness that are lived through technological co-dependency which keeps one sane, or so it seems. Anything that will distract consumers and make them even more inattentive is good for business and a technocratic state. Technological diversion is the adhesive for a ruinous empire." wrote Dalles Darling.

Do I use facebook? No, I talk with people.

When I heard Zuckerberg had been named Time's Person of the Year I was stunned with numbness and the dumbness. I started to write, then read Dalles Darling's piece - it said it more eloquently.

TIME says in justifying their choice, "This year, Facebook — now minus the the — added its 550 millionth member. One out of every dozen people on the planet has a Facebook account. They speak 75 languages and collectively lavish more than 700 billion minutes on Facebook every month. Last month the site accounted for 1 out of 4 American page views. Its membership is currently growing at a rate of about 700,000 people a day."

700 billion minutes - that's almost 500 million DAYS! Imagine if those wasters volunteered to do something real on this planet?

POOF! Gone is hunger

POOF! Gone is homelessness

POOF! Gone is illiteracy

POOF! Gone is... hell just fill in the blank, the point is things would get done

Even being the lead sheep doesn't make you the sheep herder. I would like to nominate instead my mother who taught me, "if every one jumps off a bridge that doesn't mean you have to."

Inalienable Obligation

Certain phrases have followed me around my life like a shadow - there beside me, stretching out from me, inseparably connected, married to me, even before they were there, as they were becoming know, as they are occasionally forgotten.

"Remember always that you not only have the right to be an individual, you have an obligation to be one"

- Eleanor Roosevelt

An "obligation" to be an individual.

Wow. Could there be more powerful a concept.

We don't generally think of the obligation embedded within our right. Taking for granted the first too often seems to obliterate not obligate responsibility.

As I work on the Gulf Coast and each trip leads me on a journey continually further in pursuit of a truth that so much money, time and energy has been spent to conceal, I think a lot about my obligation. To myself as well as others.

I keep searching for a balance. A balance? Yes, in my own life and in my global life, I think. And then I remembered the words of Eleanor Roosevelt, "Remember always that you not only have the right to be an individual, you have an obligation to be one."

Not just a right, but an inalienable obligation. As such maybe there is no balance - balance suggests two or more objects held in some level of equilibrium. If right and obligation meet at individual then all are one and the same. My own life and my global life are simply Life, as I live it.

Obligation of individual to me means putting self on hold.

Today I hear that at the global summit in Cancun, Mexico the parties have accepted that there can be no global agreement on global climate change, reduction of greenhouse emissions targets.

"The rising ocean raises questions, too: What happens if the 61,000 Marshallese must abandon their low-lying atolls? Would they still be a nation? With a U.N. seat? With control of their old fisheries and their undersea minerals? Where would they live, and how would they make a living? Who, precisely, would they and their children become?" - more on the disappearing Marshalls

At what point is that Life what I focus on first? At what risk of discomfort, inconvenience, nuisance, reduced fortune, maybe even frustration? When do the decisions I need to make I actually become the decisions I make? When do I realize I am that individual with an inalienable obligation?

More: UN chief warns climate talks are too slow

Pub, Pints and Petroleum Politics

I don't know if I always had a journalist gene, or it's just something that intertwines itself within the double-helix for curiosity, but stories that don't walk a straight line fascinate me. Especially stories that don't just dip their toes, but wade waist deep into the confluence of environment, politics, conservation, money. Any one of those, combined with the erraticism of human nature, would be enough, but find that wedding of the waters and you better start looking at the local levies - something eventually will give. Maybe what intrigues me even more are the convolutions that the various channels take, and the moments of serendipity. Those moments I'm finding are often over a pint in a pub.

You can just call it drinking, but it's more. It's journalistic in perhaps the oldest sense of the craft. A filtering process refined in the great newspapers and radio days, and polished in the early years of television. Sorting on the fly what is and isn't helpful verses pure raconteur BS - which of course can always lend a bit of color. Out side the DC beltway, and unless you are overseas, there seems to be less hard stuff being drunk these days, but a couple craft beers, local brews, do just fine.

Some watering holes work better than others. Each locale has its flavor and approach. I'm not skilled at them all - yet. For example I'm not good with bad beer. In other words, fishing dock lounges are my Achilles heal. The kinda places where the lingering combination of grease and cigarette smoke veneer even the clean flatware, and the smell haunts you in your motel room even the next morning as you stare in disbelief at the paisley-plaid curtains (yes, somebody really did think combining those two was a good design idea.) Places where nothing on tap, or more often bottled, is darker going in that it is coming out. Beers often referred to by the person behind the bar as "beer product" and generally bear the label "lite". And all of the establishments start and end with someone's first name - women's names are the worst for me, they hold the promise of cleanliness going in, then dash your hope and smother your senses.

Yesterday afternoon I visited one of my favorite pubs here on New Orleans' Magazine Street - finally yielding to that little voice. The same little voice that over the years tells me, "talk to that guy or gal sitting next to you" and I finally relent to discover a valuable lead or relationship that far exceeds the cost of the local draft microbrew.

There were just two of us sitting outside at 4PM and serendipity killed the power on the outlet he was using. So laptop in one hand, pint in the other, here he came. Sharing an outlet bonds you in this digital age, the way a bad cab ride or train trip did a couple decades ago, or a five-day monsoonal rainstorm in the third-world still can.

An hour later, and half a pint (second round) remaining, we shut laptops and commented on the weather - snow up north in home towns. My home town, Portland, was his envy. After this was over he would like to head there. This, turned out to be the BP mess. Serendipity. Much of the next several minutes was peppered with him saying, "off the record", but, in their turn comments, facts and anecdotal debris floated down several of the above mentioned channels, pushing me closer to the confluence of this oil mess. Information like, there are places people just aren't looking, "there's $5 billion in charter fishing in the Gulf", why isn't anyone talking to these guys. Yes, follow the money.

I'm headed for Grand Isle this weekend based on that last half pint. My Nawlins "Deep Throat" connected me to other activities, separate, out of Grand Isle. A coastal confluence. All channels seem to be flowing south to Grand Isle - now if the island just had a good pub!

PS - I debated on where to post this, here or over on my general blog Perambulations - in the end both - it's as much a Louisiana/Gulf story as general journalists journey.

"...a little rain must fall,"

"Behind the clouds the sun is shining,

Thy fate is the common fate of all,

Into each life a little rain must fall,

Some days must be dark and dreary."

- Longfellow

"Into each life a little rain must fall", hmmm? We live on a watery planet. We are bound by cycles of precipitation. So naturally a little rain must fall. It's that ambiguous "little" that changes the equation and turns daily life into chaos. Turns a tropical trip into a chance to reconnect to being an Earthling sailing together on a lifeboat through space.

As a photographer few things strip life to its barest necessity like chaos. Images seem to emerge from what hours or days before seemed, as my Costa Rican friend Rudy Zamora would say, "tranquillo". Chaos comes in all forms, some predicted, some thrust upon its victims - be it war, famine, natural disaster, or in this case a little too much rain.

The past couple weeks in Costa Rica were the great yin-yang of traveling that makes traveling the wonderful experience I crave. The first nine days were near perfect - well, from a photography and bird-watching point of view. The chronically rain drenched Tortuguero N.P. was clear and hot. The surf rolled onshore and lured hatching baby sea turtles to sea each night and dawn. Scores of migrant song birds decorated the trees. Basking basilisks. Quiet paddling in the backwaters of the "baby Amazon."

In La Selve the rain came only one afternoon. In classic form. The sky swelled in humid heat and loomed with steely-hued cumulus. The rainforest cicada ratcheted up their mechanical rhythm and then the firmament exploded with a blinding flash and a thunderous clap - seconds later the downpour was on. We escaped and took refuge in the open bar, and toasted the tropical deluge with cold indigenous libations. Afterwards watched Aracaris share tree-ripened papaya with stingless bees.

In the mountains along the Continental Divide from Arenal N.P. southwest to Monteverde Biological Reserve light showers drift in and out of each day, as expected, this is the tropics, this is rainforest.

Even at a young age a baby Guan knew this rain wasn't going to be fun

and stuck close to mom.

The last week it was time for the other reality. The one where "...a little rain must fall,"

Over the past coupe decades of travel I've discovered most chaos slips in subtly, silently. The few contradictions being bomb-blasts from rebel factions or political protests, but even then the place had been compromised long before, you knew in your heart it was a rising tide.

The road less traveled - from Quepos to Manuel Antonio

- at least the day after 16.3 inches of rain in 24 hours made it impassable.

The wonderful British travel writer Colin Thubron wrote, "You go because you... crave excitement, ... the need to understand something before it's too late. You go to see what will happen." I would add experience, not just see, what will happen. We always want to survive that place we go, but were or when we tip-toe that tightrope of survival we step into a new reality that never leaves us.

The tail of hurricane Thomas visits Costa Rica and out-stayed it welcome, turning the Pacific Coast into waterworld. A place where virtually nothing was high enough to escape the flooding waters.

Clarity, empathy, concern, global awareness, perspective, ownership, responsibility, Earthliness are all facets of the new reality. You finally emerge from the place where things happen and your days change. You check the news, surf the web, wonder why your chaos isn't news. Why where you know things happened it doesn't concern the rest of the world.

You learn sluggish sloths may die with full bellies, unable to digest in the soggy cold. You fear for friends, and all for the homeless you drive past, left sleeping on the road. You feel a refection of guilt because your wealth secures a life boat - this time. Your world has shrunk in all the rain. It has also become more lush. Rising waters have pushed up your experiential fecundity. You do it enough and soon the whole world is your street, your town, your neighbors. Your parochial blinders washed off - you see the world with your heart and soul.

My thanks to Rudy Zamora for making the past couple weeks a brilliant experience.

Only One Hummingbird Still Makes A Magical View

The rain began falling this morning early, just at dawn. Cold and soaking. Northwest winter rain. The kind for which we have received a tarnished, if not rusty, reputation. Truth is we don't like it much either. As much as it chills me to the bone I always imagine the toll on creature without the luxury of a space heater and cuppa tea. Over a dozen species of birds, little feathered souls, have flocked to the backyard feeders to fuel against the chilly downpour. My past couple weeks away in Costa Rica seems to have caused them a bit of concern - especially the diminutive dragons - Anna's hummingbirds.

With the hummingbird feeders full the Anna's, feisty three-inch hummers, have filled their bellies with sugar water and have returned to squabbling over the remainder - more of the sweet liquid than any one of them could possibly slurp up on their on. If birds did indeed evolve from dinosaurs then I fear what a 10 foot high version of these little bullies must have been like.

Peering out the kitchen window at one little male, his head swiveling side-to-side, alternately flashing the most brilliant ruby-violet color imaginable, I flashed back on one week ago, standing in the edge of the montane cloud rainforest of Monteverde Biological Reserve in Costa Rica. There, squadrons of these aerial acrobats squabbled and jousted over the sweet liquid in a half dozen feeders at the park's Hummingbird Gallery - one of the most enchanting experiences on the face of the Earth. A dozen different species vie for the feeders - oblivious to all other creatures, including humans. Their wings flashed by my head so close that wing-beat wakes would rush over my cheeks, a whoosh of air making me flinch. One diminutive hummer even entered the lens hood on my telephoto lens to challenge the reflected foe. This morning, clutching my hot cuppa Earl Grey tea and watching my single hummingbird species, I had but one regret, to paraphrase my Costa Rican friend Rudy Zamora, "I live in a place that has only one hummingbird." His regret was a planet with only one moon.

Then I thought a bit longer - if my world was only this vision, through this kitchen window, and I never knew such a place as the Hummingbird Gallery existed, I would rejoice in the one winged-jewel I have. Still, a couple more moons would still be cool.

Costa Rican hummers from top to bottom:

Male Purple-throated Mountain-gem (Lampornis calolaemus)

Male Violet Saberwing (Campylopterus hemileucurus)

Female Purple-throated Mountain-gem (Lampornis calolaemus)

Male Green Violet-ear (Colibri thalassinus)

TED Prize Goes to Mr Anonymity

I smiled this morning when I read the latest TED Prize was awarded to an "anonymous photographer." The man (since everyone refers to him) is like his work, composed of light, but takes shape in the shadows. He is anonymous, or semi-anoymous, the Parisian is referred to only as "JR." I smiled because I have always felt the work should be the celebrity, not the artist.

TED's Director of the Prize Amy Novogratz said, "The winner of the 2011 TED Prize is JR, a provocative and enigmatic artist who puts a human face on some of the most critical social issues of our day and redefines how we view, make and display art."

Mr Anonymonity's projects vary, but have one underlying cause which resonates the TED mantra, "Wishes big enough to change the world". JR's self-described photograffure indeed provokes change by fostering community. "Portrait Of A Generation" showed giant photos of suburban "thugs" outside of Paris. "Face 2 Face," which, as the Ted site explains, "some consider the biggest illegal photo exhibition ever," explored Israeli-Palestinian tensions. "Women Are Heroes" was an effort to empower women by showing their faces.

One of JR's more incredible project, is in the huge slum of Kibera, on the edge of Nairobi, Kenya. (Kibera is one of the largest slums not only in Africa, but in the world.) Perhaps more meaningful to me because I did my Wild Orphans elephant project in the orphanage just beyond Kibera and would pass the slum many mornings for two years.

JR installed his huge suffocatingly tight black and white portraits on the rooftops of the slum (photo above). His, the slum's, images stare skyward, depicting women who's lives are trapped there. Proving art can be functional as well as provocative, the giant photograffures, printed on tarp, also safe guard the frail falling-apart huts from rain. Poetically the images can best be seen by the wealthy tourists and politicians flying in and out of neighboring Wilson airfield. They are even large enough to be viewed on Google Earth. He also installed the top portions of the portraits on the sides of the train that passes twice daily through the slum. As the portrait clad cars chug through the metal and cardboard huts that press right up against the tracks, they momentarily align with the bottom portions installed on the hillside to complete the image. (Now that was a brilliant idea!)

From JR's website:

"As he remains anonymous and doesn't explain his huge full frame portraits of people making faces, JR leaves the space empty for an encounter between the subject/protagonist and the passer-by/interpreter."

Photo above copyright JR from project: Women are Heroes. You can learn more about JR on the TED site or on JR's own site.

I've posted here before about the TED, but if you missed that, you should check out the deep archive of TED speakers - there are some truly wonderful and thought-provoking video clips worth discovering.

Veolia Environment Wildlife Photographer of the Year

The annual celebration of images from nature, the Veolia Environment Wildlife Photographer of the Year, has released its 2010's top selection (the word winner suggests the others are losers - don't like it) a wonderful dance of ants by Hungarian photographer Bence Máté. My favorite ants - tropical leaf cutters. He said, 'I love the contrast between the simplicity of the shot itself and the complexity of the behaviour.' From the posting on the gallery site it says Máté's Costa Rican photo had its trials, "Lying on the ground to take the shot, he also discovered the behaviour of chiggers (skin-digesting mite larvae), which covered him in bites."

This annual event draws submissions from around the world making it truly one of the best and most prestigious competitions of its kind. As a former participant I know having one of my images selected was a great reward and considering the range and quality of the other entries.

For a look at more wonderful images from this year's entries visit the (British) Museum of Natural History's site.

the Color of Joy

Sharing is perhaps the greatest virtue of the web - ideas, images, challenges, perspectives, personal stories. I'm evolving my thoughts to see blogs as one of the most valuable and dynamic venues for web sharing. As a consequence I feel more and more passionate about this blog becoming both a sharing of my ideas, etc. but a platform for sharing all the niches I discover. Today, the niche is the joy of color - via some exceptional creativity = photography + experimentation.

Jenn's brother works for Pixar, the animation studio. Pixar I have learned is both a job and a journey of exploration - I wish there were more companies like it. Craig, her brother, sent the below video and links.

Color is Joy

Enjoy!

Canon Pixma: Bringing colour to life from Dentsu London on Vimeo.

iPadding the Future

(Gerry - since posting this Paul Melcher on his blog Thoughts of a Bohemian has posted Oct. 20th, "Beyond Metadata" worth a a read)

I have been accused of having shiny-object-syndrome. If I were 10 it would be simply AD of the HD. If you were ten 40 or 50 years ago they simply call it curiosity. Maybe that's why if you look around you see 40, 50, 60 year olds creating a pretty curious world full of things like the internet, cellular global communication, and stuff like touch-screen iPads.

But back to my focus issues for a moment. Focusing, I have always struggled with it. Having a laptop in front of me with Google open is the same as walking around in a tropical rainforest - I get excted about every thing that flutters past, flits by, crawls through my perception. I can barely read through a paragraph without highlighting and clicking a search for that word or idea and there I go - I'm off in a new wondrous direction. Unfortunately I have no light filtering through the canopy enabling me to "check in" once every so often and remember where I am, where I've been, and, oh ya, where I was going.

So I look at the iPad with trepidation - but I also know that somewhere in there lies my future. Not maybe the iPad itself, but the rainforest it will give birth to in a few short generations. As the iPad was nearing reality a photographer friend Michael and I had a pint and "it" came up and consumed much of the conversation. It was both the iPad and the rainforest. Ya see we are trying to figure out the future of our creative work, in turn a living from it, in turn our financial ability to continue the creative process. We came to a collection of conclusions, one was that quality would eventually be critical. But many conclusions rested on the creative inspiration of others - primarily the new publishing world; and I use the word publishing with considerable reservation. This snippet from media writer Colby Hall touches on the foundation of it, and slides forward in the direction we need to focus:

The question that publishers should be asking themselves regarding the iPad, and other tablet platforms, is not “how do we put our magazine on this device?” It should be “how can we best replicate the brand experience of our title, using the full suite of technological advances afforded by this new platform?” Follow up questions would include notions that would have previously been considered bizarre, like “What does our magazine sound like?” and “How many video advertisements is too much next this block of type?” (Because video stimulation hits the lizard part of the brain much quicker than the most well crafted and moving essay ever will.) It’s sad, but true.

Most of the web is frustratingly pathetic. On one level I understand and accept that because of the boxed minds that developed it. These were not audio visual people. That's why the web has been a hopeless place for kids. Kids are curious, the web is not designed in a curiously thinking way, although, as I said, a rainforest may be a short evolution away. If it is the iPad is a nice little muddy path leading in there.

What Michael and I discussed was exactly what Colby eludes to, that is, "best replicate the brand experience", although we think not in replication (which still implies backwards thinking to me), but in more creative (forward thinking) terms like, 'how cam we make the image come alive for the viewer', or 'transport the viewer/listener on our journey', or 'challenge the visitor to think anew'.

Those are the challenges we photographers, audioists, animators, film-makers and writers face. After a decade sort of away from my craft I'm incredibly excited to be back creating, it is filled with newness: I shoot digitally in both still and HD video from the same camera, upload into software like Lightroom, geotag my creative movement around the globe and listen for audio opportunities. iPad, Galaxy, even now Galapagos are, like the latter name suggests, new niches of evolutionary opportunity, creatively we can't think in replicating terms, those creatures die out, but in wholly new species.

I think we went through an odd transitional phase, past couple decades, and we aren't completely through it, as publishers will attest, where quality was down-graded and volume became king. If you walk the perimeter of a rainforest you see a pretty messy place - tattered bits of the original forest, invasive species, strangler weeds, garbage, it can all look rather depressing. Seen a few decades in the future and the order is returning, the forest re-assumes control, or more likely, a new order is established. I think we are there, in that messy place of chaos, where it is extremely difficult to see, hear, think. But I can also see some sense of order, new order with elements of old, taking root, sprouting forth. There will be devices and delivery methods that need brilliantly created content, designed to be probed and explored, and the world will pay for it, in a way that enables creativity to thrive not just survive.

The Unseen Sea

It's been rather quiet over here since I started work in the Gulf - literally and figuratively I have been swamped. I fly back to Portland next week and will catch up with several posts in the works for here and my Gulf specific blog. In the meantime Jenn sent me this very cool site with a time lapse piece on the fog and cloud formations in and around San Francisco which I wanted to share called The Unseen Sea by Simon Christen - enjoy!

Gulf Oil Spill Project

Over the past week I have been racing forth and back across the Gulf Coast between Louisiana and the Florida panhandle searching out the impacts of the latest human disaster created from our short-sightedness in exploring alternatives to a petroleum based existence. The past week has been interesting - on multiple levels - travel and photography are just two.

The BP Deepwater Horizon oil disaster caught the world's attention for the past couple months and then with the capping of the well greatest human cause environmental disaster began to slip from the media's attention and the worlds - here on the Gulf, especially in Louisiana it is still very much front and center - and as I saw Monday (Aug 16th), out on places like Grand Isle (photo above) it will be for years to come . We need to know who we are, what we have done, why we let it happen, and what is the long-term impact. That's why I came - I hope to help tell that story.

Over the coming weeks as I continue to understand what this disaster means to the Gulf Coast, human lives here, the food chain, and long-term impact on and to our cultural, political and social relationship to the environment I will be blogging about it specifically in a different site you can find here at the Gulf Oil Spill Project.

Partnering with me on the project is the National Audubon Society and photographic support is being provided by Pro Photo Supply (my blog about the photojournalism can be found here) - for each of those I will also be blogging and doing other presentations. As soon as those are up and running I'll post links to them here.

Finally this blog will continue to comment on my travels and observations on the planet - perhaps more, perhaps less, depending on the craziness of the schedule. It will take a new look soon as I will be migrating it to some new blogging tools which should provide you with more imagery, video, sound all to better experience the world I'm perambulating in and through.

Thanks to everyone who is along for the journey - Gerry

Gross Negligence - by whom?

You don't need to sit down for this, in fact most Americans won't even pay attention to the news, but here it comes...

The BP oil spill is the new world record holder for human inflicted environmental disasters. The spill has released just under five million barrels - an estimated 210 million gallons - of oil. That's 20 times more oil than was released during the Exxon Valdez spill--which previously held the record for the worst oil spill on U.S. territory. On top of that we have no estimate on the volume of methane gas poisoning the waters in and around the wellhead.

That figure "blows out of the water" the 3.3 million barrels released during the world's previous worst spill, the Ixtoc spill in the Bay of Campeche off the eastern coast of Mexico in 1979.

Writers Campbell Robertson and Clifford Krauss for the New York Times reported, the official estimate of the amount of oil spill means that BP faces fines of anywhere between $5.4 billion and $21 billion, depending on the degree to which federal investigators decide that gross negligence sparked the spill.

"Gross negligence", hmmmm?

Most Americans would say that's pretty obvious, isn't gross negligence spelled B P?

Negligence, yes, "gross", well I'm undecided. Certainly BP pushed the limits of safety, corporate ethics, destructive capitalism, and we will find out over time a whole host of other practices were compromised or simply toss overboard. But the blame for gross negligence maybe rests more broadly.

For true gross negligence I think we could start with elected officials over the past four to five decades who have failed to implement a comprehensive energy management plan for a nation (and in turn a world - we have been the leaders like it or not.) And then to the lobbying companies like auto makers who have slaved to profit margins, and insured those elected officials played along. But ultimately we have to look in our own rear-view mirrors at the people behind the wheel. WE. We elected official and didn't hold them accountable. We bought cars that ran on oil. We scream everytime gas smells $3/gal. - make it cheaper at "any" cost. We insured the system didn't change because it might be uncomfortable.

WE, you and me, are the ones responsible for the gross negligence.

Real gross negligence is being done by the media and the public indifference to a living planet that, from a human perspective, is being pushed to the limits of survivability. Just this past week the media has begun down playing the "great disaster" they so jumped on a couple months ago: "Where is all the oil?" an AFP headline asked. Time magazine ran a piece suggesting that the environmental impact of the spill has been "exaggerated." The New York Times ran a story that said the "Gulf oil spill is vanishing fast." Yahoo news ran a story suggesting that oil-starved microbes are gobbling up the oil. Anderson Cooper's CNN show ac360 is one of the few that has continued daily reporting from the Gulf Coast - and he too will likely pack up the mobile unit this week as BP looks to finally shut the well.

As for the longer-term, no one really knows what tomorrow's tide will wash up, that will take some drilling into, long into the future. The scientists are already taking sides, some optimistically portend that Mother Nature will mitigate the oils impact - but let's face it, you don't need and environmental PhD to grasp 5 billion of anything spilled into the environment unnaturally does damage, and to some creatures off our homo-centric radars, the damage could be terminal.

Brett Michael Dykes, who writes the Upshot for Yahoo News, reported that Doug Radar, the chief ocean scientist for the Environmental Defense Fund, told the Times Picayune that millions of gallons of oil remain unaccounted for.

"If you go back and look at the sheer amount of oil dumped - 60,000 barrels a day for 87 days - you get about 220 million gallons," Radar said. "Of that, 11 million gallons were burned and 30-some million were collected, meaning about 50 million gallons were eliminated. That leaves you about 175 million gallons of oil-based pollution loose in the Gulf. And when it degrades from the thick stuff you can see, that doesn't mean it's all gone. There's still an untold amount of toxins from that oil in the marine environment."

And what about that web-of-life we learned so much about in elementary school? That's the great mystery. Long-term it becomes broken links and chain-reactions, many beyond our best guesstimates. Researchers have already recorded that the Gulf's traditional summer dead zone - the annual dip in oxygen levels along the Gulf shoreline (due to Mississippi River runoff carrying agricultural fertilizer waste) - is twice as large as it was last year, representing an area the size of Massachusetts - stretching 7,722 square miles across Louisiana's coast well into Texan waters, scientists with the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium announced yesterday (Monday).

So gross negligence? BP? My gut says the real criminals will never appear in court. The real crime is being perpetrated everyday by roughly 300 million Americans who won't accept a new energy-use paradigm. 300 million Americans who greedily refuse to become participants (better leads) in a global solution to living sustainably on this planet. The real gross negligence -- the courage-less creature at the wheel of the vehicle that creeps along in our rear-view mirror everyday, around the world, at 8AM and 5PM.

PS - and what about that "other" giant nation consuming oil. China has overtaken the United States as the world's biggest producer of greenhouse gases and biggest energy consumer, but they are searching for solution to the unsustainable -China Plans Huge Buses That Can DRIVE OVER Cars

Being American - None of US are Islands Alone

I saw a movie last night that struck several cords from joy to frustration to anger. All about people. Not one kind of people, them over there, they, but all people. And in that sense about Americans. Being American. What that means. What ever that means?

It's odd to have an island named after you that represented a door, a passage way, a gate to all those people, regardless of origin, color, perspectives, experiences. A word that dangled in the desire of faraway sleepless nights and unfulfilled dreams. Ellis Island. To so many it launched a freedom granted to you at birth, for no price, and you have never in all your global wanderings stepped foot there. Yes there, on that small, originally 5 acres, of terra firma that somehow meant more than all others; between 1892 to 1954 millions of people, a planet's worth, created the most remarkable crucible of human diversity our world has ever known: mixed with the poets and the thinkers, the scientists and the musicians, and farmers and shopkeepers, there were also bigots and hate mongers and those who would have you believe that theirs is the only American blood that flowed out of that remarkable crucible - that's the price of diversity - there are mosquitoes in the diverse beauty of the rainforest, and some of them carry malaria.

The Visitor is about the potential of continuing to give life to that remarkable crucible. The Visitor is a movie every American, illegal, legal, or by the luckiest miracle on Earth - of which you had no say in - you were born here. You paid no price for your luck - you can only pay it forward. And do so like The Visitor "with impressive grace and understatement, resist potential triteness and phony uplift." Qualities you wish were the gifts of being born American.

I agreed with one reviewer who wrote, "The most remarkable part of The Visitor is the way it organically shows the way life can change un-expectantly, unfairly and without warning and does it with real, raw emotion. Just when you think you've figured out what the movie is about, you [are] slapped with a new reality. It is frightening, timely and angering. Even the ending, which is not the typical movie ending, is emotive in a subtle and realistic way. I was not overwhelmed or underwhelmed by the movie, I was perfectly whelmed; a task indeed."

Like living as an American.

The Visitor was released in 2007, that year roughly 1 million immigrants entered America, none of them look like you and me, all of them look like US. That same year 283,000 were detained - 85% of them did not have access to a lawyer - their crime was dreaming of the crucible. That year there were 10,350 immigrant children placed in the custody of the Department of Health and Human Services.

The goal of all this? To protect US from terrorism, the them, the there. The price? The crucible crumbles and diversity dies.

*****

A footnote of comparison: On September 11th, 2001 the them destroyed 2,973 lights of imagination and hope and joy in the crucible of diversity. By comparison that same year the them (drunk drivers) destroyed 17,448 lights of imagination and hope and joy in the crucible of diversity. The latter terrorism has continued every year since, and still.

BP Announces New Summer Movie Release: Silence of the Scientists

I really don't know where to begin this, so like a good writer, when stuck, just start writing and then eventually ya hit a grove. Of course, like a good writer, the alternative is to walk down to the pub, grab a pint or two and contemplate my ideas, hydrate my inspiration, then write. I'm opting for the first, since its 10 AM - not that that ever bothered Hemingway.

Here goes... I'll start with a question.

Is there a time when something is so off, its principals so clearly skewed as apparent by its actions (all that we know) in which we as a society need to stop and question its value in existing? Is it something we really need in our lives, in our world?

My background, my experiences are in nature, observing it, studying it, contemplating it, soliciting other perspectives on it. In nature the above question would be rhetorical at best, ultimately moot. The old saying goes "Nature abhors a void" but nature equally abhors anything mindlessly destructive to the system, all other life. The global petroleum company BP is treading down that path and perhaps it's time we as a society pause and consider its value in our lives, in our world.

In the past couple months the following information about BP activities has come to public light, and it's clear much more remains receding in the dim recesses.

• BP abandoned almost all prudent safety procedures in deep water drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.
• BP paid or insured few if any regulations governing their drilling activities in the Gulf of Mexico were know or under the scrutiny of the licensor (us hence the US).
• BP continually has under reported the extent of the spill scope.
• BP has, in coercion with local and government officials gagged the flow of information about the extent of damage along the Gulf Coast, including using coerced/paid local law enforcement to challenge, threaten and exclude journalists.
• BP has pressured government in the UK for release of a know terrorist who's actions killed
• BP is, still, working with the Lybian government on who's side it was pressuring the UK government to open the flow of oil leases.
• BP is current trying to buy the silence of scientists regarding their research into the Gulf spill damage.
  

Yes, this last one hits home. I have always had a soft spot for scientists. I think they try more than most, to do something of value for humankind. So it's with complete outrage that I read BP officials have been quietly moving through the science community trying to buy the silence of the scientists faced with understanding and analyzing the impact of this spill nightmare.

BP said it had hired more than a dozen scientists "with expertise in the resources of the Gulf of Mexico," according to a statement given to the BBC. That's great, get real scientists at work on this mess. But that isn't their objective apparently. According to a BBC report:

Bob Shipp, the head of marine sciences at the University of South Alabama, said BP's lawyers had approached him and wanted his whole department.

"They contacted me and said we would like to have your department interact to develop the best restoration plan possible after this oil spill," he said.

"We laid the ground rules - that any research we did, we would have to take total control of the data, transparency and the freedom to make those data available to other scientists and subject to peer review.

"They left and we never heard back from them."

Nelson warned BP's actions could be "hugely destructive".

"Our ability to evaluate the disaster and write public policy and make decisions about it as a country can be impacted by the silence of the research scientists who are looking at conditions," he said.

"It's hugely destructive. I mean at some level, this is really BP versus the people of the United States."

So where does it stop? I return to my original question,

Is there a time when something is so off, its principals so clearly skewed as apparent by its actions (all that we know) in which we as a society need to stop and question its value in existing? Is it something we really need in our lives, in our world?

Sounds ludicrous you think. We would just remove a company from our planet. Why not? BP now equates to BioPoison - life threatening. It's not infected every last worker, but clearly it has become what all corporations run the risk of, slipping off the tightrope, losing balance. BioPoison infects the inner ear, one no long hear the voice of reason and right, one loses balance. Their record is illustrating they have been tiptoeing that thin tightrope corporations balance on so precariously, only maintaining balance based on the collective conscious of a few men and women to listen to the inner ear, and realize their decisions do destroy with equal severity as they do value.

BP has lost balance, they're falling and like any one who does they desperately flail about, grasping at anything and everyone for hope of stability. The result is they take us down with them. Despite our hardwired human urge to save - this time we need, hold back our hand, look away, to let them go.