My Shipping Vessel

The titles with 'My' in them started at the very beginning of the project -- it was a conversation about responsibility and ownership. If I say "mine" am I then more connected -- more inclined -- more in control and more responsible...

Today I am focusing on an article from last week by Bruce Stanley in the Wall Street Journal:
"Single-Hull Oil Tankers Persist as Global Risk."

"A key factor in the accident was almost certainly the tanker's design. The Hebei Spirit was a single-hull ship, just like the Exxon Valdez, which spilled 11 million gallons of oil when it ran aground off the Alaskan coast in 1989.

Eight of the 12 worst oil spills to occur world-wide since the beginning of 2001 have involved single-hull vessels -- an older ship design that uses a single layer of steel plates instead of the more-protective double layer that has become the new industry standard. As single-hull tankers haul only 18% of the world's crude, the tankers' role in these disasters is even more disproportionate.

Shipping-industry executives and environmentalists say the Hebei Spirit would have leaked less oil, or none at all, had it been double-hull. Now, in the wake of the accident, South Korea's government is speeding up plans to bar single-hull tankers from its waters."

The single hulled boats were banned from coming to port in the US after the Valdez crash. Still, about 6%, the article says, are single hulled. That seems like a lot -- and also like security isn't really doing the right kinds of checking. Those are big oil boats, aren't they signing some log somewhere?

In Asia, the number is four out of five. Four out of five!

It seems to make sense -- the combination of the continent's growth and desire and the wealth and willingness to put others at risks from the point of view of those who have the power -- the oil in their boats. It's hard to eliminate race from the issue -- though race and money are inextricable in any event.

"Perhaps surprisingly, given its experience with the Exxon Valdez, the oil titan that employs more single-hull tankers than any other is Exxon Mobil. Of the 170 VLCCs that Exxon Mobil sent to Asia last year, one-third were single-hull ships, the company says. About 10% of the VLCCs that the company deployed to North America and Europe in 2007 were single hulls."

I'm remembering, too, what Ben Stein said recently in the NY Times. "Exxon is us."

My Father

Yesterday I had to call my father in order to remember the house number and directions to the house he grew up in.

Before I told him why I called, he told me he was coming from the doctor. He might have cancer. He might not.

There is a pocket on his bladder. One test showed one thing, the other another. The doctor said why don't we wait three months then test again -- the chart said that was my father's idea. Ugh. Time for a new doctor.

The doctor said it was probably from smoking 30 years ago. I said -- or the oil. He said, no, the doctor said in most people we think it's smoking. Most people didn't grow up on top of the largest oil spill in the country. Most people don't die from quitting smoking 30 year ago.

He said -- but this isn't why you called.
I said, actually, I think it is.

My Sense of Smell

When I stepped off the train in Green Point today, I expected the smell to be overwhelming. It wasn't. Ten minutes later, when I felt my asthma acting up, I thought it was psychosomatic. A few minutes after that, the wind changed -- or I turned a corner or something, and the smell was strong. And I thought, oh yes, that's it. I remember that smell. It smells a little like rot and a little like heat. It's not as bad as it used to be -- because I only walked through it in small pockets, where it used to be heavy and around -- all the time.

Yes, I remember.

And it smelled like home.

Alleged

Today I have less time than even this crazy week allows. Of course, today I am intrigued. Again, I think I can only bring up a topic I will have to begin with tomorrow...

I started with an article on Bloomberg -- The Supreme Court refused to hear a case in which Exxon was trying to get rid of MORE punitive damages. Another case. More billions. Okay, you start to see why Exxon doesn't just pay them -- because they must be in them all the time! Wish list for the day: a complete list of court cases against Exxon and salaries paid to Exxon lawyers.

Here's the paragraph from that article that caught my eye:

Exxon Mobil, the world's largest oil company, argued unsuccessfully that jurors improperly penalized the company for potential medical problems suffered by workers at the site.

The trial ``became a referendum on whether Exxon Mobil should be punished for the alleged risk of health problems it may have imposed on individuals not before the court,'' Exxon's lawyer, Walter Dellinger, argued in the appeal.

To repeat:
"the alleged risk of health problems that may have been imposed"

This I'm intrigued by. The same is being said for Ecuador. The same for Greenpoint. All over, I'm sure, but these are the stories that have my attention right now.

The alleged carcinogenic effect of oil fumes leaks.

I want to figure out how you prove it -- how do you link cancer to a carcinogen? How do you isolate carcinogens? If there are any oncologists out there who would be willing to talk to me, let me know.

As I've said before, both of my grandparents died of lung cancer -- they lived for 60 years on top of that oil spill in Brooklyn. They smoked, too -- we always assumed that that was the source of the illness.

Proof. What constitutes proof... probability, possibility...

Despite the lack of connection I managed on the pesticide front, I am going to start here tomorrow. I've already got the articles, I just don't have the time to read them. I'm going to Greenpoint tomorrow, actually -- so maybe I can even post up some pictures soon. The first in a series of pilgrimages...

And what difference does it make anyway...
my grandparents are dead; grandma's best friend Elsie died of lung cancer too -- a long long time ago. She used to make boxes and bowls out of knit together old Christmas cards and she taught my Rummy 500, which I now play all the time with my son.
It matters because it is still going on all the time.
It matters because someone else's father is growing up on a spill as we speak.

It matters because Exxon is the largest oil company in the world (according to Bloomberg), and if we don't ask them to be responsible in this crucial time in history -- who possibly can help anything...

Record Indicates Problems

A friend complained a bit to me last week that she couldn't follow the project -- it's too all over the place for her -- too many unconnected or disconnected or distinct pieces...

I argued, after nodding sympathetically, that that is the whole point. Scope, Discovery, Exploration... there is not one story I am looking to understand -- but really trying to get some picture of the world -- and some picture of a year, as well.

All this to say, if you are squeamish about tangents, today might not be the day for you to read...

The AP reports this morning, "Oil Spill Pilot's Record Indicates Problems."

"WASHINGTON (AP) — The pilot who steered a container ship into the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge last fall, causing a huge oil spill, had a drunken driving conviction and a history of alcohol abuse and took numerous prescription drugs that could have impaired him, federal investigators said Wednesday."

This stood out to me for a couple of reasons -- for one thing, it does appear that the Vadez crash lived in this realm. The Captain in that crash had a history of alcoholism, left his post, slurred -- he had numerous DUI's etc...

So if that's what happened in San Francisco, it's important to know.

On the other hand, the article goes on to list ailments and medications -- and I'm not so sure what to think. We do as a culture have a tendency to impale a person on his own record after his demise:

"The pilot, Capt. John Cota, had regularly received waivers allowing him to hold on to his federal mariner’s license despite illnesses including glaucoma, depression, kidney stones, migraines, pancreatitis and, most recently, sleep apnea, according to testimony at a hearing of the National Transportation Safety Board."

I don't know -- it seems to me that the problem is in something about who captains a ship. Maybe it's a clash what used to be the culture and what is now at stake -- on the one hand, should depression really be cause for not being able to work? On the other hand, one wouldn't be able to do some jobs that we are accustomed to think of with much more weight. Astronaut. Pilot. Surgeon. There are some jobs for which we do require deeper levels of -- purity? cleanliness? freedom from ailments? -- from their practitioners...

"“I wouldn’t want anyone taking those medicines and having to make decisions in a safety-sensitive position,” the witness, Dr. Robert Bourgeois, said on the last day of a two-day hearing on the accident on Nov. 7."

Okay, so let's figure out who's steering these ships! Let's say -- each of these tankers holds the potential for national disaster, and let's make sure we are being responsible -- for the ships, for the companies, for the crew -- let's make very clear what's at stake.

Accidents.
Each of these tankers holds the potential for national disaster.

If we change the way we think -- does it help?

Feel Good

The other day I was in a really good mood. It was because... A friend asked why -- I was thinking of going to Ecuador. I'm thinking about the project taking on a few of the stories inside of it, head on. Ecuador. I was a little gitty.
The problem with reporters is that sometimes you get like that -- excited by bad news.
My friend said, "good news doesn't do it?"
No. Some of it is adrenaline and excitement -- but there's a good side to that -- when you find a story that hasn't been covered -- break a piece of really bad news -- the potential for you to do good as a reporter is much, much higher. To draw light to -- understanding -- improvement.
Good news stories only make people feel good.

Sometimes you just want to feel good.


Photograph by Ralph Lee Hopkins
National Geographic

David Llewellyn, MP
Minister for Primary Industries and Water
Wednesday, 9 April 2008

Oil Spill Survivor Outlives Average Life Expectancy

A Little penguin rescued during the Iron Baron oil spill incident over a decade ago, has gone on to live for more than double the average life expectancy for the species, Primary Industries and Water Minister David Llewellyn said today.

Mr Llewellyn said although the Little penguin died earlier this year, its survival for almost 13 years after the major oil spill highlighted the value of the rehabilitation effort following the oil spill.

Mr Llewellyn said earlier this year local school students retrieved the band fitted to the penguin which enabled Department of Primary Industries and Water wildlife staff to trace the penguin’s history.

“It should be incredibly satisfying for everyone who played a part in the rehabilitation effort after the oil spill to know of the longevity of some of the species that they assisted,” Mr Llewellyn said.

“The details from the band and DPIW records show that this Little penguin was one that was covered in oil when it was brought in as an 800 gram adult male.

“Following cleaning and rehabilitation he was released on July 26 1995 at Low Head weighing 960 grams.

“In the following 12 and a half years he appears to have remained in the local area with his body being found only seven kilometres from where he was released,” Mr Llewellyn said.

DPIW Wildlife and Marine Conservation Section Head Rosemary Gales said the Little penguin was already an adult when it was rescued and so was certainly older than 13 when it died.

“On average in the wild Little penguins are estimated to live about 6.5 years, so this one has certainly far exceeded the average life expectancy for the species,” Mr Llewellyn said.

“It is an incredibly valuable record to get as it highlights that the massive wildlife rehabilitation efforts that are put in after oil spills can certainly be effective in reducing the impacts of a spill.”

Rehabilitation Manager at the oil spill site Mark Holdsworth said over 100 volunteers assisted the efforts to clean, feed and house around 2000 Little penguins at the time.

“The survival of this penguin for so long will be greeted with a sense of pride from our team of penguin carers,” Mr Holdsworth said.

“This also provides us with a sense of confidence that if an unfortunate accident like this were to occur again, we can do something positive to help restore an important part of the environment.”

Dr Gales said research undertaken, after the oil spill at the mouth of the Tamar River on July 10 1995, estimated that between 10,000 and 20,000 penguins were killed as a result of the oil spill.

“Unless treated, even small amounts of oil on the plumage of seabirds can result in their death – either through drowning, hypothermia or acute toxicity,” Dr Gales said.

“Rehabilitation of oiled seabirds can reverse the immediate physical effects of oiling.

“However the discovery of this little penguin has highlighted the real value of these rehabilitation efforts by showing how long they can continue to survive if they are given the opportunity,” Dr Gales said.

Previously Pristine

The reason that a lot of these issues aren't well suited to the major media is because they unfold over long periods of time -- and while the dramatic information is often staggering, daily news is based on the new and on the changing in time of a course of events.

Okay -- so this morning I came across a really big story -- a really little story about a really big story.

Report Says Chevron Owes Billions for Ecuadorean Pollution

It's a Reuters article in the Times business section. And in a lawsuit that began in the early 1990s, there has just been a bit of amazing "independent expert" testimony. (I put that phrase in quotes not to cast doubt on it -- simply to say that I am not making the claim. I don't know enough to -- and Chevron is claiming bias. I tend to believe that it is the report is both independent and expert -- for what it's worth.)

"An independent environmental expert told a court in Ecuador that the oil company Chevron should pay $7 billion to $16 billion in compensation for environmental damage in the country."

According to a 2005 column in the Times:

"The company is accused of dumping more than 18 billion gallons of toxic waste, over a period of 20 years, into the soil and water of a previously pristine section of the Amazon rain forest.

According to a class-action lawsuit brought on behalf of some 30,000 impoverished residents of the rain forest, this massive, long-term pollution has ruined portions of the jungle, contaminated drinking water, sickened livestock, driven off wildlife and threatened the very survival of the indigenous tribes, which have been plagued with serious illnesses, including a variety of cancers."

From the ChevronToxico activist website

It's kind of hard to get a lot of information on the situation -- I read about 5 articles this morning -- primarily from the Times and spanning the last 28 years. I read parts of a 20 page piece from the above mentioned website -- while it was pretty well written, it's very hard to decipher what you read on activist websites -- just as it is hard to read company websites. When people write with an agenda it is difficult to determine the truth of the matter.

Trick photography and tampering aside, the beauty of photography is that it simply offers observations. (Of course, that statement is extremely loaded... and I could and have gone off on that subject for hours -- but let's just say for the sake of argument it's true enough for now.)


Sara Dalton The New York Times

On the Chevron website there is a press release from last November -- a court in California dismissed claims against the company that the toxic waste had caused cancer -- the dismisal was based on the statute of limitations.

Who flaunts that?

Five years ago the Times ran an article about the suit which started this way:

"When René Arévalo draws water from his well, it is brown and gummy, requiring him to run it through a makeshift filtering system outside his wood-plank home in the jungle outside this town.

Like thousands of other people here, he suspects the water was fouled by the waste an American oil company dumped across miles of Amazonia in its 20 years of operations. After all, he and his five children live across from a separation plant once operated by a Texaco affiliate, their house built on a mound of dirt that covered a pit where wastewater was dumped.

"If you dig here just a meter deep, you hit oil," Mr. Arévalo said, moments after probing into the dirt outside his house to show visitors the gooey slime. "The water is contaminated, very contaminated. But we drink it. What else can we do?"

Now, about 30,000 people affected by the waste are hoping that a lawsuit, accusing ChevronTexaco of dumping 18.5 billion gallons of waste into open, unlined pits, will lead to a full-scale cleanup. This week, the California-based company, an energy giant created in 2001 when Chevron merged with Texaco, went on trial here in a case that, if successful for the plaintiffs, could establish a new way for American companies to be held accountable for environmental degradation in foreign countries."

Or the opposite -- on has to suppose...

When I was much younger -- maybe 15 years ago -- I told a therapist that I was beginning to get a little obsessed with having to prove things. She said that was fine -- as long as I didn't make a career out of it... I said... ummm... I am a documentary photographer.

Absurdity of Scale

Look at this!







Photos are all AP photos from a slide show here.

There's an amazing string of AP articles about an oil and gas company in Santa Barbara County. The article by Noaki Schwartz is great, laying out a long series of ironies and disasters. Kudos!

Here are some highlights:

• Of 21 refineries in California, Greka Oil & Gas Inc. is the fourth-smallest producer, but the state's biggest inland oil polluter, according to state officials.
• Over the past nine years, the Santa Barbara County Fire Department has responded at least 400 times to oil spills and gas leaks at Greka, resulting in fines, citations, federal and local prosecutions and investigations by the Environmental Protection Agency and state Fish and Game.
• From 1999 to 2007, the Santa Barbara Air Pollution Control District inspected Greka facilities 855 times and issued 298 violations. During that period, 203 Greka spills threatened or polluted state waters 20 times, according to Fish and Game.
• In January announced an environmental initiative dubbed Greka Green. But just a day later, it was hit with an 8,400-gallon spill.

The idyllic vineyard is the Firestone Vineyard, which was established by The Firestone family in 1972. For some reason I can't seem to figure out how big it is. But there's lot's of history and pretty pictures on their website.

Greka leases land from the vineyard.
Again, how much sense does it take? Oil. Food Source. Ugh.
Do people really not think that oil is dangerous? I just keep finding myself amazed at the decisions people will make for money.

I think it's interesting to note that the Firestone's sold the vineyard and much of the land last year. Another quote from the AP story:

"Brooks Firestone, whose family leases land to Greka, was one of two members of the county Board of Supervisors who blocked an emergency hearing on Greka in December. He said the staff needed more time to prepare, and warned board members not to become hysterical.

"To me, a huge event involving oil was the Kuwaiti oil fields that were fired by the Iraqi army in the first Gulf War, the 1969 oil spill in the channel, the Valdez tanker and the Normandy tanker," Firestone said at the time. "What is the meaning of this incident?"

Days later, on Jan. 5, Greka spilled more than 190,000 gallons of oil and contaminated water on the land it leases from the Firestone estate. Since that spill, Firestone has withdrawn from deciding matters related to Greka.

Firestone, an heir to the tire fortune, said it would be too difficult to calculate how much income he receives from Greka. On political disclosure forms, he said he owns only 9 percent of the vineyard land on which the Greka installation sits. Officials have to own at least 10 percent of a business to disclose income from it."

I'm amazed by this story.
At it's absurdity of scale, for one thing -- this little company respectively and all the power they have -- all the damage.
It's got everything -- right down to irony and government corruption.
I wonder about all the little companies in this country.
I wonder what will we drink.
When we have polluted the wine
and the rain and the rivers.

The Unwritten

When I teach writing -- comp, journalism, electronic media -- I teach that, basically, every piece of writing is the same: locate your Audience, Purpose and Tone. If you write based on those three things, your piece will work.

I realize this morning that there has been an element missing for the last two years as I teach this theory: Understanding.

The old adage of creative writing "write what you know" is compelling -- but even more compelling if you take it in terms of non-creative writing. I've been trying for the last few days to figure out how to help my students with this problem -- but it didn't really gel until I set out to learn about oil today.

Lack of understanding is often the problem in freshman English papers -- it's also often a problem in journalism articles.

So I'm going to do what you should never do -- write about what I don't understand. I'm not going to look any further, either.

An article yesterday in the Denver Post reports,

"Garden Gulch, a remote ravine north of the town of Parachute, has been the site of four spills and leaks from oil and gas drilling in the past five months."

To repeat: FOUR SPILLS IN FIVE MONTHS.

"New information pegs it as also being the site of a huge soil-erosion deposit that fell during the building of an oil-field pipeline above."

Okay -- what New Information? Photos? Reports? Whose?

There are two reasons this type of language occurs in any genre: confusion or secrecy.
(okay -- one more reason may be that a writer writes at 5 am with a 7am deadline -- this leads to all sorts of sloppy writing.) Confusion can come from not knowing enough, and also from knowing too much.

I still can't exactly understand what the problem is -- and what is missing in the article is what a soil erosion deposit means and what the effects of one are. After sitting with the article for an hour (it's pretty short) -- I think the issue is: a pipeline for oil and gas products was built somewhere over an important water source. When the pipeline was built it caused a bit of a landslide which deposited a bunch of soil into the watershed. This was not reported -- though it should have been by law. The pipeline has been leaking -- 4 leaks -- and the waste has simply been freezing -- but as spring is coming it is all about to defrost and make its way to the plants and animals. No one knows what's in the frozen waste. It's probably toxic.

Chevron owns the land -- and they didn't know anything about the problem.

"Photographers for environmental organizations mistakenly identified the formation in that photo as the remainder of the four spills from wells that created a million-gallon frozen "waterfall" into the gulch. That gulch is home to Parachute Creek, the source of irrigation and livestock water for downstream landowners and the entire town of Parachute."

Okay -- here I'm wanting to point out a problem I see:

Chevron owns the source of irrigation and livestock water for landowners and the entire town.
Okay -- hindsight, 20/20 all that -- but what did they think was going to happen? The oil and gas giant was going to put vitamin C in the water?

The writer says, "The saga of the Garden Gulch spills and deposits does hold an element of confusion."

Some of it is the writers creation. There is no one official from the local government on record -- there's no one from Chevron on record. There's a pipeline builder identified as unidentified. She may have been on deadline -- worried about getting scooped -- there are a lot of pressures that go into this type of story which is trying to uncover something people do not want uncovered...

Some of it sounds like extreme negligence on behalf of the oil people. The spills went unreported -- the erosion was also supposed to be reported and wasn't.

And more than that -- the system is set up to protect certain things and certain practices.

Get this: "Fluids used in drilling and stored in pits are kept secret under federal rules"

What?!

Here we are, right. The Federal Government. You don't really have to go much further.

The fact is that the government looks out for the oil companies and the oil companies look out for their money. And whatever you think of any of it -- of the endangered polar bear, of tankers in British Colombia, of being able to travel to California or to work off of your feet -- whatever you think of any of it, the no one is really looking out for the effects of it all.

Audience, Purpose and Tone.
If the audience is the public -- the people who drink and who raise the cows -- if the purpose is to keep in the dark and the tone is to placate or to keep in the dark --
someone is writing well. The laws. The brochures.

The unwritten.

Post Script:

Whatever problems I have complained about in this article I would like to deeply and sincerely thank Nancy Lofholm of the Denver Post for writing it. The most important role of the journalist is to uncover the covered -- it is absolutely through articles like this that education and change occur.

Sometimes We Don't Know What We Are Getting Into

But sometimes we know the risks and we aren't prepared.
Then it is negligence -- bravado -- disregard.

In November 11 ships, including an oil tanker broke up in Russia. The story in the NYTimes said,

"Viktor P. Beltsov, a spokesman for the Ministry of Emergency Situations, speaking in a telephone interview, blamed the captains and ship owners for the disaster. “They all knew perfectly well a storm warning was in effect,” he said. “The leadership of these companies simply ignored these warnings.”

Russian prosecutors said they would open a criminal investigation to assess responsibility for the environmental damage.

But the World Wide Fund for Nature said in a statement that the problem ran deeper than errors in judgment by the ships’ captains, citing the Russian practice of using river tankers, like Volganeft-139, on the open sea in rough weather.

“It’s a systemic problem,” the group said. “Most river tankers simply are not constructed for such storms, and the seagoing vessels cannot sail on the Don and Volga Rivers.”"

I'd be interested in a comparison -- is that like driving an oxcart filled with oil on the Massachusetts Turnpike? Is it like wearing wax wings?
Last week, UPI (United Press International) reported:

"Many ships entering California ports may not be able to comply with a state law requiring they have the capability of reporting oil spills within 30 minutes.

Twenty-one of 164 ships subjected to spot state inspection in a three-year period could not place four notification phone calls, The Sacramento Bee reported Sunday."

Maybe it could be argued we so take oil for granted we don't take seriously the effects at all.
We want it all and we don't want to do what it takes to be careful with our environment and the life around us...

Spilling Over

PARIS, March 17 (Xinhua) -- About 100 tons of heavy oil spilt into France's Loire River late Sunday when pipes of an oil tanker leaked during the loading process, local government of Loire-Atlantique Province said Monday.

According to a government statement, aside from the 100 tons of heavy oil spilt into the river, 300 more were poured onto the river bank near a refinery belonging to France's oil giant Total.

The provincial government warned that heavy oil is harmful to human health and has to be handled with caution.

Residents living in the area are not allowed to join in the government effort to clean up the spill, the statement said.

The China View.

Sau Paolo, Brazil: A Norwegian cargo ship crashed into a pier and cracked its hull, spilling 5,000 liters (1,320 gallons) of engine lubricant into a bay in the northeastern state of Bahia, officials said Monday.

The International Herald Tribune.

The city of Austin uncovered the mystery owner of the tank that caused January's 10,000-gallon oil spill downtown.

The Littlefield Building on Sixth Street is the proprietor of the tank. City of Austin spokesperson Lynne Lightsey said Austin Watershed Protection found documents at the Austin History Center and University libraries that said the building had requested the tank to be installed at a city council meeting in December of 1910.

The Daily Texan.

On A Cellular Level

I've just spent an hour reading about oil. About intentional spills in Dubai and punitive damages in California...

But here's what I've learned today -- from headline from Science Daily:

"Toxins in Oil Spills And Cigarette Smoke Prevent Stem Cells From Becoming Cartilage."

The new study released March 4 from the University of Rochester Medical Center asserts a common toxic pollutant spread by oils spills, forest fires and car exhaust slows healing by impairing bone growth from a cellular level. The study is focused on showing the negative effects of smoking on healing -- but I am amazed at this internal altering...

healing prevented
healing slowed
by what we breath
by our exhaust
by what we put out into the air
by the effects of disaster
the effects that disaster takes into the body
the effect of the body
and its inability to regenerate

"Gene expression is the process by which instructions encoded in genes are followed for the building of proteins, the workhorses that make up the body’s organs and carry its signals. In the current study, polymerase chain reaction (PCR), a technique that measures gene expression levels, revealed the genetic changes caused by exposure to BaP in mouse stem cells."

will our grandchildren look back and study us as the strong ones --
how children heal we do now

we are becoming weak we are making our bodies weak by what we dump we breathe

"We believe this new research will establish for the first time the mechanisms by which polyaromatic hydrocarbons interfere with the healing process.”

how does one live unable to heal

Greasy Hair Clean Up

When I was little I lived for a while in Bowdoin, Maine. My mom built a sweet little house in the middle of 17 acres of woods -- our firewood came from the trees, our corn came from the garden and out water came from a well in the front yard.

Well water. We had a hand pump -- I don't remember what it was used for -- but I do remember the endless up and down with that noise of rubbing the metal against metal -- I think it was red. Inside we did have running water -- but it was often cold, and there were always concerns about it running out. Showers were rationed.

This was a traumatic thing at the time. I kept my hair long like Joan Jett -- and spent hours curling the front pieces with the iron that doubled as a microphone when Genella came over. But the effect was entirely undermined when my hair was greasy. My hair was often very greasy. As in embarrassing greasy -- as in, don't make me go to school like this greasy - as in, there is absolutely nothing redeeming about it.

I was reminded of this in my search for stories about oil...

Turns out hair's affinity to oil is the basis of a grass roots oil spill operation in California.

A grass roots organization "A Matter of Trust" used mats made out of human hair to clean up the oil spill in San Francisco last year.

I first read about this last year -- now for some reason the original information isn't available anymore -- so -- at the risk of my memory failing, the hair mats were first designed by Phil McCory (his photo's still on the website) as small mats of mulch for potting plants -- and later applied to the oil spill.



After the mat has been soaked, Matter of Trust covers them with oil eating mushrooms.



Photos from Matter of Trust website.

Last the mat are composted.

"The mission of Matter of Trust is to Link ideas, spark action and materialize sustainable systems. We like to mimick how Mother Nature integrates enduring cycles and provides access to necessities in abundance. We concentrate on ecological and educational programs for manmade and natural surplus. The results are worthwhile, common sensical and often enchanting."

The Border

I'm thinking about interconnectedness this morning. The way we lean on each other even as tensions rise... the way if tensions rise enough we have to remove our own supports.

Last week in Ecuador, flooding and landslides damaged a major oil pipeline. Two dozen people died in the flooding, and thousands of barrels of oil poured into a local swamp.

According to the AP story in the International Herald Tribune,

"Environmental fallout from the 4,000 barrel spill in a mountainous region 25 miles (40 kilometers) east of Ecuador's capital, Quito, is "grave," as many Coca River tributaries, a water source for nearby communities, have been contaminated, Oil Minister Galo Chiriboga said."

Ecuador is the fifth largest exporter of oil in South America.
Ecuador relies on Colombia for a pipeline in one area to aid with its extraction of oil.

Today, tensions in the entire area are beginning to erupt. The story in the Times leads,

CARACAS, Venezuela — Venezuela and Ecuador mobilized troops to their borders with Colombia on Sunday, intensifying a diplomatic crisis after Colombian forces killed a senior guerrilla leader at a jungle camp in Ecuador.

The article today suggests that even the threat of war is a welcome distraction from the economy in Venezuela. There were similar suggestions in this country some years back... I think I've said before -- I'm having a hard time deciphering the coverage from the times about Venezuela. Through the rhetoric it is too hard to discern what is actually happening. Chavez speaks in language better suited to a cartoon villain, yet he is real and there is something very condescending about focusing on his words and posturing rather that the actualities of the situation -- demeaning to the people effected by it all. Here and there.

On the border
on the border of war...

It's tiring, listening to people. Listen to poetry.

A Song on the End of the World

by Czeslaw Milosz

On the day the world ends

A bee circles a clover,

A fisherman mends a glimmering net.

Happy porpoises jump in the sea,

By the rainspout young sparrows are playing

And the snake is gold-skinned as it should always be.

On the day the world ends

Women walk through the fields under their umbrellas,

A drunkard grows sleepy at the edge of a lawn,

Vegetable peddlers shout in the street

And a yellow-sailed boat comes nearer the island,

The voice of a violin lasts in the air

And leads into a starry night.

And those who expected lightning and thunder

Are disappointed.

And those who expected signs and archangels’ trumps

Do not believe it is happening now.

As long as the sun and the moon are above,

As long as the bumblebee visits a rose,

As long as rosy infants are born

No one believes it is happening now.

Only a white-haired old man, who would be a prophet

Yet is not a prophet, for he’s much too busy,

Repeats while he binds his tomatoes:

There will be no other end of the world,

There will be no other end of the world.

Warsaw, 1944

Translated by Anthony Milosz

Czeslaw Milosz, "A Song on the End of the World" from The Collected Poems; 1931-1987. Copyright © 1988 by Czeslaw Milosz Royalities, Inc. Used by permission of HarperCollins Publishers.

Source: The Collected Poems: 1931-1987 (The Ecco Press, 1988).

http://poetryfoundation.org

A Private Matter

Yesterday the Supreme Court began hearing arguments about the Exxon Valdez oil spill -- about whether or not punitive damages of $2.5 billion dollars should be dismissed.

Some notes:

Here is the opening of the "Argument Preview" from the Supreme Court website:

"Exxon Shipping Co., et al., v. Baker, et al., is known – and will always be known popularly – as a case about one of history’s most destructive oil spills. The case is also steeped in maritime lore, because the tanker ship carrying the oil hit bottom on Alaska’s Bligh Island Reef, named for Captain William Bligh, a central figure in the story of the mutiny on The Bounty. But this controversy takes its place on the Supreme Court’s docket as a test of maritime law that reaches back to an 1818 Supreme Court decision charmingly titled The Amiable Nancy. The core issue is whether maritime law allows any punitive damages again a ship owner/operator for an oil spill such as this one and, if so, how high such a damage award may legally go."

Nina Totenberg, the Supreme Court reporter for NPR, is one of my heroes -- her calm and delineated way of explaining the interchanges in the institution are forever in my head when I think about the court at all. Thank you, Nina.

Samuel Alito is sitting out of this case. He owns stocks in Exxon. Why on earth are our Supreme Court Justices allowed to own stock? Any stock! Many journalists aren't allowed to own stock for fear of conflicts. It's the supreme court, for crying out loud. Pay them well -- really well; it's a big job, and they never do anything again -- but make them get RID of their portfolios! Rid.

One issue is that Exxon knew that Hazelwood, a self-admitted alcoholic, had fallen off the wagon when he assumed the helm of the Valdez.

From the website corporate statement:
"ExxonMobil has an unwavering commitment to high ethical standards, operations integrity and flawless execution. This is embedded in our company culture and implemented through our management systems. Our Standards of Business Conduct form the foundation for this commitment, with 16 corporate policies in addition to the company-wide expectations for open-door communication."

Exxon says that they should not be subject to punitive damages because they were not seeking to make big profits from their action. This is interesting to me. Because they were not looking to profit specifically from keeping Hazelwood, a known alcoholic, from captaining the Valdez, they should not be subject to punishment.

Here's the Wikipedia entry for the term "Public Trust." (More hypocrisy on my part!)

"The concept of the public trust relates back to the origins of democratic government, and its seminal idea that; within the public, lies the true power and future of a society, therefore, whatever trust the public places in its officials must be respected.

"One of the reasons why bribery is regarded as a notorious evil is that it contributes to a culture of corruption in which public trust is eroded.

A famous example of the betrayal of public trust is in the story of Julius Ceasar, who was killed by Roman Senators who believed they had to act drastically to preserve the republic against his alleged monarchical ambitions. It is an interesting concept, nevertheless."

The blog of the American Constitution Society said this yesterday:

"Tort law must continue to perform the work of punishing and deterring misconduct that harms private interests. The applicable federal and state laws work together to provide comprehensive but not overlapping remedies for public and private harm. The Supreme Court should continue to recognize this important distinction and retain the plaintiffs’ longstanding rights to both compensatory and punitive damages."

This from the Supreme Court Blog background:

"At seven minutes after midnight on March 24, 1989, the supertanker Exxon Valdez, loaded with oil and steaming out of Alaska’s Prince William Sound, ran aground on Bligh Reef after missing a turn that would have allowed it to sail safely on out to sea. The ship was owned by a subsidiary of the oil company, Exxon Mobil, and its captain at the time was an Exxon employee, Joseph Hazelwood. The record of the case is filled with arguments and counter-arguments about whether Hazelwood was drunk, about what Exxon knew about that, and just how the turn was missed while Hazelwood was away from the bridge (in violation of company rules). There is no dispute about the first result of the grounding: With the reef punching a hole in the Valdez’s hull, some 11 million gallons of its cargo – equal to about 258,000 barrels – spilled into the Sound, and wind and water spread it over a 600-mile area in the midst of a productive fishery area."

This from a 1994 article from The Anchorage Daily News:

ANCHORAGE- For the first time since he radioed that the Exxon Valdez had "fetched up hard aground" on Bligh Reef five years ago, Capt. JoeHazelwood on Tuesday began his public reckoning of his role in the disaster and of his bouts with alcohol. Speaking as one of the first witnesses called by the attorneys suing him and Exxon in U.S. District Court,Hazelwood described the two-faced life he led during the years leading up to the spill: drinking at sea, a member of Alcoholics Anonymous at home.

In slow, deliberate speech, Hazelwood said many Exxon officials knew he was drinking, but had they asked for details or probed, "I probably would have slammed the door in their face."

"I thought it was a private matter," he said.

I've mentioned before that I am teaching Frankenstein right now -- I still think it's fascinating -- all the issues of responsibility and consequence...

Yesterday, a student for whom I have a big soft spot wrote a free write correlating her own battles with alcoholism with Frankenstein's -- I told her I was concerned that over identification could be problematic in her instance -- taking too much responsibility could work against her ability to keep her life in perspective...

There aren't that many of us with the capacity to commit deep crimes against nature through our own actions and inactions -- to create such catastrophic results in our environments...





www.valdezlink.com


openlearn.open.ac.uk


www.coastalandoceans.com

How To

This from Slate Magazine:

explainer: Answers to your questions about the news.

Oops, I Made an Oil Spill …What should I do?

By Daniel Engber
Posted Tuesday, July 5, 2005, at 6:11 PM ET

A research vessel ran aground in a Hawaiian marine wildlife reserve on Sunday and appears to be leaking oil. Aerial surveillance of the crash site by the Coast Guard revealed a "rainbow-colored sheen" on the water, and the crew of the ship took actions to control the spread of a possible spill. What happens when your ship spills oil?

First, you report the spill to the Coast Guard, along with an explanation of what you plan to do about it. Big oil tankers must have a pre-approved "vessel response plan," which includes the name of a private marine cleanup company that can get the right equipment to the scene within a few hours. If you don't have a plan, the Coast Guard will hire a cleanup crew and send you the bill.

Big tankers are required to carry "spill kits" so their crews can start to mop up a slick before the pros arrive. Spill kits typically include pads of oleophilic (oil-attracting) material that soaks up the spill. These devices, called sorbent pads, come in many forms. Crews might use an 18-inch square that can be dabbed in the oil and then wrung out on board the ship; sometimes bales of hay are used.

Once a cleanup team has contained the oil, it can attempt to skim it off the surface of the water. Some skimmers work by separating the top layer mechanically; others use a sort of blotter or a suction mechanism. Very thick oils that resemble floating tar can be removed by hand, or with a pitchfork or shovel. Any of these mechanical methods for cleanup can be used immediately after a spill without prior approval from government officials.

Later on, workers can use chemicals or fire to clean up if the spill occurred far enough away from sensitive areas and if the government approves. "Dispersants" are EPA-approved chemicals—deployed from water cannons or from specialized booms—that break up the oil slick into tiny droplets that sink below the surface and wash away. If the oil slick isn't too thin, and if it's contained with a fire-resistant boom, workers can set it on fire. (This creates some local air pollution, which may be less dangerous than the water pollution.) The fire burns off most of the oil but leaves a viscous burn residue that either floats or sinks to the bottom—and must be picked up either way.

Cleanup crews have a few options to protect local shorelines and wildlife before they even come in contact with a spill. The land nearby can be pretreated with chemicals to prevent the oil from sticking when it washes ashore. Birds and other animals that might be affected can be "hazed"—frightened away—by high-tech scarecrows such as floating dummies, helium balloons, or propane scare cans, which fire off a frightening pop every minute or so.

Unreportable Warfare

This morning, about oil, I learned that if you burn the pools from an oil spill and seal off the hole in the earth, you have only made things worse. The burning releases fumes, vapors and toxins, and leaves a denser crude behind.

Still, this is a common method of clean up for many villages in Nigeria, according to a report from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

“The land is devastated. The drinking water and streams are polluted. As it rains, we use the rain water but cannot drink it, because even that is full of crude oil,” youth leader Amstel Monday Ebarakpor told IRIN.

“At every groundwater intrusion, you see seepage. Sometimes you can see oil sheen on drinking water,” he told IRIN. “Crude will be there for the next 50 years.”

Just to repeat: Sometimes you can see an oil sheen on the drinking water.

On 25 January the chairman of the government’s National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency, Bamidele Ajakaiye, told Nigeria’s Senate Committee on Environment and Ecology that there are 1,150 abandoned oil spill sites in the Niger Delta region. Many, communities say, are cleaned like the one in Kedere - if at all.

There seem to be a lot of factors at work.

The largest is the growing unrest in that region. I've written about Nigeria before... Local people steal oil from pipelines to sell on the black market or to heat their homes -- as one would imagine, this is not a very safe practice. Also sabotage against the oil companies is occurring frequently as communities protest the discrepancy between what is being taken from the land and what is being given back to the people of the land. Also -- pipelines are really old. Also -- in the realm of things that are never reported -- doesn't it stand to reason that if the huge oil companies are responding to guerrilla style warfare that by killing and crippling the surrounding lands and people they would be engaging in their own warfare...

Unreportable warfare.

I noticed in the news coverage last year the language of the stories reported made the issue sound very much like a band of thieves and hooligans were set on messing things up for everyone. It concerned me then -- and then the coverage fell off all together. The UN report was picked up be Reuters, but I didn't see it in the Times, and a Google search didn't show it as appearing in any major newspaper.

President Bush will be traveling to Africa this month.

Posted today, on what looks to be a newsish site -- though I can't really decipher, because it's all in Portuguese (I think) -- is a letter to our President.

"Mr President:
Greetings from the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) of Nigeria. We trust this letter will reach you and your entourage touring some African countries well.

MEND needs little introduction to you since you must have been briefed after the actions we have taken to address the injustice in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria may have affected the oil dependent American economy.

Your trip to Africa comes at an opportune time and indicates the soft spot you have for the people of this great continent. Africa is facing several on going conflicts, almost all are avoidable. Nigeria is at the verge of entering its own mega-conflict even though everyone seems to be in denial. When Nigeria erupts, the lava will spread so fast, far and wide that the human and economic catastrophe will dwarf Darfur."

The letter goes on to outline a proposal for action. It doesn't sound like the kind of letter I would be reading if I was president of the United States.

I wonder if President Bush will read this letter.

I wonder if oil is being used deliberately as chemical warfare.
But really, isn't it hard to imagine a group of pissed off American or European oil workers, hot and sick of being messed with, not saying...



Photo: Dulue Mbachu IRIN photo
Environmental damage from an oil spill in Kegbara-Dere in the Ogoni district of the Niger Delta. Residents say the spill is more than 10 years old and has not been cleaned up.

My Grandparents Lungs

some things just take a long time to recover from -- and some things are not cleaned up after well...

I myself am slow to get over things... I've been home for two days now and I'm still so tired I can barely see straight --
furthermore I'm still thinking about Brooklyn.

Here's the thing:
Both of my grandparents died of lung disease.

They were smokers -- so this was a surprise to no one. In his Green Point dining room turned clinic, with oozing bandages and an IV drip, my grandfather asked me if I smoked. I lied and said no -- I was 14 at the time -- he knew, I'm sure. He told me to never start. That is a conversation I have remembered with shame my whole life.

This changes none of that -- But still,
what if it wasn't just the smoke...

I thought I should fish around and look for fume inhalation and its relationship to lung disease... I found so much information I'm going to have to spend the next few days (or months) sifting through it.

Unfortunately, most of what I found was in PDF format... as I said, I can barely see straight, but here is one quote from The Material Safety Data Sheet from Granite Construction Incorporated:

"Inhalation: Petroleum asphalt emissions (fumes and vapors) may have an unpleasant odor, and my produce nausea and irritation of the upper respiratory tract. Elevated concentration of thermal decomposition (hydrocarbons) and chemical asphyxiation (carbon monoxide, hydrogen sulfide). Systematic effects associated with trace components (less than one percent) are not anticipated during normal use. Chronic exposure to elevated levels of asphalt emissions may result in chronic respiratory irritation and/or other lung disease."

Of course there is no article that I can find that says, "prolonged exposure from a 60 year old unattended oil spill in the earth surrounding ones bedroom results in lung disease."

Of course, I'm seriously contemplating an investigative reporting project. Ugh.

And I'm still thinking about yesterday's carpet cleaner -- satisfied that Exxon bought him a fan -- and saying that when he couldn't smell the fumes because of the fans they must be staying underground...

This was not what I expected to learn about oil.
Sometimes a thing becomes more personal than you could ever imagine.

Some people never talk about anything -- maybe talking is too intimate -- too immediate -- maybe it allows for realities one simply doesn't want to exist...

The thing is, what we don't talk about can kill us.
Things don't go away just because we manage to push them out of our senses.

We don't feel them, maybe -- but they live inside our lungs -- eating away at us.
Maybe they killed our ancestors.
Maybe they will kill our children, too...

I thought I would see what would happen if I learned one thing about oil everyday for a year...

It's Stunning

So...
over nearly a century, an estimated 20-30 million gallons of oil has leaked into the water and soil of Greenpoint in Brooklyn, NY. The story got some mounting attention in 2007, as lawsuits are prepared to combat inaction on the part of Exxon and five other companies involved in an enormous toxic waste situation. Read here here here and hear here.

A report this month from the Environmental Protection Agency suggested that the Newtown spill may be twice as large as first believed — some 30 million gallons, nearly three times the size of the Alaska spill. It has polluted the 4-mile strip of waterway and some 55 residential and commercial acres around it, gathering in subsurface reservoirs, mixing with groundwater, creating toxic vapors and and seeping, slowly but inexorably, into the creek. One major concern is the reported leakage of chemical vapor into homes.

Vapors into the homes... arsenic - lead... we have no idea what this means -- has meant to families to children over the years. What effect on families - family histories... could toxic fumes cause toxic behavior? Physical illness? Mental illness...

I've just returned home from a week in Brooklyn, and somehow it seems even closer -- Greenpoint, according to NPR is still home to Polish immigrants -- which is what it was 60 years ago, when the bulk of the spill occurred; which is what it was 60 years ago when my father and his brother Al were playing bloody knuckles and my grandmother and Ellie were standing on the stoop gossiping while the fresh kilbasi boiled inside... when we drank the water...

The spill, originally several times the size of the Exxon Valdez oil leak, resulted from an accident in the 1950s and lay undiscovered until 1978. In notices of intent to sue that were sent to the five companies, Andrew M. Cuomo, the state attorney general, said that so much oil had leaked into the creek that some samples of its sediment, when dried and weighed, were nearly one-tenth oil.

The notices also disclosed that an internal study by one of the companies found nearly 100 different pollutants in the creek water or sediment, including benzene, arsenic and lead.

Of course, the timing is... not for the Polish immigrants. Brooklyn is gentrifying. Already the brick row house my family sold a few decades ago for about $60,000 would be worth probably ten time that; imagine if it wasn't nestled in toxic waste...

“The Brooklyn-Queens waterfront has the potential to be New York’s Gold Coast, with sparkling towers, schools, parks and libraries,” said Eric Gioia, a City Council member whose Queens district abuts the creek. “Cleaning Newtown Creek is critical to that vision.”

Still the ability to ignore is amazing. On the NPR story, a carpet cleaner got Exxon to pay for a fan to ventilate his work area because the smell of oil was so strong.

"with the fans running we don't smell them [the fumes] -- with the fans running, I think they stay underground."

I love the language of that. With the fans running the fumes stay underground.

Brooklyn is home to the biggest oil disaster in this country. I read about this in October, and I've been trying to figure out how to make sense of it since then -- to put into some sort of context...

maybe there simply is none.

When I was about 12 the house across the street from my grandmother's burned to the ground. I wasn't allowed out on the stoop, but I stood at the window and watched it go up -- later I took a picture which is still hanging on my wall --

and the flames swallowed up what had been. And there were rumors of intent -- murmors of intent and neglect and what a pity

and we all stood and watched -- and the fire trucks came late -- and everything was destroyed.

Spicy Tuna

Yesterday, a headline in the Times read, "Warnings Don't Deter Lovers Of Sushi."

For me, the only deterrent that ever veers me away from eating raw tuna is price and the fact that my kids don't like it -- occasionally cold, but that's never much a little warm Saki won't fix... I hadn't read the "warning" article from Wednesday, but felt alarmed enough to do so. It was reported in the food and wine section of the paper -- those sections are funny -- sometimes I wonder if they are trying to lure or bury with the placement of some stories...

"High Mercury Levels Found In Tuna Sushi." Apparently, reporters from the Times went all over Manhattan buying tuna sushi and testing it for mercury. Mercury is not regularly tested for by any government department.

Sushi from 5 of the 20 places had mercury levels so high that the Food and Drug Administration could take legal action to remove the fish from the market.

I've written about this before, but sometimes a topic warrants coming back to. It was the undeterred that intrigued me today...

Coal mining, coal burning, oil refining and oil pollution are all main causes of mercury poison. Last month an article from the Chicago Tribune looked at one plant's excretions into Lake Michigan.

The U.S. Steel mill in Gary and the BP refinery in nearby Whiting rank among the nation's worst factories on health threats to neighbors from water pollution, according to a Tribune analysis of new federal research.

Mercury, lead and other pollutants poured into the Lake Michigan basin by the two industrial giants account for the high health-risk scores tabulated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The findings are based on the amount of pollution released by each facility, the toxicity of each chemical released and estimates of the number of people who eat fish caught in nearby waters.

Here's a funny fact I found -- the mercury that spills out of your old thermometer -- you can swallow it and it won't hurt you (if you are in good health to begin with). That form and amount of the metal is hard to absorb, and easy to get rid of. But fish eat fish after fish after fish, and the levels of mercury become concentrated inside of them, permeating their flesh.

People are exposed to methylmercury almost entirely by eating contaminated fish and wildlife that are at the top of aquatic foodchains. The National Research Council, in its 2000 report on the toxicological effects of methylmercury, pointed out that the population at highest risk is the offspring of women who consume large amounts of fish and seafood. The report went on to estimate that more than 60,000 children are born each year at risk for adverse neurodevelopmental effects due to in utero exposure to methylmercury. In its 1997 Mercury Study Report to Congress, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency concluded that mercury also may pose a risk to some adults and wildlife populations that consume large amounts of fish that is contaminated by mercury.

That's from the US Geological website. This from an article in Discover Magazine:

Infants born to mothers contaminated by mercury in Japan’s Minamata Bay in 1956 had profound neurological disabilities including deafness, blindness, mental retardation, and cerebral palsy. In adults, mercury poisoning can cause numbness, stumbling, dementia, and death. “It’s no secret that mercury exposure is highly toxic,” says toxicologist Alan Stern, a contributor to a 2000 National Research Council report on mercury toxicity. But high-level exposures like those at Minamata cannot help scientists determine whether six silver fillings and a weekly tuna-salad sandwich will poison you or an unborn child. “The question is, what are the effects at low levels of exposure?” he says.

Data now suggest effects might occur at levels lower than anyone suspected. Some studies show that children who were exposed to tiny amounts of mercury in utero have slower reflexes, language deficits, and shortened attention spans. In adults, recent studies show a possible link between heart disease and mercury ingested from eating fish. Other groups claim mercury exposure is responsible for Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer’s, and the escalating rate of autism.

Fillings??!! Really, it seems like a bunch of the disconnect stems from the fact that we don't really know yet what the effects are. But isn't it one of those things you look around and think -- autism, attention span, cancer, Alzheimer's -- we know these to be growing exponentially...

Why do we do things that are so clearly bad for us? What exactly do we need proved?

But also, where do we go -- what do we eat...

Who what where when why
do we spend our time and is safety really what we are looking for?