Random
Dead in the Water
Image by Nik McCue, via ESPN
On Tuesday, I took a walk along the beach in Perdido Key, Florida, where my parents have a condo. It is my favorite place. The sand is white and cool even in summer; the water is clear and, since the Gulf is shallow, it gets warm enough to swim comfortably by late spring. The condo itself, six stories up, wrapped with balconies and floor-to-ceiling windows, is consolation for my parents’ selling the much-beloved house I grew up in (for far more than they paid sixteen years earlier, to people who razed it except for the chimney and put a McMansion in its place).
This is the part of Florida known as the Redneck Riviera. A mile down the road from us is the Flora-Bama Lounge, where donated bras crowd clotheslines across the ceiling and where you can play the LobsterZone (like those games where you grab for a plush toy with a metal claw, except instead of toys there are live lobsters). On nights when we don’t feel like cooking, we choose between the Crab Trap and the Shrimp Bucket. I usually opt for some kind of fried seafood–gulf shrimp, gulf oysters–with an appetizer of fried (blue) crab claws, a dish that I’ve never seen outside of the Florida/Alabama gulf area. Much more so than in Atlanta, where I’m from, there is truly a local cuisine in those environs. Smoked tuna dip. And the famed Royal Red shrimp — a lobster-like variety that swim through our waters for only a very short period during the year. Add some slaw and hushpuppies, plenty of tartar and cocktail sauce, maybe some new potatoes or sweet corn, and you’ve got a proper panhandle supper.
So I was on this walk. Nothing was different yet. A hermit crab grumped along the edge of the water in his chickpea-sized trumpet shell of a home. Gulls did their dive-bombing and toddler-with-food stalking. A great blue heron strutted around looking typically elegant and above it all. A (human) couple waded to hip-depth and canoodled, aware that being in water is the international PDA carte blanche.
I’m aware that in setting up this little tableau of looming tragedy, I’m skipping wantonly among diners to be deprived fish flesh, tourists to be dismayed, and living creatures to be oil-choked. The victimhood here is obviously unequal. My straits are not dire, though my lament is keen and real. Nothing compared to the all the people who depend on diners and tourists not to be dismayed. This includes not just shrimp boaters, but also construction workers, waiters, hotel maids. People who live week-to-week, day-to-day, and don’t have cash to spare while they wait for their claim to BP to be processed.
While I was at Perdido Key, I was reading The Years by Virginia Woolf. Some of those eponymous years take place during World War I, when the air raids affected London’s rich and poor alike. The effect was total. Every movement, every gesture, referred to the war. The oil spill is a war of attrition. The casualties are incalculable as yet. We won’t know for months. Years. It isn’t like an attack or a disaster sweeping through, cases in which it is possible after days or weeks to assess the damage and make a plan. All we’re learning so far is how much we don’t know yet, about how bad this is.
So I was on this midday walk, knowing that the water would die soon but not knowing when. I waded into the gulf, sat on the sand, watched a mother and child dig a castle moat, wondered how many more times I would do that before a rainbow sheen glossed the surface of the water and forbade all comers. I couldn’t see a sign, and not knowing seemed somehow worse.
The answer came quickly. At dusk, my brother returned from his own walk with tar stuck to his ankles. He thought he was just walking through a sludgy kind of sand, debris of seaweed or shells maybe, until he felt and smelled it, tried to rinse if off but couldn’t. By the next day, the oil smell had settled onto the beach. Reports of tar balls the size of peas. Oily sludge.
I was wrong. Turns out, not knowing wasn’t worse.
Tags: oil spill
“All we’re learning so far is how much we don’t know yet” — yes.. good essay, amy…
Gulp.
This is quite sad. When they’re in the US, my parents live in Naples. I love Florida’s Gulf Coast and spend a lot of time there. This makes no sense at all. Very fine writing here, Amy.
Jesus mother of god this makes me want ot cry and vomit.
Oh, Amy. This was so beautiful. And such an ugly thing coming. Crap.
It’s worse than infuriating. Thank you for this, Amy, for giving it a brief body.
“All we’re learning so far is how much we don’t know yet” — yes.. good essay, amy…
Gulp.
This is quite sad. When they’re in the US, my parents live in Naples. I love Florida’s Gulf Coast and spend a lot of time there. This makes no sense at all. Very fine writing here, Amy.
Jesus mother of god this makes me want ot cry and vomit.
bravo.
i lived across the street from the gulf, in panama city beach, for 12 years before i moved to new orleans last year. when this happened, i was secretly thinking, “fuck, i just hope this get’s fixed before it hits the beaches in florida.” now i feel like i did when my grandpa was put in a hospice (coincidentally in clearwater beach) and i had to rush to see him one last time while he was “still himself.” if things get much worse (and obviously they are) i cannot imagine “the worlds most beautiful beaches” ever really being the same. the sand is just too fucking white.
it’s good to see people still giving a shit.
So sad, indeed — I do love how you end it right there, with the realization.
Oh, Amy. This was so beautiful. And such an ugly thing coming. Crap.
It’s worse than infuriating. Thank you for this, Amy, for giving it a brief body.
bravo.
i lived across the street from the gulf, in panama city beach, for 12 years before i moved to new orleans last year. when this happened, i was secretly thinking, “fuck, i just hope this get’s fixed before it hits the beaches in florida.” now i feel like i did when my grandpa was put in a hospice (coincidentally in clearwater beach) and i had to rush to see him one last time while he was “still himself.” if things get much worse (and obviously they are) i cannot imagine “the worlds most beautiful beaches” ever really being the same. the sand is just too fucking white.
it’s good to see people still giving a shit.
So sad, indeed — I do love how you end it right there, with the realization.
Brutal. Beautiful writing. You should send this to the NYTimes Op-Ed pages. This is NOW.
Brutal. Beautiful writing. You should send this to the NYTimes Op-Ed pages. This is NOW.
Agreed. You should send this in.
Local news confirmed tar balls on Clearwater beach last weekend. The water already feels different.
I am starting a campaign to introduce “BP” as slang for “total fuck-up.” Pass it on.
Agreed. You should send this in.
Local news confirmed tar balls on Clearwater beach last weekend. The water already feels different.
I am starting a campaign to introduce “BP” as slang for “total fuck-up.” Pass it on.
Amy, thanks for writing about this. You captured the local sensibility very well. All the nastiness traveled from Louisiana to our beaches pretty quickly, didn’t it? It won’t keep me off the beach this summer, but the impact it’s going to have on our economy is, well, something we really don’t need right now. As much I love to make fun of them, our area’s economy depends pretty decently on the tourist industry. But obviously, much worse than the financial impact is the environmental implications the spill is having on some of the world’s most pristine beaches, or what used to be the most pristine… my worst fear is that this will begin a biological domino effect.
Jason, right on. BP spends millions on advertising but they can’t keep their equipment in decent repair?
Amy, thanks for writing about this. You captured the local sensibility very well. All the nastiness traveled from Louisiana to our beaches pretty quickly, didn’t it? It won’t keep me off the beach this summer, but the impact it’s going to have on our economy is, well, something we really don’t need right now. As much I love to make fun of them, our area’s economy depends pretty decently on the tourist industry. But obviously, much worse than the financial impact is the environmental implications the spill is having on some of the world’s most pristine beaches, or what used to be the most pristine… my worst fear is that this will begin a biological domino effect.
Jason, right on. BP spends millions on advertising but they can’t keep their equipment in decent repair?
Thanks for this clip, Amy.
I don’t even have any “real” ties to the Gulf coast, short of my good friend Rima living in New Orleans, but every day, I watch the news and my chest feels like broken ribs.
Has anyone else read the Rolling Stone piece on the spill?
Thanks for this clip, Amy.
I don’t even have any “real” ties to the Gulf coast, short of my good friend Rima living in New Orleans, but every day, I watch the news and my chest feels like broken ribs.
Has anyone else read the Rolling Stone piece on the spill?
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