Keeping On

A quick update from Louisiana, since my last post confused a few attentive readers. According to previous plans, I should have been on the Gulf and surveying by last weekend, when I was instead posting lovingly about little Eva learning to crawl. That's the nature of marine work--things are rarely settled. In big-time shipping, barring weather or major maintenance problems (i.e.--things are still not always settled, but it's less of a problem than with smaller, more roustabout-type boats) schedules are pretty strict. When a ship costs the better part of $100K a day to operate, and its cargo is worth tens of millions of dollars, and a long chain of events depends on smooth delivery, then things tend to happen on time. In the case of small scientific or commercial vessels? Not so much. So I cooled my heels in Maine until Monday, when I flew down to Louisiana to begin work here.

I've had just brushes of contact with the monitoring and cleanup effort so far. It's a far-flung, chaotically organized set of activities with several independent command structures. BP is running most of it, of course, including the actual oil capture effort. The state of Louisiana is pushing forward with its misguided--either outright stupid, or else knowingly cynical--effort at building berms across the mouths of inlets. A better idea: bring in the boom left alone along vacant strands of beach, and triple- or quadruple-boom the inlets, and staff those inlets with people--boats, if necessary, where the inlets are wide enough--who will monitor the booms 24/7, and insure the capture of the most oil. When surrounded by a cloud of dust, do you clap a hand over your shoulder, or stomach? No, you clap a hand over your mouth and nose, where the infected air might actually get in. The same principle applies to the coast. The operative concept is triage. Given (highly!) limited ability to mitigate the damage, select those spots to save which have the greatest impact on the rest of the system. Open barrier beach is environment worth protecting, but it's not as critical as the inlets to the low-energy, highly populated marshes beyond.

Diatribe over! BP is coordinating a sudden army of contractors, of which I'm now one, to monitor and remediate aspects of the spill. The federal government, through the Coast Guard, FEMA, NOAA, DHS and other agencies, is conducting studies and remediation efforts as well. There is some, but not necessarily total, coordination between all of these agencies. I just returned from BP's Houma operations center, an impressively big building, turned now into the Louisiana crisis command. Two gigantic makeshift parking lots have been graded out from the fields nearby, as thousands of scientific, administrative, security and PR (don't EVER lose sight of the PR--it's more important to BP than science, by a large margin) now call this campus their office.

I dropped by this morning expecting to enter a briefing, but found that the meeting isn't until tomorrow. So I had a big breakfast instead (even if I get billed, it'll be later, after I get paid...imagine a smiley here), and left. (I'm typing in the hotel lobby right now. After this post, since Kate and I have no spending money at the moment, I'll eschew the sporting goods store and hunt up the Houma library. My rule these days is, when in doubt, geek it up.) As I left, I wanted to snap a few photos. The scene is pretty interesting: huge gravel lots filled with cars, giant glass, concrete and sleek steel building with the discreet "bp" symbol high on the wall, traffic cones connected with plastic chain directing traffic flow, parking lot shuttles, hundreds of people in and out of the building. Security guards zip around the lots in golf carts. In front of the buildings are two tractor trailers, mobile command centers filled with radio equipment, one belonging to the LA State Police, the other to the Department of Homeland Security. I wanted to snap some photos of the scene and received exactly the treatment I expected: an angry injunction from a fat guard in a golf cart to delete the (rushed, badly focused and aimed even worse) photo of the front of the building. I pressed a random button, dismissively said "Done," and drove off, hoping he didn't hear too many of the curse words I followed up with. (The image above is from the internet--I intend to get a shot of the scene, but don't have a plan yet. And it'll probably of UFO-sighting quality when I do, shot hurriedly at 25 mph at 6:30 AM as I drive in tomorrow. We'll see...now I'm determined to show some spite to that fat guard.)

One of my favorite quotes is from Whoopi Goldberg (a vastly underrated standup artist, from back in the day when she did standup: she, Cosby and Richard Pryor are my three favorites). I'm paraphrasing most of this, but she mentioned someone talking about a pet peeve, and then described her response. "Pet peeve? I don't have pet peeves. I have whole kennels of irritation."

One of the loudest dogs in my kennel, so to speak, is being prevented from simply expressing myself. I don't work for the press, I'll honor the confidentiality agreement concerning data (though much is general knowledge now: yes, there is oil below the surface, and it's moving around), and my only object is to inform friends and family about the overall scale and tools involved in this somewhat awe-inspiring effort. In other words, in good faith I want people I care about (and even previously unknown passersby!) to share a glimpse of what I'm up to. I have utterly no respect for the angry, anxious, reality-is-our-property mentality of legal and corporate professions. I can sign off on this confidentiality agreement only knowing that the general truth is already known, and that the NOAA data, at least, will be in the public domain eventually. The whole truth may not always out, but sometimes the gist is enough. When people try to control even the gist, my ire starts rising.

Tomorrow at 0800 I'll go into the briefing, we'll get more specific plans, and then head to the ships (probably docked at Port Fourchon).

Then the adventure will begin in earnest. Right now I'm still polishing armor, doing calisthenics, watering and haying the horse, so to speak...only my trusty squire Jasper is many miles away, and lady Kate and young mistress Eva are too. Swamp knight...

...anyhow, no reason to abuse your patience with inanities like that. I have one little anecdote, completely unrelated to the spill or Louisiana, to share. Now that I've posted a video to this blog, I want to keep doing more, of course, and I found a convenient excuse with cats and rabbits. Only, this isn't the video itself, but instead, a link to a YouTube video. Links go bad, so this one might, and it's copyrighted material (Warner Brothers), so there's a very good chance of that happening. But I can't download the video to this computer, so for right now, the crappy-and-maybe-dead link will have to do.

Dave & Ande keep rabbits, about eight, in pens out back. A ninth roams free, a slightly mangy-looking cinnamon-sugar bunny named Houdini. Houdini's pretty bold, and will hop right on by you with indifference as he goes about his business. He now suffers Eva to touch him (even when she grabs a little bit, or is rather, um, forceful in her petting). He's also digging a cave next to the barn door, where he can hide from the sun. That hole's nearly two feet deep. Houdini is the coolest rabbit I know.

Enter Jasper. Jasper is still a little overwhelmed, sort of half-heartedly following his feral instincts, with only occasional bursts of anything you'd call initiative (sort of like me in my first year of graduate school). I told you about his abject failure with the chicken. Things with Houdini never even got that far. Jasper crept up from behind, and the rabbit was of course aware of him, but never really even turned to address him. Houdini just kept on eating grass, ears erect and eyes turned, but otherwise projecting an impressive amount of "ho-hum" for, as I've heard them called, a walking furry hamburger.

Only, that rabbit is comparable in size to the cat. Houdini's maybe, I'm guessing, about 10 pounds, and maybe 10" long rump-to-nose. Jasper, maybe 12 or 13 pounds, 14" rump-to-nose, and perhaps more importantly, much longer, more lithe and delicate. Rabbits have lots of muscle compacted in that rear end, the better to skedaddle with. One good, frantic kick in the accidentally right spot could startle the heck out of, or even badly hurt, the cat. And I just have no confidence in Jasper's ability to wrestle prey, tiger-style, to the ground. He just doesn't have the game, you know? Sort of like Ricky Davis versus Michael Jordan (look those guys up, bengal!). I'll leave it for you to figure out which Jasper resembles more--MJ or Davis.

Anyhow, Jasper failed before he even started with Houdini. The two now treat each other with all the indifference of family.

However, a neighbor's cat showed up one afternoon, and began stalking the rabbit. (Jasper began stalking the cat, which turned out to be very boring, because as we all know, cats hate to fight, and would rather sit and stare, or talk about it.) But this gray-and-orange tiger cat from down the road had foolish designs on Houdini. The bunny was sensitive to the cat's intent, and this time, wasn't eating. He was poised to jump, ears up, eyes on the cat, keeping about fifteen feet between them. The cat crept forward, and the rabbit leapt away. The cat tried again, and the rabbit jumped again. The cat kept trying to get closer.

Houdini had had enough, and just took off around the house, clearing over ten feet per jump, it seemed. In less than a second and a half, the rabbit had disappeared around the entire side of the house, making an arc from the front to the back yard.

The cat remained in a crouch, following the rabbit with his head, and then sat up. He stayed there for a good ten or fifteen seconds. It was rather like this (the first minute or so):



That's Jasper's first problem with the rabbit, too. Not only would he probably get beaten up, but, well, he'd never get the chance in the first place.

Okay! Enough typing. Time to go geek it up...