As a country, we’ve shared an outrage over the past two months as a wasteland has been made of our beautiful Gulf Coast. We’ve created rage-filled Facebook pages like “1 Million People for the Plugging of the Oil Spill with BP Executives” and seen some hilarious yet still sad videos like this one. We’ve expressed frustration and anger as our government, BP, and basically everyone in power has failed to stop the spill—and has succeeded in destroying our land, water, wildlife, jobs, and people. All in all, we are largely together in this.

Yet, as individuals, we can feel pretty powerless.

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The pope is ticked off with Belgium. Belgium is taking its duty to protect its young seriously, and is not offering special treatment to the Catholic Church. The police are investigating recent claims of child sexual abuse by predatory priests. According to a news report: Last week, Belgian police raided the home of a retired bishop, opened the grave of at least one archbishop, in their search for hidden documents, and detained Belgium's nine current serving bishops as they met, seizing their mobile phones and only releasing them after nine hours. Pope Benedict is having a fit. He called the raids 'deplorable' and demanded that he and the Catholic Church have role in investigating abusers in its ranks.

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Hurricane season is upon us. The Associated Press reports that the Coast Guard is making preparations for what could he a hurricane. on its way to the BP oil spill area. A hurricane would stop all work in the area to contain the spill. Oil  could be back gushing again at full force, and a hurricane could carry the oil slick all the way up the East Coast. See the video.

BP reports that its effort to drill a relief well, which BP tells the world will stop their runaway gusher, is on target for completion by the middle of August! BP says it has to drill through 2 1/2 miles of rock. In the meantime, millions and millions more gallons of oil will have polluted the Gulf.

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Scientists monitoring events in the Gulf of Mexico around the recent devastating oil spill have discovered some very disturbing news that could spell disaster for the Gulf Coast. Extremely high methane levels exceeding a million times higher than normal levels were discovered by scientists on a recent expedition to the Gulf. These levels are so troubling for a number of reasons including the fact that such high levels of methane could deplete the water of the essential oxygen that it needs to support life creating a massive dead zone in the Gulf.

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Punched in the Face

 

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Please stop calling my child, “Buddy.”

I get that you don’t know if she is a girl or a boy because she has short hair, glasses, and chooses to dress in the clothes that she picks out (sporty t-shirts, anything with dinosaurs, plain blue or green patterns) rather than the ones that well-meaning relatives provide for her (princess-themed shirts, skorts, pink frilly things) as gifts. We let her choose, and we are completely happy with her interests and the way she chooses to express herself.

But you don’t have to label her just to make yourself comfortable with who she is. Then you start asking questions that relate to her as “buddy” and not “princess” or “sweetie,” as you might call a girl child. I hear you ask the girls if they like a certain princess, tell them how pretty their dresses are or their hair is. “What a pretty girl!”

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Yes, I do not trust cell phone manufactures who tell us that cellphones are perfectly safe, and that we should not worry about the radiation the phones give off. I waited for years before I got a cell phone. With the nearly disappearance of street phone booths and boxes, having a cellphone has become a necessity.

Of course when I use a cellphone, I use an earplug with a long cord,  and I hold the phone as far from my body as possible. I only take the phone with me when I have to be near a phone.

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The news from the Gulf has not really gotten much better. Today, Wednesday, it got worse. Hundreds and hundreds of thousands of gallons oil is gushing unchecked into the Gulf of Mexico, as BP has trouble with the containment cap of its gadget, which was trapping some if the oil. BP says it will get the problem fix. Oh sure.

The Associated Press reports, "Before the problem with the containment cap, it had collected about 700,000 gallons of oil in the previous 24 hours. Another 438,000 gallons was burned." That's 1.238 million gallons a day coming to the surface. How much was lost in the Gulf? The Associated Press reports "The current worst-case estimate of what's spewing into the Gulf is about 2.5 million gallons a day. Anywhere from 67 million to 127 million gallons have spilled since the April 20 explosion "

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The Associated Press reports, "A judge in New Orleans has blocked a 6-month moratorium on new deep water drilling projects, but the fight isn't over. The White House has promised to quickly appeal the ruling."

Considering the BP oil spill, considering the ecological damages, considering the the government does not have in place a regime to check deep water drilling operations for safety, a six-month drilling moratorium is in the public interest, and the federal judge who lifted the moratorium is either deaf, dumb, and blind, or something else --

Is he a corrupt judge? Does he run a crooked court? Does he sits on a rotten bench? Does he bring honest justice -- or brought justice? Was he looking out for the public interest, or is he a New Orleans style judge, who takes care of the interest of his bank account first?

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The immediate response to the massive oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico is, understandably, that everybody wants to help. And you would think another place that has experienced the devastation of an oil spill, like Alaska, would want to help the most, being able to identify with the outcome and the issues that the Gulf coast must be experiencing. To a certain point, that’s the case. But on the other hand, Alaska is now thinking a little harder about sending further supplies to support the cleanup effort. Are they less sympathetic? Not at all. They are thinking- what if we have another disaster? How prepared will we be? And that makes sense.

And it makes me think that we have hit a point where so many people have experienced this kind of a disaster that we should start getting to know better- you know what I mean?

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