Trees and plants always look like the people they live with, somehow.
-Zora Neale Hurston in Seraph on the Sewanee (1948)
If someone told me that there could be any ecological disaster that could dwarf Hurricane Katrina—and the gross presidential mismanagement in its wake — I would have been highly skeptical. Of course, that was before the April 20’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion — and the Obama administration’s handling of it.
And I know there are those who say I’m being too hard on President Barack Obama. Moreover, Obama’s defenders say this is a disaster that has been decades in the making. And who can deny the incestuous relationship between “big oil” and the previous administration, which was headed by the two oil men, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney? Halliburton has even been cited as a player in this debacle.
But here’s the thing: This unprecedented “accident” happened on Obama’s watch —and so far his administration has performed abysmally. But, I’ll come back to that.
For now, I want to try to convey the magnitude of what is being lost down on the Gulf Coast, perhaps forever.
“Sportsman’s Paradise” Lived
