harry cutting photography: projects

acting pretty rude

2012-02-02T09:53:00.000-08:00

Montreal — cruising around, whistling and looking for a mate.

"I met my wife in Montreal, in the Old Town section. She was leaning against a wall having her picture taken. She was gorgeous. I walked by and sort of wolf-whistled.

"An hour later I was eating lunch at a little restaurant and she came in. She walked right over to my table and asked was I feeling okay because I was acting pretty rude out in the street. I didn't know what to say, so I offered her a seat and a drink.

"She nearly fell over from laughing so hard. She said I looked like a little trouble-maker school kid who was being scolded by his teacher. When you meet someone with a sense of humor like that, you don't let them get away."

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they still call us

2012-01-27T14:21:00.000-08:00

A perfectly satisfying life — selling insurance and raising the kids.

"I've had an average life. With my wife I raised a family, two boys and a girl. They're okay, working, have good lives, I think. They still call us once a week or so.

"I worked many years as an insurance salesman. I think it was good work. People always thanked me for providing them with insurance. Selling the insurance was nothing special, but the people were interesting.

"When my daughter was younger she used to flare-up and call me a boring old man. She thought my life was dull. She called me stupid more than once. I would just smile and butter her toast or something."

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the tourist bureau

2012-01-24T14:05:00.000-08:00

Bribes and bad behavior — a principled approach.

"It was a comedy every day, working for the tourism bureau. We had our standards. We had our principles. But the locals would pay us to do their bidding, and we did. It was obviously a corrupt system. My superiors pretended to be above it all, even as they pocketed the cash.

"A woman and her two children were badly injured on a jungle tour one year. The tour operator had paid us to promote his company and he expected us to help him with this disaster. My boss refused, but changed her mind once she realized she had no choice.

"Everything went wrong. The court convicted the operator of negligence, which was fair. The operator told the press about the bribes. My boss denied it all and tried to implicate me instead. We were both fired. Whatever."

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sanderson texas

2012-01-19T12:42:00.000-08:00

Sanderson Texas — soft air and that floating feeling.

"I was hitchhiking 'cross-country about 30 years ago. It was after my wife died of cancer. I felt useless so I took off.

"In San Antonio I had a sort of breakdown. I had a cop take me to the hospital and I stayed there for four days. It was nervous exhaustion, they said. They gave me medicine to calm me down but I flushed it and left the hospital late one night.

"I was in rough shape. I was weak and angry and almost hysterical. I caught a ride all the way to Sanderson. I rented a room there and slept like a dead person. I ate dinners at a little restaurant there in town. I remember the big white "S" on the hillside across the road.

"One evening I was leaving the restaurant and I paused outside the door. I remember I felt like I could float. The light was melting into the hills, the highway was empty, the air was soft. Everything was beautiful.

"I'd give anything to feel like that again."

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what takes over

2011-12-06T18:12:00.000-08:00

Sobriety — an unreasonable proposition.

"An addict wants drama, at least an addict who's not using wants drama. It's the other addiction. That's what takes over once you're clean. That clean and sober crap is a joke. You can be clean, but you're never going to be sober. Not like a normal person, anyway.

"Sometimes at night I just want to cry. For no particular reason. It's a free-floating anxiety that takes over, a sense of worthlessness. I feel like I want to be a better person, but I am compelled to disappoint people I care about.

"The hardest thing is to accept that all's well. When things are going smoothly it's dangerous. That's when I feel the most uneasy. I tell myself that life is good, get over it, but I can't believe it."

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a man of right

2011-11-21T12:23:00.000-08:00

Bobo Shanti — uncommon wisdom and a true life.

"I was born into a bad neighborhood with guns and fighting. I changed but it was very hard. Now, everything I say and do comes from my religion. I am Rasta, of the Bobo Shanti sect. My goal is to tune my integrity so that my word is true, so that I live a true life.

"Some are surprised that we use the christian Bible in our faith. It is our history book — the black man history book. We have adapted some of it into Bobo Shanti. But not all of it. Our idea of God is very different. We believe that a man of right is God in flesh, and a man of wrong is Satan.

"I believe in positive and negative energy. Choosing positive and counting your blessings makes your world a better place. For me, this is a wise and important religious idea. It's not so common to find wisdom in this day and age."

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moving through the landscape

2011-11-10T09:08:00.000-08:00

A perfect storm — good health and a sudden influx of cash.

"I was always concerned with the land, the weather, the natural world. As a kid, I would record the temperature and measure the snowfall. When it stormed I was so happy.

"I was a hiker. I still am. Walking in the woods, the mountains, is such a pleasure. It's like nothing else is important except moving through the landscape.

"When I was about 50 I got very sick. I recovered totally. A little while later I came into some money. It was what you could call a perfect storm: I got very focussed on important things, and then I had enough money so I didn't worry about anything.

"Now I hike all over the U.S. and visit my grandchildren in New Zealand. I carry them around in a backpack while I hike the mountain trails. I hope they learn to love walking as much as I do. I would die if I couldn't walk."

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the couple we used to be

2011-11-01T13:48:00.000-07:00

Childless — chasing the stable life.

"I married my high school boyfriend and we settled into a nice apartment over a tavern. I worked as a waitress downstairs and my husband piloted a supply boat out on the lake.

"We tried having children for years. Finally we saw a doctor about it. He found that my husband was sterile, his seed was no good. We were shocked, especially my husband. He was shook up really bad and couldn't function hardly.

"He got fired from the boat outfit and started hanging around the bar where I worked. I told him I would lose my job if he didn't leave. He was hopeless and things went straight down from there.

"We were desperate. We moved to the city. I thought if we could speed up our lives things would get better. I was okay, but my husband was still swirling down the drain. I borrowed a thousand dollars from my mother and we moved again, way out in the country.

"He started working on a ranch right down the highway. We gave up our dream of having children. I just wanted a stable life. Something about working with the animals changed him. He was gentle again, and we became the couple we used to be. I still wish to God I could have raised children, but I didn't have that choice."

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human psychology

2011-10-24T13:46:00.000-07:00

Higher education — snagging a job before they're all gone.

"I'm an electrician now. I was in college during the 80s but got distracted. That was a great decade for fun, but not for serious things. I quit school and hung out in town for two years doing pretty much nothing. I joked that I was studying human psychology, which in a way, I was.

"A friend was working in Alaska, on the North Slope, and he got me a job there as a cook. I did that for awhile, then I dove a truck and apprenticed with an electrician. After three years of that I was ready to go back to school.

"I tried to challenge some courses and get credits for life experiences but that didn't work out too well. I fought with the dean tooth and nail, but finally gave up in disgust. Now I travel around with a contractor doing electrical work on military bases. It's a good job, which is really saying something in this bullshit economy."

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our parents were clueless

2011-10-18T05:52:00.000-07:00

Leisure time after school — hanging out and blowing stuff up.

"There was this junkyard. We'd hang out there after school and blow up stuff with pipe bombs we made in our basements. Sometimes we would take pistols and shoot the place up. It was practically right in town. I don't know how we never got arrested.

"Once we lit a fuse and it didn't work so we grabbed the bomb and put it on top of a big rock. Then we threw stuff at it and it finally blew up and shot pieces of galvanized pipe into our legs and stomachs. We were crazy kids. Our parents were clueless. It was a bad combination.

"My math teacher in high school sold me a .32 Beretta pistol right in the hallway by his classroom. Nobody thought anything of it. I was probably fifteen years old. I bought a box of ammunition on the way home. Once I drank a big Budweiser four-pack and then took that pistol out and shot a whole box of ammo at a passing freight train."

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death factories

2011-10-17T09:54:00.000-07:00

Farming — moving right along, dead kittens and all.

"My dog died when I was seven. There's a lot of dying on a farm: cats, cows, chickens. Farms are death factories.

"I once watched our hired man casually kick aside two dying kittens on his way to the calf pens. He was what you'd call a gentle man, too, someone who'd stay up all night helping deliver a calf.

"The standards are different on a farm. You respect life but you also need to move along. There's no time to agonize over things."

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little spikes of feeling

2011-09-30T09:10:00.000-07:00

Life in Maine — sardine sandwiches and an understanding doctor.

"I lived in a trailer in Maine for two freaking years, heated it with a kerosene stove and lived on sardine sandwiches and canned beans. I worked part-time as a secretary in an outpost type doctor's office. His clients were mostly drunks and addicts. He prescribed a lot of medicine which is why I stayed on so long.

"One day he called me into his private office and said he couldn't give me any more scripts. The state medical people were sniffing around, he said. I said okay but could I have one for the road. He wrote up a big one and I filled it that evening at the Target in Bangor.

"Most of his clients stopped coming once he shut them off. He fired me after a few weeks. I could see it coming, of course, but I hadn't made any plans. As much as I hated living in that cold trailer, I couldn't see any further than tomorrow.

"That's what it's really like when you're a drug addict. You can't see past our own nose. You can't plan anything. Nothing is important to you. It's like a long, numb depression with little spikes of feeling."

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whatever it takes

2011-09-29T13:01:00.000-07:00

Working for a living — collecting the cash and calming down the boss.

"When I was about eighteen I worked for a guy who was a crook, really, but he was okay to me. He never hurt anyone that I heard of. He was only crooked because he loaned money to people and he wasn't a registered bank, if you know what I mean.

"Anyway, my job was to run around and collect the cash. I was a big kid, about 250 pounds and six feet four. I was always goofing around, and somehow that scared people. It made me seem unpredictable, I guess. That's why my boss hired me. He said even he flinched sometimes when he was around me.

"I worked for him for almost three years, collected a pile of money, and never once had to hurt anyone. He'd tell me to do whatever it took. I carried brass knuckles in my back pocket just so he'd calm down about me being too soft.

"I guess the biggest lesson I learned from that era was you can't tell much about someone by how they act or what they say. People say and do whatever it takes to get through the day. There's really no such thing as your personality."

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that rough irish look

2011-09-25T11:11:00.000-07:00

Saturday nights — insincere fist fights and a loud crashing exit.

"Me and my buddy, Donald, would hang out in the bars and stir up trouble just for kicks. He hardly drank. I was a boozer though. It worked out.

"He was something to watch, I'll tell you. We'd be in a place for five minutes and he'd already be working on his second pick-up attempt. He used corny lines and they worked. One went, 'My name's Donald, but they call me 'The Don' — wanna know why? Because I'm the first thing you're gonna see when you wake up tomorrow.'

"He wasn't good-looking either. He had that rough Irish look; his nose was too big and his cheeks were puffy even though he wasn't fat. He dressed well. Maybe that was his secret. Good dresser and a fast talker. That was him alright.

"Our best times were on Saturday nights when the bars were crowded and noisy. One good trick was to have a loud argument and fake a fist fight. We'd be walking down the row and Donald would pick a place based on some kind of feeling he'd get. We'd duck inside, get a table and start drinking.

"Pretty soon one of us would start an argument and make it get out of control. Thing I learned about drunks is, if you lower your voice so they can barely near you, they'll get angry about it. Then usually they come at you and it looks like everything's their fault.

"When that happened, Donald would jump up and trip the guy. Then he'd get insulted with me and start a fake fight. If the other drunk got up Donald would hit him for real and usually knock him senseless. We'd take our squabble towards the door and make a loud crashing exit and then laugh ourselves practically into a coma."

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my first clue about bad men

2011-09-17T14:41:00.000-07:00

Lawrence, Kansas — book stores, coffee shops and a semi-dangerous situation.

"I was at university in Lawrence, Kansas when I got my first clue about bad men. I was fine my first year. But that summer I stayed on to help my best friend's father open up a motel out by the interstate.

"They opened for business in the late summer and I volunteered to work the front desk at night until school started up. I knew money was tight so I insisted that I was okay working by myself.

"After a few nights of checking in tired families and rowdy truckers I realized it could become a semi-dangerous situation so I started carrying a small camping knife with me. I kept it right on the desk, just out of sight under the counter overhang. I couldn't imagine ever having to use it though.

"One night — it was very late, almost dawn — my friend's father came in. At first he just asked me questions about how I was handling the customers and was I tired and needed a rest. I said I was okay and was catching up on my summer reading. He was leaning over the desk like where a customer would sign the guest book. I could smell liquor on his breath.

"He said he could get me a nice room if I wanted to take a nap. He was smiling in kind of a weird way. He touched my arm, then grabbed my hand and started pulling me towards him. I yanked my arm away and said I was fine in a loud voice and he instantly became angry and swung around the counter and stood beside me, pressing against my shoulder.

"I grabbed my knife and jumped up and away from him. I just held the knife up in the air and told him to leave me alone. He froze and stared at me. His eyes were all glassy and wet. Then he started crying and saying he was sorry but I was still scared and I didn't move or say anything.

"He backed out the front door and got in his car and drove away. I knew he'd probably go onto the interstate so I called the police and reported him as a drunk driver. I heard later that they tracked him down and pulled him over. He never got charged though, for some reason. I didn't have anything to do with him after that and I never told my friend what happened.

"It all sounds so dramatic to tell it now, but it's just one little drunken man story and there are plenty of those around. Any woman can tell you that."

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without telling anyone

2011-08-31T16:45:00.000-07:00

A poisoning in Eau Claire — cheaper than forgiveness.

"I was raised in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. We lived right in town. There was my mother and father and me and my two sisters. I had a brother, but he died as a baby. When I was about ten my grandmother and grandfather moved in with us and life got a little complicated.

"They were my father's parents and my own mother was disgusted that he let them move right in, almost without telling anyone. We really didn't have room for them. My sisters and me all had to share a room. My dad was always fighting with my mother about our living situation.

"When my oldest sister was a senior in high school she was so angry about us girls all living in one small room that she threatened to kill our grandparents. She said she would poison them and I believed her. She was fierce that way.

"I was the quiet one so I just went along with things, kind of half holding my breath. My oldest sister graduated from high school and immediately took off for Madison. That summer my grandfather had trouble breathing. He went to the hospital and died right away from pneumonia, they said. Right after that my grandmother had a heart attack and had to go to a nursing home.

"My sister never came back. Not even once. She skipped the funeral and she never even called about her grandmother getting sick and going away.

"For a long time I thought she killed my grandfather with some slow acting poison. She had it in her. She could be mean and she never forgave anyone for anything."

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to shut them up

2011-08-30T14:32:00.000-07:00

Married at sixteen — and living to tell about it.

"I met my husband in New Jersey. I was a waitress in a diner and he walked in with some of his sailor buddies. I kept joking about marrying one of them. My friends teased me about it and to shut them up I said I would marry him — and I pointed to Dennis. I had never seen him before in my life.

"And I did marry him. I was only sixteen. We had to get married in North Carolina because of my age. We were together for fourteen years.

"I divorced him after I caught him with my sister. He was a son of a bitch after that. He died of cancer as a fairly young man."

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a serious kid

2011-08-14T09:43:00.000-07:00

Something else happened — and from then on I was a serious kid.

"When I was a kid I read the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and it changed my young life completely. I wore old dungarees and raggedy tee-shirts and even an old straw hat. I thought I was the coolest kid in the neighborhood. It wasn't like today where kids have to all look alike to fit in.

"On weekends me and my buddies would walk the train tracks and pretend we were hobos. We did harmless things like putting pennies on the tracks so the train would squish them. Once though, we hopped an empty boxcar and rode it for over two hundred miles, way into New Hampshire.

"I called my father for a ride home and at first he didn't believe we rode the train all that way. He called us juvenile delinquents and I remember we all laughed about that after I hung up. It took him over four hours to drive to where we were. When we got in the car I could tell he was really angry.

"I tried to make a joke of it but that just made him angrier. He threatened to make us all walk home to teach us a lesson. My buddies were scared and kept quiet but I kept taunting him and bragged that we could camp in the woods and walk home the next day.

"He said, 'Oh yeah?' and slammed on the brakes and tried to pull over but the car was skidding sideways. A truck hit us hard in the door and we nearly flipped over. When everything stopped I could see one of my friends in the back seat was covered with blood and he was pointing to his mouth. He couldn't breath.

"I looked at my dad because I thought he would know what to do. He just sat there gripping the steering wheel. I jumped into the back seat and started breathing into the boy's mouth but I wasn't doing it right. He passed out and I thought he was dead. I started screaming at my father and he looked at me like he didn't even know me.

"Finally I laid my friend down and started pushing on his chest. I was crying and cursing and pounding on his ribs. All of a sudden, he opened his eyes and took a deep, gasping breath and I turned around and hit my father hard on his head. Then I climbed out through the front door and ran into the woods until the ambulance came.

"I don't know if something else happened during that trip, or even if I remember the way things really were, but that day sort of marked the end of my Huck Finn life. From then on I was a serious kid."

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it sounded so stupid

2011-07-25T11:56:00.000-07:00

The acting trade — good posture, self confidence and vomiting.

"I became an actor because I was shy and awkward and thought acting would help me cover up. It didn't work. I became even more shy. I started getting sick and throwing up before avery performance. I tried to fight it off but nothing stopped the fear that controlled me.

"Later on I met this old man in New Jersey who worked with a tiny theater group in Trenton. He had been acting for forty years, all of them in New Jersey at this small unknown theater. There was something about him that seemed important. I stayed for one of their performances and it was unbelievable. I couldn't make sense of how they were so obscure because they were better than almost anything I'd ever seen.

"I talked with the older man afterwards and he said acting was all about posture and attitude and how confidently you carried yourself. He said it takes something more than confidence to be really confident. He didn't think acting skill was that important. That really blew my mind. It sounded so stupid, but was coming from such a great natural actor.

"Back home I tried out some of his ideas. Sometimes my confidence was so much more than my ability — and I would fake it so well — that the play would be re-written to match my performance. I really pumped myself up.

"I still throw up before the curtain sometimes. But I think that man was mostly right."

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funny to watch

2011-07-24T08:55:00.000-07:00

Shrimping — easier than farming in the Kentucky mud.

"In Kentucky the winters were too bad, the farming was a sorry mess. I was working all the time, day and night, and the money wasn't coming in. We moved here to the Gulf (Gulf of Mexico) to start over. Shrimping is a way easier living than farming in the iced-over mud.

"My relatives all come here to visit now. It's not me they like so much as the weather. It's funny to watch my in-laws sitting inside in the air conditioning, watching TV, while they talk about the beautiful weather outside, and the cold they left behind up north.

"You look around and you'd think the biggest business here is shrimping and fishing. There's boats and nets everywhere you look. But the biggest business here is still drug smuggling, just like it's been for fifty years. It comes in by boat or plane, usually at night. It don't bother me except I worry about accidentally being in a wrong place at a wrong time.

"One night we were dragging (our nets) north of here. It was real quiet, no moon, and we were really hitting the shrimp. I was making one last pass before heading in and then — Bam — there was lights everywhere shining down from a helicopter that came out of nowhere. They were hollering at us using a megaphone and I couldn't make it out. The lights were blinding. Then, all of a sudden, they took off.

"I'm still not sure if they were the DEA or the other guys. Around here people say they are both the same, that they work together. Some think the Feds smuggle more drugs than the locals. You can't tell by me. I'm just a shrimper, and I mean it."

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a real job

2011-07-02T18:00:00.000-07:00

Logging business logic — the money trickles in and pours out.

"We had it pretty good here, I guess. The wood's been good and we've kept busy right through the winter most years. Prices aren't always right, but that's the lumber business — the money trickles in and it pours out. Lucky we own our woodlots straight up; if we had to pay stump fees we'd be out of business.

"I've worked my saw or a loader or truck all my life. There's nothing else to do, and nothing else I'd want to do. There's nothing else I can do, really. I've never made any big money, and I've been hurt a few times. If I'd ever stopped to think about it much I would've quit and worked a real job somewhere.

"That's the way it's always been up here on this hardscrabble hill; people stay because they're too busy fighting for a living to think of anything better."

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the big road

2011-06-28T18:50:00.000-07:00

A local hero on the mighty St. Lawrence — for a few minutes.

"I've lived here on the St. Lawrence a long time. I graduate high school this year and then I'll spend a season working on the river. The river's the big road. Thousands of people float by on that water. I've been out there ever since I was a tiny boy.

"Most of my friends want to move to Toronto or Ottawa to try out a big city. I like Toronto, too, and someday I'll go myself. I want to be here a little while longer, when I'm out of school, as an adult.

"Last season a kid fell in and nobody could find him. It was a riot out there. I was just about to gun my boat and head to shore when I saw his little head pop up by my outboard. I fished him out and pumped on his chest and he started breathing okay then. I was a local hero for about two days."

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where I'm from

2011-06-26T12:21:00.000-07:00

Looking for a way out — matching goals with geography.

"I'm looking for a way out of here. Where I'm from nobody is safe, you can't trust adults to be adults, kids twelve and thirteen run the streets and have guns and make all the rules. Kids that age don't know any better and the adults are clueless. If you're smart, you get out.

"Teachers think you work hard so you can go back and help the neighborhood. My teachers are all from somewhere else. I'm sure their hoods could have used the help, but they left.

"No matter where you're from, if you want to improve yourself, you move away so you can do that. My goals don't match where I'm from."

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rising tides

2011-06-20T18:33:00.000-07:00

Gulf of Mexico region sees fragile recovery one year after the Big Spill.

To those of us who live on the Gulf of Mexico and see it every day, its presence is as the prairie is to a Kansan or the mountains are to a Coloradoan; a stabilizing comfort, a symbol and reminder of our connection to nature. And something we had completely taken for granted.

That all changed on April 20th, 2010 when the Deepwater Horizon offshore oil drilling platform exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, killing eleven workers, and instantly produced a gushing oil spill that would become the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history and take three tortuous months to stop. As the days and weeks passed we watched endless videos of the gusher, incredulous that nothing could be done to stop the poisonous oil and gas from spewing into the Gulf waters at the insane rate of 53,000 barrels a day. Finally, in mid-July, after releasing five million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, the wellhead was finally capped. The flow of poison had stopped.

Somewhere along the way though, before the well was capped, we all began to realize what was at stake. It hadn't seemed possible, early on, that something like this could actually ruin the Gulf, put tens of thousands out of work and thousands of businesses into bankruptcy. But tens of thousands of jobs were lost and many a business did fail as a direct result of the Big Spill. As far as there being permanent damage to the Gulf of Mexico, and how severe that damage might be, it's too soon to tell. It turns out it's too soon to tell a lot of things about the affects of the BP oil spill, even though it's been a year since the deep-water gusher stopped. By some estimates there is still 65% of the total oil spill dissolved or dispersed in Gulf waters. Some of that will eventually drop to the floor, currents or storms will flush some out and microbes will eat some. Then we'll see, over many future years, what has really happened to the Gulf of Mexico.

Tourism is on the rise in the Gulf region, though not yet
back to pre-spill levels.

It's not too soon to assess Gulf area residents' feelings about their Gulf of Mexico though. It's prized more than ever which, of course, makes for a natural sadness, much like visiting a sick friend who you realize you've never fully appreciated. That's one side of it. The other side is that Gulf residents and businesses have worked hard to regain their economic footing, with partial success.

The area hardest hit economically by the BP spill was southern Louisiana, then spreading west into coastal Texas and east along the coastline of Mississippi, Alabama and the Florida panhandle and south down the Florida peninsula, decreasing in impact the further away from Louisiana you travel. Those suffering direct losses from the Big Spill fall into two groups: commercial fishing (including shrimp and oysters) and tourism, though the chain of hardship extends to include nearly every adjacent business and person. When shrimpers cannot work they don't buy gasoline, movie tickets or restaurant meals, for example, and local governments don't collect as much tax money that is needed to service a community. Commercial fishing is a two and a half billion-dollar business in Louisiana alone, much of which was shut down in 2010 and gradually reinstated over many months extending well into this year. Commercial fishing losses for the whole Gulf region during the year following the disaster are estimated at 2.5 billion dollars.

Losses to tourism are more difficult to compute, especially because these losses may well persist over several years as the public image of the Gulf region is gradually rehabilitated. One estimate that seems plausible is twenty three billion dollars in losses to Gulf Coast tourism over three years.

Shrimp boats at harbor, eastern Gulf of Mexico.

So what you've read so far is a snapshot of where the BP oil spill disaster and aftermath stand in mid-2011, but it's a sterile picture, one without the humanity, the sweat, hard work, suffering and perseverance of the Gulf people. To fill out this human side of the story I talked with dozens of business owners, commercial fishermen, shrimpers and ordinary citizens along the Gulf coast from Naples, Florida to New Orleans. What I discovered was both surprising and expected.

What I expected — and found — were ordinary people going about their business of making a living, feeding their kids and paying their bills just like everyone else. Most deep-water shrimpers have long been back to work, though not able to harvest everywhere in the Gulf until recently. Ditto with other commercial fishermen. Tourism has rebounded to near pre-spill levels, but not anywhere near pre-recession numbers, which illustrates the especially bad timing of the Gulf disaster, coming as it did atop an economy already eroding away because of the recession. They labor for today's bills and groceries, but unlike most of us they are also scrambling to fill the black hole in their budget caused by the spill. The debts weigh heavily.

It's also not surprising to learn that there is much disagreement about where the spilled oil is, how much of it is out there and what's going to happen to it. Many along the Gulf are suspicious of the often contradictory damage reports and want nothing more than to go about their business without scientists and government biologists issuing scary warnings to the press about the safety of Gulf caught seafood or the threat of tar balls invading beaches even now, nearly a year after the capping of the spill. They realize there was a legitimate health concern during some of last year, but the shrimpers and fishermen feel they know their waters and their craft better than the Massachusetts doctoral students and government bureaucrats that have, in their opinion, effectively hijacked their public relations campaign for the Gulf of Mexico.

What surprised was the difference in attitudes towards BP, who unequivocally bears most of the responsible for the Big Spill and has admitted as much. Resort and motel operators were almost unanimously bitter towards the company, blaming them, justifiably, for the devastating loss of business. Restaurant owners were similarly upset. BP has paid damage claims to some of these businesses. Most recipients of BP funds in the hospitality industry, however, scoffed at these payments as far too little to compensate them for damages at the time of the spill, say nothing about ongoing and direct damages in the future. Adding to their loathing is the cumbersome and, according to some, unfair method BP used to compute damages. Claimants were required to prove their losses by comparing the current period's business with comparable periods in the past, but they were also required to prove they suffered, and will suffer, direct damages from the spill and were not simply affected by bad press. Also, there was a proximity requirement that limited payments to those from Tampa northward, for instance, even though there were undeniably legitimate and direct damages south of that line.

Oil-free beaches and a vigorous advertising campaign have
brought tourists, and their cash, back to the region.

The attitudes towards BP of those making their living directly from the Gulf were strikingly different than the hospitality industry. Fishermen and shrimpers seemed to feel that, "accidents will happen" best describes the oil spill. They were most concerned with getting back to work, though most had filed and received some compensation from BP for their losses. Their comparably muted reaction to the disaster is difficult to fathom. After all, they nearly had their livelihood taken from them, and their future is still very much uncertain. Some of this mystery can perhaps be explained by how much the region depends on the oil industry for jobs; 320,000 people work in oil-related jobs in Louisiana alone. That's nearly one out of every five jobs in the state.

Another factor that might explain the almost forgiving attitude of the commercial fishing industry is that they seem to feel more empowered to improve their situation because they work hands-on with nature and "make their own luck" as a shrimper explained to me. A restaurant owner can only advertise so much; at some point she must just wait and hope the customers walk in. But a shrimper or commercial fisherman takes what he can find, then moves on to more fertile waters and coaxes even more into his net. My guess is that this process makes commercial fishermen feel more in control of their destiny and more responsible for their success — and less inclined to blame others for their problems, even when that other is BP who spilled toxic oil all through their fishing grounds.

In some ways the Gulf region is a hopeful place. People are back to work. Beaches are clean. The tourists are back spending money. There's a sense of normalcy, as much as there can be during this slow economic time. There's less hope when you consider what might have happened to the Gulf of Mexico. Is it okay? When will we know? Living with uncertainty is a fact of life, especially when dealing with nature. But we can do more than simply hope that the Gulf pulls through. We can declare catastrophes like this Big Spill a cost of doing business and charge the cost back to the corporations. Call it a tax, call it a pre-paid expense; call it fair. Before the next oil disaster occurs in the Gulf of Mexico let's make sure there is a 50 billion dollar fund set aside. That's a drop in the bucket for the oil companies, but a whole lot of hope for everyone else.

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nodak

2011-06-08T16:21:00.000-07:00

Life in Miami — good food, beaches and prairie dreams.

"I live in Miami now which is at least one-eighty away from where I'm from. Here it's hot and humid and expensive and hard to find a parking space. I like it though. I really like the food. The food in Nodak is good, but there's no taste. I call it Nodak but usually people from Montana make a joke on North Dakota and call it that.

"I drive a lot here, just like back home. Back home I would drive an hour to see a movie. Here I drive an hour just to make it twelve miles at rush hour. I'd rather be on the prairie during rush hour.

"My son likes the beach here. All kids like the beach. Kids like everything. He says he wants to be me, but really, I want to be like him."

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