You are probably screaming at the monitor right now: We have the largest environmental disaster on our hand which has had and will continue to have significant impact on people’s lives and livelihood for generations to come. And what did you do? You bought t-shirts from Threadless?! Yes ma’am and sir, yes we did.
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Wordless. Remember the pelicans.
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On July 7, 2010, it is official:
“Tests show tar balls washed up on the Texas coast are from the spill, meaning every U.S. Gulf state — Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida and now Texas — has been soiled by the spill [sic].”
Timeline: Gulf of Mexico oil spill [sic]
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Remember the Gulf. Remember what is still going on even when the 6 o’clock news has stopped talking about it, or when the newspaper at your breakfast table no longer included the story on the first 10 pages, or when your Twitter stream no longer included any keywords related to the Gulf disaster.
No, I don’t know how remembering the fact that it is still happening and will continue going on, the fact that life will never get back to “The way it used to be” for the Gulf region, and the fact that there are more than 27,000 abandoned oil and gas wells in the Gulf, right now, is going to make any difference. I don’t know. I do know, deep down in my heart, that it will be an act of betrayal if we forget right now.
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Amount of oil found on shore. Click picture to see Interactive Map on NY Times
Love these shirts. I can’t help but recommend some local places for Gulf Coast wear… Dirty Coast, Fleurty Girl, and Skip-n-Whistle. All are good, too, for Saints wear, since it’s that time of year again! 🙂
DC: http://dirtycoast.com/home.php
FG: http://fleurtygirl.net/
SNW: http://www.skipnwhistle.com/
Cold Spaghetti recently posted…Read- ye! And be thee not so stupid!
’nuff said.
Yup. (Thanks!)
Awesome. We got ours too but since My Guy has a thing about no-matching-outfits-ever, I tricked him by agreeing to meet him someplace after work knowing full well he wore the same shirt I was to work that day. He did not want to be near me. Ha ha ha.
OK. OK. It’s probably a you-had-to-be-there joke. Anyway, these shirts are cool, and I wear it with pride even though it’s marred by a whole lot of anger, sadness and wistfulness, as in I wish I could do more.
Justine recently posted…Project Band-Aid
And they want to start drilling in Alaska, too.
https://secure.nrdconline.org/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=1911&s_src=nrdchpa
Elly Lou recently posted…Heartache
Oh my god–I just saw all the space my “comment” took up! Pardonnay!!
Vintage Christine recently posted…Ive Been At The Beach Where Have YOU Been- Huh
Dearest, first of all, you never ever need to apologize for the length of the comment. I am the Self-proclaimed Comment Hog here. So I will never ever call anybody out on it. 😉
Oh I am so happy that you come back. Every time when I wrote about the gulf, I thought of you. I thought about how stupid my posts are going to look like next to the reality that you, your friends, your neighbors have to live with every single day. I thought about how this is all talk and easy for me to show compassion this way. Then I feel powerless. Then I feel guilty for feeling powerless because WTF am I talking to you about feeling powerless?! You are in the middle of it!!!!!
I have nothing better to say other than I am sorry that this is going on. I will continue to talk about it though. I am so worried that people not “affected (directly)” are going to forget. And it does seem like so. Oh yeah. Joe Barton apologized to BP. That has got to be one of the most unbelievable moments I have ever witnessed on TV. WTF??!!!!
This past March, my husband and I decided to take the plunge and buy a condo in Florida. I’ve chronicled what we went through in order to do this (like, can you say HELL?!) and of course soon after we made our offer the “BP thing” happened. We could have cancelled the contract but we decided to stay the course and do what we could to help the economies of both Mississippi AND Florida. The Alabama and Florida beach areas were jammed over the 4th of July but still, I’m sure rentals were down since no one could go in the Gulf and if you have kids I can only imagine the whining when you tell them they can’t go swimming except in the pool, which is not such a great consolation when they can see that great big Gulf out there. Now we’re hearing that, UNDER IDEAL CIRCUMSTANCES, the relief well might be ready a little sooner than anticipated. HA HA HA. Tell that to the hurricane gods who are just itching to totally mess things up. Oh, and about all those abandoned wells–my husband is in the business of dismantling offshore wells and when I asked him about this, he said that many of the older wells were abandoned prior to the environmental regs and therefore no one is legally responsible for them any longer. If the government wants to do anything about them, they’re going to have to pony up the bucks, not private industry. But you know what I’m really mad about? The people (oh, like Sarah Palin and the US Chamber of Commerce, for instance) who are now actually DEFENDING BP!!! What is WRONG with them?!!!
Vintage Christine recently posted…Ive Been At The Beach Where Have YOU Been- Huh
Man…
Great shirts.
Maureen@IslandRoar recently posted…Doggy Diet
I know… Depressing…
ps: you’re called out on my blog today. hope you’re up for the challenge. mwuah.
The challenge’d better involve stripper pole. I need some cheering up, woman!
it’s beyond comprehension. forgetting is just not an option.
pattypunker recently posted…she’s wicked in all the right ways
You are right! Not an option.
Day 78. I have stared at your post for a few moments and let that sink in thoroughly.
My house was built in less than 78 days, complete with a full basement and retainer wall for the 2 car garage.
BP has made $7,254,000,000 in profit in the last 78 days. Before we subtract the $350,000,000 they have spent on clean-up and what the government is making them set aside. Which would leave them at a paltry $6,904,000,000 in profits.
You could have sailed around the world in a trimaran and already spent an extra 6 days doing the talk show circuit, as it only took 72 days for the circumnavigation of the globe.
Now it sits in the pit of my stomach. Yes, we buy the damn t-shirts, we buy them because we want to do something, ANYTHING to make sure someone knows that not everyone has forgotten.
I owe you extra big hugs!!!!
Wicked Shawn recently posted…Bitch Please………
M’lady, this comment of yours is much much better than my post. Seriously. How much do I love you? And actually, sometimes I wonder whether I am going to walk out of the house and get struck by lightning because it is such good fortunate of mine to have met several of you here through my blog.
That was beautiful, Shawn. *fist bumps*
Elly Lou recently posted…Heartache
Not forgetting.
You know, it does worry me that we humans are so hugely adaptive that we can begin to take almost anything in stride…I suppose, even the loss of the most beautiful stretch of coastline in our country (arguably, but no one would dare). We’ll have a kind of Stockholm Syndrome set in around this travesty; we won’t be able to help it because it’s built into our brains. We won’t all be in the same place at the same time about it, though, and that’s where our friends come in: they’ll remind us that Earth wasn’t always this mistreated. Friends don’t let friends forget.
Nance recently posted…Speaks Barrels-Doctor- My Eyes
Again, I want to turn your comment into another post on its own!
“Friends don’t let friends forget.” Right on!
So, so sad! Such a tragedy. And I hate it that they’re still calling it a “spill.”
Jane recently posted…My Heart Going Boom Boom Boom
Yup. Notice the [sic] I sneaked in there? 😉
I’ll never, ever be able to forget.
Aunt Becky recently posted…The Incredible Lightness Of Truth
{{{hugs}}}
I’m wearing my shirt today, unfortunately I have had to explain it to people…
Robin recently posted…Training Ourselves
Yup. That’s what I expect too.