Heat Index 104 And

...it's not even July yet. I wonder if all the oil in the Gulf has anything to do with the heat, you know increasing the speed of global climate change?

I made a beach run this morning to check out the condition of the Gulf in my town since Okaloosa Island in Ft. Walton Beach was covered in tar balls yesterday. The pictures on the local news were just awful.

Photo Galleries : Northwest Florida Daily News

For more local news on the oil and just in case that link doesn't take you to the photos here's my local newspaper links and the local news channel:

Northwest Florida Daily News

pnj.com Pensacola News Journal Pensacola news, community, entertainment, y


WEAR ABC 3


But as you can see below in my fuzzy picture, not sure what happened, the ancient Coolpix just didn't want to focus this morning, but it could be haze from the heat too, anyway, the water is clear for the time being. There was a huge skimmer ship on the horizon and I tried several times to get a shot of it and they were all big time BLURRY. I gave up. And I'm posting the two pictures below this one all for the benefit of the Florida Department of Tourism:

The water is so clear at Gulf Islands National Seashore between Pensacola Beach and Navarre Beach that you can see the shells. See them shells? Do you see them? The water is clean for the moment.

Look there's some toes in desperate need of a pedicure. But there is nary a tar ball floating around my feet.

I have learned a few things over the last couple of weeks. For most of my life I have been a huge supporter of Jackson Browne and his causes. What I never knew was how exhausting being an activist can be. It can take a toll on your life, your mental state and friendships. A week or so ago the spousal unit and I saw tar balls, many, many tar balls in the water and on the beach at Gulf Islands National Seashore. At the time I didn't have the oil on the shore or oil in the water numbers in my phone, at the time I didn't know we would be the only two people in the area to witness this. We took our crappy camera to CNN at Pensacola Beach and showed them but no one checked it out. We got busy with our real lives and I forgot to notify the local news, I thought I had taken care of it on a national level, I mean seriously.

I finally got around to posting a picture on my local news channel's Facebook page and one of the comments was "why didn't I show landmarks for exactly where I was". Excuse me, these beaches aren't named, they don't have bathrooms, much less a trash can. There are no landmarks, 20 miles of white sand and the occaisional parking lot here and there. I learned to be more specific about where I'm taking the picture.

Anyway, that particular weekend every time I mentioned oil or tar balls, friends would say, "Our beach is clear, quit whining, enjoy it while you can". While I appreciate clean beaches, I can't let go of what is happening and what can happen. Last week as tar balls and oil flooded Orange Beach, AL (or was it Gulf Shores?) Anyway, I heard a national news correspondent comment that people on Pensacola Beach were breathing a sigh of relief. A SIGH OF RELIEF? People this is not over, it hasn't even really gotten started good as far as coming ashore. We can't breathe sighs of relief, we need to yell, scream, holler and yes, pull our hair out because nothing is being done. After reading about the Mexican oil rig in the 70s I'm beginning to wonder if anything can be done beyond letting the well empty itself out.

I'm beyond frustrated with the governor of Mississippi. He's like the mayor of Amity in the first Jaws movie. He will not believe the oil is a problem until a big black tidal wave washes ashore in Gulf Port. I understand he wants people to come to their beaches, I understand that their beaches are clear, run some tourism commercials then but quit acting like the rest of us are making up the possibility of something catastrophic being out there just on our horizon. It is very real.

I heard this morning that there might be a 40 mile dead zone in the Gulf. Do you know how much sea life resides in 40 miles of water? I don't have exact numbers but let's go with A LOT.

We have lived here 13 years this July 4th. We do not see dolphins every time we go to the beach. It is so infrequent that when we see a dolphin we squeal like tourists, it's that rare for us. Every single time we have been to the beach in the last few weeks we have seen dolphins. And not just a random loner dolphin, we've seen pods of them. I hope Mother Nature is keeping them safe from the oil, keeping them ahead of the deluge. I've seen so many dolphins lately that I no longer think it's exciting, I'm starting to think it's creepy. That's how rarely we saw them before now. I see them so much that it's creepy.

Last night we were at the pier and a guy caught a shark. It didn't hold the normal excitement for me. It was bittersweet. There was one part of me that thought, "wow he caught a shark, cool" another part that said, "well at least he saved it from death by oil" and then my final thought was, "what if this little guy is one of the last of his kind". Shouldn't the healthy fish be left alone for now? Shouldn't they be given a chance to get to safe waters and mate and breed and survive?

I've never been a person that thought animals, especially fish, shouldn't be eaten but now as more and more sea life is endangered due to oil and tar balls and dispersants, maybe we should let them be. I know right now while everyone says Gulf seafood is safe, I think for the time being when I get my fish and shrimp cravings I'll take my chances with good old Captain D's or Red Lobster. I hate to not support my local fish markets but I'm erring on the side of caution.

60 Blocks of Summer Challenge

I joined The 60 Blocks of Summer challenge on Flickr. My first two blocks can be seen below:

I made these blocks using the tutorial found here:

Oh, Fransson!: How to Make Paintbox Blocks

I thought this challenge would be a good way for me to become besties with my rotary cutter, ruler and sewing machine. I don't have a specific project in mind and honestly my fabric stash is pretty random so I'm just going to work on different squares and see what happens. I may get a sample quilt out of the challenge or lots of smaller projects. Either way my sewing skilz should improve immensely.

I forgot to take an updated picture of my A Haunting Mermaid from Carriage House Samplings so I'll do that another day. I have made a tiny bit of progress, I mentioned how time consuming being an activist is didn't I?

Gulf Islands National Seashore

Yesterday we took a drive along Gulf Islands National Seashore. We found this bit of debris in the water and fished it out: It's coated in dispersed oil. It's thick and gunky and a nasty piece of business.

Here is a picture of the this piece of whatever coated in this mess.

Here are tar balls

Do you see how much of this crap there is? No matter what anyone says this will not be easy to clean up. This is one section of beach and no news people were here. We told CNN about it and I have yet to see it reported. Even our local news isn't reporting it. They are all hanging out at Casino Beach in Pensacola instead of driving a few miles up the coast to see the real story.

This gunk you see on the beach was floating in the water. You couldn't step anywhere without coming into contact with it.

Of course we saw hazmat guys up the road behind the million dollar homes where uh, no tar balls were reported. We saw no one on this stretch of beach and we came back a few hours later and it was worse.

Plastic buckets and shovels will not clean up this mess. It's huge, it's ridiculous, and I'm beyond furious. We can't begin to imagine how this will be cleaned up. It's just too much.

I have emailed our local news and CNN and am telling everyone I can about what we've seen. The story is not getting out. There was a sea turtle nest marked just a few feet from this and this stuff was scattered so far along this beach. I can't begin to capture it with my crappy camera.

I am not doomsdaying, I am not saying the sky is falling but I am saying that we are being misled about how easy this is going to be to clean up.

BP Left More Than Their Footprints

Well this morning tar balls started washing ashore at Gulf Islands National Seashore. This is the most gorgeous stretch of beach you will ever see. So what are tar balls? Tar balls look like dog doodoo or dukey or poo or whatever you call it. They are brown and shiney and warm. How do I know they are warm? I stuck my toe in one when I thought it was a piece of driftwood. Whoops. I just gave Tony Hayward, BP head another excuse for what these could be.

The green in the picture is June grass, it's a yearly occurence and used to be the bane of my existence. I will never ever complain about the layer of swamp grass in my bathing suit again because next time I swim in the Gulf my bathing suit will be full of tar balls. I'll take June grass any day.

More seaweed and June grass and tar turds, uh, balls.

And more. I wish I could have gotten a picture the length of the beach to show you all just how many of these there are. I wish I could make everyone see what we have to lose if we don't change our dependency on oil. And yeah, I'm embracing my radical ways once again. We as a society have failed the earth, our children, and future generations all in the name of "get me there faster" and convenience. An inconvenient truth, yep sure as hell is.

I left my footprints.

This picture is supposed to be of some surfers getting in their last ride before the Black Tide hits. Maybe if you biggify it(that's Annette's word) you can see them.

Yep that's a tar ball next to my footprint. Maybe we could give the BP execs a tar ball enema? Because that's just about where I want to stick their well.

While walking along the beach I saw the very edge, the curved edge of this perfect sand dollar peaking through the sand. I expected to only pull out a piece of it but amazingly enough it was in one piece. I posed it on a piece of drift wood and was reminded that even when one is having apocolyptic thoughts, end of days kind of crap, some beauty can be found if you only take moment to see it.

In my younger years I was an idealist. I had this vision of the person I wanted to be, I defined myself a certain way and somewhere that girl got lost. She became the person she used to ridicule, the person who quit looking beyond her back yard. The person who accepted the unacceptable just because that was how it was supposed to be.

When I was pregnant with my oldest son we lived in Ohio, there was an oil refinery in town. I didn't know what that meant being a transplanted Tennessean. One day at lunch, I worked at one of the local hospitals, I was talking with a coworker and mentioned all the strange cancers young kids had and the fact that every one my age was on fertility drugs in the lab where we worked. She begin to tell me about the oil refinery and how she blamed it for the infertility and strange cancers. I quit drinking the local water and started buying fresh produce and eggs from the local Amish farmers. I read Diet for a Small Planet and I Shopped for a Better World. I became a vegetarian. I tried so hard to make a difference and then somewhere along the way, I just started accepting, I ate a bacon cheeseburger. Life was what it was, I couldn't change anything, I couldn't make a difference and I was so tired. I surrendered to life and became just like everyone else.

Now 23 years later, I have found that inner activist. I have found my flower child. Over the next few weeks and months, I plan to change. Somehow, someway I'm going to make a difference.

Don Henley wrote in the book Heaven is Under Our Feet, and I'm paraphrasing because I can't find the book, it's in the garage somewhere, that sometimes you have to give people what they need not what they want. Basically, we're back to the inconvenient truth. Living greener is not convenient, it's not even pleasant and honestly I don't know if it's even doable. But I do know this, we can all make changes and I learned years ago when I wanted to boycott another company over their infant formula practices that some companies have their brand everywhere. You think you are boycotting only to discover that you have a house full of their brand only it's cloaked and you've been unknowingly supporting them after all. So I don't think a boycott of BP is realistic. I never buy gas there, the only times that has ever happened was when I was on the road and it was my only option.

The Gulf is my Walden Pond and I've let her down. I've lived a life of convenience and made choices that weren't in her best interest. I hope over the next few months to make some serious changes. Can I do it? I don't know, hell I don't even know exactly what to do. I just know that things have got to change, people have got to change, we as a society have to make those hard choices because they are right and not choose the easier road.

I hope with all my heart that the Gulf will be able to revive herself and flourish again. I have seen some interviews that offer a lot of hope in that direction but I fear that this is going to be just too devastating for her.

Reading, 21st Century Style

So I recently acquired a B&N Nook. But I didn't get a cover, so to keep it from getting all scratched up and because I'm broke, I needed to come up with a cover for it. So last night I grabbed the two skeins of Red Heart closest to me and fortunately they matched, one Spring Green and one, a variegated, that no longer has a label but it's got a nice mix of blue and green and yellow. I found my N hook and did a chain of approximately 40 chains, holding both strands together and then half double crocheted each row. I somehow decreased or increased as it's a bit wonky at the bottom, I'm going to try to block out the wonky, but I'm very happy with the results until I can either purchase the cover I want or make a better cover, I have fabric to make one but this was much faster:

Missy's Nook Nook

Red Heart 100% Acrylic Yarn

My own pattern such that it is

Meet Nell, my Nook

I even remembered to leave a little hole in the bottom so I can charge Nell in her Nook Nook.

Charging Action Shot

Who is that in the background? Could it be the single funniest human being on the planet, Stephen Colbert? Why yes it is. My new favorite tote bag from B&N. Yes I am a dork.

I refuse to rant about oil today. The situation is what it is. I'm going to disappear into some escapist fiction courtesy of Nell and forget about BP, oil and just lose myself in the page, uh screen.

"Very, Very Modest"

I am going to preface this post by saying that it will not all be a Gulf Coast in Oil Crisis rant. There is stitching and some thrifting so if you have been avoiding my blog due to my enviromental rants, well there's something for everyone here today.

First business:

A BP official, that British dude, stated to Sky news, that's a UK news channel, that the damage to the Gulf of Mexico due to the oil spill will be "very, very modest." Now does someone want to tell me what that means? I mean I understand that he's saying that the damage will be minimal but this is a from a man who will not allow accurate measurements to be taken of exactly how much oil is being gushed into the Gulf on a daily basis because "they(BP) are focusing on clean-up". So how in the hell does he have a clue what the damage will be and that it will be modest?

So we hear that that pipe thingie is working, well if going from 210,000 gallons of oil a day to 170,000 gallons of oil a day is working, well we are in a world of trouble. Do I need to point out this all started on April 20th? It's now May 19th, that means we are closing in on a month of astronomical amounts of oil being pumped into a body of water 618,000 miles in diameter not the 17 million miles of the Indian ocean.

Let me paint a bigger picture for all of you reading this sick and tired of the story as it's not glamourous and doesn't affect anyone but a bunch of beach bums who probably should live in the real world and vacations? Why I'll just go to the Caribbean. Well let me enlighten you folks. A lot of the sea life that lives in the Gulf migrates back and forth between the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico. Do you understand that everything is connected? That grouper caught in the Caribbean in a few months could possibly had been a grouper eating smaller fish who had consumed oil a few months before. Do you know how toxic that makes the fried grouper sandwich you are getting ready to consume sitting in front of the beach grill on St. Thomas? I hadn't even considered the whole migration thing until my friend Chelsea pointed out. Her mother has a dive business and they travel all over the Gulf and the Caribbean. All the focus is on the oil and the obviously affected sea life, we need to pay attention to this on a much larger,deeper scale.

It is being reported that oil has reached the loop, the Gulf Stream, that means oil could be in Key West by Sunday. Is anyone paying attention? Is anyone connecting the dots and most importantly are the people making the decisions doing the right thing or just sweeping all this under the rug because what's done is done?
This is a close up of my CHS A Haunting Mermaid. She's quite pissed off about the whole situation and I have been trying hard to focus on her being what any BP official sees when they close their eyes and if they don't fix this mess she will haunt them to their dying days.

Here's a pic of my progress. It's a horrible picture but hey, isn't that what you've come to expect here from the Ranch? Crappy camera, unskilled photographer and no freakin' lighting! Click to make bigger.

So I started my Jane Atkinson some time last year, above you see meager progress. Want to see the true awesomeness of Jane? Of course you do. Go check out Margaret's progress on her Jane, I think she just started stitching her last Friday, I kid, I kid. She's been working on a little longer than that but not by much: Days of a Sampler Lover: See Jane's leaves

On Monday I had planned to stop by the local thrift store but the neighbor I dislike was just walking in so I came on home. She makes me want to puke and the thrift store is small, so yesterday I popped in a for a quickie look around and found a few things.

What you see above is The Golden Rule by Lutterloh out of Germany. It's the 1969 edition. It's a book all about making your own sewing patterns from just the measurements of your bust and I think your hips. I had to have it and since it was just 25 cents well it was in my budget.

Need sometihng to wear to the beach? Lutterloh has you covered.

Going shopping? Well whip up one of these ensembles and be the Belle of the Mall.




Then I saw these placemats. They are not my style, there are eight of them and the set was $5 but I couldn't leave them there. It's so wrong that someone made these and someone passed them on to the thrift store. The embroidery is so delicate and the backs are so neat.

And then for $1 I ran across this table set:

Yep, kind of uh, well, funky? There are three napkins and three coasters all stitched with this boat.

Then there's the tablecloth, with a Dutch girl stitched on there and the other end of the tablecloth has a windmill and the person made a niftly little bread basket liner with the Dutch girl stitched on it too and for a $1 I had to give them a home.

I may not be able to single handedly save my beloved Gulf but I will declare myself the Protector of All Misfit Stitching! Think there's a pattern for a stitching superhero suit in the Lutterloh binder?

Yeah, I'm Really Pissed Off Now

For those of you that buy into BP's BS that the Gulf of Mexico is a "vast ocean" here are some facts: The Atlantic Ocean is approx. 41,105,000 square miles. The Pacific Ocean is 64 million square miles, the Indian Ocean is 17 million square miles, the Gulf of Mexico is 615,000 square miles.

The Gulf of Mexico is basically a lake compared to the oceans that cover the earth. So please people, pay attention to the news, what BP is saying and what they aren't saying. They are now telling us that the oil is magically evaporating thanks to the dispersants, chances are the oil and dispersants are just sinking to the floor of the Gulf. How many mutant fish, turtles, dolphins and sharks will we see in the not so distant future? How many of us will have children born with disabilities because we consumed fish that was reported to be safe but in fact was contaminated by the dispersants that the Gulf is being filled with? No one knows the long term effects of these chemicals, it's all about the Benjamins.

I beg everyone to please thoughtfully consider every petroleum related purchase you make in the future and I'm not saying that I can walk away from gas and oil, especially since my husband drives for a living, but we can all make minor changes to reduce our need for oil. I'm not suggesting anything radical, I can't make major big time changes but I can make small ones and any thoughtful change can make a difference.

Please when you watch the news, take a minute to fact check what the oil industry is reporting.

Place

Today I wish I was writing of frivilous wonderful stitching things but I can't. Today I am writing to tell you all about my place. If you've read this blog for anything length of time I'm sure you know how much I love where I live. I can't imagine anyone not wanting to live here in North West Florida. It's a special place. It's a beautiful place. And where I live isn't as developed as most and I don't ever want it to be. If you vacation in my town you are here for one reason and one reason only, you love the beach. Why is that? Because Dude, it's all we have. We don't have any water parks, we have only a few restaurants and only a handfull of chain restaurants. There's one or two touristy type shops. We have two groceries and a Walmart. We have two hotels and they aren't even on the beach. One is on the sound and one is across the highway from that, snuggled in between the Taco Bell and the KFC. When we moved here I had almost as many books as the local library and even had way more books on tape than they did.

Over the last few days I've thought a lot about how tired I was of this place over the winter. I was deeply jealous of those that had snow and short dark days, and the perfect excuse to cook something slow in the oven, build a fire, and hunker down with a pile of stitching. You see, where I live, when the sun is out as it tends to be the better part of the year, there is this need to be outside, soaking up that vitamin D that so much of the country is lacking come the dark days of February. There is this deep guilt, at least for me, at sacrificing any beautiful day to the indoors. Mother Nature calls me out constantly, begging me to drink in her beauty, not hide inside. Sometimes I found her calls so very annoying when I wanted to be indoors getting a good solid case of stitch ass. But it's not who I am. I am that girl sitting on the porch with a book or some stitching, do I need to admit how dirty my stitching gets from stitching outside? It's one of the reasons I don't find it too hard to stay with good old DMC, I can wash my needlework without a second thought. I am also that girl that wants to be on the beach every single minute of a gorgeous day. Not so much tanning but just sitting on the beach hoping for that random dolphin appearance. They don't swim by as often as you'd think. There's that excitement when walking on the beach in the early morning and you find turtle eggs. There's the thrill of finding an in perfect condition sand dollar. There are pelicans and herons and sea gulls that can spot a potato chip a mile away and then before you know it you are swarmed like a scene out of Hitchcock's The Birds. There is white sand. There's the scent of Coppertone and Hawaiian Tropic. There are the screams of kids getting knocked down by waves and the full throttled scream of that kid whose feet have never touched sand, never seen a wave, and it won't happen this day. These are the sites and sounds of my place. But now that view has changed. Not from a hurricane but a situation created by man.
This is Boom, it's stretched across many, many miles of the Gulf coast right now.

This boom is protecting a bird sanctuary in Pensacola Bay or maybe it's the sound, I get them confused. Should I share with you that after taking these pictures I slipped in some gunk on the sidewalk and fell right on my big old butt, right in front of Sunday traffic on Bayfront Parkway? I am so freakin' graceful it's not even funny.

This morning it was reported that 20 sea turtles were found dead on the beach in Pass Christian, Mississippi. This is only the beginning.

The oil is still gushing from under the Gulf at 210,000 gallons a day, and some experts are saying that it could be more, there's just no way of knowing.

I am not a property owner, I don't live on the beach. We don't own a boat. I don't own a business, but this place, this place is mine. I spent most of my childhood planning my move to Pensacola Beach. I'm not there but I'm close. My dad talked for years about moving down here, after every family vacation, I didn't talk, I did it. I was lucky enough to marry someone willing to go where ever I wanted and it was here. The beaches are so much more than sand to me. They are my church, my cathedral, my holy place. They are where I go to connect with that Higher Power. These beaches, the Gulf, it's where I find strength, it's where I find my peace. The connection is deep and solid and real.

What is happening right now is beyond my comprehension. I am heartbroken and I'm pissed off.

I do not support off shore drilling and I don't vote for politicians who do. There are people much smarter than me who said this kind of tragedy could never happen but I always thought it was a possibility. It only makes sense.

There is so much I want to say and I can't find the words. For many people across the country what is happening down here is nothing more than a phone call or two to change vacation plans, for those of us living and working and raising families down here the oil slick will change our lives for many years to come. Some small fishing businesses and restaurants may never bounce back.

I ask all of you reading this to please pay attention to the news stories, check out my local papers online:

pnj.com Pensacola News Journal Pensacola news, community, entertainment, y

Northwest Florida Daily News

And our local tv station:

WEAR ABC 3

Let's hope BP's Dome Plan works because Plan B will take a minimum of 60 days to put into action. As it is Plan A will take at least a week to get in place and it's truly a crapshoot as to whether or not it will work.