Sludgy oil begins washing into Lousiana's coastal marshes

[Are_grits_groceries]

VENICE, La. -- A tide of sludgy oil has begun washing into Louisiana's coastal marshes, officials said Tuesday, as BP continued to siphon some of the oil gushing from a damaged well on the Gulf floor, but remained days away from trying to cap the leak.
<snip>
And, hundreds of miles away from the Louisiana coast, there was a worrisome discovery: Tar balls, which are sticky clumps of decayed oil, were found in Key West, Fla. on Monday. Officials said they were being tested to determine if they came from the leaking BP well.

But the most ominous news came from south Louisiana, where the Mississippi River delta peters out into the gulf. There, instead of the tar balls that had previously washed ashore in Lousiana, the marshes were inundated with thick, brown oil.


"If I had been standing up, I would have fell to my knees," said Billy Nungesser, the president of Plaquemines Parish, La., about the moment he heard the news. Nungesser, whose parish follows the Mississippi out to sea, said the oil had been spotted at places called South Pass and Pass-a-Loutre. "It's our greatest fear."

If these marshes are destroyed by oil, it could mean huge losses for the area's seafood industry, and a reduction in Louisiana's already skimpy shield against a hurricane storm surge. "We're finished. We're out of business" if that happens, Nungesser said.

Slide show: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/gallery/2010/05/12/GA2010051202394.html

There's a lot more:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/18/AR2010051801676.html?hpid=topnews

TS Eliot - The Hollow Men

A penny for the Old Guy

I
We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us - if at all - not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.

II
Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death's dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind's singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.

Let me be no nearer
In death's dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer -

Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom

III
This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man's hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.

Is it like this
In death's other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.

IV
The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms
In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death's twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.

V
Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o'clock in the morning.
Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
Life is very long
Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow

For Thine is the Kingdom
For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

http://www.artofeurope.com/eliot/eli2.htm

[mikelgb]

1. eom

[janx]

2. ...

:cry: