Oil spills and deja vu

Watching this oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has been so frustrating. It is like was nothing learned from Exxon Valdez? For years after the Exxon spill people in the area of potential oil spills have been warned that it could happen there as well, but to no avail. I used to tell people from the East Coast just for perspective that if Exxon had happened on that coast and traveled as far as Exxon oil, it would have stretched from Cape Cod to Cape Hatteras, This new spill has all the potential to be so much bigger than that.

One thing that comes up with people unfamiliar with oil spills and their effects is a tendency to believe industry estimates of the amount spilled. A rule of thumb with industry estimates is that oil spills never get smaller. Case in point, BP estimated the flow from this spill at 1,000 gallons per day. Then the Coast Guard spoke up and said it was bigger than that, as much as five times more than the estimate. BP argued but today admitted the release is more like 210,000 gallons per day. A million gallons every five days.

There appear to have been no preparations for a spill this size despite the exposure in the Gulf of Mexico. I see pictures of what look like local fishermen loading boom onto their boats. They are not wearing safety gear that is mandatory in Prince William Sound responses. I see futility. MSN.com has a photo today oil everywhere and in the center is a small boat or two towing a collection boom — oil in the boom, oil behind the boom, oil on both sides of the boom and oil out in front of the boom. How much oil can this one little boom collect? And more, what will they do with it? There don’t appear to be any collection barges anywhere. I have seen video of one skimmer. It was a Transrec capable of collecting 2,100 barrels of liquid per hour. I say liquid because more than half of that liquid is going to be water.

Yesterday there was mention of a test burn. No mention of burning today. They may have tried but no word yet if they did or if they did, if they succeeded. I have participated in training and exercises involving burning and it is not as easy as it sounds. For one thing they apparently were trying to burn emulsified oil, meaning mixed with water and thickened. This is almost impossible to burn. Also they attempted, at least in the test burn to start the fire with flares. Doubtful this would work. (Try throwing a lighted match into a small pool of gasoline sometime — it goes out, and gasoline has a much lower flash point than crude oil). In Alaska , they use what is called a helitorch. It is an apparatus dangled from a helicopter and simply stated it drops blobs of flaming gelled gasoline (napalm). The blobs say burning long enough to start the real fire. And, it is not the oil itself that burns. It is the vapors just above the oil. As the oil weathers, that evaporation becomes less and less as the lighter ends are dissipated. That makes it all the more difficult to burn. The worst part is this: In a test burn done here burning emulsified oil, it was found that 3 percent of the oil by weight sinks to the bottom in the consistency of peanut brittle. Think of the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, where all those bottom-dwelling shrimp come from, coated with black oily peanut brittle.

Ok, probably enough said about all this, just needed to get it off my mind. Bottom line is there is a huge spill, minimal equipment to deal with it and it is going to keep going for a while. Same thing was said when Exxon Valdez started.

A couple of big questions: Every one of these offshore wells has on it what is called a blowout preventer. It sits on the ocean floor and the well pipe rises through it. When there is back pressure, it is supposed to fire off and close the well. Finally about four or five days into this spill it was admitted the preventer didn’t work. Why? And if this didn’t work, do we have any guarantee the preventers on all the other wells WILL work?

And the other is broad. Industry assures us all time after time that spills and accidents can’t happen, and then tells us if they do happen they have the equipment and manpower to deal with it. They are making these assurances now as they prepare to drill offshore in the Arctic. Do we really want to believe them? If you think the answer is yes, take a look at the history of Exxon Valdez, the blowout off Australia in the Timor Sea last year and this one as it unfolds.

Small world

EPA website on the oil spill

still waiting

Green day was May 4 last year and today it is supposed to hit 60 for the first time this year, so it is coming. Yesterday there was open water on the Swan Pond and they have been spotted elsewhere so they will be showing up soon too. Meanwhile, indoors that bud of a week ago now is a full blown flower. And, there's another bud getting read to bloom.

… keep on shining on me …

A while back there was the day there was rain falling on the house but none at the end of the driveway. Today the situation was reversed. Woke up to the news that Anchorage had been hit by a fairly big snowstorm overnight, 8 inches in some places which is big for Anchorage. Then I learned, too, it was snowing in Wasilla to the west of me and Valdez to the south and east. In other words, snow all around me. But here the sun shined on the house all day. I can see snow clouds not too far away, but nothing here. Could this signify some life changes?

Addendum: It didn't last long. Was snowing by the time I left for work and still snowing on the way home; 4-6 inches of heavy wet snow on the ground. Much of it gone the next day, though. But it was just enough to test a repair on a snowmachine I was working on, it's all good.

Waiting for Green Day

No, not the rock group, or Godot for that matter. The deciduous tress are skeletal now. Wind and winter have taken away the last leaves clinging to their branches and they are bare brown awaiting warmth and moisture. It goes on like this for about a month and then one day you look up and it’s all green. It really seems to happen in just one day. Just for proof, the picture of the twigs is how it looks today. When green day happens (could be a month) I will go back to the same spot and take another to show what it looks like. It might be a while. There was new snow quite a way down the mountain yesterday.

Turning over another leaf. I have done some putzing in the garden already, just clearing off the covering I left last fall. One of the things I did was bring in a geranium which over the winter unintentionally I tried to kill more than a dozen times. So look what I noticed on it yesterday. It may be the portent of good things to come, although on the negative side of things I noticed while clearing the garden a moose had nibbled down my lilac. I don't recall ever seeing tracks around it, although those tracks I followed a few weeks ago may have gone to it and I didn't notice. I only followed them in the other direction. So I actually may have a photograph of the culprit. Now, how do you tell one moose from another. Lineup? We shall see how that turns out.

Some days the medicine DOES work

When I was old enough to be paying my own way, but still young enough to be if not at my parents' house, at least close, my father used to marvel at how when I was broke enough to wonder where my next gallon of gas was going to come from, some money would just drop out of the sky. A check unexpected for this or that that I had done, and I was saved.

Maybe it is because I only notice it when it happens, but the phenomenon has followed me through life. Just seems like when I am up against it, a check falls out of the sky again.

So, with that in mind, yesterday I woke up to a cold house. Ran out of stove fuel and had to get an emergency delivery of fuel oil. That stuff costs about the same as gasoline so, even 100 gallons is more than $300. Then I did my income taxes and ended up paying a fairly sizable amount. Woke up this morning to discover my son had run his college account down to $1.81 so that took a quick transfer to bail him out. Then I drove into town to take care of a few things and buy my supplies for the coming work week. By the time I was done I actually had to go into savings to cover a few energy drinks for work.

Last stop in town is always the post office to pick up my weekly supply of bills. And that's where the sky opened up. ROYALTY CHECK!!!!!! And a good-sized one too.

This happens so often I almost count on it. But of course the first time I do, that's the day it won't happen.

Pelicans? Really?

Remember how we used to watch Northern Exposure just looking for the writers’ Alaska mistakes? Most of us have read a book or two where the author made some little mistake about Alaska that made us question the credibility, even in fiction.

Living in a relatively exotic place you find writers who attempt to capture it often make those little mistakes in detail that can ruin the whole work. Some we can excuse and move on, some we can’t. Often it would have taken a minute of research to get it right. One example that comes to mind was in a book I found and read on a boat one time. It was a mystery novel about Russians spying in the Bering Sea. It was a good story and I was enjoying it until a pelican landed on a fishing boat near the Aleutian Islands. Before I questioned it out loud, I did look up pelicans but my suspicions were correct. They are definitely a southern bird, or at least were before global warming. As far as I know none have ventured this far north so far. The problem was this book involved some rather sophisticated technology and I found after the pelican episode, I didn’t believe the author’s expertise with that subject either. It ruined what otherwise was a pretty good tale.

Maybe the most outrageous work about Alaska by a non-Alaskan was a short novel called Slade’s Glacier. In it, the author used every Alaska cliche known to man but only got about 200 pages out of all of them. The best was a guy in Juneau who found a mastodon that had melted out of a glacier and fed the meat to his sled dogs.

Alaskans see this a lot, but I am sure so do most people, especially those who live in exotic locations with unique geography, nature and people (is there a place on earth that doesn’t have those?).

What is all this about? It is about writing what you DON’T know. And, in it is what causes the admonition to write what you know. But it can be overcome. A couple of books by Outside writers who got it right: Sailor Song by Ken Kesey and Coming Into the Country by John McPhee. Kesey’s book is set in a town patterned after Cordova. As far as I know it did not do as well as his more famous works and he was criticized in Cordova for not including this or that, especially Native culture. He told them another bit of writing advice, a good novel is about people and can happen anywhere, he simply chose to set his there.

So, what do we take from this? It’s all right if you write what you don’t know, but do the research. Don’t put pelicans in the Aleutians and don’t put sled dogs in Juneau (although there may be a few. And that was about the least of the problems in Slade’s Glacier.).

Petulant child?

Eat your spinach. NO!

Pick up your toys. NO!

Hang up your clothes. NO!

Time for your bath. NO!

Reform health care. NO!

Approve a Supreme Court nominee (even though one hasn't been named). NO!

Good grief.

OK, I lied

This subject just doesn’t want to go away, at least in my own mind, although I have heard from a couple good friends who are accomplished writers on this subject. As I have thought about “writing what you know” (and before Twisted River) I have questioned it before. Of course what you do know gives you insight, but still so limiting. One example I have, came through setting up a high school writing class.

A friend had told the teacher about me and she asked me to come talk about nature writing. It was a nature writing class, sort of aimed at observing and journaling, so I thought in order to say something new I would try how nature writing is used in fiction that is not particularly about nature.

My favorite example of that is Norman Mailer's description of the Connecticut salt marshes in Tough Guys Don't Dance. It was one of the best pieces of nature writing I have ever read. I remember stopping after being enthralled with how much the author knew about it, and when I came alert and realized it was Mailer I was actually surprised. Yet, do we think of Mailer as a nature writer? NO. Was he writing about what he knew? Not really. Did he do it well? Yes.

Or, you could say we are always writing about what we know, as in looking at new things through our own old, tired personal perspective. Did Truman Capote know anything about cold-blooded murder? It goes on and on. And right now I apologize to all my students I told to write what they know, except I do remember telling them take what you know and expand it into new areas. So maybe I am OK.

"Anyway, over a dinner at some roadhouse, Stanley started talking about the "write what you know" idea. He said it was exactly right, because you would provide really perfect details that way. Like, he said, when he wrote about Chicago, where he was born, he could describe in detail the Guatamalan-Chinese restaruants. He then went on to expatiate on the perfect of this recipe and that recipe. And all the time I was thinking, "Guatamalan-Chinese?" I finally asked him if he was putting me on. He grinned. "That was fun. I was just making that all up," he said. It was weirdly believable stuff, except--Guatamalan Chinese?"

Here is another voice on the subject, My friend and a wonderful writer, Patricia Monaghan:

"Your comments on Irving's questioning of "write what you know" reminded me of when Stanley Elkin came up to Alaska. He was brought up to do readings etc, and I got to drive him from Anchorage to Homer, or was it the other way around. Anyway, he was full of sage advice. Like, one time over drinks when I was complaining that my editor (I'd published my first book and really wanted to sell a second) wanted me to do something I wasn't very excited about. Stanley asked what I wanted to write about, and I said sun goddesses, but no one was interested. "Well, if you don't write the books you want to write, who's gonna?" he asked. I had no answer to that. So I spent years writing the sun goddess book which was in print for six months, but it was still the best thing to do.

Incidentally, the teacher afterward told me she had never thought of including fiction and would I let her keep my teaching notes. I did. And, they must have worked for her because I was never invited back.

And I will make no more promises to stop talking about writing any more.

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