They're Lifting the Box Now

Thursday night: The AP has a man on board the ship carrying the "containment box" for the oil leak, who reports that, despite delays on Thursday night due to rising fumes in the hot, windless evening, the work of lowering it has gotten underway.

I spoke to my friendly fisherman landlord today about the "unprecedented mess," as he called it. He told me they shut down both sides of the river to fishing traffic today, to avoid contaminated catches, etc. Only a small percentage of the boats and crews that volunteered to help with the cleanup have been asked to help, he said, by BP or whoever is handling the situation (in name only, since no one is handling the situation), so I wonder what the banks of the gulf and delta thoroughfares look like today, lined with men helplessly searching the horizon for the creeping stain whose march they cannot stop.

Meanwhile, I'm sitting a few blocks north of the river in my stifling room, reading the latest news on the oil. It's like watching a bomb explode really, really slowly.

My landlord also said he declined to volunteer, partly because of what had been told him about the excess of volunteers, and partly because he heard that the particular crude filling the gulf can penetrate fiberglass, which forms the hull of his own vessel. It wouldn't cause it to sink, but it would leave a permanent red stain. I wonder, though, if the small craft helping to lay the booms in the path of the oily devil will wear red stains for years to come as marks of suffering and experience.

We talked more than just oil, though. He also mentioned that he has a daughter in Nashville, where she and everyone else is appalled at the lack of coverage, in favor of the Gulf Coast emergency and the Times Square bomber. If you haven't, read something about that other mess. Here's the saddest piece I've read about it.

I hope the box drops successfully. If it tears a bigger hole in the pipe, I'll be awfully sad.