My heart aches, I have a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach, I have a sinking feeling and I am overwhelmed by the tragedy in the Gulf. People here along the coast are in mourning. Our way of life is going away as the oil comes in.
I have lived along this Gulf Coast all my life and have loved the many things the area has to offer. I have always felt better when I could breathe the salt air and hear the rushing of the waves lapping upon the shore. The sights, the sounds, and the feeling of being there have always lifted my spirits, calmed my nerves and left me in awe and wonder of God's creation. I have always found solice when I am near the water. It has a calming effect on the body, mind and spirit, while at the same time being invigorating. I love it. We all love it. That is one reason the oil gushing into the Gulf hurts us so much.
After many weeks of watching this all unfold with that feeling of impending doom, we now have oil coming ashore. The oil spill has been called a “Slow Moving Disaster”. It is impacting our economy, our people, our way of life. The local evening news is hard to watch with the fishermen, business owners and people with a wide range of occupations loosing their incomes and not being reimbursed by the oil company as they were promised. The wildlife, birds, fish, sea life and plant life are dying, and we are dying a little inside with each tragic report.
Not everyone realizes that Alabama has some of the most beautiful beaches in the world. Our sand was sugar white and the water is blue-green and clear. Now all of that is being darkened by oil, and we have only had a little oil come on shore to date. It is much worse in Louisiana, but the bad news is that more is on its way and it will eventually impact all of the Gulf Coast. Yesterday I saw images on television of dark gooey oil on shore at Perdido Pass and into the inter-coastal waterway. This area is near the Alabama, Florida line. The oil boom that was to keep it out of those areas just funneled it in instead of keeping it out.
I grieve that our young people will not know or be able to enjoy the coast as we did growing up. I wonder how long it will be before they can swim in the water, fish, flounder, set out crab baskets, sail, go boating, use cast nets, or do any of the things that we took for granted before the oil spill.
So much of our lives have been centered around the water. When I was born, shortly after World War II ended, my parents lived on the beach at Point Clear, AL. My paternal grandparents, my aunts and uncles, and my mother had lived there all during the time my dad was serving in Italy during the war. When my dad came home from the war there were no jobs to be had so my dad, my grandfather and my uncle fished for a living until they could find other jobs.
When I was young we always gathered with extended family members at Gulf State Park on Sundays after church during the warm months. We would have a picnic, go swimming in the lake then go walking along the beach, picking up shells, walking in and out of the surf, delighting our eyes with the beauty and our ears with the sounds, and enjoying all that the beach had to offer.
When I was a teenager and dating the one I love, the beach was our destination every Saturday during the warm months. During this time my grandparents lived on Bon Secour River (about 6 miles from Gulf Shores) and we spent a lot of time there swimming, fishing and boating.
We continued to frequent the beach during the early years of our marriage; almost every Saturday would find us at the beach. When our son was growing up we shared with him our love for the water, the beach, the bay, the local rivers, public piers, and other coastal attractions for swimming, fishing and recreation.
The beauty of our area was never lost on me, I always knew this was a special place. We call it God's country. During high school our bus went down Spanish Fort Hill every day and from there we could see a panoramic view of Mobile Bay. Oh, so pretty. The drive to school took us along what is now known as Scenic 98. The drive is through some of the most beautiful scenery you could find anywhere, and all along the way there are glimpses of the bay. The sunset over Mobile Bay is spectacular. We love to go to the the public pier at Fairhope and enjoy the sunset over the water. We love everything about the coast, the water, the scenery, the birds, sea life, wildlife, the marshlands, the estuaries, and the delta. We love all of it.
A couple of weeks ago we went to Gulf Shores to see the beach we love one last time before the oil reached our shores. It was too beautiful to express in words, not even photos do it justice because the beauty is in the whole package, sights, sounds and feelings. We walked out on the new pier at Gulf State Park which is the longest pier on the Gulf of Mexico. The old pier was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. People on the pier were catching fish, laughing, talking and enjoying the day, but the dread of oil coming our way was on everyone's mind. As we talked to people it was evident that the dread was filling the hearts and minds of all. Some expressed anger and some expressed sadness.
Everywhere you go, people are talking about the oil spill and the devastation to follow. We do not know what will happen, but with 2.1 millions of gallons of oil entering the Gulf each day, the impact cannot be light. We know that life along the Gulf Coast will not be the same as it was before the tragic event of the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon Well off the coast of Louisiana.
We are all in mourning, we mourn the lives lost in the explosion, we mourn the loss of animal and plant life, we mourn the loss of income for so many of our people, we mourn the loss of the beauty of our area, we mourn the loss of our very way of life.
Each disaster has to be met with ways to help make things better. My challenge to you is to find a way to help. You may have seen the commercials the oil company is running touting what they are doing to help and you may think everyone's needs are being met. That could not be further from the truth. People are hurting, some have not worked for nearly two months and have not received any funds to replace their income. You can help. Lumigrate.com will have some ideas for ways you can help in the days and months to come.
Note from Mardy: Alice provided these links and I'm adding my thoughts and suggestions:
Link for facebook for Fairhope Pier (lots of nice photos and a way to better get to appreciate Alice's region and background): www.facebook.com/profile.php [1]
Link for Gulf State Park, part of Alabama State Parks (perhaps a vacation destination virtually or really someday -- think creatively about going to the region to volunteer AND be a tourist in the days and years to come with this recovery): www.alapark.com/gulfstate/ [2]
Mardy's Note from October 2011: It's now been a year since this occurred; The Chew (a show I hope Alice has time to watch as I know she is very into cooking!), and they included a piece today, going out to watch a shrimper and discussing the perceptions of the safety of the fish and seafood from their area: They noted how tested the waters are now and how devastated everyone has been because of the wide coverage of this tragedy. Things change from good to bad, as Alice spoke about here; they also from from bad to worse sometimes; fortunately on this one, it went from bad back to 'normal' -- or getting toward normal. The area has relied on our tourism and our purchasing things from the sea, as it has on the petroleum industry co-mingled with them. Please think about YOUR consumer $ as well as your health, and stay current. If there's nothing to be concerned about related to their waters, then it makes sense to get back to purchasing accordingly!
Alice Franklin was raised on a sandy beach in Point Clear, AL and lived along the Gulf Coast from Texas to Alabama in her youth, graduating from Fairhope High School on Mobile Bay. Prior to becoming disabled due to severe spine problems, she worked her way into management and purchasing positions in industrial manufacturing and art industries. She worked her way into Lumigrate unknowingly by impressively writing at Lent 2010 about utilizing her religious and spiritual beliefs with chronic pain/disease management (she has had fibromyalgia and chronic myofascial pain for decades); it turns out she holds the priesthood office of elder in her church and became active again in this office in May 2010 and has been pastor or copastor in previous churches. We are so very proud to have her words and thoughts gracing our 'pages' of this website and look forward to what the future holds for her.
Links:
[1] http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000055716915&ref=ts
[2] http://www.alapark.com/gulfstate/
[3] http://www.lumigrate.com/forum/reflections-our-way-life-spill#comment-653
[4] http://www.lumigrate.com/forums/preventive-medicine-concepts/nutrition/food/recipes
[5] http://twitter.com/lumigrate
[6] http://www.lumigrate.com/forum/reflections-our-way-life-spill#top
[7] http://www.lumigrate.com/user/login?destination=node/505%23comment-form
[8] http://www.lumigrate.com/user/register?destination=node/505%23comment-form
[9] http://www.lumigrate.com/forum/reflections-our-way-life-spill#comment-654
[10] http://www.lumigrate.com/forums/health-issuesdis-eases/fibromyalgia-chronic-pain-and-chronic-fatigueexhaustion/it-cant-hurt-o
[11] http://www.lumigrate.com/forum/reflections-our-way-life-spill#comment-1450
[12] http://www.lumigrate.com/forum/water-key-environmental-wellness-or-illness-more-important-today-ever-many-aspects-consider#comment-2890
Comments
This is just so beautiful, Alice, it really struck me deeply. Thank you.
I would like to get people together in fun little ways (or big ways) and have them make donations of money that would get passed along. For instance, make the recipe you put on Lumigrate for your Uncle's famous dish and have people over and take the extra $ donated and sent it to the location you gave us a link for. Or a book club, or if people play Bunco donate the winnings and serve Southern dishes that night. Whatever your 'thing is', try to incorporate those concepts a bit but in the end get some dollars flowing that way to help.
I personally believe that we need to be strengthening our physical communities. As you know, I've been working via Lumigrate (and facebook) to strengthen the 'virtual community' with the Grate Group of Lumigrate to transition it to being more like an 'old fashioned' community, by having people truly get to know each other. But I so often hear now "I know someone across the country or around the world better than I know my own neighbors', and I am as guilty as anyone. Yesterday when I pulled myself away from initially writing this to run off to meet up with a friend, I was a bit late because I saw a neighbor with all her stuff in her garage and posters outside drying out -- flooding from a dishwasher malfunction. I stopped and talked. When I moved to the 'hood' four years ago, she was one of the first people I met, including my immediate neighbor. All these years later we've not gotten together as we had said we would because everyone has cars and we run off to do things with friends in other parts of town and don't make time to enjoy the people who live closest to us physically. 'Tis the season here in the US, as it is summer! 'Tis on my list, and perhaps I'll make something of a FUNdraiser event when it's time to help her move her stuff back and get the neighborhood involved. There are always silver linings, and in this case, I hope that there are MANY that come from this enormous turning point in our country and Earth's life, through each of ours and how we change how we are "doing business" and be more conscious and conscientious.
We're all in this together. The link to where your recipe is: The forum is www.lumigrate.com/forums/preventive-medicine-concepts/nutrition/food/recipes [4] (and from this area, scroll to the Topic that is titled 'Recipes for Meal Things -- From Our Readers/Users of Long Ago' You'll see several of Alice's. AND Pablo Blanco's Souther Rock 'n' Rollin' Recipes are also Southern/US and appropriate for such gatherings, they're in that list as well!
How we had these good southern connections forming a year ago is pretty neat and it comes in handy now! Our Dr. Spurlock is from Louisiana and another 'foodie' so maybe we'll get a recipe from him to add in somewhere. You'll see Deirdre Rawlings, ND, PhD/holistic nutrition adds some recipes as well for us to get going with; she's written a book about fibromyalgia that has a lot of very good general recipes for 'foodies', which require adaptations for people who follow the information she presents in the first part of the book related to food allergies. It's excellent for that reason, it's got the core information in the front then the recipes in the back half appeal to those who like to eat well and cook "normally"! So they buy the book for the recipes then get to thinking more about the concepts in the front/educational portion of the book.
So please come back and 'stay tuned' here and to our facebook areas and we'll get through this together. Thanks to Alice for the wonderful report from her back yard.
Live and Learn. Learn and Live Better! is my motto. I'm Mardy Ross, and I founded Lumigrate in 2008 after a career as an occupational therapist with a background in health education and environmental research program administration. Today I function as the desk clerk for short questions people have, as well as 'concierge' services offered for those who want a thorough exploration of their health history and direction to resources likely to progress their health according to their goals. Contact Us comes to me, so please do if you have questions or comments. Lumigrate is "Lighting the Path to Health and Well-Being" for increasing numbers of people. Follow us on social networking sites such as: Twitter: http://twitter.com/lumigrate [5] and Facebook. (There is my personal page and several Lumigrate pages. For those interested in "groovy" local education and networking for those uniquely talented LumiGRATE experts located in my own back yard, "LumiGRATE Groove of the Grand Valley" is a Facebook page to join. (Many who have joined are beyond our area but like to see the Groovy information! We not only have FUN, we are learning about other providers we can be referring patients to and 'wearing a groove' to each other's doors -- or websites/home offices!) By covering some of the things we do, including case examples, it reinforces the concepts at Lumigrate.com as well as making YOU feel that you're part of a community. Which you ARE at Lumigrate!
Alice my dawlink! Oy vey iz mir, shayna maydel (holy cow says I, pretty lady)! That's as far as I get for Alabama speak, bubbeleh. Beautifully written, Alice and quite poetic. In my opinion, and I'm just an alta kaker (old geezer) the oil company hasn't done enough to rectify the mess they have on their hands and they've let down the whole country because of it. Entire families are losing a great deal. If there's no work, how would they pay their mortgages/rent, health insurance, groceries, doctor bills, car payments, school tuitions, clothing, propane (sorry but people use that), water, electric, and the list goes on.
As a kinder (child) we used to go to Coney Island. Back then this was the place to be seen. We'd get dressed up, bring our picnic baskets, a few dollars for the games and maybe for a Nedicks hotdog and sit on the beach to watch the waves, the people in the water, the sounds of the seagulls. Much like the movie, "The Incredible Mr. Limpid" with Don Knots. You should rent it; great movie.
Going to the beach during the war was a place we'd go to antloyf (escape) the reality of our lives. During the High Holy Days we'd throw bread into the vaser (water) for each of our sins that the fish may take them away. Man, according to The Origin of Man, came from the sea. We need vaser in order to live since our bodies are made up of it. The sea, the ocean and other vaser ways are often centers of romances, such as Alice's, "Old Man of the Sea", "Neptune", Atlantis, Bimini... are you getting the picture dawlinks?
Now this is what I think; I think donating is a groys (great) idea! I donate to a lot of worthy causes that help a lot of folk. By the way, bubelehs, did you know that the word "folk" was Yiddish for "people"? Now you know. Back to what we were kibbitzing about though, donating. My dawlinks, it's not just money that's needed. Food will be needed, as will clothing, including shoes, liblings. Toiletries too. Though this may sound petty to some, it's a mitzvah (a good deed) and you'll feel good, perhaps a little bit happier than usual (G-d willing). It couldn't hurt!
Your
Yenta
Yenta Tellabenta is truly a 'creation' for outreach and education with Lumigrate.com through storytelling and reinforcement of key concepts related to body, mind, spirit. Written by a very talented and somewhat mysterious younger wise woman who found her way to Lumigrate the summer of 2009, we hope you enjoy having your own Yenta with us at Lumigrate! Yenta (meaning 'town gossip' or 'connector') has a dedicated Forum at Lumigrate at http://www.lumigrate.com/forums/health-issuesdis-eases/fibro... [10] and can also be found on facebook.
I've continued to work on water information at Lumigrate, as it simply is becoming more of a concern in more places. I'd put a follow-up comment on one year later at this comment location which I am using have removed and am replacing with these words and a link with encouragement to go and see what's related.
In the years since Alice wrote this piece, which was her last, she was diagnosed with cancer. And went through treatment. And more treatment. And had problems and then would have more cancer found and more treatment. She wasn't diagnosed until the fall of 2012, but she had told me that as soon as this happened, people in her life in the area started having health problems. It was helping me to learn from someone I 'knew'. It helped me put water information 'on the map'.
So it was an interesing coincidence that when I was finishing up working on this information, almost exactly five years after Alice would have been writing the words, above, I was finishing up the new information about an expert named JosephBinder (goes by Yosef). I rather think both Alice and Yenta would like what he has to say about water as much as I.
What he said in 2013 includes references to both cancer and how water, pH, etc. interrelates. He also mentions the Gulf oil spill when talking about general pollution in the oceans and waters. "Coincidentally", I would see on Facebook that Alice was feeling better, recovering and thanking people for the prayers. Feeling better than she has in a while, looking forward. I'm so glad! Amazing Alice I have been calling her.
I want to thank Alice again for providing what she did with this heartfelt piece about her homeland. I can now tack onto it, after 923 people had read it, the following link and have this to share with those who take the link and help them learn about water and even it's spiritual connection, and how to process it for use in the home for better or ideal health. I think it's extremely important. I know Alice does a lot of homework and study when she's able, so I hope she and Yenta and all other 'grate people' will find this information and take action on what resonates for them.
www.lumigrate.com/forum/water-key-environmental-wellness-or-illness-more-important-today-ever-many-aspects-consider#comment-2890 [12]
Live and learn. Learn and live better! ~ Mardy
Live and Learn. Learn and Live Better! is my motto. I'm Mardy Ross, and I founded Lumigrate in 2008 after a career as an occupational therapist with a background in health education and environmental research program administration. Today I function as the desk clerk for short questions people have, as well as 'concierge' services offered for those who want a thorough exploration of their health history and direction to resources likely to progress their health according to their goals. Contact Us comes to me, so please do if you have questions or comments. Lumigrate is "Lighting the Path to Health and Well-Being" for increasing numbers of people. Follow us on social networking sites such as: Twitter: http://twitter.com/lumigrate [5] and Facebook. (There is my personal page and several Lumigrate pages. For those interested in "groovy" local education and networking for those uniquely talented LumiGRATE experts located in my own back yard, "LumiGRATE Groove of the Grand Valley" is a Facebook page to join. (Many who have joined are beyond our area but like to see the Groovy information! We not only have FUN, we are learning about other providers we can be referring patients to and 'wearing a groove' to each other's doors -- or websites/home offices!) By covering some of the things we do, including case examples, it reinforces the concepts at Lumigrate.com as well as making YOU feel that you're part of a community. Which you ARE at Lumigrate!