Sunday morning

The Koman Race for the Cure for 2010 is history. It was a good and moving experience for me. The day started rainy and turned steamy and incredibly humid. I met my friends and, as it turned out, because one of them had a bad ankle (he'd had surgery on it last year and it still isn't right), we ended up walking in the 1.5K rather than 4K walk. Which was fine. It was interesting to participate as a "survivor" of BREAST cancer - and I do now think of my 2003 surgery as having been to address breast cancer - while having just experienced 6 months of dealing with uterine cancer. I did have some sense of silo-ism in the "cancer community" - each type of cancer in its own silo, caring about its own treatments, cures, etc. I understand that breast cancer is a huge problem and deserves its research, treatments and cures - but I would like to see communications and partnerships with ALL people dealing with any types of cancer. (I think I posted before about my 2003 experience, but here it is again: a routine mammogram found microcalcifications, which are highly associated with an aggressive type of breast cancer; I was sent for a biopsy; the biopsy said I had "pre-cancerous" cells; I was sent for surgery, not a mastectomy, but to remove more tissue around the biopsy site) and that was that; my surgeon felt no further treatment - radiation or chemo - was called for. I did have mammograms every 6 months for 18 months, then back to yearly. Fast forward to 2009 - my medical oncologist, Dr R, tells me that there isn't any such thing as "pre-cancer," and that what I had is now viewed as a specific type of cancer itself, a type which does often come back; she was surprised I wasn't being "followed" - although I do get regular mammograms. So, apparently I had breast cancer in 2003, and uterine cancer in 2009. Good news - unrelated, meaning the uterine cancer was not metastasized breast cancer.)

Because of the rain yesterday morning, Jessie and I didn't make it to the park. We went this morning, but again it was humid and uncomfortable, even at 5:50 in the morning. The whole park seemed subdued; the trees almost wilting on their trunks, the Mallards grazing in the overgrown grasses (it looks like the park's landscaping budget must have been cutback; they seem to be letting lawns get wildly out of hand, is actually fine with me), a gaggle of Canada geese sitting in a straight line on the shore of the pond, gazing at it in what looked like humidity-induced stupor. But perhaps all of those impressions were - what do they call it - displacement? My own feelings displaced onto the park's plants and creatures.

I know I still need to write about my experience with my private "retreat" last weekend, but today my thoughts are overwhelmingly in the Gulf. (As I've said to David more than once, I think that at some point in the future, not sure how long, hopefully sooner rather than later, we (meaning humanity) are going to look back at this particular oil spill and the ecological and social disasters it wreaked and it is going to prove to be a turning point, a point where history, reaching back, will say some day 'That's when things began to change.' I hope so; to the extent I believe is something bigger than the world, the universe, I pray so.) I'm posting a link to an article I just read and then I'm "cutting and posting" remarks of Rachel Maddow that are quoted at length in the article, but which I want to see here in my blog, word-for-word. To repeat what the article's author said about it, "Please read it."

Peace. Peace especially to all living things in the Gulf, and to the souls of those that have passed on.

The link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris-durang/i-want-my-earth-back_b_600859.html

Rachel Maddow:

...The oil now coating wildlife and the beaches of this beautiful coast stinks. It stinks, it smells bad, it is filthy, it is slimy, it is sticky, it is toxic - even if Mississippi governor Haley Barbour wants to say that it's not... it is irredeemably foul, and it is everywhere.

And when you come upon it in person having only seen it on televsion, at least if you're me, you are overwhelmed by the post-apocalyptic sensory experience of a man-made disaster irretrievably destroying part of our country.

You are disgusted that BP put this ocean and this coast and the communities inland in jeopardy. Disgusted at the billions of dollars in quarterly profits that lined the oil industry's pockets and deepened their wells, and didn't do a thing to prevent this.

You are disgusted that the government let BP and the rest of the oil industry do that. Disgusted that American leaders screamed "drill, baby, drill!" without considering the consequences, all in the name of whoring themselves for a few votes during the few months that gasoline prices were rising.

Disgusted that the booms off this coast meant to protect it mostly aren't doing anything. Disgusted that those booms remain largely unmanned. Disgusted that there isn't much more to do, except maybe put more people here to try to make this totally inadequate technology try to work less horribly than it does.

This is not Hurricane Katrina. This isn't another Katrina, This isn't another anything. This is a whole new thing, happening to us. This is America's Deepwater Horizon disaster, we all own it forever.

And right now, right here in Grand Isle and all along the Gulf Coast, there are really only 3 things that matter: stopping the oil from flowing, protecting the coast and the ocean from the millions of gallons of oil that are already spilled, and making sure that this never, ever happens again.

You can diagnose whether we have a functioning media in this country by whether or not the country understands that this is a vile environmental mega-disaster. You can diagnose whether we have a functioning political system in this country by whether or not the results of this mega-disaster is change.

Big oil has been too rich to care about what it was putting us all at risk for. And we've been too cowardly to change direction and break free from them. If that changes because of our national disgust at this disaster, then America's political system in 2010 works. If it doesn't change, then it doesn't work.