The oil spill and Bill (my dad)

I find it disturbing that news reports of beach contamination have consistently shown families with children frolicking on those very same beaches. It astounds me how ignorant people continue to be about the filth with which we are coating the earth...sky, water, and now land, in greedy pursuit of yet more petroleum with which to feed our addiction. Even my 74 year old dad, who used to think I was a tree hugging pinko lunatic, was disheartened by the video of oil coated pelicans.

The magnitude of this disaster has succeeded where I had heretofore failed.....he's quoting Dr. Cornell West. I never thought that the son of an anthracite coal miner would "go green", but the deregulated fossil fuel industry has pushed him there. He has always despised W. He hates that young people are dying every day to stabilize an area which W. invaded because there's oil to be protected. He hates that people are resistant to wind power. When a group opposed windmills because of aesthetics, Bill said, in disgust, "These people have looked at culm dumps for 50 years, and they think a windmill is too ugly to grace the landscape? Jesus!" (Culm dumps are huge mounds of shale and other waste discarded during the mining process)

He grows an organic garden because "The whole point is so I don't have to eat that chemical shit". And, in the wisdom that sometimes accompanies old age, he said "Well, maybe you won't have to write all those letters to stop that whole drilling in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge. Maybe they finally get it."

Let's hope so, Bill.