Discuss: The Gulf Between Us

This firsthand feel, inquiry, sensing into the tragedy is what I have been waiting for from Terry. My friends who had to leave their homeland offer grieving, angry, heartbroken accounts as well. See Mississippi Queen’s reports.
Thanks Orion and Terry, for this sensorial reporting, the questions…

A brilliant portrait of the Gulf. Having been there it is impossible to read Terry’s account and impressions without my soul crying out for justice. Where words fall short fo most, Terry forges an insight into the beauty and hope in the most horrifying circumstances.

Thanks so much for this Terry. A personal and powerful exposé

I appreciate the effort Terry went to interview natives of Louisiana, and I appreciate the beauty of some of her language. I do have some serious problems with this piece, however, both the text and the images that accompany it.
Firstly, some of the information in the text about the history of cajuns is incorrect.  Terry states that the FRENCH “dispersed” the acadians, but it was the ENGLISH who exiled, deported, the acadians because they would not swear allegiance to the British crown.  “Dispersed” is a weak word that does not suggest the horror of what is called “le grand derangement.”

Additionally, I find myself, a native Louisianian, disgusted at the images that accompany this article.  Clearly designed for an elite audience, they do not capture the horror of the oil spill, but rather try to render it as a beautiful thing.  This is a spill that contained blobs of oil that Louisianians said looked like the “bruised internal organs” of human body.”

As a cajun myself, I also find some of the images of the cajuns in this piece somewhat cliched, and her presentation of the situation a bit one-sided.  Louisiana has always been in bed with the oil companies, and many cajuns work for the oil companies.  Indeed, there is a yearly “Shrimp and Petroleum” festival in Louisiana.  Part of the problem, locally is this deep connection Louisianians (and Louisiana cajuns) have with oil, and how to possibly disrupt it.

Terry’s attempt to connect with the culture by suggesting her companion, whose first name is Avery has a connection to the Avery Island simply because they share the same name, was completely unnecessary and weakened her voice.  She’s clearly an outsider with a good heart and good intentions, but I wish Orion would have also considered publishing something written by a native of the area.

The powerful work of a local photographer, such as Henry Cancienne, whose “Reflections of a Vanishing Ecosystem and Culture: the 2010 Deepwater Horizon Ecological Disaster,” is currently on display through Nov. 2 at the Louisiana state library, would have been a much better choice for this piece.

The website “Dirty Cajuns” (http://www.dirtycajuns.com/) is a great resource for anyone who wants to know from locals what is going on. 

Please know I mean no disrespect to Terry; we are all happy that she cares enough about this area to come over and try to understand.  But I wish Orion would take more concern to get a little down home dirtier itself in terms of what it publishes, and to consider the voices of local writers themselves in addition to the big name writers who are outsiders.

thank you ms. williams and orion for this excellent, powerful, beautiful piece. clearly it’s time to stop waiting for external forces - politicians, corporations - to intervene, and time for the people to rise up and do what we know is right - STARVE THE BEASTS. just STOP using fossil fuel to the greatest extent possible. like during the phenomenally successful WWII campaigns to “use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without”, by coming together we CAN make a difference. http://www.facebook.com/pages/USE-HALF-NOW-CAMPAIGN/316473176497?ref=mf

Thank you Terry for bringing up so many emotions that were buried deep inside my body.  It is with anger, fear, joy and heartbreak that I realize we must all stop with our addiction to oil.  Our earth and the natural animals upon her are crying out for our help, our realization of their plight and our kinship with them, in stopping climate change.  Go to 4yearsgo.org to find out what you can do to help.

Terry’s ability to allow me to look through her eyes, feel with her skin, smell with her nose, hear with her ears and share her visceral responses to the physical landscapes through which she traveled and the emotional landscapes created during her travels never ceases to amaze me.  When I finished the piece I was shaken, angry and jarred out my comfort zone by her experience of the ‘ground truth’ on the Gulf Coast.

Regarding the pictures that accompany the article:  I share Sheryl St. Germain’s feeling that these pictures are not the best fit for the article.  While Mr. Fair’s pictures are beautiful, thought provoking, and suggestive of cancerous lesions on the planetary skin, I would have much preferred that they be in a separate article with an artist’s statement that allowed me to process their power separately.  Paired as they are with Terry’s words, I feel a complete mismatch in scale and emotional space:  aerial shots spanning thousands of yards that to my eye have an inherent sense of physical detachment versus intensely sensual images shared by Terry that are on the human scale of inches and feet.  Noted photographer of similarly devastated landscapes, Emmit Gowin (http://www.johnpaulcaponigro.com/lib/artists/gowin.php) notes (albeit in the context of images shot at ground level)  that ‘…the more we think about our audience and what we are trying to present, the less, perhaps, we are in touch with the physicality of experience, the particulars, the minute details of our experience.’  While I appreciate the power of Mr. Fair’s images to convey the devastation at the larger scale much as Mr. Gowin’s own aerial shots of environmental devastation do, for me they simply do not fit the emotional space and physical scale of Terry’s reportage.

I found this a great article of immense power that created a highly charged space of creative discomfort from which I will attempt to forge new actions to help heal our battered planet.

Terry Tempest Williams goes straight to the heart of the Gulf tragedy: the lives of real people who have been directly affected. I am in love with these men and women now, and their grief is mine. I grew up on the Texas Gulf Coast, aka the petrochemical Gulf Southwest. I left there a long time ago, but even in the 1950s it was an ecological disaster waiting to happen. Thanks, Orion, Terry.