Category: Gulf Oil Spill

Dream or Prophecy?

Dream or Prophecy?

I awakened at 5am with the strangest dream of my life. This blog is about the relationship of humans and nature and ultimately, the dream is about that. I feel strongly compelled to share it as is recorded verbatim from my journal….here goes.

In the dream….“I went to a bank with my husband and three employees were very forceful about taking my money and putting it into a retirement account they recommended. I refused and two men, on the way out of the bank, grabbed us and tried to inject us with syringes filled with some white-pink thick substance. They got my husband on the first try. I escaped twice but on the third try they got me as well. The substance in the syringe made us helpless to refuse whatever they wanted. They separated us so we would fight less. They took us to some sort of facility where they regularly injected us until we were totally under their control. Over time I realized what was happening and became aware but pretended to still be brainwashed. Secretly I was planning to help release everyone from their bondage. The bank was keeping people brainwashed and hostage and taking all their money, having it diverted from personal accounts to these ‘retirement’ accounts. They had power over us because they kept us separate from those we loved on the inside and outside.”

Dream continued, “As time went by I saw others, just a few, who worked there, keeping us in this brainwashed bondage. I would look into their eyes and know if I could trust them. If their heart was evident in their gaze it was easy to see. If not, I’d quickly glance away so they wouldn’t suspect I was aware, awake and trying to start an internal revolution to free us all. For the ones who were awake and had hearts of compassion, I would whisper things like–‘you know this is wrong’ and ‘help us end this madness.’

And more dream….One day, enough of us decided to overthrow the system. Outside authorities came, knights of honor in present day time. Inside we fought back until all the gates were opened. Those still confused and ‘asleep’ and unaware were being helped. I was working to find records of what they did to people. Each person had a card with their photo, assets and how they’d been brainwashed. I grabbed handfuls as evidence and also to help deprogram those still under the bank’s sick spell.

Dream continues….I saw a line of people being shuffled out and my husband was there. They had been using him for physical labor, working him to death. He didn’t recognize me or know me but followed me when I approached him. He, like so many others, was completely under their spell.

During the chaos of breaking free and simultaneously being rescued, I awakened (physically) and got out my journal to write all of this exactly as it happened in the dream. My commentary follows.

I think this is what is happening to us in the world. We are brainwashed by banks and corporations to give them our money which they use for their own gain–to get richer and richer at any cost. Our financial system, our economy is the root cause of inequality, injustice, pollution, war, famine…..our economy and the ‘gain as much as possible at any cost’ mentality threatens to annihilate all life on our planet. Until we become aware and stop blindly accepting doses of the poison they feed our minds, we are slaves to a system that ultimately is failing everyone, everything.

After this dream, I feel inspired to call for an internal revolution of awareness and awakening so that we become the masters of our own lives and our economy can shift from one that takes and takes and leaves only poison for us and the planet, to an economy that operates on the principles of life-sustaining practices. Joanna Macy says this, “Dire predictions notwithstanding, we can still act to ensure a livable world. It is crucial that we know this: we can meet our needs without destroying our life-support system….To choose life means to build a life-sustaining society. ‘A sustainable society is one that satisfies its needs without jeopardizing the prospects of future generations.'” (Last quote by Lester Brown). A life-sustaining society operates within the carrying capacity of its life-support system, regional and planetary, both in the resources it consumes and the wastes it produces.”

What kind of world do you want? It is a choice each of us makes every day by the choices we make.

This is what it looks like when profit-at-any-cost rules our world. I believe we can do better. What about you?

To order my books on nature including adventures in nature, photography and children’s books, please visit my website, Turtle Island Adventures.

City of Gulf Shores Allows BP Protestors at National Shrimp Festival

City of Gulf Shores Allows BP Protestors at National Shrimp Festival

It took an attorney volunteering to help this group of concerned citizens get a permit to peacefully, non-violently gather at the National Shrimp Festival, but Gulf Shores finally gave permission, after turning the group down twice. The attorney pointed out to the city that they have a constitutional right to peacefully assemble. Legalities….

So if you happen to be at the National Shrimp Festival at Gulf Shores, AL please be sure to check out Lifeguard Stand #2 and learn more about what’s REALLY happening to the Gulf of Mexico, its beaches and wildlife. Those slick BP ads are simply not giving both sides of the story.

Pelicans, Turnstones, Monarchs and Masses of Fish

Pelicans, Turnstones, Monarchs and Masses of Fish

There was quite a gathering of wildlife this morning at Ft. Morgan Beach. Just offshore from the point of land where Mobile Bay and the Gulf of Mexico meet, more than 300 pelicans gathered as large schools of fish swam in the shallows. Snowy egrets, gulls, terns, turnstones, sanderlings, and humans fishing, made for quite a beautiful experience at the beach.

So many pelicans were dive-bombing fish schools that it appeared to be a tangle of wings, feathers and pouches as they feasted. Monarch butterflies were launching from the beach probably hoping to ride the north wind to Mexico. I don’t know how they dodged the mass of brown feathers and webbed feet whirling through the sky but they did. I watched as they fluttered furiously, miraculously missing what I thought was certain dunking from ravenous birds.

About 85% of the mass of pelicans was first-year birds. Very few adults were present. It was Fishing 101 for young pelicans.

Other shorebirds in attendance didn’t get in the way of the pouched-wonders. Sandwich and royal terns, laughing gulls, great blue herons, snowy egrets and ruddy turnstones all enjoyed the buffet but stayed carefully out of the way of the mass of large birds.

One of the humans present threw out a cast net and completely filled it with fish. So many that he couldn’t bring the net to the beach. I’m not sure what was the cause but something was creating this mass of fish in shallow waters. But birds and humans weren’t the only ones enjoying it. Several bottlenose dolphin arrived to claim their fare share.

I sat quietly on the beach, photographing in amazement. I finally stopped and just watched, witnessed the unique experience. It was great seeing so many pelicans and fish and I truly hope that chemical exposure from the oil spill won’t kill future generations as it moves through the DNA. We don’t know what the future holds really. But for today, I enjoyed the absolute beauty of this beach and its lively residents.

What Spill?

What Spill?

“That’s just not the kind of thing we want to carry,” said the manager at the gift shop at a local chain of restaurants in the Gulf Shores, Alabama area. She was referring to my illustrated kid’s book, The Gulf Oil Spill Story. Kids love it, school librarians and teachers do as well. So what’s with this manager? I read between the lines—we don’t carry oil-spill related anything—but thought perhaps I was exaggerating.

Gulf Shores hosts the National Shrimp Festival each year. This year a group of environmentally aware and concerned citizens want to march in the parade to show support of the Gulf and to let people know that the oil spill is still a serious concern here. The City of Gulf Shores is DENYING THEM A PERMIT. How can they do that? These are not violent people. They simply want others to know and remember what continues to happen to the environment here and stop pretending like the largest oil spill in US History didn’t happen here.

The Grand Festival of Arts and Books was in Fairhope, Alabama. The book portion was sponsored by Page and Palette, a local bookstore who is heavily involved in the community. They invited me to participate in their celebration of locally-authored children’s books. Page and Palette and the staff there are educating, informing and encouraging people to be aware of what’s happening in their community by inviting authors that share environmental messages with kids.

I understand that merchants do not want tourists to have images like this in mind when planning vacations. I know they want to increase revenue and make more money every year. That’s how our economy functions in the take-as-much-as-you-can-get-at-any-cost economy. Is it too much to expect from business owners to also have a conscience? To care about telling the truth? To actually use an event like the spill to educate their customers?

I have a friend in Gulf Shores. Eydie and her husband own <em>Printing Zone and have my books for sale in their shop. She has been dedicated to helping get my work into the community and school there. She’s standing up for the beautiful environment because of her love of nature and her concern. My childhood friend, Leslie Flowers, has my books for sale in her hair salon in Magnolia Springs. She cares, too.

It’s people like Eydie and Leslie and businesses like Printing Zone and Page and Palette that make a difference in the world. Teachers that care, librarians that care…you all are my heros! Writers like me and other independent writers depend on compassionate, caring, environmentally responsible and aware businesses, schools and individuals to help get the Work out into the world.

I’m weary of mayors, tourism boards and businesses here on the Gulf Coast who fear the truth, who think that if tourists know the truth they’ll stop coming here and who are working diligently to deny that the oil spill ever happened. These are the same officials who last year refused to close beaches, where children were routinely playing in crude oil, because as the Orange Beach mayor stated, “There’s no law against stupid.”

I envision there being room for profit and truth. What about you?

To order my children’s book on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill that happened on the Gulf Coast of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida please visit my web site OR buy it locally at Printing Zone, Page and Palette or Magnolia Hair Center.

Salt Report–Gulf Coast August 2011

Salt Report–Gulf Coast August 2011

As I was driving back from paddling the Gulf of Mexico and the Sound at Johnson Beach this morning, I noticed I felt out of place off the water. This visit to the Gulf Coast has included many hours on the water. The 100 feet of land between me and Bon Secour Bay seems far too big as I sit and compose this report.

First, to those of you inquiring about specific areas and concerns. Fort Morgan beaches have small tar balls washing in with the surf. The sand on the Gulf side has built-up considerably this summer so I am not sure if the small tar balls covering the beach in April were picked up by clean-up workers or covered by the natural migration of the sand. The point at Ft. Morgan, where Mobile Bay and the Gulf of Mexico come together, has eroded significantly. The old fuel tank that was far up on the big dune (deposited most likely by a hurricane or other wave-producing storm) is now almost to the water line. It appears ready to launch its rusty-self back into the saltwater.

I wish I had better news to report from Bon Secour National Wildlife Refuge. The beaches there are littered with hundreds of dead blue crabs. They are in various stages of decay from newly dead to bleached white from sun exposure. There were small tar balls rolling in the surf and tractors doing a surface cleaning of the sand on the mid-beach. The sand is stained there from oil, far up on the beach. The huge oily shelf was not visible. It could have been removed or covered by sand. Summer season is the time sand builds up on the beaches. We’ll know more when winter arrives and the sand shifts or a hurricane or tropical storm attacks the beach with large waves.

From the beginning of the oil spill, when they sprayed dispersant to sink the oil, we knew that bottom dwellers were going to suffer the most. Crabs, sting rays and other marine life that made a home on the bottom, would tell the real story. Seeing one or two crabs is not unusual. Seeing hundreds of dead crabs washing in where the beaches were so heavily oiled and where a large mat of oil sank just offshore, causes grave concern for this microcosm in the Gulf. I saw more than one dead sting ray on this visit.

And even though carcasses of crabs were everywhere at the beach, Great Blue Herons were enjoying the opportunity to find easy food sources. Unfortunately, if the crabs died of toxins associated with the spill, the herons will eventually be negatively affected as well. And that’s part of the frustration when I read in the local newspaper that ‘sea life is thriving.’ Nobody fished, shrimped or oystered last summer due to the spill. There was far fewer taken than usual. The harvests are big this year. But it takes at least three years for a species to tell their story of exposure and recovery to toxins such as crude oil.

Before the Exxon Valdese oil spill in Alaska, Pacific Herring populations were increasing in record numbers. In the year of the spill, egg mortalities and larval deformities were documented but the population effects of the spill were not established. Four years after the spill a dramatic collapse in the Pacific Herring population occurred and it has never rebounded.

How can ANYBODY hazard a guess as to how marine life in the Gulf will respond to oil and dispersants? To say that ‘all is well’ is absolutely irresponsible. We really don’t know what the long-term effects will be and we won’t know for at least three more years.

All areas I visited did not show such troubling signs. Ft. Pickens and Johnson Beach, both part of the Gulf Islands National Seashore in Florida, look really good. Although there are still small tar balls washing up, there was not dead marine creatures washed up like at BSNWR.

My early-morning SUP trips on Bon Secour Bay and Weeks Bay showed seemingly abundant marine life: shrimp jumped in front of my board, mullet leapt toward waiting mouths of brown pelicans, sea gulls and terns flew behind shrimp boats, waiting to eat their fill of discarded fish that would be thrown back into the water. It was encouraging and wonderful to experience.

My visit to the grass beds at Johnson Beach was also encouraging. I saw large schools of small fish, blue crabs, sting rays and large fish hunting in these nursery beds of the Gulf. And even the paddle in the Gulf was encouraging. I saw six bottlenose dolphin, large schools of sting rays and other small fish. I did, however, also see what appeared to be patches of sunken oil just offshore (probably the source of the tar balls). So yes, it does look better and unfortunately, we have to look deeper than appearances to begin to understand the impact of such an event.

For me or anyone to form a conclusion that everything is okay would be naive. I understand BP wants the world to know that there are fish and shrimp and dolphins still here. The Gulf Shores area had the best tourist season EVER this summer (according to many sources down here) and I understand that merchants don’t want a ‘gloom and doom’ prognosis about the Gulf waters or marine life. I get all that. But to ‘wish away’ the snapper covered in curious lesions and ‘cancers,’ ignore the hundreds of dead crabs washing up, or forget that dolphins found dead this spring have now been linked to the crude oil from MC252…..

Here’s a fact I’ll bet you haven’t read in the papers or seen on the news: Dauphin Island Sea Lab tests have shown a higher level of dispersant chemical than oil chemical in recent tests of salt marsh near Dauphin Island (reported to me by a worker there). Go back and read that sentence again. I really want you to take that in. And now….the questions begin.

Who do you think needs to answer questions about the high levels of dispersant? What about the new oil surfacing on MC252 now? Who can we trust to find out the real truth? These are questions we need to answer….and soon. I’d like to hear from you.

© Simone Lipscomb 2023