Above: Facing east, looking out onto Galveston Bay at sunset on the Gulf of Mexico the other evening, in Kemah, Texas (pronounced KEE-mah). The Louisiana border is but a two-hour drive from there.
Did anyone hear the interview with Acy Cooper, vice president of the Louisiana Shrimp Association yesterday afternoon on NPR? When Tracie P and I finally got to sit down for dinner last night, we talked about the piece we both had heard.
- [Melissa] BLOCK: You know, I’m curious, yesterday, we heard a term come out of the mouth of the chairman of BP, who talked about doing better by the small people who were affected by the spill. I wonder if you heard that, and what you made of that term, small people.
Mr. COOPER: Yeah, I was offended. We’re not small people. We are a lot bigger than they can actually imagine. We don’t need help around here. No, we’re not small. We do – we make our living on our own. We’re hardworking people. Where he get terminology of small is very offending to us. We’re all Americans and we’re not small.
Please listen to the story (you can also read the transcript there). The man in the interview talks like a lot of the folks I’ve met since I moved down to Texas. Folks I’ve met in Louisiana and in East Texas where Tracie P grew up.
I took the above photo the other day when I was down in Kemah, Texas, on the Gulf, doing a restaurant review for one of the blogs I author. The restaurant was a seafood restaurant, of course. So far, said the nice folks I met down there, the only thing that they can’t get this summer is oysters. But that’ll probably change, they said.
Please listen to the interview. And please keep all those folks in your hearts and your thoughts.
Do Bianchi 
i heard that interview yesterday, working late, while driving from one appointment to another and thinking how annoyed i was with the long hours…that interview put me in check though, these folks are experiencing another sort of unemployment. job losses due the economy are bad enough, now BP has helped to contribute to the pool.
some of my ‘gulf coast’ concept customers are going to be affected too. in addition to the devastating effect on the shrimping/fishing/tourism industries we have good people out there who own small businesses who will be priced out of their seafood staples. the ripples of this catastrophe are going to shake our economy, i’m afraid, in ways we haven’t imagined.