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Showing posts with label gulf spill. Show all posts
Showing posts with label gulf spill. Show all posts

Sunday, December 26, 2010

The Missing Blowout Preventer Switch [Today's News Poem, December 26, 2010]

The Missing Blowout Preventer Switch [Today's News Poem, December 26, 2010]

The buses are whining while winter is raining;
A mother is walking her daughter on Christmas.
They're hurrying, filling their hands with each other—
All washed with florescents and streetlamps and evening.
They're hurrying into a crevice of shadow.
A doorway, like others, with keys—like another's—
A sink to remove all the germs of the city,
A bed with the linens of peace and a playpen
Of toys; and a lingering presence—a haunting
Perhaps, or a memory. Maybe it's terror,
Or maybe it's sorrow—that smell has such power
I smell it while driving, with windows rolled up.
I reach for a button, a lever, a trigger
To vanquish the awfulness hovering over
Their heads... it's my head; and their halo my halo.
Their bed is my bed and their corners, my corners.
I'm so disconcerted—where is the button
To cease this disaster, stop this machinery?

"As the drilling team was trying to shut in the well, Paul Erickson, the chief mate on the Damon B. Bankston, a 262-foot work vessel moored to the Horizon, noticed something spilling off the rig. Then drilling fluids began cascading onto the ship. Dead seagulls fell, killed by the blowout’s blast. The Bankston’s captain radioed the Horizon’s bridge and was told to move to a safe distance.
In the engine control room, Doug Brown and his men overheard the conversation with the Bankston on their radios. Within arm’s reach was a console that gave them access to the emergency shutdown system. All they had to do was lift a plastic cover and hit a button and the engines would shut down in seconds. It was not such an easy or obvious step to take."
—DAVID BARSTOW, DAVID ROHDE and STEPHANIE SAUL, The New York Times, Published: December 25, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/26/us/26spill.html

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Monday, May 10, 2010

A New Treasure Isle [Today's News Poem, May 10, 2010]

A New Treasure Isle [Today's News Poem, May 10, 2010]

Sanitize leftovers, place me in bins.
Ripening refuse may travel beyond
Sirens in mourning. The harrowing din
Stresses the senses; the engines respond—

Salvaging trinkets—emitting the sound
Rescues create. The remainder is bagged,
Shipped in containers and sold by the pound.
Cauterize wounds with the garbage we dragged

Out of our houses and into the seas;
Choking the poison with sanitized piles.
Vomited litter: the corpses of trees
Join with the rancid, to form a new isle.


“Ms. Crowley has long hair, a ruddy outdoor complexion, and a sincere manner. She wants to sail west in the next month or two, out to what is called the North Pacific Trash Gyre. Her goal is to start cleaning up the plastic trash that has leaped into social consciousness over the past couple of years. ”
– Paul Van Slambrouck, The Christian Science Monitor, May 10, 2010
http://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/2010/0510/A-passion-to-clean-up-the-Pacific-Ocean-s-great-garbage-patch

“Engineers are examining whether they can close a failed blowout preventer by stuffing it with trash, said Adm. Thad Allen, the commandant of the Coast Guard.”
– CNN Wire Staff, May 9, 2010 11:06 p.m. EDT
http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/05/09/gulf.oil/?hpt=T2?hpt=C1


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Tuesday, May 04, 2010

The Ghosts of Banquo and Icarus [Today's News Poem May 4, 2010]

The Ghosts of Banquo and Icarus [Today's News Poem May 4, 2010]

Floes adrift on lava float away on molten
Clay and grind their teeth together; loosening, then
Crumbling the brittle igneous to boulders,
Else to rifts and canyons. Poles align to colder
Regions, warmer climes, then back again. It shudders;
Vomits rock and ash so hot the vessel's rudders
Fail. The oceans boil the krill. The storks are trailing
Embers, losing feathers, melting skin and wailing.
Splash! The potion's seasoned. Princes feed, while rulers
Sleep in beds of sand and wait for something crueler.

“A tumble in global stocks spread to Asia on Wednesday on heightening fears that Greece's debt woes could spread to other countries.”
– Vikram S Subhedar, Reuters, Wed May 5, 2010 12:28am EDT
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6360JO20100505
“BP Plc is fighting the oil slick menacing the Gulf Coast with more than 150,000 gallons of a detergent-like chemical intended to blend oil and water. ”
– Bloomberg Business Week, May 05, 2010, 12:22 AM EDT
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-05-05/bp-s-cleanup-uses-detergent-like-chemical-to-attack-oil-slick.html
“Every so often, movements deep within the iron core of the Earth mean that the planet flips its magnetic field; south becomes north and north becomes south. The last reversal was 780,000 years ago, and there are signs that another could be on the way soon. "The strength of the Earth's magnetic field has decreased by nearly eight per cent in the last 150 years," says Nils Olsen of Denmark's National Space Institute. "In some regions it has decreased by 10 per cent in just 20 years."”
– Kate Ravilious, The Telegraph, 10:59PM BST 26 Apr 2010
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/7636088/After-the-volcano.-.-.-the-threat-of-further-natural-disasters.html


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