EVENING UPDATE: Thanks everyone for your wonderful participation today. Please look for a follow-up diary tomorrow.
Welcome to the first meeting of BooBooks, the online book club sponsored by The BooMan Tribune. We have two goals: to read together and then discuss books that illuminate current events and to benefit this site by purchasing our books from Powells book store. You are welcome here, though, no matter where you got your copy and even if you haven’t read it yet.
Our first book is BAYOU FAREWELL by Mike Tidwell, subtitled, “The Rich Life and Tragic Death of Louisiana’s Cajun Coast.”
Let’s get to it.
“Katrina was not a natural disaster,” Tidwell says in a post-hurricane interview. “Human activity set the table.”
Because we have an usual opportunity to view this disaster both from a historical and current perspective-as if we were sitting out somewhere in space/time looking at the last 300 years-I suggest we use his book to approach the whole thing chronologically and work our way forward to the future.
In this first diary, let’s concentrate on pre-Katrina.
Tidwell quotes a friend of his as saying, “Nature always bats last.”
Well, nature always bats first, too. . .
In the same interview I quoted above, Tidwell explains that three hundred years ago, when the French arrived, there existed between the site of New Orleans and the Gulf of Mexico:
* Vast hardwood forests. . .and now they are gone.
* Vast freshwater swamps and marshes and saltwater marshes. . .and now there remain only remnants of them.
* A veritable fortress of barrier islands. . .which now are mere strands of sand compared to what they used to be.
All of those things, built up over millions of years, provided hurricane protection for the coast, not to mention also providing an Eden of birds, fish, and plant life.
The French arrived in paradise, albeit a paradise with flooding and mosquitoes
The French brought with them, as Tidwell writes in the book, a corrupted political attitude that regarded “office” as property to be sold or given away as a means to hold onto power. That set the stage for the seemingly never-ending saga of Louisiana political corruption which played its part in the eventual disaster of Katrina. A lot of people, Louisianians included, think the state’s government has always been the poster child for corruption. That corruption hasn’t only sacrificed the coast to development and diverted funds from land and water management, but has also contributed to a fatalistic attitude on the part of people living in the bayous. Government is the problem, they shrug, so how can they turn to the government to solve the problems?
But corruption is only one part of the human activity that “set the table.”
The other part is a tale of unintended consequences. And for that discussion, let’s look at the prologue and first chapters of the book. Allow me to provide some Cliffs Notes for selected chapters. . .and remember this book was published in 2000, so we are reading what he wrote before Katrina was even a gleam in Mother Nature’s eye.
PROLOGUE:
The Situation: The whole ragged sole of the La. boot-3 million acres-is washing out to sea.
The Cause: The leveeing of the Mississippi River, resulting in “a devastating chain reaction.”
The Speed: “Breakneck, with an area equal to the size of Manhattan succumbing every l0 months.” It is “the fastest disappearing landmass on earth.“
CHAPTER ONE:
The Situation: The Louisiana Gulf coast is sinking.
This is a natural process and would happen anyway, but until humans put their hands in, it was balanced by the periodic flooding of the Mississippi which laid down new sediment, which created new land, which kept the land above water.
The Cause: “The Mississippi doesn’t flood anymore” because the Army Corps of Engineers has dammed it up so it can’t. Without that deposit of new sediment, the land is sinking and disappearing under water.” The river “is no longer creating any land whatsoever, (the sediment is) tumbling instead thousands of feet over the clifflike edge of the Continental Shelf.”
The Speed: “Every 20 minutes or so a football field of land turns to water.”
CHAPTER THREE:
The Situation: “Nobody” knows about it, nobody believes it.
Back in D.C.-where they do believe about the problems of the Chesapeake Bay and the Everglades–nobody believed Tidwell when he tried to warn them about what was going on down south. “You can’t be serious,” they’d say. “A Manhattan of wetlands lost every ten months? Is that possible?”
The Cause: Location.
The Louisiana wetlands are so isolated that nobody sees what’s happening. Nobody, that is but the Cajuns, the Houma Indians, and the Vietnamese who live and fish there, and who listens to them?
The Speed: “It’s all slipping away very fast.”
Okay then. That should set us up, though I haven’t even mentioned the dredging of the oil and gas canals or the intrusion of saltwater or the global warming that is raising sea level at the same time that the land is sinking. We’ll get to all of that, too.
Let’s begin.
Mike Tidwell was deeply surprised and shocked by what he discovered as he hitchhiked the bayous. Were you shocked by what you read? Is it worse than you imagined, or just about what you would have expected? What are the images or facts you read that startled, or concerned, or fascinated you the most?
are you serving coffee in here?
With beignets, ‘natch!
We can set up a IV caffeine drip for you if you need it…the weather is MISERABLE today!
Oh, and of course, it’s chicory coffee.
Also, there’s beer.
I’ve got a thermos full of fresh-brewed Community Coffee New Orleans Blend (with chicory, of course) right here, so y’all pass your mugs over.
it is pretty ugly out. I was out walking around the Art Museum this morning, went to the Rodin Museum for a while…laughed at the ‘Colossal Head of Balzac’. It is very damp out.
Speaking of French things, what is the solution to the land erosion in the Delta?
Tidwell and every scientist I’ve seen or read since says the solution is to literally make new land. And THAT involves cutting into the existing levees and making new channels that will send water/sediment pouring over parts of the bayou. There already is one major diversion project that Tidwell says has demonstrated it can work. They’ve been asking for 14 billion $ to do the whole thing. Right after Katrina Tidwell was expressing optimism that Americans will demand it now. . .and so Wash will provide whatever is needed, but I’m not so optimistic.
I was just reviewing some of that discussion.
But, I don’t feel optimistic about our ability to change our way of working with rivers.
Tidwell goes on to say:
(page 218)
I think that’s too close to “You have the Power” and it’s not likely to happen. At least not that easily.
Boy, does he ever look like he could use some coffee.
Yesterday I saw this article about plans to ship Illinois farmland down to the delta:
LINK:
From the same article:
officials are considering grinding up the estimated 50,000 fiberglass boats destroyed by Katrina and mixing them with cement to create artificial reefs.
“We’re exploring all sorts of options for waste,” said Chuck Brown, an assistant secretary at Department of Environmental Quality.
However, Darryl Malek-Wiley, of the local Sierra Club chapter warned: “We have to make sure we’re not putting toxins into the Gulf.”
(Unintended consequences again?)
I knew it was bad down there, but a whole lot of the info in this book was new to me. I think I was most startled by his calling it “the fastest disappearing land mass on earth.” But neither did I understand about how deltas are formed. . .how the land is porous and naturally compacts and sinks and how it requires new sedimentation to keep it level, much less growing/expanding.
Every so often I will post a quote from the book, or maybe a related link. Don’t feel you have to rate these! Save the carpel in your tunnel.
I saw something about the Louisiana Land Loss on PBS or Discovery Channel several years ago so I wasn’t surprised about the facts.
What is new for me is the viewpoint. We’re not hearing about it from the engineers or scientists. There’s nothing dispassionate about it.
There are plenty of facts, but they support a story and emotions.
That’s a really good point, Katiebird, that what this situation always needed was emotion. I felt, reading the book, that that’s one thing Tidwell found so frustrating, that the emotion was actually missing among the people most affected by this. . .the people in the bayou’s. They had that hopeless, helpless, what-can-I-do kind of attitude. Partly because it’s Louisiana, and also because they are minorities, long accustomed to feeling small and powerless in the face of huge problems.
I think the poverty contributes to their lack of a voice; the government is more concerned about meeting the needs off the oil and gas concerns than those of some cajun and vietnamese fishermen. They are part of a mostly invisible culture. I didn’t know anything about the disappearing land until we picked this book!
I loved reading about how, at the age of 12, the big excitement is getting your own boat.
For me the poverty angle ties in to my only other Louisiana experience, the book All the Kings Men.
But that hopeless, helpless attitude is an emotion, isn’t it? And it’s an attitude that is fostered by the powerful.
When we feel helpless, we don’t expect results. And we don’t get them.
So, a big part of the story is that helplessness. If they felt outrage instead, we’d probably have heard about this situation years and years ago.
And then there are the Vietnamese immigrants who Tidwell portrayed as not really giving a shit because they are so focused on providing money for the folks back home and on educating their own kids so none of the next generation will have to fish.
I wondered if that was an entirely fair representation, given that almost none of them would talk to him, so we didn’t have much to do on from their pov.
of immigrants, at least looking at my grandparents and the grandparents of most of the Jewish kids I grew up with. Many immigrants are escaping something, not coming for something and that affects their attitude — it’s a moving away, not a moving toward.
I’d love it if we could read the stories of immigrants, I’m particularly interested in the differences between those who come here with a committment to becoming citizens and those who don’t.
How do the different attititudes influence their interactions when they get here?
Did you happen to see that story this week about the man who invented the Pledge of Allegiance? Apparently he did it precisely to encourage immigrant schoolchildren to transfer their allegiance to the U.S. (He was PISSED when it was changed without anybody consulting him.)
Was that a show, or a story? Could you send me the link?
Kb,I’ll try to remember where I saw that story this week.
It wouldn’t be surprising to find that the Vietnamese immigrants have less of a connection to South Louisiana than do the Cajuns and the Houmas. After all, by the time the Vietnamese arrived in the mid-1970s, it was obvious that the land was sinking. They would have known from the start that making a living by shrimping and crabbing the bayous was a risky proposition and that it would make sense for their children to prepare for more stable and better-paying careers.
From p. 139:
I expect the helplessness comes from feeling like it’s you alone vs. a force of nature. Government on every level has failed the people of South Louisiana.
During the 1927 floods, the bankers of New Orleans convinced the feds to breach the levee southeast of the city to relieve the pressure above, flooding the lands below. The bankers promised to pay reparations, but, of course, they refused to pay in full.
Tidwell mentions the mistrust people have of the state government, with its long rich history of spectacular corruption.
The Houma can’t even get federal recognition as a tribe–which, by the way, has shut them out of any help from the Bureau of Indian Affairs post-Katrina.
So I think the shrugging of shoulders is largely due to a deep and abiding belief that the bayou people are on their own and that nobody’s going to ride to the rescue with enough money spent effectively to solve the problem.
It’s interesting to compare the sense of resignation over land loss with the outrage engendered by the Turtle Excluder Device (TED) requirements. Those regulations did spur an activist response–even if the response seems to have involved mostly a wild train trip to D.C. and some confusion over t-shirts. But that was an issue with a fairly simple solution–just lift the regulation. It didn’t involve a vast amount of money, decades of time, and the rearranging of a river.
Yeah, the TED was something concrete, so to speak, they could hang onto. Related to what you just said, Tidwell makes the point that one of the problems is that “life goes on.” They were able to keep living, eating, fishing, even as the world was–literally–sinking around them. Hard to get worked up about such large matters when life seems “normal” on a day to day basis.
And when so much of your energy is taken up with just making a living and getting by, there’s not much left at the end of the day for activism–especially when you don’t believe in your heart that anything is likely to be done.
This is absolutely it in a nutshell RH. And I can say that pretty much from personal experience also as what happened to me with medical profession and why I became afraid to continue to try and find dr. for my neuromuscular disease and haven’t since 1997.
If you look at the massive amount of study, conflict, and effort that has gone into trying to save Venice and then compare what we have done (and not done) in LA, it becomes pretty clear that this country hasn’t really made much of an effort.
And the Dutch, and the Chesapeake Bay, and the Everglades. The deltas need their own Bush Brother.
There’s a long tradition, unfortunately, of the well-off making the poor pay for the environmental disasters (Johnstown Flood, West Virgina strip mining, Centralia PA underground coal mine fire).
It’s hard to understand with all that history that people continue to by the right’s stance that you don’t need strong environmental policies because market forces will take care of everything.
I came across something that shocked me in this regard, AndiF, and I don’t know how many people know about it.
“Historically, ninety percent of previous Community Disaster Loans have been forgiven. . . but the measure adopted in the House requires the $750 million in aid to local governments on the gulf coast be paid back. Loans for future disasters, however, could still be forgiven.”
I had to read it twice to believe it.
Before Katrina. . .loans forgiven.
After Katrina. . .loans expected to be repaid.
After that. . .loans forgiven again!
I found this in a furious speech given by a La Congressman Melancon (must be related to the Melancons in the book?).
For whole speech: LINK:
scroll down to “Congressman Melancon tells local governments to. . .”
What Con. Melancon tells local governments to do is take the money and then not pay it back.
Whether we do or not will probably depend on what Wilma does to the expensive condos in Florida.
Ha!! So cynical. So true. And wouldn’t that be yet another layer of irony, if Wilma turned out to be the best thing to happen to the La. towns since God invented shrimp.
(You did invent shrimp, didn’t you?)
Naw, not that big on shrimp, but mussels, those were some of my best work.
BTW, the Church of Blue Dot has a one line catechism:
The spiritual reward for joining this church is to be immediately excommunicated.
Can you hear my screams through the web?
I know!! My reaction exactly. And Cong. Melancon’s too.
pp. 98-101
From the book by Sir Philip Sydney ‘Arcadia’, describing a rustic idyll in which law prevails under some kind of communalistic moral structure.
Sydney was not well-liked in Elizabethan England, but found an audience on the Continent – hence the adoption of his ideas by French Idealists.
There was a commune of French settlers up the Missisipppi called ‘Arcadia’, from whence the corruption ‘Cajun’ – their influence is still tasted in the food. but little else…
Akkadia was a proto-Babylonian culture, the (written) language of which has never been fully deciphered. It appears that the Finnish word for sun – ‘aurinko’ – may have Akkadian origins…
Thanks, Sven! I didn’t mention above that Tidwell opined that Acadia probably came from “Arcadia,” for just the idyllic definition you spell out above.
from my headful of entirely useless trivia ;-
It’s not random assimilation – I actually seek out obscure information in the hope of finding some kind of insight. I should be through by about 3400 AD.
I get that. I like that.
If you want a full background on Acadia you have to look at not only Nova Scotia, but also the province of New Brunswick and the state of Maine. They all share Acadian history.
Here is a good place to start with a snippet of the info. If you poke around this site you will start to get a more complete picture of the history of infighting among the French, as well as the struggles against the Brittish.
Keep in mind that this page is only a starting point, but if you go there you get an idea of what your book is talking about when he implies that corruption is kind of “par for the course” amongst the Acadians that settled in New Orleans. Political and religious infighting contributed to many of the problems for them.
When Acadians were forced to leave some ended up in Quebec, some in New England and, of course, others in Louisiana. Those places recieved the bulk of the resettlers. But they also ended up in many other places all around the world.
Remember that the snippet above deals with the situation 150 +++ years before the “dispersion” of 1775.
You can also go and check if you, or one of your ancestors, have “Acadian Heritage” at this site. Many are surprised to find out that they do.
Lots of useful info at this site for background on “Cajuns”, including Geneology info on the Acadians that ended up in Louisiana.
(Sorry for hogging comment space! lol)
Cool. Not that I’m going to read all of it right now. 🙂 But later, I’ll be glad to have it. Thanks, CT.
Interesting to be talking about this on a weekend when we learn that the Amazon forests are vanishing twice as fast as anybody suspected. Easter Island, anyone?
Uh oh. This is all the French’s fault? I’m surprised Brownie and Bush didn’t jump on that angle.
I know. I had to laugh. If they ever find out, it will be Freedom Coffee forever.
CG mentioned in a comment how much she loved learning what a big thing is for a Cajun kid to become 12 years old and get his (her?) first boat.
I loved the personal stories in this book. He made me really care about these people I’ll never meet. I haven’t had any luck finding out what has become of them since Katrina, but I haven’t tried contacting Tidwell, himself. When I get a chance I will do that, through the website at the conservation site where he works, and if he tells me anything I’ll report back.
It would be good to know how these folks fared. I ran a Nexis search on several names and came up empty.
Thanks very much for trying.
I have to admit, I haven’t finished the book yet, but a lot of the descriptions of the people in the beginning (Tim and Tee Tim, Charlie, etc) give me a sense of a Huck-Finn style childhood. Fishing, hunting, taking off in your boat for hours with yur friends.
Of course, I’ve been sailing and paddling one thing and another on and off for many years, so the boat for your 12th birthday sounds really cool to me.
Sad to think that such a way of life is washing away with the bayou.
Disgusting that the federal aid is supposed to be paid back. Where the hell are they supposed to get the money? Maybe our lovel gas and oil profiteers should have to pay it back instead, since they’ve contributed to the problem?
….so-called Indians.
How simple. How powerfully insulting.
What amazes me about Bayou Farewell is how he makes the movement between people and history/statistics seem effortless. He has such control over his subject and language, that it flows back and forth.
As a reader you get so caught up in the personal stories, you don’t even notice that you just learned something, a lot really about a subject that you ordinarily wouldn’t even glance at.
And although this is the pre-Katrina diary, may I add that an October 9th article in the Contra Costa (CA) Times stated that Katrina displaced about 4,500 Houma members, while Rita uprooted another 4,000. (Sorry I can’t provide a link–I found it via Nexis.)
My god, so almost two-thirds of them were washed out.
Thanks for telling us this, and please don’t feel you have to wait to add other things you’ve learned!
Not surprising, given Tidwell’s description of where the Houma live. From p. 231, describing Point-aux-Chenes:
The furthest south and the most exposed. They didn’t have a chance.
I found it interesting that you could “read” the book’s evolution from the book itself. In the prologue and the first two chapters, it’s obvious that Tidwell first visited South Louisiana as a travel writer, hoping to meet people and write about local culture. But once he discovered an environmental catastrophe in progress, he put on his environmental activist hat as well.
It’s commendable that Tidwell can handle both aspects of the story–he’s able to connect with people and relate their stories in a candid but caring manner, and he’s able to integrate the environmental issues into the narrative. It’s more than the sum of its parts. The book stirs emotions that a dry environmental tome could not, and it raises consciousness in a way that a happy tale of Cajun cooking and Zydeco would not.
I was thinking about that. His writing style makes the most technical facts accessible.
I got up late today and this thread was already going great so I’ll just say that I want to give everyone 4’s. Everything posted is fascinating-heartbreaking also-poverty is not for sissies.
Nothing surprises me about the environmental damage or that it has effected as always people who are poor the most(aided and abetted by policies that made sure they were the most effected).
The most interesting that I’ve read so far is the bits of history of the Cajun people-I had almost zero knowledge of any of that and the Houma Indians also.
Anyone interested in the envirnoment probably should have on their bookshelf Al Gore’s book-“Earth in Balance”…and I admit that while I have it have only read bits/pieces of it.
Or perhaps that’ll be a different diary, in which case I’ll repost.
From the October 9 Birmingham (AL) Times
“We’re about to commit an act of mass homicide,” said Mike Tidwell, speaking to a conference of Alabama environmental educators at Samford University. “It’s going to kill thousands of people.”
* * *
In studying historic maps of the region, he found that the land was gradually receding because the increased building of levees prevented the floods that previously built up sediment deposits in the marsh lands and barrier islands. Entire forests, barrier islands and wetlands have simply vanished underwater, he said. That left New Orleans vulnerable and it remains unsafe in the face of future hurricanes, Tidwell said.
“We’re witnessing a city that’s no longer habitable,” he said. “I don’t think we should fix a broken window in New Orleans until we address this problem.”
Hi guys – I’m checking in late. I’m about half-way through the book. Loving it although it makes me sad and angry. I knew the wetlands of Louisiana were in trouble, but no idea of the magnitude of what is happening.
It’s interesting that Tidwell takes the “don’t rebuild” position. Yet when Hastert suggested that he was roundly attacked. I’ve had mixed feelings myself.
I think the impression was that when Hastert said don’t rebuild, it was assumed (fairly or not, who knows) that what he meant was something along the lines of “they were stupid to live in such a vulnerable place and besides most of the people there were poor black people so just write the place off and move on.” The fact that many people who look at things from our point of view immediately took his statement to mean that is probably a reflection of the general Republican attitude of social darwinism (if bad things happen to people it’s because they deserve it – they were stupid, lazy, immoral, or whatever and that’s what caused their problems) and as, Kanye West said, “Bush don’t care about Black people.”
Tidwell’s position is quite different. Don’t rebuild unless and until the loss of the wetlands is fixed. Otherwise, you are just luring people back to a deathtrap.
I would say – with real leadership, Katrina could have been followed by a call “if you want to save this wonderful city, with all of its history, culture, and personality, then first, we’re going to have to commit to restoring the wetlands that protect it. Time to spend some money on an environmental project, folks.”
It is too bad that Hastert’s comment led people to react to his perceived message and thus to embrace “rebuild it no matter what it costs’ position. Because of this, what Tidwell is trying to say is not even being heard.
And ironically, we’re hearing estimates of $200 billion for the rebuilding, which is much less than the $14 billion needed for the projects to halt land loss.
I’d like to think that these discussions can build on themselves. Are we taking the conversations that happen here to work and to our families and friends?
And do they spread out from there?
I certainly hope that we are a part of getting the word out. I have a list of about 10 people that I hope will read Bayou Farewell if I pass it along to them.
It’s discouraging though, that even though I followed the Katrina news pretty closely and even though I knew something about wetlands loss in general and that LA was in trouble specifically, I had no idea how bad it was. There were frequent mentions of how environmental damage had increased the risk to NO, but nothing like the understanding that I’m gaining by reading the book.
Perhaps as the shock wears off a little and there is time for more in-depth analysis (Frontline, NOVA, hello . . . hello?) we’ll see some TV and newspaper articles that go into this in more detail.
In the meantime, one thing we could do is send emails to friends and family with Tidwell’s article and a recommend to read his book.
As I sit here replying, I’m distracted by the ad for Diebold Voting Machines: Hackable and the top of a book by Seymour M. Hersh.
There’s all those issues on top of the ones we’ve talked about here today. And the issues that come up on the front page almost every hour.
Now, I’m totally off the subject: But, I’m remembering that idea from the Dean campaign, “The Great American Conversation”. I think I’m going to go back and find my documents about that idea. Because it should not be forgotten.
Since we don’t have an effect free press, we should be more focused in our conversation goals. At least some of the time.
Indeed a starting point. Thanks for this, RH. I’m going to post the post-Katrina diary tomorrow, using a short article that Tidwell wrote recently. I,too, have heard him call it criminal to resettle NO before fixing the danger.
I look forward to tomorrow’s diary. Great discussion today!
It’s about living in harmony with your environment.
In 50 or so generations, a culture acquires a knowledge of the environment in which they live. It is an organic, natural process which is the same for all living creatures.
But along come these people who espouse (perhaps unknowingly) disharmony with the environment. People who put belief above facts. ‘America’ was founded by religious outcasts.
As has been, and will be proved, over and over again, nature has a simple power that is far beyond the parochial interests of man.
I am not a Pantheist, and yet – if you want to call it God – nature in all her (!) glory is more powerful than any concept than humans can come up with.
Where is Ghostdancer?
I’ve been thinking and worrying about him. I hope he’s OK. I was really angry about the unpleasantness that caused him so much hurt, but didn’t know how to make it any better. Saying anything at that point just seemed to stir things up more. I just gave him lots of 4’s and hoped he’d get the message.
me too, Janet. I just know he is taking time off to be with his family and get closer to his own feelings. I trust that he is taking care of himself. He has a lot of wisdom.
ok, now, I can see where this is going…….YA GOT ME HOOKED ya all are simply wonderful to have done this. I have learned so much. I give to you a big applaud. you are great. thanks. Many many ‘4’s
Thank you, Brenda! I hoped that people who hadn’t had a chance to read the book would find this book club meeting interesting to read anyway. I’m happy to hear it was for you. There will be a follow-up diary with a little more stuff tomorrow.
kansas, this is a great way to learn as well to instigate one to read more. I just wished I had the time to do such. I may be involved later on on this at some point..I really do enjoy this and looking forward to more tomorrow. Just have any kind of coffee ready. BTW I did some nursing at Childrens Hospital and did some interaction with the locals of discussion here. Very interesting memories of that time in my life.
Here’s a map of Plaquemines Parish so you can orient yourself.
I found a story from CNN about Plaquemines Parish seven weeks after Katrina. Excerpt:
There’s a video at the link.
Very helpful map, and thank you for the article/video, Janet.
Someone mentioned a history of tabasco in the set up diary for this first Boobooks edition and I was salivating at finding out that tasty morsel of info. I know I could go look it up myself but then I wouldn’t get the interaction and fun of comments that I do here.
So bring on the great Tabasco story!
Hi, Chocolate. It’s a bit anti-climactic! Here’s all I have for you from the book: “. . .this piquant condiment native to South Louisiana, made from mashed capsicum peppers fermented for three years in oak barrels.” But hold on, I’ll be right back. . .here’s an extra little gift just for you: LINK: Tabasco. Turns out it really IS interesting. Look at that VAT of Tabasco in the photo.
Thanks Kansas, that link was great and also it included other links. Which led to the homepage for Avery Island and the family/company’s homepage. Looks like a gorgeous place to visit as the original owner made conservation of land and habitat a must. Which led me to wonder how much damage Katerina had done or if the whole place was wiped out. Luckily that did not happen.
Interesting also the story of the tabasco bottles themselves and how they basically have not changed at all.
One reason I was interested was simply due to the fact that tabasco(original) always reminds me of my Dad…and how I came to use tabasco on fried egg sandwiches.
Thanks for the suggestion to follow the links. I found this on the Tabasco website:
The America’s Wetland link looks like it will have a lot of info that can contribute to our discussion. And the “countdown” ticker is sobering . . .