ColumnWhile this past week has been full of gross news about how certain states (ahem, MISSISSIPPI and NORTH CAROLINA) view LGBT people in a less than favorable way, there is a beacon of hope in Pennsylvania, Governor Tom Wolf, who is taking a progressive political stand against the recent bigoted legislation.

Over the past weeks, the Mississippi and North Carolina governments created legislation that allows “individuals and institutions with religious objections to deny services to gay couples,” The New York Times reports.

The North Carolina law, signed by Governor Pat McCory, “made it legal to fire someone for their sexual orientation or gender identity… [and] forced trans people to use the restrooms in public buildings that correspond with the sex they were assigned at birth,” Advocate reports. And the Mississippi law, also known as the “religious liberty” law, “allows businesses to discriminate against customers and employees based on their “sincerely held religious beliefs,” Advocate adds.

Mmm. Smells like fresh shit institutional de-evolution.

Well, thank goodness for Pennsylvania’s Governor Tom Wolf, because he’s had enough of this bigoted bullshit.

On April 6, Wolf announced plans to sign executive orders “to protect LGBT state employees in response to North Carolina’s anti-gay law,” Advocate reports. He signed those executive orders on April 7.

And Wolf isn’t trying to sneak this legislation in — in fact, he’s making loud statements concerning the issue.

During an interview with WESA, a Pittsburgh radio station, he called the N.C. law discriminatory.

“This is not something we want in [Pennsylvania] — we want to be known as a welcoming state,” Wolf said in the radio interview. “We want to be known as a place that’s open for everybody.”

In an initial press release concerning the signings, Wolf detailed what the executive orders would entail. One executive order concerns commonwealth employees, and the  other pertains to commonwealth grants and procurement process, the release states. “Each say no agency under the governor’s jurisdiction shall discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation, gender expression, and identity, among other areas.”

Hell yeah, Governor Wolf. All we can add is that we hope more American states will follow Wolf’s lead and stop the bigotry now.

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Image of Governor Tom Wolf via his Facebook page

The post PA Governor Tells MI, NC Where to Stick ‘Religious Freedom’ Laws: #NowWhat appeared first on EcoSalon.

It was a warm and humid afternoon, and all I wanted was an iced coffee. Being from the Northwest, I’m used to drive-through coffee shops in even the most podunk of towns, but now I was in the heart of the Louisiana Bayou, and there wasn’t any type of coffee shop to be found. Instead there was “The Chill Out,” a small white building facing the road, with a multi-colored flag sporting an ice cream cone hanging from the window and a flashing red light on the porch.

A house turned into a frozen-treat mecca, The Chill Out had a wall facing the road with a long list of “snowball flavors,” ranging from Tiger Blood (I’m not quite sure exactly what that entails!) to watermelon. A snowball is the classic treat of this region, shaved ice doused in sugary flavoring. I assumed this meant sweet, fruity flavors, so my eyes did a double take when I read “dill pickle” on the list. I imagined what dill-pickle sorbet would taste like and cringed. Had I missed something? When had salty brine become an additive to summer iced treats?

But two weeks later, I’m finding that consuming salty, briny, distinctively flavored items out of their normal context isn’t as odd as I thought. In fact, it’s downright popular. Take Kraut Juice for example, found by the foodies over at The Kitchn, which is apparently prevalent in the Midwest. What does one do with kraut juice besides scrunch up your nose and move on? Make some tomato tang and enjoy.

If that doesn’t strike your fancy, how about Pickle Juice Sport? That’s right, you can refuel your electrolytes and prevent cramping after a serious workout with this salty drink.

Not ready for bottled juices? You might want to start easy with something like pickle pops, another delicacy that I had never heard of until the dill pickled snowball fiasco. “We used to freeze pickle juice in ice-cube trays all the time when I was little… it’s sooo good!” exclaimed one friend, a Mississippi native. I have yet to try it, but according to the blogosphere, those pickle pops are all the rage.

Ingredients

Dill pickle juice

Preparation

Fill ice-cube tray with pickle juice, and add in a popsicle stick or toothpick to each cube. Freeze and enjoy.

And you thought kombucha was weird…

Editor’s note: This is the latest installment of Anna Brones’s column at EcoSalon, Foodie Underground. Each week, Anna will be taking a look at something new and different that’s taking place in the underground food movement, from supper clubs to mini markets to culinary avant garde.

Images: sleepyneko, The Kitchn

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We’re rushing from Grand Isle, Louisiana to D’iberville, Mississippi where our guide, Pat Heidingsfelder, has set up a town hall style meeting with Gulf Coast shrimpers. It’s an uncanny mix of folks: half are Cajun, the others are from the Vietnamese community. But they all share something in common in this room. They’re angry at the situation in their waters and they feel helpless to do anything about it.

What’s at the crux of this problem is mistrust and confusion. I’m currently investigating the real effects of dispersants, talking with high level folks at NOAA fisheries and reading all that’s being published. Lots of information that’s coming out isn’t from peer-reviewed sources and from my journalistic vantage, can’t be considered credible. Anecdotal evidence is important, but sound science is paramount.

Knee deep in uncertainty, here’s what I know: The truth of the toxicity of the water is remarkably more complex than the media have been portraying and lots of scientists, unqualified to speak to the implications of Corexit 9500 and 9527, are screaming at the top of their lungs on MSNBC. And it’s not helpful.

Rumor turns to fact once it disseminates across a community. Invariably, it gets quoted by journalists looking for juice, and there’s no shortage of ambulance chasers here, journalistic and otherwise. But when that juice gets picked up by the Associated Press and spreads like a game of telephone hotted up on SEO, it’s hard to unpack the truth. Our cynical media outlets don’t care, and people are suffering hard for it. It makes me angry, especially since I’m one who believes that truth is progress.

We’re in town, right at the close of Brown Shrimp season and the opening of White Shrimp season. The fishermen talk about an ocean dead. They talk about getting sick from dispersants. They talk about finding oil in the water when Dr. Bill Walker, head of Marine Natural Resources for Mississippi, says their is no oil in the water. They show videos of finding it three quarters of a mile offshore, in 12 feet of water.

What’s at stake is big. The seafood industry has collapsed in the Gulf because public perception is reality. And the reality is that it’s unsafe. It may very well be. But that’s the point exactly; Walker has declared that fishing season is open, which by definition, means state officials are declaring that it’s safe. It also means BP isn’t on the hook for lost days of work anymore. But if their are no shrimp and there is evidence of oil, these guys can’t sell their product, even if they can find it. Besides, none of them want to sell stuff that will make people sick. When the facilitator asks who is buying right now, only one man raises his hand. It’s for a small buyer. In effect, there is no market. Would you eat Gulf seafood right now?

To add insult to injury, these men are often divided on the issue. In the wake of a massive fisheries collapse, and when the oil was still spewing, several of these guys were hired by BP’s “Vessels of Opportunity” program to assist in the ‘incident response effort’ as BP named it. Half the men in this room have made a bucket full of cash – one netting 200K in just 74 days – by re-purposing their boats for the BP cause. But others haven’t been hired, and they don’t know why. Truck sales are booming from BP money, and truck repossessions are rampant from out of work, un-BP-hired fisherman. The net result, and perhaps one of the most insidious facts I’ve uncovered during my time here, is that this divide destroys this group’s ability to organize and unify. We know what results from a lack of cohesion: muffling.

As the evening progresses, I’m looking at the other members of our delegation, bearing witness, as I photograph everything. I haven’t seen this kind of emotion on people’s faces since watching airplanes fly into the World Trade Center. It’s heart wrenching and I feel dirty, ugly. As the complexities unfold, meaning splinters and darkens.

This is a region in crisis. This is a world gone mad. What’s hardest on the heart is that what people desperately want, above all, is to get back to how things were. But how it was isn’t sustainable. This is a never ending story.

Images: Stiv Wilson

The post Watching Grown Men Cry: Fear and Mistrust in Mississippi appeared first on EcoSalon.

A picture is worth a thousand words. The expression may sound cliche, but in the conservation movement, it couldn’t be more true. In the day and age of quick soundbites and short attention spans, when it comes to promoting a cause, grabbing people’s attention is key. We need more than just hearing about things in order to care; we need to see them, and we need to be moved.

That’s one of the main reasons that pilot Tom Hutchings takes visitors to the Gulf of Mexico up in the air in his Cessna 182, knowing very well the visual power of seeing this environmental catastrophe from above. In the weeks following the Deepwater explosion, oil covered the diverse marsh landscape of the Mississippi Delta, turning a pristine habitat into an alien environment.

Hutchings flies for South Wings, a non-profit with a tagline of “conservation through aviation.” Founded in 1996, the organization is committed to connect conservation groups with pilots, providing flights at no cost.

“Do you get motion sick?” Hutchings ask as he works to take off a back hatch on the Cessna so our videographer can film through it as we fly.

“Not really,” I respond, not completely sure what I’m getting myself into. As I stare into the small cockpit wondering how I am going to cram my legs in, I realize I actually have no idea what I’m about to take on. This is my first aerial photography tour, something that I’ve always wanted to do, but never had the opportunity.

We load into the small plane and make our way down the runway, slowly lifting into the air and leaving the urban landscape of New Orleans behind. “All the waterways that you see that are straight are manmade,” Hutchings points out. And there are a lot of straight waterways. From above it’s pretty clear why levy failure during Hurricane Katrina had such an impact; this city is surrounded by water.

Soon we’re in the heart of the Mississippi Delta, flying over small islands and marshes. These days, there is in fact less oil visible to the human eye. Gone are the days when entire bays were covered in a reflective slick, but the oil’s presence and destruction is still ever present. Marshes are lined with a reddish color, evidence of oil soaked sand. In a couple of places, thin long lines of oil streak the blue water, almost as if painted on. In protected bays, oil collects and doesn’t move. As Hutchings points out, stormy weather blows it in, and there’s no way to get it out.

But it’s not just the destruction that gets to me; it’s the natural beauty. Blue water dotted with bright green marshes. Natural designs created from the various waterways. From the moment that we start flying over this diverse and rich natural landscape, it’s apparent how unique and sensitive it is; to storms, to oil and to people.

“Disaster tourism” is what some people deem projects that take travelers to areas that have seen some kind of catastrophe or devastation. Yet when you travel to a place and see it first hand, you quickly realize how connected you are to that place.

In the Gulf of Mexico, it’s apparent that even being from the Northwest, this is my backyard. It’s hard not to get emotional as I fly over this amazing place, thinking about how I would feel if a similar disaster were to happen to the natural spaces that I call home. Tears well up as I continue snapping photos, trying to capture the scope and colors of what passes below me.

“Did you even think about the Gulf of Mexico before this oil spill?” Hutchings asks me.

I think for a second. I’m embarrassed by my answer: “No, not really.” And it’s true. Besides having looked at it on the map, I realize that I’ve never really given a second thought to this region’s culture, environment and economy. But it’s a region that works its way into all of our lives, from goods that get transported up the Mississippi, to seafood that’s shipped all over the country to jazz music.

I realize that it’s all this that we’re trying to capture in photos and with video. That’s a big order. But it must be done, or we will never contemplate what our everyday actions have on people and regions outside of our immediate circles. And that’s why Hutchings continues to fly, and we have to continue to pay attention.

Aerial Tour from Uncage the Soul Productions on Vimeo.

To check out a full gallery of photos, click here.

This post originally appeared on the project PDX 2 Gulf Coast’s website and has been cross-posted.

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