Tattered Jeans

Deep in Cajun country, times are better but worries remain about long-term effects of BP spill

Editor's Note: In 2010, Katie Oxford filed a series of riveting columns from the heart of the Gulf oil spill disaster. She recently returned to Louisiana. This is her second column in a series.

While in Baton Rouge to meet Xuan "The Ant Man" Chen, I camped at The Cook Hotel, which is conveniently located on the LSU campus. Also camped there were Daughters of the American Revolution, who were attending the Louisiana State Convention — 200 plus.

I met a few of the daughters on the elevator. They were a jolly group, mostly blue-haired ladies who on this day were wearing pink hats with the pumps and pantyhose and chattin’ up a storm. An elderly gentleman stood silently in the back, wearing a baseball cap and a slight grin.

Something happens to me when traveling the back roads of Louisiana. My heart accelerates and senses ignite like a hound dog hot on a trail.

A few of the ladies pointed to their daughters and said where they were from. After we spilled out of the elevator, I felt a light tap on my shoulder.

“I just wanted to introduce myself,” the gentleman said. “In this group,” he explained, his fingers spread like he’d just tossed a seine, “I’m the H-O-D-A-R. That stands for ‘husband of a DAR’ but I say, it means ‘hundreds of dollars are required’.”

His wife, smiling dismissively, continued walking.

The DARS were adorable but I was glad to be leaving this hub of a beehive and going south. To Cut-Off, that is, according to the wife of the HODAR, “Is cut off.”

Dripping with color

Something happens to me when traveling the back roads of Louisiana. My heart accelerates and senses ignite like a hound dog hot on a trail. This trail, Highland Road to LA 1248, was dripping with color.

If spring green is gorgeous in Houston, it’s on steroids in Louisiana. Azaleas adorned almost every yard. Some sat in rows like buttons on a jacket popping pink. Others dressed the slopes down to the road, where on either side ditches were filled to the brim with cattails.

If spring green is gorgeous in Houston, it’s on steroids in Louisiana.

The houses seem suited to the land both in scale and in beauty. Refreshing. Roofs slant long and low and tree branches are the size of huge barrels. Porch columns are almost as plentiful as the golden rods, also in bloom.

From one farm road to another, I zigzagged through towns like St. Gabriel, Vacherie, ChackBay, feeling more intoxicated after every curve with some concoction of Norman Rockwell and Cajun country. The sight of water, that is, a bayou, ever constant.

From LA 20, as I hit 308 and turned south, I knew I was getting close to a place that feels like home. Lafourche Parish and Terrebonne Parish. I can’t decide which. The two sit side by side like sisters.

The people here are Cajuns. They live honoring the simple things in life like sharing a meal or a friendly conversation. As one Houstonian said, “We have watches, they have time.” Cajuns are my kind of folk.

Better times

By late afternoon, I came to that familiar sharp curve in the road and saw the Southern Sting Tattoo Parlor. Unlike three years ago, the parlor appeared to have customers. Indeed, it did.

Inside, Bobby Pitre and Eric Guidry were busy at work with more customers waiting.

I still wonder why the Woodward/Bernsteins of the world aren’t on this part of the tragedy like a tick.

Bobby looked up from the table and smiled big. I was glad that he remembered me and I was anxious to hear how things were going from Bobby’s point of view.

“Going great!” he answered, “because we’re working! It’s been a good year so far.”

Bobby reported that last year wasn’t so good. “People weren’t spending any money,” he said.

I asked whether he’d seen any media folk. “Some,” he said, “maybe four in the last year.”

Then I asked him if he had any concerns, now three years after the BP oil spill. His answer came with no hesitation.

“Yeah I do,” Bobby said. “I’m concerned about the dispersant…what’s in the soil.” He had a daughter who he used to take to the beach on a regular basis. Not anymore.

Bobby had hit on something that hits on me. Big time. Who will ever know the amount of poison that BP sprayed in Louisiana and God knows where else. Why they were allowed to is the bigger question, and I still wonder why the Woodward/Bernsteins of the world aren’t on this part of the tragedy like a tick. Something that at the end of the day may prove more damning than the damn oil spill itself.

old growth, new growth trees with moss

Photo by Katie Oxford

old growth, new growth trees with moss

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Will Houston get a shuttle?

Debate continues over moving space shuttle from D.C. to Houston

Johnson Space Center/Facebook

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Texas’ two U.S. senators, Republicans John Cornyn and Ted Cruz, have called for the Space Shuttle Discovery to be relocated from the National Air and Space Museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center near Washington, D.C., to the visitors center at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. They say Houston is Discovery’s “rightful home” and note that provisions in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act call for the shuttle to be moved to Houston.

Moving the shuttle to Houston would reverse a decision made in 2011, when NASA awarded shuttles to museums in California, Florida, and New York instead of Space Center Houston. At the time, Houston Mayor Annise Parker blamed "political calculations" for not including the home of the Johnson Space Center as a shuttle home, even though the astronauts who flew the shuttle lived and trained in Houston.

But four Democratic U.S. senators — including U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona, who is a retired NASA astronaut and a one-time Discovery commander — hope to block the shuttle’s relocation from Chantilly, Virginia, to Houston. They claim the move would waste taxpayer dollars and endanger the shuttle.

The latest development in the Discovery debate came last week in a letter written by Cornyn and Cruz. In the letter, the senators accuse the Smithsonian Institution, which runs the National Air and Space Museum, of inflating the estimated cost of relocating the shuttle to Houston.

The Smithsonian says the tab for relocating the shuttle could be $300 million to $400 million, with transportation alone totaling $50 million to $55 million. Legislation passed earlier this year allocates $85 million for the shuttle’s move.

In their letter to leaders of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Cornyn and Cruz state that the Smithsonian’s and NASA’s cost estimates are 10 times higher than those obtained from private-sector logistics companies. Furthermore, they accuse the Smithsonian of falsely claiming the shuttle’s wings would need to be taken off ahead of the spacecraft’s trip to Houston.

“This relocation honors both the intent of Congress and the legacy of America’s space program. It is time for the Space Shuttle Discovery [to] return to the community that helped make its missions possible,” wrote Cornyn and Cruz, referring to Johnson Space Center’s Mission Control operations and astronaut training program.

In their own letter to the Senate Appropriations Committee, the Smithsonian and NASA say they believe the shuttle would need to “undergo significant disassembly to be moved. Discovery is the most intact shuttle orbiter of the NASA program, and we remain concerned that disassembling the vehicle will destroy its historical value.” A lengthy article in Scientific American cites academics who support The Smithsonian’s view that the costs are higher than a private firm might estimate, diving into the logistical challenges of moving the large, relatively fragile spacecraft across the country.

In a letter dated September 26, Kelly — along with U.S. Sens. Mark Warner of Virginia, Tim Kaine of Virginia and Dick Durbin of Illinois — urge the Senate Appropriations Committee to block federal funding for Discovery’s relocation. They warn that the move would waste taxpayer dollars, risk permanent damage to Discovery, and lead to fewer people visiting the spacecraft.

In their letter, the four lawmakers peg the cost of bringing Discovery to Houston at over $375 million. That number includes more than $50 million for the move itself, and another $325 million for planning, new facilities, and exhibit reconstruction.

“Dedicating hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to move an artifact that is already housed, displayed, and preserved in a world-class facility is both inefficient and unjustifiable,” the four senators wrote.

According to the Smithsonian, Discovery spent 365 days in space — the longest period of any NASA shuttle. Discovery entered service in 1984 and was retired in 2011. It’s been housed at the Smithsonian facility in Virginia since 2012.

Space Center Houston, the Smithsonian affiliate that serves as the visitors center for the Johnson Space Center, would likely be the future home of Discovery.

In a statement issued this summer, Space Center Houston said it had not commissioned independent estimates of relocation costs, according to Roll Call. Rather, Space Center Houston is merely focused on “planning a world-class home for Discovery.”

“This opportunity aligns naturally with our long-term plans,” Keesha Bullock, a spokeswoman for Space Center Houston, told Roll Call.

museums space space center houston nasa