An Acadian Moment

Posted on September 2, 2010 | Leave a comment

The following timeline is from memory and tapped out quickly. It leaves out far more than it includes.  Nonetheless, in this blog I often argue that we may have reached an Acadian moment in American history. Therefore, I want to give some idea of where that moment would fall in our history.

1600ish Project of founding Acadie begins in Western France.

1755 Le Grand Derangement peaks with exiles from Grand Pre area as the Brits drive out the “French Neutrals”  and burn, confiscate  or destroy almost all their possessions.

1785 Joseph Broussard Dit Beausoleil  and his company receive near state statue from the Spanish Empire on the Atakapas Prairie. Connections well established with Olivier Theriot’s Acadian Colony in East Louisiana.

 Very Early 1800s Acadians deal with numerous transitions including the Louisiana Purchase, some fight at Battle of New Orleans, Louisiana becomes a State of the United States.

1850s Tensions build toward the Civil War. Acadian Governor Mouton prominent in crisis. Comite de Vigilance des Atakapas founded.  

1860s French Prince Camille de Polignac fights in Acadiana as a Confederate general. Acadian Confederate General Mouton dies  of wounds received at Shiloh. The COnfederacy loses the war.

1881 5000 or so Acadians gather for the first National Convention intended to represent the whole people publicly since the exile. August 15, Feast of the Assumption is named national Acadian holiday.

1938 the Pope recognizes Feast of Assumption as Acadian holiday.

1940s through 1950s Dudley Leblanc leads a high  profile movement of activism, study and international committees.

1960s Acadian music, festivals and crafts better organized in Louisiana. Sometimes call the start of an Acadian Renaissance.

1980s Congres  Mondial makes strong steps to restore national union of family associations.

2003 Her Britannic Majesty Elizabeth Queen of Scotland and of England Second of the Name issues a proclamation regarding the Acadians and Le Grand Derangement.

To see a bit more go to my glossary:     https://franksummers3ba.wordpress.com/acadian-forum-archive/glossary-of-terms-casually-defined/

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Posted in Acadians, Arts, Christianity, Louisiana, Louisiana Musicians and Music, Music, Personal Philosophy and Moral Economics, Religious Holidays, Roman Catholicism, United States of America, USA--UK Relationship, Vermilion Parish

Hurricanes and the Great Oil Leak of 2010

Posted on August 31, 2010 | 1 comment

I  do not devote as much time to watching the oil leak as I once did. However I do watch and read what I can. It seems that there is no lack of talk about the importance of removing the blow-out preventer or BOP to examine it and detect the cause of the accident or event. However there has been no reason given as to why they should remove the cap on the well and let it spill freely  before the relief well is drilled. I can think of some reasons why it might be good  to let the well flow from the top at the end. It would probably reduce pressure and thus make the cutting into the well shaft safer. However, I have not heard anyone say this nobody. So all I hear is that it is no big deal to open up and let the well leak for four unexplained days while they hope the constant column of storms raking the Atlantic do not interrupt the drilling.

I am not sure what the next step is if the BP people and corporation are our committed enemies but behavior like this makes it hard to understand how they could possibly be acting in good faith and with goodwill. This whole saga is truly exhausting . The behavior of  so many  on so many occasions reminds some of us how far we are from anything approaching right behavior in this situation. We will see what happens next.

September 1,2010 UPDATE

A fairly junior reporter on a local network has passed on assessments from the  Incident Command and BP undisclosed sources to the viewership of the local station  what amounts to a statement that certainly removing the cap and almost as certianly removing the blow-out preventer should not disturb the cemented in well that was static killed with mud and cemented in. In should not expose any cracks or erosion or change pressure on the well. There should be no risk of a renewed leak.  That is the answer that needed to be announced clearly. It makes sense as some feel the relief well is no longer needed. I hope that it will work out that way and think that it is probable the cement job will hold. But I am glad to have someone on record even if we do not know who or why or how emphatic their statements were.   

 

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The Great Game

Posted on August 30, 2010 | Leave a comment

It is a day when I can and do choose to blog on one of those miscellaneous topics not determined  either by the calendar on the one hand or by some large policy or news issue that I am blogging about. I think that I do only a relatively few of my blog posts fall into that category. So I want to discuss the idea of the great game. It seems to me that a great deal of the world’s business is determined by the play and progress of a great game. This great game is not the only important story in the world but it is an important story. Of course there are many games making the human world go around law suits are clearly games of a kind and so are some of the more small and clever wars. The trades, arbitrage, mergers and currency swaps that shape our financial and equity markets are clearly akin to games in countless ways.  Then there are the absolutely game related activities like bidding competitions for Olympic and FIFA World Cup cities as well as for the Super Bowl, the Cricket and Rugby and other championships including five or six really great basketball championships. There are the maneuvers played by the militaries of each country that can afford it with other countries which are called war games. If as I acknowledge and believe these games all matter then is there some kind of other great game?

Well my New Orleans Saints won the Super Bowl recently and played nineteen games of actual foot ball to achieve that –I do believe that this mattered. Spain won the World Cup winning lots of soccer matches on the way and I think those mattered too.  If all of that mattered and was made up of games that really matter then is there room for a great game?

I do believe that a lot of thrillers are based on fact.  Spies, smugglers, hackers, security analysts, bodyguards, assassins and other live out a complex whirl of life and death gamesmanship. It can indeed matter quite a bit who wins and loses and how the game is played. So if all that is really being played out and makes a difference is there a great game?

I mean a game in which perhaps most or all people participate in some way but in which really only a tiny percentage are really players in the strict sense. I mean a game where of these  million or so players maybe only a few thousand are actually playing as full-time major players with largely mutually understood rules and a considerable amount of mutual awareness. I mean a game that is a real game though few see it.  Once in a while a hint of its existence is dropped and that is about all there is to it.

Well, I had a day free to blog as I pleased and so I played with this idea. An odd idea really. I do not know if I will return and bring it to some closure or not. For I really haven’t said much of anything here have I?

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Looking back to look forward…

Posted on August 28, 2010 | Leave a comment

One of the wonders of the internet is that one can write for such an unknown readership on a blog.  I have no real way of guessing how many of you have been in a dense woods, thicket or forest. However, those of you who have been in such places  many times will know that to go in one direction as quickly as possible one must be aware of many routes and directions from the place where one is at any moment.

There is a balance in all things including awareness of direction and time. The same Jesus Christ who asserted that am man who looked back after putting his hand to the plow for the Kingdom of God was unworthy of it is the Jesus who said be aler because you do not know the day or the hour when the thief or bridegroom may return. He is also the one who said to let the little children come to him for the Kingdom of God belonged to them and that John the Baptist was one of those who knew that the the Kingdom of Heaven was taken by storm and violence. That is not contradiction it is wisdom. In each metaphor or simile he uses there is  a use of the strict demands of living a particular situation well and lets that throw a light on human light as a whole.

I am very aware of past, present and future today. Past times shared with those dear to me in China and presently having a new Twitter follower who is Chinese. Thinking of time spent with women I have cared for and recent correspondence with these and some others.  Seeing my nieces and nephews grow up and remembering their parents growing up.   

We face the future results of the future with whatever resolve we can muster. Life often has us quite busy coping with present results of past reality. WE MUST LOOK  AROUND SOMETIMES…

I had a bit of a busy day today. Nothing compared to some levels of busy and frenetic living even in my own past but busy enough. I went to vote this morning. The Republican primary was closed only to allow its own members to vote. Democrats, Libertarians and Republicans all had to vote in their own party’s primary. However, Independents could vote either in the Democratic or Libertarian primaries but not in the Republican, Whoever I may vote for in the general election I was an independent voter today in the Democratic primary. Voter turnout was very bad. The two major parties attracted a little more or  a little less than 100,000 votes a piece across in Vermilion Parish where I live some precincts saw only single digit voter turnout. I worry not only about politics but about local crises like possible epidemics or other problems.

I then went to watch three of my nephews play in youth football game.  It was impressive enough. They are learning football lessons  for life in those games. It was not a huge crowd though.

Glen Beck’s Restoring Honor rally in Washington seems to have been well attended . I hope it was a good place to spend the time. However, I am anxious about this sense of how much is wrong here and yet I hear about rallies and see how they make people feel they are addressing people who do want to make things better. I hope our understanding is deep enough for good change, I also hope the voters and relatives near me who were absent from polling place and football will be back around and feeling ready to contribute where needed.

There is a lot going on in America, Louisiana and the world. We must address it and plan for the future. To do that we must also know where we are coming from and how we got where we are.

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Posted in Acadians, blogs, family, Frank W. Summers, Frank W. Summers III's family, Jesus Christ, Louisiana, United States of America, Wetlands

South Louisiana Blues

Posted on August 26, 2010 | Leave a comment

In my last post I blogged on the anniversaries of the 9-11 attacks and the Battle of Antietam/Sharpsburg. But before we even get to those we have the anniversary of  Hurricane Katrina which I remember both as all Americans do and as a Louisiana native does. For me it falls into an arrangement with the memory of our devastating follow-up hurricane here in the western part of coastal Louisiana — Rita.

We face the uncertainty of this BP Oil Leak and we still deal with all the storm damage which is as bad as it is in part because of damage to the coast caused by other bad behavior from oil companies. Thank God we are struggling with all this because it proves we are not dead. There is a lot of sadness in the story of so much of the world. I think sadness is actually an important part of humanity and human life. However, we are really having our share here. We have known numerous very rough storms, the 9-11 attacks and the levee collapse that made Katrina what it became. Now we are dealing with the largest ecological disaster in our country’s history.

It is not that things cannot get worse. They can get a lot worse and very possible they will get a lot worse. There are some improvements in New Orleans since Katrina. Before Katrina seventy percent of New Orleans Schools were failing  now sixty percent are passing and only forty percent are failing. There is the Musicians Village put together by Harry Connick Jr. and the Marsalis family as well as their backers. There is the movement back of some celebrities and environmental lobbies who are investing talent and interest in rebuilding the city and the region.

I was partly inspired to write this post by shows I have seen on LPB lately as well as by Anderson Cooper’s show emphasizing the anniversary of Katrina. However, we face as many reminders of all of these crises as anyone would like pay attention to today and any day here on the coast..  

The story goes on but there is a lot of sadness in the story. Maybe the time to write some more music about all of this is very much here.

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Posted in 9-11 attacks, Acadians, Anderson Cooper, Arts, blogs, BP - British Petroleum, BP Chairman Svanberg, CNN, Environment, Gulf of Mexico, Ken Feinberg, Louisiana, Louisiana Musicians and Music, Music, Personal Philosophy and Moral Economics, Plaquemines Parish, United States of America, Vermilion Parish, Wetlands

September 11 and September 17 Anniversaries Approach

Posted on August 24, 2010 | Leave a comment

The three days on which  the Americans lost the most lives to violence on a single day were quite different and each adds complexity in attempting to describe them. If one says Americans that is sort of ambiguous and if one says citizens of the United States that leaves out many of the dead Americans.  Of the three bloodiest days one was in December –that is December 7 and the bombing of Pearl Harbor in World War II. The other two bloodiest days were in September. The lesser in blood is the one sharper in our own minds in which many alive today lost loved ones. But the bloodiest of all was September 17, 1862 and the Battle of Antietam or of Sharpsburg as most Southerners call the same combat event. This was something many of us were aware of as we watched 9-11 unfold. At first we thought the number of those killed might surpass the 23,000 killed that day in the War Between the States on that series of Maryland fields and hills. We now seem to all agree the numbers fell far short of that. I wish to extend my condolences however to anyone reading this who lost a loved one or several in the 2001 event which makes it impossible to compare to events outside living memory.

Today, we are also seeing Ken Feinberg head up the BP funded compensation fund to try to make whole those injured by the Gulf of Mexico Macondo oil leak.  Surely connections  and comparison will be made with the 9-11 crisis and his role in guiding the compensation fund that dealt with those tragic events. We will see how those energies play out as we watch this new thing develop.

One notable thing is that we have never had a half Japanese President of the United States and LBJ as a son of the States in the former Confederacy was brought in by assassination and only after one hundred years. However in this case we have not even passed a decade and we have a President who is the son of a Moslem foreigner. I really believe this is enough to show that our country is almost entirely dead and almost entirely insane from a sociopolitical point of view. I really do not think much else matter after we have elected President Obama. Our policies, votes and laws are all silly papers in my view. I do not act as this suggests but it is still my conviction.

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Posted in 9-11 attacks, BP - British Petroleum, BP Chairman Svanberg, Gulf of Mexico, Ken Feinberg, Oil & Gas Industry, United States of America, White House

The BP Spill and the Lessons We will Have to Unlearn

Posted on August 22, 2010 | 1 comment

One of the things blog does is advocate for radical constitutional change and another thing it has been doing and continues to do at the current time is to cover the BP Macondo Oil Leak in the Gulf of Mexico and its effects. Sometimes these activities have come together in a single post and sometimes these two join with another prevalent theme and motif. One of the things that can be confusing to some people is the idea that I do not use very many slurs, cuss words or hateful epithets and do not advocate genocide or the wholesale and unexcused confiscation of all the property of a particular class of people who I am not really angry, radical or committed. Perhaps I have no enemies and am entirely unwilling to kill or die for anything. I can only try to assert that this is not the case — I really am seeking radical change.

One problem that we will have if we ever overthrow the vast murderous tyranny of horror under which I have lived my whole life is that we are not bound by a handful of hated laws that are very well-known and which aim death and horror at a specific set or a few specific groups of people. Instead we have huge volumes of regulations in the WTO Treaty, the NAFTA treaty, The UN Charter, The IMF Charter and other systems which do harm and add to a horrific murderous tyranny which hurts innocents and loots and destroys across the world. These strengthen an unassailed and largely idiotic worldview which saturates and defines both our present and all future possibilities. Let me be clear that much of the time I feel my soul life is spent like a man who passes much of each day waist or shoulder deep in raw sewerage.  But I am not going to attack all of this vast reality in this post. IF we do change it will be important that we not rush willy-nilly to get out of or destroy every large treaty structure in the world. Those involved in whatever may be described as a movement  that is represented by this blog seek peace and prosperity and stability as much as possible for as many as possible. This is true despite the fact that charitable giving and development aid are tied here to warrior culture and property rights and true although they may have more reasons for war, austerity and hardness than many other people. The legal regime may be ignored in some new structures but it will not be assaulted — these regimes will have to attack us where we ignore them to get a fight. We will attempt to pay our dues and keep up the obligations made. Here I am going discuss the oil leak in terms of waste again.

I have quite a few post relating to future structures for dealing with waste. These structures are rather grand and elaborate and have to be taken as a whole and in context. They do not exist in time to deal with all the waste water and waste oil which exists as a result of this spill. People do not trust the storage of weathered BP oil near them, they have good reasons. I believe we are a vast distance from real solutions. Here are few specific waste programs not in a structure we need to just do whether they can be well understood or not.

1. We need special lands and zones where a few really enormous and several times as many just large  waste treatment centers. These will be kept as clean and neat as possible and will have secure housing for forced labor from all able-bodied prisoners in the entire country who are serving long sentences, forced labor from illegal aliens and short-term labor contracts  for the needy and unemployed. Each   of these groups will have some of their small pay withheld to the end and will earn educational credits so that they move to schools offsite before the end of their programs. They will also all receive some good in kind on release. These groups will constitute low status labor which will build up the position of the salaried regular waste workers.

2. All restaurants and food businesses will be forced to segregate food wastes. Really clean food will go to a food ban for humans, some will go to a washing and slop program and go to pigs and chickens raised at these centers. These will be slaughtered cooked and irradiated and the meat used for disaster relief, stockpiling and part of the diet and release good of the low status labor.   The lowest grade foods will go to the soil and fuel programs.

3. Paper, yard clippings, coal dust, trees waste, plastics, weathered oil, oil wastes in sand and other resources will go to a separate department. Some will be recycled to really good uses, some will go the soil program but most of it will go into the fuel programs.  Composite fuels will be formulated which will power a system of steam locomotives and steam locomotive trains operated by the new structures. The most regular recovered fuels can be sold and used to power the waste centers and other government facilities.  What must be stored can be placed in the foundations of the expanded human habitat sites.

There are many more things that need doing. Probably none will get done and if change comes war or other crises may keep it from doing these things effectively. Meanwhile I get a day older in a world that makes me sick in so many ways and yet I can’t find the energy to scream at people in public.

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Posted in BP - British Petroleum, Gulf of Mexico, Oil & Gas Industry, Population policy

A Tiny BP-Macondo Leak Round-up

Posted on August 20, 2010 | 1 comment

1. BP has brought a suit and is acting as a complaining witness for prosecution against two fisherman who it claims reported false fishing and related expenses and incomes on claim forms. I will try to follow that till later as it becomes clearer.

2.Ken Feinberg’s settlement fund like all before it and like almost all settlement funds requires those taking the money to promise not to sue and to give up the rights to sue. It appears that some people have felt misled in this process.

3. BP claims that there is not much leakage to speak of and will wait to put the relief well in place untill after Labor Day.

4. Despite these first three points and others I could mention but won’t it appears the wheels have not yet come off of this process and that is a good thing.

5. The moratorium continues to stir emotions we hope it is also producing excellent research and change for the better. There is no doubt it has a high expense side does it yield  a good profitable outcome?

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Posted in Acadians, BP - British Petroleum, BP Chairman Svanberg, Environment, Frank W. Summers, Gulf of Mexico, Ken Feinberg, Oil & Gas Industry, United States of America, Wetlands

Just a Note on the Blog Readership

Posted on August 19, 2010 | Leave a comment

This is the nineteenth  day on this month’s calendar page and this  is already the month with the most views in the history of this blog. In addition it makes for four consecutive months with increasing viewership and  a rise in seven of the last eight months. However, there is plenty of up and down by the day and week. Nonetheless, I want to thank all of you who have chosen to make this a more effective form of communication than keeping a diary or slipping notes into bottles and throwing them into the sea.

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Posted in blogs, Frank W. Summers, media

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Thoughts About the Next Year of Blogging

Posted on August 18, 2010 | Leave a comment

I am not at all sure that I will be blogging all of this year. This year is going to be as long and insecure as others of my life and I am very far from being able to project what I will be doing in the coming year with any certainty. Nonetheless I am able to conjecture just a bit.

If I keep blogging I will probably do a few profiles of living people. that is something I have not done yet to any extent.  The rest of the blog will probably continue to pursue a more or less familiar trajectory. I will deal with the themes that I have laid out here and covering some topics not much covered elsewhere as well as others that are better documented.

1. https://franksummers3ba.wordpress.com/acadian-forum-archive/glossary-of-terms-casually-defined/

2. https://franksummers3ba.wordpress.com/major-themes-of-this-blog/

The next two things I will do in all probability is to deal with continuing models for scientific and technological approaches to habitat expansion in outer space and in the seas.This can get pretty technical and separate from my general discourse.  The other big thing is to develop and continue to advocate models for constitutional change in the United States.  This can also lead off in varied and complex directions.

So I will hope to see you reading here as we move towards another Ahugust 17. Just about anything can happen however.

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