Self-care Saturday
I had a haircut at 12:15 in Lafayette today, and I left the house nearly 90 minutes ahead of time (for a drive that normally takes 30 minutes, tops). It's the last weekend before Mardi Gras and I know there's at least 2 parades in the city today, both centered around the original downtown area where my salon is, a children's parade in the morning, then the rowdy drunk one at night. I timed it pretty good, the children's parade had finished and they opened a lane of traffic down Johnston back up for the middle of the day, until closing it off again to get ready for the night parade.
All of which is to say, I was about a half hour early for my appointment, so I killed some time at Beausoleil Books. I've built up a pretty impressive collection of photography books about south Louisiana from visiting that bookstore, and this time I discovered Tide Lines: A Photographic Record of Louisiana's Disappearing Coast by Ben Depp. He's a National Geographic photographer based out of New Orleans (and sometimes Haiti); he took these photos using one of those contraptions where you use an airboat fan to keep a canopy aloft.
The photos are beautiful, while also being a heart-stopping reminder of what we're losing, mostly thanks to the petroleum industry. When a canal is dredged into wetlands, it just keeps expanding. That cut will never, ever heal, and it will get wider and wider as the years pass, allowing Gulf saltwater intrusion into what had been brackish marshland. That saltwater will eventually kill everything it touches, which will allow the saltwater to creep further inland. It's a perpetual motion machine of death and erosion that, once set off, is impossible to stop.
All of which is to say, I was about a half hour early for my appointment, so I killed some time at Beausoleil Books. I've built up a pretty impressive collection of photography books about south Louisiana from visiting that bookstore, and this time I discovered Tide Lines: A Photographic Record of Louisiana's Disappearing Coast by Ben Depp. He's a National Geographic photographer based out of New Orleans (and sometimes Haiti); he took these photos using one of those contraptions where you use an airboat fan to keep a canopy aloft.
The photos are beautiful, while also being a heart-stopping reminder of what we're losing, mostly thanks to the petroleum industry. When a canal is dredged into wetlands, it just keeps expanding. That cut will never, ever heal, and it will get wider and wider as the years pass, allowing Gulf saltwater intrusion into what had been brackish marshland. That saltwater will eventually kill everything it touches, which will allow the saltwater to creep further inland. It's a perpetual motion machine of death and erosion that, once set off, is impossible to stop.