Good Thing We Don't Get Our Lobsters From the Gulf

It's taken three months, but someone (in this case in an article for The New York Times) finally asked where our outrage over pollution in the Gulf of Mexico was before the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe. In the time that the broken-off well has been gushing oil into the sea, no one (at least among the publications that I read) had made the comparison to that other, infinitely larger horizontal pipeline, the Mississippi River, that's been discharging its filth ever since we first began fouling it up a century or more ago. The Mississippi constitutes the largest drainage basin on the continent, meaning that every bit of runoff - the fertilizers and pesticides from farms and golf courses, every drop of oil that drips from a car onto a parking lot, and even the pharmaceuticals (human-filtered and otherwise) that get flushed down the toilets - between the Rockies and the Appalachians ends up discharged straight into the Gulf, creating, according to the NYT article "a zone of lifeless water the size of Lake Ontario just off the coast of Louisiana." You know the saying- "Every time someone pees into a storm drain in Pittsburgh, a fish dies in the Gulf." Okay, you've never heard it before, but it happens to be true. We've capped the oil leak (for now), but as of yet nobody has suggested we plug the mouth of the Mighty Mississippi with shredded tires and golf balls. Boy, that would sure ruin Mardi Gras next year.

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In other news, the lady and I are taking a trip to New England about a week from now and it may include some camping on the Maine coast. Knowing that we'll have to feed ourselves at some point, and not being too excited about the idea of eating the same old camp fare, I came up with another possibility: Since most camp food involves a boiling pot of water anyway, and since we'll be in Maine, why not... and you're probably way ahead of me on this one... go ahead and shout it out if you know it... think Maine, the cold waters of the Atlantic, dinnertime... LOBSTAH!

Courtney thinks this is a terrible idea.

I just figured since cooking a lobster is no different than boiling a hot dog (except the hot dog died long before it hit the water, and probably in a much more gruesome, unsanitary fashion), it would make less sense to not take advantage of the fresh, local (and oh so delicious) catch. One of the campgrounds I've been looking at even sells the large crustaceans in its camp store, along with bug spray, postcards and marshmallows. Sure, it has the potential to be a tad messier than the average hot dog, but that's part of the fun.

And no, this is not one of my patented schemes to save money and deprive my lady friend of a romantic dinner. On the contrary, what could be more romantic than watching the sunset from a rocky outcrop over the sea with a bottle of wine or a bucket of cold local brews while tugging the meat from the steaming, splayed-open carcass of a crustacean while it looks up at you with its beady, lifeless eyes?

Yeah, that's what I thought, too.

By the way, if any of you have been to Boston or Maine or really any part of New England aside from Vermont (we won't be making it there on this trip unfortunately), now would be the time to tell me about anything that we absolutely must see while we're there. NPW can abstain from this part of the discussion (or not, if her enthusiasm simply can't be contained), since she will be sharing her local expertise in person.