Attending to Oil Spill Depression

A long, long time ago when we were in college we snagged a plum part-time job as an attendant on the "women's ward" of the University's psychiatric hospital. In those days, psychiatric hospital wards were segregated by sex -- to keep the patients from having any fun with each other, we suppose.

The vast majority of women in-patients suffered from depression in varying degrees. For an impecunious undergraduate student, attending to them was a breeze. The pay was good, the hours perfect, and the work required no more hard labor than occasionally holding a patient down while the doctors tortured them with electro-shock "therapy."

Mostly, attendants on the women's ward where we worked were expected to play bridge with the patients. It was a card game we, personally, had never played before. We learned the rules fast.

But the supervising ward nurses put us under instructions to let the patients win their bids as often as reasonably possible. Apparently, the hope was winning at cards would lift their spirits. As you can imagine, we became a terrible bridge player.

Irrelevant aside: ECT is a dirty business, as the saying goes, but someone almost no one, as it turns out, has to do it. Today, treatment is so much more scientifically advanced with the administration of commercially-advertised psychotropic drugs that numb the nation, don't you think? No? Well then, maybe there's more than just oil clean-up that's been neglected in our corporate culture's headlong rush for newer and newer technologies generating higher and higher profits.

We were reminded of all this today while reading PNJ columnist Reginald Dogan's self-confessed "jaded" view of the presidential visit:

Obama's visit — much like visits by every president before and after him — is nothing more than a dog-and-pony show.

They stop in a little town. Block streets. Shut down traffic. Tie up law enforcement for hours only for a couple minutes of face time and sound bites that, when it's all said and nothing's done, are really much ado about nothing.
* * *
Seen one, seen them all.

In all truth, a presidential visit to Pensacola is usually more trouble than it's worth. I'd rather have a V-8.

Now, there's a man who needs to play a bridge game with us to cheer him up. Mr. Dogan is hardly alone, however. Almost everyone we know on the beach, in town, and even strangers we've come across are showing signs of something that looks to us very much like clinical depression.

Remember that first weekend in May, six weeks ago? That was when we filmed the teary waitress and the distressed young woman who took the day off to mourn for the beach. It was a lovely weekend which many locals believed would be the last one for Pensacola Beach for generations to come.

Talking with new and old friends has been like that ever since. As the oil neared Dauphin Island two weeks ago, one friend emailed us (with a header that reads "Depression"):

This is very ominous ... . I think my idyllic days of swimming in the Gulf and walking on the beach are gone for the foreseeable future. It is just so... SENSELESS!!!!!!!!!!!!

A week later we hosted a cookout for a dozen friends. The talk was mostly about the oil spill, petroleum-poisoned seabirds, dead fish, lying corporate executives, the scary hurricane season forecasts, man's inhumanity to man, and original sin. A great time was had by all, as you can tell. It's a wonder no one brought up Darfur.

The steaks were great, though, and the drinks seemed to slightly improve everyone's spirits from deep despondence to mind-numbing inebriation; not unlike ECT, in fact.

Just the other night another beach friend emailed us:

Emotionally I'm still in the depression stage of the Kubler Ross scale. I'm just waiting for them to start talking about the use of a nuclear blast to stop the leak. {{{sigh}}}

The reactions of local residents seem to be very much like those we cataloged back in 2005, after hurricanes Ivan and Dennis ["Post-Tropical Depression"]. Then, even with most of the storm-ruined houses still visible and some streets lined with heaps of rubbish piled as high as a two-story building, we could write with conviction:

Still, however slowly, recovery is underway. Homes and businesses are beginning to be rebuilt. The community will rebound sooner or later.

There is a difference this time. Most of the people we've interviewed and friends who've email us are not convinced this time that they will see a "rebound." Not in their lifetimes, anyway.

The truly nefarious thing about this oil spill is that it has robbed so many coastal residents of confidence in the future. Just as it seems to have robbed Reginald Dogan of his customary optimism. The only thing Dogan says would impress him is if "the president steps into the Gulf, walks across the water and magically plugs the Gulf oil spill, then that would be something worth seeing."

That's pretty close to the hopeless range of possibilities the women patients we knew thought they saw ahead of them. The despair evident in Dogan's column is just as unrealistic.

The root error he makes is that he is pretending to suppose that President Obama is here to personally plug the leaking BP oil well. That's nonsense, of course. It's the very sort of forlorn tantrum we might have expected from one of our inconsolably despondent patients at the bridge table. Except, it's not really a tantrum; it's a cry for help.

Most of what any president does could be done at least as well -- and often better -- in the Oval Office. Obama came here to the Gulf Coast primarily, we think, to give us a dose of what we need most: the will to carry on.

As we noted in the midst of the terrible hurricane season of 2005, "feelings of hopelessness, rage, and abandonment" are common at a time like this. As a community, we need therapy as much as we need better booms.

In circumstances like that, effective therapy begins "by establishing a supportive therapeutic environment which is positive and reinforcing for the individual." The people of the Gulf Coast need that right now more than ever. And that's one thing a president cannot do as well in the Oval Office.

Educating the [patient] within the first session or two is usually the next step about how depression for many people is caused by faulty cognitions. The numerous types of faulty thinking that we as humans do are discussed (e.g., “all or nothing thinking,” “misattribution of blame,” “overgeneralization,” etc.) and the [patient] is encouraged to begin noting his or her thoughts as they occur throughout the day. This is imperative to further success in treatment, for the individual must understand how common and often these thoughts are occurring during a single day.

Here's hoping President Obama's visit is more uplifting and educational than a game of bridge with the ward attendants. Reggie, we need you back. Get well soon.
minor edit 6-15 am

Swamp Your Own City with BP's Oil Slick

Readers far and wide -- North, East, and West -- may find it hard to imagine the enormous size of the BP river of oil that is sloshing toward us in Pensacola. Not to worry! Google has an app for that, too.

Via Atlantic Magazine editor James Fallows: "If You Think You Have a Sense of the Oil Spill's Scale":

Try this utility from Paul Rademacher's site, which overlays a scaled representation of the Deepwater Horizon spill onto a Google Earth view of any city you choose.

Below, you'll see an idea of what the BP oil slick would look like if it were bearing down on Reginald Dogan's beloved Chicago or the boyhood campus in Boston where Mark O'Brien used to dodge Father McCarthy. (Carl Wernicke doesn't need this; he's living it.)

-------

To try it yourself for the city of your choice (a harmless, free plug-in is required) --

CLICK HERE

Dogan in the Doghouse

Because little Reggie Dogan didn't do his homework, and was rude besides, looks like he's been kept after school.

Dogan the Homey

Self-described "homey" Reginald Dogan "don't play dat," he writes in an embarrassing column in today's Pensacola fish wrapper. That is to say, he will not 'bow or kneel' should he find himself later this week in the presence of the King and Queen of Spain.

Then he adds:

If the king and queen really want to impress me, let's hear her rap like Queen Latifah and watch him slam dunk like King (Lebron) James.

Can't help wondering: would Reggie be more likely to bow, scrape, and grovel if he suddenly found himself in the presence of, say, Craig A. Dubow? And would his English be better?

Obama Opens More Panhandle Offices

Last week, two get- out- the- vote offices for Barack Obama opened in the small Florida towns of Pace and Navarre.

When added to the main Pensacola office for Barack Obama's campaign in Northwest Florida and official county political party offices, that makes five campaign sites promoting the Democratic presidential ticket in the two western-most counties of the state.

Not since Jimmy Carter ran for president in 1976 has there been such a broad-based presence in this reddest of red state areas of the country.

In Pace, the Obama office is located at 4367 5th Ave. The Navarre office is adjacent to Midway Mini-Storage at 5422 Gulf Breeze Highway, within a mile or so of the weekend flea market.

These aren't your big, slick campaign headquarters-type offices, filled bustling workers in white dress shirts and ties who look like they walked right off the set of West Wing. The get-out-the-vote offices are small, cramped, and stuffed with donated equipment and make-shift furniture. Orange crates would be embarrassed by some of the desks we saw.

The primary mission these offices serve is, first, to identify and, second, to assist Obama-leaning voters to cast their ballots from now to Election Day. Absentee ballots can be requested now from your local election supervisor's office. Early poll voting in both Santa Rosa and Escambia counties begins next Monday, October 20 and runs through Saturday, November 1. (In some other Florida counties, early voting may continue through Sunday, November 2.)

Election Day is Tuesday, November 4.

Locally, volunteers are being recruited to telephone or canvass door to door registered voters. In Navarre, two young staffers work the phones calling voters in Gulf Breeze, Navarre, and Midway, scheduling neighborhood canvasses, and politely explaining to the occasional visitor the narrow focus of their mission.

Campaign contributions are not accepted at the GOV field offices. They have only a limited supply of Obama-Biden buttons on hand and don't do media interviews. All of that is handled out of Obama's western Florida campaign headquarters in Pensacola.

"This is a working field office," a volunteer explains to an elderly couple who stopped by in hopes of picking up a yard sign. The office doesn't happen to have any yard signs on hand at the moment, he apologizes, but the volunteer takes their names and promises to try to find one for them.

By sheer luck, before the couple leaves a volunteer drops by and a dozen Obama T-shirts materialize along with a small box of Obama-Biden buttons. The couple happily selects a few buttons and a T-shirt and leaves their name and number for when more yard signs arrive.

Asked how things are going, the volunteer declined to be interviewed for the record. "We don't do media here," he says.

From what we could see, things are still in the early stages of recruiting and training volunteers, but the slim staff is surprisingly upbeat. While they undoubtedly know the Obama-Biden ticket faces an uphill struggle in Santa Rosa County, which hasn't voted Democratic in decades, the level of enthusiasm is high.

Most local voters only now are beginning to focus on the election. We overheard a few anecdotes about voter contacts that have gone well -- and a few that went badly when "the elephant in the room", as Pensacola News Journal columnist Reginald Dogan put it recently, reared its head.

"A lot of independents tell us they plan to vote for Obama," one campaign worker says. "For many, it will be the first time they've voted Democratic in years." He adds, "A good many Republicans are secret Obama supporters, too."

To volunteer, obtain, more information about the Obama-Biden ticket, or for help in getting to polls South Santa Rosa county voters can telephone "Matt" at (850) 291-2210. North Santa Rosa County voters for now can call "Nick" in the Pace office at (304) 890-4266.

Dogan's Done It - Again

Being a loyal reader of the Pensacola News Journal's Reginald Dogan, as we are, is like being a Chicago Cubs fan. No matter how fervently you wish them success, over time the odds are high that you're going to have your heart broken more often than not.

Take today, for instance. Coming off a win where Dogan hit it out of the park by showing what an unnecessary extravagance an $8-$10 million parking ramp would be on Pensacola Beach, he follows up with a breathtakingly bad idea: turn Pensacola Beach into Atlantic City so there will be a need for that parking ramp.

Our team writes:

For some people, the water and sand are enough attractions to bring them to the beach for a lifetime. But others, like me, want the bells and whistles.

We have a boardwalk that should be called a "boredwalk." It takes all of two minutes to cover the entire boardwalk that stretches, at best, about 300 yards.

There is a mix of shops and restaurants, but if you've been to a real boardwalk like Atlantic City or the Baltimore Harbor, you'll see how Pensacola pales in comparison.

Why do we have a Casino Beach without a casino? What good is a boardwalk that has only a few boards and a short walk?

Dogan then goes on to extol, among other monstrosities, shopping malls, 10,000 feet ampitheaters, and ferris wheels as the apotheosis of desirable beach development. Ferris wheels! Casinos??

"Don't misunderstand me," the columnist hastens to add. "Pensacola has a beautiful beach — if all you want is water and sand."

There's no possibility of misunderstanding you, Mr. Dogan. You are a Philistine with the environmental sensitivity of a bulldozer. Not to mention, you've done it again: you zigged when you should have been zagging. You engaged your keyboard before your brain knew what to write about.

Forget the fact that the News Journal has a venerable fifty-year history of advocating to preserve, not destroy, the natural wonders of Pensacola Beach against vulgar commercialization and destructive over-development. There's nothing that says a callow columnist can't try to tear down all the commendable works of J. Earle Bowden, one of the most esteemed newspaper editors in Florida history.

First, though, you really ought to read what Bowden and his allies endured to preserve just a small part of Santa Rosa Island for you to visit. As we have recalled before:

At the time, real estate development interests had visions -- and, indeed, a very specific blueprint -- for building a honky-tonk Disneyland penned by high-rise condos and hotels all the way down the 40-mile string of sand from Fort Pickens to Destin.

Read Bowden's book, The Sands of Time. Hunt down and take a look at the aerial map that circulated among real estate brokers back in the late 1960's, with its overlay showing their nightmarish visions of golf courses, casinos and, yes, even ferris wheels on Pensacola Beach. Ask around to find out how the old giant water slide on Pensacola Beach fared when the litigation was over, the enterprise was insolvent, and that mysterious fire broke out -- perhaps the only time in recorded history when a water slide burned to the ground.

That same incubus of cheap but destructive development ideas crawled out again a little more than a decade ago when the Island Authority contracted for an architect's plan to build a 3-story shopping mall right where Casino Beach sits today. Public outrage at the scheme to wall off Casino Beach from easy public view was so strong that even the Escambia County commissioners felt compelled to reject it. Indeed, they passed a resolution forbidding future commercial development of Casino Beach.

The main reason you have a "beautiful beach" to sniff at today, Mr. Dogan, is that voters and the Pensacola public at large have repeatedly rejected your vision and opted instead for the "water and sand" that you find so boring.

Mainlanders, island residents, and tourists alike all agree on one thing: it's a "beautiful" family beach we want, not another Destin, Panama City Beach, or Atlantic City.

Dogan's Razor

A little while ago, we gently tweaked PNJ columnist Reginald Dogan for putting his feet up on the desk and gathering wool when he should have been pounding shoe leather. So today, it's only fair to salute him for a whole week's worth of real-life social science research performed on Pensacola Beach.

He did it not with shoe leather, but on wheels. Translated from News Journalese into scientific gobbledegook, this is what happened:

The Experiment

Hypothesis: "The dearth of parking... [is] part of the reason why locals stay away from the beach."
Alternate hypothesis: "[A] lack of parking [is] driving away visitors."

Dogan made multiple visits to the beach daily and kept a journal over seven consecutive days. He noted time of day, ease of finding a parking space, location of the space, and general availability. Limited to the most popular Quietwater parking area of boardwalk shops, restaurants, and bars, these are the raw results of his scientific observations, reduced to their essence:

Mid-day Data

Mid-day visits: 6
Number of visits < 1 minute needed to find a parking space: 5
Number of visits > 1 minute needed to find a parking space: 1
Number of visits no commercial district parking space available: 0

Evening Data

Evening/Nighttime visits: 7
Number of visits < 1 minute needed to find a parking space: 5
Number of visits > 1 minute needed to find a parking space: 2
Number of visits no commercial district parking space available: 0

Over the course of the week on only Saturday night did Dogan encounter enough of a parking problem at Quietwater to "do the sensible thing" and cross the intersection to the larger Casino Beach parking lot. There, parking space remained so ample, he writes, "we could play a spirited game of flag football with room left for bleachers and a concession stand."

Tuesday night's "Bands on the Beach" event was the only occasion when Dogan found parking to be even moderately challenging. At that popular summer time event he recorded:

7:30 p.m.: There's not a parking spot in sight. Cars are double parked, lined against the fence and on the sidewalks.
* * *
After cruising through the Casino Beach parking lot, I find one spot in the Pensacola Beach Visitors Information Center lot.

Research Results

Dogan concludes, "There is a parking problem on the beach — a couple times a year, maybe." So much for Buck Lee's claim that the Santa Rosa Island Authority needs to build an "$8 to $10 million parking ramp."

Inspired by these results, we now propose a new hypothesis, suitable for rigorous testing and scientific verification by future students of Pensacola Beach who aspire to follow in the hallowed tradition of Prof. C. Northcoat Parkinson. We call it --

Dogan's Razor

New Hypothesis: The more money governmental authorities want to spend building"improvements" on Pensacola Beach, the less probable is the actual need.

A Different Drummer

Sometimes it's appropriate for a newspaper columnist to look at the world from an easy chair, within arm's reach of his bookcase. Other times, he needs to get out of that chair and stick his head out the door to see for himself what's what.

The trick is to know when to do which.

Reginald Dogan of the Pensacola News Journal does both, from time to time. But today he really blew it. He leaned back in his chair and reached for a book when he should have headed out the door for Pensacola Beach to take a look at the SRIA's EEO-1 hiring records.

The apparent burden of Dogan's column is to publicly agonize over the recent fracas at the Ft. Pickens parking lot. As he sums up the evidence, which happens to be available to the whole world on Youtube:

The Escambia County Sheriff's Office called the gathering of mostly black teenagers and young adults a "mob scene" that sparked a "near-riot."

The young folks at the beach said the Sheriff's Office sent a cavalry of "aggressive" and "nasty" deputies to prevent them from having a good time on a public beach.

The truth lies somewhere in the muddled middle of this mess.
* * *
Did deputies overact? Probably. Did the crowd intimidate and incite them? Most likely.

After a lot more 'on-the-one-hand-this, on-the-other-hand-that' stuff, the PNJ columnist reaches the startling conclusion, "[W]hen it comes to resisting authority and disobeying police instructions, I have to stand on the side of the law."

Now, there is a waste of ink. But wait! He goes further. He abruptly elevates the Pensacola Beach incident to nose-bleed heights by addressing weighty issues of morality and social reform:

Henry David Thoreau's "Civil Disobedience" advocated the need to prioritize one's conscience over the dictates of laws. In it, Thoreau introduces the idea of civil disobedience that was used later by Mohandas Gandhi and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

But the difference between civil disobedience and mob revolts and rebellions is as different as a rose and its thorns.

Civil disobedience is orderly and nonviolent. Rebellions are unruly and violent.

I will, in a heartbeat, disobey and protest an unjust or immoral law. But what took place Saturday on Pensacola Beach was not civil disobedience. It was anti-social behavior that could have led to serious injuries and even death.

Good god. From a couple of misbehaving street punks to Mahatma Ghandi?

Here's the tragedy: incidents like that of last Sunday have happened before on Pensacola Beach. Many times. At the same location. For nearly identical reasons. And they always seem to take island authorities by surprise.

And the response, as we saw in Michael Stewart's follow-up article yesterday, is always the same: "Beach To Get More Deputies..." a week after the surprise.

Year in and year out several thousand predominantly minority high schoolers and older companions from Mobile descend on the beach in May to celebrate the end of the school year and the start of summer. Year in and year out, word spreads within the local minority community, aided by local radio stations or indy record studios or some hot new music group or another, and a crowd predominantly composed of young people of color appears on the beach "suddenly."

Such crowd surges always seem "sudden" -- but are they really? Only to those who don't happen to listen to the same radio stations, read the same neighborhood newspapers, attend the same schools and churches, or move in the same social circles.

Unfortunately, that includes nearly everyone who works at the Santa Rosa Island Authority and the Escambia County sheriff's substation.

Dogan's half right when he notes, in passing, that the SRIA "requires a permit to hold an organized party or event on the beach." What he doesn't realize is that for others -- mostly others who are Caucasian, by the way -- it's always possible to streamline the SRIA permitting process or even avoid it altogether.

We've seen it happen almost instantly for everyone from antique car clubs to UFO nut cases; from visiting soccer tournament teams to legions of military recruits released for a weekend of revelry; from island resident association picnics to last-minute stock car races; and, of course, for vast crowds of gay and lesbian visitors who once made the whole island their own over Memorial Day weekend -- and may yet do so again.

Indeed, many times the SRIA solicits groups who are known to have a potential interest in visiting Pensacola Beach.

The ugly truth is that in Northwest Florida the races coexist in almost entirely separate universes. Each community knows almost nothing about what's happening in the other. In one instance we witnessed not that many years ago, for nearly two weeks in advance a Pensacola 'rap' radio station was broadcasting invitations to gather at Pensacola Beach. Yet, when a crowd showed up (one much larger than that of last Sunday), the SRIA and sheriff's deputies said they were "surprised" and overwhelmed.

As Dogan consults the Transcendentalists to better understand the problems that periodically pop up at the Ft. Pickens parking lot, he could do worse than read Henry David Thoreau's Walden. In a concluding chapter there, the sage observes, "If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer."

Minority youths in the Pensacola area hear drummers unknown to the SRIA. This is largely because, aside from the occasional clerical worker, the SRIA's affirmative action hiring record is as dismal as they come. The agency has never hired an African-American manager, supervisor, tourism specialist, hospitality coordinator, or anyone else in a position to reach out and work with minority communities, near or far.

Not that such a position necessarily should be filled by a minority applicant. We would guess there are plenty of others who bridge the divide. But they, too, will remain unknown to the SRIA until the agency finally awakens to this reality:

The greater Pensacola area is multi-racial. The beach belongs to everyone, regardless of race. Just as much effort should be expended to anticipate, accommodate, and even invite racial minority visitors to the beach as the Island Authority now spends attracting others.

If no one on the SRIA staff today marches to that drummer, then additional personnel who can do so need to be recruited.