You know I love my Gulf. I’ve driven the Panhandle coastline on two trips to New Orleans already this year, and I don’t even know how many times last year, including to Grande Isle, Lousiana to work on a post-spill project. Trips to the beach? Who counts–as long as they are frequent?
I should count, though, because every minute on the Gulf deeply matters to me. I was desperately in touch with that feeling–that fear–last year during the BP crisis, and I should hold that preciousness like a toddler’s hand. You don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone and all that.
The Gulf is my home, and another thing is true: my home away from home is HBO. Truth. So I was so stoked to find out that HBO is airing a radical documentary tonight called Saving Pelican 895. The story is intense and beautiful. After three months, cleanup workers at the Fort Jackson Oiled Wildlife Rehabilitation Center of Louisiana had rescued 894 surviving oiled pelicans, and the film shows how conservationists, government agencies and wildlife activists worked to rescue Pelican 895.
There are other pelicans in my life: my family has adopted a pelican from a different rehab…his photo is on our fridge and we refer to him as Winehouse for obvious reasons, and I am quite fond of the Pelly in The Giraffe and The Pelly and Me. But Pelican 895, he’s in the club now, too.