Way of Life Slipping Away Along Chesapeake's Edge

[DainBramaged]

The Chesapeake Bay is not tar-black and dead. It is not bright-green and toxic. It looks just as beautiful as ever, come a sunrise in Annapolis or a sunset over Tangier Sound.

What the Chesapeake has become is emptier.

It has fewer crabs, oysters and watermen than it did 25 years ago, when government officials first pledged to restore its health.

And without all that, the bay region is sloughing off the culture that made it unique. Fewer women know the intricate signals of a blue crab's molt, that a red-sign crab is two days away from "busting" and becoming a valuable soft-shell. Fewer men know how to find oyster bars, underwater landmarks such as Snake Rip, Turkey Leg or Old Woman.

Fewer people know their neighbors in a place where neighbors used to be all you had.

"It used to be when you saw a boat go by, you'd say, 'There goes Cap'n Anthony. He's going out to fish his crabs.' 'There's A-Boy,' " headed to collect fish from a pound net, recalled Ken Smith, president of the Virginia State Waterman's Association. "Now, it's like, 'Who in the hell's on that jet ski?' "

The water is still there, but The Bay -- the old, bountiful estuary -- is not. As the old industries have declined, they have been replaced by tourism, where the look of the water is all that matters. Or by trucking, or work in prisons, where the water doesn't matter at all.

This is the real cost of the cleanup's failure: People learning to live with broken promises.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/27/AR2008122701126.html?hpid=topnews&sid=ST2008122701441&s_pos=


There's a great photo gallery attached to this story.

[HillWilliam]

1. What's also a loss

is some beautiful old forms of English. Ever heard a Tangierman, I mean a real Tangierman, speak? Some of those old accents come from pre-Colonial times. I have folks that live on the Virginia and NC coasts that have lived there since the 1600's. You can spot them, never having seen them, just by their language alone.

In my paternal ancestor's home county along the Albemarle Sound, it's no different. Developers have tried mightily to move in and force folks off land that has been passed down in families along the Sound for as much as ten generations. The developers have been successful in the western part of the state. Now the mountains are blighted with McMansions and strip malls where once they were covered with forests. All in the name of corporate profit and the benefit of the few, our nation has been paved over and decayed.

It's fucking ugly and there's no good in it.

K/R

[HillWilliam]

2. Duplicate -- server fart