SKY GOOSE

An event of apparently major proportions occurred here this morning on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, more specifically the town of Ocean Springs, even more exactly the west end near the beach close to Biloxi Bay Bridge, when approximately six flakes of snow meandered through the sky, ending their ephemeral lives before actually hitting the ground. Immediately an assembly of kids of assorted ages was pounding my door, for me--the pretend-curmudgeon--to witness the rare and wondrous atmospherics. I did see the rather large snow flakes, approximately a half dozen, as I said, and stated to the young gathering that (why does my mind work this way?) it was caused by the Great White Goose-in-the-Sky shaking her tail feathers. The older kids chuckled--not sure why--but the youngest urchin's eyes grew wide and serious. I now see the kids have moved down the street a few paces, but the youngest has his head turned upward with eyes searching the sky.

For this, the hoped-for snow "storm," we all received both telephone and computer recordings from our fearless superintendent cancelling school for today, except for the Maintenance Dept., who might have to lie in wait in case anything develops. In the meantime, the superintendent wishes that we enjoy our day off, plus the weekend, plus the three Mardi Gras days next week. So, now I have a six-day break in which to ponder some of the meanings of our always newly constructing lifeworlds.

First, though, I'm taking this cup of hot tea out on the porch to search the opaque sky for shaken-loose tail feathers.

GULF COAST ON CHAMELEON SEA

Just four years after the so-named 1947 Hurricane, Mississippi writer Hodding Carter described “The Gulf Coast Country” [as] “a soft, near-tropic abode of chameleon sea and white sand.” Other natural elements in his description--“the rustling beauty of tall pines and moss-drenched water oaks and redolent magnolias”--contribute to the soft breeziness of quotidian life on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. But, the gentle sea lapping the Coast periodically changes more than just its color and rises up devastatingly like an angry dragon--twice after his observation, by hurricanes Camille and Katrina--and surges and slaps and tugs at the foundations of coastal life. It is as true now as it was then that the Coast lies in a hurricane region.

The Coast comprises a cultural landscape exhibiting traits of the wider Gulf of Mexico culture region overlaid upon a natural region on the seaward edge of the Gulf-Atlantic Coastal Plain. Post-Katrina recovery along the entire coast has not been a time of large-scale relocation and risk-reduction. Instead, beach-front properties have been rebuilt in Pascagoula, Ocean Springs, and other cities. Casinos have been repaired and Biloxi, Gulfport, and cities westward are experiencing construction of high-rise condominiums. With global climate change and concomitant rise in sea level and dire predictions of tropical storms of greater intensity, rational thought is disquieted concerning the future of the Mississippi Gulf Coast and its cities built nearly at sea level. It is, after all, a low-lying coastal region facing a warm, capricious chameleonlike sea.