Maybe a Playlist Addition for IV--Neil Young's LA

[Robin Landseadel]

On Apr 30, 2009, at 5:44 PM, Richard Ryan wrote:

>> speaking of I wonder if this will be mentioned in IV
>>
>> Santa Barbara's oil spill of 1969 is re-examined as the birth of  
>> the modern day environmental movement.
>>
>> on January 28, 1969, a “blowout” erupted below the platform and,  
>> before it was plugged, more than 3 million gallons of crude oil  
>> spewed from drilling-induced cracks in the channel floor. For weeks  
>> national attention was focused on the spill’s disturbing, dramatic  
>> images. Oil-soaked birds, unable to fly, slowly dying on the sand.  
>> Waves so thick with crude oil that they broke on shore with an  
>> eerie silence. Thirty miles of sandy beaches coated with thick  
>> sludge. Hundreds of miles of ocean covered with an oily black  
>> sheen. But the spills impact went far beyond the fouled beaches.  
>> The disaster is considered to be a major factor in the birth of the  
>> modern-day environmental movement.

If Ross Macdonnald is in fact where "Lew Basnight" comes from, I  
suggest you look in the general direction of "Sleeping Beauty." Lew  
Archer's got a case all fouled up with the crude that spilled on the  
shores of Pacific Point:

	"Half of them came from Texas, inland Texas. They think water
	is a nuisance because they can't sell it for two or three dollars a
	barrel. All they care about is the oil they're losing. They don't
	give a damn about tho things that live in the sea or the people
	that live in tbo town."

	"Is the oil still running?"

	"Sure it is. They thought they had it closed down Monday, the
	day she blew. Before that she was roaring wild, with drilling
	mud and hydrocarbon mist shooting a hundred feet in the air.
	They dropped the string in the hole and closed the blind rams
	over her, and they thought she was shut down. The main hole
	was. But then she started to boil up through the water, gas and
	oil emulsion all around the platform."

	"You sound like an eyewitness."

	The young man blinked and nodded. "That I was. I took a
	reporter out there in my boat-man from the local paper named
	Wilbur Cox. They were evacuating the platform when we got
	there, the fire hazard was so bad."