The divine - and now, the late - Lena Horne doing a song that popped up on the radio this morning in tribute to her artistry:




One big tipoff that the Macondo Prospect well in the Gulf was probably doomed from the start? It shares a name with the fictional town created by Gabriel Garcia Marquez in One Hundred Years of Solitude. So much promise, so many hopes and dreams, all dashed by man's greed and incompetence, leaving destruction, death, and emptiness behind as their lasting legacies - that is the fate both Macondos share.

Feeling worse than ever about the oil disaster, especially after I saw the interview of Deepwater Horizon worker and explosion survivor Chris Choy on the PBS NewsHour last night. Listening to the radio this morning and hearing the news that BP had suspended their attempts to cap the biggest leak with the condome, along with the interviews of Venice, LA fishermen who have no other course at the moment but to accept relief supplies, watch their bills pile up, and go work for BP sticking booms in the waters had me switching stations and taking in some of Ms Horne doing "My Blue Heaven" and then coyly playing 'round with a Beatles White Album track.

Thanks for that, Lena, wherever you are.

This blog fully endorses Billy Sothern's Digit-A-Day plan to help deal with the helplessness we're all feeling about what's doing in the Gulf, in lieu of any possible payments BP could make to all of us who are breathing in some of the traces of hydrogen sulfide fumes when the wind blows the air from the Gulf in juuuust right.

The abovementioned plan also applies to those who would do fatal harm to hardworking musicians like Brandon Franklin, good people who are trying to keep local music traditions alive into the next generation.