Mississippi Moxie

Moxie is an older term defined as “the abil­ity to face dif­fi­culty with spirit and courage.”

This is what the peo­ple of the Gulf Coast have in large quan­ti­ties.  Or, to quote one of my favorite movies, they have “spirit and guts”.  Ever since Hur­ri­cane Camille in 1969 (long before I was born), the res­i­dents of this area have known set­backs and destruc­tion.  They have faced it, and over­come it.

Hur­ri­cane Kat­rina in 2005 was even more destruc­tive that Camille was.  Entire com­mu­ni­ties were wiped off the map.  Homes and busi­nesses were lost.  Lives and land­scape were for­ever changed.  But thanks to the over­whelm­ing out­pour­ing of sup­port — both mon­e­tary and phys­i­cal — from all around the coun­try and the world, the Gulf Coast bounced back, stronger than ever.

Then the eco­nomic reces­sion in 2008 occurred.  Prices of homes bot­tomed out.  Oil prices soared to $100 per bar­rel.  The stock mar­ket fell.  But, things were not as bad in Mis­sis­sippi as they were else­where.  The growth expe­ri­enced after Kat­rina due to the rebuild­ing of busi­nesses and com­mu­ni­ties con­tin­ued, at least for a while.  We sur­vived yet another poten­tial disaster.

The fish­ing and shrimp­ing sea­son of 2010 was promis­ing to be a ban­ner one for the Gulf Coast.  How­ever, things changed on April 20.  The Deep­wa­ter Hori­zon off­shore oil rig exploded, killing 11 work­ers and injur­ing another 17.  Two days later, the rig sunk and oil started gush­ing out of the well.  The oil flow hasn’t stopped since, despite all of the efforts to halt it.

This is a new and dif­fer­ent chal­lenge for the peo­ple of the Gulf Coast.  We have not had to deal with this type of dis­as­ter.  The dis­or­ga­ni­za­tion of the dis­as­ter response and the bureau­cracy that is the over­sight is putting a damper on progress.  Local gov­ern­ments are used to hav­ing the abil­ity to attack the prob­lem head-on and solve it, with lit­tle or no imped­ance from the fed­eral gov­ern­ment.  But in this case, there is so much red tape and con­fu­sion as to who is lead­ing the effort to clean up the oil that it is ham­per­ing oper­a­tions.  Each and every day, the oil moves closer and closer to the beaches.  Poor Louisiana has oil on their shores and in their marshes, and it’s been there quite a while now.

But, as with every dis­as­ter we have faced, the peo­ple of the Mis­sis­sippi Gulf Coast will per­se­vere.

Related Posts:

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• Sun­set on the Gulf