Day One on the Ground with StoryCorps

We began our adventure in the Gulf with StoryCorps yesterday in the parking lot of the Chalmette Civic Center, outside New Orleans, the StoryCorps Airstream trailer/recording studio gleaming in the brilliant October sun.

Our mission over the next 2½ weeks is to record conversations with 200 Gulf residents whose lives have been upended by the BP oil disaster.  Many of those people were still recovering from Hurricane Katrina when this second disaster hit.

Kindra and David Arnesen, for example, are the parents of two young children and were still rebuilding their home, wrecked by Katrina, when the BP blowout closed the shrimping grounds where David earns a living.  Those grounds have now reopened, but as David explained today, many people are still afraid to buy, sell or eat the seafood.



Now the Arnesens are faced with a dilemma that’s all too common here on the Gulf Coast: take the settlement offer from BP and waive any future claims, or go to court and face years of litigation with no assurance of compensation.

That choice might be easier if David knew when he’ll earn a living again as a shrimper or whether he and his family will have health problems down the road from months of exposure to oil and dispersants.  They don’t know, and yet they must choose.

We’ll be recording all kinds of stories in the days ahead -- stories from fishermen and ministers, musicians and restaurant owners, dock workers and doctors, shrimpers and teachers, artists and scientists.  

It will be fascinating to hear what they have to say about the BP oil disaster, their own hardships and resilience,  and the way forward for the communities along the Gulf Coast.