AT LEAST THERE IS BOOM, AND DAN BARRY

The New York Times is reliable for its excellent reporting and keen insight, but beautiful prose is not a given. This is why Dan Barry's column, "This Land" is so refreshing. His latest story, about the way New Orleans fishermen are responding to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, is a colourful departure from the news-reader's usual fare:

For the last several days, the Venice Marina at the bottom of Plaquemines Parish has been a fishless stew of whisper, resentment and opportunity.

Barry's story is about the men who are working overtime to lay down boom—maritime sandbags—to keep the shoreline clear of oil. Their desperate, low-tech answer to the haemorrhaging caused by an oil-rig explosion last month makes for a compelling counterbalance to BP's efforts to use "submersible robots and other futuristic technology" to contain the spill. These shrimpers, oystermen and others lay down boom, Barry writes, "because this is what you do in times of hazardous spills, to protect your livelihood, your home and the complicated ecosystem of which you are a part." His prose gives shape to the people, the rusted trucks, oily water and hurricanes that make up this textured American landscape.

At least there is boom, lots and lots of boom... They studied the dull-orange line of protection for a few minutes, then took the cut back into Southwest Pass to enter a wonderland of rippling bays and green-brown marshland, of snowy egrets floating like bits of linen above and jumping mullets announcing the abundance of larger fish below—all now relying on oil-based products to be saved from oil-based doom.

~ COLIN BAKER