Selections from Salt Works: Reflections on Salt Water Intrusion in Southern Louisiana. On view now at the New Orleans Community Printshop, 1201 Mazant St., New Orleans, LA. If you’d like to see the show or more detailed shots or would like to buy a print or photo, email me at anthonyford10@gmail.com

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Salt has often played a significant role in history without much of a spotlight. it’s power maintains a degree of mystery & reverence. it is one of the many factors shaping our coastal environments through salt water intrusion into brackish & fresh water areas. both the presence & absence of salt can have constructive or destructive effects & it is in the midst of changing the future of coastal Louisiana. 

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We are losing our coast. But this doesn’t have to be the way. There are things to do. Be creative. Take initiative. Inform yourself. Go explore. Ask for Louisiana seafood when you go out to eat. Buy it at the market & serve it to your friends and family. See what is at stake. Read Bayou Farewell by Mike Tidwell. Take a canoe out to the Atchafalaya Basin & see a healthy wetlands. Wolf E. Staudinger says: Go Tree planting with Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana. Recycle your Christmas tree. Listen to the Coastal Desk on WWNO. Read Losing Ground on propublica.org Tell your family in Minnesota. Ask Congress and the EPA to fix the Dead Zone. Join the GULF SOUTH RISING Movement. Tell your family in New Hampshire. Close your eyes and imagine what it will be like to be standing where you are in 100 years in Louisiana. Join the Urban Water Collaborative. Make a rain garden. Subscribe to Save Louisiana’s Delta dispatches. Make sure BP oil spill penalty money goes to fixing the coast and not to building tourist attractions that ruin the environment. Demand that a major sediment diversion–that will actually build land–be built instead of the RAM Coal Terminal. Next time you eat an oyster close your eyes and imagine the millions of accidents of nature suspended across the centuries that allowed the Mississippi River to bump and twist its way into this very position that allowed this very delicate amount of salt water to interact with this very delicate amount of freshwater that allowed for this particular tiny baby spit to attach itself to an opportune rock and grow into the oyster that is now in your mouth. Now imagine a black underwater cloud of oil spewing from a busted oil well drifting across the currents of the Gulf of Mexico, dispersing into tiny little droplets and finally settling on that very rock where your very oyster once barely managed to grab on and grow. Stop the Maurepas Tar Sands pipeline. Expose the collusion between Louisiana oil companies and the government agencies that are supposed to monitor them. Encourage the beneficial reuse of treated sewage to fertilize cypress wetland growth . Tell your friends in California.  Ride your bike instead of driving. Take a train instead of a-flying. Love Lousiana. Love the Gulf. Love your grandchildren.