SHRIMP BOAT PROJECTS SPRING 2011 CLASS TRIPS WITH READINGS
Pre-semester reading:
Galveston Bay, Sally Antrobus
The Lure of the Local, Lucy Lippard
Trip 1: Nature
Kayaking and a Visit to the Armand Bayou Nature Center
The Armand Bayou, located smack in the middle of urban sprawl, is a preserve designed to Reconnect People with Nature. This preserve is by no means the pristine wilderness it claims to be but it will give students an idea of the landscape of Houston and the surrounding region before human intervention drained the swamps and channeled the bayous in concrete. Through experiencing this landscape we hope that students will be able to see its remnants as we explore other parts of the bay.
-- The Trouble with Wilderness, William Cronon
-- Conservation is Good Work, Wendell Berry
-- Living By Life: Some Bioregional Theory and Practice, Jim Dodge
-- The Rediscovery of North America, Barry Lopez
Trip 2: History
Texas Seaport Museum Boat Tour, Ocean Star Offshore Drilling Rig and Museum
This trip would serve a variety of purposes for the project. First of all, the Texas Seaport Museum provides a harbor boat tour that includes the history of the Galveston Bay Mosquito Fleet, and a collection of working Shrimp Boats. The tour boat also has a small shrimp net which can be tossed over the side and the catch will be interpreted by a marine biologist. Secondly, the Oil Rig Museum provides a unique perspective in being a clear advocate for the oil industry and insight into the labor of oil. Finally visiting these small museums will allow us the opportunity to talk about how interpretations of history are influencing the current definitions of the community.
-- Story of the 1900 Galveston Storm, Nathan Greene; Part 1- Chapters 1-5 and Part 2- Chapters 1-4
-- The Formation and Future of the Upper Texas Coast, John B. Anderson
-- A Tale of Two Texas Cities: Houston the Industrial Metropolis, and Galveston, the Island Getaway from Energy Metropolis: An Environmental History of Houston and the Gulf Coast, Martin Melosi and Joseph Pratt, eds.
-- After Ike: Aerial Views from the No-Fly Zone, Bryan Carlile
Trip 3: Community.
Dickinson Fishing Village, Repairing the Shrimp Boat, Kemah Boardwalk: .
Fishing villages are a dying breed in the Galveston Bay region and the one in Dickinson may be the last. These were once completely sustainable family-owned fishing communities where commercial fisherman docked their boats, sold their catch, had their nets repaired, had their boats serviced, and area residents could dine on fresh seafood. As a part of this visit we would like students to help us work on the Shrimp Boat Projects boat, preparing it for the season. Additionally we're interested in comparing the Dickinson Fishing Village with one of the newer type of coastal developments, the Kemah Boardwalk, a maritime-themed entertainment destination built by the Houston-based seafood conglomerate Landry Seafood.
-- The Bay Shrimpers of Texas , Robert Lee Maril, p.1-92
-- The Last Fish Tale, Mark Kurlansky, prologue and chapters 1-4
-- Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered, E.F. Shumacher, Part 1: chapters 4-5
-- Staging Utopia on the Boardwalk, Bryant Simon in Boardwalk of Dreams
-- Beautiful Swimmers, William Warner
Trip 4: Landscape
Circumnavigation of Galveston Bay
For this expedition we will be providing students with a self-guided tour around Galveston Bay to cover the large variety of ecosystems and land uses that make up the entire region. The tour will stop at a number of significant sites including the San Jacinto Monument, Baytown Marina, the Trinity River Delta, the Anuhuac National Wildlife Refuge, Smith Point fishing village, the salt dome of High Island, the Bolivar Ferry, and through Galveston back to Houston. We will have students document their adventure and offer their own discoveries to the class.
-- Outside Lies Magic: Regaining History and Awareness in Everyday Places, John Stilgoe, chapters 1,2 and 9
-- The Meadowlands: Wilderness Adventures at the Edge of a City, Robert Sullivan, p.13-33
-- The Necessity of Ruins in The Necessity of Ruins and Other Topics, J.B. Jackson
-- Space and Place, Yi-Fu Tua, Chapters 1,2,9,10
Trip 5: Energy
Valero Texas City Oil Refinery
In a region seemingly defined by natural resource extraction, the petro-chemical refineries have become the most visible icons of this pursuit. We'll be visiting the refinery to better understand how the refining process works and how it came to be situated on Galveston Bay. We will be visiting this site in the shadow of Texas City's history of industrial accidents including the Texas City Disaster and the recent BP refinery explosion. We will also be exploring the extensive dike system, now ringing the city to protect its industry and maintain the Houston Ship Channel.
-- Oil 101, Morgan Downey, Chapter 1
-- Oil in Texas: The Gusher Age, 1895-1945, Roger and Diane Olien, Chapter 1, 2
-- The Texas City Disaster, 1947, Hugh W. Stevens
Trip 6: Economy
Ship Channel tour and San Jacinto Monument
The ship channel is the lifeline to Houston, and in many respects the city would never have grown to its current size without it. The Houston Ship Channel is also America's first artificial port, created by dredging a deep channel through the middle of shallow Galveston Bay. We'll be taking a tour of the ship channel, as organized by the Port of Houston, to better understand how the ship channel affects other economies and ecologies in the Galveston Bay.
-- Book of Texas Bays, Jim Blackburn, chapters 6-7.
-- The Houston Ship Channel and Changing Landscape of Industrial Pollution and
Urban Sprawl and The Piney Woods: Deforestation in the San Jacinto Watershed from Energy Metropolis: n Environmental History of Houston and the Gulf Coast,
Martin Melosi and Joseph Pratt, eds.
-- The Tragedy of the Commons, Garrett Hardin in Science, Vol. 162, No. 3859 (December 13, 1968)
Trip 7: Ecology.
Planting cord grass with Galveston Bay Foundation.
Armand Bayou represents a glimpse of what the primordial nature of the Galveston Bay region may have looked like, and the continual effort by various organizations to plant cord grass and other native plant species around the Bay signifies an interest in reasserting this view of the region. After a number of trips where other natures have been explored around the Bay, this workshop is intended as a bookend to complement the project's initial visit to Armand Bayou, exposing the various and contradictory definitions of nature in use and the practical challenges of intervening to maintain a landscape.
-- Land Ethic, Aldo Leopold in Sand County Almanac
-- Ecology without Nature, Timothy Morton, Introduction: Toward a Theory of Ecological-Criticism
-- Shallow Water Dictionary, John Stilgoe
