Gary Smith SI Story on the Gulf Oil Spill

Two pieces from the July 5 issue of Sports Illustrated that stood out as cool (in the emotional and moving sense of the word).

The feature story was "7 Days In The Life Of A Catastrophe" about the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. It's written by Gary Smith and is good in the same way that I've found other Smith work from SI to be good... leaning a bit towards melodrama, but interesting (and usually profound) nonetheless.

The thing about the Gulf Oil Spill is it's so woven with tragedy and melodrama that Smith is probably well suited to report on it. He writes at the beginning of trying to figure out a connection to the world of sports and while he does come up with ties between sports and the spill, it's really the human drama that he writes about and captures well.

Sad piece, good writing.

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Something else from this issue that stood out to me was the last page column by Phil Taylor. "A Gift From The Game" is about 12 year old autistic Charles St. Germain and how playing golf has helped him learn to interact with others in social settings.

Just a nice story.