Want to both acknowledge the disaster that looms and still explain to everyone that the Mississippi Gulf Coast is open for business? Let me give you first-person account of the way to do it.

Via Terry Cassreino writing at Better MS Report:

A steady, late afternoon breeze from the south cooled the beach across from the Courtyard Inn near downtown – and with it came the unmistakable, strong odor of oil.

This was not the odor of gasoline or a lawn mower.

This was no doubt oil, part of the thousands of barrels of crude that have continued to spew for more than a month from a leak at an underwater well some 5,000 feet beneath the surface of the Gulf of Mexico off the Louisiana Coast.

But save for the strong stench of oil, you wouldn’t have known the biggest ecological disaster was taking place miles south of here. It was business as usual along the Mississippi Coast on Saturday as visitors and residents relaxed on the beach unfazed by the oil spill.

My family was among the many beachgoers. I brought my wife and two children to Gulfport late Saturday to relax on the beach and wade in the warm, clear waters of the Mississippi Sound. It was our second trip to Harrison County beaches in two weeks.