Connie May Fowler author of such books as "How Clarissa Burden learned to fly," "Affirmation, Etched in Vinyl," "Remembering Blue," and "The Problem with Murmur Lee" lives in Franklin County Florida, a peninsula on the Gulf of Mexico.

Being in such close proximity to the BP oil spill she has started blogging about the effects it is having on her community.

To get a bird's eye view of the disaster click here to check out her blog.

Here is an excerpt from her latest blog, it really gives an idea of the impact the spill is having on the local communities:

Amid the occasional debate over whether we’re imagining a faint stench of oil, there’s a sense of hopelessness and finality in the air. New phrases have slipped into our everyday lexicon : HAZMAT training, oiled seabirds, sea turtle autopsies, oil-spill trajectory forecasts, deep water oil plumes, Corexit dispersant, dead zones.

For now, our oyster reefs are open, fishing is unaffected, and the beaches remain pristine. But we fear we may have only a few oil-free days left. We don't have reliable data. We're all guessing, hedging our bets. All we know for sure is that the sheen is out there, to our south and west. Emails from local agencies advising us to be prepared pile up like virtual butterflies blown asunder by a foul wind.