IT SOUNDED LIKE TEA PARTY sentiment: the calls for smaller, more efficient government, lower taxes, the elimination of waste and a call for elected representatives who listen to, instead of talk at, their constituents. But the participants didn't fit the label.

Listening to national media these days, you'd think that the conservative Tea Party has a monopoly on demands for good government and the political muscle to achieve its goals. But the recent outcry in Chatham showed no particular ideological bias nor did the folks involved announce grander plans. People of all political stripes were just fed up.

IMAGINE STICKY GOBS of crude oil washing up on the shores of the Roe Jan Kill or Kinderhook Lake. Picture Canada geese covered with dark goo, the beach at Lake Taghkanic turned to tar, the Hudson boat launch choked by petroleum the tide can't wash away.

Fortunately we don't face those direct consequences the way our fellow citizens on the Gulf Coast do following the fatal accident last month that destroyed the offshore oil rig and released millions of gallons of crude into the water. But like everybody who drives a car, shops at a supermarket or flips on a light switch, all of us who live in Columbia County live lives connected to the disaster unfolding off the Louisiana coast. And we bear some responsibility for finding ways to prevent such catastrophes from happening again.