End, Begin...and Water
The past few days found me down with some sort of bug, a powerful version that left me sleeping for most of the day and thus shattering my hopes of "down" time to catch up on some reading or to watch a movie or two. This bug would have none of it; just getting up out of bed was a major effort, my head spinning and my energy as zapped as an exhausted marathoner...I even had dreams of being drugged and unable to wake up. But right along with all of that, I knew that I had to continue drinking water; as repugnant as this seemed at the time (drinking or eating anything was not in the books), I dutifully rose up after about 12 hours in bed and gulped down just under a liter of water...then back to bed. It was like a car with dirty oil; I knew that my body was battling away and doing its best to fight off this rapid infection, but if I didn't give it help to clear out the mess, to help my kidneys and liver clean their filters, then what sort of odds was I giving myself? In about 28 hours, my bug was 80% gone. All of this brought about two thoughts, one being the powerful use of biological warfare (even with something as simple as spraying a 24-hour flu virus) and the other being the transformative powers of water...and where the heck did all my germ-infected pee head to once I flushed that toilet? Which got me back to reading...
I had had the book Taking On Water for several years, but it was one of those on the back burner, a book to be read when I had that strained back or was sick (little did I know). But author Wendy J. Panich, graduate of MIT, Duke and Dartmouth (doctorate, two MS degrees and a BA respectively) earnestly tries to tackle some of the questions we all occasionally face in our homes...where does the water come from, how safe is it, how much am I using, can I use less, where does it go after it leaves my home; she asks the same of her electricity (a thorough energy audit of her rural home found that her roof, despite being built up to code, was changing her air 10x per hour; turns out that a modern 5000 square foot home is more energy efficient than a home half that size if it was built in the 80s); but the water thing. Some small tidbits that emerged: if everyone in the U.S. skipped just one flush daily, it would create a lake nearly a mile square and one four feet deep...every day! Half of our drinkable water goes onto our lawns, an amount equal to the yearly flow of 46 Missouri rivers (yes that one, the one that floods with devastating consequences); and agriculture is that main culprit of water usage (Italy is depleting its aquifers at an unsustainable rate, she writes, primarily to grow the durum wheat for its pasta). And that potent bug which I was now sending down the toilet...well, it gets somewhat complicated from there but even before treatment, 30% of our water gets sent down those porcelain bowls. Things have improved since her book was published five years ago but if you happened to catch the latest documentary by former vice-president Al Gore (An Inconvenient Sequel) you'll realize that along with melting glaciers comes the parallel effect of drought and lack of water. (the trailer shows an amazing clip of Phoenix, Arizona getting pelted with a rain "bomb" from Mother Nature).
Okay I'm veering off a bit for this was to be about clearing out those piles of articles and tidbits of what I felt were interesting-enough reports to keep for later, only now they've again become too numerous. So here begins the paper side of some of these, brief mentions of subjects you may or may not want to explore; think of it as a table of contents in a book with the links provided letting you jump deeper into the subject if you wish. For me, it will prove a slight reduction to my pile of papers even as I recognize that within another few weeks that pile will have returned like some dividing set of cells. So herewith, the beginning (but not the end...). --Kubernetes: This is big if you're a techie, but for the rest of us, what the heck? Bloomberg Businessweek tried to explain it simply. --End of Shale: Wait, wasn't the fracking boom just starting? Projections are down and may drop further in the U.S., said the same magazine. --Make Money on Hate: Of course there will always be people making a buck in anyway they can (drug dealers, mercenaries, prostitutes, etc.), but hate? As in $25,000 a month? Big enough to write two stories about it in the same magazine on successful hate crowdfunding and a devoted website apparently devoted to white supremacists. What in the world? --Bears Ears: Remember my post a few months ago, me going to the protest and well, experiencing that feeling of solidarity that seems to just blow right over politicians like a passing bit of gas? To get a good idea of the amount of the national (as in your land) cut, the NY Times presented an easy-to-view graph. --Taxes: The new year has started and in the U.S. that means a big headache for the Internal Revenue Service on issuing guidelines, even as everyday folk eagerly rub their hands...or not. Said The Week: But when the Bush administration offered a tax holiday on overseas profits in 2004, the top 15 repatriating companies brought home $150 billion — and passed most of it on to their shareholders. They then laid off a collective 21,000 workers over the next three years. On the other side of the coin, the nieces, grandsons and other inheritors of the Wal-Mart legacy are getting blisters from rubbing their hands together (make $12 billion in one day?), says Politifact. --Tablets: Okay, not the medical sort but the sort going into the hands of the young, as in ages 8 and under; 42% now have one said Axios. Algebra being taught to 3rd-graders is now the norm (really). --Nerve Gas: Thought that was gone, right? It's ba-a-a-ck, and in our food, says a piece by staff writer Nicholas Kristol in The New York Times. --Racism: Yes, much coverage here but to get upfront and personal, there was a near-personal story that came from the middle of the U.S. in Missouri; scary, touching, and revealing about this country's divide, again from Bloomberg Businessweek. --Fake News: It's really quite an old term, even if he-who-must-not-be-named is trying to take credit for it. But paper journalism and journalism in general is indeed getting salvos of attacks and is now in a defensive mode. Wired had an excellent encapsulation of the topic. --Extinction: Sure we're witnessing hundreds if not thousands of species going extinct; but Smithsonian had an article that noted that we're also discovering some 18,000 new species every year. Amazing! --Chicken: Yuck, I've avoided this topic for awhile due to the things that appear almost daily, very few of them positive (such as Costco's plans to contract 100 factory farms to supply its demand for their $4.99 rotisserie chickens, said Food & Water Watch); but of course there's worse news, such as what goes on in those factory farms, to the chickens of course but also to the immigrant employees. Read about this double-yuck story from The New Yorker.
Depressed enough? Sorry...this might, however, turn out to be my new format, to throw a few side tidbits to the bottom and let you, the reader, decide if you want to go further. So much news and info out there that it will likely prove a small relief valve for me, asking you in advance if that's okay to burden you with the clutter. Anyway, let's end on a good note, as author Panich did in her book on water when she quoted the Buddha describing nirvana by saying, "Consciousness without feature, without end, luminous all around, a mind free from craving, anger, and other afflicted states." She also quotes him as saying, "Peace comes from within. Do not seek it without." But she goes on: Through increasing my awareness of our patterns and choices --and understanding the implications of those decisions-- it became abundantly clear to me that those things that stood in the way of change were as much in my mind as they were true impediments...My inquiries confirmed that most of us want to know that our actions benefit the whole --that one fewer pair of blue jeans might translate to benefits elsewhere-- one less grape withering on the vine, a few trout with more and cleaner water, one more cup of clean water for a child in India. By sharing my journey, I hope to deepen public awareness and shine light on the easy (and hard) steps we can all take toward change. Plus, the act of sharing has helped me find a little nirvana. Our actions benefiting the whole...it has a nice sound to it, doesn't it? Like drops of rain becoming a stream becoming a river becoming an ocean...to a new year!
I had had the book Taking On Water for several years, but it was one of those on the back burner, a book to be read when I had that strained back or was sick (little did I know). But author Wendy J. Panich, graduate of MIT, Duke and Dartmouth (doctorate, two MS degrees and a BA respectively) earnestly tries to tackle some of the questions we all occasionally face in our homes...where does the water come from, how safe is it, how much am I using, can I use less, where does it go after it leaves my home; she asks the same of her electricity (a thorough energy audit of her rural home found that her roof, despite being built up to code, was changing her air 10x per hour; turns out that a modern 5000 square foot home is more energy efficient than a home half that size if it was built in the 80s); but the water thing. Some small tidbits that emerged: if everyone in the U.S. skipped just one flush daily, it would create a lake nearly a mile square and one four feet deep...every day! Half of our drinkable water goes onto our lawns, an amount equal to the yearly flow of 46 Missouri rivers (yes that one, the one that floods with devastating consequences); and agriculture is that main culprit of water usage (Italy is depleting its aquifers at an unsustainable rate, she writes, primarily to grow the durum wheat for its pasta). And that potent bug which I was now sending down the toilet...well, it gets somewhat complicated from there but even before treatment, 30% of our water gets sent down those porcelain bowls. Things have improved since her book was published five years ago but if you happened to catch the latest documentary by former vice-president Al Gore (An Inconvenient Sequel) you'll realize that along with melting glaciers comes the parallel effect of drought and lack of water. (the trailer shows an amazing clip of Phoenix, Arizona getting pelted with a rain "bomb" from Mother Nature).
Okay I'm veering off a bit for this was to be about clearing out those piles of articles and tidbits of what I felt were interesting-enough reports to keep for later, only now they've again become too numerous. So here begins the paper side of some of these, brief mentions of subjects you may or may not want to explore; think of it as a table of contents in a book with the links provided letting you jump deeper into the subject if you wish. For me, it will prove a slight reduction to my pile of papers even as I recognize that within another few weeks that pile will have returned like some dividing set of cells. So herewith, the beginning (but not the end...). --Kubernetes: This is big if you're a techie, but for the rest of us, what the heck? Bloomberg Businessweek tried to explain it simply. --End of Shale: Wait, wasn't the fracking boom just starting? Projections are down and may drop further in the U.S., said the same magazine. --Make Money on Hate: Of course there will always be people making a buck in anyway they can (drug dealers, mercenaries, prostitutes, etc.), but hate? As in $25,000 a month? Big enough to write two stories about it in the same magazine on successful hate crowdfunding and a devoted website apparently devoted to white supremacists. What in the world? --Bears Ears: Remember my post a few months ago, me going to the protest and well, experiencing that feeling of solidarity that seems to just blow right over politicians like a passing bit of gas? To get a good idea of the amount of the national (as in your land) cut, the NY Times presented an easy-to-view graph. --Taxes: The new year has started and in the U.S. that means a big headache for the Internal Revenue Service on issuing guidelines, even as everyday folk eagerly rub their hands...or not. Said The Week: But when the Bush administration offered a tax holiday on overseas profits in 2004, the top 15 repatriating companies brought home $150 billion — and passed most of it on to their shareholders. They then laid off a collective 21,000 workers over the next three years. On the other side of the coin, the nieces, grandsons and other inheritors of the Wal-Mart legacy are getting blisters from rubbing their hands together (make $12 billion in one day?), says Politifact. --Tablets: Okay, not the medical sort but the sort going into the hands of the young, as in ages 8 and under; 42% now have one said Axios. Algebra being taught to 3rd-graders is now the norm (really). --Nerve Gas: Thought that was gone, right? It's ba-a-a-ck, and in our food, says a piece by staff writer Nicholas Kristol in The New York Times. --Racism: Yes, much coverage here but to get upfront and personal, there was a near-personal story that came from the middle of the U.S. in Missouri; scary, touching, and revealing about this country's divide, again from Bloomberg Businessweek. --Fake News: It's really quite an old term, even if he-who-must-not-be-named is trying to take credit for it. But paper journalism and journalism in general is indeed getting salvos of attacks and is now in a defensive mode. Wired had an excellent encapsulation of the topic. --Extinction: Sure we're witnessing hundreds if not thousands of species going extinct; but Smithsonian had an article that noted that we're also discovering some 18,000 new species every year. Amazing! --Chicken: Yuck, I've avoided this topic for awhile due to the things that appear almost daily, very few of them positive (such as Costco's plans to contract 100 factory farms to supply its demand for their $4.99 rotisserie chickens, said Food & Water Watch); but of course there's worse news, such as what goes on in those factory farms, to the chickens of course but also to the immigrant employees. Read about this double-yuck story from The New Yorker.
Depressed enough? Sorry...this might, however, turn out to be my new format, to throw a few side tidbits to the bottom and let you, the reader, decide if you want to go further. So much news and info out there that it will likely prove a small relief valve for me, asking you in advance if that's okay to burden you with the clutter. Anyway, let's end on a good note, as author Panich did in her book on water when she quoted the Buddha describing nirvana by saying, "Consciousness without feature, without end, luminous all around, a mind free from craving, anger, and other afflicted states." She also quotes him as saying, "Peace comes from within. Do not seek it without." But she goes on: Through increasing my awareness of our patterns and choices --and understanding the implications of those decisions-- it became abundantly clear to me that those things that stood in the way of change were as much in my mind as they were true impediments...My inquiries confirmed that most of us want to know that our actions benefit the whole --that one fewer pair of blue jeans might translate to benefits elsewhere-- one less grape withering on the vine, a few trout with more and cleaner water, one more cup of clean water for a child in India. By sharing my journey, I hope to deepen public awareness and shine light on the easy (and hard) steps we can all take toward change. Plus, the act of sharing has helped me find a little nirvana. Our actions benefiting the whole...it has a nice sound to it, doesn't it? Like drops of rain becoming a stream becoming a river becoming an ocean...to a new year!
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