Down the Drain

   Try to picture this, you're given a couple of cases of water and asked to pull out what you think is that number of bottles the average American uses in a day; now this would include not only what they drink and shower and flush with, but what they wash and water their lawns and (here's the tricky part) what it takes to bring their food to the table.  I bring this up partly because Popular Science devoted most of an issue to the topic of water and its results though much of it was quite shocking; yes, you've likely heard it all before but this year the snowpack in our state (read: our drinking water in summer) is the lowest its been since 1903...uh wait, that's over 100 years.  And the latest weather projections show no major snow storms in sight.  Couple this with several guests who recently stayed at our place and were polite enough to clean up after dinner, dutifully washing and rinsing each dish with more water than the dishwasher would use (my old mantra of "it's a dishwasher not a dishrinser always seems to fall on plugged ears).  Some people (my wife included) simply grew up this way, that water was so plentiful that dishes needed to be virtually spotless before being placed into the dishwasher, even if it took what seemed a bathtub full of water to get a set of mugs and glasses sparkly clean (recent reports say again that clean dishes in a dishwasher actually causes harm to glasses and such for the detergents made for today's dishwashers are designed to seek our particles of food and such and on not finding them, will scratch or etch away at whatever else is there...thus cloudy crystal and dishes).  Ah well, you're probably not all that interested in reading yet another ranting about wasting water since you might be scratching your head and saying "didn't he just write about that a little bit ago?"  But here's the belated answer to the puzzle first presented above...you would need quite a few more cases of water in order to meet the needs of the average American.  Taking the premise that you're buying the 16.9-ounce bottles (think an American pint of beer, for the British Imperial pint is actually 20 oz.), and that a case of such bottles would contain 24 bottles (at a cost of less than $3.00 which doesn't even cover the cost of the production and disposal of the bottles), then the correct answer would be...31 and a half cases, or 757 bottles per day.  But then we're back to cattle (whaaat???).

The Tower Bridge in London; photo: Coppa Club

   Pipelines and aqueducts and wells go back millennia and getting water from its source to its intended receiver has been the challenge for countries worldwide (as has getting rid of or treating that water once it's been used either by bodies or by industry).  Romans built a system of massive aqueducts while other civilations captured and pumped water through clever screw funnels or windmills and paddle wheels.  But little will match today's modern system of canals and waterways both above and below ground to move water hundreds of miles away from its source and onto fields of crops and into the mouths of both animals and humans (this controversy continues in my own state as approval appears to have been given for another such pipeline to be built in the southern portion of our state, this despite cost overruns and a dispute over permits said our local SL Tribune).  Of course, water on our planet is finite and all the fresh water that we have now is the same water we've had millions of years ago...moved around a bit or frozen or thawed, but the same.  So lakes dry up (my own state's Great Salt Lake has been shrinking in size and drying up since 1847, the result of water being diverted and prevented from adding to the lake; currently 3.3 trillion litres are diverted annually says Science), glaciers melt (they represent less than 2% of all water on our planet but hold 75% of our freshwater, says the USGS), and our salty oceans begin to max out on their capacity to store our excess carbon emissions, adds Nature.  Add to all of this the "fatberg," a chunk of congealed concrete-like waste plugging up one of London's sewers.  No big deal, you say?  Except that this mass is quite large, as in the length of the London Tower Bridge, says the Guardian.(see the photo pictured above if you want a bit of perspective).

    So where is all of this headed, especially since I've written before on water and on conserving water and on and on; and let's face it, until it really affects us (either in a shortage or a higher bill or with contamination), water is something that we don't really think about it...it's heading right back to that circle, that water is fundamental to life and just as with life it is something that we should pay attention to and revere and respect and not take for granted for one day, it may just simply not be there or at least not there as we know it now.  Water is us, coursing through our veins and arteries as easily and uneventfully as life itself (over 60% of the human body is water, indeed half of our bones are water says a piece by Dr. Anne Marie Helmenstine in Thoughtco).  Slow down your drinking of water and your body will let you know (admittedly, you might collapse and wake up in a hospital but you'll know, as the piece in Popular Science graphically illustrates).  Even backing off a little in your water consumption can cause unwanted symptoms such as dizziness and fatigue; this happened repeatedly to my mother (a common trait among older people, and especially those with dememtia), her sodium levels increasing on par with her reduced water consumption which caused dizziness and resulted in her falling on several occasions.

   As of late I've noticed more and more people walking and running and hiking with their white earbuds on as if to isolate themselves or multitask (I'm guilty of the latter at home); but they may be missing the songs of birds or that horn honking as it warns them that they are just not paying attention.  Their was a piece by writer Craig Mod in Backchannel (now part of Wired) that addressed this issue by him putting down his phone and turning off his WiFi: If I tell people I went offline for a month, it's like telling them I set up camp on Mars.  It hints of apostasy, paganism.  Tribes seem to find pleasure in knowing all members suffer equally.  But really, is the situation so dire that we can't wrangle a little more control?  We've opted into this baffling baseline of infinite information suck, always-availability.  Nobody held a gun to our head.  We put our own mouths on the spigot every single day.  On reading his story I thought of my own usage for how often do I use my phone to, well, actually talk?  I text and take photos and look up things; but my percentage of actually using the phone to make a phone "call" is probably around 10%...how did that happen?  Life can do that as well, just slide by so smoothly that you don't notice it's changed until it's pointed out to you.

   As a final bit of testing, see if you recognize these names,* all of whom passed away last year: 1) Clare Hollingworth, 2) Betty Cuthbert, 3) Peter Mansfield, 4) Gilbert Baker, 5) Eugene Cernan, 6) Anne Morrissy Merick, and 7) Norma McCorvey...oh, and my mother.  See, in blocking out the sounds of nature and taking a video of an event instead of just watching it, it makes it seem that we want anything but the life that surrounds us.  We want more, but are actually getting less.  As writer Mod added:  Attention is a muscle.  It must be exercised.  Though attention is duplicitous -- it doesn't feel like a muscle.  And exercising it doesn't result in an appreciably healthier-looking body.  But it does result in a sense of grounding, feeling rational, control of your emotions -- a healthy mind.  Our measuring sticks for life tend to be optimized for material things, things easy to count.  Houses, cars, husbands, babies, dollar bills.  Attention is immaterial, difficult to track...Disconnection helped me remember what the mind felt like before I had lost my attention.  Reminded me how it felt to wash off that funereal glaze that seemed to coat us all, and to return to the world --however thick the gloom-- with clarity and purpose, able to help out in far better ways that I could have had I stayed online.  Despite my words, I'm guilty of that, of not paying attention as evidenced by writing this blog.  But the passing of my mother made me think of the bigger picture, of how much of life I'm letting slip by and how quickly such things as songs and words and possessions will dissolve into the ether and all that will remain, the only things that one can take with you, will be that which is inside, your memories, your feelings, your love...that is, if you were paying attention.  Water always finds it own path; perhaps if we pay attention we'll discover that life does the same...

*To respectfully credit these names, I'll address them less formally as if the world recognizes them not only for their accomplishments but for they're being not just a name but individual people: Clare was the first journalist to let the world know that WWII had begun as she reported on Germany's invasion of Poland (she was 105 when she died); Betty was the first athlete in the Olympics to win gold in four events; Peter created the MRI scanner which would go on to win him the Nobel Prize; Gilbert, gay activist, was the creator of the rainbow flag; Eugene became the last person (so far) to walk on the moon; Anne "overcame sexism" to become the first female journalist to report from the front lines of the Vietnam War; and Norma was and is the anonymous but famous Jane Roe as in Roe vs. Wade.