My thoughts today are on Edward Abbey and Woody Guthrie.
I wonder what Abbey would think about letting the water run at Glen Canyon Dam? Perhaps this gives an answer and puts hydroelectric power into some sort of perspective:
Woody Guthrie wrote a song, Deportees, about Braceros who were killed in a place crash in Los Gatos Canyon. Pesticides in the waters that grow our food slowly kill today's deportees:
DEPORTEES
by Woody Guthrie
The crops are all in and the peaches are rotting The oranges are filed in their creosote dumps They're flying 'em back to the Mexico border To take all their money to wade back again
Goodbye to my Juan, farewell Roselita Adios mes amigos, Jesus e Maria You won't have a name when you ride the big airplane All they will call you will be deportees
My father's own father, he waded that river They took all the money he made in his life It's six hundred miles to the Mexico border And they chased them like rustlers, like outlaws, like thieves
The skyplane caught fire over Los Gatos Canyon The great ball of fire it shook all our hills Who are these dear friends who are falling like dry leaves? Radio said, "They are just deportees"
Is this the best way we can grow our big orchards? Is this the best way we can raise our good crops? To fall like dry leaves and rot on out topsoil And be known by no names except "deportees"
Watermyth is about all things water. Right now, it focuses on my time in Fishtown, Philadelphia while a graduate student in Film and Media Arts at Temple University.
Contributions are still welcome and appreciated. If you are interested in posting (it can be on anything water related, e.g, poems, movies, random thoughts) please e-mail me at watermyth[at]gmail[dot]com.