Watermyth

Footsteps

2009-09-28T21:49:00.001-06:00

Goodbye Coney Island

2009-06-30T17:56:00.004-06:00

Like A Wave

2009-06-29T23:40:00.006-06:00

Like a wave watermyth is back. Again another turn in the river. Watermyth is going switch it up a bit and start to reflect my experiences in a little part of Philadelphia called Fishtown. I will still cover some basic bases in relation to water, which really I see Fishtown being a part of that struggle historically.

Fishtown is an old working class neighborhood just Northeast of Center City. It sits on the borders between the the baby carriages and bar goers in Northern Liberties, the renowned [warning, the video is produced by the BBC and is representative of a certain view on the area Kennsington, for a fuller view of this area I recommend this video project produced by David Kessler], and Port Richmond, which seems sort of quiet as I have not heard much about it.

Fishtown is White. This "White-ness" traces its roots back to Polish, Irish, and German immigrants who fished the endangerd shad. Though it was also the home to English shipbuilders and currently home to Ukrainian immigrants, and the vanguard of gentrification--it'd be tough to throw a rock and not hit a musician or filmmaker.

The day that I moved in to my house I read an article in one of the weekly papers how in the 1970's black movers moved a white family into a house on my block. That house was later fire bombed. I questioned whether I should tell my friend who was coming to help me move this nugget of information. I decided it was best to, and also told her that if my house were to be fire bombed I will hold her responsible. But times have changed and there is one African American family that lives on my block. Fishtown even voted for Obama, though I hear it was close.

I am still trying to get a handle on Fishtown. I do feel a bit like a fish out of water. We will see what turns up.

Fertile Water

2008-09-24T13:46:00.002-06:00

By now I am assuming most people have read or heard that Nicole Kidman is talking of the virtues of the water in the outback that led to her pregnancy. To be sure I am not doubting her sincerity. But for some reason it make me feel a bit sick in my stomach. Perhaps instead of Keith Urban being the biological father she was knocked up by immaculate conception by swimming in the water. It's not unheard of. The thing that will be interesting is when the bottled water companies get thier hands on this miracle water.

water fight

2008-08-12T15:10:00.002-06:00

It seems in Thailand they have a huge water fight to celebrate the new year:

Bottled Water

2008-08-05T09:23:00.003-06:00

Unhealthy thirst for profit

2008-08-04T11:20:00.004-06:00

from: The Wall Street Journal Digital Network

THOMAS KOSTIGEN'S ETHICS MONITOR
Unhealthy thirst for profit
Commentary: Water, water, everywhere, but so is the need to curb speculators
By Thomas Kostigen, MarketWatch
Last update: 7:40 p.m. EDT June 26, 2008

SANTA MONICA, Calif. (MarketWatch) -- A majority of U.S. mayors voted to stop paying for bottled water with taxpayers' money. Instead, they are opting to use tap water at city meetings and for city employees.
San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom introduced the idea at the U.S. Conference of Mayors that took place earlier this week in Miami, and it was quickly embraced by others.

To be sure, the beverage industry isn't happy about the move. "A few mayors have chosen sound-bite environmentalism over sound public policy in their zeal to appease liberal activist groups that are pedaling misinformation about bottled water," the Associated Press quoted Kevin Keane, a senior vice president of the industry's American Beverage Association, as saying.

But the mayors' move is smart. About 25% of bottled water comes from municipal sources anyway -- the same municipal sources that provide tap water. They also regulate and monitor water quality more regularly, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Moreover, considering that municipal sources are often city sources of water supply, why should these municipalities pay for their own water along with the $70 million that Corporate Accountability International estimates it costs to dispose of the plastic bottles every year?

Tap the tap

I salute the U.S. Conference of Mayors for its action and think others should enact similar measures. Many restaurants have banned serving bottled water altogether, and offer tap only.

It isn't so much the water that is the problem with bottled water, it's the plastic waste. We in the U.S. consume 81 million plastic bottles per day, according to the Container Recycling Institute. With less than one-third of these bottles getting recycled, that leaves a lot of waste. And plastics don't biodegrade.

Now while I say that water use isn't so much the problem with bottled water, it's a growing one -- both in terms of tapping supplies as well as in precedent.

The $15 billion-plus bottled-water industry has grown out of nothing over the last couple of decades. The water used to supply it amounts to far less than 1% of supply. However, the idea that water itself can be owned is disturbing.

We can only survive about three days without water. Like air, it should be made available to us as part of what many organizations call the "commons." We don't pay for air, why water?

The amount of private water providers has grown more than 100-fold since 1990 and they now supply about 10% of the world's population, according to water activist Maude Barlow, founder of the Blue Planet Project. And water ownership is growing with people, and investors seeing it as a ripe commodity.

T. Boone Pickens, the famous oil investor, for example, is betting big on water, buying up rights in the Southwest.
I'm not saying that people shouldn't have the right to buy premium water (some wingnuts have opened oxygen bars after all), but there should be a limit on the amount of water profiteers can own, then let speculators have at it.

We need look no further than our food supply to see the dangers speculation has on prices -- and therefore those who cannot afford to pay; they starve.

We should set a water policy that assures people have ready access to it as part of their right to exist. Sure we trade taxes for rights all the time. And I think that is exactly the point of the U.S. mayors who voted to end taxpayer funding of bottled water: It's ours to begin with. Water should not be made into a total commodity. That would have life and death consequences, and markets don't care; they operate without conscience.

John Cage - Water Walk

2008-08-02T15:36:00.001-06:00

A little easy listening for your weekend:

Pedagogy of Desire

2008-08-01T11:50:00.003-06:00

This just in: According to The Today Show, "tap water is good for hydration." The problem is is they don't mention that bottled water is pretty much bad for everything else.

Great Lakes waters are NOT FOR SALE!

2008-07-31T13:56:00.004-06:00

Act NOW
to remind Congress that Great Lakes waters are NOT FOR SALE!

Stop the privatization of Great Lakes waters!

In the coming days, Congress is considering a historic resolution on the Great Lakes Compact, an agreement entered into by the states and provinces of the Great Lakes Basin. This lays out guidelines for diversions from the Great Lakes, lakes and streams and groundwater in the Basin to protect the waters from large scale diversion projects and private expropriation. Generally, the Compact bans all diversions unless covered by an exception. While the Compact could be a great step forward to protect the Great Lakes, there are serious concerns with the exceptions laid out in the compact - such as that allowing the packaging and sale of Great Lakes water as a "product" for private gain and explicitly exempting bottled water from the ban. Further, the Compact fails to incorporate the Public Trust doctrine that protects Great Lakes basin waters from private export and sale and protects these waters from claims to the water as a product under international trade laws.

The Compact cannot become law without the approval of Congress, who will consider this very soon. Congress has broad constitutional powers to add conditions to make sure the Compact conforms to principles like public trust, so it is uniformly respected by the states in managing the Compact and Great Lakes waters.

Take action NOW to ensure conditions to the Compact protect the waters against being defined as a product, which could allow bottled-water companies to exploit the waters and sets a dangerous precedent for exporting water, and protect the largest body of freshwater in the U.S. as a public trust.

Sincerely,

Sam Finkelstein
Great Lakes Organizer
Food & Water Watch

I <3 Tap Water

2008-07-30T11:22:00.002-06:00

From the folks at food & water watch comes their video contest winner:

Ghandi in Austin

2008-07-26T18:00:00.001-06:00

RETURN of the Banished

2008-07-14T14:05:00.002-06:00

You return on currents and tides
after years in the wilds of the East

How many are the sorrows of exile?
More than pearls in the the seas.

--Li Po

The History of the English Word Water: Part Three

2008-07-09T13:38:00.001-06:00

The History of the English Word Water
Daniel Sanford

III

One other thing that we know about the Indo-Europeans: we know that they didn’t stay in the Ukraine. Horses, wheels, and agriculture is a pretty potent cultural combination in the world of 4,000 BC (it’s still the Neolithic throughout Europe, and far off in the most civilized part of the world, Sumeria and Egypt are just getting started at this time- the world is not a technologically sophisticated place). The Indo-Europeans took their culture, technology, religion, and language, and they moved. All over. And everywhere they went, their language became the dominant language of the region, replacing languages and language families which had previously existed in the region (unless, of course, there are places that they moved to in which PIE died out- if this happened, we of course wouldn’t know about it). PIE language splits off into dialects, and eventually languages, as groups lost contact with one another.

As a result, the English word water has relatives all over. We looked last time at a few of the Germanic ones, but there are many, many more. A few of these have stumbled over into English, some in amusing ways, despite our already having a word with the same origin. Among the Indo-Europeans who headed down to Greece, wodor developed into hudor, which English speakers borrowed back as hydro-, as in hydrodynamics or hydroponics. In the Slavic group, we see many words along the lines of woda and voda, all related (or, really, all the same word). In Russian, a diminutive ending was added to make a word that English speakers promptly borrowed: vodka, or ‘little water.’ Something similar happened with Gaelic uisge, from the same root (the Celts being the West-most of the Indo-Europeans). Uisge beatha, or ‘water of life’, was shorted to uisge and then borrowed into English as whiskey.

Another group of Indo-Europeans headed South, then split: one group headed into the Middle East, becoming the Persians (where their name for themselves- aran, or ‘noble’- is recognizable in Iran). Another, which headed into Northern India, were known as the Aryan invaders whose religious practices merged with those of the older, Dravidic population (still present, and speaking Dravidic languages, in Southern India) to form Hinduism. The words for water in these languages look a bit different. It’s been suggested that there were two roots corresponding to water in Indo-European, one which stressed water as a living, animate, thing (or, perhaps, deity), and one which labeled water as an everyday, inanimate substance. The former was ap-, the latter wod-. While languages like Hindi and Farsi are a part of the same language family, Indo-European, the words for water in these languages are descended from ap-, not wod-.

The Indo-Europeans who headed to Italy became speakers of Italic, out of which developed Latin. Latin kept wod-, as unda, but its meaning shifted over to mean ‘wave’ (another water cousin that we borrowed in English, as undulate). For ‘water’, they used what was apparently yet another word referring to water (or, it’s been suggested, a related concept, such as ‘drink’): ak^wa. It’s this word that became the word for ‘water’ in languages like Italian, Spanish, and French that developed out of Latin (acqua, agua, and eau, respectively). But, English has vestiges of this root as well: for example, our word island is from an older form ag-land, or ‘water-land’, which uses a root descended from ak^wa.

Language, on the surface, can seem like a barrier between cultures. A deeper look, however, illustrates the connections that language can evidence even as it conceals them. Even among groups with no memory of their common cultural origins, the shared use of words such as water, the same across related languages despite variations in form, belie a unity and sameness far deeper than language differences might suggest.

Etymology of Water

2008-07-08T08:11:00.005-06:00

History of the English Word Water
by Daniel Sanford

‘West Germanic’ labels one group of the Germanic language family: all of the languages that descend from Germanic (called Proto-Germanic, because while we know that the language existed, and we know a great deal about it based on the properties of its daughter languages, we have no direct access to the language itself). By the time the Anglo Saxons got on ships for Britain, Germanic had spread to much of its current distribution, with speakers ranging over what is today Southern Norway and Finland, Denmark, Northern Germany, Belgium, and the Netherlands. In the language of the original Germanic people, focused around the very northern edge of Denmark and across the way on the southern rim of the Scandinavian Peninsula the word for water would have looked something along the lines of wadar. Every Germanic language has a related word. A couple of examples: in Old High German wadar become wazzar, eventually becoming today’s German wasser. Further North, in Old Norse, the word became vater, and eventually Norwegian vann, while old Swedish watar became today’s vatten. In Old Frankish the word became weder, which in Denmark is now vand. These are all, essentially, the same word as English water, arising from the single Germanic word wadar.

Germanic is itself, however, just one branch of a bigger family. The people who would become speakers of Germanic arrived in Sweden and Denmark sometime around, or a bit before, 2500 BC (about the same time that the first pyramids were being built in Egypt). When they showed up, they were speakers of a dialect of Indo-European (or, more accurately, Proto-Indo-European).

There’s a lot that we don’t know about the Indo-Europeans, but there is a surprising amount that we do know, given the fact that they didn’t leave much in terms of archaeological remains (or at least, not remains that can be positively attributed to them). It’s a reasonable guess that the Indo-Europeans started out somewhere around the area of the Ukraine in 4000 BC. We know, based on words of theirs that survived into Indo-European’s daughter languages, that they had domesticated dogs and horses, some sort of wheeled vehicle, cereal agriculture, a paternalistic culture, and a pantheon of gods headed up by a “Sky Father” (something like Dyaus P^hatr, they called him- from which the Greeks got Zeus Pater, and the Romans got Jupiter).

The root of their word for water (or at least, one of them- we’ll look next time at the possibility that there was more than one) looked something like wod-, or perhaps wed-. The root by itself just meant ‘something wet’, but adding a suffix— -n or –r— made it into ‘water’.

What came before Indo-European? Tough to say. Language leaves rotten fossils, and 6,500 years is pushing it as far as our ability to figure out language histories goes. One thing that’s important to note, though, is that Proto-Indo-European (PIE) was just one small language in a very big, very linguistically diverse world.

The History of the English Word Water: Part One

2008-07-07T10:25:00.001-06:00

The History of the English Word Water

by Daniel Sanford

The word that we know in English as water has a long, rich history, far predating the English language. Tracing it backwards, we can follow it as far back as the earliest ancestor of English of which we’re shakily (if that) aware. Following the history of the word forward from that point, we can see its dissemination into the many languages and languages families that English is related to. Patterns of connections between the English word water and related words in other languages reflect the history of a language family that stretches back 6000 years.

It’s not surprising for water to have such a long history, because it’s so basic to life (and therefore, of course, to humans). Words that persist in a language tend to be those that correspond to phenomena that are basic to a people’s experience. For such concepts, we don’t see as much ‘borrowing’ between languages as we do for more culture-specific things like foods, ideas, and specific ways of thinking about the world (the persistence, in languages, of the ‘basic vocabulary’ that labels these ideas is so dependable that we often use the number of shared basic vocabulary items as a diagnostic of how closely related two languages are). Water is a word that the speakers of all the languages ancestral to English never stopped using, that was never replaced with a word borrowed from another language or a word from within English with a similar meaning. Nor is it especially likely to be, for as far forward as English, and whatever languages English gives rise to, is spoken.

English began its career as the language of the Anglo-Saxons, the name that’s come to be applied to Germanic people who arrived in Britain around 450 AD (as the Roman Empire was in the process of falling apart) and ruled the island until the Battle of Hastings, in 1066. In 450, there was no English language: the Germanic peoples that showed up in the British isles around that time would have been speakers of West Germanic. With time, however, their complete linguistic isolation from the mainland would have created a new dialect of West Germanic, and finally a new language, unintelligible to West Germanic people on the mainland: English. This language came to largely replace the languages previously spoken in the British Isles: today the few remaining speakers of Irish, Welsh, and Scottish Gaelic (as well as Breton, on the mainland) are the last holdouts of the Celtic language family, which once covered all of the British Isles and large portions of western Europe.

The oldest surviving occurrence, in writing, of the English word water dates from about 450 years after the Anglo-Saxons arrived, as wættre— wæter, if we change it to the nominative case (that symbol is called an ash, and the vowel’s sound matches that of the vowel in ash).

bling

2008-07-01T14:29:00.004-06:00

“While working on various studio lots where image is of the utmost importance he noticed that you could tell a lot about a person by the bottled water they carried…Our product is strategically positioned to target the expanding super-luxury consumer market. It’s couture water that makes an announcement like a Rolls Royce Phantom…the “Cristal” of bottled water.”

from Bling H2O

its water, folks

speaking of the magnificent things man has made

2008-07-01T14:17:00.001-06:00

a found poem

Everything here
seems bound
for someplace else

The grain goes down
the river
the trains speed through
the little towns
the interstate highway
is full of long-haulers
and out-of-state
license plates

I can hear
the soft chatter
of a kingfisher

I can hear
the bushes rustle
where a marmot roots
near the water's edge

I can hear
the cars plying
the bridge between
Engineer's Town
and the reservation

But except
for the slightest swish
coming from a thin
strand of water
that emerges from
halfway down
the dam's
otherwise
dry spillway

The night is devoid
of the sound of water

-suttonhoo

What's Colorless and Tasteless And Smells Like . . . Money?

2008-07-01T11:24:00.003-06:00

The push to turn water into the new wine is a marketing phenomenon: The bottled-water industry is engaged in an intense effort to convince Americans that the stuff in bottles is substantially different from the stuff out of the tap.
But empirical tests have repeatedly shown that they are generally the same. In blind taste tests, many people who swear they can differentiate between bottled-water brands and tap water fail to spot the differences, and studies have shown that both are fine to drink, and both occasionally can have quality problems.

Experts who study bottled water as a cultural phenomenon say differences between the two are largely marketing inventions.

"Taste for water is as much an effort of imagination as it is an objective fact," said Richard Wilk, a professor of anthropology and gender studies at Indiana University who studies the phenomenon. "The labels have springs and waterfalls and mountains. The latest waters are from Antarctica and Iceland; there is glacier water and iceberg water and water that is a million years old and water from 3,000 feet down off Hawaii. All of these things promise an untouched nature far from human beings."

from the Washington Post

Water

2008-06-26T15:51:00.001-06:00

Everything on the earth bristled, the bramble
pricked and the green thread
nibbled away, the petal fell, falling
until the only flower was the falling itself.
Water is another matter,
has no direction but its own bright grace,
runs through all imaginable colors,
takes limpid lessons
from stone,
and in those functionings plays out
the unrealized ambitions of the foam.

-Pablo Neruda

Exxon Valdez: 'This is it; it's done'

2008-06-26T14:12:00.004-06:00

"In a victory for corporations seeking to limit big-dollar lawsuits, the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday sharply reduced the $2.5 billion in punitive damages awarded in the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill."

from Anchorage Daily News

City of Austin and LCRA Approve Plan to Dump Treated Sewage Into Barton Creek

2008-06-26T10:04:00.003-06:00

The City of Austin, the LCRA, the City of Dripping Springs and two groundwater conservation districts have approved a settlement agreement that would allow the Belterra subdivision to dump 350,000 gallons a day of treated sewage into Bear Creek, which feeds the Barton Springs portion of the Edwards Aquifer. The plan initially met with universal dissaproval, but costly lawsuits and fears that the Orwellianly-named Texas Commission on Environmental Quality would approve Belterra's initial request to dump 800,000 gallons a day have reduced the opposition to a handful of downstream neighbors. The only remaining required approval is expected to come from Hays County tomorrow. The agreement would make Belterra the first subdivision allowed to dump treated sewage directly into a stream in the Barton Springs part of the Edwards Aquifer. Belterra currently discharges treated sewage via underground drip irrigation into a fenced off parcel of land.

Sewage-dumping proponents say treated sewage is safe enough to drink. Of course, they don't drink it or even water their lawns with it, so they really mean it is safe enough for other people to drink (or swim in). Also, water treatment plants often fail - last week an estimated 200,000 gallons of raw sewage spilled into Little Sandy Creek north of Eligin. This will not be the first pollution of a pristine environment - Barton Springs' water quality has already been degraded by upstream development (treated sewage discharged as drip irrigation by Belterra and other subdivisions still ends up in Edwards Aquifer, along with lawn chemicals, highway runoff, etc.), but it will enable Belterra to expand from 350 houses to as many as 2,000 and create a precedent to allow other subdivisions to dump treated sewage.

from Austinist

Sea of Change

2008-06-25T13:42:00.005-06:00

Another film that focuses on water is to be released later this year. For now here is an explanation of the project and a trailer:

Imagine a world without fish: It seems inconceivable. But top scientists warn that such a catastrophe may in fact play out in coming generations unless widespread awareness is raised to stop ocean acidification.

A Sea Change will focus public attention on this urgent but little-known crisis. It follows retired educator and concerned grandfather Sven Huseby back to stunning ancestral sites (Norway, Alaska the Pacific Northwest) where he finds cutting-edge ocean research underway. His journey of self-discovery brings adventure, surprise and revelation to the hard science of acidification.

Niijii Films aims not only to educate viewers about the science of our rapidly-changing oceans, but also to engage them on accessible terms. This film delivers both the data necessary to build credibility with skeptics and also the cultural / spiritual dimensions that will capture the attention of--and motivate--diverse global audiences.

The world's oceans cover 70% of the planet's surface.

Hundreds of millions of people rely on the bounty of the seas for their survival and their cultural identity. Yet compared to terrestrial ecosystems, relatively little is known about our oceans.

What is conclusively known now is that the pH balance of the oceans has changed dramatically since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution: A 30% increase in acidification. With near unanimity, scientists now agree that the burning of fossil fuels is fundamentally reshaping ocean chemistry. Experts predict that over the next century, steady increases in carbon dioxide emissions and the continued rise in the acidity of the oceans will cause most of the world's fisheries to experience a total bottom-up collapse--a state that could last for millions of years.

Through the mass medium of film, A Sea Change will broaden the discussion about the dramatic changes we are seeing in the chemistry of the oceans, and convey the urgent threat those changes pose to our survival.

Ocean acidification threatens over 1,000,000 species with extinction--and with them, our entire way of life.

The film's protagonist has an usual relationship to the sea. Born in Norway, Sven Huseby's parents owned a fish market. After World War II, his father worked in a salmon cannery in a remote native village situated on an Alaskan fjord. Moving in the 1950s to the cultural security of Seattle, Sven spoke Norwegian in his neighborhood while developing his English at school, eating fish six days a week. He became the first in his family to attend college after admission to Yale.

The changes to our seas awaken Sven's environmental consciousness, but also threaten his cultural identity. Revisiting the places where he grew up, he witnesses the cultural, economic and ecological changes already underway and assesses the problems that ocean acidification might hold for future generations. New questions haunt him:

How will he explain to his oldest grandchild, Elias, what is happening to the oceans and their ecosystems? How will he teach Elias the traditions of his family, and their historic dependence on the sea? How will he help him look into a changing and uncertain future? What can each of us do to avoid contributing to a crisis threatening future generations?

Driven by these concerns, Sven embarks on a picturesque (and at times even picaresque) odyssey that leads him to small fishing villages whose cash crop is at risk, native communities whose way of life is being threatened, activists working to combat the crisis, and individuals who are changing their lifestyles to make a difference at the most local level. He seeks out entrepreneurs and investors and everyday people to discover what is being done to address these issues. At the end, Sven is reunited with his grandson to tell about all that he has learned.

A Sea Change is both a personal journey and a scientifically rigorous, sometimes humorous, and unflinchingly honest look at a reality that we all must act on before the oceans of our youth are lost for future generations.

from: http://www.aseachange.net/video.html

Clean Water for Haiti

2008-06-24T15:55:00.001-06:00

A little more on Haiti's water situation:

Haiti and International Community Urged by Rights Groups to Promote Water as a Human Right

2008-06-23T09:10:00.005-06:00

A groundbreaking new report will be jointly released on Monday, June 23rd, by NYU School of Law's Center for Human Rights and Global Justice, Partners In Health, RFK Memorial Center for Human Rights, and Zanmi Lasante. The report, "Woch nan Soley: the Denial of the Right to Water in Haiti" analyzes the devastating consequences of the failure of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) to disburse life-saving loans for water and sanitation improvements in Haiti. According to the report, in 1998, the IDB had approved $54 million dollars in loans that would have cut the cost of clean water by 90 percent, while also making drastic changes to water-providing infrastructure systems. The report shows that even though these loans were initially approved and would have provided Haiti's most impoverished communities consistent access to clean and safe water, they were blocked in 2001 by the United States and other complicit international actors, effectively shutting down the projects.

One of the report's innovations is that it employs both human rights and public health methodologies to assess the right to access water in Haiti, following extensive surveys of community water sources, meetings with community leaders, and a thorough analysis of Haiti's constitution as well as international legal obligations around the right to water. The resulting data reveals a shocking portrait of the lack of available clean water in Port-de-Paix, one of two Haitian cities where the first IDB-funded water projects were to be implemented. The report offers analysis and policy suggestions for international financial institutions, national governments, and other entities in order to protect and promote the full range of human rights impacted by resource-based development projects. The report is the first of its kind to lay out the full range of domestic and legal obligations around the right to water in Haiti.

Blue Gold: World Water Wars

2008-06-19T09:51:00.003-06:00

This is the trailer for the film Blue Gold: World Water Wars, a documentary that explores the current and emerging world water crisis from an ecological, social, and political standpoint.

Through examining Court cases, U.N. conventions, local protests, and numerous situations where people are struggling for their basic right to water, Blue Gold reveals the breadth of what we face unless there are changes to the way the world’s water is managed.

from the website Intercontinental Cry

Flood me with splendor

2008-06-19T09:12:00.001-06:00

Waters, you are the ones that bring us the life force.
Help us to find nourishment,
So that we may look upon great joy.
Let us share in the most delicious sap that you have,
As if you are loving mothers,
Let us go straight to the house of the one,
For whom you waters give us life and give us birth.
For our well-being, let the goddesses be an aid to us,
Mistresses of all ting that are chosen,
Rulers over all peoples,
The waters are the ones I beg for a cure.
Waters—yield your cure as an armor for my body,
So that I may see the sun for a long time.
Waters—carry away all of this that has gone bad in me.
Either that I have done in malicious deceit,
Or whatever lie I have sworn to,
I here sort the waters today,
We have joined with their sap,
Oh Agni, full of moisture,
Come and flood me with splendor!

--The Ancient Rig Veda, Water of Life
from the dedication page in Vandana Shiva's Water Wars: Pollution, Profits and Privatization

Water in Space

2008-06-18T08:55:00.006-06:00

What follows are two videos from outer space of people messing around with water. The second video is particularly interesting when an antacid is added in the mix:

and

There Will Be Water

2008-06-17T09:30:00.006-06:00

"Pickens has promised to abide by the 50-50 rule. "I don't have any concerns about depleting the aquifer. All I'm doing is selling surplus water," he says. "I'm not about to drain all the water out of Roberts County. I have my ranch there. But I could sure take it down 50% and not hurt anybody. And it could make a lot of people a lot of money." -- from There Will Be Water by Susan Berfield in Business Week

a pyramid- the basis of all civiization

2008-06-17T08:06:00.001-06:00

Swallows

Spits

Rises drips stains -rips canyons

floods

faces

places we’ve known

you’ve known

I’ve been

In rainstorms in reply to sunshine I’ve been in rivers

damned

god damn

god damned the world

there was a flood

of forces and horses and two of every kind

with three on every side

enough to leave you aware that you are only one

in a sea I can see

I feel happy -like many things- I’m not even sure

But I do know

jesus sandals are always in style

Everyone wants to walk on water

everyone feels in waves

Don’t make it holy

Tonight it will be

--Kate Mitchell

'Bottlemania: How Water Went on Sale and Why We Bought It'

2008-06-16T11:35:00.012-06:00

"By the time I finished “Bottlemania” I thought twice about drinking any water. Among the risks: arsenic, gasoline additives, 82 different pharmaceuticals, fertilizer runoff sufficient to raise nitrate levels so that Iowa communities issue “blue baby” alerts."

--from Lisa Margonelli's book review of Elizabeth Royte's Bottlemania in Sunday's New York Times.

The Biggest Water Festival on Earth

2008-06-16T08:17:00.003-06:00

Friday marked the beginning of Expo Zaragoza which is being billed as the biggest water festival on Earth. Nine themed weeks will take place over the 93 days of Expo in which scientists and experts will reflect and discuss on water-related issues from different perspectives.

In addition to the themed weeks, the Water Tribune has organized a full program of events. Among other activities, Agora stands out as a space for reflection open to the public in which writers, artists, communicators and thinkers will take part. It will also make the Water Words collection available. This is a series of 17 books written by eminent global figures of the likes of Mikhail Gorbachev, Rigoberta Menchú, Javier Solana and Federico Mayor Zaragoza.

To see images from the Expo hit up their flickr site:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/expozaragoza2008

FLOW: For Love of Water

2008-06-12T09:15:00.003-06:00

Hitting theaters at the end of the summer:

FLOW: For Love Of Water, a new film by Irena Salina, highlights the local intimacies of an emerging global catastrophe: African plumbers reconnect shantytown water pipes under cover of darkness to ensure a community's survival; a Californian scientist forces awareness of shockingly toxic public water sources; a ‘Big Water’ CEO argues privatization is the wave of the future; a “Water Guru” in India sparks new community water initiatives in hundreds of villages; a Canadian author uncovers the corporate profiteering that drives global water business.

With an unflinching focus on politics, pollution and human rights, FLOW: For Love of Water ensures that the precarious relationship between humanity and water can no longer be ignored. While specifics of locality and issue may differ, the message is the same; water, and our future as a species, is quickly drying up. Armed with a thirst for survival, people around the world are fighting for their birthright; unless we instigate change, we face a world in which only those that can pay for their water will survive. FLOW: For Love of Water, is a catalyst for people everywhere: the time has come to turn the tide and we can't wait any longer.

Water: A Global Challenge

2008-06-11T08:55:00.003-06:00

The Journal of International Afrairs in its Spring-Summer 2008 issue analyzes water from a number of angles: as a right, a commodity, a source of disease, in sustaining ecosystems and modern lifestyles.

Calculate your water footprint: www.h2oconserve.org/home.php?pd=index

underground water

2008-06-02T14:53:00.002-06:00

Nina Simone

2008-06-01T13:51:00.000-06:00

Little one
I cannot write about her
And do her justice
The woman with the
improvisational approach of jazz and the modulations of the blues,
the woman who takes any song and adds too many minutes to make it just right
I cannot pretend to know her, but have no shame in being grateful

settling into the groove
as the needle moves
into, up out of the blues

in this one part she
She takes a pause and says “someone get me a little bitta water”

-Tessa Karel

Duck Deaths Confirm First Nations' Fears

2008-05-29T15:49:00.000-06:00

Media Release
Duck Deaths Confirm First Nations' Fears

Fort Chipewyan, May 2, 2008 -- Only one day after the 500 ducks were found dead in the tailings pond at Syncrude Canada in the Alberta tar sands, a local Mikisew Cree hunter killed a duck that was totally covered in oil. Community leaders have no doubt that the duck was a victim of the toxic tailings ponds near Fort McMurray, 300 kilometres south of Fort Chipewyan. The oil-drenched duck will be released to the Canadian Wildlife Service for further investigation.

The Athabasca Chipewyan and Mikisew Cree First Nations of Fort Chipewyan, Alberta, say the deaths of up to 500 ducks in toxic tailings ponds at Syncrude Canada once again confirm growing concerns of tar sands development upstream from their community. The community has escalated its efforts to determine the true state of its highly toxic waters, sediment and wildlife, including waterfowl, which the community knows have unusually high levels of arsenic, mercury and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons.

"It angers and saddens me because our ancestors have been able to survive in this region for thousands of years. We should have the same opportunity to live traditionally, but developers have taken that from us," says Lisa King, Environmental Specialist for the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation Industry Relations Corporation.

Chief Allan Adam of the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation says, "Our fears have been confirmed by the recent incident with Syncrude Canada. We have always known that our traditional ways are at risk. Today our fears are reality. As Chief of the ACFN, I expect a clean up that focuses on affected wildlife in the Peace-Athabasca Delta as well as the region including Wood Buffalo National Park, where birds are known to nest each year. We are a downstream community of concerned members and we need peace of mind that our traditional ways can continue. We need answers from Canadian, provincial and industry representatives."

The First Nations fear more birds that are still contaminated with oil have flown further north in the Peace-Athabasca Delta and elsewhere in the Mackenzie basin watershed.

Chief Roxanne Marcel of the Mikisew Cree First Nation says, "The community of Fort Chipewyan has informed government time and again that their management of the tar sands needs to be vigilant. Time and again, if it were not for the Mikisew Cree's efforts, the standards would be the lowest in the world at this, the world's largest industrial development project. The local finding of the oil-drenched duck and the other 500 ducks that perished is only the latest catastrophe in the tar sands development. This region is being exploited at an unprecedented pace and all in the name of economics." Chief Marcel believes that this latest catastrophe is a sign of worse catastrophes to come, with the continuous approvals of multi-billion dollar projects by the Alberta government.

Tony Boschmann, Environment Director for the Athabasca Tribal Council, adds, "This unfortunate incident is a poignant reminder of the environmental impacts that can occur in this region. It further emphasizes the beneficial role that First Nations can provide in co-stewarding the environment."

For more information contact:

Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation
Lisa King, Environmental Specialist, Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation IRC
Telephone: 780-742-3475

Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation
Chief Allan Adam, Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation

Telephone: 780-697-3730

Mikisew Cree First Nation
George Poitras, Mikisew Cree First Nation
Telephone: 780-972-0017

Background -- Syncrude approval clause:

"The Waterfowl Protection Plan referred to in 6.1.76 shall include:

(a) techniques and procedures for a comprehensive bird deterrent program for all tailings, composite tailings and waste ponds which minimizes avian mortality from the ponds;

(b) a comprehensive program for monitoring and documenting avian mortality, timing of incidents, and bird species affected; and

6.1.78 The approval holder shall implement the Waterfowl Protection Plan referred to in subsection 6.1.76 as authorized in writing by the Director."

Join the IEN Newsletter!

Clayton Thomas-Muller
Indigenous Environmental Network
Canadian Indigenous Tar Sands Campaign
2-94 Charlotte ST. Ottawa, Ontario

Canada K1N 8K2
Home Office: 613 789 5653
Cell: 218 760 6632

http://www.ienearth.org/CITSC/Sand_Tar_Campaign.html

Drought

2008-05-28T16:09:00.007-06:00

Drought

Try to remember: things go wrong in spite of it all.
I listen to our daughters singing in the crackling
rows of corn and wonder why I don’t love them more.
They move like dark birds; small mouths open

to the sky and hungry. All afternoon I listen
to the highway and watch clouds push down over the hills.
I remember your legs, heavy with sleep, lying across mine.
I remember when the world was transparent, trembling, all

shattering light. I had to grit my teeth against its brilliance.
It was nothing like this stillness that makes it difficult
to lift my eyes. When I finally do, I see you
carrying the girls over the sharp stones of the creek bed.

When they pull at my clothes and lean against my arms,
I don’t know what to do and do nothing.

--Felecia Caton-Garcia

mental air conditioning

2008-05-28T14:32:00.005-06:00

Ice crystals that formed on a window in Yellowstone this past February.

Photograph by Melanie Armstrong

one fish two fish

2008-05-27T16:13:00.001-06:00

"There are about 500 fish per mile. Once the river is restored, we could see twice as many fish."

-- David Schmetterling, a biologist with the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks, commenting on the breaching of the Milltown Dam in Milltown, Montana in today's New York Times

New Watermyth

2008-05-27T10:26:00.002-06:00

Watermyth has turned a corner. It is now an open blog to be about all things water. If you are interested in posting (it can be on anything water related, e.g, poems, movies, random thoughts) please e-mail your submission to watermyth@gmail.com. Your submissions will be posted in the order they are received, with probably not more than one post a day.

Drugs

2008-03-10T15:08:00.003-06:00

More on this later, but it might explain why I am growing breasts:

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/100038.php

dirty water

2008-03-06T15:05:00.004-07:00

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"

the weirdness of water

2007-02-27T11:51:00.000-07:00

It has recently come to my attention that some people think that blogging about water is “weird”. And admittedly, it is, perhaps, a bit eccentric. I started this blog on a whim, and for some reason chose the theme of water. After more serious consideration, I am convinced that the theme of water is particularly important at this time in history.

When I was a kid, water seemed to flow as freely as air. And for some reason I always enjoyed it better from a backyard hose or the bathroom tap. Nowadays, I’d be hard pressed to drink it from any tap for fear of contracting radiation poisoning or some other incurable disease. As we are well aware in the Southwest, the water is toxic in these parts—too many Government tests of weapons that’ll kill you ten different ways, and leave you burnt to a crisp.

But who needs to worry about groundwater. We have Coca-cola, and their purer than pure water. Water has become a trade good, like a bead. What was given to us by the creator to share and sustain life is now owned by private corporations. For some reason that don’t sit right with me—call me “weird”.

But the fact does not change: we are all water. Animals are water too. We need water. We need clean water. We need to share water. And if you think the oil wars are bad, just wait until we start running out of water. For a car I can do with out, but don’t fuck with my water.

agua

2007-02-24T22:05:00.000-07:00

water, water, everywhere

2007-02-10T15:51:00.000-07:00

So having scanned blogs for a bit now, with the generous help of a neighbor, I have decided to post again.

The water intake has been not so great, but I have started drinking bottled carbonated water that makes me burp. Perhaps because I like it so, my water intake is better than before. But it fluctuates.

First Blog

2006-01-27T11:58:00.000-07:00

In an effort to drink more (water), I will monitor my water intake, and the highs, the lows, the hydration, and dehydration as I attempt to fight off the thirst in the desert