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W is for Water worries

The calculus is whether the short-term economic gain is worth the long-term ecological loss.

“In December 2010, the United Nations General Assembly declared 2013 as the United Nations International Year of Water Cooperation (Resolution A/RES/65/154). In reflection of this declaration, the 2013 World Water Day, which will take place on 22 March 2013, also will be dedicated to water cooperation. Therefore, UN-Water has called upon UNESCO to lead the 2013 United Nations International Year on Water Cooperation…”

For years, I’ve been hearing that the wars of the 21st Century will be fought, not over oil or precious metals, but over H2O. I was distressed to hear from the Nestle CEO that water is not a human right and should be privatized, which is already happening in Canada. This has energized the forces calling for a boycott of Nestle products.

As the UN reports note, climate change and other human activities are messing up the planet’s “hydrological cycle,” leading to more droughts in some parts of the earth, and devastating flooding in others. The only year in the last five that the Red River did NOT flood near Fargo, ND was when there was a drought in the region; talk about all or nothing.

My concern over a process called hydrofracking, which, according to many opponents, “uses significantly more water than conventional drilling, as well as a ‘slick water’ mixture that is pumped into the shale to fracture the rock and release the [natural] gas,” is largely based on the use and potential abuse of precious water supplies. “There is an increased potential for toxicity and its long-term impacts, [as well as] the environmental impacts of the drilling: surface and subterranean damage including forestland loss… [and] groundwater and surface water contamination…” Where will the toxic fluids go is a large and seemingly unresolved question.

Fracking is a highly charged issue in New York State because the financially depressed Southern Tier region (Jamestown to Elmira to my hometown of Binghamton) is sitting on top of part of the Marcellus basin deposit which could be a boon to the area. The calculus is whether the short-term economic gain is worth the long-term ecological loss.

On a planet of about seven billion people, more than one billion are suffering from lack of ANY clean, potable water, and twice that cannot get to “any type of improved sanitation facility. About 2 million people die every year due to diarrhoeal diseases, most of them are children less than 5 years of age.”

Read more about water policy HERE.

One does NOT want to be quoting Samuel Taylor Coleridge:
Water, water, every where,
Nor any drop to drink.

ABC Wednesday – Round 12

Equality, rape culture, and the war on women

So, is there a “war on women” when women at war are being raped?

I’ve been thinking about the rights of women a LOT lately. There are so many examples of what’s wrong – and to be sure a couple that are right – that it’s overwhelmed me. (And it’s taken at least a couple of weeks to write this piece.)

In New York State, “The Women’s Equality Agenda will safeguard women’s health, extend protections against sexual harassment in the workplace, help to achieve pay equity, and increase protections against discrimination in employment, housing, credit, and lending.” Sounds wonderful, of course. The big hangup for some is over abortion rights, a huge issue.

But I think the conversation about whether there is a “war on women” had been framed too much on abortion and birth control – sometimes reframed by the talking heads, to be sure.

Though there does seem to be a sexual component in all of this. In his review about Fiona Apple’s song Criminal, MDS writes: “Let’s just admit something upfront right now: as a society, we are all pretty much terrified of girls and young women having sex. Terrified. Been that way since the beginning of time, I guess. Which is why for a while there we bottled up virginity in exchange for land before the wedding ceremony. Chastity belts and dowries are mostly archaic things that no society really trades in anymore, but that doesn’t mean we haven’t figured out new ways of badly dealing with girls and young women and their sex-having. We slut-shame. A lot.”

You’ll find gender issues in comics and other entertainment, including the suggestion that the woman of a married couple in the comic business got where she was because of him when she in fact had several credits before they even dated. Someone complains about the lack of female protagonists in video games is savaged on Twitter.

So, is there a “war on women” when women at war are being raped? Recently, and I’m quoting Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) here: “The Senate Armed Services Committee held its first full hearing on sexual assault in the military in a decade. Of the twenty witnesses, only two were there as victim advocates. The other 18 were representing the top ranks of the military and uniformly opposed our efforts to reform the military justice system.”

Meanwhile, Senator Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) suggested that the “hormone level created by nature” was to blame for rapes in the military and that all pregnant servicewomen should be investigated to make sure their condition was the result of consensual sex.

Former baseball star Jose Canseco’s defense of a rape allegation against him is that he doesn’t HAVE to rape to get women to bed, showing his sheer ignorance. Then he makes his situation worse by going on Twitter and attacks his accuser by name.

What caught my attention more recently was comedian Patton Oswalt’s reversal about rape as a source of humor. “I was secure in thinking my point of view was right. That ‘rape culture’ was an illusion, that the examples of comedians telling ‘rape jokes’ in which the victim was the punchline were exceptions that proved the rule. I’ve never wanted to rape anyone. No one I know has ever expressed a desire to rape anyone. My viewpoint must be right. Right?” It’s long (addresses two other topics) and rambling, but makes an interesting point.

A report on working moms came out. It showed that 40% of the households have moms that are either sole breadwinners or making more than their husbands; BTW, that latter category would include MY household. The men at FOX News were so histrionic: “Society dissolv[ing] around us,” said Lou Dobbs. A sign of “something going terribly wrong in American society,” said Juan Williams. Erick Erickson chimed in and said having moms as breadwinners were against “biology” and said people who defend moms are “anti-science.”

Happily, they got slammed by their female colleagues on FOX, including Megan Kelly. This particular article also disses some of the MSNBC women for not calling to task the men on their network, notably Chris Matthews, over the stupid, hateful things THEY have said. Don’t know if it’s Rachel Maddow’s job to do so, but I agree that Matthews, for one, has made vile, sexist comments, especially about Hillary Clinton.

I haven’t even scratched the surface: e.g., Texas governor Rick Perry recently vetoed an equal pay bill. Instead, I’ll hang on my great hope from the words of Jean Luc Picard himself, Patrick Stewart, which you should just watch. He speaks, among other things, about the role men must play in curbing violence against women.

Different M.O. for my father and me

I don’t think it was until I was an adult, that I realized, or that HE realized, or that he was willing to share the fact that he was proud of me for whatever intellectual prowess I had.

Another pair of pictures sent by my sister Marcia this year!

Les.Roger.backporch — Les and Roger Green, 1953

When I was born, we lived on 5 Gaines Street in Binghamton, NY, on the second floor, a property owned by my maternal grandmother. These pictures were taken on the back porch. At some point in the next year, my parents and I moved downstairs, perhaps when my mom was pregnant with my sister Leslie, or at the latest, just after she was born.

My paternal grandparents then moved upstairs. The second-floor had only one bedroom, while downstairs had two.

I’m struck by how relaxed my dad was in these pictures, just sitting on the porch with his eldest child, who was me. I certainly knew my father to be able to relax, and I knew him to spend time with me. We did have the music connection, which WAS huge; however, outside of singing, usually with sister Leslie, the hanging out with me, and the relaxing, tended not to coexist, at least in my childhood.

He was very clever with his hands, doing floral arrangements, painting (both artistic and signage), and the like. I was not so adept, and I often felt he was frustrated and even disappointed with me.

I don’t think it was until I was an adult, and he, my mother, and my sister Marcia were living in Charlotte, NC, that I realized, or that HE realized, or that he was willing to share the fact that he was proud of me for whatever intellectual prowess I had.

I was almost in shock when he mentioned that he always told his coworkers how great it was that, when I didn’t know something, I would look it up in the dictionary or encyclopedia or World Almanac; this was before Google. (He talked about me to his co-workers? Knock me over with a feather!) I never knew until my 30s that the skills I possessed he thought were useful, even though it wasn’t his mode of operation.

Les.Roger.backporch2 — **Les and Roger Green, 1953**

***
Happy Father’s Day to all you dads, especially my father-in-law. Special shout out to my online buddies Greg and Scott, who’ve been great dads despite the travails.

21 reasons not to write, but an unsharpened pencil isn’t one

I’m ALWAYS planning to blog . At any given time I might have three or four blogposts in mind. If I DON’T, THEN I worry.

Jaquandor, that budding novelist from the Buffalo area, responded to some meme, presumably as it applied to book or short story or poetry writing. Much of it, though, also applies to blogging, IMHO. And you KNOW my opinion is humble.

1. You are letting people tell you that you should be doing other things with your time.

When I first started blogging, people said, “How do you have TIME for that?” A lot. And I used to try to reply, “How do you have time for…” whatever they did, as though that were useful. Now that I’ve blogged for a while, it’s MUCH less common. They realize, “It’s just what Roger does.”

2. You can’t live with the level of cleanliness that your family accepts as normal. You should see the chaos in the office. Better still, please don’t.

3. You haven’t decided to treat your writing seriously and so no one around you treats it seriously, either.

Serious as in, “I need to do this, I’m compelled to do this” I got to fairly early on.

4. You haven’t made yourself a writing space.

There is no writing space. Work at lunchtime, the library, the dining room table with the daughter’s laptop, the office. If I’m away, some public computer; doesn’t matter.

5. You haven’t realized that you need help.

Lots of people think I need help…

6. You do what is urgent rather than what is necessary.

I try to balance; don’t always succeed.

7. You don’t let your kids and other people solve their own problems.

Well, my daughter is nine, and if she needs help finding her homework, I’ll still help her, even if it cuts into writing time.

8. You think that someday you will have more time for writing.

I now know, barring retirement, that AIN’T gonna happen.

9. You are spending time doing things you actually don’t care about.

Don’t we all, to some degree? Mine is lawn work. If we had a goat, I wouldn’t do it at all.

10. You are actually using distractions as an excuse not to write.

Nah, the distractions are real. Usually, the Daughter being sick or needing something.

11. You are terrified of writing, of actually sitting down and putting yourself on the page.

Not an issue. Actually, he said immodestly, if there’s one thing about Roger’s blog, it is that his voice is, for better and worse, on the page.

12. You are too busy criticizing the best-selling books that you are reading to write something better.

I hardly read best-selling books; no problem.

13. You don’t know what to do with a blank page.

Well, that’s true, but reading and following newsfeeds, that’s seldom an issue for long.

14. You don’t know how to turn off your internal editor.

Definitely correct. But I write anyway.

15. You talk a good game, but you don’t play it.

Actually, no.

16. You need to do a little planning and research before you start.

I’m ALWAYS planning. At any given time I might have three or four blog posts in mind. If I DON’T, THEN I worry.

17. You don’t actually like writing. You like having written. (Join the club.)

Oddly enough, no. I find that in the act of writing, it always changes, which I find to be quite informative. It hones my thought process. I mean, it’s not that I LIKE to write, but rather I NEED to.

18. You need to write the first line of the next chapter before leaving for the day.

That is true, and I usually do.

19. You need to spend time remembering what it is you love about writing.
No.

20. You have convinced yourself that you need 2 hours to write and don’t know how to use the 20-minute chunks you actually have.

I don’t need two hours. But I really like 30 minutes. Otherwise, I end up doing memes like this!

21. You don’t have notebooks scattered through the house, including in the bathroom, to jot down inspiration.

Actually, my process involves lots of e-mail, to myself. I think of something, or I see something on TV or read something in an e-mail, I send it to myself, and mark it, USE IT! Sometimes I actually do.
***
The title came in part from me doing some math problem Arthur posted on Facebook (my age X 7 X 1443) with the product repeating my age thrice (606060).

Roger: Did the math with a pencil. FWIW.
Jason: Pencil? What’s a pencil?
Arthur: It’s similar to a stylus for a tablet or smartphone. Only without electricity.
Roger: It’s this graphite stick encased in wood.

Burn that flag

The question was “How should you dispose of a U.S. flag that’s beyond repair?”
Options were 1) Burn it 2) Shred it 3) Give it to your local government or American Legion Post to dispose of

One of the things I loved as a kid was flags. I decided that the US flag was one of the best, design-wise. You have your red, white and blue, the colors of both England, with whom we fought for independence, and France, who helped us achieve it. (Thanks, Lafayette.) After adding a star and a stripe for each state entering the union, someone figured out that we’d better stick to the 13 stripes and merely alter the number of stars.

But it is clear that not many folks have read Title 4, Chapter 1 of the United States Code, which can be found here, among other places. (My guess is that most people have never heard of the US Code. That extra star provision is there. So is this: The flag, when it is in such condition that it is no longer a fitting emblem for display, should be destroyed in a dignified way, preferably by burning, which I’ve noted before, probably.

Interesting piece I found:

I recently took a Flag Etiquette Quiz at another site. One of the questions concerned the proper disposal of the American flag. The question was “How should you dispose of a U.S. flag that’s beyond repair?”
Options were 1) Burn it 2) Shred it 3) Give it to your local government or American Legion Post to dispose of

The quiz gave the correct answer as “You should give a flag that’s beyond repair to your local government or American Legion Post to dispose of.” But my local government would not accept our old flag. What should I do to dispose of an old flag?

USA Flag Site Answer:

Their answer came from an incorrect interpretation of this sentence at the Federal Citizen Information Center of the U.S. General Services Administration (the GSA):

“American Legion Posts and local governments often have facilities to dispose of unserviceable flags.”

While that statement is true, it’s also true that they often have neither the facilities nor the knowledge… The only definitive answer is found in the US Code…

So if you’re one of those Americans who like to put out your flag, or have placed them in public settings – bridge overpasses seem to be particularly popular, in my observation – you might want to make sure the flags are still serviceable. Then dispose of those ratty old flags properly.
***
Interesting conversation: Should Churches Display the American Flag in Their Sanctuaries? I’m in the NO camp.