The week that was, 1/31/2010-2/6/2010

A body of water: water’s body

that seems to have a mind (and

change it: isn’t that what makes

a mind, its changing?) not much

prone to thinking – rather, thoughts

curl through it, salt or fresh, or hang

between states; sometimes gloss

the surface with their oil-illuminations.

Wind-worried to dullness, pulled two ways

(earth and moon like parents not quite

in accord), unquiet body, it can never

quite lay down its silt; always trying

to be something other, to be sky,

to lose itself in absolute reflection.

*

“Betweenland 1,” an extract from “The Water Table” by Philip Gross, Financial Times, February 6, 2010

The week that was, 1/17-23/2010

Huila, Angola. A boy jumps into a pool below a waterfall. Photo: Finbarr O'Reilly / Reuters. Click on the image to be taken to the original from The Guardian's "24-Hours in Pictures."

…  “this slick and fluted glitter, / slightly / arcing, rebraiding itself as it falls, // as for tangible / seconds it’s a thin/ taut string of surface tension // that my hand feels, on the handle, / as a pulse, a pull, / a thing // in space, that lives in this world” — excerpt from “Pour,” a poem from The Water Table by Philip Gross, winner of the TS Eliot Prize for Poetry, reviewed by the Guardian, January 23, 2010

The week that was, 1/10-16/2010

Survivors of the Haitian earthquake reach for water packets. Source: Wall Street Journal. Click on the image for the accompanying story and photo gallery

“Water is water. You can’t last long without it.” — Stephanie Bunker, United Nations Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs, “Frantic race against time to get clean water to Haiti quake survivors,”  The Guardian, January 16, 2010

This is one of the things Americans do really well. We step up in whatever ways we can. — “Water for Haiti: Now,” Peter Gleick, San Francisco Chronicle, January 13, 2010

The week that was, 1/3-9/2010

Map: US Geological Survey. Source: "Estimated Use of Water in the Tennessee River Watershed in 2000 and Projections of Water Use to 2030." Click on the image to be taken to the article.

“We weren’t very popular during the drought.” — Chuck Bach, general manager for river scheduling for the Tennessee Valley Authority, in the January 5, 2010 Chattanooga Times Free Press article “High-water mark” on how the  TVA began 2010 with more water stored in reservoirs above Chattanooga than at the end of any previous year since the authority erected its network of dams in the 1930s and 1940s

…there is a reason the river carries the name “Tennessee.” — Mike Bell, Representative, Tennessee General Assembly, “High-water mark,” Chattanooga Times Free Press, January 5, 2010

“When you hear people say to Georgia, ‘Leave our water alone,’ they need to remember that Georgia already

The week that was, 12/27/2009-1/2/2010

Revelers go for a New Year's Day swim in Malo-les-Bains, northern France, January 1, 2010. Photo: Reuters. For the Toronto Sun's gallery of New Year's Day plunges around the world, click on the bathers.

“I found out about it when I was about eight, and I never manned up to do it. But now I did.” — Twenty-two-year-old Jeffrey Vanek, while pulling up his boxer shorts amid catcalls from 500 people, Naked water skiing, Bloody Marys and breakfast burritos — it’s the 30th Annual Bethel Island Frozen Bun Run,” Contra Costa Times, January 1, 2010

« go backkeep looking »
  • After the lawn


  • As you were saying: Comments

  • As I was saying: Recent posts

  • Garden blogs


  • Contact

    Emily Green by e-mail at emily.green [at] mac.com
  • Categories