The week that was, 1/31/2010-2/6/2010
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
…
I think I’m in love
It could be that the Department of Interior’s new website would appear merely well done if Monday afternoon hadn’t been spent at a Congressional field hearing listening to Central Valley Rep Tom McClintock lie, lie and lie some more about how the federal government is failing his region for the “enjoyment and amusement” of a fish. There might be a more shameless man in politics, whatever the party, but it doesn’t bear thinking about. Instead, quaint as it might sound, to find out what is actually happening, click here for Interior’s Interim Federal Action Plan for the California Bay-Delta. If you missed it the first time, it’s because it was published two days before Christmas.
For a report from hydrogeologist Michael Campana on the proceedings this week inside the National Academy of Sciences committee gathered at the behest of Senator Dianne Feinstein, click here. The committee was convened …
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 …
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