Sunday's Gratitude Post

Today I'm oh so grateful for running water. Recently our water pressure decreased drastically for a short while, and I was amazed at how nervous that made me. My parents live out in the Texas Hill Country, and they live off a spring. At the height of this year's drought, they were squeaking by on a trickle of water until it finally went dry for a few weeks, when they were living off of water stored in plastic jugs. The town a few miles away was being delivered water by truck.

Their water is running again, and their pump is working now, so all seems to be okay. They can shower, wash clothes, wash dishes, and make ice. It was tough for them for a stretch.

But it makes me hyperaware of how much we depend on water. Now every time I rinse my dishes I notice how much water runs into the drain. Every time I wash my hands I think of all that clean water that's wasted.

Every day I'm reminded of our dwindling water supply and how we need to preserve it. No great ideas here tonight, just gratitude for the recent rains and for indoor running water, available, hot or cold, at a moment's notice.

Photo of dripping water by naughty architect from here.

"Running the Numbers"

If you haven't seen Chris Jordan's art, you're in for a powerful experience. If you've seen it, you no doubt remember it. Jordan puts American statistics into a visual form - one that enables us to "see" the actual numbers. For instance, what does 60,000 plastic bags - the amount Jordan says is used every five seconds in 2007 - look like? What does 2,000,000 plastic drink bottles - the number used every five minutes in 2007 - look like? Jordan shows us.

From Jordan's website:

Running the Numbers looks at contemporary American culture through the austere lens of statistics. Each image portrays a specific quantity of something: fifteen million sheets of office paper (five minutes of paper use); 106,000 aluminum cans (thirty seconds of can consumption) and so on. My hope is that images representing these quantities might have a different effect than the raw numbers alone, such as we find daily in articles and books. Statistics can feel abstract and anesthetizing, making it difficult to connect with and make meaning of 3.6 million SUV sales in one year, for example, or 2.3 million Americans in prison, or 32,000 breast augmentation surgeries in the U.S. every month. 

This project visually examines these vast and bizarre measures of our society, in large intricately detailed prints assembled from thousands of smaller photographs. Employing themes such as the near versus the far, and the one versus the many, I hope to raise some questions about the roles and responsibilities we each play as individuals in a society that is increasingly enormous, incomprehensible, and overwhelming. 

~chris jordan, Seattle, 2008 

I'm not sure I believe every statistic (the cell phone and plastic bag numbers seem way off to me), but whether or not you believe his statistics, it's a fascinating way of looking at large numbers. 

Thanks, Era, for reminding me of this artist. (She posted about this on her blog, Today's Thought.) I had been planning on digging up this website so that I could put some pictures to numbers for my kids. We had been putting together a proposal for a grant for eco-solutions, and I wanted to make a visual impact about our topic. (Perhaps, Era, you should have named it "Camille's Thought" that day, since you read my mind!)

Contrasts and Similarities

Monday was a day of contrasts and similarities. In the morning we watched an energizing and moving (both physically and emotionally) video of Stand by Me, by playingforchange. I'd seen the video before, and it struck me then as so worthwhile that I had to immediately share it with my kids. And since we're traveling to New Orleans this summer, I thought it particularly appropriate.

So that morning T was trying to decide what song he wanted to learn on his guitar, and I reminded him of Stand by Me. We watched it again and danced together, grinning and singing. One by one, the other kids drifted in, captured by the music, remembering what they'd seen before. "Yes," T said quietly when it was over, "that's the song I want to learn."

We were struck by the commonalities of people all over the world. How the facial expressions, body movements, and smiles are all identical and all unique - and how they are all examples of what we share. We left the room feeling connected, light hearted, each going our separate ways for a while.

Fast forward to the afternoon. We often watch videos together, virtually all educational in some sense. Sometimes it's a science show, sometimes a history documentary, occasionally something "fluffy" but still worthwhile, like a travel documentary.

For years now I've been meaning to watch An Inconvenient Truth but have never gotten around to doing it. I'd even bought the book but had never gotten around to reading it. I finally received the DVD from Netflix, and sat down with the kids to watch and discuss. It was long overdue. 

In the opening scenes, for whatever reason, I immediately flashed to "Stand by Me," with  Grandpa Elliott and Washboard Chaz singing in New Orleans. It was the images of Gore flying over flooded, devastated post-Katrina New Orleans juxtaposed with the passionate faces of the singers in Jackson Square. Similar, yet strikingly different.

I don't know why these two videos became connected in my mind. I guess it's the way the world has shrunk, how the people I meet from across the world are strikingly similar to me instead of strikingly different ... how music crosses every barrier.

How what we do on this side of the marble affects all those on the other.

I want to think that I'm helping to create the first generation of true global citizens - kids who grow up knowing nothing other than intricate world connectedness. The earth will be better for it.

They have a lot to teach me.

(The Playing for Change Foundation is building music and art schools in poor countries around the world to bring peace and unite humanity. Listen to the samples of the cool stuff on their CD Songs Around The World.)