Something to think about...on this Thanksgiving...

Summer glances should not be lightly thrown,

For winter waits in grim disguise

To take the gleam from Summer’s eyes.

I was writing a bit of poetry this week and realized that the lines seemed to apply to a blog I was thinking of writing.  We have so much to be thankful for on this week of Thanksgiving and yet do we think about our water...

As I was contemplating all that has transpired in my time, which is a speck of dust in the progression of time, I became aware of how little we have progressed morally in so many ways.  As I looked around me... I am & I was appalled that the progress that we have made as humankind has gone forward and yet it has regressed globally.

Like a new love that brings hope we reach for the future and try to forget the problems of the past.  We forget wars, we try to enrich our heritage by making ourselves the victor of our struggles, yet somehow failing to use that knowledge as a base to gauge what lies in the future.

Few of us come to understand the struggles of foreign cultures that have not progressed.  Yes we say that we care… we say that we are conserving energy; we say that we are trying to save the planet for future generations, but in reality I ask... are we?

We here in the north have an abundance of water… in most places our water tables are filled by Winter in its somber white suit.  We are lucky.  Today the World in summer attire thanks to Global Warming awaits its future to unfold, a future that has loomed for sometime…a future that nobody seemed to want to recognize…the lack of one of our most precious commodities…WATER!

Today clean water, which is a staple of life, has been afforded us in a good part by our wealth and our past forward thinking, although this thinking may in fact be at fault.  As we strive for more agriculture we dammed our streams that filled with mountain snow runoff and delivered it to land below in doing so we have allowed agricultural waste to enter our water tables. In our quest to beautify our homes and take our many showers we are depleting our precious supply of clean water, and we are failing to realize the implications of pollution... whether it be by pesticide, liquids like petroleum, by hydro fracking, or by poor management… For money, pleasure and supposed progress we have turned our heads away from water conservation.

As a historian I can tell you that in the past in our little area distilleries were one of the first businesses to be opened because early settlers drank and cooked with distilled goods to prevent illness.

Seeming plentiful in the past, we fail to see that the earth and its globe are filled with 90 percent of water, however today only about 10 percent of that water source is clean enough to drink.

My own house has a drilled well and yet I filter it because of runoff from the hills that have been sprayed with liquid manure. Both detergents, animal and human waste have all been named as the culprit in the algae bloom contamination of our ponds and lakes. In flood times it is more than prevalent in the wastewater that flows to our local streams and enters our watersheds.

I was visited by Rev. Wheeler this week and he brought to my attention a program that has great promise for underdeveloped countries and perhaps in the future for our very own.  The company is called “Water Step” and it provides a simple safe water filtration system solution attainable global wide.

The funding for this some of this particular project uses shoes… Yes water step supporters use shoes to raise money to purchase systems to distribute as a missionary effort to underdeveloped countries.  The simple premise is that collection boxes are place to collect worn serviceable shoes that are in turn sold to companies that resell them… the money raised is used to buy these chlorinating units. (Old shoes, are another commodity that our society is rich with.)

Waterstep is a not for profit company that has managed to successfully distribute these water saving devises through churches and missionary outreach and I suggest you take the time to read about it and take the time to understand how important water conservation and ecology go hand it hand for not only the outside world, but for our future as well.

Rev. Wheeler is supplying a collection box and information on the program to our local Community via the church and if you would like to help collect some serviceable shoes for the project (which has donated many water purifying units to Puerto Rico recently) you can contact FBCSyracuse@gmail.com.

For more information go to....www.http://waterstep.org