A Water Blog on Wee Flow to Overflow: An Introduction

While there is much ado about poo, as a conversation non-starter, it is estimated over 2.5 billion people worldwide lack safe sanitation. We take  water as a right with each eight gallon flush, and we take water as a guaranteed right when the tap is tapped for countless reasons.  

Once considered a guaranteed resource, water has risen to the forefront of  attention through lack of (or too much of) under the emergent headers of environmental tolerance, intolerance and climate change. 

I’ve been in earnest about writing a blog for some time. But I’ve been held up by the enormity of the subject: Water. My quest began with anticipation of shedding light on stormwater: The voracious culprit streaming from our  skies onto our lands showering good and evil depending on the ideals of say a gardener, homeowner, farmer or fire fighter. Not so much as a storm ready volunteer rescuing unthinkable numbers from Tsunamis to Sandy. 

So where do you begin to discuss the need, the waste, ecological matters and the mechanics of it all that we, as humans, contribute to water awareness and move on from there. I’ve been afforded an opportunity to do so right here, and in so doing ask for a wee slice of your attention as my journey to shed light and life to a most precious resource as it takes foot.

Water words: The sanguine side of the journey begins!

From literary lexis to The Bible, water has been played with the brevity of a piccolo note to vintage adage as point illustration.

A Ponsi victim has been known to be “sold down the river” while period cowboy speak sends the cheating scoundrel “up river.” Up or down meanings transfer with simplicity between “your mouth waters” to “watered down,” while complex issues sometimes “sift through water” only to end up as “water under the bridge.”

Biblical ascriptions are generally optimistic accounts of “mighty rivers” of abundance in bringing you “to a land of brooks and fountains flowing forth in valleys and hills” (Deut.8:7).

And who has not witnessed Cecil B. DeMille’s historically significant parting of the Red Sea in Vista Vision, or ventured through a Disney theme park bearing witness of an aesthetic re-enactment of the sea of judgment while on a tram.

As innocent water words flow unconsciously through your every day, I look forward to elevating a mindful awareness of complex and simplex rain-water, running water and stewardship conscientious as we stream ahead!

Feel free to share your thoughts and insight.

Rhoda Toback is a member of the Howard County Maryland Watershed Stewards Academy and serves as Vice Chair of the Columbia Association Watershed Advisory Committee.