World Water Day
Today is Monday, 22 March 2010.
Today is World Water Day, first proclaimed in 1993 by the United Nations General Assembly.
We are reminded that more than a billion human beings lead lives habitually degraded by a chronic lack of access to potable water supplies. (While the elites, and that includes most everyone likely to read these columns, enjoy a wasteful access to umpteen brands of essentially-identical products, all of which are promoted by wasteful advertising.)
I’m put in mind of a chapter in the first or second volume of Robert Caro’s great biography of Lyndon B. Johnson. It describes the back-breaking, spirit-diminishing task which weekly befell women in the parts of Texas (and the rest of the world) which still, at the time of FDR’s election, lacked access to rural electrification. That task was, of course, laundry. (I would cite chapter and verse, but those volumes are boxed. Should be easy to find if you’re interested.)
I’m reminded of this every time I see news footage from locations such as Haiti, Sudan, etc., and note how often, in the midst of terrible suffering and deprivation, women manage to provide clean, if worn, clothing for their families and loved ones. And then, there are those who whine because Americans are on the verge of receiving better healthcare for less money, and mourn the diminishment of profits.
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The Museum of the Bourgeois is very pleased to congratulate CK on a milestone birthday!
Today is World Water Day, first proclaimed in 1993 by the United Nations General Assembly.
We are reminded that more than a billion human beings lead lives habitually degraded by a chronic lack of access to potable water supplies. (While the elites, and that includes most everyone likely to read these columns, enjoy a wasteful access to umpteen brands of essentially-identical products, all of which are promoted by wasteful advertising.)
I’m put in mind of a chapter in the first or second volume of Robert Caro’s great biography of Lyndon B. Johnson. It describes the back-breaking, spirit-diminishing task which weekly befell women in the parts of Texas (and the rest of the world) which still, at the time of FDR’s election, lacked access to rural electrification. That task was, of course, laundry. (I would cite chapter and verse, but those volumes are boxed. Should be easy to find if you’re interested.)
I’m reminded of this every time I see news footage from locations such as Haiti, Sudan, etc., and note how often, in the midst of terrible suffering and deprivation, women manage to provide clean, if worn, clothing for their families and loved ones. And then, there are those who whine because Americans are on the verge of receiving better healthcare for less money, and mourn the diminishment of profits.
__________________________________________________
The Museum of the Bourgeois is very pleased to congratulate CK on a milestone birthday!
posted by HH at 11:06 AM
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