Blog Action Day 2010: Blogging for Water Awareness

What do you do first when you wake up in the morning? After turning off my alarm, I reach blearily for a drink of water. I take for granted that I can and that, if I'm really thirsty, I can guzzle as much as I want. One in eight people - nearly one billion, worldwide - can't do that because they don't have ready access to clean water.

Count the people you see today with that number - one in eight - in mind. The eighth person you passed on the street on the way to work? She can't hop in the shower to warm up first thing on a crisp fall morning. The sixteenth car you passed on your way home? The driver can't splash cool water on his face to wash off the sweat of a long hike under a hot sun. The twenty-fourth person you pushed your cart past in the grocery store yesterday evening? Her kids are always thirsty, because she has to use what little water she has, dirty as it is, to cook enough food to keep them from starvation.

Meanwhile, every hamburger we eat is the result of hundreds of liters of water - for just one meal. (The estimates on the water used during the production of a single hamburger vary widely, ranging from a little more than 100 liters all the way up to 2,400 liters, or about 27-634 U.S. gallons.) Have an iPhone? Every charge uses half a liter of water's worth of electricity. (And there's probably an app for that.) In 2010, 2.5 billion people don't have access to a toilet - and 1.2 billion don't have any bathroom facilities at all - but only about 1 billion people worldwide don't have a cell phone.

I'm not saying that we should give up our showers and our filtered water and our favorite meals in a fit of guilt. That wouldn't do anyone much good. What I am saying is that not enough of us are aware that there's a global water crisis - and that needs to change.

The first step toward solving a problem is recognizing it, and that's what we need to do. We need to think about water the way we think about what we're going to have for dinner, or what one thing we really want to do tomorrow - it needs to be something that's always there, at the back of our minds. That way, when you're washing dishes, shutting off the tap in between rinsing plates will become a habit, if it isn't already. So will waiting until you have a full load to do the laundry, taking shorter showers and turning off the water when you brush your teeth. You might mention to your neighbor that the barrel in your backyard is for collecting rainwater to use for watering your garden so that you can donate your water bill savings to an organization that provides clean water to communities in Africa. He might think, "Wow, that's a great idea," and do the same. Gradually, the message will get out: water is precious and scarce, and we need to help more people gain access to what they need to survive.

So here's what I want you to join me in doing today:

1. Visit the Blog Action Day website. Read up on water - its scarcity, the hardships people experience trying to get it and ways to start solving the problem. Think about what you read, and share it with a few people you talk to today. (The statistic that touched me most? 42,000 people die every week - 38,000 of them children under five - from not enough water, unsafe water and unhygienic living conditions. That adds up to more people than are killed by violence, including war, every year.)
2. Monitor your water usage. Be conscious about reducing the water waste in your home, even just by turning the tap off a few seconds faster every time you use it. A great idea my brother's family uses is saving the water from my niece's baths to water their yard.
3. Lend a hand. Fortunately, there are some fantastic organizations working globally to combat this problem and making some real progress, at least one of which I've written about on this blog before. charity: water, Ryan's Well Foundation and Water.org make it their business to raise awareness and work to get clean water to the people who need it most. As you think about where you might make donations at the end of this year, a popular time for charitable giving, consider them.

The global water crisis isn't something we can ignore without serious ramifications for each and every one of us. With less than 1% of the world's fresh water accessible for human use, every drop is precious. Let's start thinking about that, and doing what we can to help.

This post was written as part of Change.org's Blog Action Day 2010. There are more than 5,016 blogs in 137 countries participating right now - to add yours, click here. Blog Action Day 2010 is also taking place on Twitter, using hashtag #BAD10. To read a travel-centric post about the water crisis and how travelers can help, visit Diary of a Wandering Student.

Recipe Corner: Pumpkin Bread

I love autumn: the beautiful colors, the crisp temperatures that are just right for curling up with a mug of tea or hot chocolate and the ready availability of various kinds of squash, which I think is delicious. Dealing with the tough hulls of most squashes intimidates me, so I usually settle for recipes that don't involve trying to hack through them. One of my favorites is this one for pumpkin bread, which I made for the first time this season yesterday. Enjoy!

Pumpkin Bread

Servings: ~20 (two 8" x 4" loaves)
Preparation Time: 10-15 minutes
Cooking time: ~1 hour

Difficulty: Easy. Just toss the ingredients into a bowl, stir and pop in the oven.

Ingredients:

3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour (I'm debating trying this with half whole wheat flour, but haven't done it yet.)
2 cups packed dark brown sugar (If you want a slightly less sweet bread, don't pack it.)
2/3 cup granulated sugar

15 oz. pumpkin puree (I use one can of Libby's Pure Pumpkin; most recipes for this quantity call for two cups, but I found that it didn't quite bake all the way through on the inside unless I let the outside get a bit too done, so I use just a bit less.)
1 2/3 cup applesauce
2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 - 1 tsp ground nutmeg
3 tsp ground cinnamon

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350°F. Prepare two 8" x 4" loaf pans (I use cooking spray or parchment paper; use your preferred method.)
2. In a large bowl, combine all ingredients. Mix until the flour has been fully incorporated. Evenly divide the batter between the two pans.
3. Bake at 350°F for 1 hour, or until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean. Remove from the oven and cover tightly with foil; allow to steam for 10 minutes. Remove foil and turn out onto a cooling rack. Tent the foil loosely over the loaves and allow to finish cooling. ("Steaming" the bread locks in the moisture of the pumpkin and allows it to set a bit, which is one of the things that makes this bread so delicious. Do give it the full 10 minutes - the first time I made this recipe, I got impatient and turned the loaves out to cool early, which caused one to break in half.)

This bread doesn't really need butter, but adding it (and microwaving it for a few seconds, if you're not eating it still warm from the oven) completes the rich flavor of fall. Add a cup of tea or coffee and pretend you're walking through a forest flaming with the colors of autumn. (Or go for the walk, then have the bread!)

The Good Samaritan Muslim

Before this past Sunday, I hadn't given the word "Samaritan" much thought. A Samaritan is someone who does good deeds, is kind to others, we should all strive to be one, etc., etc., and I think there's probably something about it somewhere in the New Testament. It's just a word, right?

Apparently not.

I spent a few days this past weekend in my hometown of Manhattan Beach, CA, catching up with friends and family and enjoying the annual Hometown Fair. A tradition of mine, whenever I'm in town on a Sunday morning, is to go back to the church I grew up in - Manhattan Beach Community Church - for services, which I was happy to be able to do last weekend as well. My beliefs aren't 100% in line with what MBCC preaches, but I spent a large portion of my childhood and adolescence there and going back to a community that's open and welcoming to everyone, whatever their beliefs, always feels like going home. Being greeted warmly, whether by new members of the church I don't know or by members who remember me from when I was eight years old, is as comforting a sensation as curling up by a fire on a cold day.

I was especially excited to be there this past Sunday, since a friend of mine who also grew up at MBCC, Joe (now Rev. Joe Zarro!), was giving the sermon. It was titled "The Good Muslim," and as Joe is one of the most compassionate, kind, thoughtful and inclusive people I know, I was eager to hear what he had to say about the haze of intolerance toward people who hold differing beliefs and particularly toward Muslims that seems to be spreading throughout much of the U.S.

Joe read the parable of the good Samaritan from the book of Luke, about a man who is set upon by thieves, beaten and left on the side of the road. A priest and a Levite (a man from a particular Hebrew tribe) each see the man and each passes by on the other side of the road, leaving him there to suffer. A Samaritan happens by and is the one who helps the man, tending his injuries and taking him to an innkeeper, whom he gives the equivalent of about two days' pay to care for the man until he can return.

Today, that doesn't seem like an exceptional story: the Samaritan is so called because he helped the man who was injured - he was a good Samaritan - right? Wrong. Joe explained that Samaritans were actually part of a religious sect (and they number about 700 worldwide today), one that was reviled by Judaism and treated with the same intolerance and fear with which Muslims are met in much of the world today. For the skeptical Jewish lawyer who asked "Who is my neighbor?" when Jesus instructed "Love thy neighbor as thyself," the idea that the Samaritan was his neighbor and deserved to be treated with fairness and respect was as radical as suggesting to a member of the Tea Party that a Muslim is his or her neighbor today.

The takeaway from this is that if a Samaritan, a man widely hated just because of the personal beliefs he held and not because of anything he had said or done, was the only person with humanity enough to stop and help a man who couldn't help himself, what does that say about prejudice and intolerance? If the Samaritan - or the Muslim, to use a modern example - hadn't existed, as the injured man himself - let's update him to a Christian - may have wished at some point in his life before that day on the road, what would the man's fate have been? The priest and the Levite - a pastor and a rabbi, in our modern example - would have passed him by and he would have continued to lie there, bleeding. The Samaritan (Muslim) demonstrated more compassion than anyone else in a society where he was regularly scorned and we remember his good deed, having long since forgotten that we ever despised or mistreated him.

This may be a parable from the Bible, but it also sounds a lot like common decency.

When it comes to organized religion and worship, I'm not a particularly active participant. My beliefs are my own and I usually prefer to keep them private. What I do share is my faith, a word I think is sadly under-utilized: my faith in the strength of community, my faith in the love of my friends and family and my faith in the basic goodness of humanity. In all of the shouting matches the past few months about how terrible it is that masjids (mosques) and Islamic community centers are being constructed around the country, amidst all the slander against Muslims as a single evil entity rather than a diverse group of people like any other, I haven't heard one critic mention a single Muslim he or she knows personally. And I have to wonder how anyone can hate more than one billion individuals they don't know - it seems to embody the very extremism these critics profess to stand against.

This wave of intolerance, hatred and bigotry worries me. But I have faith that neighbors will stand together against the mob and not only protect the people that mob seeks to cast out, but speak out on their behalf. I have faith that, if one person in that mob, and then another, and then just one more, stops shouting long enough to meet one of the people they've been shouting about, that they'll fall silent, realize that this person is their neighbor and turn to stand with, rather than against, him or her. I have faith that every one of us who shares space in this society can coexist, more or less peacefully. That faith has nothing to do with religion - mine or anyone else's - and everything to do with believing that people are basically good and, when face-to-face with another individual, whatever they look like or believe, will usually choose to accept, rather than hate, one another, because the commonalities that unite us almost always far outweigh the differences that we choose to let divide us.

If you're reading this, you're my neighbor and, although we may not always agree, I believe that we're more than capable of respecting one another for who we are. And I promise that if I see you bleeding on the side of the road, whoever you are, I'll stop and do what I can to help.