Day Late; Dollar Short

Which is typical of me. There are certain risks of living only half-heartedly connected to your calendar; the main one being that when you see something cool happening "today" you always think it is today, as in the day you are on, and because you haven't looked at your calendar (and for the most part don't really even know where it is, except when you have to add a book to the "To Read" list scribbled in the back) you aren't going to bother verifying a small detail like dates.

So I woke up (way too) early this morning (I've come to terms with that the only way for me to get writing done is by getting up at 4am) and saw that it was Blog Action Day 2010 and the subject was water, I was immediately inspired. What is Blog Action Day? It is this: Blog Action Day is an annual event held every October 15 that unites the world’s bloggers in posting about the same issue on the same day with the aim of sparking a global discussion and driving collective action.

Pretty cool, huh?

This year's topic is water. I read the stats on water - just a few. (I have to work fast when I get up at 4am, because my son could wake at any moment.) Here's what I learned:

- African women walk over 40 billion hours each year carrying cisterns weighing up to 18 kilograms to gather water, which is usually still not safe to drink.

- Every week, nearly 38,000 children under the age of 5 die from unsafe drinking water and unhygienic living conditions.

-Many scholars attribute the conflict in Darfur at least in part to lack of access to water. A report commissioned by the UN found that in the 21st century, water scarcity will become one of the leading causes of conflict in Africa.

- Today, 2.5 billion people lack access to toilets, but many more have access to a cell phone.

I thought of our time abroad; in Singapore, the water is pretty safe, in that you can drink it out of the tap, but like most major cities in the US and around the world, you are wise to have a water filter. In Bali, the water out of the tap won't necessarily make you sick, but you are best off to drink bottled water. Like most things, the bottled water is a mixed blessing. As Josh Tickell tells us in the film, Fuel if you take your empty plastic water bottle and fill it one quarter full, that is the amount of petroleum it took to make that plastic bottle of water. At the same time, plastic water bottles get clean, safe drinking water to places like Bali, Bangkok, and other places throughout SE Asia and Africa that otherwise wouldn't have safe drinking water. The downside of this is most the pollution you see in such places is plastic water bottles; either they are thrown in piles of garbage, littered on the sides of roads, or they are burned and locals then inhale the fumes of empty plastic water bottles burning.

The water in Bali could be drinkable and safe - it starts out as such, but it becomes a dumping ground for things the locals don't know what to otherwise do with. If our gardener found a dead rat, he threw it in the stream of water just outside our door. On any given walk through the side roads of a village or the rice paddies you'll see entire families in the streams washing all their clothes with detergents - full of phosphates - and themselves with soaps and shampoos. If they change the oil in a tractor, the old oil goes into a well or stream.

I of course didn't get a chance to write all this this morning. My son woke up. I spent our day perusing playgrounds and visiting with my sister and other fun things all the while itching to get back to my computer. When I finally did, just before dinner, with my blog post fully composed in my head, I realized then, that October 15th was yesterday. Today was the 16th.

Alas, my inspiration, my little bit of activism on my corner of the internet was, as they say, a day late and a dollar short. I signed the petition anyway. I mean, even if it is a day late, people still need water.

I guess there's always next year, which means I have 365 days to get back in the habit of using my calendar and actually keeping track of it. If you want, you can sign the petition too.