Clean water

I once wrote a song called "Water", which included the line "you are the water in my life," water being the one essential need of all people and, therefore, a fitting metaphor for how important the "you" to whom the song was supposedly being sung was. I thought of it this morning as I was cleaning my office and came across a flyer I was given.

When I spoke at my local Rotary a couple of months ago, they made a donation in my name to Pure Water for the World, a non-profit organization dedicated to providing, well, just what its name says. They supply filtration systems in needy areas. 1.8 billion people lack clean drinking water, and 2.2 million die each year from waterborne illnesses. In Honduras alone, fifty thousand children under 12 die each year from diseases that result from drinking contaminated water. We all know we're not supposed to drink the local water in certain areas because our bodies may not be immune to the pollutants in it; imagine living where the locals shouldn't drink the local water!

Rotary and other groups donate to this organization, which installs filtration systems in homes and villages. Polluted water is poured into the system, flows through layers of gravel and sand, and comes out clean! They currently use concrete holding tanks, which are of course very heavy and difficult to get into some remote regions, but they're researching the use of plastic components instead. This is important work.

I hadn't expected to be paid for speaking, but I was thrilled that Rotary chose to make that donation. It was a nice way of paying it forward: I spoke for free, and the club gave money to a worthy cause. I didn't really look at the brochure till just this morning, but now I'm even prouder.

All of which leads me to suggest that, especially at this time of celebration and good cheer, you make a donation of time and/or money to a worthy cause. Huge amounts of money go to wars, political campaigns and to frivolous purchases. Take a moment to give to something that no one can complain about. (Okay, no one can justifiably complain about. There'll always be someone criticizing.)

Be the water in someone's life.

Imagine

It's the thirtieth anniversary of John Lennon's death. (Some call it an assassination, but that is defined as an attack for political or religious reasons. This was just to impress a woman.) At the time, Jane Fonda said, "They're killing the poets now." It was a time full of hyperbole along those lines. A horrible but random act against someone that many people respected and/or loved--nothing more--but people wanted it to have some meaning. Well, it did--because it reminded people of the positives in his life, and maybe made people a little kinder as a result. Even today, people will recall the date and think about peace and kindness.

I read an article recently that pointed out that Lennon wasn't the gung-ho pacifist we often recall. When Brian Epstein managed the Beatles, he encouraged them to avoid political statements, and Lennon obeyed for the most part. He was actually quite the hooligan (now there's an old word) when he was young, was occasionally violent to his first wife, ignored his first son, Julian, for many years, and became an outspoken pacifist when it was trendy to do so. "Imagine" was written by a multimillionaire who lived a cushy existence ("Imagine no possessions"). The album before, he had called his fans "peasants". And after a couple of years as an outspoken peacenik, he retreated from the public eye for years.

This is not to say that his activism wasn't heartfelt...just that it wasn't the sum total of his life. Yet we celebrate that part...and that's okay. He was flawed, like the rest of us, but if he serves as a symbol, so be it. My feelings that day thirty years ago didn't harp on any hypocrisy in his life. I was telling myself that all you need is love...and trying to believe it.

I was remembering the songs---when they played "In My Life" on the radio that day, I cried. I discovered the Beatles because the first girl I ever had a crush on, in fifth grade, loved the Beatles, and I drew a cartoon of them to impress her, and became a "fan" because she was. But "She Loves You" blew me away, and I was a True Fan ever thereafter. "Strawberry Fields Forever" still moves me. "I Am the Walrus" has so many layers, it's like a little five-minute concerto. And I love that he used a slamming door as percussion on "Give Peace A Chance".

All the radio stations were playing his solo and Beatles music all day on December 8, 1980. It was what I frequently played on my stereo anyway, but it meant a lot more because millions of people were listening with me. And in that process, a sense of togetherness and a wish for a non-violent world coalesced, if only for a few days. It happens on a smaller scale every year at this time.

And isn't it nice that, the day after we mourn the bombing of Pearl Harbor, we recall the life of a man who, at least for a few years, sang about the idea that there might someday be a world without war? Sure, it's simplistic. And unlikely.

But at least once a year, it's nice that we stop to imagine.

Elizabeth Shaw

One of the teachers from my sixth and seventh grade years--and I think the fifth, too--passed away last month. I hadn't heard from or spoken to her since I moved on to junior high---she wasn't the type I would have tried to contact. She was pretty serious, never affectionate, and could even be mean sometimes: she once made fun of a student's big feet, and another time, when we were filling out personal information forms in class and I didn't know the city of my birth, she abruptly sent me outside in the snow to go around the building to the principal's office (I went to a very small, old school) to call home and find out from my mother. She could be short with her students, and never radiated the warmth that one recalls in one's most fondly remembered teachers. But she could teach. And she taught me love and respect for the English language.

 

She would drill the rules of English grammar into our heads until we understood them. She once procured booklets with all the basic rules of English for us all to take home---a book that I saved and referred to for years, and which I wish I still had today.  (I doubt I'd use words like "procured" if not for her positive influence.) She instilled in me a clear understanding of the difference between their, they're, and there; of when to use it's rather than its; that when you create a possessive form of a plural word ending in s, such as members, you don't add a second s---"the members' votes were counted" would be the proper form. There are still words and rules I have trouble with: I generally have to rely on Spell Check to confirm or correct the spelling of occasion or broccoli, and I always have to set aside time when confronted with whether I should write "if it were to have..." or "if it was to have...". But those are my own personal mental blocks---not a failure on her part. 

As a matter of fact, just starting that last sentence with "But", I was aware that, technically, it should have been part of the previous sentence, because Mrs. Shaw taught me that. 

 I understand that language evolves, but it took me years to accept "impact" as a verb because I'd learned it was only proper to use it as a noun. One can reasonably play with grammar only if one understands the basic rules. Certainly, "woe is I" is awkward, albeit correct---but a lot of people never learned, or were never taught well enough to remember, that "Woe is me" is perfectly acceptable as a colloquialism, but it isn't proper grammar. I wrote a song with the line "You told me you'd take me and never forsake me for anyone cuter than I," and I like that I used the proper form when "me" would be the more common choice. Mrs. Shaw's influence.

Unfortunately, it wasn't until I reached high school that I realized just how much I valued what she'd taught me...and I should have written her then to say thank you, but I didn't. I went to college as an English major my first year, and she deserves a large part of the credit for that. I should have written to her in college---I certainly knew by then that she had molded at least the writing and speaking portion of my brain well---but I didn't. And when I began writing a comic strip and a blog, it would have been a good time to track her down and tell her how I was using the tools she'd given me as a child. Why didn't I think of it then?

A classmate from those elementary school years recently commented on a grammatical reference I made on Facebook with the words "Mrs. Shaw would remember"; shortly thereafter, another former schoolmate informed me that she had passed away. So I went to Google and typed in her name--I thought it was Elizabeth, but I'd only thought of her as "Mrs. Shaw" all my life, so I wasn't sure I'd find her--but her name came up, and I read the obituary online. There was a link to send condolences to the family, so I clicked it and left a few comments on what she had meant to me.

She evidently had a happy retirement. She was in a quilting club in Maine---an activity that I wouldn't have imagined the stern woman I knew participating in. (Yes, I know I shouldn't end a sentence with a proposition.) She had a husband and children who loved her. I'm glad. She scared me sometimes, but she had a very positive and lasting impact on my life. And she loved teaching, which says to me that maybe she loved her students, too.

So if you're listening, Mrs. Shaw: thank you.