Street Jazz

I’ve been think a lot lately about bottled water - no, honestly, I have.

I’ve always thought that the fetish we in America have for buying bottled water is pretty silly, though I have bought it myself on a hot day, walking on campus or downtown. I’ve always found the ads pretty amusing, especially the ads touting water that only has a few calories.

Wow, only a few calories - in water.

But I have talked to quite a few people about the whole concept of banning bottled water. Not politicians or environmentalists, but to people who plug money in machines, or pull the bottles out of the racks at the local mini-marts.

Factory workers.

Construction workers.

Ordinary people on the street.

What they tell me is this:

They think that battled water is silly, but they’d rather drink it than a soft drink. But if bottled water isn’t available, then many of them will buy a Coke, or a Pepsi or something else - that also comes in a plastic bottle, and that also is made up largely of water.

Unless someone thinks that it all comes from Lake Pepsi.

Like public phone booths, there just aren’t that many water fountains around any more. Well, goes the counter-argument, just use your own bottle from home and refill it from the tap.

Which works, except when you are really, really hot, and you want really, really, cold water. Oh, look, there’s mini-mart with bottled water!

So - how do you get people to drink less bottled water?

I’d start by building more water fountains, for one thing. It’s not much of a start, but at least I’ve talked to people who buy the damn stuff.

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Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?

"John Gibson said we couldn't do the unthinkable and refuse them access to the clinic, and I don't think that would be unthinkable at all," Lundstrum said. "If Benton County doesn't want to pay for the cost of the clinic, then we should refuse their citizens access to it and let Benton County build their own clinic.

"It is "easy to be a philanthropist as long as you're doing it with somebody else's money. Washington County needs to quit subsidizing other counties. I think Benton County may be more wealthy than we are now." - “Unshared commitment : JPs unhappy with HIV clinic’’s lack of support from Benton County” -  Nortthwest Arkansas Times

It’s obvious that something needs to be done concerning Benton County and their lack of support for the Washington County HIV Clinic, especially since almost 40 percent of the clinic’s patients come from Benton County. But Republican JP Tom Lundstrum’s remarks are beyond the pale.

Would he be so callous if it weren’t HIV they were talking about?

Well, yeah, he would, actually.

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James Earl Jones - always The Man

In the early 1970s I read a novel by Irvin Wallace called “The Man,” about the first black president of the United States. It was made into a movie - which I have never seen - with James Earl Jones.

Has anyone seen the movie? Has anyone else read the book? For more information about the movie: http://www.moria.co.nz/sf/man.htm

The screenplay was written by the great Rod Serling, who also wrote the screenplay for one of the greatest political thrillers of the 1960s, “Seven Days in May.”  If you haven’t seen that, you haven’t seen a political thriller, my friend.

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Quote of the Day

Habit and routine have an unbelievable power to waste and destroy. - Henri De Lubac, "Paradoxes"

rsdrake@nwark.com