Into the Arms of Florida

So my blogging has been severely limited lately, due to several factors, among them time, access and a severe crackdown by The Man on computer usage at work. What like I'm not supposed to obsessively check and write blogs on the clock? Lame.

This weekend I ended up on a 62-foot Schooner with a plastic cup of red wine in one hand while the other gripped to whatever was available for gripping. The seas were high and it took all of my conscious energy to not yell “WHEEE!” at the crest of every wave. The sky was gray, the sand was gray, the ocean was gray but it did little to dampen my spirits. My ancestry is a long line of ship-captains and the sea truly is in my veins. I feel like a different bit of life comes to visit me out there.

I was in Saint Augustine for a four-day adventure that mostly included eating, planning the next place to eat, getting to the next place to eat, recovering from eating and then celebrating by having a beer. It was lovely. I love Asheville but it is such a joy to skip town and see something else.

The lighthouse on the island also served as a landmark; the spiral-painted tower the only denotation between cardinal directions. We climbed the lighthouse on Sunday morning; being that my only reoccurring nightmare involves spiral staircases I was less than enthused to undertake the process of ascension (and even less that of distention) and my knuckles were white with the strain of my grip. I got quiet; I do that when I'm terrified. I don't like it to be known how hard my heartbeats. I stood on the balcony with an underwater archaeologist who works at the site and he could point out histories and disasters only known by their wreckage. His words gave it all a sense of place.

Turbid

Very often I'll get a word or two in my head and they'll sort of tumble around in there until I can figure out why I'm thinking about them or I get distracted by something shiny. A few weeks ago the word was Turbid....interesting. I'd actually started to write something about it but it was absolute crap so I ditched it but I hadn't stopped thinking about it.

Last night I scribbled something down on a scrap piece of paper after some thoughts.

Turbid: (1) clouded, opaque or muddy, as a liquid. (2) confused, muddled.

When I was in AP Bio in high school we took a five day field trip and did coastal ecology experiments, one of which included testing the turbidity of the water. This uses a secchi disk that's dropped slowly into water; when it's no longer visible that depth is marked. The more turbid the water, the more contaminated it is (by runoff, algae blooms, science stuff). The visibility is low, things are lost. Ever tried to snorkel in a clouded lake? Sucks.

Turbidity...losing myself in a situation, hoping to fake it til it works, forcing a square peg in a round hole, shaving edges and boundaries...hoping to force an ends rather than living the means. Not just in relationships but expectation, occupation, even memory. Letting things get turbid; forsaking definition for comfort or the feeling of safety and losing the better parts of oneself in the process. Stirring up things that should've settled long before. Turbid: a sort of succubus preying on standards and boundaries. I'm astounded how turbid things have gotten recently, how I've let them get there. I wasn't just passive, I was permissive. Hoping clarity is coming.

Don't Drink the Water

Several years ago I began hearing reports of problems of pharmaceuticals in our water supplies; that is the prescriptions that we take for a myriad of problems--high cholesterol, birth control, anxiety, tranquilizers, chemotherapy, etc--aren't being removed from our water at treatment plants and thus are coming back in our drinking water. I heard these reports from scientist friends but surprisingly hadn't heard anything big in the news (one of the big issues on the science front has been the issue of trans-gendering fish. That is, hormones are causing male fish to become feminized and thus sterile. It's a much bigger deal than it sounds. Things start at the bottom of the food chain and work on up. Think DDT.)

Today the AP had this "Investigation" about it.
It's long, so here's some bits (though please consider reading it):
* "A vast array of pharmaceuticals — including antibiotics, anti-convulsants, mood stabilizers and sex hormones — have been found in the drinking water supplies of at least 41 million Americans, an Associated Press investigation shows.
* But the presence of so many prescription drugs — and over-the-counter medicines like acetaminophen and ibuprofen — in so much of our drinking water is heightening worries among scientists of long-term consequences to human health.
* How? People take pills. Their bodies absorb some of the medication, but the rest of it passes through and is flushed down the toilet. The wastewater is treated before it is discharged into reservoirs, rivers or lakes. Then, some of the water is cleansed again at drinking water treatment plants and piped to consumers. But most treatments do not remove all drug residue.
* The AP's investigation also indicates that watersheds, the natural sources of most of the nation's water supply, also are contaminated. Tests were conducted in the watersheds of 35 of the 62 major providers surveyed by the AP, and pharmaceuticals were detected in 28.
* Rural consumers who draw water from their own wells aren't in the clear either, experts say.
* Even users of bottled water and home filtration systems don't necessarily avoid exposure. Bottlers, some of which simply repackage tap water, do not typically treat or test for pharmaceuticals, according to the industry's main trade group. The same goes for the makers of home filtration systems.
* Another issue: There's evidence that adding chlorine, a common process in conventional drinking water treatment plants, makes some pharmaceuticals more toxic.
* Mary Buzby — director of environmental technology for drug maker Merck & Co. Inc. — said: "There's no doubt about it, pharmaceuticals are being detected in the environment and there is genuine concern that these compounds, in the small concentrations that they're at, could be causing impacts to human health or to aquatic organisms."
*There's growing concern in the scientific community, meanwhile, that certain drugs — or combinations of drugs — may harm humans over decades because water, unlike most specific foods, is consumed in sizable amounts every day.
* "These are chemicals that are designed to have very specific effects at very low concentrations. That's what pharmaceuticals do. So when they get out to the environment, it should not be a shock to people that they have effects," says zoologist John Sumpter at Brunel University in London, who has studied trace hormones, heart medicine and other drugs. "