SWCAMBORNE

“A bull makes money, a bear makes money, but a hog makes nothing.”

Joseph D. Goodman

Forbes Columnist

1935 – 1958

Great civilizations have always built massive water projects.  The aqueducts are one of the great sites of Rome.  Southern California grew because of two huge water projects, the Owen Valley and the California Aqueduct.  The TVA was one of the lasting contributions of the Franklin Roosevelt’s Reconstruction.  Now it time to bring more water to the American West.

I propose that we spend billions to dam the Yukon River and with a little pumping, a lot of engineering and several hundred thousand construction jobs bring the water through the Frazier, Snake and Colorado River Valleys to the sunny, fertile and now arid fields of the South West.

A dam on the Green River

We are the stewards of the planet we should manage the resources the best way we know how.  Water project to feed the people are something we know how to do and are a lasting legacy.  In Segovia a hundred foot high arched aqueduct built by the Romans in the year 100AD is still being used to irrigate fields.

In the Grand Canyon the Humpback Chub is endangered.  It is a fish that needs silty water to survive.

The rare and endangered Humpback Chub

At the same time the Glen Canyon Dam upstream is getting filled up with silt.

Navaho Bridge near Glenn Canyon Dam

Why not use giant hydraulic pumps to pull the silt out of the bottom of Lake Powell and let it flow down the Colorado river through the Grand Canyon. This would help to restore the canyons riverine environment and save the Humpback Chub.  At the same time it would help to keep Lake Powell a water source and a flood prevention mechanism.

The Grand Canyon is worth saving

This is the sort of idea that President Obama is looking for.  It is green, creates employment and will have a lasting positive effect on the infrastructure.

Next more giant water projects.

This is a product I invented about six years ago. I called it Green Water

It is very simple really.  House plants do better if you feed them regularly.  But it is a pain to feed plants so most of them die.  If you could buy bottled water especially for plants that already had the perfect nutrient mix your plants will do much better.

I spent about $30,000 developing the idea and test marketing it.  The results were very good.   During the sale of Brandon I ended up giving the product idea to Lisa N. the very smart woman who did the market research for me.  She rebranded it as Hydra Feed and was able to sell it into Fred Meyers among other places before Miracle Gro came out with a competitive product.  Hydra Feed has an excellent web site about plant care.  I haven’t had any contact with Lisa in the last few years so I’m not sure how she is doing with the product now.

Water Ideas to come:

Saving the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon

The Mother of all Water Projects

This is one of those “should I say something” moments.

spy picture taken from across the street

There is a church nearby that has a small preschool.  They are letting the children play on the front lawn near a very busy street.  It scares the heck out of me.  Should I say something?  To whom?  I don’t know these people at all.

What would you do?

Imagine you have just been seated in a restaurant The waiter comes to the table and asks “would you like still water, sparkling water or tap water.”

If you say “Tap Water” you are saying either that you are cheap or that you are not a fool.  The restaurant wants to sell you some water but you don’t want to pay $5.00 for what used to be free.  What if there were a purified water product called  “TAP WATER”

It could claim to be purified and certified.  It would have local flavor and be $1.00 per person for an unlimited supply.  Everybody would be happier. You can have this idea.

Here is one to think about:

Here is what we know: People drink a lot of bottled water these days even though water is almost free out of the faucet.  The reasons they say they buy water in bottles are taste, fashion, health and convenience.

What they are really saying when they buy bottled water instead of using the free stuff is “the government can’t supply water good enough for me.”  Here is the irony: Many of the people who don’t trust the government enough to drink their water are in favor letting the same government supply their health-care.

Health-care is a really complicated and expensive thing compared to water.  I’m pretty sure that if the government can’t deliver water to meet your standards then the health-care supplied by the government won’t be satisfactory either.

Read my previous posts about water:

Public Drinking Fountains

Better Water from Scotland

Tomorrow Tap Water

At my local Whole Foods they are selling Function: Urban Detox.  It is juice with implications.  They are not allowed to make claims.  The implications is that you need to drink this juice to live a healthy life in the city.  Who will buy it? I thought there was a recession?

You don’t have to hurry in.  There is plenty.

My objection is that the existence of Urban Detox implies that living in the city is unhealthy.  The evidence and my instinct indicate the opposite.  Living in the city near good hospitals, clean water and sanitation make for longer healthier lives.  Urban Detox is marketing itself by promulgating a myth.

To make a broader counter claim in the Urban Detox mode, a friend of mine has observed that the people who shop at Whole Foods and other “health food” stores look less healthy than the average person.  Is there a casual relationship?

The Stone Age did not end for lack of stone and the Oil Age will end long before the world runs out of oil.

Sheikh Zaki Yamani

Saudi Arabia

Buying wine has been an issue in our family for years.  We have some friends who are serious wine connoisseurs (thanks to spell check I got this one right) and I’m a bit intimated, although even I can tell the difference between really good and not so good wine.  Nurit has tried to get me to buy more and better wine and a few times we have gone to various wine stores and bought some bottles but it never seemed right.  There was a disconnect between how Nurit wanted to buy wine and how I wanted to buy it. I didn’t feel comfortable buying wines I didn’t know anything about and I could never remember what wines I’d liked in the past.  I wanted to find wines I liked and buy only those wines.  It wasn’t working and when Nurit mentioned buying wine a shiver went up my spine.

Carole’s new wines

Fortunately this all changed when we were in Sunbury visiting Gene and Carole and you can benefit from my experience.  Carole had a $100 gift certificate to a wine store.  So when we were in Savannah replacing Rebecca’s Iphone we went to the wine store.  Caroles approach was completely different than mine (the approach mentioned above that meant that I only ever bought wine reluctantly).  She first determined that she needed to buy at least a case to get the discount and that she needed mostly red wines in the under $15.00 range.  Then she asked Nurit and I, the wine expert in the store and perhaps some other customers, for recommendations and filled up her cart.  When I started to question her method she explained to me that we were buying it for drinking.  At that moment I had an ephipany.  A bottle of wine is like a meal at a restaurant.  Savor it for the moment but don’t make purchasing it into a process like buying a car.  Now I get it.  Thank you Carole for showing me.  And thank you Nurit for tolerating me all those years when I couldn’t see.  Now lets go and buy a case of wine.

one of the “seven deadly Zins”

(Zinfandel)

BTW Nurit recommended the Silver Oak Cabernet (way more than $15), Carole bought it, we all drank it and it was wonderful.

the Silver Oak artistically displayed

with a found food dessert platter.