Monday Morning Musings:
“The water understands
Civilization well”
–Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Water”
There’s a spin instructor
At my gym.
She sometimes lifts her water bottle
And says, “community drink.”
When she says that
I picture a group of people
In a smoky old tavern
Passing around a mug of ale.
History brain.
And as soon as I think “history brain,”
Referring to myself
You understand,
I begin to ponder drinking in
Revolutionary Era America.
At the City Tavern
In Philadelphia
The bill for “55 Gentlemans Dinner & Fruit”
In September 1787
Went mainly for alcohol.
Madera, Claret, Porter, and Beer,
And don’t forget the “7 Large Bowels of Punch.”*
George Washington
Had a distillery at Mount Vernon,
The largest one in North America
At that time.
His hogs were fed the slops.
No waste on the farm.
Perhaps his neighbors
Drank to his health
With the whiskey
They bought from him.
Eighteenth-century toasting
At the table could be an ordeal.
With each guest toasting the health
Of everyone there
And on
And on
Till they could toast no more.
But perhaps it was better
Than drinking water in the city.
Dr. Benjamin Rush once
Lauded the murky water
Of an urban well,
Saying that its mineral waters
Could cure a host of conditions
From flatulence to rheumatism.
But it turned out its peculiar scent and taste
Was due to its connection to a privy.
Ooops.
I guess the doctor is not always right.
Well, well.
There’s a scene in A Town Like Alice
Where an Englishwoman
Returns to a village
In Malaya,
A place where she lived and toiled
During the war
After the Japanese took control
And force-marched her with
Other women and children
Over hundreds of miles.
She had money after the war,
An inheritance,
I think,
And so she goes back
To ask the headman of the village
To let the women have a well.
A small thing
But huge to them.
The scene has stayed in my mind
After all these years.
And I think about how in many parts of the world
Women and children are at risk every day
Because they must fetch the water used for
Cooking,
Drinking,
And washing
From miles away.
They can be assaulted
Or kidnapped
Or killed.
And women in some places
Do not have sanitary facilities
During their monthly periods
And so they cannot go to school
Or to work.
Water.
Those of us who have it
Take for granted that we can turn on a spigot
And there it will be.
And I just realized we haven’t seen
The Walking Dead survivors boiling water
To drink
Not that I remember anyway,
I could be wrong.
But then I guess if you’re already
Infected with a zombie virus
It doesn’t matter much
About the water.
Water from faucets,
Wells, springs, and rivers,
The Amazon,
The Nile,
The Thames,
The Tiber,
The Ganges,
And the Delaware
That flows not far
From my door.
The Delaware River from Red Bank Battlefield
All giving rise to cities
And civilizations.
And the oceans–
The magnificence of whales
Killed to supply people with
Oil for lights and corset stays.
The tides call to them
And to us.
I think about my four-year-old daughter
Twirling and jumping on the beach,
Sheer delight at seeing the ocean
For the first time.
Then the day both girls
Were terrified by a storm
That arose suddenly
On that same beach
As if Poseidon himself
Had awakened–
But was not very happy.
Nothing like a grouchy god.
Air and water blended
Into a mist,
The sand whipped us
In tiny, stinging pellets
As the wind howled
And the waves crashed.
And then just as quickly,
All was once again calm.
Water
And life.
Playful otters
Who cavort in rivers
And salmon that swim upstream
To spawn.
Fanciful beings who
Live between water and land,
Selkies,
Mermaids,
The Lady of the Lake,
And Nessie, too.
We build bridges over troubled waters.
And we sing in the rain.
We paint water lilies
And glance at reflections,
Illusions
And ripples
Time passing
On the water.
I’m fascinated by reflections on the water.
Knight Park
We humans spend nine months
In a fluid-filled sac,
Emerging from the womb
To gasp, breathe,
And let out that first cry
Announcing,
“I am here.”
Like our ancestors
Who surfaced from the sea
To build a life on land.
But still,
The water calls.
Spinning thoughts
As I pedal
And the wheels turn.
Connections,
Community,
Though the water is wide.
Raise your glass.
Drink.
Sources:
* “Entertainment of George Washington at City Tavern, Philadelphia, September 1787
http://teachingamericanhistory.org/convention/citytavern/
Merril D. Smith, The World of the American Revolution: A Daily Life Encyclopedia (ABC-CLIO, 2015).
A Town Like Alice (miniseries 1981 with Helen Morse, Bryan Brown, and Gordon Jackson) based on Nevil Shute’s 1950 novel.
There are so many versions of the folk song, “The Water is Wide.” Here is James Taylor singing it.
Yesterday and today: Merril's historical musings 