As you may have seen, the NYT has published some new kind of
foolishness about a topic I hold near and dear to my heart: water access in
America. “Unfiltered Fervor: The Rush to Get Off the Water Grid” is about how wealthy people are drinking untreated
water.
Publishing this story gives this topic attention, fueling
distrust of government by presenting the raw water movement on equal footing to
scientific fact. Tacitly
condoning consumption of unfiltered water that has not passed rigorous drinking
standards gives this practice validity. Drinking water at a surface spring is
more likely to seriously harm than to be beneficial to health.
Stick with a "look, don't drink" policy when going to unknown creeks.
American’s has some of the safest water because
of our extensive processing of subsurface water. Ground water, both municipal
and private wells, are monitored and tested at regular intervals to ensure
safety.
By portraying “raw water” as a phenomenon by
entrepreneurs selling an “off the grid” lifestyle this article also draws
attention away from the misallocation of capital that desires to create a dangerous
product for the rich rather than ensuring everyone in America can drink their
tap water for today and tomorrow.
Rather than fund production of this one guy who
admits to trespassing and
stealing water could capital not flow to any of these issues?
Incorporating
desalinization for cities with changing water availability due to sea level
rise.
Replacing
lead water pipes in Flint, MI with steel water pipes.
Using
publicly available data to target municipal treatment facilities for specific problems
and hiring engineers, geologists and scientists to create more efficient
treatment systems so toxins like hexavalent chromium didn’t exist in public
water
Creating
and sustaining public health non nonprofits that focus on community access to
safe, clean water
We cannot claim to be a first world nation when
people cannot access safe drinking water-- one of the things that we've done
mostly right for a long time. Giving attention and money to any regressive, dangerous
ideas is investing in the ruin of our nation.
The
anti-municipal water movement that has united the anti-establishment fringe
groups from both the left and right. However, the ‘establishment’ being
protested with "Live water" is not the President, Congress, or Washington DC,
but local civil servants in our communities, whose meetings are generally open to the
public.
In
California, the State Water Control Board regulates all of the municipal and
county agencies that provide water directly to residents. Working with the
state and federal EPA, the Water Board ensures the safety and access to water
all Californians’ are entitled to. These water boards require an extensive, multi-month vetting process
before hiring anyone.
My home
city, Oakland, has established the aggressive goal of zero waste by 2020. They are using multiple tactics; educating restaurants and
auto businesses on best management practices for preventing pollution,
establishing an illegal dumping hotline, and disseminating freely
available information about the difference between sanitary sewer vs
storm drain systems.
By
contrast, the interviewed entrepreneurs are rushing to get off the grid with
their water consumption. As Mr. Singh says he is concerned about “drinking toilet water with birth control drugs” they would
be much better served to participate in pre-existing programs by the Department of Toxic Substance Control to educate and promote cessation of improper pharmaceutical disposal.
We know
from science and medicine that drinking “raw water” is a bad idea. Yet in the
article, six proponents of untreated water are quoted before a medical
professional advises against it. This narrative lends equal footing between the
raw water movement and the medical and scientific communities, establishing
false equivalency; science can be disregarded when it contradicts the emotions
of the beholder.
Many
Americas view scientists as lofty elites, whose conclusions are opinions, up
for debate. Promoting raw water with this article lacks the integrity The New
York Times stands for in its mission statement. If the NYT’s intention
is to support science, scientists and scientific thought then the editors of
this publication need to do better in ensuring articles like this do not work
against that priority.
Sincerely,
Sara Be
A
Geologist Who Drinks Tap P.S. This song goes out to Flint, MI.
Look Mum I’m writing on a weekly schedule
again! Hahaha. I expect this will last all of today.
So last week I talked about how my new job is
like…bewilderingly good and I can’t really get over myself about it. I have a
bunch of Feels on the matter but that generally continues to be the case.
This week I’d like to focus on my second professional life:
my experience as an entrepreneur/small business owner.
When asked how I felt about starting Queen ofStrawbs I responded, “My only regret is that I didn’t start sooner.”
Everything that’s happened about becoming a small food business owner in one of
the coolest foodie scenes in the country has been positive. The margins are
huge but I’m staying in the black on my hobby. There is literally nothing more
I could ask for.
A lot of folks have asked if I will be selling my jam at
farmer’s markets. I usually respond that I’m struggling to keep up with my
friend requests and then usually get a puzzled look in return. It recently
occurred to me that the average person does not regularly communicate with 1000
people on any platform. If 30% of my “friend” base on Facebook were to buy 1
jar of jam each, that’s still 300 jars of jam for me to make and distribute. This
is not including people I work with, people I attend synagogue with and other
tenants at the share kitchen I rent. If I were able to produce adequate supply
for all of those people, yeah—maybe I’d consider taking my jams to a farmer’s
market. In the meantime, my side hustle is intense enough as is.
And then there’s this guy:
This guy has bought close to 20% of every jam I have made to
date. He freaking loves my jam. He loves my jam enough that I think everyone in
his life is getting a jar for Christmas. And if they all like my jam, that’s
another whole network I just acquired. Like, damn yo. Slow down.
I’m loving all the things my friends are doing with the jam.
A common recipe is yogurt with muesli/granola and jam on top. Some friends
introduced me to the wonders of hollowing out one of those crappy little
croissant from the supermarket, filling it with jam and microwaving it for 15
seconds:
That one was actual heaven. It was so good I forgot I was
the one who made the jam.
The same couple made a mixed drink and called it a Sara
Jewlep and it looks as follows:
The recipe:
Bourbon
Mint
Queen of Strawbs "Get Stuff Done" jam
Another friend made shortbread cookies:
And like…I’m completely in love with every single photo I
get. Everything looks phenomenal and the fact that something I made with my
hands is bringing people joy is literally the best feeling I have ever felt in
my life.
Getting space at a share kitchen is quadruple-fold the best
thing I’ve ever done, especially to keep a project like this going. Things that
are awesome about industrial kitchens:
I pay my landlady money and I get a shelf in a
walk in freezer to keep my fruits.
There are ladles and scoopers of multiple sizes.
It turns out that ladles come in 3 oz and 4 oz varieties, which is super
helpful when you need to fill a jam jar to 7.75oz.
Stainless steel surfaces that can just be wiped
down and sprayed with bleach.
A mop and floors that are easy to mop.
Did I mention I don’t have to wash my dishes by
hand? I don’t have to wash my dishes by hand.
Walk in freezer that freezes blueberries to
marbles in 1 hour (I timed it).
INDUSTRIAL STRENGTH NINJA BLENDER. No more hand
processing, ever.
Bose sound system with a Tupac Pandora station.
Tupac has become my mandatory soundtrack. Biggie can join too.
I invited some friends to help me this weekend where I
attempted some very aggressive goals: three flavors and processing 60 lb fruit.
Let me just say that it absolutely wouldn’t have happened without them and I
owe them much but all I have is gratitude and jam so I paid them in that. I’m
going to name the couple AdventureTeacher and King of Pomegranates (or KPom). I
call him the King because he singlehandedly processed 50 lb of pomegranates. We
all got our talents.
I really liked AdventureTeacher’s remarks upon the kitchen:
“This place isn’t fancy. It isn’t huge. It just has the best stuff in it. It’s
like they went with absolutely no frills and just went straight for quality.”
This warmed the depths of my utilitarian heart. That’s exactly what I love
about my kitchen.
I emphasized to my friends that just because I was setting
crazy expectations for myself, I did not set the same for them and they were
free to go when they needed. They stayed 8 hours, for which I am eternally
grateful. It turns out I was starved for friendship and companionship and
hanging out all day made me feel much more sane. (That goes for all the other
friends I’ve had seen in meatspace in the past 5 days or so. The sanity benefit
of spending time physically present with friends and family is absolutely
irreplaceable)
I, however, did not give myself a break and I worked for
nearly 13 hours straight. The issue with jam is that once ya pop the fun don’t
stop. If you have jam on the stove, you need to see that jam through to a
jar/can until it’s sealed. I successfully met my goal and here is a glimpse of
the final products:
I’m really excited about the flavors. I used the blueberries
I froze during my first couple days at the kitchen. There are three flavors:
·Blueberry, white nectarine, ginger
·Blueberry, pomegranate, vanilla and fresh sage
·Pomegranate, mint (spearmint) and cumin
The final flavor is hands-down my favorite. It’s also my
first jelly! (Jelly does not have fruit pulp. Jam has some, preserves, like
“Get Stuff Done” and "Summer Jam" have whole fruit pieces.)
I have not fully decided on flavor names but I think the
blue/nect/ginger will be called “Morning, Darling” and the pom jelly will have
Moroccan in the name. I definitely leaned into my deep memory of Moroccan food
of my childhood to put that flavor combo together. It will work excellently on
meats, particularly white meat like chicken breast or pork.
It turns out I have a word that’s in my head but it’s not a
word, it’s a hand motion. It’s the motion of opening a lever 90°. I
use this word/motion to describe how I pair savory components with the
overwhelming/overpowering aspects of fruit. With pomegranates, the overwhelming
attribute is the sour, so the compliment I chose was cumin. I don’t know if
this is a real thing or I’m just weirdly good at identifying these pairs.
::shrugville::
The real treasure of working in a shared kitchen with other
food entrepreneurs is the people. The people who work in my kitchen are the
most wonderful, generous and lovely people I’ve ever met in a professional
setting. Working together in the setup we do, it is common for folks to share
resources, share tips/suggestions/opinions about vendors and most importantly:
SHARE FOOD. And the other chefs in my kitchen are amazing. They make little
macrons, lumpias, all manner of baked goods…it’s just basically heaven TBH.
One instance that really summed it up was when I worked in
the kitchen this weekend and some of my dishes (I’d left them soaking)
disappeared. I asked the guy from the other company what happened and he just
shrugged and was like “Eh, we’re all in here together. We help each other out.
Welcome to kitchen life.”
It’s an interesting juxtaposition of drilling life, which
I’m learning more and more about. First of all, within the context of drilling
I am hired as oversight and management. I liked the way one trainer put it: "we’re the professionals, [the drillers] are the experts.” They carry
two 100lb sacks of cement on their shoulders, I carry a clipboard and nitrile
gloves. Drillers, so far as I’ve met them, tend to use crude language but are
generally not rude. Not that kitchen folks have prim mouths—I certainly do not,
in either context--- it’s just that working in a kitchen seems softer, in a
way. They’re both kinda harsh work conditions with lots of physical exertion. Overall
I didn’t get very close with any of the drillers or my work colleagues. I
parted ways for the week with a firm handshake. I hope that was the right thing
to do. Corporate interactions are so confusing, esp in a white collar version
of a blue collar job. Light Blue Collar, I guess. Like my arts high school motto “Fight high school fight,
for the blue and the liiight blue.” You
would think so many artists in one place would choose better spirit colors.
Kitchen folks are also more up in each others’ lives than I
expected going in. Everyone seems to know everyone else’s business. I don’t
mean like business plan kind of business, more like who’s going out with whom
type thing. One time there was a drug phone found in the doorway and that
rippled through the tenant like a gossip wave. We have our own Facebook group.
I think this is a side effect of having a small business: your personal life
and your professional life don’t really get the luxury of separating. It’s all
you, all the time. I like it for that very reason. As long as I make good jam
and I want to keep being there, I’m allowed to be exactly who I am.
Being in control of my own business, being a little bit my
own boss has been a great experience for my sense of myself as a leader. I
don’t know how much longer I’m going to keep doing this because my day job
requires a lot of logistics so having a logistics heavy hobby is pushing my
limits. I am struggling with my demand. Freakin’ everyone wants my jam. And I
don’t really know how to alert people in a kind and fair way to let them know
my jam is on sale before it sells out. Hopefully having a bigger supply this
time will buy me some more time. My last batch, after distribution to my
GoFundMe backers sold out after one day of my announcing publicly that
jam was for sale. 3.5 gallons of jam
completely gone in 3 days.
I am definitely going to finish out my contract (and complete
the jam from the stored fruit I made in August) but I am probably going to put
this experiment on hold until I can get a more reliable travel schedule. Being
that I was 100 mi south of home on Friday and I’m on a flight to somewhere 800
mi north on Tuesday, it might be a good minute before I have a “predictable”
schedule.
As my wise friend Good Panda commented on my life: it
appears that I am living three lives simultaneously. In case I’ve never
mentioned, I straight up do not understand the concept of being bored. I can’t
remember many times in my life when I was bored, and when that happened I
probably went and did something else. #HighFunctioningAnxiety
I did block out this post in advance but I have a feeling
that this is going to take a moment anyway. More tends to happen in three weeks
of my life than does for many people in months. My plan is to visit each “life”
I lead and then do some meta-analysis and State of The Brain (spoiler: it’s
filled with poo and lies) at the end. If there is a part you feel would be
relevant or interesting, you can jump to that part. I am not fancy enough to
know how to do those hyperlink jump-tos so you’ll have to scroll and look for
the bolded sections for now. Or teach me? That could work. Or I very well might
just write separate posts since my days are absurdly long and I can only manage
so much writing in a night. (Edit: this is what I'm doing, more posts to follow)
Life One: Sara the
Geologist
Let me just start off by saying that actually working in the
position I have now (woohoo, got employed!) is like…a million times easier and
better than pretty much every other job I’ve had in my life. It’s like working,
but on easy mode. Even though I’m out in the field this week, I’m only doing
what I would consider “actual work” about 3 hours out of the 11. The rest is
oversight and safety management.
So that’s one thing: the hours are long. They usually
involve doing skilled labor that either involves thinking a lot or
management/logistics/planning skills. One of the weirdest things I’ve had to do
so far was research pee and poop for a day. Turns out sewers are dangerous on
top of being gross? Who knew.
While taking lunch is required (yay, legalities) we have to
make up our time and bill 8 hours each day. This means that my days are
typically 9 hours long in the office. So far the field days have been “short”
in that they’re only 11 or so hours. It’s only Tuesday and I’ve put in 23
hours, including transit to my site. PartnerPenguin has commented that it’s
exactly what I wanted, several hours more per week than I wanted it.
One type of mindset shift that has been hard is the concept
of“staying billable.” In academia there
is a disproportionate burden placed on the shoulders of the professors to bring
in grants enough to support the lab running. In environmental consulting people
are a lot more…open about talking about money. It feels like the veil around
actually living in a capitalist society has finally been pulled back. Instead
of this mysterious thing shrouded in shame and misery, it’s a shared burden.
There is this concept called utilization-everyone needs to try to make as many
of their 40 hours a week billed to a cost code. It is impersonal in some ways,
but it also spreads the responsibility of staying in business on everyone, not
just one professor. Obviously I am a mere peon and my manager shields us well
from pressure Up Above so I have little idea what that’s like. But the firm I
joined is quite large so the supply chain is long and the contracts are large.
I’m working on several DoD contracts and they’re pretty cushy.
Definitely one thing I can get behind is that I’m finally
not the only woman in the whole office who cusses. My manager (loosely, she
just makes sure I have work to do, she doesn’t actually supervise me) dropped
the f bomb at our “get to know you” lunch. I have never felt such automatic
comradery.
Yeah, that’s another thing I’m not used to. I’m not managed.
Like, at all. I’m not micromanaged. My “manager” has even commented that it’s
OK if I contact her less. Holy shit working in academia/government was a
horrendous nightmare compared to how work gets done in industry. I’m assumed to
be competent. I’m allowed to ask questions. No one gets judgey or annoyed when
I ask too many questions. And then I’m encouraged to ask more questions to
clarify. A supervisor on one project called me on Thursday last week because I
hadn’t checked in all week on a thing due on Friday. It wasn’t a long
conversation, just said what I’d accomplished and what I predicted I could
accomplish by the deadline. She said I did the hard part and thanked me. And
then we hung up after 15 minutes. Like…that’s it.
Related to that project: Did you know that there is a
poisonous newt in Idaho? Along with rattlesnakes, bears and wolves they
are the deadliest animals in the state. If I ever go there I might have to make
up a newt based nickname.
Another friend
who pivoted from academia to industry put it this way: “I thought I would miss the rush of doing
original research, of seeing things that nobody had ever seen before and
figuring out puzzles that nobody had ever figured out yet. Part of me
does, but I found that part offset very quickly when I realized that my
employer thought that what I was doing was inherently and obviously valuable,
and paid me without me ever having to justify my work by writing grant
proposals. I hope that you find the experience equally rewarding.”
The hardest shift for me has definitely been the shift from
Poverty Mindset to Safety Consultant Mindset. I feel like this might be
difficult to describe but I will try:
The site I’m working at right now is investigating an
emerging contaminant that is currently ubiquitous. It’s the thing that
makes Teflon nonstick. It’s in sunscreen. It’s in GoreTex. It’s in anything
that’s possibly waterproof. Because of its ubiquity combined with low testing
limits, there are bananas absurd preparation
methods for this field season. Someone in the field made the uncomfortable
observation that we have more of this stuff in our bloodstream than we’re
testing for so to some extent we can’t actually be blank slates for sample
prep.
What has this meant for your regular, average, everyday
Sara? Well, the requirement on clothing is that everything is natural fibers,
eg. cotton, wool, linen (ha! Noooope). Ha! 100% cotton does not exist for women
with curves, so Target would have me believe. I have since learned that field
folk prefer Duluth or Carthartt but fuck spending that much
money on clothes before I got my first paycheck. I only had one-ish pair of
acceptable pants at the beginning of this whole thing so I bought 3 more pairs
of pants, 4 new bras (they are terrible, I hate cheap bras with a burning
passion), several new pairs of panties and a set of wool long undergarments.
The kicker: I had to wash them 6 times before I went into the field. The worse
kicker: my Laundromat is 5 blocks from my house. And I have had pitifully
little time to go do this sort of chore so we’ve paid for fluff’n’fold.
Now how does this affect poverty brain?
New clothes are a dreadful necessity that
must be avoided at all costs. Buy clothes at thrift stores, discount stores,
Walmart, Target, or just wash your current clothes cunningly to disguise the
lack of diversity in wardrobe.
Counterpoint:
I absolutely refuse to risk exposure so I need to
commit to making sure the breakthrough time on my clothing is as long as
possible. This means new clothing. And I need my boobs to have some sort of
support too, so I need more than 2 bras total.
This battle in my brain keeps coming up because I have been
trained that only the cheapest option in any situation is ever acceptable, no
matter the time cost. My “manager” actually told me in an email that my time is
more valuable than trying to get a truck on Sunday so I didn’t have to pay for
Saturday. I almost cried. I have very very rarely been told by an employer or manager
that my time or skills are valuable.
Somewhat to satisfy my poverty brain, but also to satisfy
making sure all of my food needs were met adequately: I have become the Hobo
Queen of the Quality Inn this week. I brought a rice cooker, a slow cooker and
the room has a microwave. This was my dinner tonight:
and this was how I rigged all the dishes I’ve been doing:
I have been preparing all three meals a day in my room.
Though…I did discover that the hotel has biscuits and gravy at breakfast.Yum. I think I’m still going to make myself
oatmeal. PartnerPenguin has been perfecting the art of slow cooker oatmeal.
Here’s his/our recipe:
3/4c (or 1/2c) steel cut oats
3/4c (or 1/2c) milk
3/4c (or 1/2c) water
Raisins
Strawberries
Cinnamon
Poppy or flax seeds
Put all ingredients in a Pyrex bowl thing. Place in a slow
cooker with water enough to meet the sides of the Pyrex but not overflow it.
Cook on high for 6-8 hrs. It creates enough of a double-boiler to cook the
oatmeal well but keeps the great texture of the steel cut so eating isn’t too
tedious.
So yeah. That for breakfast, sliced meats and cheese with
pickles, veg and fruit for lunch and meat of some sort for dinner. I think I’m
going to expand my meatsies prep and go full 50’s housewife and get into
microwave cooking. We’ll see.
Anyway. All this prep has been an absurd amount of time
commitment.
The final thing that’s difficult about my new job is how normal
everyone is. People have functional families. They certainly encounter challenges
but from what I’ve heard they are all very tame. I actually thought such a
thing was fiction but multiple people
have talked about events transpiring that I imagine can only happen with
functional families. They certainly encounter challenges but from what I’ve
heard they are all very tame. I caught myself mid-story today because I
realized I was so poor when I lived in a house with a gas leak for a month I
kept my head down and was just thankful for having a roof over my head instead
of being concerned about dying from the accumulated natural gas in my bedroom.
They just don’t seem to have stories like that. And I don’t know yet how to
temper my life to seem more normal than it has been. More on this topic later.
To some extent it is nice that a lot of people are much more
normal than me-in regard to anxiety at least-because they set the standard for
what kinds of actions and levels of chill should be approached in a given
situation. But it’s pretty mind-boggling. Though in some cases I am grateful to
listening to my AnxietyBrain: it has prevented me from being phone-less for a
week.
Overall I am loving the job and loving the work. I get to do
weird research. I get to read policy documentation. I get to do Quality Checks
and tell people where they fucked up, but like…they asked me to point it out
and also I’m nice about it? I get to be outside and I got a <safety
mullet> for my hat. Thanks to this job I have rad long underwear that I’ve
avoided buying for my whole life.
Ok. I think I need to shower and make my food for tomorrow,
despite that I definitely have more to say. I think I’ll make this
LiveJournal-esque and say that I’ll come back tomorrow and talk about my other
“lives.”
P.S. Here are some photos from the field:
Me, in field gear. Minus Safety Mullet (just bought it today, this was taken yesterday)
No babies in buckets. Needs to be stated, I guess.
Tren fren. It's a special freight line that branches off the national line...for some reason?
Volunteer melons! Because watermelons like composted sewage? Anyway they're fuzzy. I'll let you know if we try to eat them how they taste.
Yeah, this is just insanity pants cheap. Oatmeal costs at least $1.00/lb by us.
And because I’m feeling silly and un-original tonight, y’all
are getting one of the best videos on the Internet.
