Ice Bucket Challentge

The lovely Madelyn Simone and I were looking at pictures on Facebook recently when she discovered her first Ice Bucket Challenge video. She watched with interest as her friend’s mother was drenched with ice water, and proceeded to watch the clip at least ten times, laughing uproariously every time the water splashed. “That’s funny, isn’t it, Madelyn?” I asked her. “No, Nana, that’s not funny – that’s hilarious,” was her response.

Since the beginning of August, the Ice Bucket Challenge has gone viral, moving from a random video on Facebook to a world-wide phenomena that has raised nearly one hundred million dollars for ALS research in less than one month. That compares to $2.6 million in donations during the same period last year. In case you boycott the internet or you’ve been holed up in a cave for a month and are clueless as to what this is, here’s what happens. When you receive an ice bucket challenge from a friend, you are expected to either dump a bucket of ice water over your head or write a one hundred dollar check to fund ALS research. Then, you get to challenge three people (or more) to do the same, and post a video of the ice dump and the challenge so that the world can watch you scream like a girl or take the frigid water without flinching.

It’s been an absolutely brilliant windfall for ALS research, especially as celebrities have gotten on board with great enthusiasm. Ben Affleck completed his challenge by tossing his wife into the pool, (to the great delight of his watching child and our Madelyn), while George W. Bush challenged his friend, Bill Clinton. I couldn’t find a video with Clinton answering the challenge, but I was able to watch New Jersey governor Chris Christie face his bucket stoically. Writer Stephen King did his wearing classic knee-length white socks, while Kermit the Frog, called out by WWE’s Vince McMahon, completed his challenge totally naked. Oprah Winfrey wins my best scream award, although Lebron’s video, with its beautiful ocean view, raised the shriek meter a notch or two as well. But celebrity involvement notwithstanding, the real key to its success is the challenge between friends, with a twenty-four hour deadline to take the plunge or write the check (or both).

Watching this sensation unfold, I’ve often wondered, how do we decide how to direct our charitable donations? The ice bucket challenge is a great gimmick, and no one can argue that ALS research isn’t a valuable cause. ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, is horrific in what it does to the body, and there currently is no cure. But what about the pink-ribboned cancer needs, or the community-wide local United Way, or the scourge of cystic fibrosis, a battle faced by my friend’s grandchildren and another friend’s daughter? Are they less worthy or in need of our support?

I also wonder how this financial boon will be managed by the ALS Association. In early August of this year, they awarded $3.5 million in grants for research, which funded twenty-one research projects. Now that same group has thirty times as much cash. How should they spend all the additional money pouring into their coffers? Can they set up an endowment so the funds will last longer than the melting ice? Or should they dive head first into searching out new research possibilities? That might be more difficult than it sounds at first hearing, as there may not be enough qualified researchers prepared to move in that direction immediately. Do they even have enough people to open the water-stained envelopes stuffed with checks?

When you do the math in this pyramid-like scheme, it’s only a matter of time before nearly every person in the world will be challenged at least once, and the popular ones a hundred times. I’m quietly hoping that like the streaking craze that took off in the early 70s, the Ice Bucket Challenge will be a fad whose days are numbered, preferably before I get called out. This is definitely one time when I don’t want to hear the name Nana from the lips of the lovely Madelyn Simone.

Ready or Not, Here I Come

The rhythm of my childhood was established by the Western New York school calendar, with the first day of school falling on the Wednesday after Labor Day. The same schedule was in effect in Philadelphia, where my children began their elementary school career. Upon moving to Ohio, we discovered that school typically began in the third week of August, quite the disappointment for children who loved the freedom of the summer schedule, but a welcome occurrence for parents who were tired of the classic words: “There’s nothing to do,” that typically flow from the lips of children by the second week of summer vacation. Even after almost twenty-five years in Ohio, that early start date catches me unaware. It was ninety degrees this week. How can it be time to go back to school?

A trip to one of the big box office supply stores was an indicator that many parents weren’t fully prepared for that auspicious day. The store’s shelves are generally the model of precision, but their disorder was evidence that frantic parents had been rushing through its aisles, determined that their child had every single item on the back-to-school list, including the six boxes of Kleenex.

While stuffed backpacks and stylish ensembles are in order for the first day of school, much more valuable to the long-term success of our children is the physical, social and intellectual readiness of a child for kindergarten.

Two incidents stick out from our family history. When Drew entered first grade, the returning students reported to the auditorium, but new students to Shawmont Elementary were to go directly to their classroom. Drew and another boy were the only children in the room until the veterans were dismissed with their teacher, and while I stayed with Drew until the teacher arrived, the other little boy was abandoned to his new environment without the comfort of a familiar face. Within five minutes, the new first-grader had his shiny Thundercats lunchbox on his desk, and proceeded to eat his lunch – at 8 o’clock in the morning. His school preparation hadn’t included any instruction about eating lunch in the cafeteria at noon.

In Dan’s first weeks of kindergarten, his teacher used the letter of the week system. Week one, “A” came home traced in yarn, then “B’ in macaroni, and“C” in glitter for week three. At Dan’s first kindergarten conference, I asked why she made such a concerted effort to reinforce the letters of the alphabet. Like the lovely Madelyn Simone, our gifted granddaughter, Dan had recognized all his letters by age four. Why was she spending so much time on something children knew before they come to kindergarten? I was taken aback by her response, for more than half the children in her classroom could not identify more than five letters in the alphabet when they entered kindergarten.

Twenty years later, too many children in Ashland County were not doing much better. In a 2009 assessment of oral language, rhyming, letter identification and alliteration, elements identified as essential for reading through KRA-L testing, 46% of Ashland five-year-olds were identified as needing targeted instruction, and 19% needed intensive instruction to succeed in their first year of school. That percentage was not acceptable to educators and community leaders, so the United Way of Ashland County, the Family and Children First Council, and SPARC P-16 determined that school readiness would be a community-wide initiative, aiming for increased awareness, early identification of children at risk, and supports for family involvement, and from what I’ve heard, this intentional, community-wide intervention is making a difference for our kids.

Of course, letter recognition isn’t the only indicator for school readiness. A year away from kindergarten, we want our Madelyn to be prepared when she climbs aboard the big yellow bus next August. As we practiced her name recently, she proceeded to tell me, “I don’t want to make an ‘M.’ I want to make an ‘H.’” We may be able to put a check beside “letter recognition,” but we may be in trouble on “follows directions.” Hopefully, creativity and independence will be welcome in her classroom. If not, at least we’ve got another year to get her ready.

No Words

Three of our daughters are gone. Three Ashland area families are walking through the darkest of valleys, marked by their bleak signposts: the shrill of a phone call, the chill of the sterile corridors of the ICU, and the array of casket samples that will forever define August 2014. Two fatal automobile crashes in Ashland County have left families in mourning, drivers stunned, and first responders shaken to the core.

We knew these girls. They walked the halls of the high school with our children. They posted silly pictures on Facebook. They stood on the brink of adulthood, full of hope.

We’ve chatted with their grandparents, we’ve worked with their aunts and uncles, and we’ve strolled past each other at the county fair. These are our children, not an actor whose movies we admire, or an eighteen-year-old boy in Ferguson, Missouri. They belong to us, and in this loss, a community grieves alongside their bereft families.

We know it could have been us. We drive Route 30 and Route 42 every day. Our kids jump in the car with friends they’ve known forever or are just getting to know, without a wave good-bye. We trust them to click their seatbelt and to use good judgment, but the day comes when we have to let them pull out of the driveway without us.

And then the unthinkable happens, and life is forever changed. These invincible teens, with stars in their eyes and laughter on their lips, are gone in an instant, or slip away after an excruciating stay in the ICU, where time itself stands still.

Family members and high school classmates are in shock. How can this be? We were just together. I just received a text from her. We planned to see each other today. Nothing can prepare us for this sudden loss, this horrific intrusion into the rhythm of life in small town Ohio.

At first, the questions are specific. What happened? When? Where? Who else was involved? After a while, the finality of the answers sinks in. No, we’re not dreaming. We see the mangled car and we weep.

As a community, we ask the broader questions. How can we keep our children safe? Could we have done anything to prevent these tragedies? How could this happen here?

And as we read the Facebook posts and gaze solemnly at the young faces who stare at us from the obituary page, we ask the ultimate question: Why? Suggestions that God needed another flower for his garden or another voice in the angel choir are hollow. I, for one, have found no satisfactory answer for that question. All I know to say is that God is with us in our loss. “Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted” (Matthew 5:4).

Yet, still, we do our best. Pastors reach deep within their own experience of faith to prepare words of comfort. Counselors, armed with boxes of Kleenex, stand ready on the first day of school to greet students with grief support in lieu of words of welcome. We sit together in silence, we light a candle, and we pray.

And still, we know that life will go on. Those who dearly loved these young women will somehow stumble their way through the maze of loss and grief, forever changed. I turn again to the words of Anne Lamott to describe the experience: “You lose someone you can’t live without, and your heart will be badly broken, and the bad news is that you never completely get over the loss of your beloved. But this is also the good news. They live forever in your broken heart that doesn’t seal back up. And you come through. It’s like having a broken leg that never heals perfectly—that still hurts when the weather gets cold, but you learn to dance with the limp.”

For the rest of us, we’ll whisper a prayer of comfort for the families, and then resume our daily tasks. But we won’t forget, for when we drive past the crosses on the highway, we’ll pause to remember Brooke, Christianna, and Cheyenne, and the harsh August days when unspeakable tragedy struck our community.

Question, Persuade, Refer, Live

In preparation for my weekly column, I keep a running list of possible topics. I can pull themes from column A when needed, ideas to draw upon when the calendar or headlines don’t provide any inspiration. Others topic are time-sensitive, based on holidays, seasons, local events, or world news that sparks an image or idea, my column B. With the death of actor Robin Williams, “QPR” made the leap from column A to column B, for once again, an oh-so-familiar face succumbed to suicide.

Five days later, is there anything more to be written? By now, his death by hanging is old news, although it will never be old news to his family and friends, who will grieve him deeply. Just as the eyes of the world abandoned the young women kidnapped in Nigeria, so too will we soon forget Robin Williams. The reality of today’s world, spinning at the speed of the light of social media, is that my post needed to be up on Facebook by Tuesday morning, and I missed that deadline.

Yet here’s the truth. It’s not just about Robin. Oh, we loved how he could generate side-splitting laughter in ways that seemed effortless. We remember Mork saying “nanu nanu,” and we can still hear him rumble the familiar words, “Good morning, Viet Nam.” I have used his line from “Good Will Hunting” more often than I can count with folks who are struggling with the scars of the past. “It’s not your fault!”

We’ll read his daughter’s tribute tweet and sigh with the pain she is feeling, but few of us knew Robin personally. But what we do know personally is depression and her kissing cousin, suicidal ideation, a plan or a preoccupation with suicide. Some of us are on a first-name basis, while others made the acquaintance of these unwelcome cousins as they insinuated their troubling presence into our family circle, workplace, or congregation. “Depression,” writes former Ashland resident and United Methodist pastor Adam Baker, is “a sorrow that infuses blood and sinew and bone, that shades the eyes of the heart and frosts over even the windows of the soul . . . And many, many, many are touched and shaped by it.”

For me, suicide first came knocking on my door in fifth grade. We sat in alphabetical order in those days, and so JoAnn Streeter always sat behind James Stitt. One day, there was no freckle-faced boy to pass papers to me. James had killed himself, unfathomable to me.

My Philadelphia neighbor overdosed. A troubled young man in our congregation in Canton jumped ten stories. Three families in our Kroc Center circle lost loved ones to self-inflicted gunshots, and will never be the same.

What do we do? That’s where QPR comes in. QPR trains gatekeepers, people who regularly come in contact with individuals and families in distress, to question, persuade and refer. According to proponent Dr. Paul Quinnett, QPR training “strategically positions people in existing personal or professional relationships to recognize and refer” those at risk of suicide. Through the support of the Ashland County Mental Health and Recovery Board, QPR training is available so that we might engage in life-saving, caring dialogue.

If, as Adam Baker reminds us, “Hope is a weapon we [can] cling to, allowing our communal song to fill our aching world,” this practical mental health intervention has its place in hope’s arsenal, alongside professional mental health support, to combat the secrecy, shame and isolation associated with depression and self-harm.

Theologian Frederick Buechner understands: “It is absolutely crucial, therefore, to keep in constant touch with what is going on in your own life’s story and to pay close attention to what is going on in the stories of others’ lives.”

Writer Anne Lamott provides a similar perspective: “Gravity yanks us down, even a man as stunning in every way as Robin. We need a lot of help getting back up. And even with our battered banged up tool boxes and aching backs, we can help others get up, even when for them to do so seems impossible or at least beyond imagining.” As we cling to hope. As we question, persuade, refer. As we live.

The Sand at the Foot of Union Ave.

The 2014 Shade family vacation to the shores of the Atlantic Ocean is now history, as Larry and I shared a rented cottage in Old Orchard Beach, Maine, with the lovely Madelyn Simone and her parents. The monotony of our interminable Interstate drive quickly dissipated as the scent and sound of the ocean washed away our weariness that first night. We were on vacation, we were together, and for a few short days, all was well with the world.

The word vacation evolves from words that mean freedom or exemption. It wasn’t until the mid-nineteenth century that vacations became accessible for middle class Americans, often with a religious component, part of the reason for our choice of destination. I’m especially glad our Salvation Army forebears decided on a shore location for their camp meeting gathering.

Methodists founded the Old Orchard Beach and Camp Meeting Association in 1873, the same year the Boston and Maine Railroad came to Old Orchard Beach, thus making it an easily-reached destination. In 1885, (only five years after the fledgling mission came to the United States), the Salvation Army began camp meetings at the site, and our attendance at a mandated conference many years ago first introduced us to its allure.

For thirty-five years, our family lived an itinerant life in ministry, appointed to our place of residence and work by our denominational leadership. As our children grew up, they resided in eight different parsonages in three states, but every summer, for at least twenty-five years, we have made the pilgrimage to Maine, where the sand is always warm and welcoming at the foot of Union Avenue.

In today’s exploit-driven culture, many people look for exotic locations to explore during their vacation days. Not so for our family. Part of what draws us to this place is the sameness, the routine of our days away. The first taste of Rocco’s Pizza, the scent of fried seafood, and descent of the seagulls over our left-over French fries at the Clambake all contribute to a sense of tradition in Old Orchard.

Thanks to our contemporary phone navigation apps, we no longer get lost en route to Two Lights (a long-standing family tradition), but its age-old rocks provide a place for reflection and for photos that measure the growth of our family from year to year. Yet most days, we don’t even get in the car, walking to the beach, the pier, the grove (as the old-timers still call the Pavilion), and even the corner store for another loaf of bread.

While she is not usually an early riser, Madelyn greeted me one morning with a kiss, and while her parents slept on, we donned our hoodies and quietly snuck out of the house for an early morning walk. What fun it was to watch the beach come to life through her inquisitive eyes. Madelyn delighted in seeing how close she could get to the waves without getting soaked, but she wasn’t too successful. As we dripped our way back up the hill to our cottage, I stored that hour of time, even with its ensuing shivers, among my cherished memories.

Part of the rhythm of my week in Maine includes a solitary sojourn to the sunrise before the rest of the world awakens. Since I refuse to set an alarm on vacation, I’m never quite sure which day this will occur, but an internal clock somehow nudges me awake for that yearly appointment. In landlocked Ashland County, there are days when I hunger for the power of the ocean, her immensity, her rhythms, and her cleansing. I’m grateful that as I waded through the tides, her healing balm did its work.

As Maya Angelou reminds us, “Each person deserves a day away . . . Each of us needs to withdraw from the cares which will not withdraw from us.” Whether at the shore, on a mountaintop, or under the silver moon in our backyard, a withdrawing space offers freedom from the burdens of daily cares, even if we can only be there in memory. Stay-cation or vacation, here’s wishing you a day away every now and then. 

No Crying in Baseball

What do Marilyn Monroe and Nicole Kidman have in common? Here’s a hint. “A kiss on the hand may be quite continental, but diamonds are a girl’s best friend.” Marilyn’s performance of these lyrics in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes is iconic, while Nicole’s rendition in Moulin Rouge is as scintillating as the jewels she sings about. Yet there’s another kind of diamond calling to me these days: the baseball diamond

Two images from the past come to mind. The first originated in a weekly jaunt our family took to watch my dad play in a church softball league. We’d hop into the station wagon and head to one of the baseball diamonds scattered across Tonawanda and North Tonawanda, and while I don’t remember any championship rings, they sure did have a lot of fun.

My second diamond memory is a bit nightmarish. I worked as a playground and wading pool attendant for the recreation department, and one summer afternoon I got drafted when the scheduled umpire didn’t show up for a baseball game. I knew quite a bit about the game from my years watching my dad play, but calling balls and strikes on the field was a horrendous experience for a fifteen year old, especially when I lost count of how many pitches there had been. Never again!

Baseball has been called America’s Favorite Pastime, and fortunately my fledgling umpire experience didn’t ruin my appetite for the game. Since moving to northeast Ohio in 1990, I’ve faithfully followed the Cleveland Indians, from the days of Mike “Grover” Hargrove in the old Municipal Stadium to today’s team with Tito at the helm. The Tribe has had its ups and downs, but there’s nothing like hearing the words, “Play Ball,” on the corner of Carnegie and Ontario.

I also appreciate the recreational aspect of the game, running the gamut from a Wiffle Ball challenge in the back yard to a fast-pitch tourney at Brookside Park. I’ve been excited about the ASA Men’s 50-and-Over Fast-Pitch National Tournament here in Ashland this weekend, as well as the twenty-fifth annual Moose Softball Tournament. The diamonds of Ashland will be sparkling for sure.

As part of the baseball-flavored weekend, Ashland Main Street brought Madonna, Tom Hanks, and Geena Davis to the big, big screen last night for a Downtown Walk-in Movie. They starred in A League of Their Own, the story of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL), a real-life operation in existence from 1943 to 1954. It’s a fun movie, with memorable scenes and characters, and quite a few life lessons as well.

The most repeated line from the movie comes from manager Jimmy Dugan. After getting blasted by Jimmy for a mistake on the field, Evelyn begins to cry. Jimmy asks her: “Are you crying? There's no crying! There's no crying in baseball!”

In another scene, Dottie decides she’s going to quit the team to be with her husband who had returned from the war, so tries to leave quietly. Dugan, himself a washed-up former player, tells her: “Sneaking out like this, quitting, you'll regret it for the rest of your life. Baseball is what gets inside you. It's what lights you up, you can't deny that.” Dottie answers: “It just got too hard.” Dugan responds wisely: “It's supposed to be hard. If it wasn't hard, everyone would do it. The hard . . . is what makes it great.”

What is it about baseball that makes it great, and that keeps us coming back for more? In A Field of Dreams, James Earl Jones (Terrence Mann) said it best: “They'll watch the game and it'll be as if they dipped themselves in magic waters. The memories will be so thick they'll have to brush them away from their faces. People will come, Ray. The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It has been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again. But baseball has marked the time.”

This weekend, baseball is marking the time for our community. Pass the peanuts and Crackerjack, please, ‘cause there’s a diamond in my future. Batter up! 

Not your grandmother's library!

As a young girl, I’d climb on my bicycle for my weekly trek to the public library of my hometown. Housed in the former New York Central and Hudson River Railroad station, the library was small, dark and hushed. As the mysteries of its card catalog were revealed, I discovered a vibrant world far beyond its walls, beginning my lifelong romance with literature of all genres. Even as a young reader, I understood Jane Austen’s words: “But for my own part, if a book is well written, I always find it too short.”

Whenever I immigrated to a new community, one of my first tasks was to acquire a library card. The architecture varied from city to city, but once I entered its doors, I felt like Maya Angelou: “I always knew from that moment, from the time I found myself at home in that little segregated library in the South, all the way up until I walked up the steps of the New York City library, I always felt, in any town, if I can get to a library, I'll be OK. It really helped me as a child, and that never left me.”

With the advent of the Internet and the proliferation of e-books, I’ve worried that libraries may be headed down the path of extinction to join the card catalogue. But if my experience with the Ashland Public Library is any indication, libraries are here to stay, for the days of musty, silent libraries are long gone. Cell phone usage is still discouraged, but the air of today’s library is punctuated with the click of computer keys and the giggles of children discovering an old favorite on its shelves.

How do I love thee, my dear library? Let me count the ways. I have to start with the books. “One must always be careful of books," said Tessa, "and what is inside them, for words have the power to change us,” writes Cassandra Clare in Clockwork Angel. I stubbornly remain in the purist camp of readers, preferring the stories in my life to unfold on the pages of a real book. But for those with differing inclinations, the public library offers large print books, e-books, books on CDs, music CDs, and films of all sorts. Why, our public library even lends out Nintendo Wii and DS games.

With the lovely Madelyn Simone in tow on a recent visit (or was she towing me?), I was introduced to the wonders of today’s library through the eyes of a child. We played checkers, built towers, and listened to Green Eggs and Ham on the computer at least five times. Say it with me: “I do not like them, Sam I am, I do not like green eggs and ham.” We also checked out the library’s calendar for July, discovering storytimes, a school-age science camp, a tinkerlab, and a family Kooky Karnival. And true to form, she wanted to stay long past my planned departure time. As we finally left, I may have been heard to whisper, “This sure ain’t your grandmother’s library.”

Not everyone has computer and/or Internet access in their home, so our public libraries fill the gap for an essential part of daily living. Can’t get into town to the library? No problem, for the bookmobile makes more than twenty-five stops throughout our county in the course of a week’s time. And there’s a terrific library book sale today starting at 9 a.m. I’m in need of a few mindless novels for the beach, but I’m out of town today. Bummer. Guess I’ll have to make a trip to the library next week.

One of the joys of going to the library is that you never know who you’ll meet. Why, just this week, library visitors got to chat with Dr. Seuss. I wasn’t there, but a little bird told me he was heard to say, “The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you'll go.” And here’s his key: “There's no limit to how much you'll know, depending how far beyond zebra you go.” That’s the true magic of the library.

Water

We recently enjoyed an extended weekend visit to my mother, which also included a fun time at Fantasy Island with the lovely Madelyn Simone and her cousins. While at the homestead, I worried that there was a bit of a poltergeist spirit present, as we had some minor trouble with the normal operations of Mom’s house.

First to go was the remote control for the television. Changing the battery didn’t solve the problem, my usual response for anything vaguely electronic, so I was at a loss as to what to do. Thank goodness my brother knew where the instructions were and re-programmed it.

That same evening, the remote control for the garage door didn’t work, so I had to close it from inside the garage, head out the back door, and stumble through the side yard, potentially disturbing the monster dog at the neighbors. Would I live to see the sunrise so that we could get a new battery?

I’m glad to testify that I made it safely past the canine fiend, into the safety of the house and the familiarity of my childhood bed. But when I turned on the faucet in the morning, there was no water. Now what did I break? I was getting a bit paranoid about what I might touch next, until Larry noticed the city trucks at the end of the street. A water main break was the culprit, presenting us with the challenge of how to complete our morning ablutions prior to visiting the bustling farmer’s market. With only thirty-two ounces of bottled water in the house, we managed to brush our teeth, and my always-prepared mom had filled the coffeemaker to the brim before she went to bed, ready to be brewed by the first riser in the family (not me!). But no showers that morning, so I took a quick dip in the backyard pool to wash off the outer level of grit and grime associated with the previous day at the amusement park.

Upon our return from the market and the grocery store, with gallons of water in hand, the water main had been repaired and water was flowing from the faucets again. Hooray! Now I could get a real shower.

The irony of our short-term water loss was the pool in the backyard filled with water, and our proximity to the mighty Niagara River, within walking distance. Yet the truth of the words of the Rime of the Ancient Mariner remained: “Water, water, everywhere, nor any drop to drink.”

What a First World perspective I have, whining over a small inconvenience. Yet as The Water Project reports, nearly one billion people in the developing world don't have access to clean, safe drinking water. The United Nations claims that “water use has been growing at more than twice the rate of population increase in the last century, and . . . an increasing number of regions are chronically short of water.”

One devastating water issue has been the prevalence of Guinea worm disease, a parasitic infection spread through the use of stagnant water. The Carter Center, led by former President Jimmy Carter and First Lady Rosalyn Carter, has worked diligently since 1986 to coordinate efforts to wipe out this ancient curse through teaching people in affected areas to filter all drinking water. Guinea worm infections have now been reduced by 99%, and are close to being eradicated.

As so often happens, once I focused on the concerns surrounding water, I couldn’t escape its voice. So as I viewed the Fragile Waters exhibit at the Massillon Museum, on display until mid-September, the delicate connection between water and life that my reading had revealed was visually confirmed. The 119 black and white photographs, created over the course of a century by Ansel Adams, Ernest Brooks II, and Dorothy Kerper Monnelly, speak to the crucial role that water plays for all life on planet Earth. Powerful images.

In his inaugural address in 1994, South African president Nelson Mandela said, “Let there be work, bread, water and salt for all.” I echo his words today, that the parched of our world might find sustenance in the simple gift of water, clean and safe.