A Curious Statistical Anomaly

Today is blog action day and the topic is water. About two thirds (2/3) of our planet is covered with water and yet many people do not have access to clean water. Of all the water on the planet only about one percent is fresh water than we can drink and we are continually polluting that water. [Note: These numbers and figures differ slightly depending on which authority you get the numbers from — I picked conservative numbers.]

Blog Action Day 2010: Water from Blog Action Day on Vimeo.

Many of today’s blogs will probably deal with the facts and figures of water, water contamination, pollution, and the need for clean water. I’m going to talk about me — after all this is my blog.

Before we moved to our present house, my husband and I lived in cities and water was no problem — it was just there unless the water main broke. Water to drink. Water to cook with. Water to wash with. Water to flush toilets. Water for house plants. It was just there. In some places it didn’t taste quite right so we got a Britta filter — problem solved.

Then fast forward to our present house and we have a well. Our house sits on 5 acres with its own well and septic system. Now we had to think about water and sewage. We have to be careful what we flush down the toilet because it’s going to go through the septic system and back out into the groundwater — hopefully clean again. If you put the wrong stuff in, the system may not work and that’s an expensive proposition of pumping it out, and so on.

But drinking water hasn’t been a problem. The well is deep and the water has been tested and is safe to drink. There’s an electric pump that brings the water up from that deep well and into the house. No electricity means no water.

A few years back, a hurricane knocked out the power and we were without water for over a week. No pump, no water. Earlier that year we’d bought a rain barrel which sat under a drain pipe from the roof. We’d been using that water to water the garden so we wouldn’t be stressing the well. With no electricity, we could use that water to flush the toilet but it wasn’t drinkable. We had to travel and buy water at stores; an expensive proposition when you needed water for everything — drinking, cooking, washing dishes, washing us.

That experience really made us appreciate just how reliant we were on technology. I remembered staying at a camp when I was a kid that had a hand-pump to bring water into the kitchen sink. But, electric pumps have replaced that in our lives and now without electricity we’re without many of the basics we take for granted — one of which is water.

Now, think about the many people living on this planet who can’t buy clean water. People who need to collect water from rivers, streams, rain barrels and then take their chances drinking it that it won’t make them sick — or kill them. We’re not talking fancy smart waters or flavored waters — just plain clean, disease and parasite free, water. 42000 people die each week from drinking unclean water. Think about that — that’s twenty times the population of the little town I grew up in in Maine. That’s every week just because they lack clean drinkable water.

Humans need water to survive. I’ve heard, but haven’t verified, that you can survive longer without food than you can without water. Yet, we treat our planet as if all its resources are infinite. They are not. While water is in many ways renewable because it can be treated, filtered by the ground, evaporated and returned via rain, it’s not a perfect system in the face of humanities every increasing abuse of our planet and its resources.

In my family we do what we can to help. We use rain barrels and recaptured water for gardening. We try not to buy bottled water and instead use our own water in reusable water bottles whenever possible. When we do buy, we try to buy where some of the money goes toward clean water programs. We try to put our efforts and money into programs and actions that will help everyone sharing the planet with us.

We’re all on this planet together and it’s about time we all spent a bit of time thinking about how we use it and how we can help others to have the basic necessities of life and the most basic of these is clean drinking water.

Mr. Darcy’s Obsession by Abigail Reynolds. Sourcebooks Landmark, ISBN: 978-1-4022-4092-8. Pages: 346. Published: October 2010. List Price: $14.99 (Amazon: $10.19 / Kindle: $9.68). Cover images ©Bridgeman Art Library; NinaMalyna / Fotolia.com.

Mr. Darcy’s Obsession by Abigail Reynolds is definitely a What if story.  The divergence point for this what if story occurs when Elizabeth Bennet is visiting Charlotte near Rosings.  Elizabeth receives word that her father is very ill before Mr. Darcy gets a chance to give his horrendously inept proposal.  She rushes home and not long after Mr. Bennet dies, Mr. Collins takes possession of Longbourn. Elizabeth is now out of reach and Mr. Bingley never gets a second chance with Jane Bennet.

Months have passed and Mr. Darcy has not forgotten Elizabeth. Bingley opted to bury his disappointment in work and left London to become actively involved in his businesses.  While visiting Darcy, Bingley tells him that he met Elizabeth Bennet near Kew Gardens.  He goes further and tells Darcy that she’s living with her aunt and uncle in Cheapside caring for their children and that Jane married a milliner shortly before her father died and the rest of the family are living with Mrs. Bennet’s sister in her apartment.

After Bingley leaves, Darcy can’t forget that Elizabeth is in London and he determines to see her – at least from a distance.  Well, a distance isn’t good enough and soon with the help of a street urchin in the neighborhood that he hires to spy for him, he manages to meet her on her daily walk and resume their acquaintance. On these walks he learns that while time may have past, his heart is as much taken with her as it ever was.

Of course, nothing is going to go smoothly because while the characters are the same, Elizabeth Bennet’s situation is more reduced now than it was when they first met.  Darcy begins to realize that just because someone is born into privilege and wealth doesn’t necessarily make them worth knowing.  He begins to truly see the behavior of his family as they inform him who Georgianna will marry with no consideration for her feelings or well-being.  Finally, he begins to evaluate his own beliefs and assumptions about class and realizes that the person, not the rank, is what is important.  It’s not an easy change for him and essentially this conversion runs throughout the book as a secondary plot thread — though truth to be told, without this thread Darcy would have to walk away from all that he loves and holds dear.

Meanwhile the story, because of the changes caused by the divergence from the original Pride and Prejudice, follows along with the same major plot points occurring with minor variations. The changed circumstances of Elizabeth and her family members and Jane’s marriage mean that there are other social obligations and entanglements. These are dealt with in a manner that makes the story flow smoothly and, more importantly, believably from the divergence point to the ending without seeming forced.

Darcy isn’t the only one questioning his beliefs and his assumptions.  Bingley also has changed as he’s lost Jane and it’s only in losing any hope of marriage to her that he realizes that he’s often followed the advice of others rather than trusting his own heart. Bingley also sees his level of society with a more critical eye and doesn’t like what’s revealed. As for Elizabeth, she has found a strength to maintain her dignity, humor, and concern for other even though she’s had to do things that she’d never been brought up to do.

Reynolds maintains the inner integrity of the Austen characters.  You may find the characters in changed circumstances but you’ll recognize them.  They act pretty much as you expect with the givens of the new situation in which they find themselves. There are no modern sensibilities imposed on them, they are as you’d expect them to be.  Reynolds has given us an excellent retelling of the tale with this single divergence point playing out to its inevitable conclusion.

Don’t hesitate to purchase Mr. Darcy’s Obsession, Reynolds has managed to remain true to atmosphere and language of the original work while taking a path that Austen didn’t.  While not in the Gothic tradition, Mr. Darcy’s Obsession has much of the dark broodiness and biting criticism of a Gothic but lightened with humor and hope — making it a satisfying and compelling novel that you’ll wish to read over and over again.

Managed to figure out what was wrong with the car to keep it from starting … water in the gas line.

However, that meant that I didn’t get my reviews all done for SFRevu so I’ve got to do them tomorrow. We did go live with the October issue but I’ll be adding more of my stuff tomorrow and did manage to proof a few more things today to go into the issue.

Monday the “official” announcements will go out but if you get a chance check out October but stay in touch because we’ll be covering ComicCon in New York this month with updates from our reporters attending the event.