🌓 Spring is here.
March 20 was the vernal equinox — the turn of Spring in the Northern Hemisphere and Autumn for our friends south of the Equator. Earth came oh-so-close to perfect balance, as night and day were ~8 minutes from being equal.
With Spring’s onset, it’s natural to think of rain, which offers a fluid segue to the theme of this edition of our newsletter: WATER.
💧 Water is life.
For reasons that become evident in the 🍩 Tim-bits section below, water has flooded my consciousness for the last two weeks, and I anticipate it staying there, eddying, into the foreseeable future.
Reflection on my adult years, revealed that I’ve taken water for granted. I turn on the faucet, and clean, potable water streams out at my desired temperature. I use as much water as I need for every use I can imagine — it’s seemingly limitless. The water that flushes my toilet is the same water I drink — each equally safe. I use water once and dispose of it; though it could be reused or recycled. The monthly water bill is relatively inexpensive, so I don’t feel a financial pressure to conserve water.
Statistically speaking, many Americans experience and perceive water similarly to this.
It’s there when we need it. Until it isn’t. And when it isn’t, we’re often helpless.
We need to transform our relationship with water.
I need to be grateful for water and be mindful of water’s sacredness and vital importance — biologically, spiritually, and culturally. I need to acknowledge the scarcity of water — it’s a finite resource; the water we have today is all the water we’ve ever had and all the water we’ll ever have. I need to protect and preserve water, through meaningful, science-informed behavioral changes and effort.
And people in similarly privileged positions need to shift as well, so we can begin to collectively alter our awareness and practices.
A transformation must acknowledge, put an end to, and work to heal the trauma of colonization, environmental racism, and other injustices that disproportionately affect vulnerable communities — historically and today.
Millions of Americans do not have ready access to water — like much of the Navajo Nation and other tribal communities, folks in Appalachia, and the people in Flint, Michigan. Over 2.2 million Americans lack running water and 44 million lack safe drinking water (DigDeep.com). And then there’s the rest of the planet. 😥
People who currently lack water have a human right to access water from a faucet and trust that it’s safe and healthy. Water Protectors in Minnesota and worldwide have the human rights (and often treaty rights) to see their waterways and lands liberated from the threat of destruction by unnecessary, profit-and-power-driven oil pipelines. Front-line communities across the country deserve justice, which requires everyone to recognize their respective roles in the injustice.
Water justice is part of climate justice.
...More on water in future editions.🚰🚰🚰
Tim-bits ✨
🍩🍩🍩
🤠 Howdy from the Falls
Updates from our family’s neck of the woods:
🚚 March is our last full month residing in New Mexico for now. In mid-April, we’ll move back to California and settle down in the small, rural town of Sebastopol, ~50 miles north of SF. We’re stoked to return to the Bay Area, where we got hitched in 2018 and where we’ll find many of the people we love and miss as we re-emerge (eventually vaccinated) from our pandemic hunker. We’ll have a big yard for Finn to play and me to garden. We think it’ll give us an ideal balance between staying connected to nature and having access to The City we love.
📔 Field Notes
Highlights from projects I’m working on at the [home] office:
🌊 On March 15, I dove into a startup studio-esque program called X Genesis that’s designed to focus entrepreneurial energy [of its participants] on solving “wicked problems” at the intersection of water and climate change.
As a prospective founder/CEO, I’m two weeks into a four-week process of discovering potential opportunities and solutions related to water and climate. If a promising idea bubbles up by the end of four weeks, I’ll take that idea into the validation phase of the program, where we determine the idea’s viability as a sustainable business.
This experience is designed to support entrepreneurs to find founder-opportunity fit and ultimately launch a new venture; though not launching a company would not be a failure. I’m excited to see where the currents take me, and I’ll keep you posted right here!
✅ Climate action together
I only invite others to take action that I’m taking, too. Three minutes x three actions = nine minutes to speak your voice thrice:
📝 Write to President Biden to ask him to #StopLine3.
If you’re not familiar with Line 3, Winona LaDuke explains it in 3 minutes; and I recommend watching the LN3 Film (38 min).
🗣️ Write to President Biden to ask him to shut down the Dakota Access Pipeline.
If you want to learn more about Standing Rock and the #NoDAPL movement, I suggest viewing the film AWAKE (and sharing with others!)
✍️ Sign a petition to urge President Biden to take action for the ocean.
“The ocean absorbs 90+% of the heat caused by our emissions and 25+% of our excess CO2” → the ocean’s waters play an enormous role in the climate crisis.
🤝 Aspiring to allyship
I invite others to join me in the following efforts to be an ally to Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC):
🛍 Support Indigenous artists by buying their creations. Here are three of my faves:
White Bear Moccasins by Shauna White Bear
Kokom Scrunchies by Mya (who’s ten years old!)
Thunder Voice Hat Co by Thundervoice Eagle and team
🧘🏽 Meditative moments
A simple way to welcome a moment of calm to our day:
🌬 Sit with music from a flute.
My father turned me on to a Native American artist named R. Carlos Nakai. I find his songs provide lovely accompaniment to transcendence through states of consciousness. Listen to and support him on Bandcamp, Soundcloud, and Spotify.
⏯️ Now "playing"
Film, books, podcasts, and other amusing and enlightening stuff I recommend:
🎥 FILM: Necessity: Oil, Water, and Climate Resistance — watch the trailer, support the project.
📚 BOOK: We are Water Protectors — a children’s book written by Carole Lindstrom (Anishinabe/Métis) and illustrated by Michaela Goade, who won the Caldecott Medal for this work (the first Native American to do so).
🎙 POD: How 2 Save a Planet episode: The Tribe that's Moving Earth (and Water) to Solve the Climate Crisis — learn about water’s role in ecosystems.
🍩🍩🍩
Welp, the water cooler is dry. I hope thirsts were quenched.
If water or any other topic here makes a splash with you and you’d like to dive deeper, hit reply or leave a comment!
If you know someone who might connect with this edition of the newsletter, please click the share button below.
Stay hydrated, stay healthy.
💙
Tim Falls
I've been a fan of R. Carlos Nakai since I was little. The first CD my folks bought during their transition from LPs was one of his. There are two songs of his that when they come up on the spa streaming channels I can still whistle note-for-note.
I appreciate the perspective on the challenges of water. From the natural resources governance side of things, all we ever do is fight about water. It's a fight represented by colleagues who are wicked smart, and lead with passion and purpose vs. those business interests that rely on water for their livelihood. We have such a tragic relationship with water.