Do you think Cleveland will ever run out of fresh water? There it is, city by one of the Great lakes, the largest surface supply of fresh water. For residents of the city, Lake Erie’s waters flow through four giant intakes, more than a dozen pumping stations, and over 5,000 miles of water mains in a seemingly endless supply of fresh water. Life must be good by the lake because life requires water, and Cleveland has water in abundance.
A water molecule in Lake Erie is a temporary resident, spending perhaps two to three years before leaving via human use, Niagara Falls or evaporation. During that brief span, fresh water can change character, especially for a lake that drains more than 30,000 square miles with factories and farms. Pollution is inevitable. Lakeside people, to put it bluntly, pee in their drinking water. Phosphorus runs off farms and causes algal blooms. Algae die, sink to the bottom, and use up oxygen, creating anoxic dead zones that support only anaerobic bacteria. Such dead water zones acquire excess manganese. Manganese colors the water. Yuk!
In a 10,000 square mile lake, no one can control where the dead zones occur, and they sometimes extend from the depths of the lake to the water company’s intakes, changing the color of the water that reaches Cleveland’s residents. Not to worry. Manganese colored water isn’t dangerous; it’s just not the clear stuff Clevelanders expect to pour from faucets.
So, there you are, a visitor to Cleveland, and you’re thirsty. “Hey,” you say to yourself, “got to be a lot of water here; I can see the giant lake outside the window.”
Your host says, “Wait, I’ll get you a glass of water,” and returns with a cloudy solution. “Oh! Don’t worry about the cloudiness,” your host says. “That happens every once in a while; we’re used to it. It’s just some water from the dead zone. In reality it’s harmless and just as healthful as clear water.”
Do you say, “Thanks, I am really thirsty”? Do you gulp without thinking?
Of course, you do hesitate. Appearance changes your notion of abundance and safety. You’re in a quandary. If you show the hesitation, you might offend your host who went out of the way to explain the cloudiness. Then, as you lift the glass to your lips, you keep repeating to yourself, “dead zone water, water from a dead zone.”
Tough to get past both that description and the cloudy appearance, right? It doesn’t matter that Cleveland’s water company allowed the water to flow through those mains to the host’s faucet, and it doesn’t matter that the host made assurances about the water’s safety. “Dead zone water,” you think. “Cloudy appearance,” you think.
A simple description and an appearance can alter acceptance of the most innocuous of substances, water, the very stuff we need to sustain life. And so descriptions and appearances alter the way we accept or reject one another regardless of reality.
A water molecule in Lake Erie is a temporary resident, spending perhaps two to three years before leaving via human use, Niagara Falls or evaporation. During that brief span, fresh water can change character, especially for a lake that drains more than 30,000 square miles with factories and farms. Pollution is inevitable. Lakeside people, to put it bluntly, pee in their drinking water. Phosphorus runs off farms and causes algal blooms. Algae die, sink to the bottom, and use up oxygen, creating anoxic dead zones that support only anaerobic bacteria. Such dead water zones acquire excess manganese. Manganese colors the water. Yuk!
In a 10,000 square mile lake, no one can control where the dead zones occur, and they sometimes extend from the depths of the lake to the water company’s intakes, changing the color of the water that reaches Cleveland’s residents. Not to worry. Manganese colored water isn’t dangerous; it’s just not the clear stuff Clevelanders expect to pour from faucets.
So, there you are, a visitor to Cleveland, and you’re thirsty. “Hey,” you say to yourself, “got to be a lot of water here; I can see the giant lake outside the window.”
Your host says, “Wait, I’ll get you a glass of water,” and returns with a cloudy solution. “Oh! Don’t worry about the cloudiness,” your host says. “That happens every once in a while; we’re used to it. It’s just some water from the dead zone. In reality it’s harmless and just as healthful as clear water.”
Do you say, “Thanks, I am really thirsty”? Do you gulp without thinking?
Of course, you do hesitate. Appearance changes your notion of abundance and safety. You’re in a quandary. If you show the hesitation, you might offend your host who went out of the way to explain the cloudiness. Then, as you lift the glass to your lips, you keep repeating to yourself, “dead zone water, water from a dead zone.”
Tough to get past both that description and the cloudy appearance, right? It doesn’t matter that Cleveland’s water company allowed the water to flow through those mains to the host’s faucet, and it doesn’t matter that the host made assurances about the water’s safety. “Dead zone water,” you think. “Cloudy appearance,” you think.
A simple description and an appearance can alter acceptance of the most innocuous of substances, water, the very stuff we need to sustain life. And so descriptions and appearances alter the way we accept or reject one another regardless of reality.
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