Dear Friends & Concerned Citizens, November 5, 2020

Election day is over (whew!), but now begins election week…(or weeks? A month? Months?!). There will be time to discuss the results and how they impact the waters of West Virginia, but most importantly in this moment, we want to check on you. Are you doing OK?

The anxiety we’re all feeling takes a toll on our bodies and minds. It takes a toll on who we are, and how we feel about each other. With all the emotions we’re feeling, mundane tasks like grocery shopping or checking email become insurmountable. In more ways than one, 2020 has made it hard to breathe.

Yesterday, during a virtual staff meeting, we found ourselves reflecting on a recent breathing and mindfulness exercise we participated in during a socially-distanced staff retreat at Babcock State Park. Lately, we’ve all found ourselves turning to the strategies we learned to find a little calm and catch our collective breath.

We want to share a couple tips to help you regain control (of your breath at least!) if you are feeling anxious.

>> Go outside. You don’t have to go far. From state parks and forests to local hiking trails to your own backyard, anywhere you can feel the breeze, hear the birds, and see the sun.

>> Get grounded. This step is literal. Take off your shoes and socks and let your feet touch the ground. Think about it – how often do you ever truly feel the soft grass or crinkle a fallen leaf or dig through loose soil? Let those toes fly!

>> Breathe in, breathe out… Once you’re in a comfortable position – sitting, standing, wherever you feel relaxed – inhale slowly through your nose, fill your belly (you read that right) up with air, and then slowly exhale through your nose or mouth. Continue breathing this way until you feel calm, peaceful, and ready to go on with your day.

Try it right now: take one deep breath in while you count to four, then slowly release it as you count to four. Practice this breathing exercise for about a minute and see how you feel. Hopefully, you’ll feel a little more relaxed.

Finding a breath of fresh air

To clean water and deep breaths,

— The WV Rivers Team

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Donate to our activities if you can do:

West Virginia Rivers Coalition
3501 MacCorkle Ave SE #129 | Charleston, West Virginia 25304
304-637-7201 | wvrivers@wvrivers.org

WVU Distinguished Visitors Lecture:

Prof. Brian Fagan, April 4, 2012, Morgantown, WV

Brian Fagan is emeritus professor of anthropology at the University of California at Santa Barbara, where he has been on faculty since 1967.  He is author or editor of 46 books and over 100 articles in scientific journals. Three of his books are summarized below.   In his lecture at WVU he presented photographs to feature the topics in his most recent book Elixir: A History of Water and Humankind.

He said that the earth has experienced a 25% increase in global drought since 1990, due to global warming. And, severe to extreme drought conditions are expected to continue to increase.  He expressed concern about rising sea levels which will displace tens of millions of people around the world.  Already there are climatic refugees exposed to hunger, disease and death in many countries.  “Then there is fracking …….”  He said that no one knows the full extent of fresh water depletion that will be caused by the hydrofracking of shales for natural gas development nor the amount of water that will be contaminated.

Elixir: A History of Water and Humankind,  by Brian Fagan 

Book Review, Publication Date:  June 2011.

This book surveys water management, alighting on every continent and chronologically spanning from the advent of irrigated agriculture to the water works of modern cities like Phoenix, Arizona. He critiques the common impression that centralized control of water, such as that which conjured Phoenix into existence or, in ancient times, Roman aqueducts and Chinese canals, is the main theme in the story of humanity’s capture and distribution of water. He favors a bottom-up view, suggesting that local solutions to water problems were consolidated by civilizations, not invented by them. He describes village-scale technologies to support that viewpoint, going into archaeological analysis to underscore how communities such as Bali, the Maya, and Angkor Wat invested their water sources with sacredness. Well might they have ritualized water, for Fagan recounts how science indicts drought as the agent of various civilizations’ downfalls and a forewarning of our own. Supplying intriguing historical background, Fagan well informs those pondering freshwater’s role in contemporary environmental problems. — Gilbert Taylor

The Great Warming: Climate Change and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations, by Brian Fagan

Book Description from Amazon, Publication Date: March 3, 2009

This book takes up how the earth’s previous global warming phase reshaped human societies from the Arctic to the Sahara—a wide-ranging history with lessons for our own time. From the tenth to the fifteenth century the earth experienced a rise in surface temperature that changed climate worldwide—a preview of today’s global warming. In some areas, including western Europe, longer summers brought bountiful harvests and population growth that led to cultural flowering. In the Arctic, Inuit and Norse sailors made cultural connections across thousands of miles as they traded precious iron goods. Polynesian sailors, riding new wind patterns, were able to settle the remotest islands on earth. But in many parts of the world, the warm centuries brought drought and famine. Elaborate societies in western and central America collapsed, and the vast building complexes of Chaco Canyon and the Mayan Yucatán were left empty. The history of the Great Warming of a half millennium ago suggests that we may yet be underestimating the power of climate change to disrupt our lives today—and our vulnerability to drought, writes Fagan, is the “silent elephant in the room.”

The Long Summer: How Climate Changed Civilization, by Brian Fagan

Book Description from Amazon, Publication Date: December 29, 2004

Humanity evolved in an Ice Age in which glaciers covered much of the world. But starting about 15,000 years ago, temperatures began to climb. Civilization and all of recorded history occurred in this warm period, the era known as the Holocene-the long summer of the human species. In The Long Summer, Brian Fagan brings us the first detailed record of climate change during these 15,000 years of warming, and shows how this climate change gave rise to civilization. A thousand-year chill led people in the Near East to take up the cultivation of plant foods; a catastrophic flood drove settlers to inhabit Europe; the drying of the Sahara forced its inhabitants to live along the banks of the Nile; and increased rainfall in East Africa provoked the bubonic plague. The Long Summer illuminates for the first time the centuries-long pattern of human adaptation to the demands and challenges of an ever-changing climate-challenges that are still with us today.

A national poll conducted by the nonprofit think tank Civil Society Institute shows nearly half of Americans are aware of the  hydrofracking issue and more than two out of three (69 precent) who are aware are concerned about the potential threat to clean drinking water.  From the CSI website: Nearly three out of five (72 percent) Americans say that they would tell their Member of Congress, governor or state lawmaker the following: “When it comes to energy production that requires large amounts of water or where water quality is in jeopardy as a result of the energy production, my vote would be for coming down on the side of the public’s health and the environment. We should favor cleaner energy sources that use the least water and involve the lowest possible risk to the public and environment.” Only about one in five (21 percent) would say the following: “When it comes to energy production that requires large amounts of water or where water quality is in jeopardy as a result of the energy production, my view is that energy production priorities have to come first. There is always going to be some risk involved when it comes to energy production. We have to accept that there are going to be tradeoffs when it comes to the public’s health and the environment.” Clean water is favored over energy production by Republicans (62 percent), Independents (80 percent), and Democrats (82 percent).  Poll highlights report.