World Water Day #WorldWaterDay #waterstory

I've never gone without water.

I've contemplated it. When you grow up in the great lakes region, talks of climate change matter. They have immediate, real world consequences.

I remember the day I learned about global warming. It was my freshman year in high school, and our teacher did a segment based on a series of studies about the rising global temperature. Being a experimental, holistic learning school, we did more than study the science. We also used the science as a basis for sociological, historical, and literary learning. In Western Civilization, we talked about the history of human beings going to war over access to resources- including fresh water.

"In fifty years," my high school science teacher told me, "it's likely that half the world could be at war over water."

Because rising coastlines don't just drive people inland, they also contaminate fresh water sources with salt water. And de-salination is costly and difficult.

But we lived in Michigan, surrounded on nearly all sides by fresh water. Lake Superior, all by itself, has enough fresh water in it to cover North and South America in a solid foot. Which meant that if you were looking for a good long term investment, real estate in northern Michigan was a decent plan.

I sat on the deck of my parent's house, dipping my toes in the spring fed, potable pond where I swam all summer without having to think twice, thinking about people fighting every day for water.

I looked at the lush, green trees. I thought about the ducks and herons and frogs and turtles and fish and even snakes that shared my lake, and thought about the charts we made in Creative Problem Solving, of what parts of our ecosystem would be destroyed by a raising temperature.

I thought about all the fluorocarbons from the sixties and seventies, still eating up our ozone.

And I sponsored a child in Ethiopia with the last of my bat mitzvah money.

I did it to alleviate my own guilt- because it seemed so unfair that people were already living with drought, and famine, and they couldn't even get water. Water. And I was completely surrounded by the stuff.

In the last fifteen years, not a lot has changed. Those same flurocarbons are still up there, we're still making more, and the global temperature is still rising.

And there are still people all over the world without access to safe, potable water. 768 million of them. A tenth of the world population.

2,000 children die every day from drinking tainted water, the only water available to them.

And, as with nearly every problem in the developing world, it's even worse for women and girls. The lack of access to water also means fewer toilets. In fact, in many regions of the world where water is scarce, schools have no gender segregated bathrooms, and this causes girls to leave school as soon as they start menstruating.

And it falls on girls to provide water for their families. Each day, women in developing countries without adequate wells walk an average of four miles to carry water to their families. Instead of getting educations, they're carrying water.

Only one in three people on our planet has access to a toilet. To a toilet. And lack of access means that women in places like India have to travel through incredibly dangerous areas to find a toilet. Women risk sexual assault just to find a place to relieve their bowels.

So what can you do, right? What can you do to help?

First of all, you can donate. Just $25 is all it takes to provide a person with access to water and sanitation. That's all it takes.

And you can help raise awareness. You can call your congressmen and tell them to support the Water for the World Act. And on Saturday, World Water Day, WaterAid is hosting a social media to raise awareness. On Saturday, take a selfie with a glass of water, and use the hashtag #cheerstoH2O. Share your stories of a time, any time, when you didn't have access to water. When you knew how it felt even just a little to be without.

With awareness, we can start to bring about change. So let's all start there.

Esprit D'Escalier

Yesterday, I lost count of how many people ogled my boobs.

The first 99% of them were at a Purim carnival, and I was in costume. I was a pirate or a gypsy or some mish-mash of the two, and yes, my top was low cut. And I kept bending over because I was herding three very small people all over the place. And yes, I recognize that made my breasts very visible. But only one person said anything to me, and what he said was, "Oh, wow, um, that is one fantastic costume." It was clear that "one fantastic costume" was code for "two really awesome boobies," but I let it go. Because he had the decency to pretend he was gawking at something totally benign. And I can accept that.

So after the carnival was over and I changed out of my pirate or gypsy costume and into a more mundane outfit, I went to dinner with some really spectacular women. We talked about writing and performance and life, and it was a fascinating and delightful time. And as I walked out the door, wearing my coat and my hat, I passed a group of young men waiting to be seated.

One of them ogled my breasts. And I say "ogled," but what I really mean is "craned his neck until his nose was perilously close to diving down my shirt," and I didn't say anything. Because I was walking out the door and had my coat and hat on, and although I wasn't wearing my low cut, blousy white pirate top anymore, I was used to people kind of noticing my breasts all day. And as soon as I was past, he said something.

Not that it matters, but this is the
top I was wearing.

"Damn, those are some nice boobs you got there."

And I stopped.

Because that shit is not cool.

I understand that we all have eyes. I understand that it can be difficult to mask our reactions to things that we see. I understand that the things we see can cause us to have reactions that might be hard to mask, and we are not entirely, 100% responsible for not reacting well.

I understand that sometimes, a fifty year old man will be wrong footed and try to cover up that he was leering at a young mom as she ushers her three small children through a busy carnival, and try to say something basically harmless to cover it up.

This? This was something entirely different.

If it had been a few hours later, or a few beers later, this guy at the pizza parlor probably would have just reached out grabbed one.

So he said, "Damn, those are some nice boobs you got there," and I froze. I turned around, and his three buddies were grinning and nodding. And I walked right back up to him. I didn't smile.

"That was really, really rude. And inappropriate. And offensive."

His three friends looked away, their smiles suddenly very uncomfortable.

He grinned at me, shrugging. "And also cute, right?"

"No. It was rude. And offensive."

"And cute!"

"No." Now his friends started backing off, looking really uncomfortable. He was the only one still smiling, and still standing his ground. "It wasn't cute. It was rude. And inappropriate."

"And cute."

"No, it wasn't. It was really rude."

And as my hackles rose I wanted to say a million things to him. About treating people like people, about common courtesy and acceptable social behavior. About rape culture misogyny. but I knew as he laughed and repeated that what he'd said was actually adorable, there was no getting through to him, so I turned back around and left.

And it's been bothering me ever since.

I wish instead I'd smiled, and asked him for his name and phone number, and then smiled while I picked up my phone and called the police to file a report for sexual harassment.

I wish instead I'd talked to his friends, and asked them if they're okay with this. If they're okay with going around with this super rape-y guy who can't tell the difference between disembodied breasts and a human being, and ask why they're willing to be seen in public with such a pathetic excuse of a human being.

I wish instead I'd stopped the hostess, told her I was a paying patron, and that he was bothering me, and ask them to escort him out.

I wish instead I'd turned around and punched him in the face.

But I didn't do any of those things. Because when you're a woman confronted with bold faced sexism, inappropriate behavior, and a complete lack of empathy, no matter what you do... you lose.

If I'd made a scene, I would have been just another "crazy bitch," and he'd brushed me off that way. If I'd asked him if he'd have harassed me if I was with my children, I'd be playing into the idea that women are somehow only people if they're wives or mothers. If I'd sexually harassed him right back, I might have actually encouraged him.

It really, really bothers me. And not just that it happens, but that I'm still so lost for what to do about it.

I know how to talk to people about sexual harassment and sexual assault. I know how to talk to people about stopping their friends from acting like that, about preventing their kids from turning into that guy. But I don't know what to say, as a woman and the owner of a partially visible pair of breasts.

I'm not going to start going around in a poncho or anything. But I'm under no illusions that this is the last time. Because it's not about being young and hot. I'm almost thirty years old, and unlike many women, this is not my physical prime. It's about a mentality held by somebody else that I am an object. A source of entertainment or pleasure. But not a human being.

And I have no idea what I can do about that.