This year, I signed on to blog on October 15 for "Blog Action Day" as I saw information on it on a friend's Facebook page and thought it a fabulously worthwhile idea. I knew it fell during my time at Bouchercon but I was convinced I could post something by midnight. (I thought of writing it up in advance but when I cut and paste here, i get all those weird symbols like * for an apostrophe and haven't managed to figure out what I need to do. So I thought I'd have time to write something up before midnight.
Yeah. Hah.
I'm not exactly of the blogger community, though I love writing here for you - whoever you are - and love hearing back. I blog because someone flattered me into it all those years ago and as you know, this is a very personal site full of books and politics and disability rants and occasionally promoting a friend, a book or a cause. So no one cites me as a prominent blogger or whatever, but I like that there actually is is a community out there and that is does things like hold conventions and come up with do-gooder projects. like http://blogactionday.change.org/. Blog Action Day 2010 suggested that we bloggers focus on an issue that everyone can support, that of water. Access to clean water. Drought and global issues. I had no idea what I was going to say - maybe just point to the site and say "go read" but then something happened during Bouchercon and it was, sort of, weirdly, water related.

I'm a good sixties woman. I recycle. Obsessively. I've lived through American droughts - California had more than one when I lived there and I learned stuff like "turn off the water when you brush" and "don't flush". (and when we visited Silverbob one summer, we had to bring water for the pool/succulents as a means of egress.) I fret when I watch these design shows on tv about the necessity to have granite and marble countertops, to grind stuff up for cosmetics. I worry about running out of the planet.

In our freezer are two gel pack ice packs which I use regularly for pain control. In my suitcase, there's one (ok, now two) of those instant packs which I have carried for years, which we used (see previous blog post) on Thursday. I used ice and ice and more ice. And wondered, as I often do, what I would have done without it.

Here then, is my Blog Action Day post, a week and a half later. Simply this.

I was raised to be aware of the world around me. Our neighbors, the Glickmans, and we, the Shechters, hosted visitors from other countries and participated in exchange programs. I tried to become an exchange student through the AFS program in high school (we sent two students. I was told later than I had been third, that I had been "too serious" during the questioning. Oops. Was I not supposed to say I wanted world peace?) (I think I'm still peeved!)

Ice. It's so simple. And it's such a luxury. Because it requires refrigeration - so many people don't have that. We even filter our drinking water because there seems on occasion, to be some schmutz in it (probably iron from the city's pipes.) Ice. I've been to National Figure Skating Championships, Stars on Ice, Skate America and Champions on Ice and announce the figure skating season every year with mixed joy and annoyance (oh look! It's "Shut up, Peter!" season!)

Ice. Because of it we can buy food on sale and keep it. We don't have to drink tepid beverages. We can save some fresh herbs by freezing them in little cubes. And ice can stop the pain. My pain. The shoulder, the feet. my back, the othershoulder. Or that bizarre pain behind my knee. Ice. It's frozen water and amazing clever wonderful helpful stuff. I wonder how I would live without it. And millions do. And on an almost daily basis when I think how lucky I am to have glasses and a power wheelchair, and a microwave to heat up my bunny slippers, and a computer that takes me to look at Kenya and Ghana and Guatemala and places that I probably will never go but love to see (and learned about as a teenager). I get to think, today, about ice. Frozen water. It's a lifesaver.