Maintaining the Flow

Dear Fellow Earthlings Back in my University of Illinois days (in 1968 and 1969), I had a friend named Victor Gelbron. Vic was young, handsome, blue eyed, curly haired -- but most of all, he was always smiling -- and always considerate. What I liked most about Vic was his daily greeting: "Hey, how's it flowin', Steve !" Instead of the usual "How are you doin'?" or "How are you?" or "What's happening?" that were

the normal greetings on the Champaign-Urbana campus in those day Vic would always say, "Hey, how's it flowin' " -- and then would add the person to whom he was speaking's name at the end. I asked Vic how he had come up with that expression and he told me that life is a river, its source

being our birth and its mouth entering into the ocean our "transition to the afterlife". He added that

as long as the flow is smooth, we will reach our destiny, our potential. Moved by Vic's attitude, I told him that "everything was flowing just fine, that I was being carried

along by the currents -- and that there were no "damned dams" to interrupt it... Which brings me to today's blog: One cause of strokes (those known as ischemic strokes) is blockage of the blood flow in our

blood vessels. Blood clots clog up a vessel or vessel, blocking or (used in this blog only)

"damming" the blood flow. An ischemic stroke is a terrifying example of what a "dam" can do. What do the Seneca people, the coho salmon, the eel, and many stroke victims have in common?

They are all dealing with stoppage of something that should be flowing -- sometimes to the point where there is no flow at all: The immediate effect of the construction of the Kinzua Dam (construction completed in 1965) on the Allegheny River in Seneca country was to displace more than 600 families from 10,000 acres of

ancestral land. The longterm effect of this removal was the decimation of the Seneca people's language and culture. (See installment 140, released on November 23, 2013.) Another dam -- this one in California -- was built in 1938 to provide a swimming hole for humans near

the confluence of two creeks. The dam proved to be an insurmountable barrier for coho salmon, whose life cycle calls for them to swim from the ocean and up the creeks to spawn. In October of 2015 the dam was demolished.

Already some coho -- albeit a tiny number -- have been observed spawning in the creeks

whose waters can now flow freely since the dam has been removed. Let us hope that coho

numbers will increase in the coming months and years now that "the flow" is back.

Eels too (See yesterday's blog.) spend part of their lives in fresh water streams and rivers

-- and they too are decreasing in number (partly due to dams that block them from living out

their lives in the way that they had before dams came onto the scene. There is always the argument that we need dams for flood control and for hydroelectric power generation. But if develop the technology to utilize the sun's power directly, then global warming could be reversed.

This would leading to a drop in water levels and flooding -- and the need for hydroelectric dams would be obviated.

Let's get things flowing by gradually deconstructing all dams, all blockages!

Steve Walker Earthsaver and Jingles Creator

© 2013 Steve Walker, The Jingles-The Japan Foundation for English Pronunciation, Summit Enterprises.