Students polishing Legislative cuspidors, 1962. (Florida State Photographic Archive.)
The Florida Legislative chambers once were fully stocked with cuspidors for tobacco-spitting legislators. That became an unacceptable social practice, then was considered a charming recollection, and finally only disgusting. Stigmatization can be a very good thing. Maybe, in the future, you will hear some water stigmatization progress:
“That sure is a green lawn you got there, buddy. Real green. Very, very green, isn’t it”?”
“Daddy and Mommy, I sure am glad we have a dairy farm but why do all the other second-graders keep asking me about nitrate levels in springs?”
“Alex, I know you like to play golf but it just makes me sick to see those big irrigation guns apply so much water.”
“I know that our company’s phosphate mines provide valuable fertilizer but shouldn’t we know how much our product contributes to stream and lake eutrophication?”
“This is such a beautiful home you have here but can we ask why it takes so darn much water to fill the toilet tank in the bathroom?”
“Gosh, we are lucky to have you as a neighbor, Pat! If you keep spraying insecticides around like you do, though, we are gonna report you to the Neighborhood Association.”
“Kris, we no longer allow dogs to run free in the neighborhood. And we don’t much like having fertilizer in our groundwater or storm drains either.”
“If the plants demand more irrigation water than is spit in a cuspidor, they better learn how to walk.”
from Watery Foundation http://ift.tt/1o3s1Wb
via IFTTT Tom June 08, 2014 at 06:25PM
