Palimpsest: a parchment or the like where the text has been partially or completely removed to make room for another text.

This is our opportunity to create a new narrative for the Puget Sound–one of stewardship and rejuvenation as the precious resource that it is.

The drop has completed its transformation to the color of the Sound. One drop makes a difference. Scientists project that Puget Sound will rise by six inches in the next 5o years. What does that mean for the sea? What does it mean for our city?

Thus far, rainfall in September has exceeded the normal amount by more than three inches. Is this just variability or another signal of climate change?

The drop continues to shift and disappear – although an outline is beginning to appear.

Again from April 2010 National Geographic on Water:

“Living in the  high desert of northern New Mexico, Louise Pape bathes three times a week, military style: wet body, turn off water, soap up, rinse, get out. She reuses her drinking cup for days without washing it, and she saves her dishwater for plants and unheated shower water to flush the toilet. While most Americans use around one hundred gallons a day, Pape uses just ten.

You don’t have to be as committed an environmentalist as Pape, who edits a climate-change news service, to realize that the days of cheap and abundant water are drawing to a end. But the planet is a long way from dying of thirst. “It’s inevitable that we’ll solve our water problems,” says Peter Gleick, president of the Pacific Institute, a nonpartisan environmental think tank. “The trick is how much pain we can avoid on that path to where we want to be.”

Gleick leans on a soft path (of solving the problem): a comprehensive approach that includes conservation and efficiency, community-scale infrastructure, protection of aquatic ecosystems, management at the level of watersheds instead of political boundaries, and smart economics.”

The rain has continued to transform Precious Water along with Carolyn and Ellen. Today Ellen made changes. Then Carolyn.

The perseverance needed to work on the piece as the materials get harder to handle seems aligned with the perseverance needed to make changes.

The benefit are the many conversations with people on the Pier. Many of them young and articulate.

From the 2010 National Geographic edition on Water (the second in a decade) –

“We have been slow to give up on the myth of Earth’s infinite generosity. Rather grandly we have overdrawn our accounts. Americans use about 100 gallons of water at home each day. Millions of the world’s poorest subsist on fewer then five gallons.”

The rains came last night and continued through the day. The Sound and the drop are becoming one.