Muddy Waters

by Susan Weinberg


Before I let you make a fool out of me, I’d rather drink muddy water, lay down and sleep in a hollow log. – Lou Rawls

That song was my first thought when I heard the title of this year's lab. Muddy Waters: Climate Change, the Environment and What We Can Learn from Jewish Texts. Several of us were familiar with the blues musician Muddy Waters as well as the fact that there was a song by that name. Actually, there are three songs. Unfortunately none that particularly relate to our theme.

The 2019/2020 Artists' Lab kicked off with an event at the Icon Theater, the film Sustainable Nation, a part of the Jewish Film Festival and a topic that was quite relevant to this year's lab theme. There was a lot of hugging as we reconnected with old friends, learning who would be in the newly constituted lab. We gathered before the film to do some brainstorming on our thoughts relative to this year’s theme.

In contemplating the term “muddy waters” we thought about the meaning of the phrase "to muddy the waters." The figurative use of the term "muddy" means to confuse by making something hard to understand. The analogy relates to stirring up mud from the bottom of a clear body of water. In fact the waters of climate change have frequently been muddied as pseudoscience is introduced to counter the facts presented by the many reputable scientists.

We identified elements that we associated with the broader topic of the environment and climate change. Many elements in the environment are interrelated. We have ecosystems that are composed of interacting organisms. Having just read The Overstory by Richard Powers,  my mind went to trees which can be an independent ecosystem all by themselves. They also mark the stresses of historical climate within their very body.

From trees it is a short leap to water, the theme of the film we watched. Trees and water are inextricably interrelated. Trees are 50% water and a 100-foot tree can absorb 11,000 gallons of water. I thought of my neighbor whose yard is now flooded since another neighbor took down trees to build a sports court. We are interrelated as well. 

Trees absorb carbon better than anything we’ve been able to come up with. That’s why deforestation increases the carbon in our atmosphere. As plant species face extinction, seed banks are often designed to save them, but many seeds don’t survive the process. Goodbye oaks, goodbye horse chestnuts. Goodbye mangos, goodbye avocados.

Water, trees, seed banks, ecosystems, biodiversity. This will be a rich topic. Loamy soil for creativity.