In 2001, the Arizona Supreme Court at least had the wisdom to acknowledge that Mark Twain might never have said the thing about whiskey and water and drinkin’ and fightin’. But the court used it anyway: We wish it were possible to dispose of this matter by establishing a bright line standard, easily applied, in …
Continue reading ‘Twain Whiskey-Water Quote Watch, Arizona Supreme Court edition’ »
In my continuing effort to milk the not-Twain quote for all it’s worth, there is this – in the mountains north of the well fields of the proposed Cadiz California groundwater project is Whiskey Spring. And of course, one of the big areas of fightin’ in Cadiz is the question of whether the project’s groundwater …
Continue reading ‘Could Whiskey Spring be fer fightin’ over?’ »
Mark Lubbell at UC Davis makes the case for abandoning the Mark Twain “whiskey’s for drinkin’, water’s for fightin’ over” quote, and not just because Twain didn’t say it: Unfortunately, perpetuating water wars and the language of conflict will never solve California’s water problems. Water wars are equivalent to the “tragedy” aspect of managing common-pool …
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My life’s kind of a blur right now, but the official Island Press announcement of my book, along with the unveiling of its cover, is a thing that has just happened, so let me pause and catch my breath. People familiar with my frequent ranting about how Mark Twain never said the thing about whiskey …
Continue reading ‘“Water is for Fighting Over” – on the shelves in September’ »
From Texas: A feud over a water well is blamed for a violent confrontation in Santa Fe, according to the Galveston County Sheriff’s Office. I stand corrected.
A forest burns down. Humans rescue fish, keep ’em alive in an Albuquerque warehouse. Maybe 80 years before the drainage that feeds their forest creek recovers. Maybe 200. This is life in the anthropocene: Angela James’ fish tanks don’t look much like Whiskey Creek. But for 68 imperiled Gila trout, the tanks in a northeast …
Continue reading ‘Anthropocene diaries: a fish story I wrote elsewhere’ »
In response to the latest abuse of the Twain whiskey/water non-quote*, this: * Breitler 2011
Alex Breitler has done us all a useful service, not only debunking the Not Twain “Whiskey’s for drinkin’” quote but also pinning down, via Barbara Schmidt, where it first got attached to Twain: She believes, based on a Google Books search, that the quote probably was first attributed to Twain in the 1960s.
My current water policy hammer is the “not fer fightin’ over” meme – the idea that the apocryphal Mark Twain quote is wrong, not because he didn’t say it, but because much of what is most interesting about western water policy involves the places where people find solve water problems with negotiated compromise rather than …