The tree was covered in velvety green moss, which was so comfortable and soft that you could take a rest on it. The bark was reddish brownish, strong, and looked and smelled like the bark on a Christmas tree. The roots were little zigzags cracking into dirt spreading out around the tree.

The holes were circles that you could live in. The holes had big windows and doors, and porches. The fairies, bugs and little people could climb up the tree and into the holes. There was amber colored sap at the bottom of the tree. When the fairies were hot they could go into the sap which was like a sticky swimming pool.

The leaves were like hammocks that the fairies could rest on. They were always making a rainbow of red, orange and yellow as if it were Fall.

Franci (with a little help from mommy).

(photo by Jason McKim)

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1. Funny quotes from Nabokov’s novel “Lolita”

California – the most populous state in the United States – faces many competing demands for water use, mirroring what is happening throughout the world, as nations try to come to terms with an impending international water crisis. In California, agricultural demand for irrigation during the dry summer has traditionally been met by reservoirs and a system of irrigation canals that have in turn lowered the amount of water available for river flow. The practice of water control and diversion has resulted in endangered fisheries, reduced salmon runs, and pitched battles between interest groups –particularly, farmers, fishermen, developers and environmentalists. California is often subject to years of drought, when it does not receive enough winter precipitation to replenish reservoirs and groundwater, compounding its water troubles. Ironically, California is also susceptible to damaging floods during wet years, causing billions of dollars in property damage. Many new subdivisions are being built on floodplains, and depend on antiquated levees to protect lives and property. After bearing witness to the effects of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, and faced with the possibility of a similar disaster, California voters recently approved a bond measure that would repair the levees, in order to protect homes and lives. As California begins to face the reality of future water scarcity, many local conservation efforts have been implemented, and water districts are giving rebates on water efficient appliances, and distributing water-saving devices that will make it easier for customers to become more water efficient. Although California is making some progress towards meeting its water challenges, the growing population’s demand for water will continue to rise, creating a situation where high stakes battles over water will be an inevitable consequence unless the state is able to formulate an overarching science-based water plan, and implement it despite the political risks inherent in alienating special interest groups.

A traveler through the state of California is treated to a variety of different climates and landscapes, from the arid deserts in the south, to the coastal redwood rainforest. In the summer, a visitor will note the lack of rain, as most of California, with some exceptions in the Sierra Mountains, experiences no precipitation whatsoever from June to October. Lack of summer rainfall makes farmers, industry and residential water consumers dependant on stored water. California in the summer is a parched landscape of golden brown hills, barren save for dry grasses and the occasional lonely stand of live oak trees or scrub brush. Native California plants have developed unique adaptations to the dry season, most requiring no water at all during the summer months, yet in many residential gardens, one would be hard pressed to find a single native plant amidst the carpets of emerald green lawn that blanket nearly every suburban yard.

Cities like Palm Springs appear like artificial oases in the middle of the desert. An internet search for the words Palm Springs and golf turns up over thirty separate golf courses in the Palm Springs area. It is a sad irony that in a desert, obscenely excessive water displays appear to be the main tourist attraction for many resorts in the area, which has an annual rainfall of less than 3 inches (Rosenblum). At the Palm Desert Marriot Resort,

“Boats ferry diners from the lobby to a restaurant across a 23-acre artificial lake. Inside, its brochure boasts, “It took over 50 million gallons of water to fill the indoor lake and waterfalls.” Elsewhere, cooled mist above café terrace tables air conditions the outdoors. Badly aimed sprinklers water paved streets. Nearly every home has a swimming pool, its water evaporating in the heat.” (Rosenblum)

Expanding American desert cities like Palm Springs have become a cliché of wastefulness and poor planning. In a state and nation that risks running out of water, or having it severely rationed, we must ask ourselves whether it makes sense to continue the development of large subdivisions where there is not enough annual rainfall to sustain them. In Palm Springs, as in other desert cities, citizens and industries should pay the true cost of their water, which is currently heavily subsidized by taxpayer dollars. Politicians, environmental groups, and concerned citizens must band together to develop reasonable, long term solutions before there is a true water crisis in the desert.

Water problems in California are not only caused by overdevelopment of marginal areas. The PBS documentary Cadillac Desert gives a sobering look at the water wars of early twentieth century Los Angeles, where battles over water rights were fought with guns and explosives, instead of in the courts of law. The city of Los Angeles developed into today’s megalopolis because it was able to secure water rights to the Owens Valley, and later The Colorado River, and Mono Lake. Such was the city’s thirst for water that Mono Lake -an important ecosystem supporting numerous species, some of them endangered- risked “death” due to low water levels. The outcry from environmentalists and concerned citizens eventually motivated politicians to pass legislation forcing Los Angeles to drastically cut its use of water from Mono Lake (Cadillac Desert). The story of Mono Lake can be considered a victory from multiple perspectives. Diverse interest groups, including scientists, environmentalists and concerned citizens were able to pressure politicians to protect the lake and its tributary streams (Cadillac Desert). The city of Los Angeles has had to develop water conservation efforts as a result of the loss of water from Mono Lake. When municipalities are forced to take this sort of action, they must use creativity, science, and technology to develop long-term conservations solutions, creating a template that can be adopted by other municipalities seeking solutions to their own water management issues.

Of course, California – the richest state in the richest nation in the world- has the financial resources to deal with current and future water shortages. Many nations in the developing world are not so lucky. To put our problems in perspective,

“Today, 31 countries are facing water stress and scarcity, and over a billion people lack adequate access to clean drinking water. By the year 2025 as much as two-thirds of the world’s population will be living in conditions of serious water shortage or absolute water scarcity.” (Barlow)

Many see the looming problem of ever scarcer supplies of fresh clean water as a harbinger of war. As nations compete for water rights, clashes are inevitable, particularly in the more instable regions of the world, such as the Middle East. According to Michael Klare of Hampshire College in Massachusetts:

“As population grows, and the need for water and food rises in tandem, each of the riparians will seek to maximize its utilization of the available supply. When the actions of any one of these states results in a declining supply for any of the others, the conditions are set for a clash over the distribution of water.” (Klare)

Although global water scarcity may seem an insurmountable problem due to an apparent lack of the international political will needed to preempt the inevitable struggles by creating viable regional water accords, there is still some time to act.

The first step towards solving the global water problem would be to insure sources of clean water for the poor in developing countries. The World Bank could be at the forefront of financing and building wells for communities that currently rely on contaminated water for drinking and other needs. If help came without political strings attached, it could generate the kind of international good will needed to make hard decisions about precious global resources.

Solving the problem of insufficient clean water in poor communities would be a great boon to public health. Disease and infant mortality would decrease, and perhaps people would have fewer babies if they knew their children would survive infancy. Women and children would be spared the exhausting chore of gathering water from miles away from home, and have more time for other pursuits, such as education.

The citizens of impoverished communities could learn to manage their water resources, and to prevent the degradation of aquifers, and other water sources. The communities would then establish their own communal water governing body, chosen or elected according to local traditions, which would oversee the distribution and management of water resources.

Of course, helping impoverished communities gain access to clean water would not immediately solve the global water scarcity issue. Education and investment in infrastructure in poor communities are also needed, in order to bring people out of crippling poverty, and enable them to protect their own resources. Education, particularly for women and girls, is an effective way to curb population growth-perhaps the most important piece of any conservation effort. The more time a girl spends in school, the fewer children she is likely to bear. Educated women also tend to have healthier children, because they have the skills necessary to understand and apply important principles of hygiene and nutrition.

Providing the infrastructure needed to allow for controlled economic development in impoverished countries will create jobs, and bring people out of poverty. When people are not living in dire economic straits, they are more likely to have the time and energy to care about issues of conservation. Bringing families out of poverty, educating children and adults, giving them access to information about water conservation, and helping communities formulate a viable plan to manage local water resources will help to alleviate the impending global water crises.

In California, the water wars continue to rage, although this time in the halls of Congress, and in the courts, rather than with explosives and guns. Recently, the debate has been centered on the use of Klamath River water, which has pitted farmers against environmentalists and fishermen. A plan to manage the Klamath is on the table after years of fighting and finger-pointing, although disagreements between stakeholders could still kill the deal (Whitney-Mcklatchey). In the meantime, faced with another impending drought, Californians are again being asked to conserve water.

After living through many droughts, some lasting years, it has become second nature for many Californians to conserve water. We could be doing much more. To give residents some help in their water conservation efforts, one of the Bay Area’s municipal water companies, East Bay Mudd, is offering rebates for customers purchasing water conserving appliances. They are also offering water saving devices, such as low flow shower heads, and faucet aerators for free. On their website, one can find tips for xeriscaping, a type of landscaping that requires little to no irrigation, and for planting native gardens (EB Mudd website).

Following the water conservation tips of water districts are just some of the steps we can take as residents of a drought prone state. We could easily reduce our water consumption at a time when

“Drought, overpopulation and pollution are all contributing to the water crisis, but so is water waste and overuse — two factors that can be mitigated through better water efficiency practices. In the United States, an average household could save 30,000 gallons per year by combining conservation practices with water-efficient products. This represents a savings of 24 percent of total household water use.” (Lagod)

Easy ways to conserve water include watering only when necessary, repairing leaky plumbing, and installing water saving devices. Some steps consumers could take which require more planning, foresight and initial financial expenditure include purchasing water saving appliances, xeriscaping yards, and installing drip irrigation systems. Another way to save water is to recycle grey water-the water used to wash vegetables, or in the rinse cycle of the washing machine-and use it to water the lawn or irrigate the vegetable garden. Families could also use rain barrels or cisterns to collect rainwater and roof runoff for irrigation purposes, as people have been doing for centuries.

As residents of a thirsty state in a thirsty world, the worst thing we can do is to ignore the water problem and hope that it will go away. That is what industrialized societies have been doing for decades, if not centuries, and it has gotten us into this tangled mess. On international, national and local levels, we need to create a science-based water policy, push for sustainable development, and muster the political will to alienate some interest groups in the name of the greater good.

WORK CITED:

Barlow, Maude, “WATER WAR! How the People of Bolivia Won Back Control of Their Water from Those Trying to Own It”, Briarpatch Magazine

Cadillac Desert. Dir. Jon Else, Linda Harrar 1997. DVD.

EBMUD. East Bay Municipal Utility District. 27 October, 2007

Lagod, Martin , “We’re Running out of Water” San Francisco Chronicle
Sunday, July 8, 2007

Liquid Gold Exhibit-Water Resource Center Archives. 11 October, 2007. University of California at Berkeley. 27 October, 2007

Lobe, Jim, “Competition for Resources to Dominate Global Relations,” Inter Press Service, May 8, 2001, n.p.

Rosenblum, Mort, “America’s Next Crises: Going Dry,” Albuquerque Journal (Albuquerque, NM), May 13, 2001

Whitney, David-McClatchy “Discord threatens Klamath River water talks Klamath: Refuge farms ‘a deal-killer’” The Sacramento Bee. 12 August, 2007. 27 October 2007

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Humbert’s passion for young girls would not have been found strange in many cultures, both ancient, and modern. In ancient Rome, “at age twelve a girl was considered nubile. Some were even married off at this tender age, and the marriages were consummated”. (Aries 20)
In Shakespeare’s time, young girls were often married in early adolescence, and in Romeo and Juliet, Lady Capulet lets her daughter know in no uncertain terms that at fourteen, it is high time she were married, for “younger than you, here in Verona, ladies of esteem, are made already mothers: by my count, I was your mother much upon these years that you are now a maid.” (Shakespeare 887, Act I, Sc. III, Lines 69-73)
In cultures where girls are married early to men old enough to be their fathers, the men are considered to be sexually normal. In no way are their relationships to their pubescent wives considered manifestations of pedophilia. Humbert is aware of this, excusing his fantasies by putting them in a historical-cultural context, and reminding the reader that “marriage and cohabitation before the age of puberty are still not uncommon in certain East Indian provinces. Lepcha old men copulate with girls of eight, and nobody minds. After all, Dante fell madly in love with his Beatrice when she was nine…And when Petrarch fell in love with his Laureen, she was a fair –haired nymphet of twelve”.(Nabakov 19)
When Humbert first sets eyes on Lolita in the backyard of her mother’s house, it is as if his adult self had never existed. She is not Lolita, a person with her own history, personality, and desires, but the ghost of his adolescent love, Annabelle Lee, returned from the dead to rejoin him. “I find it most difficult to express with adequate force that flash, that shiver, that impact of passionate recognition…while I passed by her in my adult disguise…the vacuum of my soul managed to suck in every detail of her bright beauty, and these I checked against the features of my dead bride.” (Nabakov 39)
Typically adolescent, Humbert’s first spark of obsessive love for Lolita is like that of a teenager finally seeing their movie star idol in flesh and blood. Although Humbert’s first attraction to Lolita is due to her uncanny resemblance to the dead Annabel, Humbert is quick to point out that “A little later, of course…this Lolita, my Lolita, was to eclipse completely her prototype.” (Nabakov 40)
At the beginning of his relationship with Lolita, Humbert sees her as the embodyment of his sexual fantasies -the perfect nymphet. At first, Lolita seems to be Humbert’s willing partner, even initiating their first sexual encounter. (Nabakov 133-134) However, despite his fantasy that Lolita is a somewhat willing accomplice to their semi-incestuous relationship, Humbert is forced to confront the reality of Lolita’s absolute desperation, when he must hear “her sobs in the night-every night, every night-the moment I feigned sleep.” (Nabakov, 176)
In allowing Lolita to “seduce” him, Humbert begins a perverse relationship with a child who is in point of fact his legal stepdaughter, due to his brief marriage to her mother, Charlotte. He is at once Lolita’s lover, her rapist, and her father. In fact, confounding the situation even more, Humbert enjoys keeping up the pretense that he is a good father, telling his daughter that “I want to protect you, dear, from all the horrors that happen to little girls in coal sheds and alley ways…I will stay your guardian, and if you are good, I hope a court may legalize that guardianship before long.” (Nabakov 149)
However, Humbert does not harbor any truly “fatherly” feelings for Lolita. He merely wants to have the power of guardianship over her to continue his sexual abuse. Perhaps it is in the abuse of his power as Lolita’s only guardian and “father” that Humbert’s true perversion comes to light. More than in his attraction to pubescent girls, or his sexual relationship with a twelve year old, the reader feels the horror of the situation when Humbert justifies his abuse of Lolita through obscure references to purported Sicilian father-daughter incest. (Nabakov 150) Not only does Humbert acknowledge his relationship with Lolita to be incestuous, he even goes so far as to fanaticize about perpetuating the incest though multiple generations of Lolitas, once his pubescent darling is no longer an attractive nymphet.
“With patience and luck I might have her produce eventually a nymphet with my blood in her exquisite veins, a Lolita the Second, who would be eight or nine around 1960…indeed, the telescopy of my mind, or un-mind, was strong enough to distinguish in the remoteness of time…bizarre tender, salivating Dr. Humbert, practicing on supremely lovely Lolita the Third the art of being a granddad.” (Nabakov 174)

Humbert idealizes Lolita as a nymphet, but has no attraction to her as a person. Once her “nymphetage” is over, she will be useful merely as a vessel for the production of more nymphets so that he can continue the cycle of abuse. Both in his relationship to Lolita, and his fantasies involving future generations of his and Lolita’s offspring, Humbert is clearly manifesting his pedophilic tendencies, and fits perfectly with the hypothesis that “a man is likely to sexually assault his sexually immature daughter (plus other children) if he has pedophilia, if he spent little time with her during her early childhood, if she is available, and if he is psychopathic.” (Harris, Rice, 3) Humbert certainly has most of the qualities of the psychopath. He is “callous, selfish, manipulative, irresponsible, impulsive, sexually promiscuous, and generally antisocial” (Harris, Rice 3) in his relationship with Lolita.
Incapable of truly loving Lolita, Humbert is merely obsessed with her, as the embodiment of a physical ideal. He idolizes Lolita’s external shell, but has no idea of the true Lolita that lies within that protective chrysalis. Much later, a more mature Humbert realizes that “I simply did not know a thing about my darling’s mind and that quite possibly, behind the awful juvenile clichés, there was in her a garden, and a twilight, and a palace gate-dim and adorable regions which happened to be lucidly and absolutely forbidden to me…” (Nabakov 284) Humbert regrets the lack of any possibility of a normal father-daughter relationship between them, and realizes that he has missed out on ever knowing the real Lolita, because his continual abuse of his power over her has made her retreat from him completely.
Before falling in love with the real Lolita beneath the nymphet, Humbert must come to terms with the fact that Lolita, now fourteen, is no longer the idolized child-bride that he has adored for two years. In a fit of anger at one of Lolita’s many deceptions, Humbert is able to see Lolita as the teenage girl she has become. “Oh, she had changed! Her complexion was now that of any untidy highschool girl …A course flush had now replaced that innocent fluorescence…how polished and muscular her legs had grown!” (Nabokov 204) Despite her less than ideal appearance, Humbert’s panic when he thinks that she has run away after their quarrel, and his deep feelings of love and relief when he finds her again are indicative of his deepening feelings for the true Lolita, and not the nymphet. (Nabokov 207) However, Humbert’s metamorphosis from pedophile with psychopathic tendencies to selfless lover is not yet complete. He still objectifies Lolita, who while changed, continues to exhibit some of her nymphetish qualities.
When Lolita runs away, Humbert is forced to live without her for three bleak years, in which he searches obsessively for her and her “kidnapper”. His penance enables him to finally clearly see despise the damage he has inflicted on Lolita. Humbert has finally developed compassion, a quality he certainly never had in his years with Lolita, Perhaps these years of soul-searching are what finally give Humbert a more mature emotional perspective, and the ability to see Lolita as a person, lovable in her own right, and not as the embodiment of the nymphet.
In the three years since Humbert has seen her, Lolita has morphed into a pregnant, adult woman with a striking resemblance to her dead mother, Charlotte-the wife that Humbert despised, and married only to have access to Lolita. No longer a nymphet, “there she was with her ruined looks and her adult, rope-veined, narrow hands and her goose-flesh white arms…hopelessly worn at seventeen with that baby…” (Nabakov 277) Lolita now has the looks of the older women and girls that Humbert has deprecated throughout the novel. It would seem impossible for Humbert, a pedophile in love with an ideal that can only by definition exist between the ages of nine and fourteen, to have any feelings towards a young woman so far beyond the outer limits of nymphdom, and yet, Humbert has matured a great deal in the three years without Lolita. In that time, his love has become the mature accepting love that we associate with adults. No longer bound by an ideal, “I looked…at her, and knew as clearly as I know I am to die, that I loved her more than anything I had ever seen or imagined on earth, or hoped for anywhere else…I will shout my poor truth. I insist the world know how much I loved my Lolita, this Lolita”. (Nabakov 278) Unfortunately for Humbert, Lolita is incapable of reciprocating his love, because of the unspeakable damage he did to her as a vulnerable young girl.
Near the end of the book, a mature Humbert realizes that his greatest crime was stealing Lolita’s childhood. Listening to a group of children playing, Humbert writes that “the hopelessly poignant thing was not Lolita’s absence from my side, but the absence of her voice from that concord.” (Nabakov 308) Humbert’s moral development has matured to the point that he is able to feel true empathy towards Lolita. He is able to see outside his own pain at her loss, and exhibit some of the selfless love that parents typically feel towards their children.
Humbert’s last words are of fatherly advice to Lolita: “Be true to your Dick. Do not let other fellows touch you. Do not talk to strangers. “(Nabakov 309) Humbert Humbert has undergone a final transformation. Like one of Nabokov’s butterflies, his feelings for Lolita have metamorphosed from immature adolescent attraction, to a fathers’ selfless feelings for his daughter. No longer a pedophile attempting to sate his lust for young girls, Humbert is now capable of caring deeply for Lolita and desiring only her happiness.

Works Cited

Aries, Philippe and Georges Duby eds. A History of Private Life From Pagan Rome to Byzantium.Trans. Arthur Goldhammer. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1987.

Harris, Grant T. and Rice, Marie E. “Men Who Molest Their Sexually Immature Daughters: Is a Special Explaination Required?” Journal of Abnormal Psychology May2002, Vol.111, No 2, 329-339. Psychnet . Laney College Lib, Oakland, Ca. 6 December, 2007

Nabokov, Vladimir The Annotated Lolita Ed. Alfred Appel Jr. New York: Vintage Books, 1991.

“Pedophilia.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 14 Dec 2007, 13:55 UTC. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 15 Dec 2007 .

Shakespeare, William The Unabridged William Shakespeare. Eds. William George Clark and William Aldis Wright. Philadelphia, Penn: Running Press, 1989.

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1. Funny quotes from Nabokov’s novel “Lolita”

U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein responding to my message:

Thank you for contacting me to express your views about the advertisement MoveOn.org placed in the New York Times on September 10, 2007 regarding General David Petraeus. I appreciate hearing from you and welcome the opportunity to respond.

I was disappointed to learn of MoveOn.org’s advertisement criticizing General Petraeus. When he testified before Congress in September, Congress and the American people were hoping to hear a new strategy on how to forge political accommodation in Iraq. While I did not agree with all of General Petraeus’ recommendations, I felt that the MoveOn.org advertisement was inappropriate and unhelpful to the larger debate about our policy in Iraq.

On September 20, 2007, I joined 71 of my colleagues in approving Senator John Cornyn’s (R-TX) amendment to the fiscal year 2008 National Defense Authorization Act (H.R. 1585), expressing the sense of the Senate to reaffirm support for General David Petraeus and strongly condemn personal attacks on the honor and integrity of General Petraeus and all members of the United States Armed Forces.

Again, thank you for writing. I hope you will continue to keep me informed of issues important to you. Best regards.

Sincerely yours,
Dianne Feinstein

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