Column: Progress you can drink

Talk about it

I like progress. Progress means I can watch television on a large, flat, high-definition screen instead of a Buick-sized console that weighs 600 pounds and has a black-and-white screen the size of a goldfish bowl. It can’t make American Idol more interesting than a spirited karaoke night, but sometimes you have to take your progress where you can get it.

Progress means I can take thousands of books and songs with me wherever I go, even after I got rid of the pack mule I used to use to haul around my CD collection.

Progress, thank the plumber’s union, means I can use the toilet in the middle of winter without having to worry about my rear end freezing to the seat of a splintery wooden outhouse.

Progress makes our lives easier, which is why I get confused when I hear something like the advertisement that was on the radio last week for something called Schmidt Organic Water.

It’s not just that labeling water organic is about as necessary as labeling it wet or labeling lefse delicious. If going organic is about not using pesticides on the plants we grow or hormones in animals we raise, well, I feel like it’s safe to say there are no pesticides or hormones in tap water.

Rare is the infestation of the notorious water weevil.

I don’t have anything against organic products. I don’t seek them out myself -- if chemicals and preservatives can keep a Twinkie pliable through the apocalypse, I don’t see why they can’t help me live to a ripe old age -- but I understand why other people do. I am even willing to accept it’s not just because they’re filthy hippies.

My issue with Schmidt Organic Water is that doesn’t make my life easier. Because if I want a jug of fresh from the Mt. Hood Aquifer Schmidt water draws from I have to collect a clean jug, drive to the old Schmidt brewery in St. Paul and get it myself.

I don’t like paying for anything I can get for free with a little effort -- like parking, or those towels and robes they’re always giving away at hotels. I certainly don’t like it when gas money gets involved.

Progress is ice and water coming out of the freezer door, not a trip across town to use somebody else’s tap.

I’m a little late to the game on this whole organic water thing. Based on Schmidt’s Facebook page, they’ve been offering fresh-from-the-ground water since at least 2010. Other bottlers have also been causing a stir in the organic community by offering a product that couldn’t possibly be labeled organic because, you know, it’s water. Call it spring, call it mineral, call it hot dog, they might argue. Just don’t call it organic.

For myself, I’ll just stick with the tap. At least until somebody invents something that will deliver water right to my mouth.

Come on, progress.

Tags: opinion, farmington, commentaries