Wind and Water

Pretty soon T. Boone Pickens will own the rights to all of it. If water is the new oil, and if wind is the alternative energy source of the future, then T. Boone, having bought large expanses in the Great Plains, is well positioned to take advantage of the increasing demand for both.

This fact came up in conversation the other night, and it didn't hit me until today that those words, wind and water, are the English translation of feng-shui (in Wade-Giles) or fung-xue (in pinyin), the traditional Chinese art of placement, or locating things with respect to natural forces, sometimes misleadingly called 'geomancy'. The ancients knew that wind and water are important forces in the life of the planet, and apparently so does T. Boone Pickens, though probably for different reasons.

Or not. Their reasons may not be entirely different. Traditional feng-shui involves choosing the best site and situation for a house, business, bed, or graveyard so that the qi (ch'i, or energy in its many forms) of the place will favor the humans who frequent it. Bad feng-shui tends to drain away health, vitality, fertility, good luck, and money. The wealthy Cowboy entrepreneur T. Boone Pickens is interested in, among other things, money, Oklahoma State football and more money.

So there is considerable common ground: wind power, water rights, and gaining more money. I see a great cross-cultural wedding of strange bedfellows in or around Stillwater. You heard it here first.