And another good morning to you all. I thought it best to separate the gardening post form the social/political/economic/environmental etc. issues.

Huffington Post carried this excerpt from a new book, "The Ripple Effect." I don't know, yet, if I will try to pick it up. But I like the excerpt because it really brings home several aspects of industrial pollution. First, its long history. Pollution has been along as long as human beings have been human beings. We have always had waste and by products from our activities. Some of the most revealing remains archaeologists have found were trash piles. Medieval cities segregated noxious, but necessary, manufacturing facilities outside and down wind/down river. No one wanted to live next door to the dyers, butchers, or tanners. Second, the long term and unanticipated consequences of industrial pollution. No one, I am sure expected an explosion of highly volatile hydrocarbons that had pooled underground leaving a crater in a New York Neighborhood. Third, how those most affected are those with the least information, least political power, and fewest economic resources.

Reading about the uprising and repression in Syria I suddenly had a thought: I wonder what is happening to Riverbend who wrote the "Baghdad Burning" blog from the early days of the American occupation of Iraq till the sectarian violence forced her and her family to move to Syria.