"every CF bulb has mercury in it ..." Yeah, and every incandescent bulb has lead in it! But fear not. The amount of mercury saved - mercury that a coal fired powerplant does NOT emit powering a CF, which uses less energy - is greater than the mercury in the CF. So the net release of mercury is LOWER. This is even more true with the new low mercury CFs (the amount reduced by 75-80%). An ordinary cheap generic compact fluorescent lamp has about 4-5mg of mercury. A coal fired powerplant will emit about 3.5mg of mercury powering a 20W CF for its lifetime, taking that as 7500h (a rough average). If you chuck the CF in the trash, you've just released 8.5mg of mercury into the environment. If you take it to the HHW center and they recycle the mercury, you've released only 3.5mg. Now let's say you use a 75W incandescent bulb instead. Since it lasts an average of 750h you'll need 10 of them to the one CF. This uses more landfill space, and puts lead in the landfill, but we'll neglect that for now. The salient point here is that although those 10 bulbs contain no mercury, the powerplant emits 13mg of mercury powering them. And there's not a thing you can do about it. You can't haul any of that mercury to your local HHW center. Bottom line: using an incandescent bulb releases at least 53% more mercury into the environment than using a CF, and that's if you junk the CF in a landfill. If you use a CF and dispose of it properly at a HHW disposal center, the mercury released is only 3.5mg. In that case, using the incandescent bulbs instead of CFs releases 270% more mercury, or 3.7 times as much! So don't be afraid of fluorescents on account of the small amount of mercury they contain. They actually REDUCE mercury release into the environment. But to be sure, buy low mercury CFs. Here is a link that might be useful: Low Mercury CFs

Been working my way through a pile of books that I just have to get back to their rightful owner, plus one of them would make good fodder for my monthly book review column that I do for a local rag. The Perfect Storm is a YA epistolary novel based on the real-life Galveston hurricane that happened in September 1900. This was actually a really good read, and in fact, the descriptions of the "I was there" POV of the lashing of the rain and the winds and the utter destruction that was the result was really powerful, as when I put down the book to let the cat out, I opened the door fully expecting it to be rainy and windy, instead of 100 degrees that it was. (Sigh. This might also have been linked with the fact that we haven't had any measurable rain in the area since last October. Wishful thinking.) The other book was called Breathing, In Dust by Tim Z. Hernandez, which is really a series of short stories (more vignettes, really) of life in a poor urban Hispanic neighborhood of LA. Each story/vignette can stand on its own, but when read as a group, you can see threads of various stories and characters throughout the book. Although I didn't enter the book with very high expectations, it was still a good book and it's likely that the author made it pretty autobiographical. Like I said, I enjoyed it but it did seem rather as though it was a thesis or dissertation from a graduate writing program. So, as a complete change of pace (and being heavy with guilt from having too many books on the real-life TBR pile), I pulled out a Ruth Rendell book of short stories which I have had in my possession for absolutely ages. Titled Piranha to Scurfy, it is a really good collection of short stories that cover a wide range of topics. Not a murder in them (so far), but more of the unexpected twisty tales of Saki or perhaps The Twilight Zone... Thoroughly enjoying this one. And in the spirit of cleaning up the TBR pile, I pulled out the NF Stuff:Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things by Randy O. Frost and gail Steketee. Starting off with famous Collyer brothers in NYC, the book has started really well, and I am looking forward to reading it with gratitude that I am not a hoarder (nor is any of my family). I think it would be tough to handle. So - that's my weekend ahead of me. Reading, reading, reading. (I hope. I do have the MIL in town, so there may not quite as much time reading as I hope...)

Oh, I do miss Woolworth's! There is nothing like it now. I got out a magnifying glass and read the journal entries. Ineresting juxtaposition between the idyll illustrated in the article and the unhappy domestic scene described in the handwritten pages. She must have given permission for the journal to be photographed, but I wonder if she gave much thought to the pages that ended up being published? I love the beautiful papers and journals, but for me, pretty much useless - minor arthritis makes it difficult for me to write much. I am very thankful for my computer with its friendly yet unphotogenic keyboard (and spell and grammar check ;) I'll share half a muffin with someone.

veer, I just learned recently myself that what we call arugula is the same thing as rocket. Shaw was very clever when he said that we are two nations divided by a common tongue. The book maintains, and I agree, that there is a great divide in America. A great many people live primarily on fast food and convenience food, and eat both unhealthfully and without much sophistication. Lots of people never cook other than to heat something in a microwave oven. On the other hand there is a large and growing segment of the population with a great interest in good food -- the "foodies" -- who dine out or cook at home. Look at the success of the Food Network on television these days. This interest seems to be centered most heavily around the Northeast and the West Coast, although I'm sure many such people are found all throughout the country. The book was a lot of fun to read. My poor husband was trying to read his own book on the plane and I kept nudging him to read bits to him. (It's only fair -- he asks me crossword puzzle questions.) You should be able to find it if you are interested. I bought in a bookstore in Florence, and I see that Amazon UK has it. And yes, we did come home inspired. I have made several things we learned, and my son was gratifyingly impressed. Tonight Tom will be cooking my almost-birthday dinner and I'm eager to see what he comes up with. Someone said to me, Oh how nice that you took your husband to cooking school with you. I replied, How nice that he took me. It was his idea in the first place! He generally comes up with good ideas.