<I represent the epitome of what you hate - a gas guzzling, big car lover extraordinaire who is doing his bit to destroy the environment.

Where do you get this stuff? What I said -- and you can go back and look -- is that, based on my experience, mass transit is a good idea that works well when people use it, and that it wouldn’t be a sin if we would drive less and use smaller cars. Also, I observed something that I know is true where I live: big cars -- big shiny new cars -- are often status rather than utility purchases. From this you have extrapolated that I hate all big cars and everyone who drives one, which is breathtakingly untrue, and Larry has concluded that I’m a stupid selfish moron jealous idiot bitter bitch queen from Hell who wants to repeal the Bill of Rights and stuff a cow down his throat and does nothing more useful with her time than to put things on shelves, shush people, and perhaps eat bonbons. Will you puleeze read past your own stereotypes?

On the subject of the environment, the following paragraph appeared in my local evening paper yesterday, in an article about air quality. The bucolic place where I live is in the top third of areas in the US for very bad ozone levels. LA, New York, and Baltimore still outdo us. This condition does not originate from cow farts.

"One reason pollution is so bad here is because we're in this interesting location with a lot of goods and services passing through the county," Stewart said [Kevin Stewart, director of environmental health at the American Lung Association of Pennsylvania]. "We are uniquely located to get the air pollution that comes from the west over the Ohio Valley and Pittsburgh. We're also getting that Baltimore/Washington, D.C., pollution when the wind blows up the I-95 corridor. So while it's true that we are generating our own fair share of pollution, we're also clearly the victim of being downwind of air pollution sources that aren't in the county."

Two of my kids have asthma, an unknown ailment in my family, and not prevalent in their dad’s family either. They suffer on bad ozone days. So when it comes to air pollution, yeah, you could say I have an ax to grind. It looks to me as if some people’s freedom to do exactly what they want (not because they need to but because they can) has not only not stopped at my children’s noses, but has reached down their throats and squeezed parts of their lungs shut.

Regards--
Mary Anne