Re: Re: Off Topic - MLK & Sam Smith's Progressive

**"Mike McGrath" M*@PTD.net**

Right on, Adam.

I'm also a reader of Smith's excellent iconoclastic
news service. He's based in D.C., but it was his news
service that alerted me to the story of a community
college writing professor in nearby Winston-Salem NC
who lost her job for expressing her anguish over the
Iraq war, and asking her students to write about it -
no requirement the essays be pro or con. The topic was
not considered 'appropriate' by her department head or
the dean. A few weeks later, oddly enough, Bush
appeared at the school's rural campus to ballyhoo his
'support for education'. Right... Anyway, Smith is
well worth reading, and all of us need to pay
attention to what's happening in Washington. In the
new issue of Community Greening, which should be
arriving momentarily in your mailboxes (the boxes of
'overs', which I'm now going to be sending/carrying to
bookstores and Amazon, arrived on my porch this
afternoon), check out the story by David Malakoff
entitled 'Final Harvest" if you want to be reminded of
why keeping close tabs on Washington is important for
community gardeners and 'greeners'.

Thanks, Adam, and, heck, far as I'm concerned, you can
go 'off topic' anytime you like. First, it opens
minds. Second, who's to say what's 'off topic' in
community gardening, which touches everything?. Third,
you've earned the right to speak your mind through
years of toil in the Hell's Kitchen garden and on
behalf of community gardens all over the place.

Got a first planting of snow and sugar snap peas in
today (it was in the 50s, and sunny), and now a gentle
rain is falling. Nice.

Don Boekelheide
Charlotte, NC, USA