Maggie's Farm

Dearest Laurie,

You barbecue? Inhumanely cooped up and diseased chickens, land and resource-hogging/ methane-emitting cattle, or effluent, dust and odor-producing pigs? Barbecue, that releases carbon dioxide, toxics, meat fatty acid pollutants, and if using charcoal, carbon monoxide, soot and ground-level ozone, as well, unless one uses a flameless slower-cooking solar stove or, at a minimum, lump charcoal from invasive tree species or sustainably-managed tree forests and chimney charcoal starter instead of lighter fluid?

You have a pit fire? Releasing carbon emissions and smoke pollution for the wanton entertainment of us Dem and Hollywood-Manhattan tribal types?

You installed an amphitheater? Regrading and hard-surfacing over natural coastal beauty for political theater and our write-off partisan-charity events?

You put in a lush, sodded lawn? The upkeep of which uses (potable) water irrigation, chemical fertilizer and insecticide, and gasoline powered mowers, weed-whackers and those noise and air polluting blowers?

Are your hostess frocks and the help’s uniforms made from hemp, do your guests arrive there by Prius or bicycle, and do any of us tolerate the less flattering light of CFW bulbs and rough recycled toilet tissue applied to our best sides?

Believe me, I understand where you're coming from and would like the names of your contractors, but Chanel and Ferragamo don't make shoes large enough to accommodate our “footprints.” What on earth are we to do?

#4 is another lame joke. Sorry!