Air Date: Week of October 18, 2002

This week, we dip into the Living on Earth mailbag to hear what listeners have to say.

Transcript

CURWOOD: It’s Living on Earth. I’m Steve Curwood.
Coming up, some New Yorkers are fuming about a proposed smoking ban. But first...

[THEME MUSIC]

CURWOOD: ...comments from you, our listeners.

Our interview about a scientist’s discovery of a hidden image of Japan’s Ryoanji Zen Garden was not calming for KUNM listener Karen Mack in Albuquerque.

"I found it to be shallow and in the typical spirit of a scientific reductionist paradigm," Ms. Mack wrote. "I, frankly, have never needed any scientist to either confirm or deny the validity or uselessness of any religious practice or ceremony. And I’m sure the vast majority of people who practice their faith and spiritual beliefs feel the same way."

Rebecca McClanahan’s poem about eating dirt disturbed listener David Staber from Floyd, Virginia.

STABER: As long as you have people on there who are eating dirt and glorifying it, you’ll never be taken seriously by the mainstream, and you are, yourself, your own worst enemy.

CURWOOD: Seth Crosby heard the poem on KWMU in St. Louis. He’s a physician and says he recognized in a fictional pregnant narrator, the symptom of a real disorder called pica. "Pica is caused by iron deficiency," Dr. Crosby wrote. "Growing a little person in one’s body takes iron, which often causes or worsens the mother’s iron deficiency."

Dr. Crosby suggests that the poem’s narrator might find it easier to keep her promise not to eat dirt by taking a mineral which comes from soil, iron. A daily vitamin with iron, he says, ought to do the trick.

There’s no waiting on our listener line. We’ll take your call any time at 800-218-9988. That’s 800-218-9988. You can also write us at letters@loe.org. Once again, letters@loe.org. And visit our webpage at loe.org. That’s loe.org.

[THEME MUSIC]