Here in the comparitively quiet Shire-like town of Swarthmore, located in Delaware County, Pennsylvania, we like to live tranquily. We like our trees for which we have won awards, and we like clean yards. In the past, we could always set bags of leaves out on the curb, and the community would take them for recycling into mulch. Recently, I learned of a disturbing change which has caused some controversy.

The town has begun requiring its residents to put leaves in biodegradable bags, and to attach red stickers to them. The bags cost $2.50 for five, and the stickers cost a dollar a piece. The town makes money from the stickers. I enquired at the local hardware store, "Just what does this money go to, anyway?" "I don't know," replied the owner, "Payingthem to pick up the leaves, or something." I quietly wondered if our outrageously high property taxes didn't pay for that already. Anything done under the pretext of the false manmade global warming excuse always gets my attention. I don't mind using the bags per se, but would prefer to use them by my own free will rather than force. Applying force when unnecessary ultimately causes problems, and raises issues of civil liberties, even if over something as benign as a friendly biodegradable paper bag.

In my entry detailing my heinous voting experience, I noted at my Mom bought a bag of mulch at the end of the visit, which seemed fitting, given what I had just witnessed. It now seems even more fitting, knowing that the materials for that mulch now come with a nice little red pricetag attached. Irregardlessly, I still love Swarthmore. Sometime I will have to write about the Duncan Donuts/Baskin Robbins, the first chainstore to blight its landscape, reminiscent of Frodo's return to the shire in the book version of the Lord of the Rings. It supplanted a pharmacy which I seriously thought would stand there until the end of time. I remember making jokes as a kid tat one day we would look out its windows only to see the four horseman of the apocalypse. "Look, the four horseman!" we would excitedly comment. "You have to buy something or get out." the surly clerk would respond. Not anymore. All things in form must pass.