I love to cook, and I'm glad to use fresh, local ingredients when I can. But I think people who live in California (where evidently there are 24 hour farmer's markets on every corner) are a bit clueless at the state of farmer's markets in other parts of the country, especially when you get out of a couple of big cities, not to mention the realities of working a job that requires you to be at work at certain times.

I recently moved, and tried to find a local farmer's market. I found two fairly nearby - one that ran 10-2 on Tuesdays and another that ran 11-3 on Fridays. Hmmm, which one of those is compatible with an 8 to 6 job? I finally found a Saturday farmer's market that entailed a 40 mile round trip. I got there by 8 am and the place was practically empty - evidently if you aren't there by six, you can't get anything decent. I'm not willing to get up at 5 am on a Saturday so I can drive 40 miles to buy a few vegetables. (Maybe you morning people think that's fun, but not me.)

And this isn't unusual - I've lived in four different places, and it's always been hard to find a farmer's market that's open at workable times. I'm not a huge fan of Whole Foods, but at least I can shop there after work. I don't want to spend all my time trying to work my schedule around the extremely limited hours of the local farmer's market. I'd rather spend that time cooking and eating.

I'm not sure that there's a particular "female" attitude toward cars, but I remember how frustrated I was when I was looking for a car a few years ago. Most of the car sites focus on things like how big the engine was, how fast it could go from 0 to 60, how "cool" it looked. (I think of those features as "guy things", although I know women who love this stuff, and men who couldn't care less.)

I wanted to know, how long will it run without needing major repairs. How reliable was it. How many bags of groceries could I fit in the trunk. To me, a car is like a toaster - I just want to turn it on, have it work, then turn it off. It's not that I feel like I'm "too girly" to know about cars, it's just that I don't really care - I know how to change a tire and do some basic maintenance (although living in an apartment limits what I do myself) but honestly, I have a lot of other interests and I'd rather spend my time on them. I don't get a thrill from admiring a car engine.

Most car sites just don't cater to buyers like me, so if the "female friendly" sites do, that would be great. If so, I'll bet there are quite a few men who'd be happy to visit too - not all men are "car crazy" either.

I lived in Atlanta until a few months ago, and I saw the good and bad sides to Atlanta's development issues. Although I left before the water shortage kicked in, I'm not that surprised.

However, there have been some attempts to reign in "sprawl", and in large part, they've been defeated due to NIMBY attitudes. I lived in an area where there was a proposal to build compact, affordable housing. It was near public transportation (as much as Atlanta has) and major highways, and because it was compact, it would have had much less impact than the same number of people living in typical suburbia. There were plenty of people willing to buy this kind of housing, but the locals wouldn't have it. They all screamed about how it would "bring down the value of their houses" and "bring in the wrong kind of people". I think the project was eventually dropped.

The result is, people end up moving outward in order to find affordable housing. (There are some fancy-shmancy condos downtown, but they're not anywhere near "affordable".) Which means more sprawl. I saw the same issues when I lived in the NY suburbs, and I'm seeing it here in PA where I live now. Current homeowners don't want anything built in "their neighborhood" other than McMansions, because they feel that anything else will "lower their property values". And because homeowners vote, and go to zoning meetings, and scream loudly, their views carry the day - and you end up with more sprawl.

Until someone solves the NIMBY problem, it's going to be difficult to combat sprawl.

I read the NY Times online, and the story was highlighted on the top section of the web site on Thursday morning. I only realized it was part of the "Style" section when it fell off the top section later in the day and ended up under "Fashion and Style". So online readers may have been more likely to read it.

However, it was striking that it appeared on the same day as the article on African-American CEO's. I read both stories, and I would have assumed they'd both be in the same section, since they had a lot of similarities. As an online reader, I don't pay a lot of attention to the "sections" of the newspaper, but I probably would have missed the article in the print section, since I have very little interest in "Fashion". That section always seems to be about overpriced, impractical stuff that I'd never want to buy, so I almost always skip it.

Karen