I've been having an ongoing email conversation with my mother (age 74, conservative, Catholic, Republican). She's convinced that illegal immigration is the root of all evil, and everything wrong with America could be stopped if there was no illegal immigration.

OK, I've said in countless emails. But why are those illegals here? They're not tourists. They're not going to Disneyland.

They are here because WE are paying them. Directly or indirectly, we all are.

For those people who appear to care so deeply about illegal immigration, who are sure they are breaking the law, sneaking in the back door, taking our jobs, yadda yadda, I challenge you:

Make sure every bite of food in your mouth came from a documented, taxed, legal worker.

Make sure every nail in your house, every drop of paint from your painting crew, was put in by a legal, documented, taxed worker.

Make sure every bite of your next restaurant meal was prepared, served, and the dishes washed by taxed, legal workers.

These people are here because we are paying them to be.

What if it was a FELONY with serious consequences, like three years of community service picking up trash by the highway wearing a FELON vest, for employing an illegal alien? No "I didn't know." What if employing an alien, knowing or unknowing, resulted in a full IRS audit?

What politician would have the guts to enact a law like that? But if we did, the whole problem would be over and done in a weekend.

What if I could by "legal" carrots in my local grocery, the same way I can buy organics today? Some certifying body would bless them and say "we guarantee these carrots were never touched by illegal hands, from field to your table," and they're twice or three times as expensive. Would you buy them? Would the anti-illegal blowhards on talk radio buy them? Be honest now.

So. Put your money where your mouth is. If illegal immigration is a scourge upon the American way of life, a black eye for mom and apple pie, then be prepared to follow through, and make sure absolutely nothing in your life was gained by cheap undocumented labor.

We'll have less stuff, and less space. Less need for our more expensive electricity from solar cells. It won't be a one to one transfer, oil to solar, and we all zip around in electric cars and live in spacious, lighted, air-conditioned houses.

The planet cannot support us all living in houses like mine, I'll be the first to admit it. What a weird world we live in where the biggest problem (to me) in my household is clutter. To damn much stuff. Kids toys, clothes, junk mail, papers, McDonald's Happy Meal toys (and don't go all sanctimonious on me, I'd bet every house in America with a child under 10 has at least one), and stacks and stacks of papers.

Does all this stuff make me happy? Not in the least. Getting rid of it takes a ton of time and effort. It takes even more time and effort not to accumulate it in the first place. It's a constant, daily barrage of stuff, and a super-organized human (which I am not) to keep track of it all. But the sole reason it accumulates is because stuff is cheap, and time is expensive.

And there is a connection here to the HTTW article. I'll know when photovoltaic cells make economic sense, when I stop getting little plastic toys, made of an oil by-product, and shipped halfway round the world to put in with a bad hamburger at a fast food joint. When giving away all those little plastic doodads no longer makes economic sense, I'll know that oil is expensive enough to make solar cells viable.

As food prices rise, and the commodities that make up our foods, the price of processed food (packaged tortellini, cheese flavored goldfish crackers, Cheetos, Rice-A-Roni, Mac and Cheese, canned soup, cornflakes, microwave popcorn, you name it) will also rise. All that modified food starch (which I'm just as guilty of consuming as the next suburbanite) just won't make economic sense.

What a concept that we'll go to the store and buy things like flour, cornmeal, beans, vegetables, meats, and spices.

Just as the rising price of oil makes us do what we should do anyway (ride our bikes and take public transit), the rising prices of food commodities will make us do what we ought to be doing anyway--eating less processed food, eating out less, and cooking at home from real ingredients.

Yes, in fact, she may be sexually active.

Many, many seniors in nursing homes are widowed, and find partners there in the same situation. More power to 'em! My husband's grandfather (quite a catch at the assisted living home, still with most of his marbles and no wife, in his 90s) has had three partners (that we know of) in the last eight years since his wife of 60 years died. He may have had more. Not my business. The point is that a lot of sex is going on in assisted living, among people in their 70s, 80s, and 90s.

Seniors are sexually active, and many of them are showing up with various STDs. Most seniors usually have multiple medical conditions anyway, no one wants to add genital warts or cervical cancer to the mix.