Sherry Chandler

AFP via Juan Cole:

BAGHDAD (AFP) — Hundreds of Shiites and Sunnis marched on Wednesday in protest at the building by US troops of a tall concrete wall separating their northwest Baghdad neighbourhoods, an AFP photographer said.

The protesters complained that the wall would promote sectarianism and demanded its removal.

Residents said that US forces last week began building the two-kilometre (1.25 mile) wall along the border of the mainly Shiite al-Shuala and adjoining Sunni-majority al-Ghazaliyah neighbourhoods without consulting them.

The demonstrators — tribal leaders, clerics and local residents — marched from one neighbourhood to the other carrying banners reading “No to the dividing wall” and “The wall is US terrorism.”

Like the “something” in the Robert Frost poem, I don’t like walls. I’ve written about it here and here, here, here, and it’s a theme of my poem at nth position.

Once we all get fenced off from one another, what then?

The Fall 2007 issue of the New Southerner is out. Here’s a snippet of Bobbi Buchanan’s editor’s note for the issue:

But weaning myself from Wal-Mart was no easy feat. Our grocery bill doubled when I limited shopping to independently owned stores and union-friendly chains. Making the transition to organic has been even more expensive. I tell myself over and over that the prices are more realistic, that I shouldn’t be paying the same price for a gallon of milk that my mother paid 25 years ago.

The theme of the Fall ‘07 issue of New Southerner is organic versus conventional. While all those conventional foods seem like such a bargain, the Fuss feature will educate you on the high price we pay for cheap food. We pay with poor health, the destruction of land and local economies, and the horrific abuse of factory farm animals. Our food chain is being tainted with cloned meats, chemical-laden fruits and vegetables and genetically modified products such as rice produced with human genes. It’s disturbing news.

To some, the organic movement seems ridiculous, particularly with the wide range of humanely raised, pesticide-free products now available. Commercial food producers have invented new organic lines with every item imaginable — right down to corn chips. On the downside, many people are fooled into thinking these processed organic products are actually good for them. Another problem is that the definition of organic varies by country, state, manufacturer and farmer. But at New Southerner, we’re still convinced that buying organic, when possible, is better for our health, the environment and local economies.

Check out

• Leslie Smith Townsend and Ellen Anderson on The High Cost of Cheap Food
• Bobbi Buchanan’s interview with Anne Shelby (If you aren’t familiar with Anne Shelby’s work, you’re in for a treat.)
• Ellen Anderson on A Potter’s Mark on the Postmodern World
• Holly Brockman’s A Tale of Two Beekeepers
• Erin Keane on “Root Hog or Die” — that’s an internet radio show you can listen to here on East Village Radio

With fiction by Sheldon Lee Compton and poetry by Robert M. Kinsey, Michael Beadle, and Aaron Buchanan.

And more.

Check it out.