While futilely attempting to clear some space in my minuscule residence (henceforth known as the Wendellair), I marveled at the sheer volume of old newspaper accumulated. Now, I only subscribe to one dead-tree publication, and it's the local small-town daily, not the BIG CITY Times, so there isn't that much paper to start with. (In fact, like much of the ink-stained industry, it's shrinking - last week it cut down the size of its SPORTS section, forgoodnesssake!) The only time it has any heft at all is on Sunday, when every retail chain with a store in the county throws in a multi-page ad (except WalMart: they insert their ads in Saturday's paper). And the paper doesn't always end up in the Wendellair - when I take my aren't-you-jealous frequent trips to the beach, I take the paper with me (something to read when my mind wanders from the scenery AND a way to show others near me I am NOT a tourist) and dump it in the Recycling Bin out front when I return. So why is there SO MUCH NEWSPAPER around here? Well, I may have figured it out with a glimpse of the paper's masthead:

I saw the well-illustrated article on the Annual Crop Report, and was shocked - shocked to see all the words about Strawberries and Carrots, but not a word in the main article about Broccoli! Why not? It's the number 2 crop - $78 million - that's more than all the Lettuce, Carrots and Cabbage combined! (Your chart showed it up $14 million from 2006, although when I checked the crop report's 'raw numbers' they showed a revised number for last year, so the increase was only $5 million - yes, I checked the 'raw numbers'.)

Nevertheless, I suspect there has been a media bias against broccoli ever since George H.W. Bush came out against it, and it's not fair! In fact, when I googled this site for 'broccoli' (http://www.google.com/search?q=broccoli+site%3Asanluisobispo.com), the first result was a restaurant reviewer saying "I would have preferred a bit less broccoli -- I have a love-hate relationship with the vegetable -- but the cheese blend was yummy enough". I rest my case.