For the next few Sundays Springfield's leaf recycling centers will be open.  City ordinances prohibit the dumping of leaves and yard waste into streets and waterways; this includes street gutters.  Open burning of trees, brush, or any other vegetation requires an open-burning permit, but the open burning of leaves is prohibited.  Legal alternatives to the leaf recycling centers include mulching and backyard composting.

While the US, Canada, and Europe diverge from each other in many ways, they are consistent in the fact that yard waste makes up 20% to 30% of municipally-collected solid waste.  (Food waste makes up another 8% to 9%.)  Collecting, hauling and processing yard waste can constitute an average of 20% of the waste management budget, although the number rises to 50% in some localities.

The Michigan legislature is approaching this perennial problem in an interesting/controversial new way.  After nineteen yard-waste-free years, they are proposing to to re-introduce yard waste into the trash flow ending up in landfills--but only if 70% of the gas (mostly methane) from the decomposition of garbage is recovered and used as energy supply.  While landfills would then derive more revenue from the sale of energy and increased waste volume, environmentalists worry about the unrecovered methane, an extremely potent and volatile greenhouse gas.

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As early as June '08, the Springfield-Greene County Health Department not only recognized, quantified, and evaluated Greene County health-care deficits, but pulled together a consortium of providers to address some very pressing issues.

The director of the health department estimated at that time that about 37,000 people in Greene County had no health insurance.  Another 74,000 were estimated to be underinsured (defined as having to pay more than 10% out of pocket for health care).  These numbers accounted for 43.57% of the total population, a figure that can only become more bleak since national health care spending has increased at an annual average rate of 10% since the Sixties.  Without some sort of remediation, it seems inevitable that more than half the population of Greene County will become uninsured or underinsured in the foreseeable future.

The problem doesn't stop there.  Of that part of the Greene County population that had some degree or form of health insurance, 33% had some type of public insurance.  With an aging population and both large and small employers cutting back or eliminating health coverage, it remains to be seen how that number will hold up.

Fast forward to 2009.  The number of uninsured people in Greene County is now estimated at 40,000, an 8.1% annual increase.  The Kitchen Clinic, a typical safety-net clinic operating at capacity, turned away 230 people in June.  Data released in late September by the Census Bureau show 11.3% of children in Missouri's 7th Congressional District to be uninsured.  The percentage of uninsured adults (ages 18-64) in the 7th district is 22.8; that's nearly 100,000 people.

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Semiannually there is a (nearly) national undercurrent of grumbling and whining.  A couple of states and four US territories are oblivious to this--because they don't observe daylight saving time (DST).  (Not "daylight savings time," although most people want to call it that.)

The Internet has given the disgruntled an outlet to move beyond annoying their friends and relatives with their utter dissatisfaction with the DST concept or application.  Web sites have sprung up, advocating either ending DST or extending it year-round.

In its present configuration, DST will go away for only four winter months.  The most-often cited reason for its existence is energy savings.  More than one critical eye is being turned on this claim, however; the most serious contender is a 36-page academic paper making the point that DST actually increases residential energy demand by a substantial amount.  (If 36 academic pages are more than you want to deal with, here's USA TODAY's q&a on the study.)  Another quasi-scientific study purports to show that the productivity of US knowledge workers is diminished by $480 million by DST.

Another commentator finds DST deadly, but advises against bringing up the matter lest Congress impose a National Bedtime Hour!  He also notes the existence of a 240-page book, Spring Forward:  The Annual Madness of Daylight Saving Time, that one review says "draws much mirth from the facts about DST and its amorphous benefits."

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