Holy expletive. The Center for Media and Democracy has this to say about the U.S. Composting Council (USCC): [Here's the link]: http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=US_Composting_Council [Quote]: "The US Composting Council (USCC) is a front group for dumping sewage sludge onto gardens and farms. It sponsors the ironically titled International Compost Awareness Week; the irony is that the buyer of compost is not "aware" that USCC puts their seal on sewage sludge-derived "compost." It describes itself as a national trade and professional organization with over 600 members including Synagro, compost manufacturers, local government, equipment suppliers and others. It promotes "compost" manufactured with sewage sludge.[1] As a promoter of "biosolids," the sludge industry PR term for sewage sludge dumped on farms and gardens, it works closely with BioCycle magazine, Water Environment Federation, Kellogg Garden Products, and other promoters of growing food in sewage sludge." [End of quote] Further down the page in the link above, the Center says this: [Quote]: "USCC Behind 'Compost Awareness Week' International Compost Awareness Week (ICAW) is a yearly PR campaign by the US Composting Council to promote dumping sewage sludge on gardens and farms. Jeff [Z.] of the giant Los Angeles, CA, Inland Empire Utility Agency (IEUA) coordinates the program for the USCC. IEUA supplies the sewage sludge "compost" that is resold by the Kellogg Garden Products company." "In April 2010, the U.S. Composting Council sent a letter of support to the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission in favor of its sewage sludge compost giveaway program.[3] In the letter, the U.S. Composting Council says sewage sludge composts "provide many benefits while being safe for use." ======== "Seal of Testing Assurance (STA) One of USCC's main programs is its Seal of Testing Assurance (STA) for compost products.[4] The STA program, developed in 2000, requires regular testing of compost products by "certified" labs. The testing is relatively minimal and the standards are designed to allow for certification of products containing sewage sludge." [End of quote] Now the last sentence above unnerved me, because a local St. Louis company from which I intend to buy 3 cubic yards of compost later this Spring promotes on their web site that they are STA-certified. On the phone, the local St. Louis company (which I will NOT name here) says they do NOT use treated sewage sludge (aka "biosolids") in their compost. I sure hope that's true, or I'll have to find another source of compost this spring.

Times have changed with internet shopping...comparing prices, bulk orders, big savings but sketchy delivery practices. My parents lost every appliance except fridge during storm Sandy. Even their boiler and hot water heater. At 84 and 85 yrs old and having replaced only one at a time the last 50 yrs, this was a bit devastating for them. We spent a week helping with installation etc. They needed local human contact to guide them. Consistent delivery and a number to call. Sears delivered the wrong stove the day before x-mas and let them keep it for the holiday and was replaced the next week free of charge of course. He would never order internet or feel comfortable. My dishwasher was three weeks waiting with no return calls...dumped in the driveway and i was home at the time!...damaged and dented (tiny) but not on the visual face front. We installed to avoid the hassle of return and works fine but so frustrating. If ordering internet to save money, read all delivery print and ask questions repeatedly by phone. You will not get the service you have had in the past when you ordered locally. My fridge was delivered white glove by a very good local appliance store and old fridge removed. No stress and on time and on the day agreed. My washer/dryer was next day delivery from Lowes. Yes you can save a bundle but must be flexible. My neighbors did an e-bay nightmare and it was never delivered. It was protected but took a couple months to get money back...the seller did not have the item they were selling....listed and sold it over and over to take the cash hoping to stall the buyers for another stove in the future...even blamed the buyer for backing out of sale! My point is...do your homework and do not expect the white glove services of yesteryear...ask for it, demand it and you will be expected to pay for it. It is often included in your local suppliers delivery service. Ask lots of questions. Many stories here of appliances dumped on sidewalks.

Jane - good question. I know I can use AOL free mail. It seems to me that this summer/early fall, I kept finding issues with AOL email - and several web-savvy people (like my web designer, etc. suggested that AOL is very troublesome in it's efforts to be helpful. Now I'm having trouble remembering why I was getting so frustrated with AOL. This is what I do recall. Not always being able to view embedded images (including an email blast from a non-profit I'm on the Board of). Difficulty formatting emails - if I cut and paste word documents in the email, it gets deliverd with all kinds of extraneous punctuation and symbols. I've had neighborhood listservs reject some of my postings bc. AOL sent so much gibberish with it. I had to rewrite it to get it sent to these neighborhood yahoo-group listservs in a format that was clear. I think (I could remember this wrong), that if I use AOL's fonts, colors, formatting - it may not get delivered that way. Now I'm opening AOL mail through the firefox browser and not using AOL software. I have found that the search function is vastly inferior to the search function if I opened AOl software. Having AOL email open in Firefox, the searching for emails is highly inaccurate - to the point of being almost useless. This is probably the single biggest frustration I have with AOL (now that I"m not using their software). I don't know that it would work any better if I used the free AIM instead of opening my AOL mail in Firefox. Not quite sure if and how AIM is different. Using AOL mail via Firefox - it just handles my emails badly. It will place emails in my old folder when I've marked them as save as new. I seem to have less control over where I save my emails. It seems to almost randomly decide whether it keeps the email in the new inbox - or places it in the old folder (where it eventually disappears). And I can only access old emails for a short period before they're deleted. And the recently deleted seem available for a tiny, tiny time compared with the AOL software. Jane - if your experience with AOL mail is different, please let me know. I know that it's just been very cumbersome and un-useful since I switched to Firefox this summer. Another problem -which may not be AOL, but could be firefox - or who knows what else. If I'm looking on craigslist and I want to inquire about an item for sale, I can't manage to reply to the poster. I hit the "reply to" button, it places that poster's anonymous contact info in the to: field - but when I hit send, it says that I can't send mail with parenthesis in the BCC field. I have not added anything in the BCC field - and if I click bcc field and delete everything in it, it still insists there are parenthese in the field and won't send the email. Gee - now that I start thinking about it, I guess I can recall all the frustrations I've been having with AOL (not using the AOL software). The reason I haven't cancelled my paid AOL account is bc. I still need to resort to going through AOL software to reliably access and search old emails. I will keep a free AOL account with my current email address - just so I can be reached by anyone I forgot to inform about my new address. And for those who forget and send to the old. I still want to receive those emails. But my hope is to use it less and less often bc. it's troublesome now. A different reason for not using AOL for my professional email is that it just doesn't look professional. (I presume that's one reason your husband using gmail for his professional correspondence - it's just more professional and less amateurish seeming to clients/customers.) not2bright- I appreciate the FWIW addition. It's a little over my head - but not completely. I do have a professional website - which my webdesigner set up to forward my emails to me. I'm not quite ready for setting up my personal email like this, but the more I hang out on this forum, the more I'm willing to attempt things that I once thought were not possible. Lynn.

Oh well that's entirely different, don't even look at it, why would it bother you in the spam folder that means your email program is working as it should. Let it dispose of them or just click delete on the spam folder to get rid of them. I don't care or know what in in there it gets deleted. Don't you get fliers and junk mail in your real mailbox? I know I do and it goes directly into the trash can. Every time you visit websites they put tracker cookies on your pc . If you order online you give your email address, it gets shared among the "partners" they now have your email address, they share with their "partners". On and on. I have ordered from Amazon recently and twice now the company that had the product that I ordered from Amazon have emailed me directly asking for my opinion and asked for feedback. I don't like this new development, but I did place the order and I had to provide my email address. It is what it is, also Facebook and other social media that encourages sharing every thing well it's going to happen a lot. Expect that to increase not decrease. But not using that primary email address online and among friends will help. It's your friends that are the likely culprits, forwarding emails with long list of everyone's address on them. Use BCC if you must forward! And if someone you know is doing it and including your email address then tell them to stop. I see a signature quite often asking to please use BCC or remove their address before forwarding. If someone does not know how to do that by now, ask for help or use Google to learn more about proper etiquette in email forwarding.