HANGING GARDENS SEEK MIRACLE GROW The UN Environmental Programme has evaluated the environment in Iraq and found it lacking. Actually, it found it disastrous. Some of the crisis is humanitarian, some directly related to tonnes of ordinance scattered throughout the country. And some, like the fact that the entire Tigris and Euphrates tidal marsh -- once one of the largest in the world -- has been virtually destroyed, thanks to Saddam Hussein's draining of the marshes in the 1990s. That was on account of the fact that he didn't like the Shiite fishermen who lived there.

A WRITER WITH PRIORITIES Peter Maass took a break to be a journalist, so his web log has been lean and spare, as he explains. But he provides some links to his recent articles in the New York Times, and because he's smarter than, say, Walter Cronkite (that was just cheap, wasn't it?), he actually hosts the articles so you don't need to register your first-born to read them.

YOU PROBABLY FORGOT TO FEED THE DOGS, DIDN'T YOU? I know you forget about Mimi when I'm not around, and here it is just a smidgen past 1:00 in the morning and I'm telling you not to forget Mimi Smartypants today. First off, she and I both need to break her first three habits (I have a head start on her with cynicism! Go optimism!), and secondly, I know far too many people who need to break habits number 4 and 5. Damn precocious kittens.

SPRING BROKE, I BREAK I'm not dawdling. Honest. But I've lingered over cafe au lait and newspapers, looked at books, looked at plants, visited a tailor. I've also read a good chunk of the utterly depressing, splendidly written "We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda," by Philip Gourevitch; it's hard to believe that nine years ago 800,000 people were massacred by their neighbors and nobody blinked. I've bought CDs by Neko Case, Morphine, the Jayhawks and Ibrahim Ferrer of Buena Vista Social Club fame. I sat for baby Henry and we ate flowers. I watched Buffy, even though it was a repeat. I've sat in the sun, talked on the phone, talked in person. I've registered for a new writing class, looked into Arabic and Spanish classes, ordered more art from Steve Keene. I've written friends. Now, I've got new magazines and books waiting, poetry that demands editing, and possibly a major website overhaul in the works. And I put world affairs on pause. A good two days' work, I'd say. Four to go. I'll be back on Monday. Ciao.

ALL ABOUT AFRICA, ALL OF THE TIME AllAfrica.com has been nominated in the category of "Best News Site" in the International Academy of Digital Arts and Science's Webby Awards, and for good reason. The independent site culls from its own reporting staff and major international publications and groups to present a clear, daily picture of African events. For its readers, AllAfrica.com fills a void left by traditional news sources with limited attention spans.

Africa is exploding with news -- some good and much bad. Nigeria is currently fumbling toward democracy, attempting to emerge from years of violence that some say has cost 4 million lives. Zimbabwe is stumbling into chaos under the brutal, corrupt rule of Robert Mugabe. South Africa's progress toward reconciliation has been amazing, but also has been marred by unemployment and crime. Rwanda is entering an important phase with the tribunals established after the genocide there in the mid-1990s. AIDS and starvation threaten millions of lives, and have left the continent with millions of orphans. And AllAfrica.com stays current with it all.

YO, CAESAR! Gideon Rose of Foreign Affairs has it right: If you're going to get into the business of empire building, get into the business of empire building already.

Since the postwar problems in Iraq were entirely predictable, you'd think appropriate solutions for them would be waiting in the wings. But you'd be wrong. As in Afghanistan and the Balkans, postwar events in Iraq are being handled largely on the fly and far less smoothly than they could be because the U.S. government has yet to face its new global role squarely and plan for it appropriately ...

... After 9/11, the interventions increased in scale, but similar attitudes persisted. Despite the Bush administration's grandiose rhetoric, in practice, in both Afghanistan and Iraq, there has been a strong bias toward casting the American role in simple negative terms—beating up the enemy—as if the complex positive tasks of building a thriving new order afterward could and should be left for someone else. But just who that someone else is supposed to be, and how and why they should finish the job for us, has remained unclear.

This simply will not do. Bungling the peace in Afghanistan would be a tragedy; bungling the peace in Iraq would be a catastrophe. So unless the Bush administration changes its mind and decides to hand off responsibility to the United Nations and the rest of the international community, it will have to do much of the work of postwar nation-building itself. Interestingly, one result of going it alone might be to force the United States to finally develop the institutions required to run what is now a de facto empire (albeit one designed to be temporary and managed on behalf of the dominions rather than the metropolis).

HEY, PAUL REVERE, NICE HAT The California town of Arcata is not Anywhere, USA. In fact, it's more Oddsville than Smallsville. But it is one of many communities taking a legal stand against some of the more intrusive provisions of the Patriot Act. The Washington Post reports on the efforts of Arcata and some in Congress to reign in the antiterrorism act.

Lawmakers and lobbyists on both ends of the political spectrum are beginning to sound more alarms about the antiterrorism act, which gave the government unprecedented powers to spy on citizens. Rep. Bernard Sanders (I-Vt.) has introduced a bill, the "Freedom to Read Protection Act" (H.R. 1157), that would restore the privacy protections for library book borrowers and bookstore purchases. The bill has 73 co-sponsors.

Earlier this month, Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.), the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, and Rep. John Conyers Jr. (Mich.), the ranking Democrat, asked the Justice Department for more information on the government's use of the Patriot Act to track terrorists, questioning what "tangible things" the government can subpoena in investigations of U.S. citizens.

Sensenbrenner and Conyers sent an 18-page letter to Attorney General John D. Ashcroft, challenging the department's increased use of "national security letters" requiring businesses to hand over electronic records on finances, telephone calls, e-mails and other personal data.

They questioned the guidelines under which investigators can subpoena private books, records, papers, documents and other items; asked whether the investigations targeted only people identified as agents of a foreign power; and asked the attorney general to "identify the specific authority relied on for issuing these letters."

NERVY STRUMPET Well, not exactly. Sometimes I just enjoy other people's weekends.

POEMETRY IN MOTION Random House gives the old National Poetry Month shout-out to six poets on their roster -- Kevin Young, Sarah Arvio, Peter Davison, Edward Hirsch, Sharon Olds and Andrew Zawacki.