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First off, big thank you for everyone that attended the celebration for my deck. We had a ton of fun on Facebook and many of the posts are still here on the website for you to read.

I had one hell of a week last week and from what I heard from others it was a doozy energy-wise. Perhaps it was that FULL MOON that knocked out the sky. Maybe it was the eclipses and astrological influences (if I hear one more time about Mercury Retrograde I will scream LOUD. Good thing that is over.) But one thing I know for sure, I didn’t feel right. I experienced:

• Sudden mood change
• A heavy feeling
• A dark cloud around my head that made my head fuzzy and confused
• My usual upbeat personality felt depressed, sad and hopeless and I couldn’t get rid of it

Did you ever have a big change in mood like that? Comes on like gangbusters and hard to clear out? I call it Smog.

We are talking about Smog over on this month’s newsletter. Did you sign up yet? Subscribers will receive $10 to $20 Off on classes that start this Friday, AND $20 off this week on the new class, Help! I’m Sensitive Support class.

Sign up for the newsletter right over HERE.

The Santa Monica Public Library has selected Smogtown: The Lung-Burning History of Pollution in Los Angeles, to receive the 2009 Adult Local Impact Award. For three consecutive years the Library has awarded a Green Prize for Sustainable Literature. I'm pleased to inform you that the Green Prize committee has selected your book, . This year, according to librarian Nancy Bender, "the decision to award Smogtown the Green Prize was unanimous; the Committee found it a fascinating take on Los Angeles history."

Booklist, the book review arm of the American Library Association, has announced the ten best books on the environment this year and Smogtown, by Chip Jacobs and William J. Kelly, has made the list: "A fun book about smog? Jacobs and Kelly capture the aura of 1950s sci-fi movies in this lively history of Los Angeles’ monstrous smog." Smogtown was also recently featured in Capitol Weekly magazine. For all the latest news on this fascinating history of pollution in Los Angeles, check out the Smogtown blog.

Ian Volner takes on Smogtown, by Chip Jacobs and William J. Kelly, in the new issue of Bookforum: "A meticulous chronicle of the city’s signature airborne grime and of the civic and social forces that emerged to stop it. The authors, Los Angeles–based journalists Chip Jacobs and William J. Kelly, bring LA back to its unglitzy basics in a story of greed, pollution, and molasses-slow political change. Their history describes a decidedly dreary Los Angeles: Patio furniture fades, flowers die, and a man’s coral-colored tie turns bluish-purple over the course of an afternoon—all due to the smog that rolled into the city quite unannounced one morning in 1943. 'The blocked skies,' write Jacobs and Kelly, 'were tantamount to acne on a beauty queen.' . . .But the point of Smogtown is well made: that the truth really is inconvenient. Nearly fifty years after the publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, we are coming to know the cost of environmental stewardship in blood, sweat, and dollars. The story of Smogtown is that of a city vying against time to reconcile incommensurables. Any city, or any country, is only as amenable to improvement as its citizens are prepared for change. It’s an uphill slog the whole way."

Kirkus Reviews takes a look at Smogtown: "This colorful history of smog in Los Angeles begins in the 1940s and ends with a warning call for action. Self-proclaimed "survivors" of "L.A.'s greatest crisis, " journalist Jacobs and California Energy Circuit senior correspondent Kelly (draw on newspaper articles, scientific case studies, policy books andoral-history archives to dredge up the story of smog in all its hazy—andsometimes humorous—permutations. It all began on July 8, 1943, when a blinding, "confounding haze" spread around unsuspecting Angelenos, birthing a decades-long battle against a toxic, shape-shifting monster. The side effects were sinister and wide-reaching: increased car accidents andcancer rates, ruined crops, suicides and even smog-induced mental conditions, like "globus hystericus," the formation of an imaginary lump thataroused the need to swallow constantly. Most remarkable, note the authors, was the push to develop sprawling, car-dependent communities even while L.A.officials and scientists were trying to combat the deleterious effects of automobile emissions. Jacobs and Kelly cover many familiar events and figures,such as the Rodney King riots, the early work of Ralph Nader and the legacies of Gov. Jerry Brown and then-Gov. Ronald Reagan. Awareness increased in theearly '70s when doctors compared inhaling air on the most smog-ridden days as"tantamount to puffing a pack or two of cigarettes a day." By 1982 legislation was passed that required car smog checks every two years. In this tale of underhanded deals, gritty politics, community organizing and burgeoning environmentalism, the corruption is plentiful and the subplots replete with intrigue. . . The authors offer a zany and provocative cultural history."

The September 1 issue of Booklist offers a rave starred review of Smogtown: The Long-Burning History of Pollution in Los Angeles, by Chip Jacobs and William J. Kelly:

"Remember those great 1950s horror movies, when some superpowerful creature menaced a city while the citizens panicked, law enforcement officials bumbled, politicians pontificated, and plucky scientists worked at a fever pitch to find something, anything, to kill the monster? That’s pretty much the feel of this remarkably entertaining and informative chronicle of the birth and—so far—inexorable evolution of smog. On July 8, 1943, smog attacked Los Angeles without warning (well, not much warning). People didn’t know what to make of this gray mist that blanketed the city, and when it didn’t go away (or went away and then came back), the citizenry began to react in strange ways: there were rumors, for example, that this smelly cloud was some sort of chemical attack by the Japanese—less than a year after Pearl Harbor, this claim didn’t sound so silly. By 1947, when it looked like smog was here to stay, the governor of California created the country’s first smog agency. The following year, a documentary about smog was released in theaters, animated by some guy named Walt Disney, and a Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter was writing investigative pieces about the stinky mist. Later, smog helped launch Ralph Nader’s crusading career, and today it’s a central theme in the environmentalism movement. This book is just amazing, a gripping story well told, with the requisite plucky scientists (including Arie Haagen-Smit, a Dutch biochemist who was “the Elvis of his field”), hapless politicians, and a nebulous biochemical villain who just will not be stopped."