I recently visited North Bridge in Concord, site of the "shot heard round the world." More men fell in the town where I grew up than in Concord or Lexington on April 19, 1775, but they get the recognition. Go figure. This isn't my gripe about Minuteman National Historic Park. This is: the visitor center doesn't have flush toilets. This isn't a misguided attempt to recreate the out-house conditions that prevailed 234 years ago. It's a boasting point in the park's fight to save the Earth. Above each toilet, a sign announces that the toilets use no water or chemicals. Simple gravity takes human waste and turns it into compost in a mechanism under the building. Some people call that progress. Others call it gross.

I've experience these new fangled 'waterless' toilets and talk about going backwards! The smell reminds me of a shed I had in my backyard as a kid. The side of which we used as a toilet and only got 'flushed' when it rained.

So why, in a technologically advanced civilized society, do we have sparkling new porcelain urinals that basically work the same as the side of an old shed?

Do we have a water shortage that I don't know about? I don’t think so.

Another tribute to the planet from the radical environmentalists who think that the earth would be a much better place if we just all went away.