If  you've done business with iKitchen or Homebrands, or have received an unsolicited DVD in the mail recently, check your credit card records IMMEDIATELY. And warn your friends! Here's the full story.

I get books, CDs, and DVDs in the mail with some frequency. Publicists and others who feel our work might be a good venue for their clients send them along, sometimes with advance notice, sometimes not. But the DVD that arrived Friday seemed odd from the get-go.

Would LFTLC pay so much attention to a project in Redwood City if the show's host - moi - didn't happen to live there?

I like to think so. I live on the other side of town from the proposed development, and I avoid the 101 freeway whenever possible. Its direct impact on me is questionable. My concerns - pollution from overcrowded freeways, inappropriate use of what had been natural wetlands, possibly losing the chance to ever restore those wetlands - would move me to discuss this whether I lived here or in Iowa.

For those of you new to the topic: the multinational giant Cargill owns - and once upon a time operated - salt ponds along the Redwood City shores of the Bay. Salt production ceased there years back. Now a proposal on the table promotes a small city on the flats: developing the 1,433 acres with twelve thousand homes, along with parks, streets, stores, and parking lots.