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Letters: Guerilla Gardening, and More

STEVE INSKEEP, host:

It's Thursday morning. And most Thursdays we hear from your comments.

A story on Guerilla Gardeners, a group in London that covertly plants flowers and plants on public land, delighted Phyllis Malonis(ph) of Mary Esther, Florida.

(Soundbite of listener's voicemail)

Ms. PHYLLIS MALONIS: It was a wonderful to hear a story of flower bombing and planting flowers in the dark of the night, instead of terrorist bombing and people dying in overnight fights. If this could be the only type of guerilla warfare, what a beautiful world this would be.

(Soundbite of unidentified man singing in foreign language)

RENEE MONTAGNE, host:

And our report from Beijing on the sounds of old Beijing, brought fond memories for Jeremy Wong(ph), who now lives in Fresh Meadows, New York.

(Soundbite of listener's voicemail)

Mr. JEREMY WONG: The sound brought me back to China during my childhood. It tipped off a flashback of my worry-free years, when, for a moment, I was able to see what I saw, hear what I heard, smell what I smelled.

INSKEEP: Not all of you were quite so happy with all of our reporting. In a report about ethanol, Trish Hekan(ph) thought we gave switchgrass a bad name by calling it a weed.

(Reading)"Switchgrass is not a weed," she says. "It's an important species in wetlands and moist grassland meadows."

And we have a correction this morning. We mentioned this week that it was the birthday of filmmaker Bernardo Bertolucci, who's made such classics as Last Tango In Paris. As some of you pointed out, our birthday wishes were belated.

(Soundbite of listener's voicemail)

Mr. CHARLES LATNER(ph): This is Charles Latner from Salt Lake City, Utah. His birthday was, in fact, March 16th. Being as his work is as controversial and full of nudity and sex as it is, what does it say about me that I know so much about him?

(Soundbite of song "Zoom A Little Zoom")

Mr. TOM GLAZER (Musician): (Singing) Zoom a little zoom in a rocket ship; home we go on a trip. Coming back to earth at a rocket clip, we're going to zoom, zoom, rocket.

MONTAGNE: And this from John Sebastianski(ph) in New York.

(Reading) "Last week, I woke up, as I always, do to MORNING EDITION. But then I was coaxed into consciousness by this song, and I've spent every free minute since then searching for it."

John, you can now rest easier. The song is called Zoom A Little Zoom, and it's the theme for the video blog, Rocket Boom that we've profiled. It was written long before blogs existed by folk singer Tom Glazer back in the 1940s.

INSKEEP: If you want to get that song stuck in your head, you can hear a little more of it and email us your comments by going to npr.org.

(Soundbite of song "Zoom A Little Zoom")

Mr. GLAZER: (Singing) Zoom, we'll see if the moon is made out of green cheese. Ha-ha-ha-ha. Zoom, we're here at the moon, let's see what the moon is.

INSKEEP: This is NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.