UPDATE 1/10: From today's Bee: Stronger Valley air pollution alerts to be issued.

ORIGINAL ENTRY 1/9: I was walking along Huntington Boulevard at about 4:30 p.m. yesterday, enjoying a nice late-Sunday stroll on a lazy afternoon, when I noticed a house on the south side of the street -- very cute, very rustic, with a charming depiction of an owl hanging from the roof -- with smoke wafting out the chimney. A big pile of firewood was stacked on the front porch. It was nearly 60 degrees.

Really? On a no-burn day, in a week in which the stuff we breathe is choked with particulate matter? Are people really that clueless about how bad our air is this winter? On Dec. 29, Bee environment writer Mark Grossi wrote:

The Valley's haze has become a nasty brew of soot and debris twice the federal health standard. And it's getting worse. Nature and the economy have created a perfect storm of dirty air -- the worst December bout for the Fresno-Clovis area in more than a decade.

Some people say they have to use their fireplaces for economic reasons. If they don't burn, they can't stay warm, and that's a health issue, they say.

Not when it's warm to walk down the street in your shirt sleeves.

As seems to be depressingly the case in our hyper-polarized society, wood burning becomes a political act as well. As one fresnobee.com commenter declared:

I believe I have a right to burn a fire in my fireplace without an unreasonable search of my chimney. Just seems like government has grown too big.

What I want to know is this: How bad does our air have to get for clueless people to stop the burning? Right now, the fine for lighting wood fires is $50, waived on the first offense. Maybe it should be $5,000.

Bee reader Don Slinkard doesn't think much of the "Pop Up Savings" experiment being conducted by Regal Entertainment Group at the UA Broadway Faire movie theaters. (Along with the regular admission cost, a $4 charge is added to every ticket to cover the cost of a refillable drink and popcorn. If you don't want to eat, you have to go to another theater.) Slinkard writes:

At Broadway Faire the other day, we were asked to pay $11 each for admission with all the greasy popcorn and sticky soda we could consume. We refused and went home.

Slinkard's Regal blues didn't end there. He continues:

This afternoon we went to Edwards to see "Midnight in Paris." Sorry, we were told, the theater is "being fixed; come back tomorrow." How's that for customer-friendly? "Pirates" is available on multiple screens in Fresno. Why not close one of those instead of "Midnight" which has one?

That attitude and lack of business sense is typical of Regal. Long ago it stopped running movie times. That annoyed me. Ever-rising costs, the endless ads and previews and the above experiences have turned into rage. Is there a way for a seriously unhappy customer to respond to that corporate monolith?

I'm going to dig around and try to get you a corporate contact, Don.

In the meantime, I'm interested in the whole Broadway Faire "experiment." (When the program was announced in May, Regal said the program will run through Sept. 8, when it will be evaluated.) What say you, Beehive readers? Have you experienced the theater's stuff-yourself plan? If so, did you end up drinking and eating yourself into a stupor? Is it a good deal?

What I didn't understand until Slinkard's email is that you don't have an option to forgo the empty calories. Either you pay to eat or you go elsewhere. For a nation very much concerned about battling obesity, that seems kind of tragic.

What do you think?