If you're in the Baton Rouge area, drop by LSU's Manship School of Communication this evening at 7 pm for a good read and a great cause. Jason Berry will be talking about and reading from Last of the Red Hot Poppas, and the Louisiana Environmental Action Network will be selling his book. We've teamed up with LEAN to help them raise money and to highlight the fact that Poppas, at its core, is a novel about environmental degradation that precedes and directly connects to the broken levees.

LEAN is on the front lines of the fight for the environment in Louisiana — and it is hard to imagine a state with more glaring environmental problems. Here's how LEAN describes itself:

LEAN was founded to help Louisiana citizens change the balance of power and challenge the insanity of continued economic and ecological suicide as practiced Lousiana-style.

That's LEAN's style. Up front and in your face. From what I can tell from my little corner of the Pacific Northwest, LEAN is doing some amazing work. Talking to LEAN's MaryLee Orr on the phone, you get a sense of how dedicated and hardworking these folks are. They are on a mission, and so are we. I called to see if they'd want to join us at the LSU event, and it took MaryLee a millisecond to say yes.

I'm hoping we can do more with LEAN and use Poppas to raise awareness about how deep-seated the state's environmental problems are. Today is just the beginning.