The L.A. Times revisits (Ex-Door Lighting Their Ire) the feud between John Densmore (at right), who won't sign to sell Doors tunes for commercials, and Ray Manzarek, Robbie Krieger and former Cult singer Ian Astbury, who sings the late Jim Morrison's vocal parts these days. All but Densmore are eager to reap the multimillion dollar profits from the band's '60s hits:

Even if Densmore is loath to tour and disdainful of Astbury playing the late Morrison ("Nobody can fill those leather pants"), Manzarek said his old mate should allow Doors hits to be used in tasteful commercials that could add flicker to the band's pop-culture memory.

"Flicker" -- that's the ticket.

It was all long ago and far away and ...in another country.

The Densmore photo is also from the L.A. Times.

Apocalypse There: A journey into the nightmare of New Orleans. Matt Taibbi recounts his incursion into New Orleans with actor Sean Penn and academic Douglas Brinkley in Rolling Stone.

Taibbi feels gonzo, writes gonzo:

Any country that enjoys fighting and bitching as a recreation as much as America does will always be, in some way or another, walking along a knife's edge. We're a nation that spends its afternoons watching white trash throw chairs at each other on Jerry Springer, its drive time listening to the partisan rantings of this or that hysterical political demagogue, and its late-night hours composing feverish blog entries full of anonymous screeds and denunciations. All of this ... is harmless enough so long as the power comes on every morning, fresh milk makes it to the shelves, there's a dial tone and your front yard isn't underwater. But it becomes a problem when the magic grid goes down and suddenly there's no more machinery between you and whomever you happen to get off on hating.

Professor ponders the healing power of trees: Joan Maloof argues that walking in old growth forest does much more than reduce stress:

In a new book, Ms. Maloof asserts that, indeed, it does: Walking the woods prompts physical changes in human body that are beneficial to well-being.

"Americans largely ignore this dimension of the forest's allure, but the Japanese recognize it and have a name for it: shinrin-yoku, wood-air bathing," she writes in Teaching the Trees: Lessons from the Forest.

She argues that the forest releases natural chemicals that wind their way into our lungs, blood system and brain, aid people with diabetes and affect some of our most basic drives. They could even help prevent cancer, she feels.

She acknowledges there is much left unknown and is calling for more research.

"What could be in forest air that makes us feel better? Researchers working in the Sierra Nevada of California found 120 chemical compounds in the mountain forest air -- but they could identify only 70 of them. We are literally breathing things we don't understand," writes Ms. Maloof, who teaches at Salisbury University in Maryland.

Oakland Forest and Meadow in Portsmouth is such a forest, saved from development by Jamestown arborist Matthew Largess, pictured at right. A May 15 Journal story about Largess notes,

In 1998, a Providence developer hired him as a consultant on a plan to build condominiums on a forested site in Portsmouth. When Largess learned the trees' age -- up to 300 years -- he called for preservation of the forest. The condos were never built. Instead, the Aquidneck Island Land Trust bought the property and preserved it.

Closer to (my) home,

He can lead you to an old-growth forest in Providence, sandwiched between the Hartford Park public housing development and Route 6. To get there, you drive down Manton Avenue past pawn shops, flea markets, factories abandoned and operational, check-cashing shops, churches and fried chicken joints. Then you walk over a footbridge that bears graffiti reading, "Fish are not safe to eat."

Largess was photographed April 30 in front of a 300-year-old red oak and sycamores in that old-growth forest in Olneyville section of Providence.