That reminds me of the many times I "quit" smoking, only to be out
with my buddies and tell myself that "just one cigarette couldn't
hurt". Nicotine is so addictive and so deadly that it's hard to
believe that the product hasn't been outlawed and the CEO's thrown in
prison. For the last ten years that I smoked, I bought a pack each
day, so if I decided to quit, I wouldn't have the rest of a carton
sitting at home. I knew that if I had any loose packs, I'd convince
myself that I'd quit just as soon as the last pack was gone. I'd gone
down that road several times.
Oh, the horror stories all of us former smokers could tell. I
remember when Cathy's dad died at 57 years of age...from heavy smoking
and heavy drinking. We had not smoked for over three months, but as
soon as the service was over we rushed outside and cornered our
sister-in-law and bummed cigarettes from her.
Quitting was hard, but staying quit was even harder.
Carl Jarvis
On 9/9/20, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I stopped smoking with great difficulty and then after several years, after
I returned from my first Evergreen trip which was to Spain, I began drinking
a glass of sherry before dinner each night, and I had this great urge to
have a cigarette with that glass of sherry. Just one cigarette with one
glass of sherry, how could it do any harm? Before long, I was back to
smoking a pack a day. Incredible, after all of that suffering and sacrifice
to give up smoking years before. So then about 6 years later, Fred was in
the hospital, dying of brain cancer, and he asked me to promise him that I'd
stop smoking. He wanted to save me from possibly dying from lung cancer, a
fate that had befallen one of his brothers. I promised, and stopped. It was
the only gift I could give to him at that point.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Wednesday, September 9, 2020 11:53 AM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Where there's smoke there's fire!
From the news you'd think all the West Coast was going up in flames.
It sure smells like it, but Cathy reports that all she sees is smoke haze.
I can smell it, and considering how I've damaged my sense of smell with too
many years of cigarettes, it has to be fairly strong for me to get a whiff.
And just for any who might be taking up the primitive art of sucking smoke
into the lungs, the sense of smell never returns to its full power. This
Labor Day weekend marked the 29th anniversary since Cathy and I smoked our
last cigarette. We drove to our cabin on Friday night, with three
cigarettes each. When I smoked my last cigarette sometime mid Saturday,
Cathy refused to drive me into town. She never did weaken, but I kept the
car keys in my pocket, anyway.
We came out of that weekend still married and still speaking to one another.
But years of smoking had taken its toll on my nose and my taster.
A 29 gun salute to our Great American Tobacco Industry, a standout example
of Capitalism and the Free Enterprise System that has kept that mighty
American Standard in business spreading death to millions around the world
and spreading millions of lies as it waddles to the bank.
But I digress.
. So far the Olympic Peninsula has reported no fires. In other news,
reported cases of COVID-19 in Jefferson County stand at a grand total of 70,
with no deaths. This proves that distancing does work, since most of us
live hundreds of feet apart. Port Townsend is the County seat, and the
county's only incorporated town, having fewer than
10,000 residents.
So today I will do my best to obey Governor Jay Inslee's request that we
stay indoors and avoid strenuous work...I just love that governor.
Carl Jarvis
