Friday, July 8, 2011

Our Lady of The Respiratory Assistance...

As I pondered my fate right after I quit, I was in the drug store check out line 
when I noticed the tiny elderly woman standing behind me. Our Lady of the 
Respiratory Assistance. She had tubes in her nostrils and was hauling 
around a heavy canister of oxygen on a little wheeled cart. 
She reeked of smoke. 
Abject terror mounted inside me as I realized how close to her condition 
I actually was, while being younger by decades-maybe. You can never 
tell with chronic smokers. In a raspy, failing voice, she asked for two 
cartons of the cheapest generic filtered brand. It was the most frightening 
mirror I’d ever stared into. She was never going to quit. Seeing her 
stopped me from buying a pack. Hearing her convinced me that I could 
never go back.  Whoever and wherever she is, I’d like to thank her. 
I’m sure she doesn’t realize how much she helped someone that day. 
But I'm not buying her a pack of cigarettes.




Wednesday, June 22, 2011

A Potentially Dangerous Brush With Flame

Another’s brush with flame almost blew an actor 
and the whole house sky high. There’s a tale I 
heard from Rolling Stone that Johnny Depp was 
staying in the basement of Hunter Thompson’s 
house in Woody Creek, CO. He was prepping
for his upcoming film role as the journalist, chain-
smoking while he poured over script night after 
night in the dark little room. 

As he struck a match to light a cigarette one evening, 
he noticed for the first time that his nightstand was in 
fact, a barrel of gunpowder on top of which he had his 
ashtray. Hunter said he’d always wondered what had 
happened to that powder keg.

Johnny never smoked in the house again.

Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Thursday, June 9, 2011

ART returns to where it was created 43 years ago...

Created in 1968, this ceramic sculpture returns
to the Thacher School for the Alumni Weekend.
Made by John Aaron, CdeP 1971, its influence
is of Warhol. It was the art of the time. It also
had the first warning from the Surgeon General.
I began to take smoking way too seriously...

Saturday, June 4, 2011

If they offered you a smoke, what would you do...?

Paul Newman

Rod Serling
(died way too young)

Bogie knows just what to do 
once his cigarette is lit...

Once I realized I'd never be this cool, 
I could quit smoking... and I did....
YOU can too!

Saturday, May 28, 2011

If they offered you a cigarette...

Smoking Sirens
seductive as smoke
when the candle lights the cigarette
If they offered you one,
would you turn them down?

It is up to YOU to remain Smoke Free...
not so easy, is it?



Friday, May 27, 2011

I have this intense craving....

I feel the need to gnaw 
on wood, to splinter it
with my teeth. I think 
I picked this up from 
my dog...

It is the transferral of 
smoker's oral fixation.

Like all behavioral
realignments, this too
shall pass...but you 
may never look at 
a doorjamb the 
same way again...


Take deep breath...

Thursday, May 26, 2011

Somewhere RJ Reynolds was laughing til he wet his pants....

Print and television ads back
then suggest that Hollywood
was completely under the spell
of the Tobacco Industry...
Visit our
Advertising At Its Scariest
FB link to decide for yourself...



http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.215810231779701.67364.215809221779802

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Adding Up The Costs...

There's enough money in this to have 
a down payment for a house...

Romancing The Smoke: What They Wouldn't Do...

Ronald Reagan told us us  to give
Chesterfields for the Holidays!

Romancing The Smoke tells the story 
of how America got so bamboozled
into smoking in the mid part of last
century, it's a wonder anybody could
ever quit. Myself included...
This guy sold them to me
when I was a little kid. 
Didn't even card me.
The Psychology of Smoking. 
Have I got a story for you...

This blog, Romancing the Smoke,
draws from my new book,
Romancing The Smoke: 
Confessions of a Nicotine Addict. 
I'll be posting excerpts & thoughts 
about the most absurd & dangerous
habit in the world-- tobacco.
Took out most of my family.

I got away after 35 years and lived to tell about it. 
Here's the story. It's probably alot like yours.
FREE YOUR LUNGS.
MAKE THE CHANGE.
This blog gives you great reasons why...