After you live in a place for while, you wind up driving around the territory by rote. Your subconscious remembers certain place markers so that otherwise generic stretches of country road remain familiar. You know that you are on the road home because you have passed a certain stand of birch or split rail farm fence or huge ancient maple tree centered in an acre of weeds.
There is a downhill stretch of country road I drive on the way back from town. I know where I am because the high craggy side of the mountain rises suddenly in my vision. It marks my place on the road home.
Several days ago, as I started down that hill, I suddenly felt lost. The road seemed unfamiliar. It took me a few seconds to realize that the mountain was not there. Instead, the gray sky edged my view from horizon to horizon.
I was aware of parts of my brain darting about trying to decide if this were some other downhill stretch and I had lost track of where I was driving.
No mountain. No crags. Not even hint of evergreen or speck of granite. Just miles of gray sky. The thought came to me that, in another time, I might think that dark forces had magically removed the mountain; that I would need to do some sort of ritual to bring it back.
As I drove closer to where the mountain should be and made the turn into the road that follows the mountain’s base, I still couldn’t see it. It was gone from sight. Like magic.
As I drove up the driveway, I turned to look again from another perspective. Nope. Nothing. Just impenetrable gray sky.
The next day the sun came out and the mountain was back.
See, my ritual worked.

I’m one of those people who never smoked. Oh, I tried it in my teens, my cousin and I swiping Parliaments out of the case in her father’s soda fountain where we both worked on weekends. We would lock ourselves in the bathroom and blow smoke out the high little window. In college, I tried again, since most of my sorority sisters smoked. But I still didn’t like it, and I’d rather spend my money on beer anyway. (Back then, a big glass of beer was 10 cents; of course, the beer company was owned by the city’s Democratic machine bosses and so every bar had to carry it. The beer did not exactly taste that great but it did the trick.)
Back to smoking. Maybe it’s that I hate being addicted to anything or anyone. Not even hanging on to things I own. Well, maybe my computer.
My son is a smoker. I hate that and he knows it. I hate it because of what it’s doing to his lungs, his brain. I hate it because his father used to smoke and he’s feeling the effects of it to this day. But my son is an adult with the right to do with his own life and his health as he chooses.
Over on my his weblog, he is assessing the appropriateness of efforts of a Commissioner of the city of Portland, Oregon to institute a public policy that bans public smoking, even on sidewalks.
I left the statement below as a comment on one of his posts.

It seems to me that the public policy debate is very much related to how that public policy affects the health of individuals of that public. Granted, gas fumes are also unhealthy. But that’s another public policy debate issue.


Cigarette smoke is both noxiously harmful and noxiously distasteful to smell. Smokers do get used it it. You can get used to living next to the smell of a garbage dump.


Many health establishments ban people from wearing strong perfumes. The sense of smell is very sensitive in most people, especially non-smokers. Personally, cigarette smoke makes me nauseous and makes my sinuses swell. So does strong perfume. But at least strong perfume is not toxic to lungs. And it doesn’t do damage to brain cells, as nicotine does. And it’s not addictive, either. And it’s easy to embarrass someone wearing such perfume by muttering something about it loud enough for them to hear. Not so, however, with smokers.

There is currently a public “cultural” outcry against smoking by non-smokers for good reasons. Not the least of which are health related. If it takes pushing the empathy button or striking fear into the hearts of those too stubborn and/or addicted to nicotine to break the habit, then I say go for it.

Yes, it should be that anyone who wants to damage themselves by smoking should do it in the privacy of their own homes. That way they don’t wind up being role models for kids and they don’t befoul my air space any more than I already have to deal with.

And if the public pressure gets so bad that they quit, all the better for them. And their families. And the public.

We ban spitting on the sidewalk. And littering. Why not ban public smoking.

It’s bad enough that we’re on opposite ends of the country from each other. Now we’re on opposite ends of a very personal issue.
Feh.

That’s sure what it feels like. It might well go up to 70 degrees here this weekend.
Maybe the folks who can actually do something about the ultimate problems will finally get the message.
Personally, I have this general feeling that the whole of existence is just out of sync, not just the weather. I can’t seem to get into a lot of the things that I’ve always enjoyed. Reading, for example.
I’ve always been a voracious reader. Fiction, mostly. Fiction with kick-ass female protagonists, mostly. These days, instead of actually reading, I take the lazy way out and download audio books from my public library and listen to them as I’m lying in bed, trying to fall asleep. The problem is that the library’s selection leaves much to be desired.
I don’t like the kinds of romance novels that writers like Nora Roberts produce. The library has lots of them. However, Nora Roberts writing as J.D. Robb turns out a series of unqiue sci-fi/romance stories with a great female main character — Eve Dallas, a cop in the next century. The library has a few of those. They also have one of the novels by forensic anthropologist Kathy Reichs. Her series with Temperance Brennan as the main character is the basis for the current Fox television series, Bones. But I’ve already read that one in real book format.
So, the other day I downloaded a series of short stories by Elizabeth Berg. In my days of actual reading, I had consumed several of her novels, my favorites being The Art of Mending. and Talk Before Sleep.
All of Berg’s novels wrestle with the contradictions that suffuse the lives of “ordinary” women. Yet, her characters emerge as truly extraordinary in the management of the details of their lives and their relationships. The short stories to which I am listening these nights include a vignette about a woman whose mother is developing dementia and how the two of them deal with it. It’s told by the woman and shifts between her memories of mother of her childhood and the mother she now has. Obviously, it hit home.
The other stories are just as relevant. I like reading about women who muse, women who amuse, women who love and hate and wonder and know how to kick ass. Women whose living is infused with introspection and honesty.
Occasionally I can get into a male writer. I read all of Dan Brown’s novels — for their subject matter as well as for the roller-coaster writing. I have even enjoyed listening to a couple of Dean Koontz’s eerie tales.
But tonight it’s back to Berg.
I miss my women friends.

Red sky at night, sailor’s delight. The sky was rosy pink as I drove down the Thruway just after dusk. That should means that tomorrow will be a nice day.
A halo around a full moon, which there was tonight, is supposed to mean that bad weather will follow.
Just more conflicting premises in a world full of them these days. There’s proof that there’s global warming. There’s no proof that there’s global warming. We are in danger from terrorists. We are safe from terrorists.
What is there to do but take one day at a time, prepare for the worst and hope for the best.
I had a lovely lunch today in Albany with a friend from college. He and I were not really friends back then, but we became such since. It was nice to get away for the day.
And the drive back, despite the conflicting sky, was not bad at all. New non-reflective eyeglass lenses do, indeed, help.