Word: smoker
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...first Senior class smoker of the year will be held in the Dining Room of the Union this evening at 8.30 o'clock. A piano will be moved in from the Living Room and there will informal singing. All members of the class are urged to attend...
...never too late to quit. As the years go by, an ex-smoker's risk of heart disease and stroke diminishes until it's essentially the same as that of a person who has never smoked, says Dr. Corinne Husten of the Centers for Disease Control's Office on Smoking and Health. Alas, the risk of lung cancer never quite gets down to what it would have been without smoking. "Even with cancer, people respond better to chemotherapy if they quit," Husten says. Best of all, of course, would be not to take up the habit in the first place...
...time: a decade or two from now. The scene: the First Church of Christ, Smoker, the only place where nicotine addicts can find sanctuary in a society that has declared their pastime illegal. Communicants file up to the altar rail for a long drag on a cigarette - a precious, stale relic from the last carton of Marlboros sold before the U.S. government banned smoking in 2007. The priest blesses the faithful, they cough in response, and all exeunt to today's hymn, "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes...
...happens that I am a smoker. It also happens that, each year at this time, I'm on vacation on the Caribbean island of Sint Maarten / Saint Martin, which, being a joint satrapy of the Dutch and French governments, has no smoking restrictions - you can light up at work, on the beach, in the restaurants and casinos - and where a carton of cigarettes, from Europe or the U.S., costs $11. So I am 1200 miles and one time zone removed from this noble experiment in summoning the will to tell other people to stop doing something they enjoy...
...column is not missionary but analytical. Using two main texts - Richard Klein's wonderfully suggestive book-length essay "Cigarettes Are Sublime," and Ross McElwee's documentary film "Bright Leaves" - I want to take a calm look at smoking, and its place in the culture, from the inside - from the smoker's hot mouth, wheezing heart, sooty lung and vivid, endlessly rationalizing brain...