posted
OP - glad to see we found some common ground here...and glad to hear you're feeling healthy as a result of kicking the habit. Keep up the good work...live long and prosper.
-------------------- Todd Gill Outside The Lines Potterville, MI Posts: 7792 | From: Potterville, MI | Registered: Dec 2001
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Wow, lots of interesting points of view about the smoking. I'm glad it was brought up. Alot of people would probably be nervous about putting any kind of negative spin on the meet, especially on an open forum like Letterville, but at least by several of us are reading about it and maybe raising some eyebrows a little bit, more of the smokers will be aware of our concerns and may show some more consideration at future meets.
Adrienne's comments were painfully obvious about her situation with a past meet and smokers, and I hope it hits home with some of the smokers. I'm glad to see that some of you even mentioned that you cut short meets or didn't attend at all because of the smoke. Thanks for your honesty. We hosted the Brush Bash in '02, and I DID NOT verbally indicate that people should smoke outside, but I had enough NO SMOKING signs in the office and shop and felt that people did a pretty good job in respecting other people's air!
I worked at a large shop 15 years ago and was stuck in separate "lettering" area and office with the shop foreman who was a smoker. It was really frustrating because if I spoke up about it, he would defend the "smoker's rights" and it was useless to even bring it up. Finally I got a little brainstorm and sketched out a unique invention on some poster paper. It was a mock-up of a large exhaust fan complete with propellors, controls and a brand name called something like the "Smoke-Evac 1000". It was there for a few days as a joke, but the owner of the business took it seriously and installed a real fan to suck out the smoke! It was a compromise, but at least it helped. I worked there for 2 and a half years and the foreman quit there a handful of years later due to job stress. We still keep in touch and I know that he also quit smoking about 5 or 6 years ago...finally!
I had my 8 year old son with me at the Muster and he has asthma, but we were aware that there would be smokers, because there usually are, so it didn't deter us from attending the meet. However, if more consideration for non-smokers was given, it would certainly make for a better experience for all of us.
I like the old adage that goes something like this...
You like smoking... I don't. I like BEER... mind if I p*ss on your head?
That's a good one!
My dad smoked for 42 years until he had a heart attack. Since then, he quit, but he has also had open heart surgery, a stroke, non-Hodgkins lymphoma, prostate cancer, and most recently has been diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease. He is 74 years old but has been suffering the last 15 years from smoking related illnesses, in my opinion. Is it really worth it? I guess it's up to each individual, but I'll be smoke free the rest of my days. (except for second hand smoke)
-------------------- Kurt Gaber Chippewa Falls, WI Thank You Letterheads for being a part of both Brush Bashes in '02 & '06!
posted
ok....most of us here seem to abor smoking. this is 2004. now lets time travel bck to 1950's. all of us "old smokers" were children of ages between 3-16. now WW 2 had just finished, korean conflict had just started. uncle sam was one of the biggest supports of cigarettes. remember CAMELS,LUCKY STRIKE, CHESTERFEILDS, and WINGS. if you smoked these where the "top of the line"....because all the famous people smoked em. JOHN WAYNE, EARL FLYNN, ARTHER GODFRY, JACKIE GLESON,JAMES DEAN, ROBERT MITCHEM. and all the troops in WW 2 and KOREA were provided with all the smokes they needed. then tv started to saturate the population and the cigarette companys became one of the best advertisers. so it became "the thing that was cool to do", like todays low carb diet. all the medical and scientific info was not availalabe to the general public and most didnt care, it was a happy time most of those years. then the 60's came along, with pot and self discovery, searching the inner self so to speak. well if you smoked pot, you had ta smoke cigarettes, good cover for doin the illegal stuff. by this time most of us where so intreched into the habit......we just accepted the people around us dieing. and we all knew in our hearts this stuff was to blame but hey you gota die some way. the 70's bought a lot of our famous people dien from smokin..and then the light went on to no smokin is a good thing and started to be more acceptable as the norm. the 80's brought in AIDS now sex was also bad for ya, and seeing all these people who were infected and diein at early ages tended to open our eyes more and more as to the fraility of this life we live(and most of us had reached that magic number of 30, and was on a down hill run heheheheh)so everbody decides that livin a little past 30 would be a nice thing. some got it quicker then the rest of us, and some just cant stop it. so that it will still tend to be a sticking point of our culture. just like the fight between pot being legal and outlawing alcohol or legalizing pot so its no different then booze or cigarettes. but we only can do what we convince our self to do at any given time. why some people are over the top religious and others commit crimes against children, and others of our species. why its ok to kill animals for sport, and its ok to kill others if you are in uniform, but dont kill a chicken or a goat for sacrifice to the gods, then you are totally wrong....its all in your perception of how you see your world.
-------------------- joe pribish-A SIGN MINT 2811 longleaf Dr. pensacola, fl 32526 850-637-1519 BEWARE THE TRUTH.....YOU MAY NOT LIKE WHAT YOU FIND Posts: 11582 | From: pensacola, fl. usa | Registered: Nov 1998
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Just "got" me a possum. The sucker was trying to raid the dogs dish. I bought the dog food, it was my property, so I consider that stealing...and you know what happens to thieves in the midwest?! Hang 'em high baby!
The dog was going wild and I didn't relish the idea of a possible scrape with rabbies. Some states consider them fine dining, but we consider them a high grade rat.
-------------------- Todd Gill Outside The Lines Potterville, MI Posts: 7792 | From: Potterville, MI | Registered: Dec 2001
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My mother and father were both heavy smokers for many years. My sister and I aren't. I tried em one time when I was younger, but the appeal just wasnt there. I was a musician for many years and played alot of bars, so I inhaled my fair share of cig smoke. No doubt smoking is a bad habit, but its a hard habit to break. I know this from my parents trying to quit. Dad did after 30 plus years and my mother did after it affected her health greatly. I aint gonna sit here and tell the smokers here that its bad for them, heck they know that. Most of em would probably be more than happy to give it up if it was that easy. I always eat in the non smoking sections of restaurants, and dont allow it in my shop. Im not crappy about it, I just tell them to please put the cigarette out. To tell you the truth, the thing I cant handle is snuff dipper. Every mothers son here dips that crap, and leaves their spit cups all over the dang place. Brother, now there is a nasty habit. Bit ol fat lip full of snuff, makes em talk funny as hell, and they spend all their time just spitting. Whats up with that? You can always tell one too. Got them little bits of stuff in their teeth. Looks like somebody flicked a toothbrush of gloss black at their teeth. shew!
-------------------- Maker of fine signs and other creative stuff. Located at 109 N. Cumberland ave. Harlan, Ky. 40831 606-837-0242 Posts: 4172 | From: Ages-Brookside, Ky. Up the Holler... | Registered: Jul 1999
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OP;thats like someone jumping to their death and you following-would you??? I smoked for 10 years and quit 23 years now because I wanted to not because someone told me to.
-------------------- Randall Campbell Randy's Graphics, 420 Fairfield N. Hamilton Ontario Canada Posts: 2857 | From: Hamilton Ontario Canada | Registered: Jan 2002
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Not to mention lip and mouth cancer...and, sorry, I would NEVER kiss a boy that chewed!!!!EEEWWW!! LOL!!
I want to have a sign to post up when I'm painting outside...:
"If you smoke around the artist, I will assume you are on fire and take appropriate action"
I can't stand it when someone stands around watching me, smoking and then puts the ciggerette still smoking away in the can next to the door of a shop where I'm working to pick up when they come back out. I get off my ladder, give it a good soaking with my spray bottle and then go back to work....I love the look of confusion when they come back out and find thier soggy butt instead....lol...I'm mean!!
Sometimes I'll tell them to stay back at LEAST 30 feet, that's paint thinner in that spray bottle!!!
And what's with smokers trying to be 'curtious' by offering to turn an occelating fan on while you are visiting? Sure, so the smoke gets evenly distributed all over the house!!!
Next time someone asks you if you mind if they smoke, tell them, "Why no, mind if I FART"?!
OK, rant over....... smoke 'em if ya got 'em...just don't exhale!!
posted
I just now found this post, I have not looked in here in a number of days, my life is complicated right now.
I am reeling from a diagnosis one month ago in my 50 yr old brother who lives here in town. He has lung cancer stage 4 which has spread to the brain,and he is a heavy smoker. I have another smoking brother who spits and coughs all morning and has shortness of breath and his skin is beginning to break open.
I smoked for more than 30 years, 2 packs on a GOOD day. Quitting was the hardest thing I've ever done. And one of my proudest achievements- which is about par on the scale of hard and proud.
When I smoked I was genuinely unaware of the pain I was to non-smokers. I smoked in my home and shop without ever thinking much about them. I thought if I waved my hand a little in front of my face, after throwing a cigarette into the bushes before ringing someone's doorbell, that they had no clue I smoked.
Now I can pass a house walking and can often tell if the inhabitants are smokers.
So I have come a long way to realize how much of a discomfort we smokers (if I had a cigarette I would be one again, because one is too many and a thousand are not enough) are to those that don't smoke, and I think it is a valuable thing to be discussed here in a frank manner.
My opinion now is that: the non smokers are to be respected first, because smokers are diminishing their comfort to varying degrees, sometimes, as we are reading here, in serious ways. Therefore, the non-smoker's good air has to be assured somehow. With that awareness, the new American Homeless, the Smokers, have to go to the porches, the basements, the front stoops, whatever Which holds true for gatherings that happen now, parties in homes, bars, restaurants, sign shops, every place.
I myself am different. I let smokers smoke in my house, because I don't know many any more, and I like to smell it. I now go weeks without smelling smoke, and it causes me no discomfort.
I live in Winston-Salem, home of RJReynolds, cigarette city USA. When I arrived here in the early sixties, the smell of tobacco, sweet and heavy hung all over downtown all day because the factories were in the heart of it. People who went on job interviews here got a Reynolds brand, whether they smoked it or not, and smoked during the interview. It was part of getting hired. We have come a long way baby, and it ain't about Virginia Slims no more.
Now to John's diatribe about the tobacco chews.
My story is that in the early 1970s someone had asked me to go with her to meet her shrink. I was this relatively young immigrant, had never ever even HEARD of chewing tobacco, and the man had a gold spittoon next to his chair. Every now and then this stream of dark juice was delivered into it from his sitting position, and I swear he never missed. I thought he had lung cancer and was being brave. I left the room and went to the bathroom and threw up.
----------------------------- Forgive me for just rambling. Smoking/ Non-smoking/ the horrible hazards of it - and my own experiences - just make it a hot issue for me, one where I simply have to say a thing or two, or three.....
-------------------- Myra A. Grozinger Signs Limited Winston-Salem, NC
signslimited@triad.rr.com Posts: 1244 | From: Winston-Salem, NC USA | Registered: Nov 1998
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In California before they outlawed smoking in public places, they had smoking areas. Usually there was a back room in restaurants without windows for non smokers, and to get there travelling through the smoking area was the only way.
I enjoyed the comment that I once heard that a non smoking area in a restaurant was like a non peeing area in a pool.
Ever notice those rooms in airports where they get 30 people in there smoking together? Then they turn 'em loose.
I smoked for many years, and now I get near it and my breathing clogs up. Don't know if I'll ever get over the damage I did to myself.
I certainly appreciate the courtesy that some smokers display by their sensitivity to the needs of others.
Thank you for bringing this subject to the foreground.
-------------------- The SignShop Mendocino, California
Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity. — Charles Mingus Posts: 6718 | From: Mendocino, CA. USA | Registered: Nov 1998
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Ahh, smoking. Some do it cause they like it, most cause they have to....
I'm in total self-contradiction on the matter. For one, I hate cigarettes. Nasty little paper tubes full of chemicals and nickle-a-ton ditch weed designed as a perfect drug delivery system for the addicts.
But to me that's not tobacco, that's drug addiction. Most folks have seen me at meets with a cigar, which any more is my only habit involving combustibles. Now a good cigar, people, is a fine thing, and should NEVER be confused with those atrocious little corporate drug-delivery tax-producing coffin nails you buy in twenty-to-a-pack doses.
A good cigar is real tobacco, grown by people who know what they're doing and care about the results. They are made for taste and enjoyment, not mass consumption, and have about as much in common with cigarettes as Thunderbird has with Dom Perignon. I'm always amused by the nicotine addicts who actually complain about cigar smoke. Look. This is what TOBACCO smells like. Not formaldyhyde, ammonia, chlorine and animal waste, all components of what the cigarette industry laughingly calls "tobacco".
My cigar habit is lately about two or three a month - not what I'd call an addiction, or even frequent enough to be harmfull. As to smoking or non-smoking at an event, that's ultimately up to the host. I don't look at smoking as something I have to do to service an addiction, so it doesn't bother me if I can't do it. But I do love to fire one up when I'm relaxing with good friends over a drink, which generally happens at Letterhead meets, go figure. I always assume if it bothers someone they'll tell me; if someone is polite about it, so will I.
-------------------- "A wise man concerns himself with the truth, not with what people believe." - Aristotle
Cam Bortz Finest Kind Signs Pondside Iron works 256 S. Broad St. Pawcatuck, Ct. 06379 "Award winning Signs since 1988" Posts: 3051 | From: Pawcatuck,Connecticut USA | Registered: Nov 1998
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hahahahahaha cam......you got your finger on the corperates,how they have fueled an addiction. i also feel this way about the alcohol industy. speakin of cigars....i grew up in an multi ethnic area of pa. and i have witnessed some of the nastest tobacco habits in the world. my parents owned a bar from 1956 till 78 when my mom died. our house was behind and above the bar. the smoking that went on there was so thick sometimes you almost couldnt see across the room. now most of patrons were old european guys, italian, polish, solvok, litiwainian, hungarian, russian. all had there own tobacco thing. most of the old guys either rolled, pipe, or chewed...this one tobacco we sold. 5 BROTHERS, fine cut...let me tell you this was the nastest smellin stuf when it burned. i cant even imagine chewing it. the old "dagos" smoked these little..looked like dried up dog turds...cigars called PARODI, PETRI,and DENOBLI...but boy...you was a he** of a man if you could stand smokin one of them. ontop of these nasty smells most of these old guys carried garlic in there pocket and ate it raw, drinkin beer and smokin all this stuff. needles to say...you olafactor sences got a workout. on sunday we cleaned the bar....and my job was to clean the SPITOONS...had 4 of em(they were required by the health dept if you ran a bar at that time)and i also had to polish them, they were solid brass. and then when i finished them i had to polish the brass footrail!!!!! and also wash all the ashtrays....boy was i a dummy. now the funny thing here is when i quit smokin, my wife still smoked. now i was getting to the point with my non-smoking and her still smokin that i was having a hard time kissing her(youve heard the saying your mouth smells like an ashtray) and i didnt want to fight with her about it. so in self defence, she askes me to stop and get her a pack of smokes on the way to freinds house....i did and i figured...well if shes gona smoke iam gona try a cigar....hehehehhe i did and bought a 5 pack PARODI'S.....i put it my mouth in the store, asked for matches....and walked out of the store. i got such a nicotine kick from just puttin the cigar in my mouth...i never lite em. for almost a year, i chewed these things....never lighting. then the wife quit smokin and after a couple weeks..she wouldnt KISS ME!!! she told me in no uncertain terms....one or the other gota go..me or the PARODI'S!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
-------------------- joe pribish-A SIGN MINT 2811 longleaf Dr. pensacola, fl 32526 850-637-1519 BEWARE THE TRUTH.....YOU MAY NOT LIKE WHAT YOU FIND Posts: 11582 | From: pensacola, fl. usa | Registered: Nov 1998
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posted
Fancy or not....it still smells like your smokin' a turd....
The reason I never speak up if someone is smoking a cigar at a social gathering, is that most (not you, Cam) cigar smokers are the most arrogant ppl I have ever met....to speak up and say that is offensive is only asking for trouble.
How would you respond, if at a Letterhead event, we were all sitting around having a chat, drink, whatever, and you were to light one up and I said " Could you please not smoke that right now"?
Most non-smokers just are afraid to speak up, I know I am, and then I sit silently, in misery.
Maybe it's time we do speak up to smokers and ask politely that you not smoke around us.
Will this only make you defensive? (This is not aimed at you, Cam, I'm just using you as an example.)
posted
One of the things that always bugged me the most about cigarette smoking (ers) is when they get ready to walk into a store or are driving down the road they think it's "ok" to throw their butts right on the ground.
To me, that's littering and I think it's rude as well. I bet the people who throw their butts on the parking lots, in front of store entrances, etc would not like it if someone driving down the road finishing up their McDonald's lunch heaved their trash and wrappers into their front lawn as they drove by?!
It's a habit that for some reason is overlooked. A cop would pull you over if you threw a McDonald's back out your window on the highway and ticket you, but they wouldn't think twice if you through a still burning cigarette butt out the window with sparks flying underneath passing cars that are leaking all kinds of flamable liquids. Go figure.
-------------------- Todd Gill Outside The Lines Potterville, MI Posts: 7792 | From: Potterville, MI | Registered: Dec 2001
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posted
I think the natural assumption should be, assume it WILL bother someone if you're smoking anything that leaks smoke into an enclosed indoor area. Perhaps saying, "Mind if I smoke?" would be more appropriate?
posted
4:14 AM???? you up smokin a cigarette?????? hehehehehehehe
-------------------- joe pribish-A SIGN MINT 2811 longleaf Dr. pensacola, fl 32526 850-637-1519 BEWARE THE TRUTH.....YOU MAY NOT LIKE WHAT YOU FIND Posts: 11582 | From: pensacola, fl. usa | Registered: Nov 1998
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Soon enough Mr Pickett.. It will be your way.. No Smoking, No Guns, No Rights... You will miss the Second hand " CIGARETTE" smoke. But that's another Post...
I am a Part time Smoker.. I wouldn't mind no smoking at the Meets. Inside.. Good Idea...
What about Swearing... I heard some Bad Words at the Muster... Got worse after the Beer & Cigarettes busted out...
I want a "Swear Free Zone" at The Muster. Mike do you think you could help me on this one... It would have to be a White Room... Non Smoking of course... Yeh... That'd be nice...
Quiet Music playing.. Maybee some Yanni. Cocktails being served. ( non-alcholic of course) Vinyl & Hand Painters sharing Tips & Tricks... Oh what a meet!!
I have A DREAM.... that one Day on the Green Hills of Mazeppa..... Sons of Former Sign Painters..... ANd sons of Former Computer Generated Sign Artists, Will be able to sit down at the Drawing Board of Life...
Signs At Last..... Signs At Last.... Thank God Almighty... We makin Signs at Last...
-------------------- Mike Contreras MAX Sign & Design Gladstone , Michigan Posts: 84 | From: Gladstone , Michigan | Registered: Jun 2000
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good post up till the last one....oh well gota be one of these when things were going good.
-------------------- joe pribish-A SIGN MINT 2811 longleaf Dr. pensacola, fl 32526 850-637-1519 BEWARE THE TRUTH.....YOU MAY NOT LIKE WHAT YOU FIND Posts: 11582 | From: pensacola, fl. usa | Registered: Nov 1998
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posted
you right jeff....back on the farm they came in the form of COW PIES... and you learned quick, to step over or go around em, but always be aware of where your steppin!!!!
[ February 24, 2004, 01:44 AM: Message edited by: old paint ]
-------------------- joe pribish-A SIGN MINT 2811 longleaf Dr. pensacola, fl 32526 850-637-1519 BEWARE THE TRUTH.....YOU MAY NOT LIKE WHAT YOU FIND Posts: 11582 | From: pensacola, fl. usa | Registered: Nov 1998
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