Allergies- was Re: [Sca-cooks] Re:New to list

[Dan Phelps]

Was written:

> Recently, on the EK List, someone was complaining that the smokers were
> congregating outside the doors of events, and they found it unpleasant to
> walk through the smoke around the doors. The smokers around the doors are
> there because we're not allowed to smoke in the event, and we usually
spend
> part of our event freezing or frying our asses off because we're not
smoking
> in the event. If you can't take enough control of your own problems to
> simply walk and not inhale for 10 feet, then that's YOUR problem.

> I don't know when the New Puritans got it into their heads that the rest
of
> us had to completely give up our preferred activities to accomodate them,
> but it stops with me. If you don't like what I'm
> eating/drinking/smoking/wearing/doing or whatever, don't get downwind/near
> me.

Look as I see it it's your additiction and if you want to practice it upon
your own body it is your business.  Everyone should be allowed the dignity
to go to hell in their own particular hand basket.  It is indeed your life,
your health and ultimately your own personal death wish,  but when your
particular practices impact on others, to the degree that they impact
others, you are going to get your ear turned into white porcelain.  That's
life... wishing won't change it... moaning about it won't change it... it is
what it is.

If you shoot up and get aids from a dirty needle,

drown yourself in drink,

fry your brain on acid

or end up smoking through a hole in your throat and talking through a funny
little box you hold up to that odd little hole...

these and more are the follies I've seem and even cried for...

it's your right, your choice, your fate is your own.

You do not have the right to inflict any of those fates on anyone else.

> There really is a difference, too between accomodating disabilities and
> being taken advantage of. When Muiredach was in our camp, he took care of
> his own needs and picked up after himself and his dog. In exchange, we
were
> more than willing to give him a hand when he needed it. This is in strict
> contrast to another person of whom I'm aware, who bragged about all the
> things they could do, while leaving piles of trash wherever they went,
> despite being within 5 ft of the trash can.
>
> In college, I went to school with two kids who had very severe CP. One,
> babied by hir family, made excuses for, and generally not required to do
> anything for hirself, wound up living at home and never getting a job. The
> other, who helped pay hir way through college by mowing lawns in the
summer,
> even though hir CP was worse than the first person's, went on to get a
good
> job and raise a family.

My great uncle was one of the most remarkable people I ever had the honor to
know.
He was born with a profound birth defect, from the hips up he was "six foot"
tall and barrel chested but below that his legs were twisted, stunted and
deformed.  He walked on crutchs his entire life.  He put himself through
college and law school, married and had three childern... two of whom
graduated from med school one of those was a MD Phd.  He was president of
the Michigan Bar Association and a close friend of Gerald Ford.  He was
indominiable.   He never let his disability stop him from doing quite
literally anything he set his mind to do.  When he died the Lansing paper
ran a two page obituary... not one line of which mentioned his disability.

Life is what you make of it...  what you yourself personally make of it...
because ultimately when you get right down to it it's your life and no one
else's.

Each day is a gift... open it with care.

End of rant dedicated to lost friends and relatives both the dead and those
still surviving their bouts with addictions... if only to nicotine.

Daniel