DESCRIPTIVE TITLES ARE NOT ADMISSIONS OF GUILT

 

If some well known celebrity shows up on a screen, any screen, talking about drug addiction, mental health, and suicide, they’re not talking about themselves.

Instead, they’re using their recognition, their acclaim, and their name-fame, to get a message across to a broader audience.

Why do they bother with adding their feelings?

Because they want to help. People need help.

People like Adam Driver.

 

 

Who wants to see promising young movie stars shrivel up in a cloud of smoke?

The public wants to remember them as they were the first time they saw them.

 

 

Smoking cigarettes has come a long way.

The ups and downs of the tobacco industry is on the rise. Again.

 

In the early 20th century, cigarette smoking was glamorized in Hollywood, normalized by doctors and deeply embedded in American life. By the 1960s, nearly half of U.S. adults smoked.

Then came the fallout: emphysema, heart disease, stroke, lung cancer.

The 2020 Surgeon General’s report marked a historic milestone: adult cigarette smoking in the U.S. had fallen to just 14% — the lowest rate ever recorded. It was one of the greatest public health wins of the modern era.

For a while, it seemed America had finally kicked the habit. But now, a smoking comeback is underway.

Zendaya lights up in Euphoria; Jacob Elordi does the same in Saltburn. Celebrities like Dua Lipa, Charli XCX, Timothée Chalamet and Anya Taylor-Joy have been spotted puffing away, becoming modern-day “cigfluencers.”

In 2020, cigarette sales rose for the first time in decades — though still far below the 1981 peak of 636.5 billion. Even among teens, nicotine use is shifting from vapes back to traditional cigarettes.

 

Good Mental Health Is Healthy

Visit the Tualatin Wildlife Refuge and feel better.

My wife and I went to the recent Brews For The Birds.

We came away feeling like winners.

 

Local families can enjoy live music and craft beer while supporting outdoor education and habitat restoration during the Brews for the Birds festival — a free festival benefiting the Tualatin River National Wildlife Refuge.

The Friends of the Tualatin River National Wildlife Refuge will again host a two-day music and beer festival at Langer’s Entertainment in Sherwood — 4 to 9 p.m. Friday, Aug. 7, and from noon to 9 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 8 — aiming to raise funds for one of the region’s most popular close-in nature areas.

Attracting over 10,000 visitors each year, the refuge offers a rare pocket of green space for wildlife viewing and nature exploration near Portland’s expanding communities.

The event is designed to be family-friendly while raising awareness about the refuge’s role in connecting people to nature at a time when green spaces and outdoor education are increasingly scarce.

 

 

Drive around Washington County and you’ll see green spaces gobbled up and planted with condos and apartments instead of a forest of trees.

Live in one place long enough and you’ll see the changes in what it became after you showed up, but keep it to yourself old codger.

With a sharp eye you’ll see forty year old buildings on what used to be berry fields joining the new mass density in-fill of modern times.

 

Builder: We’ve got the demand, we’ve got the commitment, the infrastructure, and the crews ready to go. What we don’t have is the land.

Metro: We will expand the urban growth boundary.

Builder: And we will help with your re-election because the people need someone on their side.

Metro: Can you help us annex the Nike campus to Beaverton?

Builder: No can do, sir. That’s more than a berry patch or a fallow farm field. That’s Phil Knight. We have projects going up on campus and many more in planning. Here’s a check for your election committee.

Metro: Thank you.

 

What’s Your Descriptive Title?

Maybe you’re a Bull Goose like Randle McMurphy?

Wild Thang?

Whatever you decide to call yourself, try and live up the the descriptive titles, more than one, because people change, people like you.

Me? I fancy myself a writer, a blogger, a baby boomer blogger near Portland, so a Portland baby boomer writer.

Am I the voice of my generation? No? Then who is?

All I do is chronicle the times and places of our lives, our modern lives, not some time forgotten in the clouds of history that was beautiful and perfect in every way.

If you hear someone recollecting the past like a fantasy, they may need help.

“We had the best music, the best cars, and everything we needed.”

Sure you did.

Even if you did, no one under fifty believes it.

People have a hard time believing anything they’re not told to believe, believe me.

When some old crank starts spewing the bullshit they’ve loaded for decades to a new audience willing to suspend their disbelief like they’re life is a movie, things start to crack.

Don’t do that, don’t crack.

Can you do that? Yes you can.

 

PS: 

When you come across a man with all the answers, and you didn’t ask any questions, what have really got?

Man: I can make your life better, better than you’ve ever imagined, better than anyone has ever had it, trust me.

Lady: I’m fine thank you, and please be quiet.

Man: Oh my God what is wrong with you? What are you, a commie?

 

PSS:

If people who know better start slinging ‘communist’ around like it’s a new slur, they’ve already lost their train of thought.

But you’re supposed to pick up on it anyway, and join in?

Noooooo

But you are supposed to vote. Can you do that?

Yes, you can.