smoking

THE CAT DID IT

/ janpriddyoregon / 3 Comments

Our Zora used to lick the butter. If we left it uncovered we’d come down in the morning to find tiny grooves in butter from her cat tongue.

When Gary or I confront something neither of us is willing to admit we did, we say, “The cat did it.” It is a none-too-subtle admission of fault. Sometimes we don’t remember breaking a glass (nearly always Gary) or losing track of something (mostly me), or which of us cut a sandwich on the baking cabinet (me again), or we’d like to blame our children or housebreakers. It was me or it was Gary who did whatever it was because we are the only two living in our house. But even when we are certain who “done it”, we might say: The cat did it. Mind you, we were saying this when we had one or the other cat, and we’ve not stopped saying it merely because our last cat left the planet some years ago. We could have blamed our dog Yeti, but she would have been offended. The cats did not care.

This vine grows on the corner just west of our condo. It has orange trumpet-shaped flowers, and is one of my favorite volunteers. To find out what it is, I did a Duck-Duck-Go search for “orange trumpet-shape flower vine.” As it turns out, that’s exactly what it is: Orange Trumpet Vine (Campsis radicans). It is considered a noxious and invasive species, and “should be planted only where it can be contained” but this one is growing out of a crack in concrete, so I think we’re safe. Someone has recently hacked it back to half size. It’s still huge but with fewer buds.
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PREVENTABLE

/ janpriddyoregon / 13 Comments
On May 25, 1911, a catastrophic event changed public opinion forever. A factory building in Manhattan caught fire but all exits, including firedoors and stairs had been locked or chained shut. Workers (mostly women) could not escape the building. In desperation, 62 people died when they fell or jumped from windows to escape the flames and smoke that killed others. In total, the infamous Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire killed 146 people and injured another 78. The deaths were almost entirely preventable. Americans were outraged and as a result laws were enacted to protect workers and laws that had been ignored were enforced.

Some things are preventable, but we resist. Most of us use seatbelts, as required by law, and fewer people die in accidents as a result. Drunk driving went from a social convention to an affront against decency thanks to Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD). Today, most people call an Uber. But I just read an essay wherein the author bragged she’d driven only a few miles rather to a friend’s home rather than fifty minutes to her own home while drunk. People smoke despite knowing throughout their entire lives that tobacco products are poisonous. Some insist they need guns for protection despite statistics proving gun ownership make our lives less safe. We take unnecessary risks that are life-threatening not just for ourselves but for others. Isn’t it time for a little healthy anger?

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