I first heard about this thread when I looked at Carol's website--on Tuesday she had come to a bi-monthly jam I had just managed to get re-established after the pizza joint where it used to be got shut down by the Alcoholic Beverage Commission. She sat beside me with her concertina and fiddle and charmed the heck out of me, so I googled her and found her site where I found the song and her reference to the flak she was getting about it here. I am stunned by the vitriol heaped upon her--you slaves to the habit are a bitterly defensive lot (I'm a reformed smoker: I quit cold turkey 42 years ago and like many former smokers am strongly against the evil weed--I have been driving with an open window and have felt assaulted by the smoke drifting back to me from a smoking driver in the car ahead of me at a stop light).

I had smoked for about fifteen years when I quit, primarily by avoiding other smokers--I stopped eating in the faculty lunchroom. I also can attribute my ease in quitting tobacco to the fact that I was smoking a bit of marijuana in those days, and the infinitesimal pleasure I derived from cigarettes paled in comparison with the pleasure derived from a drag or two of the boo.

But anyway, guys, take it easy on my new friend. Check out her website--she's a very passionate, opinionated person, a committed activist, a writer who habitually speaks her mind in no uncertain terms. And, I might add, a fine singer, fiddler, and concertina player (she didn't bring a guitar to the jam--and, unfortunately, didn't sing any of her songs there).

Charles