Kendall, tonight I watched an episode of "Boston Legal" where they took on the tobacco industry. And, as Alan Shore recited the statistics on the damage tobacco wreaks on smokers and their families and how big tobacco makes cigarettes even more addicting and their advertising even drawing in young smokers in the way they "campaign against" smoking for youth, etcet etcet...and I had as decent a cry as I've had. (I don't cry easily, unfortunately.) For Tom's voice, for your voice, for Tom's other physical problems (and, I suppose, for yours), for my father's death from emphysema...

How addicting is tobacco? I told Tom over 30 years ago that I wouldn't marry a smoker. Like a damned fool (and because I love him so much), I did anyway. He quit the first time, though, when I told him that. And he quit so many times and for varying lengths of time over the past 30 years. He quit again before his heart surgery in 2004, but at some point afterwards decided he could have the occasional cigarette. He never actually lied to me, but when I said I could smell it on him, he just wouldn't answer... He saw a hypnotist for the SECOND time the day before I broke my arm four years ago. And, in the snowstorm on the way home from the hospital on the day of my surgery, he started smoking again.

He continued to smoke after vocal cord cancer robbed him of his singing voice. I pleaded with him and pointed out that vocal cord cancer wouldn't make him immune from, say, lung cancer. And he TRIED. Then the vascular problem -- caused by smoking -- robbed him of most of his sight as well.

He finally quit for good last May -- that's less than a year ago. He analyzed what it was he was looking for...and it was a feeling he had back in the '60s sitting on the edge of Boston Common while smoking a cigarette. And -- epiphany! -- he realized he would NEVER feel that way again, no matter how many cigarettes he smoked.

So he quit.

And I just have to console myself with the fact that if I hadn't forced him into starting to try to quit 30 years ago, and if he hadn't quit numerous times and for varying lengths of time, that he would probably be dead by now.

But YOU know how much I wish he had never started smoking in the first place.

All of the deaths caused by alcohol, AIDS, illegal drugs, homicide, accidental injuries by firearms, and motor vehicle accidents COMBINED are LESS THAN 34% of the deaths by smoking. And that's not taking into consideration secondary smoke -- which both you and Tom got as a result of performing in smoky bars.

And I agree totally, Kendall. Whatever it is you really want to do, do it NOW, while you can. You just don't know what's coming next down the road. And when you won't be able to follow your dream.

Linn