Oh this just makes me want to get a what-a-chair and sit my ass down and never move outta that alley. I think I will teach my dog to smoke to get some animal rights activists out there with me just for the hell of it. Oh shit this just gets my steel toed boots out of the closet today. Hell this pisses me off. The guy must have some shit time to waste. Reminds me of the time I took my kids on a horse carriage ride in Seattle and the PAWS or whatever they are harrassed and yelled at us (young kids can you imagine)They said we were killing the horse, due to being in that carriage, and the horse was going to die from car exhaust. Now, I, not being a silent sufferer(well sometimes)asked one of the screamers how his mother liked his double ear piercings. (I am not anti piercings,tatoos,smoking,meds, animals or lawyers oh and Im also not a doctor)He didn't like that too much, he walked away, as he did I told him she would probably want his haircut too. Oh shit that was a wonderful display for my kids. I own a bullhorn too, I cant help myself. I want to sit in that alley with a candle (you know the lead from the wick can kill someone). OK so just take a deep breath. These are the things I love about freedom in this country. We can get pissed off and change something. By the way, I found out yesterday there is no smoking on the Washington State Ferries either. I like the days when business establishments could choose to be smoke free. I don't like this pitting person against person thing. It's like going to get free birth control from the Women's Center's and hope you don't get harrassed from pro-life people, or shot. I would like to know where ALL of the public officials go smoke. Can't tell me they all believe in Valdez-ism.

iacta alea est

Rubicon (rū'bĭkŏn) , Lat. Rubico, small stream that flows into the Adriatic and in Roman times marked the boundary between Cisalpine Gaul and ancient Italy. In 49 B.C., after some hesitation, Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon to march against Pompey in defiance of the senate's orders. He thus committed himself to conquer or to perish, and “to cross the Rubicon” now means to take an irrevocable step.

Sometimes, it is important to take a seemingly small step, to move forward, something, that appears small to some, bigger than life to others, nothing to some, into something, for someone. One person can make a difference, though tiresome, one must forge ahead for others that will be thankful for the one small step we took, that day, we decided it was not just good enough to sit and think about the issue, it was better to bring it above ground, or in this case out of the alley. Sometimes, we must not just look up those stairs, we must step up those steps, one at a time. We can't be afraid to make the choice to go beyond that point of no return, to cross that Rubicon. I have stood alone more days than I would like to count moving forward things, from darkness into light, not everyone will like you in the process, but in the end they all seem to come out and tell you that you did the right thing. That is because it is only a brave person who dares to say Iacta alea est and mean it.

http://www.pscleanair.org/specprog/airtoxics/index.shtml

Wood smoke indoors or out is toxic to the health, and more people should be concerned with burn piles at new housing developements, your neighbor burning his winter pile of debris, than air from someone smoking outside of a building, away from entrances. The indoor wood stove that NW people love, omit so much crap into their lungs, who gives a crap if they are inhaling anything else. Ive had builders fined for illegal burn piles, Ive gone up against fire chiefs who refused to use chippers because they loved to have personal burn piles. In the end, the particles in our air in Seattle, that are endangering our lives have nothing to do with a person smoking. The cars we drive, those bad ass black smoke omitting diesal trucks on the I-5, the burn piles, the wood burning stoves for heat in home with unclean chimneys...now these are the things that take away my right to breathe clean air. Before the ban on smoking indoors, if I didn't want to sit in a smoke filled room, I wouldn't go. It's all a matter of choice there. Now that the State has gone slap happy over smoking indoors, I would rather have them get back to reality and look at our skies on days it doesn't rain, and how we live in an backwards society here if we don't admit to our pollution omitting habits. I am still shocked when I see a burn pile, talk about backwards. Yes, we have the right to breathe clean air, the alley way really isn't what that guy is all about. He wanted and has picked a fight, for something he probably doesn't really give a rat's ass about. Valdez should do a fly over our state some evening and see the fires people have in their yards, or sit behind that black exhaust from a diesal truck and ask why he is breathing in that shit before he clamps down on a back alley. What he breathes on his walk in the morning, if he takes one will kill him first, long before the alley smoke from a cig.