Quitting: Must Love Dogs

By Suzanne Danforth

December 27, 2007 6:00 AM

We are going to the dogs this week, reader, to the dogs and to love. I'll save the details for later, but I have fallen in love and I think (I hope!) it is reciprocal. It's so much nicer when it is reciprocal, don't you think?

First things first; the dogs. I am quitting dogs, wholesale. Every last damn one of 'em. They are all up for sale or adoption. Just e-mail me and soon after you will have a black furry bundle on your doorstep. I will even include medications, food and a long note about who they are, what they like and whether they hog the bed or curl up tight at the bottom.

You already know Atticus. My Atticus is a nervous Nellie and is having some trouble adjusting to our new life in Western Massachusetts, hanging out with friend Marya. Although Marya has one of the last one-acre fenced-in parcels of land near downtown Northampton, Atticus is nothing if not stealthy and he has figured out ways to breach the fence. This causes me great consternation and paranoia and fits in which I am sure he has left to go on a long journey home to Portsmouth.

He also tries regularly to assert himself as "top dog" of the pack. This invariably involves a toy and behavior that looks anthropomorphically as if he is lording his treasure over the other dogs. And let me tell you, the other dogs don't like it. They are forced to save face with the only means possible; by retaliation with teeth and lips drawn back and the most threatening barking they can muster.

Phoebe is a nearly 2-year-old black Labrador retriever who weighs 95 lbs. Phoebe is the lone non-rescue dog. She has enjoyed a comfortable life free of uncertainty and maltreatment and, in this new cancer situation, she is like a child who knows something is wrong. But because she has been protected from the underbelly of life, Phoebe's ultimate vibe is, "How bad can it be? Let's play soccer!"

Abby belongs to my sister and her children. She is a small cocker spaniel who tonight is resting in the emergency veterinary clinic in Portsmouth after ingesting many many chocolate kisses and Dove bars and going into the requisite cardiac distress. Abby is a snuffer, a gobbler who munches first and asks questions later. Abby appears dumb and smelly, but she is a little Einstein when it comes right down to it. The X-rays of her belly showed not one bit of tinfoil wrapping from all those kisses. This finding was bolstered by the prodigious amounts of tinfoil wrappings littering my sister's kitchen this afternoon.

You see, the living room furniture was re-arranged to accommodate the Christmas tree, and Miss Abby found a way to hop from here to there to the counter where, voila!, the chocolate was waiting. Just for her.

Luke is also a nervous Nellie. Luke is Abby's brother and counterpart. Luke also loves to eat like the cocker he is, but Luke's sense of right and wrong is more sophisticated than Abby's. I am sure Luke was paw-wringing and trying to talk Abby out of her choco-fest, alas to no avail. Luke shivers and moans when his Abby is away from him, and I expect it will be a long night at his house tonight, for the humans.

Joni is the next door neighbor. She gets so happy when Atticus I come home for our brief visits that you could just die watching it. But Joni is a jumper. She's young, and although she knows she is not supposed to jump, she just plain can't contain herself at times.

Now, let's talk about love. I have known Keenan for about a year. I have felt fondness for him to this point, but in the past few weeks I have fallen downright in love with him. He is a big guy and he has seen troubles in his life. His modus operandi is to ask for nothing, absolutely nothing. Although there is a way he can enter the house independently, he always waits to be invited inside.

When tensions rise, Keenan doesn't try to nose in, or offer an opinion. Nope. Instead he will step outside for a breath of fresh air. When I am sad, he silently appears to comfort me. When I fall asleep on the couch, he will quietly wake me and lead me to bed, where he climbs in beside me and positions himself so I can hold on to him. He sighs deeply and says nothing and just lets me know he is there. Keenan, a Newfie-Lab rescue, has won me over.

He is the only dog in my life, this week, who is not up for adoption or sale.

We all hope you had a good Christmas. Just kidding about the adoption or sale of the dogs, by the way. They are family. suzanne.danforth@gmail.com.

Quitting: Life Change

By Suzanne Danforth

December 20, 2007 6:00 AM

Curl up, reader, on the couch with a cup of steaming tea, a small reading lamp to illume your reading material and just the lights on the tree twinkling in the background for ambience.

Listen for the sounds of the season; the silence of snowfall, Tchaikovsky, boots stomping off stubborn bits of snow in the back hall, perhaps even distant sleigh bells in the chilly night.

Did you have a favorite holiday game when a child? Something you can resurrect now that will capture an innocent feel for the season? Something that will serve to remind you of what is (and by implication what is not) important?

One of my favorite childhood Christmas memories is sitting in the darkened living room in front of the tree and making my eyes blurry, so that each light took on multiple soft points, then making them even blurrier until the tree dissolved into a soft riot of multicolored stars to wonder over. With a quick release of my ocular muscles, the tree would snap back into focus and then I could do it all over again.

My column this week was going to be about quitting cut trees with which to decorate our living rooms. I wanted to propose a new type of holiday tree farm in which digging up the tree and planting it in a bucket, rather than severing it from its stalk, becomes the norm. I envisioned dragging trees-in-pots into homes (not much more trouble really than how we do it now), and back out to the curb when the holidays were over.

They would be safer and more fire-proof because they would be alive and rooted, not withering toward an end. The greener or more landed among us could plant them in our own yards come spring. Or I'm sure a cadre of reducers, reusers and recyclers would crop up to prowl curbs on trash day to rescue the still living trees and direct them for planting elsewhere.

In my mind's eye, quitting cut trees gave me visions of discounts from retailers for returned trees, busy nursery workers sprucing up trees for re-sale or planting and of course more trees in the world.

But it is not trees I have been thinking about these past days. In my world right now, things are down to elementals; information that is even more basic than what day is it, what month or what season. I have literally lost track of those things. I know when it is dark, or light. I know when it is snowing and when it has stopped. I know when we are getting low on pain killers or anti-anxiety pills and where to get more.

You met Trigger, my good friend Marya, several columns ago. Marya has been challenged with something few of us will ever need negotiate in life. A week ago, she was given a foreseeably short life expectancy. She seems to have turned up with a rare and random aggressive mutation. The first diagnosis has been partially retracted because of in-depth molecular staining results that suggest something potentially better than what it appeared to be: late stage pancreatic cancer.

We are hoping for something (anything) else right now and on the day you read this, she will be back in Boston in front of her team and waiting to hear, again, what is causing all these troubles and what can be done about them.

Whatever this turns out to be, it is being met head on with similar strength by a random aggressive cohort of friends, neighbors, boyfriend, family and an amazing medical team in Boston.

In November, I was lucky enough to quit my life (aka job) in what I thought was going to be an attempt to be a writer. While I know I will do that someday, I think what I really left for was to be free to spend more time in Northampton with Marya, and her dogs (Phoebe and Keenan) and her birds (Larry and three unnamed parakeets).

The fight here may be titan but it is expressed mundanely day to day in the form of pill counting, finding pharmacies that carry Schedule I narcotics, vacuuming, playing with dogs, feeding birds and finding ways to remain calm. Hikes help, and despite the nasty stupid things littering the inside of Marya's body, when her pain is controlled she is still a stronger and heartier hiker than me.

And so off we go. I don't know the day, but I do know it's snowing and it's time to find my boots and coat, because it's beautiful out there and no doctors need to see her today.

Atticus has had a little trouble adjusting and managing the stress coming off his mama, but Rescue Remedy is helping. He is settling in. Send him doggie anxiety tips at suzanne.danforth@gmail.com.

Quitting: Buy Local

By Suzanne Danforth

December 13, 2007 6:00 AM

Author's note:

Dear Reader,

Quitting, the column, is morphing. Kind of. The column has already changed once; the series began in late July and was originally dubbed Trying to Quit. This changed to Quitting for several reasons, none of which can clearly be recalled at the moment. The Quitting theme will not change and Suzanne will surely update you from time to time about how her struggle with butts is going (owing you at least that) but the Quitting focus is going to expand. We may need to talk about quitting habits other than smoking; quitting thoughts, things, traits or pastimes.

It will evolve as we go on together. Everything does.

Something is afoot this month of December, reader. Are you experiencing it, too? The axis has slipped. The calendar page alone tells me a holiday is nigh. The Long Night Moon, December's full moon, occurs on the 24th, and it is already reminding me of a cold bright moon of some years ago.

Hopefully your December is moving along a more predictable and cheerful trajectory. Whether it is or it isn't, in Quitting this week, I entreaty you to quit commercial buying for the holidays and, instead, buy local.

The mission may not be an easy one to accomplish. Big box stores and familiar logos litter the national landscape. The massive buying power associated with such mammoth size results in lower prices, to be sure, but that is paired part and parcel with compromised quality.

There is a political lyric writer in town, Charkee McGee, who penned the words to one of the Leftist Marching Band's wildly popular and most-oft requested songs. The song is a growl-y version of the 12 bar blues standard Night Train and it chronicles the myriad reasons why we should not shop at the big box retailer that begins with a W and ends with a Mart.

The economy of words required to write good lyrics eludes me, and so I will instead attempt to wax eloquent on the reasons why your dollars will do the most good and be most welcome if spent right here on local goods and services.

There are Twelve Days of Christmas, 24 tiny doors to open on the Advent Calendar, Three Kings of Orient and Three Entrepreneurs of Occident that we will highlight here as an alternative to big box commercial holiday buying. Our Seacoast entrepreneurs include a Peddler of Scribes, a Land Keeper and Invasive Species Avenger.

Our local Peddler of Scribes is Tom Holbrook over at the RiverRun Bookstore (www.riverrunbookstore.com). I can often be spotted downtown dragging bags or boxes of second hand books through Commercial Alley and into SecondRun bookstore. Most times, I drag more second-hand books back out to my car, but sometimes I take the credit option and I step giddily over to RiverRun for crisp new books and the knowledge that I am supporting a local independent bookstore.

My heart went fully to RiverRun this summer, when the ubiquitous wizard book was released at midnight in July of 2007. My niece was focused on acquiring the tome from a large book seller in Newington because of the market saturation hype for the midnight release. Weeks before the event, I found myself repeating the words "RiverRun" in one breath, followed by "independent local book seller" in the next. Because she is an adolescent, I was ignored.

On the appointed night, we arrived at said commercial bookseller at 10:30 p.m. to find madding crowds. I entreatied her to allow me to call RiverRun, Holbrook not only informed me that there were plenty of copies and no madding crowds, he assured me I would have my purchase in hand by 12:15 a.m. The implications of this were great: I could be home in bed by 12:30 a.m.

Along with getting a $5 credit as a thank you for purchasing local, that is exactly what happened.

Our local Land Keeper is Rebecca Emerson, proprietor of Creek Cottage Gardening, a landscape and decorating design outfit that puts the charm in charming (www.creekcottagegardening.com). You can spot Emerson around the region in an overlarge truck with "Garden" proudly proclaimed on the license plate.

Even better, you can be sure that the most fetchingly decorated houses in town are the handiwork of Creek Cottage Gardening. Should you pass a house festooned with live garland, trees dotted with red and gold ornaments and plentiful sprigs of holly lining the perimeter, chances are Emerson, along with her support staff, is the responsible artisan. Emerson is available not only for decorating, but clean up and pack up, as well as for winter garden design. Best of all, come spring, she will prepare your yard for the sublimity of the height of summer.

Our final entrepreneur is Invasive Species Avenger Dave Kellam, owner of Phragwrites (pronounced FRAG-right-ease). Phragmites (careful there, different word) is an invasive reed threatening the North American wetlands because of its tendency to choke out native plants and animals. Kellam collects the reeds by hand from infested local wetlands and returns home to fashion the tubes into writing instruments.

Check out the rhyming extravaganza on Kellam's Web site (www.phragwrites.com), and if you own a business, you must get the Lighty Phragwrite Gift Jar instead of those boring old corporate pens emblazoned with your logo. Do the environment a favor and Kellam will in turn donate a portion of annual profits toward the invasive species battle.

There are many other local business that could use your business this season. Make the commitment, it makes a difference.

Suzanne is back out in the western part of Massachusetts for the time being. You can write to her about time or being at suzanne.danforth@gmail.com.

Quitting: No Avoiding Public Food

By Suzanne Danforth

December 06, 2007 6:00 AM

It happens every year during the holidays. That's right, 'tis the season of public food. Even if commercialism were to up and disappear from our culture and abscond to the islands, I would know the holidays arrived simply because of this phenomenon. Public food ranks right up there with Christmas-decorations-next-to-Halloween-candy as an early sign that the holidays are on their way.

I spotted public food just today. Watch out, it's everywhere. Public food makes appearances at the doctor's office. It beckons to you from mom and pop retail operations and turns up on every last reception desk in the city. I am quitting public food this year (and gifting locally, but maybe that is a topic for next week).

Public food is hard to resist, and it knows it. Public food laughs in the face of studies demonstrating that caloric restriction results in a longer life span. Public food knows all about the equation between less food and a lower body temperature. Public food knows, in its heart of hearts, that no one really wants to be cold and hungry for the sake of a few more years. I can play that game; I am eschewing public food this month (bless me).

Public food has a year-long background presence and comes in many forms. Starlight mints qualify as public food, although they are evocative of absolutely nothing suggestive of starlight. Andes mints? Yup, public. Even though I suspect they were invented by a guy named Andy who decided to get fancy on us. Even those little pastel colored candies usually found in a dish with a spoon (and which have a cringe-worthy nickname unprintable here) are officially listed in the government database dubbed the National Public Food Registry (www.NPFR.com)

But at Christmas time (Oh!), at Christmas time public food comes out of hiding and runs smack into the middle of the town square, where it does a jig for all to see on the brickwork in front of the North Church.

During the month of December public food is elevated to an entirely new level. It strives to achieve 'public food as art form' status by showing up at all the coolest places in town, including at Le Club Boutique, the Nahcotta Gallery and of course the Button Factory open house. It hobnobs by rubbing shoulders with locals and visitors, the comfortable and the impoverished, the breeders and the non-breeders alike. Indeed, it endeavors mightily all month long to be public-food-everyman.

During the month of December, public food even rousts itself out of bed in the morning and (gasp) goes to work. Only during the month of December, however. Public food wouldn't think of making an appearance in a radiology suite in, say, May.

Before the politically correct police make a traffic stop, I offer an aside. I don't mean to be exclusive of other traditions by referring to the Christian incarnation of the month ahead of us. I am simply used to calling the season by that name. I could easily sanitize and call it any of the following: holiday, season, jubilee, fest or gala. Alternatively, I could take the inclusive tack and refer specifically to Hanukkah, Rohatsu, Ramadan, Kwanzaa or Yule. With the exception of Rohatsu, there is a gift giving expectation.

And where there is a gift giving expectation, one is sure to find ...; public food. Public food and gift giving go hand-in-hand and have a long and well documented history. In fact, they go back together as far as the mists of antiquity. There is some evidence (fossilized of course) that early Lucy in the caves put out a dish of pebbles for guests to munch on during an ancient celebration. Unfortunately, the fossil evidence also shows that the party was crashed by a wooly mammoth with really big feet and an appetite for proto-humans. Oh well. Sad, but at least this early hostess informed the scientific record as it relates to public food.

And so, public food will prevail this year, as it has in years past. There is, however, one contemporary and burdensome worry when it comes to public food. Although baseball season is over, contract negotiation outcomes are in the news. And I fear that one of our very own BoSox'ers is going to encounter major challenges this season.

Poor Curt Schilling. How will he manage to make it through this month's random weigh in? Can Curt even pass by public food, do you think? And what kind of public food do you think is left out for the masses in his world? Lobster? Coq Au Vin? Caviar? What will he do without that extra $333,333 if he goes up by even a quarter of a pound?

And quarter pounds count, let me tell you.

Suzanne used to look forward to public food all year long. Not so much any more. Detail your preferences to suzanne.danforth@gmail.com.

Quitting: Giving Thanks Not far Off the Grid

By Suzanne Danforth

November 29, 2007 6:00 AM

Two moose, one curious beaver, one owl and one power outage add up to equal my first handful of hours along Moose River in Rockwood, Maine, where I retreated for Thanksgiving weekend.

It got cold last night. I couldn't get the woodstove properly stoked, the power went down and the sheer surface area of the Palladian window in my loft overlooking the river guaranteed a chill. Even Atticus needed his own blanket. It's hard being off the grid.

Please. This comfortable cabin is about as far off the grid as I could easily and knowingly go at this point in my life. I am wretched at certain endeavors, including roughing it and home improvement projects.

For years, my brother has entreated me to learn how to change my own oil, replace a showerhead, or properly hang a picture. I don't even feign interest anymore. He weatherproofed my back door recently and when the inevitable invitation came to learn how, I countered that I would be happy to learn how, and would do so just after I teach him the cranial nerves.

Back to giving thanks. The ride from the New Hampshire Seacoast to the Maine Highland region is long. Really long. I had good company for the journey in my niece, Katie. She demonstrated amazing knowledge of the area, pointing out snowed-in logging roads and navigating our way far beyond the highway.

In preparing for this trip, I got caught up in the romance of the prospect of being entirely smoke free and breathing simple pure piney air while traipsing through the woods. I left Portsmouth without any cigarettes. I'm down to none or just a few a day, most days. Not bad, considering that when I turned 43 at the end of July I was smoking nearly a pack every day.

Along about exit 157 (that's right, exit one hundred fifty seven) my sister called us to check on our progress. It was when Katie said "We'll see you in a couple of hours" that I crumpled. A couple of hours? A couple more hours? Hours? Plural? As in more than one?

Exit 157 used to be exit 39. Psychologically, I like exit 39 a lot better, let me tell you. Perhaps if it were still exit 39 I would not have pulled off the road to purchase a nasty pack. But I did, and I smoked, and I stayed calm, amiable and alert on the road as a result.

This was a good thing, because I began to white-knuckle the wheel 50 or so miles later in response to the signs warning me of the dangers of crashing into a wandering moose.

I found myself employing a methodical visual sweep of the vista in front of my headlights; near left, far left, far right, near right. Katie and I discussed identifying a "moose word." She is an exuberant person and she gasps for the smallest of reasons, including in response to her own thoughts. I knew a gasp in this situation might result in a rollover, and we finally settled on the single word "moose" as our verbal signal. Katie informed me that we would surely utter the word reverently, if we were lucky enough to see one.

Miles later, in the high beams in the near left quadrant, I saw a twinkle at the road side. That reflection was followed by a looming outline that took shape first into one moose, then two. One was a bull of proportions I have seen only in pictures, peering at us and turning slowly toward the woods, as if he owned them.

Which, I suppose he does.

The gasp that followed belonged to me, and I was suddenly catapulted into the holiday spirit; excited, hopeful and on the lookout for magic.

At dinner, we remembered to give thanks and be grateful out loud. But feeling grateful inside is even nicer. I spent some time in the past several years trying to be purposefully grateful and it didn't work so well. I often felt like I was being sent to bed while everyone else who got to stay up was having a picnic, party or worse, pony rides.

I am grateful for many things this year; for my cozy little house in Portsmouth, for the children in my life, for my family, friends, neighbors and community. It is good, too, to know some things about myself; that I will never trade my name, even if the right someone eventually dances by; that I don't have to stay in a job that doesn't fit, that bad things do pass, even if it takes years.

Suzanne is typically bah-humbug around the holidays. Perhaps her heart has grown three times. Ask her at suzanne.danforth@gmail.com.

Quitting: Trash Talk and Sexy Stewardship

By Suzanne Danforth

November 22, 2007 6:00 AM

Listen up, Earth citizens. You will generate 25 percent more trash between today and Dec. 25th than you do all the other months of the year. You will haul it weekly to your curb and it will disappear. Catalogs, boxes, mailings, ribbons, wrapping paper, holiday cards, glass and plastic, gone, our detritus whisked away. There will even be live trees at the curb (sob) waiting for incineration.

There is nothing magical about what happens to the trash after it leaves your neighborhood. It goes from the curb into one of Portsmouth's 12-ton capacity garbage trucks and up the highway to a big garbage pile (aka landfill) in Rochester. There, Portsmouth's 12.5 million annual pounds of garbage join recycling and trash from surrounding communities for sorting.

We're talking trash this week, folks. Today, we lie on the floor and bemoan our overlarge appetites and give thanks for our privileged citizenship in the world's premiere military industrial complex. Tomorrow, watch out, we hit the stores.

I kicked off my holiday season by attending a trash lecture a few weeks ago hosted by municipal employee Silke Psula (known to her Portsmouth colleagues as the recycling queen) and others from nearby communities. (Please don't feel left out if you are from Dover, or Eliot or Greenland. Call your municipal people Monday for your numbers.)

Trash, says Psula, needs to become sexy. She quickly follows that comment with reference to a biblical verse about stewardship to the earth. I don't know about you, but I have never successfully mixed sexy with stewardship. Sure, stewardship involves passion, but it's not necessarily the sexy kind.

Anyway, the harbinger of the holidays has been showing up in my mailbox for some weeks now. I don't even look at the catalogs, much less save them. I put them into the paper recycling box in the kitchen and haul them out to the curb when Tuesday comes.

But I think. I think. I think about garbage and food and resources.

I began to eat local this summer, bit by bit. I attended the farmers market every week, got to know the angry farmers and the friendly farmers, figured out how some got their greens so clean (old washing machine agitation cycle), and bought fresh meat for the first time in my life (sorry Bessie). Eating with a local purpose led naturally to wondering about trash.

I have recycled since 1986, when I moved to California and got to know Greg. He ran one of San Francisco's early recycling centers, and educated the community tirelessly (if grumpily) on the necessity of recycling. I thought it was cute, quaint and quirky.

I was young.

Now I am old and I worry. I worry about the burden our biological need to procreate places upon the earth. I worry that the leaves did not seem to fall this year until about three weeks after I thought they should. I worry that about the startling reduction in the size of the polar ice cap as photographed from space. I don't need science to point the way, and I don't need politics to equivocate.

There is succor in the data, however. The average bag of trash is 20 lbs., before categorical recycling. We can reduce that to just 4 lbs. by separating materials. And yes, it is important to separate the plastic 1's and 2's from the other numbers.

The 1's and 2's literally boil down to a different substance than the others. Because there is an aftermarket ready to purchase them, they can't be contaminated by other types of plastics. They get purchased, turned into a raw resource, sold to someone who creates a product and eventually your trash is marketed back to you in the form of a recycled product.

Sorting is not just a feel-good green act. The consequences of poor sorting are almost as dire as the consequences of not sorting at all. New Hampshire is not siting new landfill beyond 2018. By 2020, we will have no further capacity for old-fashioned dump-it-in-big-piles-somewhere-out-of-town-where-I-don't-have-to-think-about-it style landfills. We must reduce the scope of our throwaways, and become more creative in our day to day living. It's a crowded planet. We've had the indulgent luxury of a new cup every day for our coffee, of disposable diapers, of commercial cleaning products.

It's time to get back to vinegar and lemon juice to clean the bathroom, to drink our own perfectly good tap water, to support projects like the UNH Ecoline and to purchase responsible technologies as they become more widely available to us.

Regardless of our politics, we're all in this together.

Suzanne is out of town and cannot attend any musical festivities at our local red retailer tomorrow. She is available for bail bond duty, however, at suzanne.danforth@gmail.com.

Quitting: The old life, starting anew

By Suzanne Danforth

November 15, 2007 6:00 AM

In preschool, we always began our day in circle with a tune or two and a greeting. It really did a body good to pointedly acknowledge everyone in the room and tell them "hello, so very glad to see you." I'm not talking Romper Room memories either. I spent the past two years in preschool, exploring the world of developing language.

It seems I have two jobs: a day job and a night job. As a reader of Quitting, you know all about my night job as writer, in which dispatches from my head make their way to the Herald every Thursday. My day job (which by the way is completely, wholly, unaccountably and diametrically antithetical to smoking) is as a pediatric speech-language pathologist.

I came to pediatrics by way of adults. I was a neurodegenerative specialist (don't choke on that) at a large urban hospital in Massachusetts for years. I loved my work, my colleagues, and the opportunity to watch grace happen on a near daily basis. I traded degeneration for development when my own mother turned up with a nasty withering disease and I found I needed more hopefulness and whimsy in my daily work life.

Well let me tell you, hopefulness and whimsy is just what you get when you hang with a bunch of four year olds every day. You also get a front row seat to observe developing social skills like conflict resolution, when to tell the teacher, when to ask for help and why it's not OK to hit someone else, even if they deserve it.

It is in part because I am exposed daily to the breathtaking innate creativity of children that I began writing again. The other part is time; since my mother's passing there is no more need to meet with lawyers or nursing home administrators, no need to get medicines, seasonal clothes that fit or manage the paperwork that comes with being someone's legal representative. When she died last year, I was grateful in my head that she was not suffering any longer, but it was a stilted cerebral gratefulness that had nothing to do with my heart. I was decidedly un-grateful that my mother went like she did and that she was gone forever.

That has changed slowly over the year. Not only do I have a developing relationship with her as most-important-and-honored dead person in my life, I have the time to explore my own creativity, with the help of the little ones I know. Since I can't draw worth beans, I don't set goals like "I'm going to run a marathon" like my friend and neighbor Amy Wallace, and since I'm not very good at making stuff, that leaves writing. Massaging the written word, crafting a thought over and over until it comes out just rhythmically so can make me sigh with pleasure.

My choice of tagline, Quitting, has been like a needy dog lately, poking its nose into my side, nudging me, sending me powerful-strong silent messages. It's as if Quitting is my smoking baby and my smoking baby got extinguished along with the bathwater. Throw out smoking? Sure! And while you're at it, why not quit everything else you know about your life!

Yes, reader, I am preparing to quit my entire old life. I have decided to leave my profession as a speech pathologist for one year, during which time my job will be to establish enough of an income stream as a writer to justify going forward into a second year, and hopefully a third.

I do not naturally ascribe to the school of life idea that believes "everything happens for a reason." I am more from the drama school of "why the heck did that happen and how long can I ponder and gnash over this before the people in my life want to kill me."

New age-isms notwithstanding, there have been unmistakable signs from the universe that this is supposed to be happening for me; there is my chance New York City meeting of a person who is highly placed in a very large and recognizable international media outlet, there are the two separate offers from published writer friends to introduce me to their editors, there is the reconnection with the first editor who ever gave me an assignment back in San Francisco in 1987.

There is also the children's character and story that came to me almost fully formed during a meeting (sorry about that attention wandering).

Children's songs and old tunes are equally great for pointing the way. I like this one lately: Enjoy yourself while you're still in the pink, enjoy yourself, it's later than you think.

Suzanne is smoking not much at all, in the big picture. She remains the engine that could. Encouragements and writing assignments accepted at suzanne.danforth@gmail.com.

Quitting: Trigger Happy (and dangerous)

By Suzanne Danforth

November 08, 2007 6:00 AM

Oh it might be a clunky column this week, reader. In the spirit of the haunted holiday just gone by, be warned before you read on! There could be scary syntax, ghoulish grammar or dangling participles here.

I am writing to you from a hamlet in Western Massachusetts, Northampton, home of Smith College and my closest friend, who shall be known here as Trigger.

Although Portsmouth and Northampton have no formal municipal relationship, the two towns in my mind are sisters. I've been coming here for nearly 25 years, or as long as I've known Trigger, and I have come to think of Northampton as Portsmouth without the ocean. They may be "cities," but these girls give off a real hometown vibe. Their backdrops are different (mountain hamlet versus coastal community) but the similarity of their souls is unmistakable.

Despite my love of the place, I am not in my usual writing space, a spot also known as my bed, where it is comfy and warm. I don't dispatch my thoughts to you as much as smuggle them out of my brain. I write wrapped in a down comforter with my laptop propped just so, coffee to my right and my dog at my side. Doesn't sound much like a big deal; writing is the ultimate in portability, right? Wrong. I have been staring long enough at this blank document to realize that I have begun to attach my writing to place and creature comforts.

Writing may be a higher order behavior, but as a behavior, it really is just like any other repetitive act. Thankfully, the products of repetitive writing are more novel and generative than my other favorite repetitive behavior, smoking. Enter Trigger, aka many other names and nicknames; Marya, Myra, Ouij, Zekebird to list a few. We decided last night that I am a trigger for her and she is a trigger for me. In analyzing this positively, I figure someone can only attain trigger status if they actually trigger something. Even though in this case what is triggered is an undesired behavior, we can work to change it to something better, or focus on what is already there. Myra is also my trigger for moving my body (shhh, don't say the E-word).

She began to teach me years ago, when moving my body was somewhat more of a chore than it is these days, that walking in the woods is fun, interesting and smells good too. She taught me how to dribble, kayak and how to ski on the slopes at Stowe (that last just four years ago).

For several years, when I was commuting from Dover to Boston for work, I stayed with Myra two nights a week. This afforded us a grown-up opportunity to somewhat share a slice of day to day life, like we did all those years ago in college.

And even though she actually biked to work in Somerville from her apartment in Newton every day, she could always be counted on to share a smoke and a laugh at the end of the day. I still count on her for so many things. Our mothers had the same bizarre form of dementia (frontal lobe) at the same time. We would shake our heads together at the improbability of it, or share in joint envy of our age-matched peers who still had their parents and their grandparents.

Now, despite our acknowledgement that smoking doesn't serve us so well anymore, it is still something that is triggered in each of us, simply by the presence of the other. I called her one night last week to report I was getting restless. It was the time of day when most people's bodies and minds begin to wind down, but my mind was stuck in the groove of smoking, wanting to smoke and seriously contemplating a trip to the store to purchase smoking implements. When Myra gives support, it rarely comes in the form of "no, don't do that" or even "I don't think you should do that." Make no mistake, she has an opinion and she expresses it, but she doesn't tell me what to do.

Her prescription for my restlessness that night? To put off buying a pack until tomorrow. Brilliant.

Suzanne is getting ready to trade "The Known World" for the unknown world. Watch it happen here. suzanne.danforth@gmail.com.

Quitting: Passing the Couch Moving Test

By Suzanne Danforth

November 01, 2007 6:00 AM

This week, we shall look at what cold turkey is shaping up to look like. My story will reference dreadlocks, cigarette caresses and how to be a witch, but in a nice way.

You may have noticed in the past few weeks that the tagline has changed from "Trying to Quit" to "Quitting." For all the ups and downs and slips and slides, I have never not once let go of my desire to become a non-smoker. In quits past, attempts were followed by failures and failures were followed by amnesia.

It made for a nice little parade; a bon vivant as marshal, pomping it up in front (Come one! Come all! See me quit!) with a smoky fugue state bringing up the rear (Who me? I said I wanted to quit? Really?).

This time, my grand marshal seems to realize that its rightful place is in the back of the line, eating humble pie and pushing fugue state along every time it holds up the works.

On day two of cold turkey, I had to move a couch. A big comfy sectional couch designed for a great room, not for the crooked Colonial space in which I actually live. My friend assured me (being male) it would fit and we undertook the project together. We commenced at the U-Haul on the Bypass where, waiting for my turn, the first murderous cold turkey urges occurred.

The completely appropriate and nice gentleman behind the counter had a beautiful head of dreadlocks, the more than 10-year kind, at least. For five awful minutes, I would have traded my soul for a big pair of industrial scissors. I envisioned myself leaping over the counter brandishing them as sword and slashing through each gnarled coil. When it finally came time in the real world for our turn, it was a terrible downturn to discover that I needed to return home to get proof of insurance.

The short drive afforded my frontal lobes the opportunity to talk to the rest of my brain, and I returned to U-Haul to confess my situation to the gentleman. He understood, he used to smoke himself, and quit after seeing evidence of the scam perpetrated on the populous by big tobacco. I was still antsy waiting for the rental truck process to play out, with lots of overflow movement in my limbs (dance anyone?) but my inner witch was at least demonstrating a modicum of sociability.

That lasted until we got the couch into my front hall, where it sat on the floor and refused to budge. You can't stay here, I admonished it. It curled its couch lip petulantly back at me and remained silent. Thankfully, my friend, joined now by my neighbor, knew how to take charge of the situation (taking charge in this case involved implements such as screwdrivers and brute force) and the couch finally made it into the living room.

Throughout, I didn't smoke. I can't say I have been 100 percent abstinent since Oct. 18, but I can say I have not smoked more cigarettes than I can count on one hand. In talking to people who have succeeded, it seems cold turkey can look different for different people. There is the lady at my coffee shop for whom cold turkey was just that. Done. Finis. "If you are smoking one a day, you don't need any at all," says coffee shop wisdom.

There is my friend Marge, who looks at life with years of accumulated experience, and who was my mother's longtime partner in jazz and smoking crime. She kept a pack in her freezer for a long time, and would take one out each night and hold it for a while before taking just one drag. There is my friend Andy, who quit after he got a cold and didn't smoke for one whole day because his body didn't want to. Then he didn't smoke for two whole days, and so on until that turned into 10 smoke-free years.

Finally, I seem to have spoken to a lot of men who quit on a bet (oh, lovely competitive natures...;.). So, bottom line is, I'm doing OK. Yes, none is best. None remains the goal. But for today, less is better than giving up my goal completely.

Suzanne actually forgot this year and had to be reminded about the Saturday night Halloween dance at the Jumbo Circus Peanuts world headquarters. Swear to God. suzanne.danforth@gmail.com.

Quitting: After You've Gone - Jim Kept it Upbeat

By Suzanne Danforth

October 27, 2007 6:00 AM

Until two Saturdays ago, I had a friend who struggled like I have with nicotine. He could be counted on to have one of two things in his mouth when in public but not on stage; a piece of Nicorette gum or a cigarette. Jim Howe, jazz bassist, photographer, woodsman, uncle, father and grandfather, died Oct. 13.

If he could have, Jim would have been with me on the sidewalk the afternoon I found out he was gone, in broad daylight and full public view, smoking up a storm. He would have laughed with me at the self-reflexive absurdity of it, and joined me in my pain at coming to terms with the idea that, suddenly, someone is gone and you will never see them again.

I know Jim because he came as a package deal with Tommy Gallant, the person who loved my mother and all of us by extension. In our family, Jim was known as Tommy's other wife. Jim has held a special place in my life since Tommy's gone and since my mother is too, now.

I spent many a Sunday night at the Press Room in the late 1980s and early 1990s, eating dinner with my mom, each of us moving to the sound and catching each other's eye on a good riff.

I liked rock music too, and my mom always gave me a hard time about their playing faces; until the night I leaned in to her to point out how funny Jim's faces were when he was massaging the strings of his upright bass. Jim would not only emote the music on his face, he would vocally talk it up and down the string line of his instrument. His playing was a voice-face-bass extravaganza, always.

Then Tommy got sick and Jim, my mother and I had the privilege of seeing him out of this world in the early-morning hours of Sept. 28, 1998. After he was gone, Jim and I made our way downstairs to the deck, as Tommy's daughters arrived and before his body was taken away. We shared two cigarettes that night, and marveled at the falling star we saw, wondering if it was Tommy on his way to somewhere.

Jim was there when you needed him to be, even if it was hard for him. I don't think he "wanted" to be there as Tommy died, but my mother and I had a rough night the night before, trying to care for and keep Tommy out of pain. Jim stayed to spot us, so we could get some sleep. He called for us to come late in the night when Tommy's breathing wasn't right and before any one of us realized, the process was underway.

I know he didn't want to see my mother in the last days of her life. I understood; I suspected my mother would only vaguely sense he was there. It didn't matter to me if he came; I knew he loved her. But I nonetheless took pains to let him know he might be sorry if he missed the opportunity to see her one last time. I didn't want him to be sorry after the fact, when it was too late.

He came.

I'm the only one left who was in the room the night that Tommy died. I never did make it up to Jim's cabin when he was there to welcome me. It is situated on Howe land, in a small Maine town "whose population is catastrophically reduced when Jim leaves for a gig," according to the 2004 disc liner notes for Sterling, written by fellow jazzman Paul Verrette.

Jim fed my soul in a primal way, too. I saw the sparkle of transformation in his eye each time we met. I had weight loss surgery five years ago and lost more than the equivalent of one other me in the year following. Jim never failed to make me feel like the most beautiful person on earth, before I lost weight. After I lost weight, when beauty actually came to visit my life, there was a lovely "I told you so, Suzie" quality to his regard of me.

After my weight loss, Jim saw me through bits of lovelorn sadness in a way I am learning is typical to the jazz world. I was boo hoo'ing to him one night at the Metro, where Jim was a Friday night fixture forever. I asked him to play the tune "After You've Gone." After the break, he launched with his pianist into a lively upbeat version, completely unlike the dark sad landscape of my heart.

Of course I complained after the set; I had been expecting minor chords and a slow beat, not swing! He laughed that throaty chuckle that could explode at any moment into a big life-filled guffaw, and said, "Suzie, you have to keep it upbeat. There isn't any other way."

Jim's canine companion, Gunner, came to Jim as result of his winning a quit smoking bet he had with his son. Play on, Jim. suzanne.danforth@gmail.com.

Quitting: Time to go Cold Turkey

October 18, 2007 6:00 AM

Since I have begun writing again I have found that alliterations bring me a type of satisfaction unmatched in any other area of my life. I get a kind of joy from tweaking a sentence to within an inch of its life, but the best bang-for-my-buck payoff comes from fashioning a string of words all containing the same sound.

"Core condo cadre" is a recent favorite; "crickets calling cadence" is another. Seems the hard "C" sound figures big in my amazing alliterative allusions.

I have already fallen down on "cognitive quitting." Not enough inches here for all the details, but the good news is that I haven't given up. I am getting ready to undertake the method that the data show is the most successful. Cold turkey.

I have received inspiration from the least likely of sources; an activist street band festival I attended this weekend in Somerville, Mass., called HONK. More specifically, from two people I met there and the comments they made, separately. Although neither had to do with smoking, each has undulated through my mind since.

HONK was described by one reporter in media coverage as the kind of gathering that results when the hip kids in band grow up. It is kooky, creative and cacophonous (whoops, another hard "C" word parade). It's about personal expression through music, dancing, performance and community, a celebration of individuality. This weekend, I wore chapeaus, and tulle and glitter and boots (Google your locally famous Leftist Marching Band for further explanation).

Most days I dress in a kind of pedestrian middle class way, and live a kind of pedestrian middle class life. I work hard at my profession and try to make the personal connections necessary to exhort change in others, which, at its most reductionist, is my charge.

Before leaving for the gala, I decided I was not going to struggle with trying to quit over this weekend. I intended to let the street performer in me win out. And the street performer smokes. At least she does for now.

In my own individual quest, reader, I find myself in a double bind. On the one hand, quitting in print makes for good prose. On the other hand, quitting in print makes its own case for continuing, lest what shall I write about?

Oh, I remain black and white; curses. Where are the shades of gray?

The comments that I can't get out of my head were made by people who are current friends, former roommates and who are both percussionists in Environmental Encroachment; a terrific band hailing mostly from Chicago.

One mention had to do with language being unnecessary for actual communication; the other had to do with choices, and making them despite feelings that urge you toward the opposite.

I love rolling in language perhaps as much as my Atticus enjoys his rolls in sea gull matter on Peirce Island. Language is uber-specific but ultimately unnecessary for communication. Yep. There it is. All these words are icing on the cortical cake. There are plenty of non-linguistic examples that illustrate the point; connecting with an autistic child, communicating a world of feeling through a look, or keeping quiet when words implore to be heard.

The other comment, like the person who uttered it, was more right-brain. The right brain is the part of us that operates on feeling. This half is the seat of our ability to "read" a situation without any specific information, to make an informed decision based on gut alone.

This comment was about making choices, feeling all the feelings related to a particular situation whether happy or sad, but choosing, ultimately, to be positive.

My feelings about not-smoking run the gamut, the gauntlet even. But, in service and homage to choosing positivity, I say that I can quit. Cold turkey. No Chantix buzz, no caving in social situations, no smoking. Period.

It will likely be a terrible but necessary month.

Recently, I have spoken to two people right on my block who you would never guess used to be smokers. They embody non-smoking, are active and unwrinkled and without that gray veil smoking affords you.

Each quit cold turkey. Patty, the erudite house cleaner around the corner, has regaled me with the tales of her first non-smoking month. You want me to do what when I clean that room (raised eyebrow)?

Well, I pledge, in print and to a fairly large circulation, to quit by the day this column publishes (Oct. 18). On Halloween, I will probably choose to be a lion (my sun sign in any case) so I can roar and posture and c-c-c-complain about the unfairness of it all, but I am going to do my damn level best to quit cold turkey for just one month. I will take stock on Nov. 18 and keep you posted, reader.

Wish me the courage of my convictions.

Suzanne Danforth wants to thank Mister Petey and Carlos for just plain existing. Talk to me at suzanne.danforth@gmail.com.

Quitting: Jeffrey Carter Albrecht

By Suzanne Danforth

October 11, 2007 6:00 AM

Trying to quit has evolved into Trying to Quit Chantix. There are some early, but disturbing, bits of anecdotal information out there on the mental side effects of this drug for a small subset of people.

The indie music world lost guitarist/keyboardist Jeffrey Carter Albrecht on Sept. 3 of this year in Dallas, Texas. Carter Albrecht, best known for his work with Edie Brickell, was shot by a gun-toting neighbor when he was mistaken for a burglar. He had recently begun Chantix and in a life unmarked (as far as we can know right now) by domestic abuse, on that night he got into a physical altercation with his girlfriend, and then ran out of his house. Evidently, the pounding and noise prompted the neighbor to shoot-to-kill.

The girlfriend, Ryan Rathbone, has come out in her grief to point to Chantix as a potential variable which resulted in such foreign behavior by Carter Albrecht.

Closer to home, mental health professionals are seeing effects of Chantix in some acute situations, and quit smoking blogs are rife with odd stories of changes in internal states of being.

I have mentioned here before that the pill has visited me with some strange effects. In detail, I can tell you that my Chantix odyssey has been a burst in creativity, sleeplessness and the kind of energy that is just shy of scary.

These effects were not immediately noticeable in either the first or second trials of the drug. What was immediately apparent is that the desire to and thoughts of smoking became, well, unimportant.

Three weeks or so in, I began to eschew sleep and write with a vengeance. Once the writing was done, I was still not able to quiet my brain enough to put head to pillow and slumber. I would catch a few hours, and be ready to go again in the morning. I am sure this tendency to wake immediately and fully is partly inherited; I hold dear my sweet stepfather's description of sleepily watching my mother wake up in the morning. He was a big one for substituting noises for words. His noise for this daily visual? Doink!

Back to Chantix; the brain buzz got to be too much, and I quit it, only to pick up the weed.

Which I hated. This resulted in my experiment of modifying the dose. I halved the pill, and took it once a day. All went well, again for about three weeks, when my internal engine again ramped up. Creative juices flowed, ideas were rampant and the midnight oil was burned, most often in service to getting my thoughts down, sketching out ideas and sending out queries.

I am currently four days off the pill, but its after-effects persist. I know, because of the last time, that it should be about another five days until my being is back to its homeostasis. A boring homeostasis; predictable routine, amid long bouts of staring at a blank word document taunting me to write something, anything.

Hypergraphia is a condition in which the need and urge to write is untrammeled. My friend, neurologist Alice Flaherty, wrote an entire book about hypergraphia. It was born of her experience after losing twins postpartum and suffering a breakdown of all the mental constructs we take for granted on a day to day basis. The book is a wonderful read, peppered not only with the brain basis for writing and other high-level (read: human) functions, but with well-researched and interpreted stories about writers with whom we are all familiar: Dostoevsky, Plath and James, both William and Henry.

I am loathe, on the one hand, to give up the sheer production value that has come with this drug. On the other hand, I just want some good dreamless sleep.

The fine print on Chantix, which was fast-tracked through the FDA because of the promise it showed in clinical trials, lists as infrequent the following side effects: aggression, agitation, disorientation, dissociation, abnormal thinking and mood swings. Rare side effects are listed as euphoria, hallucination, psychotic disorder and suicidal ideation.

One wonders if Carter Albrecht's chemistry was of the kind to invite both the infrequent and rare side effects of this new compound. A compound born in a laboratory, new but targeted at specific receptors. Problem is, we humans are enough divine that chemistry, with its lockstep logic, falls short of predictable; a predictability that may only become apparent when applied to the population at large. We are all part of clinical trials these days.

It is far from hard science, but personal experience with a change in internal state because of a drug leads me to mourn this musician, Jeffrey Carter Albrecht, in a personal way, as a casualty of the desire to try to quit.

Google Carter Albrecht on myspace to hear his music. It's good stuff. I remain suzanne.danforth@gmail.com.

Quitting: Other People's Gardens

By Suzanne Danforth

October 04, 2007 6:00 AM

My best friend in all the world would snort if she knew I am trying to care for a neighbor's garden. When we lived together after college, she would return home from time away to find that I had not, as promised, watered the plants. Or even looked at them.

I don't know my neighbor; she lives along the route of my twice daily walk with Atticus. There is a tiny patch of garden on the side of her house that produces breathtaking amounts of tomatoes and basil. Last summer, I watched as the tomatoes grew, ripened, withered and finally rotted off their branches.

This summer, as they came into being, I began to pick the fruits as they turned red and leave them on her front stoop. Ten or so luscious plums, handfuls of good old-fashioned staking tomatoes, nearly by the day. (I did let the neighbor across the street know what I was up to, lest peace officers were called in on the case of the neighborhood gardener).

Today, there was a bucket on the step. I filled it up. I returned later in the morning to weed. I have never weeded in my life, but walking by as often as we do has afforded me a slow-motion film of the life cycle of a garden. And this garden was in need of cleaning out.

My garden also needs cleaning out, a revisit to the reasons why I tried to quit smoking in the first place. I truly thought I was going to be able to quit, but I have discovered that I have not tended my own garden well enough and the weeds are back.

I suspect we all have weeds that return again and again into our lives. Difference is, most people's weeds don't stink up the building. Humans can over-eat in silence, berate each other quietly, or watch TV alone while their partner sleeps. But if your fall down is smoking, there is no way to hide it, especially when the non-smokers have you surrounded. Smoking used to be something I did full time. Since trying to quit, it has become a kind of window into my well being, a personal barometer, even a bellwether.

I have been, as you know, struggling with the Chantix. Its side effects are noxious, including the most subtle one, which has to do with how I am inside of myself (see Alice Flaherty's "The Midnight Disease"). Although it continues to tamp the need and desire to smoke, as well as to squelch obsessive thoughts about smoking, it changes me in a way I am not willing to tolerate.

Enter a new action plan; cognitive quitting. Some weeks ago I received an e-mail from an anti-tobacco coach in Toronto. He evidently has read me from the beginning, but waited to write me until he began to see some chips in my veneer. I guess you too, reader, can probably tell that my once hopeful descriptions of being smoke free are no longer enough to keep me from actually not smoking.

Most smokers do very well in the early heady days of trying to quit. Most smokers in the long run, however, remain smokers, through obstructive pulmonary disease, heart disease, circulatory problems and of course the stink. Hey kids, another reason never to begin.

But some smokers do quit. I really, really, really want to be one of those people. I need to be one of those people, if the quality of my life is going to remain as it is, with two working arms and two working legs and the ability to get out of bed by myself and ambulate comfortably. There is no denying I am getting older (even weeding a garden can result in aches and pains) and I don't want to add to the inherent challenges of aging by continuing to drag smoke into my body.

So, my intention this week is to reset the barometer and take the cognitive quitting gentleman up on his offer to coach me through my trying-to-quit journey.

As for my neighbor's garden, turns out she is a they. I received a gift of fresh tomato and basil confit on my own stoop tonight. I am more than a little surprised that I have taken on this patch of earth to nurture and am pleased with its yield.

As for smoking as bellwether, wether is Middle English for castrated ram. Long-ago farmers used to tie a bell on the neck of these woolly castrati so they could successfully lead the sheep to pasture. Since it must be close to shearing time, I am happy that my neighbors grow tomatoes.

Suzanne Danforth knows she hasn't returned Donna's call. She will soon, or you can e-mail her at suzanne.danforth@gmail.com.

Quitting: Do It For Atticus

By Suzanne Danforth

September 27, 2007 6:00 AM

After a long summer off (a gift from the childhood gods) I am back to work and have had to find ever more creative ways to afford my dog, Atticus, his walkabouts. I groan when the alarm goes off before the sun makes its appearance, but what gets me up and going is the vision of his joy as we approach our destination, his body aquiver with the excitement of the running to come.

Atticus came to me as "Artemis," complete with a BB in his back and a broken spirit. Addy is a Hoosier, from Indiana, where kill shelters are the norm. When we met, it was clear he'd been through some stuff; he didn't know how to play, startled easily, and looked for all the world like a lost cause.

We spent some time together in the shelter. When he finally put his long nose in my lap and shyly thumped his tail during our second visit, I was his. Thankfully, he did not (and has not) gone back on any of the silent promises dogs make. Even though he has had to put up with me. Which is where smoking enters.

Atticus is a sneezer. He sneezes. A lot. He sneezes when he is excited. He sneezes when he knows he is going outside. He sneezes when he is playing. He sneezes when he is nervous or when he is trying to assert his dominance in a small space. He sneezes sometimes 12 or more times in quick succession. He sneezes, truly, on command.

And, of course, he sneezes when I smoke, after he is finished snorting in disgust.

The familiarity of the words "according to the Surgeon General's report" belies this fact: there have been just 29 reports issued by the Surgeons General since 1964, and most of those focus on tobacco. Its health consequences, its costs in billions of healthcare dollars, its use by young people, women and minorities.

Secondhand smoke, known as involuntary exposure in Surgeon General speak, came to the fore of the national consciousness in 1986, when the office published a report that called it a cause of disease in healthy non-smokers. No friend of big business, these doctors.

The updated version of this report was issued by the office of the Surgeon General last year and it has just a few more teeth than the 1986 report. It makes for some scary bedtime reading; look, here is the information on the toxicology of secondhand smoke. There are the measurable biomarkers by which we can tell how much of your neighbor's butts you are smoking. And don't forget to check out the mechanisms by which secondhand smoke can cause heart disease (via a prothrombotic effect, in case you were wondering).

The major conclusions are few, but stark. For your reading pleasure, they are re-printed here.

1. Secondhand smoke causes premature death and disease in children and in adults who do not smoke.

2. Children exposed to secondhand smoke are at an increased risk for sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), acute respiratory infections, ear problems, and more severe asthma. Smoking by parents causes respiratory symptoms and slows lung growth in their children.

3. Exposure of adults to secondhand smoke has immediate adverse effects on the cardiovascular system and causes coronary heart disease and lung cancer.

4. The scientific evidence indicates that there is no risk-free level of exposure to secondhand smoke.

5. Many millions of Americans, both children and adults, are still exposed to secondhand smoke in their homes and workplaces despite substantial progress in tobacco control.

6. Eliminating smoking in indoor spaces fully protects nonsmokers from exposure to secondhand smoke. Separating smokers from nonsmokers, cleaning the air, and ventilating buildings cannot eliminate exposures of nonsmokers to secondhand smoke.

That last one is clearly responsible for the clogged sidewalks on Daniel Street these days.

The report makes no mention of dogs, but I wonder in dread what the year and a half of smoking exposure Atticus got from me has done to shorten his life span. I've already risked my heart for him to tear (nod to Rudyard Kipling), but has he risked his too, in service to a stupid terrible habit?

The sunrise on Peirce Island is a favorite activity of ours, as of late. I get coffee and he gets a Munchkin before we head over. He begins to sneeze round about Strawbery Banke, and smiles broadly in between. I open my door and tilt my hip to the right so he can make the leap from the back seat out my door.

I experience embarrassed joy when he comes across an early exerciser, laboring on the ground doing scissor kicks, and he attempts to engage her with delighted barking and a play stance in his mistaken belief that her efforts are purely for him. This little dog of mine, who now knows how to play, for you I will keep trying to quit.

Suzanne Danforth is well aware she brings the schmaltz to the party. E-mail your own schmaltz to her at suzanne.danforth@gmail.com.

Quitting: Inspiration from the Stages of Change

By Suzanne Danforth

September 20, 2007 6:00 AM

My current column is titled, a la Winnie the Pooh, "in which it comes to be known that inflatable cigarettes do exist."

They aren't filled with sand and so could not be punched, but at 3-feet long a couple of them would be just the thing for an inflatable cigarette fight with a friend.

Or, they would be perfect to carry around with an invitation pasted to them: "If you see me smoking, please hit me with this giant inflatable cigarette!"

We could go out to dinner, my inflatable cigarette and I. And, even though we are in non-smoking New Hampshire, it could accompany me to hear music at The Press Room.

At night, it could rest next to my little inflatable scream guy by Munch. In the morning ...; oh, never mind, you get it.

In all seriousness, inflatable cigarette novelties are actually learning tools for kids, so they can escape this blasted need to quit in the first place.

Some years ago, I came across a group of theorists who studied successful changers. These changers were of many stripes; people who were successful in quitting smoking, losing weight, stopping drinking or leaving the inflatables at home. Being an academic-head myself, this material was for a time like finding the Holy Grail, fountain of youth and secret of life all in one.

Until I realized this: knowing that is not the same as knowing how. Knowing that successful changers go through distinct and predictable stages, does not in itself make one a successful changer. To wit, here I am.

The Stages of Change model is very Western in that it analyzes and categorizes, each conclusion leading to and influencing the next. Eastern thought on changing has been around a little bit longer and is found in the classic Chinese text the I Ching or Book of Changes.

Each mode of thought proposes distinct stages in changing, markers that can guide us in our efforts to change. In both views, change in its incipient state is invisible. It is the energy in a seedling, a life spark, a quickening. The theorists call this stage Precontemplation, in which there is little to no desire or intention to change. Although the person in this stage can be under aware, something is nonetheless brewing.

Contemplation follows Precontemplation, implying an awareness of a problem and the thinking that goes along with knowing something has to give. What does not occur in this stage is a commitment to take action. That comes next, in the Preparation stage, where intention and intent merge to become an action plan.

This is the stage to write home about, but not too fast, for it is also the stage where the company includes backsliders from the Action stage. Whoops-ers who tried to make overt behavioral changes but were unsuccessful. If at first you don't succeed, get back to the Action stage, and recommit time, energy and behavioral strategies.

Eventually, you end up in the Maintenance stage, where the commitment is to preventing relapse. Maintenance can last, in the case of addictive behaviors, for a distressingly long "indeterminate time period past the initial action." Man, I may really be fighting this for a long time to come.

Being hooked on tobacco is undeniably an addiction. Medical research is getting ever more sophisticated in this area of study and the mechanisms of addiction are slowly being revealed.

In this country and time, lay people use the term "addictive personality." This misnomer has taken on breezy explanatory qualities, when in fact addiction is a change in the neural architecture and hormone soups of the brain. And if you don't think that is powerful, watch a child's development between the ages of zero and 10 months or so. That's what we're up against, only in grown up, smelly tobacco-brain form.

There are plenty of days when I am tired of myself and barely have the energy to change my outfit, never mind my brain. On those days I usually end up thinking less than positive thoughts, like "oh brother, just get over it, move on." That is when I conjure the research showing that positive changes to the brain, any brain, whether because of addiction, or traumatic events, take a long time.

There is good news, though. I speak for myself only and not to the model of change. Although I may backslide from Action to Preparation, it would be impossible for me to return to the halcyon days of Precontemplation.

There is no innocence here anymore.

Suzanne Danforth wants Bobbie Krewson's son to stay quit smoking. E-mail tips to suzanne.danforth@gmail.com.

Quitting: Memories of Mama

September 13, 2007 6:00 AM

My mother died 363 days ago, at dawn. It had been a lovely stretch of September weather, clear cool mornings, hot afternoons, crickets calling cadence in the evenings. My siblings and I left her body after our goodbyes in the early hours of Sept. 16 to find nature on display; moon and stars waning in the west and the sun nudging forward in the east. The over large silence of that morning ruptured when a roost of small black birds took to wing startling us in their seemingly choreographed flight.

I still find comfort in my belief that those night birds flying were more synchronicity than coincidence.

I would be writing revisionist history if I recalled the days of her death without a cigarette in my hand. Or if I chose not to acknowledge their role in our decision to let her die from the pneumonia that took hold of her over most of last summer. In those 12 awful days up to her death, smoking was a comfort and friend, a sure dopamine-releaser when none other existed.

I am weary of trying to quit. Oh, make no mistake; I am committed to becoming a non-smoker (remember, though, the clinical definition being six months of continuous abstention). My pattern seems to be that I stay away successfully (which means not a whole lotta brain space devoted to thinking about butts) for a while. I do healthy things like ride my amazing new bike, eat well, sleep good, read or write. I "thought stop" the occasional unbidden intrusion into my thinking.

These nicotine intrusions usually take one of two forms; a craving or a sweet recollection. The sweet recollections are infinitely more dangerous than the cravings. The cravings, at this point in my quit trajectory, have changed their nature. Instead of my friend the black hole, they have collapsed into a small ball of dense matter, much like that preceding the big bang. While it doesn't have a gravitational field, this matter is theoretically capable of imploding to give birth to a universe. Point is, it hasn't.

Sweet recollections, on the other hand, sashay in from the perimeter, and comment on your beauty or erudite nature. They invite you to try your luck at shimmying like your sister Kate, to hoist your glass and make the toast, to gamble on love. It never occurs to sweet recollections to mention risk, or if it does, they reason it away. They mess. You up.

I view the nasty weed, personified, as a deceptively benevolent Napoleon, a patron of "let's consider it my way" (consider being non-optional in the final analysis).

In most areas of my life I am black or white, full speed ahead. If trying to quit were a matter of, say, getting another graduate degree or mounting Everest, I would have few problems reaching the goal. But, like most of us, my strength is my weakness.

There must be a genetic basis to this either/or aspect of my personality. Because I am not a breeder, I must look further than myself for clues, specifically to memories of my mother and her own convictions. As a child, I recall visiting a homeless student and his family at a campground; I remember withstanding community pressure when she challenged the practices of a local orphanage; I well recollect how long it took her to realize that my father was best out of our lives.

And, of course, I remember when she quit tobacco. We were peppered with the statistics. Her description of reduced blood flow to the extremities after one cigarette continues vivid in my mind. My rebuffs of her repeated offers to pay for a program or medication make me sorry, now, that she is not aware of my current attempt. When it gets really hard, I don't focus on what I suspect would be her pride; rather I focus on what I know would be her relief.

She became unable to make those offers, or any others, because of the ravages of dementia. Although I risk the foolishly sentimental here, I remember one of the last times she spoke to me, as herself. We were in the hospital after a fall. I leaned into her and asked her, "Do I make you feel better?" She repeated everything at that point, so as was her wont, she mumbled, "Do I make you feel better?" Then, without missing another beat, clear, quick and emphatic, she said, "You do."

It is good to remember these things; not only do these memories re-stock my emotional larder, concentrating on a vision of my mother, relieved I don't smoke, is what keeps me trying to quit.

Suzanne Danforth thinks it is time to purchase a life-size blow up of a cigarette that wobbles when punched. If you know where to get one, e-mail her at suzanne.danforth@gmail.com.

Quitting: Studying the (potential) Outcome

By Suzanne Danforth

September 06, 2007 6:00 AM

Outcomes are big news right now, across a variety of fields; medicine, education, science and policy. Consumers, foundations and government agencies that grant money demand results and results are demonstrated, we are told, in the guise of data.

It is no longer enough to say, it sure does seem like that speech, occupational or physical therapy is helping. We have to prove it.

What is an outcome?

Basically, it's how the story ends. It asks the question: what is the change or benefit in an individual or group as a result of the offered service?

The thorny problem with measuring outcomes is that while information is countable, experience is not. Outcome literature so much as admits this.

"Outcomes are not how many birds the worm feeds its young, but how well the fledgling flies" (United Way 2002). Hmmm, pardon me for asking, but just how can the first flight of a fledgling be enumerated in such a way that it can be given to a desk jockey in a state capital for an end-of-year statistical report?

Welcome to the thoughts in my head after wading through piles of full-text literature on outcome studies related to giving up tobacco, including the veddy dry reading of studies about the dreaded but effective medication I ingest daily to help me stay quit.

That's right, stay quit. I am still quit, despite the smoking spasm chronicled last week in these pages. This fledgling is still aiming to fly.

I am back on a tiny amount of the wretched little pill and am walking the line between not smoking and holding my food down.

The absolute best thing I have read thus far is this, straight from the British Journal of Medicine. But first, please take a moment to visualize John Cleese as speaker.

"These large trials show once again that most people find it difficult to stop smoking, even in the best possible conditions and even when they want to quit badly enough to volunteer for a randomised trial of a new treatment."

Yeah.

I have learned several exciting new facts in my research. Non-smokers metabolize caffeine twice as efficiently as smokers do, for example. This means that as a recent quitter, if I haven't simultaneously decreased my coffee habit, there is a good chance I am hopping around out of my mind on caffeine. Or this one: recent quitters have warped time perception. Really. Recent quitters stink at estimating time, suggesting that cravings really do feel like they last three hours.

Let's focus this week on the facts, the data, the information, the stuff you can put in a report, Harper's style, but compiled by me.

• 6: months of complete abstinence defined as smoking cessation.
• 2: IQ points lost by young children exposed to even small amounts of secondhand smoke.
• 440,000: premature U.S. deaths every year attributable to smoking.
• 132: dollars not spent by me on cigarettes since trying to quit.
• 500: dollars given to losing state Senate candidate Tom Eaton (R) by Philip Morris in 2006.
• 50: percent of increased caffeine levels in non-smokers, after ingesting the same amount of caffeine as smoking subjects.
• 450,000,000: worldwide tobacco related deaths expected in the coming 50 years.
• 8: number of seconds someone dies from a tobacco-related disease.
• 1.08: N.H. state cigarette tax per pack
• 1: place in town where I just can't seem to resist the allure.
• 10: number of days left for me to attempt to resist the allure. (N.H. statewide smoking ban goes into effect Sept. 17.)
• 0.39: Federal cigarette tax per pack.
• 273,857: children worldwide who became regular smokers in 2007.
• 100: percent of organs in human body harmed by smoking.
• 3: percent of quitters who are successful for one year.
• 22: average percent of Chantix-taking quitters who are successful for one year.
• 7: number of free downloadable quit meters on whyquit.com.
• 5: subscales on the Modified Cigarette Evaluation Questionnaire, including smoking satisfaction, psychological reward, enjoyment of respiratory tract sensations, craving relief and aversion.
• 90: seconds estimated by recently quit smokers when asked to estimate time (which was in fact 45 seconds).
• 45: seconds estimated by non-smokers when asked to estimate time (which was in fact 45 seconds).
• 38: percentage increase in ear infections in children exposed to any tobacco smoke in first three years of life.
• 60: in billions, dollars spent annually in United States on smoking-related illnesses.
• 1: U.S. biopharmaceutical company prepared to market a nicotine vaccine, currently in clinical trials
• 1: ongoing spending spasm by author as compensation for not smoking.
• 90: percent of smoking adults who took their first puff before age 18.
• 1: outcome unknown — will she really quit for good?

Suzanne Danforth, clinician-researcher that she is, can provide references for each of these claims. E-mail her at the risk of being swamped with data at suzanne.danforth@gmail.com.

Quitting: She did a bad, bad thing

By Suzanne Danforth

August 30, 2007 6:00 AM

Writing a weekly column seems as if it should be, for lack of a more accurate term, easy. You think you are on a trajectory, a curvilinear path that takes you from here ...; to there. Not so. Especially when the column regards smoking. Or not smoking. Or trying not to smoke.

When I began this endeavor, I figured that "coming out" to the community was a wise thing to do. I pitched the local newspaper after a day or two of writing about my quitting experience. There it was. Not bad, I said to myself. Decent writing. What the hey, I'll pitch it to the daily and see if they will have it. Surely there are others like me out there. Surely.

In life, the loneliest experiences you endure are that: lonely. But there is always a voice, small but persistent, that reminds you that you are human. And since there are 6 billion of us or so on the planet right now, there must be a few who are sharing this experience. Right? And if there are people sharing this experience, perhaps there are some in my demographic.

I have a confession. Goethe says that all writing is confession. My confession is that I have smoked. Not continuously. Not happily. But since I am in this for the honesty of it, to you, dear reader, I confess: I have smoked.

Until tonight, I have smoked 1.0 cigarettes. One whole cigarette, over two instances separated by time, space and doubt. Tonight, I have blown cigarette smoking out of the water.

Why? Because I am human and made up of chemicals and neurotransmitters and the space between synapses that (improbably) dictate my behavior. This, despite being in possession of a pretty impressive cortex; that wrinkled part of our brains that make us human.

The human cortex is wrinkled for a purely Darwinian reason: the convolutions evolved to allow us more brain space than, say, a bird. Or even a dog, those wonderful creatures who share our front lawns and, if they are lucky, our beds. And we need our brain space, to negotiate the challenges that are presented to us, in the form of "life." Used to be the challenges were somewhat more pressing than those modern culture serves up. Like, how to devise a tool, or create fire or get the boys out of the cave to hunt.

Today's challenges are deceptively simple. Obesity in our children? Turn the television off, get off the couch and go out and play. Come home when the streetlights buzz on. So why don't more of us jump up and down and scream the news that "the steady rise in life expectancy during the past two centuries may soon come to an end." (New England Journal of Medicine) Don't you just love academia? So careful and measured. HEY, WE'RE DYING.

But, I am burying my lead. Which is still thus: I have smoked. My brand, no less. My kind, my butts. The 1.0 butts I have smoked before this were not my brand. They tasted good, but were gross; an ashy reminder of what I am doing and why. Not so my brand.

My brand is yummy, so comforting, such a part of home. Can you understand this if you have never been a smoker?

Why now? I'm not sure, but last week I went to a backyard party, a crustacean gathering, homage to all things Swedish. And I haven't stopped thinking about smoking since. There I am, engaged in a conversation, or a book, or an article, or research and it is in the background. Relentless. Smoke. Smoking. Dragging in, blowing out. It is its own presence, a secret conversation I have with myself.

It wasn't like that on the medication, which I stopped, because of stomach pain, nausea, headaches and an inability to sleep. Is that the trade-off? Nausea and non-smoking offset by being a productive writer? Thoughts of a book even, themes, the fiction that has eluded me for my entire 43 years, taking shape in the background. Clean lungs and fiction at the price of sleep?

So, I am faced with the decision of going back on what has classically become (in the purest Pavlovian sense) the dreaded medication. Maybe not in the dosage it is suggested. Perhaps I can cut the pill into a fraction, which will allow me both to resist this devil and be relatively free from the side effects.

There is nothing here, at the end of this column, to wrap things up neatly. If you are still reading, perhaps you have some advice, some words of wisdom, something to offer.

Yours in nausea and sleeplessness.

Suzanne Danforth welcomes the voices of those who have gone before. She can be reached at suzanne.danforth@gmail.com.

Quitting: Me Without

By Suzanne Danforth

August 23, 2007 6:00 AM

Real time is not newspaper time. In real time I have quit for 20 days.

In the past few days I have begun to feel like a person who doesn't smoke. Instead of missing the act and all its parts (like visiting the nice people at Cabot Street Market), there is not-missing. I can't go so far to say a there is a fullness, because not smoking remains an absence (best pronounced with a French accent).

I have found myself at times musing over a life without butts and feeling an achy, empty lonely road stretched out before me. Me without. Just me and my shriveling nicotine receptors cranking out nostalgia in a calculated attempt to win my sympathies. My rational brain tells me what this phenomenon is and compensates for it (Don't be pathetic! Life without butts will bring only good things, good health and maybe even running or some other sport I can't sustain right now).

Twenty days has been long enough to have developed a yin to the yang of "the black hole of craving." This new feeling also radiates from mid-chest and is akin to solitude in good company. It is contentment shaded with gratitude for simple things (because contentment without gratitude has an expiration date). It is the abundance of seeds in an heirloom tomato — a promise to cross the seasons. It's a great book and the focus to read it.

This lovely state of being happens to be a great counterpoint to a now near nightly experience of sleep talking, a habit I am primarily aware of because of a tendency to wake myself up, what with all the yelling. Most recently, on a trip north. This was not a welcome thing in a hotel room stuffed with sleeping kids, wet bathing suits and detritus of fudge. It's because of this medication. The literature states "changes in dreaming" in the top four side effects.

This is not the first medication to have influenced my dreams. The first shall be nameless. But let's just say this; it was ineffectual. Those dreams were downright hallucinogenic. To begin with, there was no space-time continuum between sleep and waking. I would lay my head on the pillow and immediately be in deep stage, quixotic sleep. On its own, such immediate slumber wouldn't be such a bad thing, 2-4 a.m. waker-upper that I am. But the dreams, the dreams ... I shudder to recall, not merely their content but a predictably relentless calliope turn to funhouse proportions. And this calliope was no muse of epic Greek poetry; this was Medusa, arisen in my personal night. I lasted about five nights before presenting to my PCP as nutty as Poe.

These dreams are different, tolerable thankfully. Slightly less vivid, but similarly without a union representative to demand they punch out every now and then. When one considers that during my waking hours I am rarely focused on inhaling tobacco into my lungs, yes, tolerable.

By day, I find myself reclaiming what I relinquished (with complicity) all those long years back when the promise of a good life was still a promise and not yet a derailed reality. This little pill just may be the better-living-through-chemicals contract of the '60s. And I'm not a miracle person. I'm the one in my profession who notes the cute marketing name, then asks "but what does the product do?

I'm a process girl. Sometimes painfully so, but ech, that's me. This process is different enough that it not only deserves its own description, but (heck) its own shrine, a living compact to aspire to this feeling, or at least remember it clearly enough in the dead of winter (actual and emotional) to resist the gravitational pull of 'the hole'.

I think I am really giving a quit-claim deed to tobacco, a sayonara, a slip out the back Jack. When you are truly gone, I know I won't miss you. Today I can breathe, today I don't want to smoke. Today I miss it a little bit less than yesterday.

Portsmouth native Suzanne Danforth is a nominee (but not winner) of the Pulitzer Prize some moons ago and band geek from way back, now returning to her roots as a writer. She can be reached at suzanne.danforth@gmail.com.

THANKS FOR FEEDBACK

I have received an amazing number and quality of e-mail responses since publication of this column. It has made it less lonely when in the grips of wondering why I have done this, and comforting. Not alone, not alone. To each of you, thanks. Thank you to those long quit for your inspiration and strategy sharing. Thank you to recent quitters for keeping it up! Most importantly, thank you to the strugglers for being kind to yourselves and for the willingness to try, or to try again.