Affected brains

"It was really touching to see how hungry they were for tobacco. I never realized how much it could mean. I lit a cigarette myself, and remember it was more like eating something than smoking. The effect was so distinct as to be felt in the pit of the stomach. After a few puffs one felt the cold and damp less. Tobacco in times of great fatigue, annoyance, and nervous stress brings a slightly sleepy feeling of contentment and does not seem to lower the faculties much. It enables one to endure more." A peacetime comment, 2008 or a wartime observation, 1918? Words or sentiment compliments of Hervey Allen or my neighbor across the road?

"There is no man who is so totally absorbed by the present of another as the soldier. It claims all his attention and he lives from moment to moment in times of danger with an animal keenness that absorbs him utterly. This is a happy and saving thing. With time to brood, conditions would often seem intolerable. To the soldier, now is everything. It is in the piping times of peace and leisure that man has had the time to afford himself the luxury of an immortal soul.. When the present world is not engrossing enough, we begin to ponder on another." Words applicable in wartime France, 1918 or Iraq and Afghanistan, 2008, each conflict intended to preserve civilized men’s immortal souls.

How are we doing? 2008? Laws to ban smoking? Anti-war politicization? Wealth, narcissism and stupidity overflowing at Christie’s auction house when the gavel falls for the $14,000,000 sale of painting of A BALL OF TWINE, by Roy Lichtenstein? 2008? The Ohio Easy Play Ohio Lottery advertised without shame on the airways? It is a tax on the stupid, wasting money that supposedly benefits ‘failing’ schools but which in reality adds up to self-imposed financial waste along with an ancillary self-imposed credit card crisis. Both are caused by unpaid debt and perpetual spending. If tobacco hasn’t affected some brains and war has preserved some of our freedom, where have we gone wrong?