BUTT OUT

This is in reply to Matt D.'s letter, "A Small Pleasure" [March 10]. I'm happy that you enjoyed such a sublime experience. It baffles me, however, that anyone can romanticize smoking with all we know about it. Hey, I'm all for your right to do it - don't get me wrong. I'm not exactly a paragon of health and I have my vices. I drink alcohol... not the best thing for the bod. But you can drink gallons of booze and it won't make everyone else in the room with you smell like booze. It might make you sick as a dog, but it won't give everyone else in the room hangovers. That's the difference between us... my bad habits don't intrude on other people's space or make other people feel ill.

Smokers can argue all they like about how much they enjoy the taste and smell of their cigarettes, but I defy any of you to pick up a dirty ashtray, take a deep, loving sniff, and tell me that it smells good. I have a lot of friends who smoke, and many of them tell me that if they aren't smoking themselves, they find the smell fairly disgusting. Well, my smoking friends, to be cliché, you smell like dirty ashtrays, and that's the lingering memory that you leave with anyone you share space with while you're smoking. That smell permeates a room. It sticks to everything - clothes, hair, skin. Far from being merely unpleasant, cigarette smoke makes a lot of people feel physically sick. If I'm trapped in a smoky room for too long, I get nauseated, my eyes turn beet-red, and I get a headache. I'm not even allergic. I can tolerate bars because I know what to expect, and a little drinking goes a long way toward alleviating my aggravation. But in cafés and restaurants? I don't think so.

The romantic image of smoking has been shot down by the knowledge that it causes cancer, heart disease, emphysema, gum disease and premature aging. Add those images to the immediate, visceral experience of inhaling some stranger's secondhand smog along with your lunch. Why is it so hard for smokers to understand why non-smokers find the habit so annoying? Is the overwhelming evidence that cigarettes are deadly in the long-term not enough? Believe me, we're not all out there trying to save your sorry hides. I know I'm not. I think that for the most part, non-smokers just want to be able to enter a building and leave it without feeling like we need a shower.

If you smokers want to live in some fantasy world while you make yourselves sick, more power to you, but keep the stench, the smoke, and the sadly out-dated and self-aggrandizing attitude to yourselves.

Selfish Non-Smoker
Athens

ANOTHER RECIPE

Mr. Pernice has some mighty fine suggestions as a food service industry person "in good standing" [March 17], but one can only express amazement that he would forget what is surely the most obvious recipe. I guess he must be getting on in years.

Washed-Up Burned-Out Ex-"Local Rock Legend" Smoothie: Blend interchangeable and predictable elements at various speeds, increase pitch until long after appeal disappears, add ex-girlfriend bitters, alcohol and unhealthy dose of sycophancy.

When this fails to sell, serve with oversized ego and continue to suck up anyhow.

t edward bak
Athens

AMERICAN ORIGINAL

One more baking or decorating cliché in the news about Martha and my head - not my soufflé - is going to explode. It gets me to thinking how even the above average educated people in this country, our news reporters, are prone to mediocrity. And while there are evidently many things to accuse Martha of, taking the easy way out is not one of them.

At the tender age of three, Martha's dad taught her the art of precision and tenacity - making her spend a whole afternoon picking blades of grass from a cobblestone path. According to Christopher Byron, Martha's unofficial biographer, she was not the typical suburban housewife, either. Instead of playing soccer mom and league tennis, she axed down walls at 3 a.m., renovating her Connecticut farmhouse, planted fields of produce and flowers, raised chickens and became a self-taught expert pastry chef. When K-Mart came knocking, rumor has it she was "difficult to handle," demanding high quality stuff, putting her time and personal touch into all things "Mawtha."

Sure, she backstabbed friends, but she got the job done. Martha created a successful catering biz which led to a book deal, magazine, newspaper column and TV show, plus stints on "Today," "CBS This Morning," "Oprah," etc. On the day Martha's company went public, she proved that "domesticity" is just as much a commodity as software and soft drinks. And that the chief bottle washer didn't have to be a man, a nerd or Mother Teresa.

But Martha didn't stop there. Before the stock problem in 2001, you couldn't step into Barnes & Noble without seeing some Martha Stewart Living subscription promotion tacked to a bookshelf. To keep the Martha machine humming, she merchandised products on her own website and catalogue, which even this Martha fan found to be a wee bit much. (I'm sorry Martha. I canceled my magazine subscription at $28/ year and still get respectable Gourmet and Bon Appétit for $16 each year.) Still, you can't blame Martha for asking for more. After all, if you don't ask, you don't get. And this is Martha we're talking about. I once heard that Martha stole not just staffers', but innocent craftspeoples' ideas - to re-create and present them as her own. Pretty savvy, huh?

The day she was informed about ImClone declining, she responded like any tight-fisted billionaire. She bent down and picked-up the penny on the sidewalk. After all, a penny is a penny and $47,000 is $47,000. What's wrong with that? Well, the 12 jurors found something wrong, and now she's going to jail... or so we're told. Amid the snickers of teenage girls and their suburban moms forking out $40 a week to fill up SUVs that tote little Billy to baseball and feed him Domino's pizza in their blue duck wallpapered kitchenettes, I can't help but feel a little sorry for Martha. Not because of her style and elegance which she may never get to share with me again. Not because she can't help herself from being unethical and ice-queenish. But because she is, unlike most of us, an American original... something not even the federal penitentiary can take away from her.

Sharna Fulton
Athens