With Every Breath We Take
With Every Breath We Take When I moved to LA in the 70s, I could see and taste the air most days. And it was never birthday cake flavored like one of today’s delicious vape concoctions. During runs on the Westside and on the beach in Santa Monica – where the air was supposedly “clean”- I often felt like I could hack up a lung or two. I’m all for a free market, but I find images of people in the city walking around with scarves covering their mouths to filter the dirty air repugnant. Do we really need to create and maintain a world that is that filthy to show the rest of the globe how industrious we are? Even China seems to be getting over that, isn’t it? The population of the Golden State was just over 20 million in 1978. Then, the air was so lousy that everyone standing over 10 feet away looked like they were softly lit actors behind a flattering gauze filter. The downside: asthma and hacking coughs were more common than gluten intolerance.