The World According to Gillespie

BIG TOBACCO STILL CAPITALIZING ON KIDS This column originally appeared on Wicked Local. Smoking is no longer considered to be cool, only an annoying nuisance, meaning the long war on tobacco finally appears to be coming to an end. Gone are the days of high school kids running off to the bathrooms to grab a quick rebellious cigarette. In my own experience, I was thankfully never able to inhale (truthfully taking a line from Bill Clinton) and also first attempted to smoke Virginia Slims which conveniently led to reactions that did not encourage me to keep trying.   Big Tobacco has struck back with a marketing vengeance directing their attention, again, at kids. The successful movement to effectively curtail smoking has caused them to reinvigorate their efforts with e-cigarettes, an activity that is becoming increasingly popular with teenagers commonly known as vaping.   Using a tiny device that can be easily mistaken for a USB drive, vaping devices with brand names ...

CHANGED PLANS TURN WORTHWHILE This column originally appeared on Wicked Local My wife and I had planned to make a trip to Waitsfield, Vermont to stay at the Inn at the Round Barn Farm, but the predicted weekend weather didn’t call for it. I suggested that we travel up to Gloucester instead and maybe visit the Georgia O’Keeffe exhibit at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem along the way. My wife answered surprisingly, “That would be fun!”   To be clear, I do not know a lot about Georgia O’Keeffe, other than a somewhat regular familiarity with her southwestern style of art, and I certainly do not consider myself an art junkie. The Peabody Essex Museum seemed like a more culturally interesting way to spend the day rather than trekking up to Vermont’s Mad River Valley in what still promised to be the dreary dead of winter and peruse the local general store (again).   We traveled north of Boston strategically planning to stop by the O’Keeffe exhibit before heading ...

THE PATH UP THE MOUNTAIN IS THE BEST PART This column originally appeared on Wicked Local. Sometimes it is the journey that is most rewarding.   In 1983, my high school’s guidance department got their hands on a computer that resembled the robot from Lost in Space. Every kid in my grade was called down to choose a career that would be put into the computer which would then spit out a conclusive report detailing why or why not this career choice was appropriate. At the time, I had realistically veered away from my dreams of playing for the Red Sox and although inspired to shoot for the Navy’s Officer Candidate School in Newport I had yet to achieve required success in any math class that required fractions. I showed up prepared and offered a completely practical response: mailman. I had seriously considered the idea. I had already worked as a paperboy so I felt like I had experience, liked the idea of having a government job (already contemplating retirement at the a...