Mass. Meeting to Have Scent-Free Zones

Ledger-Enquirer.com ^ | Mon, Apr. 28, 2003 | AP

[fight_truth_decay]

SHUTESBURY, Mass. -People who attend Shutesbury's upcoming town meeting will be segregated by scent to avoid disturbing those hypersensitive to chemicals and odors.

Splitting the meeting hall into three sections May 3 is part of a two-year-long effort that also has produced "fragrance-free" hours at the library.

One section of the room will be reserved for people who never use perfumes or scented deodorants, detergents or other products. The second will be for those who sometimes wear fragrance but not on the day of the meeting, and the third will be labeled, "Seating for those who forgot and used cologne and perfume."

Using fragrances in public is similar to smoking, said Town Administrator David Ames, who is also responsible for making the town compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act. He said the Massachusetts Office of Disabilities recommended establishing the fragrance zones.

A local survey found that nine of 52 respondents identified themselves as afflicted with multiple chemical sensitivities syndrome, although the National Institute of Environmental Health Science says the very existence of such an affliction is in dispute.

[Redcloak]

So how does overendulgence in roasted garlic go over in that town? (That's "gaaahrlic" for you Emeril fans."

[Little Bill]

Hippies, commies, and UMass Professors, probably a few of the same sex crowd drifting down from Vermont. I have been all over Western and never heard of the damned place, Franklin County, says it all.

[fight_truth_decay]

Shutesbury is about 9 miles north of Amherst - figures!
Registered Voters 1,197
Democrats 331 27.7 % Republicans 71 5.9 % Other parties 14 1.2 % Unenrolled Voters 781 65.2 %

[fight_truth_decay]

On their Links page they only list NPR under radio stations.

[fifteendogs]

Baked beans, in Boston, I thought they were too sophisticated for that.

[dion]

Please tell me this is a joke! I think its really sad that people are so desperate to find something to be offended about, they come up with stuff like this. I am alergic to shellfish, that doesn't make me whine when I go to a seafood restaurant that nobody else can eat shellfish. Geeeez these people need to get a grip!

[SpaceBar]

It would be priceless to get in with a press pass, after an
evening of dining on boiled cabbage, beans and lots of beer.

[JBCiejka]

Now we will have to chop all the flowers heads off at the botanical gardens so no one will be unable to attend.

[The Electrician]

There was actually a ruling by a California judge that having body odor and going into a public library was protected by the Consititution.

Here's an excerpt from one of Ann Coulter's articles from a few years ago (http://www.humaneventsonline.com/articles/10-13-00/coulter.html):

Though we won’t have a right to engage in political speech, we will gain a right to stink up public libraries as part of our precious 1st Amendment rights.

That was the ruling of federal Judge H. Lee Sarokin–a favorite judicial appointee among Democrats. Sarokin was first appointed to a Federal District Court in 1979 by President Jimmy Carter (on then-Sen. Bill Bradley’s recommendation). In his second year in office, President Clinton elevated Sarokin to the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals.

Recognizing that the Constitution is a document that can "grow," Judge Sarokin discovered that in 1991 the Constitution had sprouted a 1st Amendment right to emit a foul body odor in public libraries and prohibited a public library from evicting a smelly homeless man. You couldn’t make this stuff up. (If you can, you stand a good chance of being nominated to the Supreme Court by Al Gore.)

Our right to free speech, according to Judge Sarokin, protected the bum’s right to harass the library staff, stalk female patrons, talk loudly to himself, stare at people, smell the place up, and generally frighten library patrons away. As the learned liberal judge explained, "If we wish to shield our eyes and ears from the homeless, we should revoke their condition, not their library cards."

(Except the town had tried to revoke this particular homeless man’s "condition." Various community groups had tried to prod him into drug and alcohol recovery programs and had even found him a job. Sarokin rejected both the job and the programs on the grounds that the religious element of the community groups "turns homeless people off.")

So we’ll have a lot of pornography and stinky, menacing homeless people–all part of our precious freedoms under a constitution that "grows."

[Kozak]

Man, Iwould attend after not showering for 3 days, eating a bean and garlic feast, and stuffing horse manure in my pockets. Then insist on being seated in the "fragrance free" zone. After all it will be all natural....

[microgood]

She says she herself can't go to the meeting, because she has the disorder and the school building has odors that bother her.

She has a disorder all right, but not the one she's talking about.

[mom-7]

I don't think that this is funny or a joke. Recently I was in a restaurant and the smell was so bad that I started to have throat spasms, and had to get up and leave an expensive dinner behind. People that pour the scents on do not realize how awful they smell. You do not smell yourself. You may have an expensive bottle of whatever, and in the bottle it smells nice, you put it on and it mixes with the individuals body chemistry and wow. The resturant that I had to leave, I now eat in the bar, where smoking is allowed. I am a non-smoker. I prefer the smell of a cigarette to that of perfume. Just remember a little dab will do you.

[fight_truth_decay]

strongest smelling perfume

I remember when the Librarian wore the strongest smelling perfume.

[Arkady]

Libraries were long-ago overtaken by the libs, along with most of our once-great institutions. Like academia,PBS,NPR and the alphabet networks, they will eventually be starved into oblivion...due to their own inability to serve the public.
The good news is that books and learning will survive!

[fight_truth_decay]

There is an "arms length" test to tell if one is wearing too much.

Taking into consideration the 'way the wind blows'. ;)

[gitmo]

Are they allowed in the special section if they've brushed their teeth?

[ido_now]

DO YOU MEAN THAT THERE ARE NO SKUNKS ALLOWED!

I'm calling the ACLU on you guys.

[F.J. Mitchell]

It is probably merciful that we don't know what's next. Envision your worst nightmare-then try to imagine a scenerio so insane that the worst night mare seems rational by comparison. THat's the liberal dream brought to fruition.

[StriperSniper]

PUFF!!!