Ultimately they all ?blow smoke

Cannabis is good medicine for some truly ailing people, there’s no doubt.

But am I alone in suspecting that only a fraction of the people who’ve obtained medical-marijuana cards from (ahem) doctors deal with what any reasonable person would consider a serious illness?

For so many healthy people to be growing or buying and using pot behind the shield of laws intended to show compassion to those who are genuinely afflicted is absurd enough. But if you’d forecast not long back that one day the law would say to the guy in Apartment 3, “Stop exhaling nicotine vapor indoors or be fined!” and to the guy exhaling THC vapor in Apartment 4, “Have a nice day!” there’s but one thing I could have said in response.

My friend, what have you been smoking?

SCRATCHING TRUSTY: ?After a cup with a friend, Cindy DeMoore stepped from Acre Coffee in Montgomery Village to find a fellow alongside her Toyota pickup, writing a note.

He told DeMoore he’d seen a Dodge Ram pickup strike the Toyota while attempting to park. The witness said the Dodge’s driver got out, examined the damage to the Toyota’s rear left panel, then drove off.

DeMoore eyed the scrape on her beloved 1995 Toyota, nicknamed Trusty, and dialed 911.

Within minutes, two Santa Rosa police officers pulled up. Spotting them, five people emerged from the Boudin bakery to say they’d witnessed the hit-and-run and would gladly recount what they saw.

DeMoore was blown away.

She was home later when one of the officers phoned. A suspect in a Dodge truck had been pulled over and was being detained on Fulton Road.

DeMoore drove there and so did a witness, an older man who’d told officers outside Acre Coffee that he could identify the Dodge’s driver. DeMoore said officers gave her the suspect’s name and insurance information, and told her he’d be cited for hit-and-run.

She said, “The irony of this whole thing is that if this guy had left a note claiming responsibility, I likely would have just told him not to worry about it.”

But he didn’t. So, in addition to feeling hugely grateful to all who helped her, she’s determined that the driver will fulfill his duty to have Trusty fixed.

BEST BURNS: David Best, the Petaluma artist renowned for the elegant but doomed temples he creates for the annual Burning Man festival in Nevada, sparked dialogue, debate and healing in Northern Ireland with a grand, build-then-torch project atop a prominent hill.

Best engaged Catholics and Protestants, many of them children, in the construction of an intricately cut wooden temple overlooking the River Foyle in Londonderry.

Known also as Derry, the city is home to great sorrow that lingers from The Troubles, the bloodshed that flowed from the decades-long struggle between nationalists determined to wrest Northern Ireland from the United Kingdom and loyalists dedicated to remaining part of the UK.

Historically, bonfires are divisive acts in Londonderry. Artists with the Artichoke Project raised money and enlisted Best for a fiery, communal endeavor that might bring people together and provide an opportunity to let old hatred and pain go up in smoke.

Prior to the torching of the more than 70-foot temple on March 21, thousands of visitors entered the temple, many using pens to write messages of forgiveness or tribute on the wood. A sign outside the temple urged, “Leave a memory behind, let go of the past and look to the future.”

A story by a New York Times reporter in Londonderry recounted that the first visitor to step into the temple was 71-year-old Jeanette Warke, a Protestant who’d lost her home to what people in Northern Ireland call the Troubles.

Quickly, she began to cry. She and her tears were noticed by local architect Kevin Strathern, a Catholic who’d helped to build the temple and whose father was shot to death by Protestants in 1977.

He stepped to Warke and asked, “Would you like a hug?” She replied, “I most certainly would.”

The Times story quoted Strathern as saying, “And here I was, a Catholic whose father was killed by Protestants, purely because he was a Catholic, hugging a Protestant.

“We wouldn’t have hugged 40 years ago. We might not have hugged 10 years ago.”

A throng estimated at more than 15,000 watched the Londonderry temple burn. The entire process of planning, building, experiencing and torching it acknowledged the extreme pain that Northern Ireland has suffered and celebrated the coming to peace.

Best told the BBC, “There is grief but there is also absolute joy - this is to share in that.”