Two idle thought while I am idling (after doing my push-ups and trying to get my breath back). just when, exactly, are they going to come out with the research that indicates conclusively that vigorous physical activity for those over 80 is a very bad idea and if one is entertaining a thought in that direction, the best course of action is to go out and get some waffles or pancakes with a large side of crispy bacon? Two eggs, over medium, is also recommended.
Secondarily, on the contention that, as a society, we are getting softer (see above): it rained here last week…something we can always use (unless you are rich, live in the L.A. area on an exclusive hillside and are susceptible to having your $15 million dollar home slide down that hillside) and I saw almost every dog being walked in that rain with a doggy raincoat on. Most of the human dog walkers also had on some sort of rain-repellent over jacket. As an 82 y/o who has thus lasted through many rainy seasons in all sorts of climes, including Upstate New York, where one gets to know winters rather more intimately than one generally wishes to get to know winters, I have never previously seen dogs, big dogs (Chihuahuas and such are exempted, of course) needing raincoats in 50 degree weather. German Shepherds (originally generated in Germany…check out the latitude of that nation) have spent Millenia in cold, wet climates with just their natural dog hair as perfectly fine protection vs the elements. Why would you put a raincoat on a dog like that? Well, if you are a Californian, maybe you would. Dogs, those extra marvelous creatures, will do anything to please their idiotic owners…even suffer the embarrassment of going out in public, in perfectly livable, but moist, weather in an imposed garment. Their owners should get some kind of ticket for anti-social behavior. That’s my view, and yes, we are getting soft and projecting that softness on our loved ones, which includes our pets.
I interrupt the message below to make an announcement. In case you came here while I was gone (Friday through Monday and into Tues.) and wondered what I might be up to, here’s the skinny. I went to visit my old business partner and dear friend David Field, and his wife, Jan, in Las Cruces, N.M. The reason was to evaluate and make an offer on his approx. 200 pipe collection. That was successfully done and I am home with some heavy wood to post…over time. (I do not look for, or talk about, pipes that are not on the site. That would be a ball buster in terms of killing time away from the actual revenue enhancing aspect of selling pipes.) In case you do not know who David Field is, here is a bare-bones summary. In the pipe world, David is a Doctor of Pipes…one of the early DOPs. He is also a Kapnismologist…another award granted to few people, before the DOP designation existed. There is a third one, I think, but I can’t remember what it was. David was one of the first to research and organize Dunhill dating and nomenclature. An awful lot of the work in Loring’s book, ‘The Dunhill Briar Pipe’ was given him by David. Loring, of course, a penurious bastard in my personal experience, didn’t acknowledge David’s help in putting that book together. The pipes David helped bring to the U.S. market, while also helping the pipe makers improve their work: Becker of Italy, Ashton (it could easily be said that without David, there would be no Ashton. And it certainly would not have the name Ashton…that was totally David’s invention. Radice, Il Ceppo, Jorgen L (Jorgen Larsen. With my help, along with the following) Barbi, Joura, Red Hat, Maestro Beraldi, Amorelli and, for a little while, Don Carlos. I’m probably forgetting one or two, but you get the idea.
So, there will be some fine pipes showing up on my site and I hope you keep looking and keep contributing.
A friend asked me if I was planning on putting something a bit more current on this page, thus telling me in a nice way that I’m getting stale or at the very least, the stuff I write and post is stale. At the time of her question, earlier today (1/31/25) I honestly said, ‘yes, and I was planning on doing that either today or tomorrow as a couple of thoughts came to mind. Unfortunately, as many thoughts as come into my mind also pass right through it. I mostly can’t recall what it was I wanted to vent about. However, one insignificant thought did manage to settle in, and that can be typed here. I noticed that the two winners of the men and women’s singles titles at the recent Australian Open tennis tournament, Jannik Sinner and Madison Keys, both wore hats with brims, ostensibly to help keep out direct sunlight and/or glare, something that seems like a good idea when you’re playing a game for a few million dollars. It didn’t hurt their efforts, obviously, and may well have helped. Yet, a huge percentage of the players wore no head protection, including the two losing finalists…if you count a headband as nothing) and some of the men wore a hat with a brim, but wore it backwards. They were the ‘cool’ young men. Losers, at the end, but cool. These guys are not, one imagines, summa cum laude.
I’ve typed my feelings about hats before, so please accept an apology for the repetition, and I am definitely a hat person and always have been. This does bring to mind a hat I will be donning very soon. When in Chicago for the 2023 (or was it the 2024?) pipe show, I went downtown and stopped into a hat store and purchased an expensive cowboy-type hat. I’m no cowboy, clearly, but this was a beautiful lid and with a credit card in my pocket resistance was impossible. The moment I stepped into the street with that hat on, two ladies strolling by stopped and remarked on how good the hat looked. Whether they were including me in that compliment is hard to know, but it did lift the spirits and took away a little of the guilt for spending so much on an item that wasn’t a pipe. Well, I get to visit my old business partner, David Field, at his beautiful home in Las Cruces, N.M., next week, and doesn’t that sound like a perfect place to sport a cowboy hat? Mine is smaller that most cowboy hats (just as I’m smaller than most cowboys), but I’m already imagining all the double-takes and envious looks I get from the natives. Now, if I can keep the hat from getting miserably crushed while on the plane to N.M., that will be a bonus.
If something clever enters my mind (what are the odds of that happening?) I’ll hurry back here and post it. Otherwise, that bit of inconsequential musing will have to do for now.
I did remember what I was going to write about, and I can even tell you how that memory was generated. I was lying (laying?) in bed, semi-reading a short story mystery before conking out, when I looked up at the ceiling and thought of the illusion of protection my home provides. The thought of this little house, on this teeny, tiny planet struck me somewhat heavily. If, I thought, all the blades of grass on a large 18 hole golf course were numbered randomly, and someone said find a specific blade, it would be easier and quicker than finding this planet in the universe (yes, assuming the same access). “Fucking amazing,” came to mind. And then I recalled the subject I had hoped to type about.
Normally, I’m a little squeamish about typing a word like ‘fucking’ here…I’m still a touch puritanical about some things. It’s upbringing and brainwashing, as hypocritical as this might be, having been what is called a potty-mouth from very early on. One of my earliest memories is of having come in from playing on the street in front of our apartment bldg. on Manhattan’s Lower East Side…not an upscale neighborhood although our building was nice…others next to it could well be called slums. I must have been in the range of 5 or 6 years old, because we moved from there before I hit 7. In our 3rd floor apartment, my mother decided to give me a wristwatch, one of my father’s I suppose. I looked at and having learned a new word, and the perfectly correct way to use it, I looked at this gift and uttered, “this fucking thing doesn’t work.”
Rather than being attentive to the inaction of the second hand, my mother was distracted by my precociousness, although not the same exact way she would have been if I had been, say, a prodigal math whiz. What she did with that revelation was take me into the bathroom and wash my mouth out with soap. Soap has lye and lye burns, and nothing more easily than soft tissue. I don’t remember what my specific reaction was, but it must have been severe enough to make my mother sorry she applied that treatment. I could tell by her expression, or maybe by what she said. Nor did the cleansing accomplish its mission. 76 years later I still like to curse and consider ‘fuck’ to be an everyday exclamation. (As an aside, there is, or at least was, a You Tube clip of a stand-up comic doing a bit on the multiple uses of the word, including shades of meaning and the nuances achievable with the emphases placed differently. I thought it was brilliant. I think he was of Indian (as in Asian Indian) extraction, but I can’t remember for sure; if so, that added a specially delicious layer to his routine.
Still, for public consumption, it’s not a word I throw around, knowing that some people are offended by it and other associated colloquialisms. You haven’t seen it, ere now, used either here or in describing pipes, have you?
That may change due to something I saw just last week. At a friend’s house, I did the friendly thing and raided his fridge for a can of beer. I don’t want his wife, but I will take his beer. What was in that fridge…a can of IPA called, in big letters on the tin, “Reno As Fuck” by Revision Brewing Co. For somebody to buy it, no doubt it had to be sitting right there in the glass case…for any 10 year old to see and read and consider acceptable. This is where my puritanism comes in. Aren’t there agencies, at least at the state level, that oversee what labels say?
Am I now officially Old And In The Way? I tried to look up regulating agencies with my limited research skills, and came up with the following: The label shall meet the requirements of federal malt beverage labeling regulations contained in Parts 7 and 16 of Title 27 of the Code of Federal Regulations.
This comes from the a Calif. Gov’t agency, the Alcoholic Beverage Control board. From the little I could discern, there are other agencies involved, yet the label reads just as I stated. You could look it up. Is every gov’t agent asleep at the wheel? I’ve also assumed that each state has its own set of regulations, which is why I was so very surprised, years ago, when I ran across a beer made in Utah, Mormon country, that was called Polygamy Porter, with a subtitle on the front saying: “Why Have Just One?” The tin also suggests that since it’s such a smooth, easy drinking chocolatey Brown Porter, “you bring some home to the wives.” How did the fathers of the state of Utah ever allow that to fly? Clearly, the ‘requirements of federal malt beverage labeling regulations” as stated above, are not particularly rigid. I can hardly wait to see what the next child focused breakfast cereal is named.
Now, back to posting pipes (if some gov’t. agency doesn’t come out with a new regulation prohibiting this.
Marty
P.S. A new book from our own historian and author, Ben Rapaport, arrived and it’s so beautiful, and so full of new, at least to me, information that it’s requisite I share it with you. It’s titled “The World of Wood Tobacco Pipes…Two Centuries of Craftsmanship and Creativity”. Craftsmanship & creativity seem like understatements when looking at the photos, but what other words could you come up with? “Artistry” would not be amiss. The tome, for it is a large, heavy, and heavy with content book, deserves a full review, as it contains a trip around the world, a gorgeously illustrated trip. Around the world? Yes, for instance the detailed, refined carvings of female pipe carver Sophia Isberg, of Sweden, a mid-19th Century worker in maple and birch who won a gold medal at the Malmö (Sweden) Exhibition in 1865. Reading about her and seeing photos of some of her “skill and diligent workmanship,” I want to travel to her home city of Motala and visit the museum that still shows off her craftsmanship (and maybe purloin a piece or two for home viewing). That’s a bare beginning of what this book contains. I believe it’s $75, plus shipping, for what can be a lifetime (whatever is left to you, anyhow) of inspirational viewing. You can easily find Ben on line, or contact him via his email address: Ben70gray@gmail.com
MP
I’ll leave this quote from The Portable Curmudgeon right where it is; it is so very appropriate this election year.
Then we can continue on to Principles.
”President”
When I was a boy I was told that anybody could become President; I’m beginning to believe it.” Clarence Darrow
“Principles”
You can’t learn too soon that the most useful thing about a principle is that it can always be sacrificed to expediency.
W. Somerset Maughm
Principles have no real force except when one is well fed. Mark Twain
It is easier to fight for one’s principles than to live up to them. Alfred Adler
I like persons better than principles and I like persons with no principles better than anything else in the world.
Oscar Wilde
“Progress”
What we call progress is the exchange of one nuisance for another nuisance. Havelock Ellis
All progress is based upon a universal innate desire on the part of every organism to live beyond its income.
Samuel Butler
Progress celebrates Pyrrhic victories over nature and makes purses of human skin. Karl Kraus
Progress is the mother of problems. G.K. Chesterton
“Promiscuity”
A promiscuous person is someone who is getting more sex than you are. Victor Lownes