Briar-Brained for a New Year
-
Kevin Godbee - Jan 11, 2016
- 6 min read
Fred Brown
You’ve often heard people claim how they are "right-brained," or "left-brained." I won’t go into some of the other "brain" word games, i.e., lame brain, no-brainer, brain-dead, scatter-brained, bird brain, etc., etc.
It has been well established now by neurologists that right-brain/left-brain thinking is pretty much brainless. Those of us with enough gray matter to fill a thimble tend to think with at least one side or the other of our brain, most of the time.
But for many of us, it is necessary to use the front, back and all the sides and lobes we can get when it comes to thinking.
Now that I have established the ground rules, I would like to start the year 2016 with a revelation and a number of resolutions and a couple of predictions. I am divulging for the first time right here on PM.com that I am briar-brained. Yes, sir, right down to the ol’ burlwood.
It is not that my brain is divided into two hemispheres where math and emotions of some sort take place. My brain is in the shape of a bent billiard in the left hemisphere and a straight billiard in the right hemisphere, which is where most of my genius lies, so to speak.
Now, for all you other briar-brained folks, here are my resolutions and some predictions for 2016. Remember, you read it first here from the ol’ half brain-dead briar brained Pipe Pundit:
I resolve to smoke more, not less in 2016. The zealots be damned; it is full Virginia ahead.
My most sacred 2016 resolution is to purchase at least two-to-four pipes, all from great artisans. (Note to self: ease into the artisan ranks from the lower end before heading for the deep part of the pool. Your bank account will thank you.)
This will be the year that I break all known records for smoking Va/Pers.
Hold the Latakia, boys, we are headed for the Arcadian perique barns where barrels of tobacco remind you of Tennessee’s and Kentucky’s finest sipping whiskeys. They have that beautiful coloration and mash looking stuff draped like moss on Florida oaks.
First prediction for 2016: Tobacco High Priest Russ Ouellette will astound us again with a unique blend. Also, of course, look for the master of the universe G.L. Pease to birth another in his series of brainy blends. And if Joe Lankford of the Seattle Pipe Club brews up another blend in the vintage of Mississippi River, Plum Pudding or Deception Pass, he will enter the realm of Middle-earth Master.
I further resolve to try more aromatics in 2016. I’m not a purist when it comes to tobacco. I once smoked a raw leaf. (Note to self: never, ever do that again.)
Aromatics are not the bad bogey of many characterizations. They just take a little getting used to, like a new pair of cowboy boots, sans horse, as it were. I like aros for a change, especially in one of my beloved cobs. You smoke an aro in a cob and you will think you have just added brain cells.
Second prediction for 2016: We will see funkier pipes that look as if they might flap and fly off, gobble down a frog, ignite both engines at once, or leap tall buildings on their springs.
We will also see more of the most beautiful pipes being made in any era. Today’s pipe makers are rare air for the most part. We are experiencing an epic movement in the pipe making world commensurate with the fine art realm of say, Impressionism, Neo-Classicism, Art Nouveau, or Post-Impressionism. It is truly a renaissance.
My next resolution is to firmly refrain from continuing to hunt down the esoteric tobaccos that live mostly in the imaginations of men.
I am returning to the old standbys when the urge hits me to once again go on the big hunt for the Penzances and the Stonehavens. That’s like hunting big game in the bush without a guide. I’ll stick to the old Grangers, Sir Walter Raleighs, Carter Halls (and Russ’s masterful Chatham Manor in his Mid-town Series). I’m pulling out of the safari.
Prediction No. 3: The zealots will intensify their anti-tobacco propaganda in television commercials that focus on "hookahs" and "other tobacco products" in 2016.
I saw a television commercial the other night just after one of the interminable news hours on the crazy political season. I thought it was apropos for what had just taken place in what was being cast as a "political debate."
The ad specifically pointed to "hookah" pipes and other tobacco products, without specifically mentioning "pipe tobacco." The advertising also went after the new e-cigarettes, grouping everything related to tobacco together as something to be feared, even more than political debates.
Since 2016 is famously a presidential election year, you can also look for more extremists to pop out of the woodwork and from beneath rocks to throw more stones at the tobacco world. We are easy to chuck rocks at during high political fever.
And with the political season in mind, this might also be a good time to meet and greet your favorite pol and bend his or her ear about your side of the story of tobacco and our treasured pipes.
My last resolution is to try (one more time) to not purchase any more pipe tools or pouches. I have a drawer filled with pipe tampers, tools, nails, knives, rollup pouches, bags, pull-string leather pouches that belong to medieval times and pipe racks, small, large, and desktop leather jobs.
This past year, I even bought a beautiful copper tobacco holder just for flakes. There is one problem with copper and tobacco: sitting in said holder and cohabitating with copper, tobacco becomes toxic, or so I read.
When I called the manufacturer, a PR type told me in a rather salty voice: "Well, you have to put a piece of wax paper in the bottom of the holder" to separate tobacco from copper bottom. As if everyone knew that.
I protested and said, "There were no such instructions." The PR type said once again, "You have to put wax paper, cut to shape, and form it inside the holder to prevent the tobacco from touching the copper."
Oh, I see. Batteries not included!
I further resolve to purchase more pipe books, especially anything by Rick Newcombe, pipe magazines and any other reading material on pipes and tobacco.
Which brings me to a subject close to my heart: pipe writing and writers of pipes and tobacco stories.
We are a fortunate band of brothers now to have some of the finest pipes and tobacco writers plying their talents for us.
This time reminds me of the 1970-80s in the sport of fly-fishing (I grew up with a fly rod in my hand and wish I could still wade a stream).
Young fly-fishing writers were testing their wings in a time that was simply magical for fly-fishermen who, like pipe smokers, will read anything they can on their sport.
Ours is not rod, reel and dry fly, but pipe and tobacco; ours is not steamy streams early of a morning, but coffee and pipe smoke curling skyward to start another day. Ours is not the sweet sound of a murmuring stream, but the relaxing silence of a pipe on a blue-sky day when our brains are able to release the stress of the times.
Happy New Year and pleasant pipe adventures from the Pipe Pundit!
|
|
Written by Kevin Godbee
6 Responses
Smokingpipes.com Updates
24 Fresh Brulor Pipes |
48 Fresh Ropp Pipes |
12 Fresh Estate Pipes |
9 Fresh Ashton Pipes |
17 Fresh Brebbia Pipes |
Recent Posts
Welcome to The Pipes Magazine Radio Show Episode 636. Our featured interview on tonight’s show is with Barry Kane. Barry started smoking a pipe in 1961 when he was 14-years old. Back then it seemed like everybody smoked, and you could buy pipes and tobacco just about anywhere. Barry is a true old-school pipe smoker, sticking to just one blend. See if you can guess which one before listening. At the top of the show Brian will give his take on Scandinavian Tobacco Group’s purchase of Mac Baren and Sutliff Tobacco and their announcement that they will be shut down.
There’s a pipe in my collection that I cannot bring myself to smoke, though I’ve had it for more years than I care to recall. It’s old, or shall I say, well experienced; that experience, that oldness came to it long before it was in my possession. The pipe is an old Comoy’s Grand Slam from the 1940s. The shape (#93), a slightly canted, stack billiard (sometimes referred to as a Belgian) is right up my alley, and it’s a beautiful example of it. It came to me with some wear and tear; nothing unusual for an old pipe, but more the signs of one that has been well loved, smoked a lot, treated as a favorite tool, cherished, in a sense, by frequent use. It’s the pipe equivalent of a vintage car that’s been driven a lot, enjoyed fully and maintained adequately, rather than one kept in a spotless garage, dusted and detailed weekly, brought out only for leisurely Sunday drives, or to be ogled behind the ropes at the next Concours d’Elegance. When it arrived, those uncounted years ago, it wanted a little restoration. Nothing dramatic needed to be done to it, but the stem was oxidized, the finish a little dingy. The cake was even and fairly thin, and the airway was relatively clean, both signs that its previous owner cared for it, but the bowl’s surface was a little drab and dull. It took little effort to reveal its beauty, to show the lovely contrasted stain and interesting grain beneath the old wax. I often think I should do before and after photos of pipes that I work on, but those thoughts always come after the work’s been done. This one would have been a great illustration of how years of handling that can sometimes make a pipe more beautiful, can other times make it just look grungy. Once I’d cleaned up the externals, it was time to address the inside bits. I approach this a little bassackwards, I realize. It would be more sensible to take care of the inside before addressing the outside, but it’s how I roll. If an old pipe isn’t pretty to look at, it’s unlikely that I’ll care much about it, and cleaning is usually the hardest part, or at least the most boring part of any restoration for me. Alcohol and pipe cleaners. Lots of pipe cleaners. That’s why I leave it for last. Sometimes, I’ll even give a pipe a test smoke before a deep cleaning, just for a point of reference. I gave it a sniff to get an idea of what I was up against, and it stopped me cold. There in that bowl was an aroma that I had not smelled in decades. My head was instantly filled with memories of being in the back room of a fabled Berkeley tobacconist’s shop where I stumbled upon a few jars of long discontinued blends. One of them, a blend called Forty and Eight, had the most engaging and unusual scent of any tobacco I’d stuck my schnoz into. It was sweet, but not in a candy store way. There were none of the usual vanilla, cherry, berry or anise notes of typical aromatics, nothing that could be compared to aftershave or deodorant soap, but something almost musky, a little earthy, something exotic. The shop’s owner couldn’t tell me what was in it, how, or where it had been produced. The old blend had been retired before he’d bought the place. The printed catalogue gave no clues, either, other than being overprinted with the word “DISCONTINUED” in bold, rubber-stamp type. (And, I don’t recall it as being “highly aromatic” as the description indicates.) There was still quite a bit in the jar. Being, at that point, an intrepid explorer of all kinds of tobaccos, whether I thought I’d like them or not, I had to give it a try. It was burly based, but also comprised a good measure of virginia leaf, and maybe some other varieties; I didn’t have enough experience at the time to really pick it apart. But, that aroma was unlike anything I’d experienced before or since. It was something now completely lost to time. Until it wasn’t. Memories are powerful things, and there is no sense more tightly bound to memory than our sense of smell. One whiff was all it took to carry me back in time, conjuring a vivid recollection of something long submerged in the inky depths of a subconscious mind. Look, I know as well as anyone that pipes are meant to be smoked, and that many feel it almost sacrilegious to have a pipe and not set it to its intended task. In this case, I simply can’t. I won’t. Ever. Rationally, I am fairly certain this pipe would probably be a great smoke. It was too well loved by its previous caretaker to be anything less than that. My choice not to smoke it is an emotional one, not something rational. Of the thousands of pipes that have passed through my hands over the years, this is the only one to create such a singular and vivid, almost Proustian recollection of temps perdu, of lost time. It revivified a long dormant memory that is mine, and mine alone, and that’s enough. I keep it in a drawer with other old English pipes. In some ways, it’s nothing special, just a nice old pipe. I don’t lavish it with any particular care that arguably befits the hidden treasure that it holds. It’s not in a special box, or displayed preciously in a glass cabinet. Every once in a while, I take it out, point my nose bowlwards, and every time, those memories return just as powerfully as they did the first time. I have no idea how long it’s been since its last owner smoked it, but in the years I’ve had it, there seems to have been very little degradation of the aroma, and that’s […]
Welcome to The Pipes Magazine Radio Show Episode 635. Our featured interview on tonight’s show is with James Ravenwood. James is the boutique tobacco blender of Ravenwood Blends. His blending started out as a fun hobby, and he now has professionally packaged commercially available products with some great tin art. Part of his interest in pipe smoking goes back to fond memories of a retired Navy Veteran that lived on his street while he was growing up that would sit in his driveway smoking a pipe all day. Later, in 2011 he began smoking pipes and soon after started experimenting with mixing different tobaccos. His other hobby, that he has been doing for 30 years, is photography. He takes wonderful photos of outdoor spaces, and still life pictures of pipes and tobacco. You can see them on his Instagram @thebriarfellowship. At the top of the show we’ll have an Ask the Pipemaker segment with renowned pipe artisan Jeff Gracik.
Welcome to The Pipes Magazine Radio Show Episode 634! Our featured interview on tonight’s show is with Warren Ertle. Warren is an extremely accomplished musician with a PhD in music. He started early as a percussionist in sixth grade. Later his grandmother got him a cheap Casio keyboard which he taught himself to play. He started playing in blues bands in high school, and has been a pianist with jazz big bands for years. Even though he was already a professional musician, he took his first real piano lesson when he enrolled in college with his studies in classical music. He is of course a pipe smoker. At the top of the show we will have an Ask the Tobacco Blender segment with Jeremy Reeves. Jeremy is the Head Blender at Cornell & Diehl, which is one of the most popular boutique pipe tobacco companies in the USA.
Soon now, supposedly, our neighborhoods will shift from grinning pumpkins, skeletons in various assortments, and zombies dashing about to pretty reindeer, angels, and flashing lights illuminating homes with sparkling stars and laughing, scurrying Santas. But, lest we forget, there is the turkey season, fancy pie aromas wafting from kitchens, and a national pardon of a big Tom Turkey. Remember, now, that only one of these holiday personalities is a pipe smoker. And that is the hefty, bearded fellow in a bright red suit sitting in a sleigh with a herd of deer hitched up and ready to streak across the globe, bringing tidings of joy and many presents. Ok, the scene is set for the next couple of months, right? So, before we get too far off the beaten path, let’s just take a deep breath of fresh autumn air, shall we? Ahh. That’s better, isn’t it? What’s got the Pundit in a snit is not all the Halloween spooks who came a-jostling for candy. Or the wild turkeys gobbling in the backwoods or all the fuss and feathers over the big one—Christmas. No, it is that we might need to take note of all the little things that mean so much to us. Like a good sunrise (seriously, Pundit has not gone all Pollyanna.) Mayhaps we need to appreciate more of what we have than what we have not. Or something like that. Like, a good pipe in the morning with coffee as the dawn brings us coolish weather now that we have flipped the calendar to autumn. But it also brings beautiful leaves that have become a spectacle of technicolor in the wind. It is the little things. The rereading of an enjoyable book and finding something you did not see or learn in the first go-round. Or a stunning phrase you commit to memory with the re-read, while smoking that favorite pipe. And you notice a superior puff that just seems to be different. It’s in the air and the seasons of meaningful little things. It’s aromatic! Or perhaps it is that sense of satisfaction knowing and appreciating you made it to another day. With the world in a kind of rinse-and-repeat history, reminiscent of a Shakespearean play, it is perhaps a good moment to remember some of Pipedom’s philosophers whose cogent thoughts brought light to clear a path in the mists of confusion and confounding opinions. Ok. No gloom and doom. Just some down-home thoughts. Think of times in the past when history was running off the rails. It took our pipe-smoking thinkers (the mind workers of the world) to speak of better pathways to more light. Think for a moment, with a pipe in hand, these wizards of the world and word: Albert Einstein, J. R.R. Tolkien, Mark Twain, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Edwin Hubble, Bertrand Russell, C. S. Lewis, and Jean-Paul Sartre. All learned and enlightened. They offered wisdom instead of storms of meaningless roads to nowhere. All while smoking their pipes! Maybe especially with the help of their pipes in the art of thinking and philosophy. Recall the words of Mr. E=MC2 when he said, “I believe that pipe smoking contributes to a somewhat calm and objective judgment in all human affairs.” Amen and amen! Dealing with world-rattling events takes a calm and objective view of things, to the Pundit’s way of summing it up. You just don’t go messing around with quantum physics without a calm and objective approach, methinks. Or as the extraordinary physicist Robert Oppenheimer said after he and a team in the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos Labs developed a way to split atoms into bombs during World War II. “I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds,” said Oppenheimer referring to the development of the first nuclear bombs dropped on Japan. It must be pointed out that Oppenheimer was more of a cigarette smoker than a pipe smoker. Nonetheless, pipes were part of his personality. Now, if you have read some of the great authors of the past and present, their pipes were always nearby. Reading Sir Arthur Conan Doyle can be a three-pipe problem at times. S. Lewis and Jean-Paul Sartre require time with your pipes to reflect on the existential problems and solutions these authors provide in learned novels and other narratives. Or take Edwin Hubble and Bertrand Russell, philosophers of another world. Pipes are required for reading. The quantum lode of ideas Pundit is attempting to sort out is that our pipes are relaxing and stimulate our thoughts and creativity. Especially in these last months of the year. Many times Pundit has had that light bulb flick on while smoking my beloved pipes. And friends in Pipedom, it ain’t easy to turn on the lights in Pundit’s rock pit head. Now it’s time for a quote from a Pipe Smoker of the Past. Shelby Foote was born Nov. 17, 1916, in Greenville, Miss., and died June 27, 2005, in Memphis, Tenn. A fact is not a truth until you love it—Shelby Foote. A parting thought: It is said that famed Southern author William Faulkner carried a packed pipe in a coat pocket wherever he went. That’s one effective way to deal with workday conflicts and confusion. A calm and objective judgment in our everyday human affairs, as the quantum man said.
Welcome to The Pipes Magazine Radio Show Episode 633. Our featured guest tonight is Jon David Cole. JD is the Owner/Tobacconist at The Country Squire in Jackson, MS, and the accompanying online store. We’ll have JD and Brian talking about what’s new at the store and in the business in general. At the top of the show, Brian will discuss tobacco growing, what happens to the leaf, and provide updated information on where tobacco is being gown today. Tobacco production originated in the United States and we were once the #1 producer. It’s quite different now.
Great article. Enjoyed reading it. Mind if I adopt your resolutions for my own as well?
Good stuff,Fred.
Nice article with which to launch the coming year in the pipe world. New blends in the offing? Please, I’m already overwhelmed.
Another fine article!
My resolution among others is smoke and enjoy more pipes filled with more tobacco blends.
And stay away from politics if possible.
Thank you, fine gentlemen, for your kind words.
And, Max, please feel free to adopt my resolutions and add your own, so that I might pick up some good ones that eluded me.
All’s good in the piping world except for the anti zealots. Takin’ away my freedom!
I’m not a fan of far-out pipe shapes, but as always, diff folks, diff strokes…..Thanks for the article, and I promise to read more and attend more conventions, and not smoke any less! And to support our great American blenders.