G. L. Pease Some pipes don’t treat us well. They seduce us with their beauty, their charm, only to tease us cruelly, never delivering what they appear to promise. They can be likened to horrible relationships that we keep revisiting, either because of the intensity of our shallow lusts, or because we keep forgetting how […]
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Category Archives: Out of the Ashes
The Care & Feeding of the Pipeman – by G. L. Pease Indulge me. Take a moment to close your eyes and reflect on your earliest experience as a budding pipe smoker. It could have been months ago, years, or even decades. Imagine that first bowl in as much vivid detail as you can conjure. […]
Read moreG. L. Pease I’ve been saving the ash from my smokes for a couple weeks, partially in response to some vocal claims made by a few that smoking to the bottom is either nearly impossible, or that doing so almost guarantees destruction of the pipe through burnout. Truth is, I’m actually pretty far away from […]
Read moreG. L. Pease Last month (see Part I), we asked the the question, “why coat the bowl?” and looked at some of the common reasons coatings might be used. Response to the article was just what I expected it would be, with people taking up residence in one of the three camps I mentioned—hate ’em, […]
Read moreG. L. Pease One of the most contentious of the long-running debates in the pipe community is the issue of bowl coatings. Why something so seemingly innocuous can drive discussions to a fevered pitch is intriguing, since, on the surface, it seems a fairly innocent thing. When I’ve discussed the subject with other pipemen, the […]
Read moreG. L. Pease Pipe smoking is at once the simple affair of filling a bowl with some chosen leaf, getting it smouldering just right, and spending an hour or so enjoying the fruits of the effort, as well as a deceptively complex equation of too many variables to keep sorted. There are the obvious influences […]
Read moreG. L. Pease I’m a collector. It’s not just pipes that stimulate this peculiar but fortunately not uncommon affliction. There are a lot of things I find difficult to resist. The books are probably the heaviest, overall, or maybe the wine. Wristwatches have always appealed to me, and fountain pens, pocket knives, old coins. The […]
Read moreG. L. Pease I’ve been smoking a pipe for about 30 years, now, and I’m starting to get the idea that I just don’t know how to do it. Seriously. It’s not that I can’t stuff tobacco into a bowl, get it smouldering, and even keep it going more or less until I get to […]
Read moreG. L. Pease I love the first bowl in a new pipe. The courtship. The anticipation. The excitement. I fill the bowl carefully, taking time to appreciate the workmanship, the grain, the balance, the cut. I test the draw, then strike a match, and slowly tease its fire over the surface of the tobacco, drawing […]
Read moreG. L. Pease Not really. Actually, it was some joker in the airport who decided to sneeze and cough all over everyone in sight that made me sick. But, it happened in Kansas City, and it made you look. I’ve been back from the KC show for a few weeks, now, and I am still […]
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Welcome to The Pipes Magazine Radio Show Episode 481! This week’s show is a unique holiday themed show with Brian’s Zoom Pipe Club looking at pipes and tobacco in a Charles Dickens’ ‘A Christmas Carol’ sort of way. The guys will talk about pipes and tobaccos of the past, present, and future. Joining the discussion with Brian will be Fred Hanna, Tad Gage, Barry Goldstein, Ronni B, Rich Esserman, Fred Janusek, Brad Pohlmann, Dave in LAX, Rob Cappuccio, Dino Argyropoulos, and several others. At the top of the show in Pipe Parts, Brian found some old tobacco ads, which you can find at this link – Almay.com. Sit back, relax with your pipe, and enjoy The Pipes Magazine Radio Show!
Welcome to The Pipes Magazine Radio Show Episode 480! Tonight we have Rich Esserman back with us for an epic show. Rich is quite well known in the hobby. He has been smoking, collecting, and writing about pipes for over 40-years, and he is best known for collecting large-size Dunhill pipes. We will have Brian and Rich discussing the different types of pipe collectors. Find out which one you are … or are you just a “pipe accumulator”? This episode will go right into the conversation, and bypass the usual Pipe Parts segment. Sit back, relax with your pipe, and enjoy The Pipes Magazine Radio Show!
Welcome to The Pipes Magazine Radio Show Episode 479! Our featured interview tonight is with pipe maker Brian G. Rowley of Growley Pipes. Brian is also a leather crafter and produces handmade merchandise in that area as well. He makes all types of pipe shapes, including some of the classics, but leans more towards the Danish freehand styles. He takes commissions on pipes as well. At the top of the show, We’ll have our “Ask the Pipemaker” segment with artisan pipe maker, Jeff Gracik. Sit back, relax with your pipe, and enjoy The Pipes Magazine Radio Show!
A faded Synoptic Weather Chart for the morning of Saturday, July 1, 1916 read “Light to moderate breezes between East and North, fair to dull. Some showers and mist.” A low-pressure system passing over the English Channel and onto the continent pushed a break in the rain on that first day of July. Bright yellow rays punched down into No Man’s Land and alighted on what poet Siegfried Sassoon described, as a “sunlit picture of hell.” That morning, as the winds changed direction, in the hour when the last mist still clung to the meadow, the whistles blew 8 divisions of British troops into the valley of the shadow of death. Overconfidence in the previous day’s bombardment led officers to conclude that enemy resistance would be minimal and that the allied troops would need their shovels and full 50-pound packs to reinforce captured German positions. General Sir Henry Rawlinson had given the command that the infantry should advance toward the enemy at a walking pace, in evenly spaced lines, some evidence suggests that this command was ignored. German soldiers would later report that the offensive looked more like a mass suicide than an assault, writing that they didn’t even have to aim, “We just fired into them, and they kept falling.” That first day marked the bloodiest battle in British history with 57,470 casualties and 19,240 deaths. Military historian John Keegan would later write, “[For the British] the battle was the greatest tragedy. . .of their national military history,” and, “marked the end of an age of vital optimism in British life that has never been recovered.” In 1914, Major-General Ernest D. Swinton was a journalist covering the front lines of the “War to End all Wars.” Exposed to a wide-ranging view of the newly deployed tactic of trench warfare; he happened upon an idea. He began to sketch out a design for an armored vehicle, mounted on tracks like the one he had seen on a Holt Tractor from the United States. Early adoption of the idea was slow with Lord Kitchener canceling one of his first meetings on the pretense that he was, “Too busy.” The introduction of slow-moving armor was a hard sell to the Gentleman Officers who placed supreme faith in the swift, mounted charge of British Cavalry. The project languished unfunded for over a month before Sir Winston Churchill in control of the Admiralty, made the unusual move of allocating money out of a Naval fund, for what he would call his, “Landships.” Swinton would later write, “Thus, at a time when the machine gun destroyer scheme had for six weeks been lying moribund at the War Office, abandoned as an impossibility, here was born on the other side of Whitehall a special organization, well supplied with the sinews of war for its support….In May [Churchill] severed his connexion with the Admiralty, though retaining an active interest in the landship project.” Tanks would eventually be deployed during the Battle of the Somme; but not until mid-September after the rains had intensified. If one were to calculate the delays in the project, the problems of cancelled meetings and intransigent officers; the tally would amount to at least 3 months. Had the idea not faced such an uphill battle; the armored “Landships” might have been available that fateful morning when the whistles blew. A German report of the psychological impact of the tank once deployed against their troops reads as follows: “The monster approached slowly, hobbling, moving from side to side, rocking and pitching, but it came nearer. Nothing obstructed it: a supernatural force seemed to drive it onwards. Someone in the trenches cried, “The Devil comes!” And that word ran down the line like lightning. Suddenly tongues of fire licked out of the armoured shine of the iron caterpillar…the English waves of infantry surged up behind the Devil’s chariot.” It’s hard not to wonder what a difference that factor could have made on the first day of July back in 1916 This Thursday, on the 11th day of the 11th month of the year, we celebrate Veterans Day, formerly Armistice Day, to commemorate the end of hostilities in the Great War. In the 1950s the Congress of the United States changed the name to Veterans Day to continue the extension of gratitude to Veterans of later wars; but they saved the connection to the Armistice of the Great War as a lingering message of remembrance. The lessons learned in that war were short lived; and it was little time before the sons of those fallen on Flanders Field would find themselves a long way from Tipperary, once again. The lesson of the importance of armor was quickly established by the younger men who survived going over the top and battlefield tactics and minds were changed. Except for Field Marshal Douglas Haig, who commanded the Allied Forces on the Western Front. The embittered old Commander would take his faith in mounted Cavalry to the grave. In 1926 Hage wrote that he, “Believe[d] that the value of the horse and the opportunity for the horse in the future are likely to be as great as ever. Aeroplanes and tanks are only accessories to the men and the horse, and I feel sure that as time goes on you will find just as much use for the horse—the well-bred horse—as you have ever done in the past.” One hundred years later, Staff Sergeant USMC [Ret] Jeremy Stafford walked into the famous gun room at Taran Tactical in Simi Valley, slapped his pipe roll down on the table and smiled. Stafford is well tanned after a summer working the streets of Los Angeles in an LAPD cruiser. Stout and trim, the 49-year-old veteran of the Iraq War is built like a college fastback, with shoulders as wide as a door frame. A sleek 1990s style USMC tattoo on his bicep occasionally peeks out from under the sleeve of his shirt. Unraveling a leather chord from his pouch he removed a stout, rusticated billiard […]
Welcome to The Pipes Magazine Radio Show Episode 478! Our featured interview tonight is with novice pipe smoker Warren Byle. Warren is an IT guy that is working on a tobacco project of his own. This episode is another installment in our series of novice pipe smokers (those with 3-5 years of pipe smoking experience) that we pose seven questions to. At the top of the show, (hold onto your seats), Brian will have a surprising review of Captain Black Original. Sit back, relax with your pipe, and enjoy The Pipes Magazine Radio Show!
Welcome to The Pipes Magazine Radio Show Episode 477! Tonight we have Rich Esserman back with us for an epic show. Rich is quite well known in the hobby. He has been smoking, collecting, and writing about pipes for over 40-years, and he is best known for collecting large-size Dunhill pipes. Last time we changed things up, and had Rich interview Brian. We are changing it up again tonight with these two experts having a conversation on various topics in pipes and tobacco. This episode will go right into the conversation, and bypass the usual Pipe Parts segment. Sit back, relax with your pipe, and enjoy The Pipes Magazine Radio Show!
