A Calm and Objective Judgment

A Calm and Objective Judgment

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.

If there ever were seasons of a three-pipe problem, it is the ones upon us now. It takes mornings and evenings with a pipe, thankfully, to sort through it all. Helping with this are, from left, a Peterson Deluxe System, a Peterson Sherlock Holmes Lestrade, and a Ser Jacopo Picta Magritte Bent Egg. (Photo: Fred Brown)
If there ever were seasons of a three-pipe problem, it is the ones upon us now. It takes mornings and evenings with a pipe, thankfully, to sort through it all. Helping with this are, from left, a Peterson Deluxe System, a Peterson Sherlock Holmes Lestrade, and a Ser Jacopo Picta Magritte Bent Egg. (Photo: Fred Brown)




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