Pipeology - The Fine Art of Pipe Smoking and Thought

 I had to look up to see which teams are in the NHL and NBA playoffs.  I know Cleveland got beat by the Celtics.  But right now, for me at least, it's baseball season, but I might care about either the Reds or the Guardians, which used to be the Indians, but I can't get used to the name change.  ESPN+ has recorded baseball games from the day before and since I don't follow the scores it's like watching live, but usually it's two teams I don't care about, but it's something to watch.   With a 162 game season a game here and there doesn't matter. The Pirates are playing the Braves from a game recorded two days ago.  I could just look up the score, but I don't want to.  I'll root for the Braves.  I've never liked ANY team from Pittsburg.   But it's baseball.  I'm just into college football and that is about it.  I'll start getting into college basketball after the college football season is over, but I was never a big fan of ...

 David Berkowitz was just denied parole for the twelfth time.  He is now 70 years old and was captured in 1977 after killing six and wounding five in a string of murders in NYC as the "Son of Sam" murderer, as he called himself.  Okay, I won't spend any more time on this except to say he heard voices telling him to kill.   First of all, I know enough about psychiatry to be dangerous, as is often said of novices on a subject.  I know that there are mentally ill people who have actual conversations with themselves.  Often such people are harmless.  But then someone like Berkowitz hears voices to kill.  These are the ones that need immediate help.  The problem is, we don't know who these people are until they act on those voices.  Then it's too late.  But every mental health professional will always ask whether one wants to harm someone or themselves regardless of who it is as a patient. But in this case intervention was too late....

I drink two large cups of coffee a day, but sometimes I want some decaf coffee.  I usually keep a bag of ground decaf coffee available.  But decaf coffee might be disappearing.  Methalene Chloride is why.  It can cause eye damage, liver problems, and other health related issues.  So, the FDA is talking about removing all decaf products off US shelves. First of all, this might affect consumers who don't drink any caffeine.  So, when I read this I wondered how many people this would affect.  I'm not supposed to drink caffeine, but then I'm not supposed to smoke a pipe either.  Even alcohol could be risky to my health.  But I've been alive for 13 years since my heart attack and I've experienced no chest pains.   I kind of look at it this way, my heart is protected by my Spirit Guides.  In my thinking, nothing can damage my heart.  But then I don't take unnecessary risks with my heart.  I guess if you want to know the tru...

 At first, I felt writing about my Spirituality was too religious, but over time I've felt more comfortable about doing so, because some of you seem to like when I do.  I'm not selling anything nor am I condemning anyone to hell.  It's different and it's who I am.  I can't help that.  My pipe is a part of it.  But it took quite awhile for me to feel comfortable writung about it.  I asked myself why this is and it's because I write mostly about it here. But why did I feel uncomfortable.? Very simply put, I'm pretty quiet about it.  Except with a few.  And to those few it's my obsession.  I didn't want to write about it here. Not at first.  I feared there would be those who wouldn't understand.  But my Spirituality explains the last 30 years of my life and I smoke a pipe.  I am pretty rare by both accounts.  But my pipes and tobacco are also a part of it. And I'm at my best listening and not talking, but when I'm not wr...

 I had something else for this morning, but today is a day we remember the dead.  Not just war heroes, but really anyone who was a part of our lives and are now gone.  Neither my wife or myself have any surviving members of family apart from siblings and their heirs.  Fortunately, neither of us have lost a sibling, but the oldest is now 82, with his health failing.  That is my wife's oldest brother.   But today is a day we remember.  I was probably more of my Mom's son that I was closer to my dad.  And as I grew up in the church, we were never geographically close to family.  I grew up apart from either sets of grandparents, so I felt I didn't know them very well.  The church was supposed to be family, but in a way it kind of was, but wasn't.  So, there's no one there I can I say I miss except for my Mom. So, that is where I am this morning.  My Mom was one-of-a-kind.  She was literally the salt of the earth.  Sh...

 Before I write a post, I want every post to flow, without much thought.  If I think too much, or I I'm thinking too hard a post won't flow.  Everyone has some kind of belief system, even if it's no believing at all.  Each one of you share in my own Spirituality.  I have my own religion, if you want to call it that.  I am an evangelist for Human Life.  I find living in today's world with my belief system very stressful. Some people believe that if they belong to something, and they have disagreements, instead of working to change it, they leave it.  Some things ARE written in stone.  But that all depends on what it is they are leaving behind.  But then I know the theology of my Spirit Guides would be acceptable to no one, but I've since learned my beliefs align more with Buddhism.  But it's only been in the past five years or so I learned this.  My Spirit Guides told me Jesus died for every sin except for the taking of Human Li...

My son and I played chess together for the first time since he was quite young.  Playing chess with him brought back a flood of memories about playing chess and other things in my life.  I can take some things seriously.  When I was in high school I played chess regularly with the son of Russiam immigrants.  He could usually beat me, but he was the only one who could.  I became known as a very good chess player. I tend to dabble in things like playing pool in college.  Until I got so good at pool no one on campus could beat me.  College was like that for me.  I dabbled in college until my senior year when I got straight A's.  There are things I take very seriously including my Spiritual life.   Chess teaches life lessons.  In order to be good at chess one needs to think ten moves ahead.  I was thinking only of my next move.  I could see maybe a few moves ahead, but not much beyond that. Chess teaches to see the big pi...

 It might be a little early to write about, but in a week my wife and I are going to spend time in upstate NY for about six weeks.  I've been at least somewhat streessed about it and that might be putting it mildly.  But there are things about NY I really do like.  We've been planning it for some time and she knows I'm stressed about going.  But it's the planning and traveling.  I hate flying these days.  And I guess I'd rather smoke my pipe here on the patio.  But there are things we need to take of while we're there. We've made our home here in Cape Coral and as she says a change of scenery would be good for bot of us.  I've talked to my Spirit Guides about it and have been listening.  I went to YouTube about listening to Angells, but all the videos I've found are about talking to them.  I mention this, but it's not talking I need to do.  I need to listen.  I talk when I'm stressed, and instead I need to listen. ...

 I told my wife the other day that if my Spirituality had any special powers it would be the power to heal.  I don't feel I have anything special to offer, nor even in regard to the power of thought.  I might, but it's not something I can prove.  I wasn't given X-Men powers.  I have this sense of feeling, which is similar to the Third Eye in Buddhism. But that is a sense.  Maybe thinking about a person's physical health might be the same thing, because I do that. During the pandemic, I had a lot of wishful thoughts that people wouldn't die.  I prayed for protection of friends and family and if anyone became ill I just hoped they'd survive.  Fortunately, we all made it through, but not without becoming ill ourselves.  My wife may have been overcome by the worst case of all of us, but she survived okay, although at one point I wondered whether to take her to the hospital, but she came through it.   I might possess some power of preven...

 I had a dream the other night, and the only reason I can think of for having it is to say something about it.  I was on a flight to a destination where families might go, like to a Disney park.  I was in the very front row of first class.  There was lots of leg room.  I stretched out and for whatever reason I had in my dream, I was sitting there smoking my pipe.  But no one said a word to me about it.  The tobacco wasn't an Aromatic but was English and I knew the smoke from my pipe was filling the cabin.   As we were preparing to land the stewardess said I had to put away my pipe.  I had a small duffle bag and while still lit, I put the pipe carefully on top of my things in the bag and zipped it up.  Then I woke from my dream.  I'm not about to analyze this dream, but the dream was about how I felt while smoking my pipe.  I was completely relaxed.  I had been on flights long ago when men, okay mostly men, smoked pipe...

 I have made a post just about every day for a couple of years usually posting around the same time every morning.  But why, you may be asking yourself of me.  In case you were wondering I do it because I can.  Doing this is good for my mind.  I am my own writer, editor, and publisher.  Any mistakes I make fall squarely on me.  And believe me my wife will point them out to me.  I used to correct them, but that meant sending out new links.  So, if there is an error I just might leave it and maybe correct it days later. Sometimes these posts can be like a daily devotional, if I'm so inclined, or they're about nothing at all.  They might be at least a bit humorous, even if I'm just laughing at myself.  I try to stay on the lighter side, but even in regard to Spirituality, I don't see my task as evangelism.  It's just a part of who I am.  But I do avoid politics although, God knows, most anything can be taken as political thes...

There was a YouTuber whose videos my wife and I watched regularly because he lived in NYC.  I haven't been to too many world cities.  But we've been to Rome and Paris, however, it is NYC which is full of US history.  At least I can say NYC is the most interesting city in the US, if not the world.  Mostly because so many movies have been filmed there.  But this YouTuber we watched moved to Miami and at least I have lost interest in his vids.  I don't see his videos posted as I once did.  He began filming Miami and I simply lost interest and YouTube seems to know this. I started thinking about it and wondered why I lost interest.  Miami is interesting, but it's not NYC.  In fact, he could have to moved to LA and lost my interest.  Maybe he felt he did everything NYC has to offer.  But I couldn't visit Central Park too many times.  There are areas of NYC that never tire me of visiting.  That includes Battery Park and Times Sq...

 Billy Graham once said he had a conversation with a man who told him he'd want to go to heaven only if heaven had golf courses.  Graham told him that if God wanted us to have golf courses there will plenty of them with no tee times or waiting.  I was thinking about this the other day as I was pondering about what heaven would be like.  If we knew what heaven was like, we'd be falling all over ourselves trying to get in. I have no fear of death or dying.  Heaven is pretty easy to get into.  One preacher once said some people who get there smuggle themselves in.  They don't deserve to be there, but they'll get in.  Actually, no one deserves to be there.  So, I don't buy into the smuggling idea.  Even Atheists will be there, but maybe they are the ones God will smuggle in.  But after his comment I thought to myself no one deserves heaven, so I threw out his comment as being worthless. Some say there are levels to heaven to which we se...

  The above pipe is an Aaron Beck Smooth Freehand pipe.  I stumbled on this pipe on the Smoking Pipes website.  Since I seem to be on a NYC theme lately, after reading about the pipe and it's maker, I thought I'd write about it.  Some freehand pipes are machine made, but this one is not.  The price of the above estate pipe is $125.  It is almost out of my $100 range, but at $125, I thought I'd include it here. Let me just say that I find some Spirituality in a handmade made pipe, particularly if the maker is deceased.  I could suggest his spirit lives on in this pipe.  I had to do some reading about Aaron Beck, but didn't get much info on him.  He began making pipes in his Queens,NY shop in the 50's. He began to make free hand in the 60's which at the time had become popular from Denmark.  He made pipes for 30 years and died in 1984 shorty after he retired and sold his shop.   I tried to find out about how many pipes he made an...

  I did a little research on my very first pipe and thought I could find a similarity to it, even on eBay, but I couldn't.  So, I thought, what the heck, I'll take my own photo.  I once did a whole series of my pipes on a previous blog that no longer exists.  But I decided to write about my first pipe.  As to whether I will write about any other pipe I own is a question I can't answer.  I can save myself a lot of thinking if I plan the next 40 posts around my collection of pipes, but as of now, I've decided not to do that. If I can't think of anything to write about, I can always pull out a pipe, take a photo, and write about it.  But so far, I'd rather not.  I think I paid about $30 for this pipe in 1974, which was back then about $190 in today's money.  Today this pipe used might be anywhere from $50 to $100, but for a serious collector it might go for as much as $200, but I am thinking around $50.    I'm probably most careful wit...

 The Bible says young people have dreams while old people have visions.  Dreams and hopes are more personal while visions of the future involve the larger world.  But I can find myself daydreaming in my meditative state of mind, but if I live there, then it's a psychosis.  So, I'm very careful about daydreams and fantasies.  Daydreams take our minds off the stresses of our day.   But when I seem to have visions, they are my hopes for the future, but not just for myself, but for all humanity.  I can envision a hope for Peace and Love for all humanity.  But until then, this world causes me stress.  I pay attention to what is going on in the world, but not too much.  I CAN worry, but I avoid too much of it.  This is where my Spirit Guides come in. I do what I do and let them worry about the rest.   I believe my meditation changes the world, but through people.  So, while I can focus on people, I can see the big pict...

 I don't live without rules, but a pipe is within the rules.  I don't meditate on God's rules because basically He has none.  There is only one rule of God:  Human Life.  In a way He let's us believe what we want and basically live how we want to live.  But in the end He always wants us to choose to live and always let others live.  I see the world as it is and it seems rules and laws don't matter to many people.  In a way I saw this coming.  God had to prepare me for a future world in which I was to live.   I am NOT God.  I am human.  And in a way I made up my own rules knowing God's Rule.  I have not been a participant in life as much as I have observed life, maybe from my own Ivory Tower while smoking both pipes and cigars.  But I made my notes along the way.  I have to admit this blog is the closest I've been to being published.  But I've been writing about life sometimes as a theologian that I am b...

  Okay, so I'm partial to bent shaped pipes.  I have a number of pipes in this style.  This is reminiscent of my first pipe, which is a Jobey.  This pipe is an English GBD pipe and is from the 1980's.  It sells for $115 on Smoking Pipes website.  It might be close in style to an Oom Paul pipe.  It has a bird's eye grain that is favored by many pipe smokers because it is so different.  GBD stands for Ganeval, Bondier, and Dominger, which began as a French company, but the pipes are now made in England.  Cadogan now owns the company which also make Comoy pipes, but the quality is not the same. However, that is not to say that GBD pipes don't hold their value.  The above pipe is probably one of the better GBD pipes at $115, which makes this pipe worth every penny.   It is said newer GBD pipes don't have the quality of the older estate pipes.  This one certainly has the quality, although this photo is all I have to go by....

 They're like people in that they must be treated with care.  I've never broken a pipe, until just the other day, but when I dropped my Gettysburg pipe and the stem broke, I learned a very important lesson.  People need to be treated well, especially those in our lives.  Some, like some pipes, are to be admired, but like pipes, while people are the same, each of us are individually different.  And too, there are a lot fewer pipes in this world than there are people. We all have our favorite people in this world.  My circle is relatively small, but I've kept it that way on purpose.  And my wife is the curator of our circle of friends and family, with a few exceptions, but she knows who they are.  I have no secrets from my wife.  I've purposely done this throughout our nearly 50 years of marriage.  And I really have no secrets I keep from others, except for my life before she knew me, but even then she knows most of them.   But I...

 Today is Sunday and Mother's Day.  Sunday's are my really Spiritual days and thought I'd write about my pipes being tools for my Spirituality this morning.  But first, a Happy Mother's Day to the moms who are reading this post.  I've written so much about how pipes are part of my Spiritual life, but they are a hobby along with my tobacco choices.  I find pipes to be a very enjoyable and fascinating hobby.  I enjoy looking at and reading about pipes and tobacco and still find myself learning something new as I did deertongue the other day.  I guess most anyone might ask why after fifty years I've stayed with a pipe. It's rather difficult to explain, but I'm not an evangelist for pipe smoking.  It might be best if no one used tobacco products, but then no one should use alcohol or Marijuana for that matter.  Smoking herbs is still smoking and any smoke isn't good good for anyone.  But I'll make an exception for myself and say the benefits...

  I haven't written much about estate pipes.  I own two now, one of which broke yesterday, and once in awhile I find myself having looked at hundreds of pipes on the Smoking Pipes website I'll find something I want to write about.  I read the descriptions and give a brief synopsis without plagiarizing.  But once in a great while I'll find something of interest, like the pipe above.  There are interesting pipes costing hundreds or thousands of dollars and I've written plenty about those pipes.   But if anyone is interested in what I have say, I'm trying to stay in the hundred dollar range for pricing, because that is the sweet spot for pipes.  If one is just starting out and spent a few bucks for cheap pipes, one, they might not any longer be interested, but my thinking is that while cheap does work, a good Briar pipe shouldn't be all that expensive.  One can find decent pipes in the fifty dollar range, but one moves up from a cheap used car t...

 Okay, I said I would review Ctooner by Cornell and Diehl, which says they got the recipe for this tobacco from an old trusted friend of Bing Crosby.  Crooner is in the top 100 best sellers on Smoking Pipes website.  They had one ounce left when I bought it and now they are currently sold out.  But what makes this tobacco stand out from so many others?  Is it that it is associated with Bing Crosby?  Well, that might be part of it, but most is out of pure curiosity. I had to do some research into it, but Cornell and Diehl is the only pipe tobacco blender that uses deertongue.  Never heard of it?  I hadn't either after smoking pipes for fifty years.  Deertongue is new to me.  This tobacco blend uses deertongue.  So, what the heck is deertongue?  It is a plant native to North America which grows mostly in the wild along the East Coast from the Carolinas down to Florida.  When one treks in the woods often one comes across the ...

 I usually write a few days ahead.  I almost always have a few articles I write I can choose from on most any given day.  I went over my tobacco order I placed the other day, and my wife wanted to know out of several thousand blends of tobacco how I chose seven and only two out of the seven I have had.  Actually, it was a very good question.  How do I know what to order?  Which includes questions anyone might have about about going into a real tobacco shop which might have hundreds of pipe tobaccos to choose from.  How does anyone know what to buy? One could start with price.  Or a tobacconist might ask if one wants an Aromatic or English?  Aromatic is about flavoring and English is about strength.  But even then, how does one choose?  One YouTuber said his grandfather smoked only Prince Albert in a can.  So, every Christmas he got a can from each of the grandkids that would last him for a year until the next Christmas.  P...

  I work hard at trying not to be sexist about pipe smoking.  But I have to admit that I simply have not known a woman to smoke a pipe.  I know they're out there because I have purposely looked up women smoking pipes on YouTube.  I know there are women who smoke cigars and they have YouTube videos as well.  I'm not saying the above Peterson pipe is just for women, but it has a smaller bowl and might fit a woman's hand quite nicely. But I'm not into choosing pipes for women specifically, and the other day in writing about the romance of pipes, I wrote about a man smoking a pipe, but I did say roles could be reversed.  My thinking was that I thought of the romance as a man smoking a pipe.  There is nothing wrong with this thinking.  The above pipe is a Heritage Nickle Calabash pipe by Peterson which sells for $98 on Smoking Pipes. I like the Calabash style of pipe and instead of silver that is often used by Peterson, the band is nickle, but the same...

Many philosophical thoughts about life, marriage, and relationships simply don't apply to me, which is why when I see quotes about these things, I have to think hard about them.  After reading so many quotes I get overload and have to quit.  Some things may have applied at some point in my life, but most of the time I have to say DNA.  But why?  Well, I thought that my writing this post this morning might require too much I am unable to explain. But then I could write my own library of quotes, but they'd apply to myself and maybe not to too many others.  I'm not sure I care about quotes in regard to relationships, for example.  If I were in search of meaning in life I might be a student of biographies and write my own.  But my life only applies to myself and I could reflect on my own thinking.  I have to admit I can come to understand people in general. I am not an Angel or some kind of Supernatural being.  I am very human and often I don't u...

 I got more hits yesterday on the topic of a little night romance than i have received on a post for quite awhile.  My wife said it was probably the title that drew people to that post.  I probably lost most when they realized I was writing about a pipe.   I'm on a kind of philosophical bent on life.  It is often asked in Christian circles as to a person's life quote from the Bible.  I have to admit that I don't have a life quote from the Bible or any place else, for that matter.  My wife and I were at our doctor's office the other day for a check-up.  This was our first time with this new doctor.  She suggested I give up smoking my pipes as they are tobacco use, which for many physicians is a no-no. I understand this about doctors, but my wife understands why I smoke a pipe.  Our doctor suggested a title of a book to read about quitting smoking.  I then quoted Mark Twain who said quitting smoking is easy.  I know because ...

  Maybe very little.  Okay, no one thinks of romance when it comes to pipes.  The brass on the stem might be a sliver of moonlight amidst swirling clouds in a night sky.  The above pipe is called Notte, meaning night in Italian.  I have to give credit to Smoking Pipes for my photos I use, and I read the descriptions and try not to plagiarize.  But I saw romance in the description and while not copying word for word, I have to admit I found the description kind of romantic.   The above pipe is a Rosi pipe The company is owned and operated by Savinelli.  The above pipe has a list price of $68, which rivals in price closely by the most expensive Dr. Grabow pipe.  So, obviously I would recommend this pipe over a Dr. Grabow any day.   But can a pipe be romantic?  Some or maybe most anyone today would say that nothing about tobacco is romantic.  The romance of a pipe is in the eye of the beholder.  My wife would say I'...

  The above pipe lists for $114 on the Smoking Pipes website.  Barling is the pipe company and has been in existence since 1812 by Barling and Sons.  The family took over the business in 1906 and in 2020 the company has been owned by the Ropp pipe manufacturing company.  The company began in the Marylenon district in London from which this particular pipe gets its name .  It is fashioned in a similar style from a pipe made in 1814.   Obviously the pipe is more up to date than it was back then.  The stem would have been fashioned from wood instead of the Vulcanite used in most of today's pipes.  The finish is a sandblast finish, which again is different from that of a pipe from that era.  There is a very small lion's head fashioned from silver which is inlaid in the stem.  While the style is reminiscent of that era, the pipe is very modern.  There is nothing about this pipe that would have been what it was in 1814 except for sty...

 I could smoke tobacco in a novelty pipe from Amazon.  One reviewer on YouTube ordered the cheapest wooden pipe from Amazon and decided to smoke it.  The pipe cost $6.99.  I have a link to the video below.  There are very adult novelty pipes that sell for about $25 if one wanted to smoke out of them.  One doesn't have to spend a lot for a pipe if all one wanted to do was smoke a pipe.  A glass bong works if one wanted to do that.  One could smoke tobacco in a any vape pipe but I would not recommend inhaling pipe tobacco. There's all kinds of stuff used for weed that can be used for pipe tobacco.  I just don't recommend inhaling pipe tobacco.  But there is no rule suggesting one needs an expensive Briar pipe for pipe tobacco.  This is by far the best more expensive way to enjoy pipe tobacco, but one can go cheap or use an adult novelty pipe if one so desired.   So, technically, I can use anything designed for weed as a toba...

  The above pipe is a French estate pipe by Chacom.  The price is $75 on Smoking Pipes website and is a gently used and reconditioned pipe called a Canaries French pipe.  I own only one estate pioe that has turned out to be an excellent pipe.  It is my " haunted" Gettysburg pipe. I say "haunted" because it is from Gettysburg and has four fingers carved into the bowl rather than five.  The previous owner is more than likely long been dead.  So, I attribute a sense of some spiritual connection to it. I know nothing of the history of the above pipe, so I could make up any story about it as I did my Gettysburg pipe.  A good pipe doesn't have to be expensive and while I have had posts about expensive and unusual pipes, I'd like others to know a good pipe doesn't have to cost a lot.   The above pipe has a bird's eye grain and has been slightly abused with a few flaws, but none so noticeable that it's not collectible.  Every gently used pipe ha...