The League of Bearded Catholics

Good News for Catholic Pipe Smokers

According to The Heresy Hunter's math, Catholic pipe smokers have a lifespan hardly distinguishable from non-smokers.

In addition, I heard today (on NPR, no less, so you know it's true) that recent research shows heavy drinkers... heavy drinkers... live longer than teetotalers.

So, have a drink or three with your pipe and it's practically a health regimen, and much more pleasant than having your colon irrigated. 

The Heresy Hunter is also a ton of Catholic fun on a bun. Check it out!

God Invented Weekends

I love being a Catholic. The photo above was not set up at all... just a collection of stuff that happened to be there this morning: my favorite pipe, some smoking paraphernalia, prayer book, Rosary and G.K. Chesterton coffee mug. Later tonight, I suppose I should take another photo, only there will likely be a glass of wine instead of the coffee.

There are hedges that need trimming, and half a hundred small chores that cry for attention, but The Boss jovially insisted I take the whole day off and drop by His House later to see him.

Sunday is also a great day to read all the poems Pavel Chichikov has sent through the week. Like a good meal, it takes a little leisure to give them proper attention.

Today (Sunday, July 11) is also day four of the Belloc Novena.

(cross posted at Old World Swine)

It's International Pipe Smoking Day!

Pictured above is one of my international pipes, smoking (clutched in my stubby fingers... it's no wonder I never excelled at playing the guitar!). This is on our screened porch, which is a marvelous pipe smoking venue, amenable to peaceful contemplation among the tall oaks. During the winter months, I have taken more often to the Man Cave or, as it is affectionately called in our house, The Den of Manly Pursuits (or DMP, pronounced "dump") for my smokes.

The Dump is also where I keep most of my books, with a special shelf being given over to the works of Tolkien, Lewis, Belloc and Chesterton. At least three of these Four Patrons smoked a pipe. I don't know about Chesterton, but judging frim the time in which he lived, it would not be at all unlikely that he smoked a pipe occasionally, as well. I have personally only seen photos of him with cigars or cigarettes.

The terrific thing about being a bearded pipe smoker is that you get to carry the aroma of your last smoke around with you, wherever you go.

Sounds like a good day to drop in at my local pipe shop!

(Cross-posted at Old World Swine)

Pipe Lines

The free man owns himself. He can damage himself with either eating or drinking; he can ruin himself with gambling. If he does he is certainly a damn fool, and he might possibly be a damned soul; but if he may not, he is not a free man any more than a dog.

 

- G.K. Chesterton - Broadcast talk 6-11-35

(quote courtesy of The American Chesterton Society)

As a preface to the following excellent post by League member Tobin Rachford, on the subject of pipe smoking, some thought should be given to two great and opposing internal threats to a lively and humane culture in the West; Profligacy and Puritanism. The mere debauched urbanite and the astringent Pharisee are alike in their lack of proper gratitude for the delights of earthly life.

 

The profligate cares only for worldly and bodily pleasures, dismissing the possibility of any real spiritual importance to anything. Some reject the idea of any transcendent dimension to our actions, while some may allow for a God, but doubt his goodness.

 

The Puritan, through an unconscious gnosticism, rejects the body, the created world and all things sensual as base and evil, over against spiritual things, which alone are good and pure... the "total depravity" of Calvinism. This is one reason why we moderns build such ugly churches.

 

One rejects the goodness of God, and the othe rejects the goodness of his creation.

 

The Church - in her teaching and her lived tradition - acknowledges both the goodness of God and the goodness of His creation, top to bottom, in opposition to both the Puritan and the Profligate. Let God's name be praised in basilicas, and in bread and in beer, in feasts and in fasts. When our ascetics give up wine or meat, they at least ought to know they are giving up a good thing.

 

There will be those who will object to any positive mention of tobacco, as there are those who will object to any positive mention of alcohol, rejecting even the very possibility of moderation in the use of these things.

 

Long story short... according to scientific studies, like this 1979 Surgeon General's report (National Institutes of Health)... cigarettes are just awful for you. They are not only the most unhealthy form of tobacco, but because of their ease of use and other factors, they are very addictive.This does not make their modrerate use impossible, only very difficult. Cigars are less habit forming, as well as being less physically harmful. Pipe smoking is the least harmful and addictive form of tobacco use, and is very easy to moderate, because each smoke requires a kind of elaborate ritual, which becomes in itself part of the pleasure. So, considered as a whole statistical group, there is only a negligible difference in the lifespans of pipe smokers and non-smokers... and moderate pipe smokers (a few smokes a day), like moderate drinkers, may actually live longer than non-smokers.

 

The absurd panic over second-hand (and now third-hand!) smoke, we will not even address, except to say that being locked in a room (or a car, or a closet) with a chain smoker is, by plain common sense, not going to be good for anyone... but the millions of deaths commonly attributed to second-hand smoke every year we frankly hold to be obvious bunk.

 

In short, we can confidently say of pipes what Chesterton said about booze... "We should thank God for beer and burgundy by not drinking too much of them.".

 

And now, Tobin Rachford, for The League of Bearded Catholics;

 

 

 

My Pipe Smoking History,

with a nod to Tolkien, Lewis, Belloc, & Chesterton

 

by Tobin Thomas Rachford

(December 2009)

 

 

I took up pipe smoking just exactly two years ago.  I am still not a very experienced pipe smoker, since I only indulge a few times a month, maybe once a week at most (okay, sometimes twice).  I still consider pipe smoking to be basically an outdoor sport, so the weather has to cooperate as well. And when I do smoke, it is usually only one bowl of tobacco at a sitting, which takes me maybe an hour to go through.  At that frequency, I have never experienced the dreaded tongue bite, and I always look forward to my next opportunity to indulge this relaxing hobby.  There is nothing frantic or compulsive about the briar.

 

I was raised to hold cigarettes in utter contempt, but I could never bring myself to harbor any evil thoughts against pipes.  According to my mother, my great-grandfather on her side was a pipe smoker.  He kept a pipe in his breast pocket, and the advice which he passed along was to load your pipe very carefully, like you were packing a suitcase.  My grandfather on my father’s side is a pipe smoker, and still indulges on occasion (so I hear) at 90-years old.  One of my childhood memories is the smell of a leather tobacco wallet (was it black cherry?) which he kept in the drawer of a workbench in the basement. 

 

The back cover of my old copy of The Hobbit, which I first read as a child and cannot sufficiently praise as an adult, had a picture of J.R.R. Tolkien, pipe in hand, looking very grandfatherly and very authorial.  That was enough to convince me forever of the virtuousness of pipe smoking.  As a child, I doubted that I would ever have the wisdom or stature to take up a briar.  A few years ago, and now fully convinced of the fact, but with 40-years in sight, I decided there was no need to wait any longer.  After all, as G.K. Chesterton quipped, “If something is worth doing, it’s worth doing poorly!” (Platitudes Undone).

 

 

My pipe collection is still exceedingly small.  My first, and primary, pipe is a bent-stem briar, a Dr. Grabow no less, a piece of drugstore Americana.  It has a wonderful grain and seems to smoke just fine, for all the better I know.  Perhaps wider experience will disabuse me some day.  Then, I have a long-stemmed churchwarden pipe.  My “Gandalf pipe” is for the good stuff.  All I know about it, is that it is briar and was made in Italy and wasn’t very expensive.  My last pipe is a straight-stem corncob, a Missouri Meerschaum (is there any other kind?).   I favor over-the-counter burley tobacco, which I have seen referred to affectionately as “codger burley,” in a corncob.

 

 

I began pipe smoking with those unknown aromatic blends which are measured out from big, glass jars in the tobacco shop in the local mall.  I didn’t, and still don’t, know much about them.  The blend that I enjoyed most, and still buy sometimes, is called “Sunset.”  I think it is basically a burley blend, with a little dark Cavendish and a rum-flavored aromatic component.  And I think everyone will confess to enjoying a good black cherry aromatic now and then.  Captain Black satisfies my occasional craving for vanilla.

  

But, basically, I enjoy burley tobacco – just straighforward, uncomplicated burley – and I am partial to the old American standby, Prince Albert.  I consider the Prince to be “good tobacco,” even if it does happen to be sold in drugstores (but, I concede, it is better from the tub than from the individual pouches).  If I was marooned on a desert island and could have only Prince Albert tobacco in a Dr. Grabow briar, I could be perfectly content.  I love the raisiny-chocolatey, granny apple-caramely flavor of Prince Albert.  The best puff is always the first, when I am first lighting the bowl.  Then down towards the middle I get those reliable chocolate notes, and billowy clouds of white smoke.  As a relatively new pipe smoker, however, I have the problem of smoking too fast and too hot.  I get moisture in the bowl and have to re-light frequently, especially towards the end.  So sometimes I reach instead for Sir Walter Raleigh burley, which has a different cut (cube-cut) from Prince Albert (crimp-cut).  The chunkier cut of Sir Walter helps me to slow down a little bit, and I enjoy the nuttier flavor as a change of pace.

 

 

I recently opened up a tin of Mac Baren’s Burley London Blend.  It is a rich burley blend, with some Virginia tobacco added in for a little sweetness. This tobacco really takes burley to a new dimension for me.  There is some kind of top note that comes on strong when you first open the tin – maybe a little rum, maybe some cocoa, maybe both, I can’t really say – so I had to air it out a little.  The tobacco is a coarse-cut, ready-rubbed, flake tobacco.  I’m still a little confused about what to do with it.  I pretty much just wad it up and stick it into my briar.  All I can say is, I will have to indulge this blend very sparingly, or it may ruin me for my usual burley.

 

 

 

 

My first foray into Latakia tobacco was McClelland’s Frog Morton blend.  When I saw the label and realized the connection with J.R.R. Tolkien’s works, it was a no-brainer.  For those who don’t know, Frog Morton is a village in the Eastfarthing of the Shire.  The smell from the tin reminds me of wet oak leaves in Autumn with a good campfire in the background.  The flavor is full and smoky and sort of peppery, I suppose.  Really good stuff.   I am eager to try Frog Morton on the Bayou, which includes a little bit of Louisiana Perique tobacco.

 

I also have some other McClelland blends around here:  Christmas Cheer 2009 (description: “made with a special selection of beautiful, ripe, sugary, deep-orange, South Carolina Border-Belt, flue-cured, aged Virginia tobacco from the 2003 crop”), and Dark Star (description:  “bright, yellow, sugary, top-grade Virginia tobacco, triple-aged and stoved”).  Concerning this last, like Shakespeare’s Cleopatra, it beggars description.   Finding words for the impression made by a particular tobacco blend can be challenging, and I am at a loss to characterize the experience of McClelland’s Dark Star.  For the time being, I will say only this:  like C.S. Lewis’ Aslan, it is certainly good, but definitely not safe.

 

 

My current wish-list of tobaccos includes:  Mac Baren’s Navy Flake, Golden Extra, and Scottish Mixture; McClelland’s Oriential Blend #14, British Woods, and Blackwoods Flake;  Peterson’s Old Dublin and University Flake;  and the Spilman Mixture, by Iwan Ries.  The world of pipe tobacco is as varied and interesting as that of artisan-brewed beer, single malt scotches, or good tea (McClelland’s Frog Morton Latakia blend reminds me of Lapsang Souchong tea, because of the smokiness.)  A little tobacco lasts me a long time, however.  It will be a long time before I ever get bored with discovering new tobacco blends.

 

And just for good measure, although apropos of nothing, here’s an obligatory picture of Hilaire Belloc smoking a pipe and sporting a distinguished beard: