MANY LITERATE PEOPLE SMOKE PIPES

While at the bookstore one of the people there asked me where one could buy tobacco in this area. Well, there are extremely few places that have even halfway knowledgeable staff, as most "smoke shops" if they have anything tobacco-related at all specialize in cigars. Cigars are what pay the rent, salaries, and insurance. As well as special events.
I had put my pipe on the counter, which had prompted the question.

Note that about ten minutes before I entered the bookstore I had let the pipe go out, because one just doesn't step into a crowded business reeking of smoldering Virginia leaf.
It might offend a vegan.

So I told him. And also her. Because the woman next to him was curious too, and likewise indicated that she smoked a pipe occasionally. I also gave a short lecture, to the effect that Burley blends are soft but hit you in the jaw and gut because they have a tonne of nicotine. Virginias, like Tolkien and Sir Bertrand Russell prefered, are subtle and satisfying, if smoked slowly. Balkan blends -- think of William Faulkner and Clark Gable -- are complex and velvety, and trigger nearly every non-smoker for miles around.

[Virginias: largely pressed, and redolent of carotenoids. They should never be hot-boxed. Balkan blends: Latakia, which is smoke-cured, plus Turkish, on a basis of Virginia leaf. Rich and exciting. They smell like terpeneols. ]

And where can one smoke one's pipe?
Well, there's the problem.

William Cuthbert Faulkner (born September 25, 1897, passed away July 6, 1962) was one of America's most famous writers. He was often unnecessarily modest and self-effacing.
Among pipe-smokers he is lauded for being one of our most admirable fellows.

Sir Bertrand Russell was a Cambridge educated man, a well-known author and philosopher, and famous anti-imperialist enfant terrible, whose visage often graces an internet meme circulated by pipe-smokers; "I have a pipe therefore your argument is invalid."


Both men are Nobel laureates.


Good beans.



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