Guess the pipe smoker -

[Kashmir]

JRR Tolkien. CS Lewis and fellow novelist Tolkien were close friends. Both authors served on the English faculty at Oxford University, and both were active in the informal Oxford literary group known as the "Inklings". Here's a real nice photo of the Father of the Hobbits. Note: Read the smoke rings. Get it?

 

[the rev]

...I've recently been plowing through William L. Shirer's magnum opus The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.

Yup...I know it well—a superb work. In fact, I plan to read it again soon.

I'm currently devouring William Manchester's The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill...my second time for the first two volumes, which is why much of this stuff is fresh in my mind. The third and final volume (completed by Paul Reid at the request of his mentor, Mr. Manchester, who was unable to finish the work before his death) wasn't published until 2012. November. So, I'm going back to the beginning to get the full flavor of the work before I dive into Volume 3 for the first time.

I swear...the doggone book reads like a novel, and it's all the more gripping because it's actual history. It whitewashes nothing, revealing Churchill and his contemporaries with all their warts, as well as their more positive attributes. The author's research is unimpeachable. In fact, in Volume 2 (Alone 1932-1940) he often cites William L. Shirer, who was a correspondent for Universal News Service and CBS in the prewar years. and remained a CBS correspondent throughout the war.

I must say that it is always a pleasure to find a weed brothah who appreciates the value and importance of history. As George Santayana wrote, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

Alas, I haven't found any evidence that Santayana was a pipe smoker. :mrgreen:

:joker:

I have to admit I am a non violence advocating Gandhi ite, but... I loved this book, and loved Churchill because of it

rev

 

[Kashmir]

Thank the good Lord above for Winston Churchill. On the hallowed ground of our collective memory he walks.

 

[the rev]

this is an easy one, but at least he aint another dead white man

and man can this guy play

rev

 

[Vito]

this is an easy one, but at least he aint another dead white man

...

and man can this guy play

rev

Yeah, that's easy, rev. Albert King. You beat me to it, bro'. :mrgreen:

:joker:

 

[Vito]

JRR Tolkien.

Huzzah! :cheers:

...I have to admit I am a non violence advocating Gandhi ite, but... I loved this book, and loved Churchill because of it

rev

I too consider myself to be a non-violent man. But as you well know from reading The Last Lion, Brothah rev, Churchill was not the warmonger he has unjustly been accused of being. In fact, quite the opposite is true. He did everything he could to prevent WW II, spending nearly 10 years in the political wilderness warning that the stupidities of the Versailles treaty had laid the foundation for the next great war. No one listened.

Churchill-haters are enslaved to the myth that he hated Germans. It is utter nonsense. He hated Nazis…and especially their chief murderer, the Austrian corporal, Herr Hitler. Immediately after WW I, Churchill proposed abundant humanitarian aid for the starving Germans. His political opponents rejected any such notion.

He alone identified the Nazi threat. At every juncture — the occupation of the Rhineland, the Anschluss in Austria, the rape of Czechoslovakia — he warned against the policy of appeasement started by Baldwin and continued to its ignominious end by Chamberlain. In each case, Hitler easily could have been stopped had Britain (and France, who had unquestionable military superiority) had the backbone to stand up to him.

But they didn’t. The ghastly memory of the slaughter in the trenches of WW I held them so terrified of any military action that “might” start another world war, they were incapable of recognizing those military actions that could have prevented one. And so, as the appeasers repeatedly rejected every chance of preventing the impending carnage when the price would be small, they dragged the world toward a much more catastrophic war by their refusal to honor their own pledges to Hitler's first victims. As Churchill said to Chamberlain after the sell-out of Czechoslovakia at Munich:

“You were given the choice between war and dishonor. You chose dishonor, and you will have war.”

That is exactly what happened. :x

:joker:

 

[Kashmir]

That's a great quote at the end Vito. And a good summary of Shirer's book. Amen. The question of when to use force - to prevent the use of much greater force later - is a central argument. One that I'm afraid many of today's leaders have not grasped.

 

[Brewdude]

this is an easy one, but at least he aint another dead white man

and man can this guy play

rev

One of my favorite blues pickers of all time.

Here's another of the great ones-

Cheers,

RR

 

[Kashmir]

Ah, Steve Ray Vaun. SRV. The man himself! Blues guitarist extraordinaire. RIP.

What's that, a Pete he's smoking? Wonder what blend(s) he smoked.

 

[Vito]

...Here's another of the great ones-

Cheers,

RR

I'm guessing it's Stevie Ray Vaughan...not because I recognize him, but because that looks like Fender's SRV Stratocaster he's playing. :mrgreen:

Update: Ah...I see that Brothah Kashmir nailed it while I was posting. :cheers:

:joker:

 

[the rev]

I saw him his last California gig, he opened for BB King, with John Lee Hooker and Joe Cocker, best show ever

rev

 

[Kashmir]

My favorite jazz bassist.

 

[Brewdude]

...Here's another of the great ones-

Cheers,

RR

I'm guessing it's Stevie Ray Vaughan...not because I recognize him, but because that looks like Fender's SRV Stratocaster he's playing. :mrgreen:

Update: Ah...I see that Brothah Kashmir nailed it while I was posting. :cheers:

:joker:

SVR, without a doubt. One of my influences.

And I'm given to understand he smoked Night Train (or was it Stonehaven?) in at least one of the pics of him smoking and picking.

And yes, that's a Pete.


Cheers,

RR

 

[Vito]

That's a great quote at the end Vito. And a good summary of Shirer's book. Amen. The question of when to use force - to prevent the use of much greater force later - is a central argument. One that I'm afraid many of today's leaders have not grasped.

Yup...it's the lesson that those who appease bullies STILL haven't learned. It's one of the great ironies of history...and perhaps more profoundly, of survival in general: Weakness invites predation. When carnivores stalk the herds, they look for those who are unable to defend themselves. One can excuse such predation in the non-human domain. After all, lions and wolves are only doing what they can to survive, and they serve a purpose by culling the weak and diseased from the gene pool.

But we humanoids are not lions or wolves...at least, there is no reason for us to be. Predation that requires the subjugation or destruction of other humans (whom we do not eat)—especially when it's the kind of senseless, wholesale slaughter practiced by the Third Reich—is a form of criminal bestiality that understands only the language of coercive force. You cannot reason with it. You can only make yourself strong enough to defend against it.

It was no less true in the advent years of WW II. Chamberlain was so deluded by his obsession with "peace at any cost" that he showed himself as a victim. He thought, "Hitler likes me." He was horribly mistaken. Hitler intensely disliked him.

In fact, Hitler resented Chamberlain's meddling with his ambitions in Czechoslovakia. Hitler wanted war; he wanted to flex the muscles of his new mechanized Wehrmacht in wiping Czechoslovakia off the map. Chamberlain's interference ultimately gave him the territory without a fight, but that frustrated his grand vision of himself as a Great Teutonic Warlord<img class="emojione" alt="" title=":tm:" title=":tm:" src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/emojione/assets/png/2122.png?v=2.2.7"/>. He ended up having to invent new pretexts for invading Prague, and for exterminating tens of thousands of non-combatants whose only "crimes" were that they were born Slavs or Jews.

So, far from preventing war, appeasement actually encouraged it. When Hitler set his sights on his next target (Poland), he was utterly determined not to allow the appeasers to prevent the war he so desperately wanted to wage. In August, 1939, he had explicitly spoken to Nevile Henderson (Chamberlain’s pro-Nazi ambassador to Berlin) of “annihilating Poland”. Halifax (Chamberlain’s Foreign Secretary) simply deleted that reference from the communiqué he subsequently reported.

Alas, that same mentality is alive and well today among those who would rather not face the truth. As Churchill observed:

“Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened."

:joker:

 

[Vito]

My favorite jazz bassist.

That one stumped me at first. There are so many great ones. But it has to be Ron Carter.

:joker:

 

[Kashmir]

Vito - Spot on! You're the master! And by the way I really enjoy reading your analysis on the steps that led to WWII. The post 911 world certainly is no less challenging than the one that led up to it. Piping promotes the thought process. Someone once wrote that without tobacco the Industrial Revolution would not have occurred, or would have done so at a much slower pace.

 

[Vito]

Vito - Spot on! You're the master! And by the way I really enjoy reading your analysis on the steps that led to WWII. The post 911 world certainly is no less challenging than the one that led up to it. Piping promotes the thought process. Someone once wrote that without tobacco the Industrial Revolution would not have occurred, or would have done so at a much slower pace.

Thanks for your kind reply, Brothah Kashmir. You do yourself far more credit for recognizing the truth when you see it than any commendation I can offer, but I commend you anyway. :mrgreen:

What you say about the role of tobacco in the history of the modern world is, sadly, an aspect of history that is being systematically purged by the anti-tobacco Nazis. The Nazi-esque mentality in all its manifestations has always promoted historical revisionism...by which I mean distortion, obscuration, and outright lying. The technique is still practiced today by apologists for the Third Reich and Soviet Bolshevism. For example, they attempt to obviate any need to exonerate villains like Hitler, Lenin, and Stalin of their crimes by denying that those crimes ever were committed in the first place.

Anyhow, that revisionist mentality is not limited to the political history of Europe and Asia. I discovered a similarly regrettable anti-tobacco revisionism some years ago when I was researching the history of Larus & Brother Tobacco Company of Richmond, makers of the original Edgeworth Extra High Grade Sliced Pipe Tobacco (EEHGS)...

...a favorite of mine in bygone days. It became extinct in 1974 — not to be confused with the (also now-extinct) European made counterfeit by the same name that was available some years ago. The more recent version still has its own fans, to be sure, and with good reason; with sufficient age it's a good smoke in its own right. But it never equaled the original.

At any rate, for a time I was motivated to research the manufacturing processes used for EEHGS and other now-extinct classic Burleyweedages, and I hit a bit of a brick wall in the process. As it turned out, there were incomplete historical records, and those that existed were not easily accessible.

And it wasn't confined to Larus & Bro. Co. Entire sections of Richmond that once contributed much to the economy and culture have been obliterated, and the cultural roots they replaced having been swept away into obscure historical archives, safe from the awareness of those to whom all things weedular are anathema.

Indeed, Virginia isn't the only place where much of the history of the tobacco industry and associated culture has been suppressed...presumably to protect our impressionable minds from the irresistibly corrupting influence of the evil weed. It's For The Children<img class="emojione" alt="" title=":tm:" title=":tm:" src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/emojione/assets/png/2122.png?v=2.2.7"/>, you know. :roll:

Ah, well...no doubt I'm preaching to the choir here, so 'nuff said.

:joker:

 

[monbla256]

To get things back to this threads subject, here's one for the Francophiles:

 

[Buckshot]

Christian and Luc Boltanski?

 

[monbla256]

Christian and Luc Boltanski?

VERY GOOD !!