Dwelling in the Land of Pipe Smokers: Part I

(This is the first part in a four-part series on one of my favorite hobbies: pipe smoking. Enjoy.)

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The year was 2002, if memory serves, and I was on the cusp of a journey to a wonderful land. It is a land sparsely populated with wise, thoughtful people, a group whose number I gladly joined and among whom I've dwelt ever since. It is the Land of Pipe Smokers.
My father and I had taken my grandmother on a field trip to her home. She was living in an "assisted living center" at the time, and we thought a trip to the old home place would be just what the doctor prescribed. The validity of our observations I will not discuss, except to reference the old saying: "You can never go home."
As she was in another room with my dad, going through closets and drawers, searching for happier days, I was rummaging through a dresser drawer full of things long forgotten. In that drawer, I found a pipe that had belonged to my grandfather. He had been a pipe smoker in his earlier days; I remember cans of Sir Walter Raleigh sitting around their house. I pocketed the pipe with little else planned except to take possession of a missing part of my past.
The pipe sat around for a number of weeks. I noticed a faint voice occasionally calling to me from the direction of my grandpa's old pipe. I didn't understand the language of pipes then, but intuition told me it wanted to be smoked. Not knowing what else to do, I went to Walgreen's and purchased a pouch of Captain Black.
My initial pipe experience was like many initial experiences that later prove to be enjoyable: it was fraught with mistakes and unpleasantness, rooted in ignorance. Undaunted, I set out to educate myself on the wisdom of pipes and pipe smoking.
(Pictured: Peterson Aran 80S, Shape: Bent Rhodesian; one of my collection)
To be continued...

A Shaving Pilgrimage

Being a male in these times, one has to be familiar with the act of shaving. The vogueness of beards comes and goes in various forms, but shaving has become an essential part of manhood, like it or not. It is a huge industry, with companies trying to separate men from their hard-earned dollars by offering the latest and greatest in shaving implements, usually overpriced multi-bladed razors promising to shave closer and closer and closer yet.

There have been some advances in shaving that have improved the lot of those cursed with unwanted facial hair. The modern safety razor is one. The disposable razor is the most prominent member in that class, but disposability doesn't add anything to the usefulness or benefit of the modern razor. There are still sharp razors out there, ready to do a good job for those who aren't quickly taken in by the latest shaving gimmick or innovation.

When I was a junior in college, I moved into an on-campus apartment with my friend, John. In a local store, I saw and was mesmerized by an Old Spice shaving mug/brush set. To that point in my lifetime, shaving creams had ruled and the mug/brush was an archaic throwback, yet I was taken in completely. There were benefits, I learned, to shaving with a mug and brush. You can make the lather hot with hot water, and that makes for a more pleasant, smoother shave. So I bought the mug and began my journey of shaving with a mug and brush.

Much to my dismay, the Old Spice mug and brush didn't last. The mug broke and was replaced by a coffee cup. The brush eventually gave out, too, and was replaced over and over again through the years. I now have a coffee cup I've been using for quite some time. The brushes, while not common, are not hard to find. Online, the array is astonishing, and a simple version can be found at virtually any Walgreen's or CVS. I haven't purchased a can of shaving cream for nearly 30 years. I take a bar of soap, usually one of the glycerine types with a pleasant aroma, carve it down to fit in my mug, and that works just fine. I like the way the foam rinses out of my razor, not clogging it up like shaving creams tend to do. I like the feeling of the warm suds, as opposed to the coldness of a can of shaving cream. On the whole, I find it's a much more pleasant experience. I will most likely never go back to shaving creams. As long as a boar- or badger-bristle brush is available, I'll have my mug or a version of it at the ready.

Razors have changed much more than the foamy side of the equation. Going from the straight-edge razor to the ever-increasing array of blades mounted in today's razors seems a quantum leap of sorts, yet the practical improvements have been much more subtle. To be able to shave without cutting oneself to ribbons is a plus, but this has been possible for many years. In my judgement, little has improved in razor technology since the Gillette Good News, one of the first twin-bladed disposable razors, came on the market in 1976. The Good News arguably remains one of the best razors on the market and has changed very little since it's advent. Practically every disposable razor out there will trace its roots to the Good News.

So, if you shave (your face) regularly, think of changing up your game. Get a brush and see how you like it. You just may find yourself smitten.

Foolishness?

There's a verse in I Corinthians (1:18, to be exact) that reads, "For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God." 

This is full of meaning--practical meaning--and truth. We that not only consider ourselves believers but have allowed the gospel to fill and shape our lives understand what it means. Yet the concept of the cross, of its sacrifice and of the power of that sacrifice and of the resurrection, sound like a silly tale to many people. The notion of such a thing is strange to some people because they don't acknowledge the need for such an event. To believers, it's not silly. To believers, the crucifixion and the resurrection are God's greatest work, and, according to scriptures, it's something that He planned from the beginning of time.

Reflecting on this fills me with an awe and wonder that I cannot describe. God's power, focused on one moment in time, accomplished a feat that could be accomplished in no other way. It's magnitude is not lost on me. This event will continue to cascade throughout time and eternity and will never be eclipsed, never overshadowed, by any other thing. There is nothing else that will ever command the awe and wonder that the cross commands, and those who fail to bow to its purpose will spend eternity regretting that decision.

Phillips, Craig and Dean recorded a song, "Crucified with Christ", that codifies this feeling for myself and many others. It testifies to the awe-inspiring work found in the cross and the desire it creates in believers to sacrifice our own lives daily, not on a Roman cross, but in relinquishing our will to see His will done.

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 As I look back on what I thought was living
I'm amazed at the price I chose to pay
And to think I ignored what really mattered
'Cause I thought the sacrifice would be too great
But when I finally reached the point of giving in
I found the cross was calling even then
And even though it took dying to survive
I've never felt so much alive.

For I am crucified with Christ and yet I live
Not I but Christ that lives within me
His Cross will never ask for more than I can give
For its not my strength but His
There's no greater sacrifice
For I am crucified with Christ

and yet I live

As I hear the Savior call for daily dying
I will bow beneath the weight of Calvary
Let my hands surrender to His piercing purpose
That holds me to the cross yet sets me free
I will glory in the power of the cross
The things I thought were gain I count as loss
And with His suffering I identify
And by His resurrection power I am alive

And I will offer all I have
So that His cross is not in vain
For I found to live is Christ
And to die is truly gain

© 1995 by Randy Phillips, Denise Phillips, Dave Clark and Don Koch. From the Phillips, Craig and Dean album, "Trust".

Slipping into the Unknown

Some years ago, I was working my way through the application process for a police department. Part of the process was to submit to a polygraph ("lie detector") test. Anyone who has done this can tell you that it is a nerve-wracking thing, even if you have nothing to hide. There is the fear of a response being read as a false positive, i.e., it says you are lying when you are not. After I was done, the examiner unexpectedly told me that I had done OK (They normally aren't supposed to tell you anything about how the test was read). I asked him, "In your experience, why would I be so nervous about taking this test when I have nothing to hide?" He said, "It's the fear of the unknown."

Fear of the unknown. It's a strange force, even for those of us who consider ourselves well-adjusted and remarkably sane. We envision scenarios, wildly implausible, yet we take that .00001% chance of occurrence and rework the decimal point and the zeros so that it is plausible enough that we should spend long hours worrying about it.

We long to know the future. We covet the ability to read others thoughts and feelings. We wish for abilities beyond our reach. All of this we do out of our fear of the unknown.

We can't escape the unknown. Until we achieve omniscience, the unknown will continue to surround us. We hold the candle of our knowledge high above our head, yet it only casts its light in a small circle, creating a much larger area of darkness outside, a darkness stretching to infinity.

If this is true, then our fear of the unknown is very irrational. We can't know everything, so why be fearful? Frankly, I believe that God's generosity extends even to this. Some day, we'll see and fully understand that our limits were to protect us, sort of like a play-pen, creating limits and keeping those things that would harm us at a safe distance.

Thank you, Lord, for that play-pen.

 

Some Lessons Learned

There are always lessons in life, put there for our benefit, which we can either ignore or benefit from. Sometimes, we learn from them but have a hard time retaining that knowledge and repeat them again and again. Sometimes, we refuse to learn the lessons and they are repeated again and again until either a cleft is formed in our thick skulls or we move on into the next life, having learned nothing.

As I wander through life, I try to learn and try and apply that knowledge in making my life, the lives of my family and friends, and the world in general, better. The operative "try to" should not be overlooked. I succeed. I fail.

At the moment, I am nearing the end of a project that has spanned the last several months. Our church has done some extensive remodeling that has encompassed the better part of the last year. Part of that renovation has been the replacement of the sound system, much of which has fallen to me as the resident "expert". I built a sound booth, from design to brushing on the lacquer topcoat. I am presently wiring the sanctuary for the new sound system. I will, in the next week, help another man finalize the installation. This, not being my day job, has taken virtually all of my free time during this period. I'll be glad to see it done. It has been rewarding, but also taxing. I'm ready for a break.

I've reflected on lessons I've learned in this project and others like it. I'd like to share those here:

1. Do the best work you can do, no matter what the job. - It's always easy to slacken when you think no one will notice or you think the outcome doesn't matter. I've been tempted on many occasions to take short cuts. Resist the urge. Give it your absolute best effort. Push your abilities to and beyond their limits. When you get to the edge, create a new threshold that makes you a better person and hones a new edge to your skills.
2. Realize that doing your best work takes more time and more effort. - There is a direct relationship between the quality of a job and the time it takes to do it. Time is one of the primary costs in doing a job well. Unfortunately, we don't always have the luxury of factoring that into our work. Forced deadlines rob us of the ability to do a better job and to do our best work. We should see time as a constraint in the same way we see our abilities and cost as a constraint. Do the best job you can, within your ability and the time available and the constraints of cost. Laziness is the worst enemy of quality work, so banish laziness from everything you do.
3. Let doing a job well be its own reward. - We're often tempted to let someone in on everything we put into a project to make it happen the way it did. We don't want our hard work and our attention to details to be wasted and unnoticed. Fishing for compliments or saying, "Look how hard I worked" can make us look small and insecure, or worse, can make us look like someone whose primary purpose for existence is self-promotion. Resist the urge to toot your own horn so loudly. Keep those little jewels in a chest that only you have the key to. In the sound booth project, I discovered that a previous contractor or worker had taken some shortcuts in wiring a bathroom in an earlier remodel. This was, most likely, because of laziness, but definitely reflected a rather low standard of what "a job well-done" means. I corrected the problem, making it as it should have been done in the first place. My goal is to keep that to myself, not to publicize it in such a way as to malign the other fellow's character or to puff mine up in any way (other than sharing it in this venue, which no one reads anyhow).
4. Don't be afraid to share credit or glory with someone else to see the best job done. - Initially, I had anticipated being in the lead of the whole process, including the design of the sound system itself. However, the Powers-That-Be decided to bring in a consultant to recommend what equipment we should have and how it should be installed. At first, my feelings were bruised, however, I soon realized that we just may get better equipment through this consultant than we would if I were doing the design (I would have been tempted toward frugality for the benefit of the church). As it is, I was correct. The overall quality of the install has been improved by having this fellow come in and steal my thunder. I have also seen that I have still had input and my opinions have been taken into consideration throughout the project. It was silly and childish to take offense in the first place.

So there you are: pearls of wisdom I've harvested from the Oyster of Life, and all of this at no charge to you.

Arresting Sonic Assault

I love live music. In my lifetime, I've seen a varied assortment of different artists performing live, from novice to professional, from unknown to the biggest of touring acts. Live music has a unique dynamic, a power that is unique and is absent in facsimiles. In other words, you record the same performance and it wouldn't seem nearly as good later as it did at the moment. Therefore, I consider live music to possess an element that makes it appealing, but only if you are there to experience the moment itself.

I've listened to concerts in churches and in bars, in coffee shops and in the most massive of football stadiums. I still enjoy live music, though my years increase, and I don't anticipate that changing any time soon. However, in spite of my fondness, I find one large flaw in the system, and if possible, I'd make it my mission to change that one thing.
Rock music is my favorite genre. I've never grown out of it. I like some classical music, some country music, and bits and pieces of other genres, but rock music has remained my favorite. I grew up loving what is now termed "classic rock", but at that time was just "rock". "Alternative rock" is basically a more edgy, classic rock without the obligatory guitar solos. This fondness has driven me to the concerts of my favorite artists over the years and I find one commonality among all of them.
Live rock music is too loud.

It's not my age that speaks either. I've always felt that way. I've never felt that it was cool because it was loud. I consider enduring a concert that is too loud torturous, even to the point that I've begun taking ear plugs to shows and discreetly inserting them before the first chords blast out.

Not only is it too loud, but as a result of being so overdriven, it is thoroughly distorted. What assaults your ears is an accurate representation of what is being performed in the same way that a faxed photograph is an accurate representation of the original photograph. Distortion and the limitations of fax machines turn the infinite shades of black, white and gray to black or white with nothing in between.

I don't understand when or why it became this way either. It seems contrary to what musicians would strive for. If you labor for months and months, consuming hundreds of thousands of dollars--yea, even millions--to produce an album of original compositions or arrangements, perfecting every measure, why would you be less diligent in rendering it live? I realize that the volume and distortion is desirable in some cases to cover for sloppiness in how songs are played and sung, knowing that between the guitar or microphone and the speaker, the signal will be ground into an audio sausage that is mostly fat with little meat. Yet there are performers out there, always as spot-on in their performances as they are in the studio (i.e., Rush--one of my favorites), who succumb to the trap of playing music at those volumes. I blame it, not on the artists, but on the FOH (front of house) engineers--the "sound men".

I've always wanted to own and manage a music complex, a place where new artists are encouraged and equipped and where young talent can be given an opportunity to be heard. Part of that dream would be to build a venue that would render live music in a less overwhelming fashion. Levels would be loud, but not painfully so. The goal would be undistorted, clean live sound. Who knows how that would go over, but I'd like to try.

One idea, not my own, is to use a more distributed sound model where speakers are distributed around the venue instead of piled up at the front of the venue. I've read on the subject though, and the problem is not as simply defined as a speaker placement that forces FOH engineers to pump up the volume to fill the venue. There are many inputs feeding the problem, making it far to complex to be solved by moving some speakers around.

Yet the problem remains unsolved and it seems there are few out there who are interested in offering input. I find that even more a challenge. Were my dream to come true, were that music complex to materialize, I would be poised to break new ground that would--I think--revolutionize the music industry as we know it.

Dream on, right?

Admitting Fault

There are things we cannot do. These aren't things that are physically impossible, beyond the boundaries of physical frame. They aren't things beyond the processing power of our minds, nor are they things we cannot understand. They are things that our body and our mind will not allow us to do.
Self-preservation is a very powerful natural instinct. By now, everyone knows the story of Aron Ralston, the hiker that hacked his own arm off when it became lodged beneath a boulder. When hearing this story for the first time, most of us marvel at how a person could do this. The instinct to protect ourselves prevents us from cutting off our own limbs, even staring at certain death. Many also have an intense fear of pain, and for them it might be preferential to starve to death at the bottom of a chasm than to cut off an arm.

We have other instincts of self-preservation, evidence of which we've seen in more movies than 127 Hours. Finding fault in ourselves, in our own actions, seems to be as strongly against our nature as turning a Swiss Army knife on our own flesh. Refusing to criticize our own actions has few noble motivations though, and its results tend more toward self-destruction than self-preservation.
One thing we tell ourselves is that no one cares for us as much as we care for us. We're convinced that even those who are closest to us, when the chips are down, will look out for themselves first, us second.

I remain convinced that every human soul longs for one thing: to know that there is at least one person who loves them more than anything. Ultimately, I think there are few of us that see this realized. We may find someone that will love us, but the shadow of self-interest always lingers on the periphery of the relationship, sometimes spilling over into its confines. Why is it so hard to put ourselves second?

One reason it's so hard to admit fault is that we refuse to acknowledge reality. We're all broken. We're all sinners, and we never get over that in this life. We can struggle against the current of self interest and make small gains in overcoming it, but more often we prefer to tread water and be swept downstream with everyone else. When we can overcome this flaw, it's a beautiful thing. Seeing people seek what's best for others without any personal gain is also a strange thing. It stands out in normal, everyday life, glistening. Some see it and are dumbstruck because it looks so strange, unfamiliar. Others are afraid of it and their fear of the unknown keeps them from venturing into that strange land of selflessness.

Even if you don't have the strength to fight for long, turn and paddle upstream for a while. Freak people out by performing an act for which you gain nothing and in fact may be giving up something for someone else. If someone does something nice for you, pay it forward.

The other day, I was in QT, getting a couple hot dogs and a drink for lunch. At the drink counter, I saw two plain-clothes police officers, getting drinks and perhaps a hot dog or two for themselves. I immediately thought to myself that I'd pay for their stuff along with my own, as an anonymous gift of appreciation ("No names, please."). I stepped up to the counter behind them and was about to make my move when three or four other people stepped into the line behind me. I chickened out. My fear of what those behind me might think disabled me, I'm ashamed to say.

I need to think differently, I suppose, about how good actions might be perceived by others. I need to think more like a Liberty Mutual commercial. Watch these:

Commercial #1
Commercial #2