My W.O. Larsen's black sandblast and a Mark Tinsky's Clubstogie forum pipe. Photo by Richard Cordero.
I do like the two-fingers a pipe gives to people's concept of what smoking is. The pipe says smoking 'actually' is pretty cool and health issue's are being thrown around without any broad-minded bases.
There are two studies done that found pipe-smokers live longer than NON-smokers. The studies concluded that although there is still a risk of throat and mouth cancers from pipe-smoking, the pipe smoker in general was a meditative kind of person who spent a lot of time relaxing and was not prone to fast or dangerous lifestyles. Hence the end result with the statistics.
With the globalism, inter-connectedness and saturation of mass media and communications today, there is a much bigger pressure and tendency on us to conform to generic and politically correct opinions on all sorts of subjects and issues. We are 'informed' what is cool and not cool, what is to be 'middle-class', what is 'good' and 'bad'. As a man who has worked many years in media and advertising - it's all about selling bullshit.
I think the old saying, "It's not what you do, but how you do it that counts" applies very much to the pipe smoker.
To conclude, I think we could make the comparison with smoking today and the days of prohibition in the 1920's. Drinking was bad for people's health and the nations prosperity - so they banned it, but as time went by they realized it wasn't going to eradicate its consumption. Today the drinking of a fine glass of vintage wine is considered both good for your health and the height of cultural pursuit. Who knows how pipe smoking will be regarded in 50 years time...but I do know one thing...50 years on it will be the least of our problems on planet earth.
