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PSI Announces Contest No. 3!

In honor of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, whose Sherlock Holmes stories thrilled generations, take this quote from The Red-Headed League, “It is quite a three pipe problem, and I beg that you won’t speak to me for fifty minutes,” and in 25 words or less answer what the three pipe problems were: it can rhyme, be in verse, or a simple sentence.

. . . Such as, “My first problem was to find a match, Watson. I then had to find a striker and light this infernal wet tobacco.”

Above all be clever. You might even add a touch of Halloween to the quote: “Three pipes, boil and trouble, double cauldron turned my tongue to a burning pit and my brain to chaudron (with many apologies to Mr. W. Shakespeare).

Okay, you get the idea, I hope.

Remember, 25 words or less. Put your thinking caps on.

And good luck to all. This is a toughie! Quite apropos for Halloween, don’t you think?

Send all entries to editor@pipesmokersintelligencer.org

Deadline is Oct. 31.

Top five winners plus an honorable mention (if there is one) will receive your choice of an 8 oz tin of tobacco from Cornell & Diehl.

In your emails, please write in the subject line: “PSI Contest No. 3″. Also, please include your snail mail address to help me cut down on double duty work. All home addresses are considered proprietary, and will not be released to anyone but C&D!

Bob Runowski Wins Contest No. 2

Please see our “Contest” page to view winners and honorable mention for PSI’s Contest No. 2.

Congratulations to all winners, and we will deal another hand for the losers.

The Show, Ah, Um, Continues

All right, I know that I have been among the missing.

I can explain.

But first, this message: Be careful what you ask for, goes the old saw. Right? I begged to to make  trip to Richmond, Va., for this past weekend’s C.O.R.P.S. Pipe Show, the 25th edition. CORPS, of course, is the Conclave of Richmond Pipe Smokers.

I got what I asked for. And then some.

I have been to pipe shows before, but never anything like this. There are pipe shows, and then there is CORPS.

I promised to “blog” from the show. To offer up my wonderful photos (just kidding), and do all the good newsy stuff to keep you up to date from the show.

Well, we all know what happens to:

“The best-laid schemes o’ mice an ‘men
Gang aft agley,
An’lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,
For promis’d joy!”

As Robert Burns might say, which he did say.

Where was I. Oh, yes, the CORPS show. I want you to know that I was accosted there by a fellow who will go unmentioned for now, wanting to know why I had not kept my word about announcing the PSI Contest Winners before I left for the show.

A very good question. The short answer is, my desktop (ancient and held together with band aids, some Gorilla Glue, and bailing wire) quit. Right in the middle of the day. Kaput! Over! As I was about to leave for the show. The fellow in India, who cold not understand a word I said, and vice versa, was no help, except to mention that I needed a new computer since my present system was so out of date, the make was no longer in existence, nor any of its parts.

Oh, but I have a laptop, you say. Yes, but, ah, um, not every file that was on my desktop resides on my laptop.

And the very next problem is, that the CORPS show was so full of news, that I spent half the night Friday (after arriving on Friday afternoon) to all of the hectic day Saturday and much of Saturday night collecting stories. No time to write. Just scribble notes that I am having trouble deciphering right now.

I hope you will also notice that we have a new page, entitled appropriately enough, “Pipe Shows.”  That was originally intended to have a running tally of the latest news and photos from Richmond.

It will now. I will rotate in stories from the CORPS shows as well as photos, of which there are many, starting today, until I run out. So, check the Pipe Shows page often. Not only will I run the news from Lake Woebegone (oh, wrong place), the, uh, news from Richmond, but also news of other pipe shows in the future, and mayhaps from the the past.

Perhaps you will forgive an old reporter for taking so long to do the things I used to do in a blizzard of activity. Now, I’m down to a drizzle.

But, the Show Continues.

And, oh, yes, I have given all of our wonderful Pipe Contest Entries to our unimpeachable judging panel. The winners will be posted today!

That is a promise I can keep.

Cash Has ‘Clunked’ Us

I am somewhat behind on the states and their new laws governing smoking. But here is one that you need to read.

Maine has outlawed smoking outdoors! As of Sept. 12, 2009, smoking is prohibited “in an outdoor eating arena where food and drink is served to the public for consumption on the premises, 24 hours per day, 365 days a year.

You can read the Maine law here

The law includes “patios, decks, or other property that is partially enclosed or open to the sky.”

Imagine that? I wonder how long it will be before some politician wooing votes comes up with the idea to stop one from smoking on one’s own outdoor “deck, patio, that is partially enclosed or open to the sky?”

Check out the Maine law, and then write your Congressman to inform them that you are a pipesmoker whose rights are being trampled upon.

We are being taxed without representation in Congress. We are being punished by revenue-hungry politicians, who are pandering to the wingnuts of society, who are furthering their own causes on the backs of tobacco users.

This is a fight that all tobacco users must, must, take up!

Unless we combine our efforts to support our choices of smoking tobacco when we want, we are going to be pushed out of existence.

I fear the day is coming in which it will be against federal law to smoke in one’s home, or patio, or deck.

I for one am opposed to all federal legislation that takes away any of my rights established by the U.S. Constitution, as amended. Unless the Constitution is amended to prevent my ability to choose my own lifestyle, then I oppose any such legislation passed by pandering lawmakers, state or federal.

Ron Paul, who ran as a Libertarian in 1998 and as a Republican candidate in the 2008 presidential contest, was quoted in the Sept. 28, edition of Time Magazine on the loss of our rights.

Here is what this topnotch thinker, physician, and Congressman from Texas said: He was asked why he supports the legalization of marijuana: “Why support the criminalization of marijuana is the better question. First, I defend it because a free society allows people to make free choices, even dumb choices. And the problems we have with the war on drugs are a thousand times worse than the problems we have with drug over usage.”

Question: Why do you oppose the income tax?

Ron Paul: “Because I have a right to the fruits of my labor, and government does not. I f you concede the principle of the income tax, you concede the principle that the government owns all your income and permits you to keep a certain percentage of it. God-given rights to our life and our liberty don’t come from government.”

Friends and neighbors, these are basic rights provided to every citizen of America through that wonderful document, the U.S. Constitution. You have the right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Unfettered by any governing body.

My argument is that no governing body has authority over your rights of liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We elect politicians to do our work, for which they are handsomely rewarded. For me, all of them should be term-limited. The philosophy of “seniority,” has long-since passed into oblivion. Now, lobbyists handing out bags of money to politicians handle America’s business through legislation. The only thing to do with seniority is the longer you have been in Congress, the more lobbying money you can get. Money is governing your rights today, not your welfare.

You can check out the politicos who took wads of cash from the health-care industry, the health insurance industry, the anti-tobacco industry in the fight over tobacco use. It is outrageous. And many of those politicos who are defeated for re-election, turn to those same lobbying firms for employment and big-time paychecks to help those industries guide legislation through Congress to benefit Big-Medicine, Big Insurance and Big-Pharma, Big Anti.

You have to go back to the Robber Barons of the 19th century, the captains of industry and the railroads, who amassed personal fortunes through questionable business practices. It was a sorry time in America history, just as it is today when we hand out money to bail out Wall Street and the bankers, who got us into the Great Recession in the first place.

For their next act, our current run of politicians in Washington insulted the American public by a “cash for clunkers” scam to plug the Swiss cheese economic holes in the automobile industry, an industry that has been greedy, blind to public desires and blaming everyone but their shortsighteness.

Those big cash rebates were nothing more than a gimmick to get the unsuspecting in to the show rooms, and turn over the keys to a new car, a new car note, and taxes on the rebate. They giveth on one hand and taketh away on the other. Same old game.

If we don’t wake up, not only will tobacco be lost to those of us who enjoy our pipes and cigars and other forms of tobacco use. You might find that it is illegal to, say, enjoy a glass of wine or a mixed drink because that can lead to alcoholism, which can lead to more automobile wrecks, which can lead to death, which impacts the nation’s economy.

See where this can go?

My hope is that enough people will eventually awaken and take control of their lives, instead of leaving that up to local, state and federal governments.

I do not speak of revolution, but I fear we are headed in that direction unless Congress and other political elites awaken to the fact the very fabric of American life is being threatened.

Contest No. 2 Over, No. 3 Upcoming

Our second PSI Contest is over. It ended yesterday.

I apologize for the late notice, but I have been in the throes of computer problems. My desktop went on the fritz, right in the middle of work, and my laptop decided to get cranky, because the desktop was dead.

Multitasking is not for the faint of heart, I’m learning.

Okay. Contest No. 2 is history. Winners will be named soon, after our distinguished panel of experts wrestles with the many entries we received this time.

Your hard-working editor is researching a new, maybe an even more difficult contest for PSI Contest No. 3. You guys are pretty good and No. 2 seemed a little too easy. We had some really great entries.

It will get tougher, you betcha.

Winners and the honorable mention will be named before I leave for Richmond and the C.O.R.P.S. Pipe Show, Oct. 1. C.O.R.P.S stands for Conclave of Richmond Pipe Smokers. Wonderful bunch of fellows.

And just a note about that pipe show (one of the best in the nation). I will blog daily from the show, hopefully bringing you news and photos.

So, stay tuned. Tomorrow is another day, thankfully.