"I'm not playing for other musicians. We're trying to reach the guy who works all day and wants to spend a buck at night. We'll keep him happy."Nathaniel Coles was born in Montgomery, Alabama. His family moved to Chicago when he was still young. His father was a Baptist minister and his mother was the church organist, who first began teaching him music. He grew up heavily influenced by, and participating in, both the world of gospel music and the jazz-heavy atmosphere of early-20th-century Chicago.
"If I became a philosopher, if I have so keenly sought this fame for which I'm still waiting, it's all been to seduce women, basically."There is much that has been said of Sartre, so I'm not going to bother with any details here because you can easily read it elsewhere. He was born, and spent most of his life, in Paris, France. He was an--or perhaps, the--existentialist philosopher. He was also a novelist and playwright. And it's just about impossible to find a photo of him without a pipe in his mouth. Above we see a rather worried-looking Jean-Paul (but then, he was almost always worried-looking) smoking something in the Canadian family.
"Civilization has a relatively precarious hold upon us and there is an undoubted attraction in a life of absolute freedom once it has been tasted. The 'call of the wild' is in the blood of many of us and find its safety valve in nature."Percy Fawcett was born in Torquay, Devon, England. He served in the Royal Artillery beginning in 1886 and in 1901 joined the Royal Geographic Society to study surveying and mapmaking. In 1906, at the urging of the president of the RGS, he began exploring South America. He found the terrain to be dangerous, the native wildlife to be dangerous, the weather to be dangerous, and the native people to be...dangerous.
December 30 of 1913That must have been a fairly capacious pipe. The .32 ACP and .32 S&W are both nearly an inch long, and the old .32 rimfire is over an inch long. In any case, I think we can safely draw the conclusion from this that one should not store one's ammunition and pipe tobacco together.
Isaac Bishop of Eagle township in Ohio was loading his clay pipe with tobacco after a very fine meal that his wife had prepared. Now the lights were kind of dim and he was reclining in his chair and he didn't notice that not only did he load tobacco, but he also loaded a 32 caliber cartridge into his pipe. He then brought the match to the pipe and of course the bullet went off and went through his cheek. He ended up with a scar on his left cheek for the rest of his life.
Let your boat of life be light, packed with only what you need - a homely home and simple pleasures, one or two friends, worth the name, someone to love and someone to love you, a cat, a dog, and a pipe or two, enough to eat and enough to wear, and a little more than enough to drink; for thirst is a dangerous thing.’
—Jerome K. Jerome, from Three Men in a Boat (1889)
THE MARRIAGE OF THE ARTSFrom Chamber's Book of Days. Thanks to Brer via email.
On Sunday, the 26I of August 1621, a comedy, entitled Technogamia, or the Marriage of the Arts, written by Barton Holiday, M. A., of Christ’s Church, Oxford, was performed by students of the same college, before James I at Woodstock. As a typical specimen of the allegorical piece of the olden time, this drama is not unworthy of notice. The dramatis personæ; consist of Polites, a magistrate; Physica, and her daughter Astronomia; Ethicus, with his wife Economa; Geographicus, a traveller, with his servant Phantastes; Logicus, and his servant Phlegmaticus; Grammaticus, a schoolmaster, and his usher Choler; Poeta, and his servant Melancholia; Medicus, and his servant Sanguis; Historia; Rhetorica; Geometres; Arithmetica; Musica; Causidicus; Magus, and his wife Astrologia; Physiognomus and Cheiromantes, two cheating gipsies. All these are attired in goodly and appropriate fashion. Astronomia, for instance, wearing ‘white gloves and pumps, an azure gown, and a mantle seeded with stars; on her head a tiara, bearing on the front the seven stars, and behind stars promiscuously; on the right side, the sun; on the left, the moon.’ Astronomia is the brilliant heroine of the play--the heaven to which Geographicus aspires to travel, of which Geometres endeavours to take the measure, in which Poeta desires to repose. On the other hand, Arithmetica has a more natural passion for Geometres, and Historia anxiously wishes to be united to Poeta. Grammaticus, in an amorous mood, solicits Rhetorica, whose flowers bloom only for Logicus.
These conflicting attachments cause great confusion in the commonwealth of learning; each of the enamoured personages endeavouring to obtain the object of his or her affections. Polites assists Geographicus; Magus employs his occult art in favour of Geometres; while the Nine Muses, as in duty bound, assist Poeta. Polites can with difficulty keep the peace. The gipsies, Physiognomus and Cheiromantes, pick Poeta’s pocket, but find nothing therein but a copy of Anacreon and a manuscript translation of Horace. Physiognomus is appropriately branded on the face, that all men may know him to be a rogue; and Cheiromantes receives the same punishment on the hand; and the two, with Magus and Astrologia, who had attempted to strangle Astronomia, are justly banished the commonwealth of the Sciences. Then Geographicus, discharging his servant Phantastes, marries Astronomia; Grammaticus espouses Rhetorica; Melancholia obtains the hand of Musica, and takes Phantastes into his service; Logicus, old and heartless, being left without a mate, becomes an assistant to Polites; and thus peace and harmony is restored among the Sciences. There is considerable ingenuity displayed in the invention of this plot, the dialogue is witty, and the professors of the sciences represented are humorously satirised.
One would have supposed, that the pedantic spirit of James would have been delighted with this production, but such was not the case. Anthony h Wood tells us that the king ‘offered several times to withdraw, but being persuaded by some of those that were near him to have patience till it were ended, lest the young men should be discouraged, [he] adventured it, though much against his will.’ And the Cambridge students, pleased that the Oxford drama did not interest the king, produced the following epigram:
‘At Christ-church marriage, played before the king, Lest these learned mates should want an offering, The king, himself, did offer--What, I pray? He offered twice or thrice to go away.’
It is not difficult to perceive what it was that displeased the king. Phlegmaticus was dressed ‘in a pale russet suit, on the hack whereof was represented one filling a pipe of tobacco, his hat beset round about with tobacco-pipes, with a can of drink hanging at his girdle.’ He entered, exclaiming: ‘Fore Jove, most meteorological tobacco! Pure Indian! not a jot sophisticated; a tobacco-pipe is the chimney of perpetual hospitality. Fore Jove, most metropolitan tobacco.’ And then, rather unphlegmatically, he broke out into the following song:
Tobacco’s a Musician,
And in a pipe delighteth;
It descends in a close,
Through the organs of the nose,
With a relish that inviteth.
This makes me sing, So ho, so ho, boys,
Ho, boys, sound I loudly;
Earth ne’er did breed
Such a jovial weed,
Whereof to boast so proudly.
Tobacco is a Lawyer,
His pipes do love long cases;
When our brains it enters,
Our feet do make indentures;
While we seal with stamping paces,
This makes me sing, &c.
Tobacco’s a Physician,
Good both for sound and sickly;
‘Tis a hot perfume,
That expels cold rheum,
And makes it flow down quickly.
This makes me sing, &c.
Tobacco is a Traveller,
Come from the Indies hither;
It passed sea and land,
Ere it came to my hand,
And ‘scaped the wind and weather,
This makes me sing, &c.
Tobacco is a Critic,
That still old paper turneth,
Whose labour and care,
Is as smoke in the air,
That ascends from a rag when it burneth.
This makes me sing, &c.
Tobacco’s an Ignis-fatuus,
A fat and fiery vapour,
That leads men about,
Till the fire be out,
Consuming like a taper.
This makes me sing, &c.
Tobacco is a Whiffler,
And cries huff snuff with fury,
His pipe’s his club and link,
He’s the wiser that does drink;
Thus armed I fear not a fury.
This makes me sing, So ho, so ho, boys,
Ho, boys, sound I loudly;
Earth ne’er did breed
Such a jovial weed,
Whereof to boast so proudly.
The royal author of the Counterblast to Tobacco must have felt himself insulted by such a song. Ben Jenson was wiser, when, in his Gipsies’ Meta-morphosis, he abused ‘the devil’s own weed,’ in language totally unpresentable at the present day; and the delighted monarch ordered the filthy, slangy, low play, to be performed three several times in his kingly presence.
“I believe that many who find that ‘nothing happens’ when they sit down, or kneel down, to a book of devotion, would find that the heart sings unbidden while they are working their way through a tough bit of theology with a pipe in their teeth and a pencil in their hand.”
--C.S. Lewis
There are two kinds of truth: the truth that lights the way and the truth that warms the heart. The first of these is science, and the second is art. Neither is independent of the other or more important than the other. Without art science would be as useless as a pair of high forceps in the hands of a plumber. Without science art would become a crude mess of folklore and emotional quackery. The truth of art keeps science from becoming inhuman, and the truth of science keeps art from becoming ridiculous.
--- Raymond Chandler, ”Great Thought” (19 February 1938), published in The Notebooks of Raymond Chandler (1976)
