Pipe Smoker Quick Fix: Walter Cronkite

Walter Cronkite as a student at the University of Texas in Austin.

Unpublished Raymond Chandler work discovered in Library of Congress

Unpublished Raymond Chandler work discovered in Library of Congress

An early, never-before-published work by crime novelist Raymond Chandler has been discovered in the Library of Congress in Washington.

The 48-page libretto to the comic opera The Princess and the Pedlar, with music by Julian Pascal, has hidden in plain sight at the library since its copyright was first registered on 29 August 1917.

The work, a copy of which was obtained by the Guardian, was found in March by Kim Cooper, shortly after she published her debut novel, The Kept Girl, featuring a fictionalised Chandler in 1929 Los Angeles.

Click for all the info and another great photo of Raymond Chandler with pipe.

Pipe smoker: Roy Hardesty

Joe Gillan and Roy Hardesty (with pipe) of the Texas Rangers, photographed in Mexia, Texas in 1923.  Thanks to Traces of Texas (Facebook link).

Pipe smoker: Nick Merfelder

click to enlarge

Nick Merfelder petting his dog in Fort Davis in 1896. Mr. Merfelder was born in Bavaria, immigrated to the United States as a young man, and eventually ended up in Fort Davis, Texas. He was the post's musician, barber, photographer, and justice of the peace.

Thanks to Traces of Texas (Facebook link).

Bottled History

Bottled History from Smith Journal on Vimeo.

A short film about pipe-smoking ship-in-a-bottle artist Ray Gascoigne.

30 Jean-Paul Sartre Quotes For Your Next Existential Crisis

30 Jean-Paul Sartre Quotes For Your Next Existential Crisis

From Russia Beyond the Headlines

Planet’s strongest shamans gather in Tuva for landmark festival.

Might not be pipe related, but it has a cool photo at the top.

Einstein's pipe

Albert Einstein's desk at Princeton University.  Photo taken a few hours after his death. From The Day Albert Einstein Died:  A Photographer's Story at Life Magazine.

Pipe smoker quick fix: Gimli

Or at least a character who certainly appears to be Gimli, by artist Adrian Smith.

Pipe Smoker: Joe Williams

Joe Williams (1918 - 1999)

Born Joseph Goreed in Cordele, Georia, his father abandoned his family when Joe was young so his mother moved them both in with her parents, then moved to Chicago alone and worked until she had saved enough money to bring Joe with her.  It was there that he was exposed to Chicago's thriving jazz scene and fell in love with the music.

As a teen he taught himself to play piano and formed a gospel quartet that sang at local church functions.  He later began singing solo with various local bands and began earning a little money.  At 16 he dropped out of school to pursue a career in music, at which time he adopted the last name of Williams as a stage name.

In 1938 he got his first break when jazz musician Jimmie Noone hired him to sing with his band.  He became more and more well-known, eventually being hired as a replacement singer for Lionel Hampton's band in 1942, but then lost that job when the regular singer returned.  But during his time with Hampton, his fame grew in leaps and bounds.

In 1954, he was hired as the male vocalist for the Count Basie Orchestra.  He stayed with Count Basie until 1961.

Williams continued to sing for numerous big names in jazz, and in the 1980s was cast in a recurring role as Grandpa Al Hanks (Heathcliff Huxtable's father-in-law) on The Cosby Show.

He was given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1983, next to Count Basie's star.



Links:
Wikipedia
YouTube
Allmusic.com
imdb
Discogs

Pipe Smoker quick fix: Samuel Clemens (again!)

Mark Twain and his dog.

Pipe Smoker: H. Beam Piper

Henry Beam Piper (1904 - 1964)

Apparently, on New Texas, killing a politician was not malum in se, and was mallum prohibitorum only to the extent that what happened to the politician was in excess of what he deserved.

--from Lone Star Planet (1958)

I don't know where to start.  H. Beam Piper was a mostly self-educated writer of science fiction short stories and novels.  His first publication was the short story "Time and Time Again" in 1947.  Common themes in his stories are that history always repeats itself; and the idea of the self-reliant man who does what needs to be done without first consulting with his "betters."

Piper committed suicide in 1964.  Although he left a note behind, he didn't make it clear as to why he killed himself.  Various theories have been postulated, of course.  At the time of his death, his writing career was blossoming greatly and in hindsight it seems that he would have eventually joined the ranks of other extremely famous and influential sci-fi writers such as Arthur C. Clarke and Robert Heinlein.

Many of his stories have become public domain and are available for reading at Project Gutenberg.

Links:
Wikipedia
The H. Beam Piper Memorial Website
Books by Piper, H. Beam at Project Gutenberg
"Time and Time Again" (mp3 file) from X Minus One (Old Time Radio Researchers Group at archive.org)

What Mark Twain may have sounded like

I have sometimes wondered how our perception of history would be different if the technology to record sounds had come about before the technology to record images. Because if that had happened, we would likely know how people from history sounded.

I have covered both William Gillette and Samuel Clemens as pipe smokers on this blog before. Here is a very interesting link between them.

Pipe Smoker (fictional): Professor Utonium

"Once again, I have no idea what I did!"

Professor Utonium is a fictional character from the Cartoon Network animated series The Powerpuff Girls.  He is a brilliant scientist and inventor who was attempting to create his own perfect daughters by combining sugar, spice and everything nice, but accidentally spilled a mystery ingredient known only as Chemical X into the mix and created three little girls with incredible super powers.

He is always working on new inventions, but most of them are either complete failures or have some great flaw.  The only inventions he has made that worked were created by accident.

He is a very affectionate and supportive father to his three girls.  He also is an excellent golfer.  He likes science, inventing things (or attempting to) and watching silent movies.  He dislikes liver and onions, profanity and spiders.  He also has a bad habit of lying but his lies always backfire on him, and he seems to be quite unlucky in romantic matters.

The Powerpuff Girls ran on Cartoon Network from 1998 through 2005.  The first season is currently available for streaming on Netflix.

Links:
Wikipedia
Powerpuff Girls Wiki

Pipe Smoker: Frank "Rocky" Fiegel

Frank "Rocky" Fiegel (1868 - 1947)

Frank Fiegel was a man from Chester, Illinois who was known for his great physical strength, his handiness in a fight, and his pipe smoking.

Chester, Illinois was also the hometown of Elzie Crisler Segar, the creator of Popeye.

Links:
Wikipedia
Popeye Wiki
Popeye Picnic
Cracked

Pipe Smoker: Andrew Jacobs Sr.

Andrew Jacobs (1906 - 1992)

Andrew Jacobs was a lawyer and judge from Indiana, who also served one term in the United States House of Representatives, being elected to the position in 1948.  This photo is from that year.

Links:
Wikipedia
Getty Images 1
Getty Images 2

Pipe Smoker (fictional): Reed Richards

Reed Richards is a fictional character from the Marvel Comics universe, created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, and first appeared in The Fantastic Four #1 in 1961.

Richards was the only son of physicist Nathaniel Richards and his wife, Evelyn.  Reed was a child prodigy, excelling in mathmatics, physics and mechanics, taking college-level courses when he was only 14.  While attending State University at Hegeman, NY, he became the room-mate of football star Benjamin Grimm.  Richards' dream was to someday build an interstellar spaceship, and Grimm joked that if Richards ever did, he would pilot it.  Later he and Grimm served in the military together.

While attending Columbia University, he rented a room in a boardinghouse owned by the aunt of Susan Storm, then only 12 years old.

Nathaniel Richards eventually mysteriously disappeared (but that's another story), but had made arrangements to bequeath Reed with two billion dollars, which Reed used to fund his spaceship project, in addition to getting funding from the government.  By the time he had finished it, Grimm had become an astronaut and test pilot, so Richards did indeed recruit him to pilot his new spaceship.  Richards decided to launch the ship on a test flight before government funding was withdrawn.  Susan Storm, now an adult, had joined him and was dating him at the time.  She insisted that she and her younger brother Johnny accompany them as passengers.  Benjamin Grimm was against the test flight, because he believed the the ship had inadequate shielding to protect them from cosmic radiation.

After the launch, an unexpected solar flare caused the Van Allen radiation belt to fill with intensely high levels of radiation, so they returned to Earth, but not before they had been exposed to the radiation.

And of course, that meant that they soon discovered they had super-powers.

Ben Grimm was the worst off, being essentially turned into a human rock and called himself the Thing.  Susan Storm gained the ability to become invisible and manipulate force fields and became the Invisible Woman.  Her brother Johnny was able to turn himself into a human torch and called himself the Human Torch.

Reed Richards became Mister Fantastic, with a body that now had super-stretch powers.  He called his new team of superheroes the Fantastic Four.  So there you go.

See also:  Professor Richard Impossible

Links:
Marvel Wiki
Wikipedia
imdb

Pipe Smoker: Amou Haji

I'll just let you read it for yourself.

Update:  more.

Pipe Smoker: Frank Belknap Long

 Frank Belknap Long (1901 - 1994)

Born in New York City, as a boy Long was interested in natural history and "weird" fiction by the likes of Edgar Allen Poe, Ambrose Bierce, Jules Verne and H.G. Wells.  As a teenager, he was active in the United Amateur Press Association as an amateur journalist.  He was pursuing the study of journalism in college but suffered a severe bout of appendicitis which rendered him hospitalized for a month and health complications resulting from a burst appendix brought him near death.  After recovering, he gave up on college to pursue a freelance writing career.

Long came to be a successful author of weird fiction, poetry, gothic romance, science fiction and other fiction genres as well as non-fiction.  He came to be one of the "Lovecraft Circle":  a friend and collaborator of Howard Phillips Lovecraft.

Frank Belknap Long goofing around with his friend, H.P. Lovecraft, above.

And a slightly more staid photo of Lovecraft and Long.  Unlike Lovecraft, Long lived a long (no wordplay intended) and productive life, with a bibliography that would be the envy of anyone.  He was awarded the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement in 1978, the Bram Stoker Award for Lifetime Achievement in 1987, and the First Fandom Hall of Fame Award in 1977.  However, like Lovecraft, he died impoverished and was at first buried in a cemetery for indigents, until friends and colleagues put together enough money to have him reinterred in a family plot not far from where Lovecraft's grandparents were buried.

Players of the role-playing game Call of Cthulhu may know him best as the creator of the monstrous Hounds of Tindalos.

Links:
Wikipedia
The Hounds of Tindalos at Too Much Horror Fiction
Summary Bibliography at isfdb
imdb

Pipe smoker quick fix: unknown Korean boatman, 1904

From this Flickr collection.