I recently got a link to this posting via my Google Alert that I've got set up for mentions of newly-index postings of "meerschaum": 

Every morning he smokes a pipe, and this is a sight to behold. In a city where new smoking-ordinances have outlawed the leaf that financed early-America (tobacco leaves are indeed carved in columns on the Capitol building) in bars, restaurants and offices, the old man stands out as a counter culture relic. His age is defies death already; his pipe dares it. If I weren't so chicken of dying an early death of some sort of cancerous suffocation, I would join him. I would break out my Meerschaum pipe, as white as that old man's hair and purchased (with the help of a more barter-savvy friend) in Turkey's Grand Bazaar. I'd watch the beautiful purples of morning turn to gold while breathing in the taste of Virginia's soil. I would warm my hands with the bowl of my pipe and watch the many flavored residents of Washington DC walk hurried and harried to work.

The writing and observations in most of this post were quite enjoyable. I do, however, have to take exceptions to this blogger's insistence on lumping all smoking in with the dangers of cigarette smoking. They describe themselves as a social smoker which I would agree is definitely better than being an addict huffing tobacco through his "sissy-stick" (cigarette) in an attempt to get their nicotine fix.

Responsible pipe smokers, and cigar smokers for that matter, are not addicts, nor does their action significantly shorten their lives like regular cigarette smoking does. Quite the opposite, the infamous 1964 Surgeon General's report on smoking included statements that pipe smokers tended to live longer than the general population. An update of this report issued in 1979 indicated that perhaps pipe smoking increased the mortality ratio fractionally when compared to non-smokers except for "light" smokers (4 or fewer bowls a day) who had a lower mortality rate than non-smokers.

But back to the post at hand... Very nice slice of life writing but while they seem to be warning against too much PC in the tone of the posting, I would strongly recommend that responsible pipe/cigar smokers not perpetuate the blurring of the line between their passion and the evil and dangers of cigarette addiction that non-smokers tend to confuse. We should all know better!