ARE THERE RULES OF ETIQUETTE THAT APPLY TO THE WAY A GENTLEMAN HOLDS HIS CIGAR

Lightnin Hopkins Smoking a Stogie

HOW A GENTLEMAN HOLDS HIS FINE CIGAR…

One of the reasons why I enjoy cigar culture is that it is one that embraces the novice taking time and patience to properly cultivate him.  if you have a question about cigars the best place to go is your local cigar bar or lounge where the main topic of discussion is always cigars.  During my brief experience with them I have discovered that cigar enthusiasts are some of the most knowledgeable about their art form and they love to share their wisdom with others. So I pulled up to one of my favorite cigar lounges on my motorcycle and after situating myself on the outdoor café I asked the question, “Is there a proper way that a gentleman should hold his cigar”?  Well everybody switched over from whatever side conversations they had to offer their opinions.  Based on how my peers opined it was amply clear why I gravitated toward the culture of cigars, they all agreed that there was no “Official” way in which to hold ones cigar and encouraged me to find the style that best suited me. 

A Vintage Diagram Showing How A Gentleman Might Hold A Cigar

Aside from the question of how a gentleman should hold his cigar which was suitably answered I was also eager to understand how I could get the most enjoyment out of my cigars.  I wanted to know more about everything, for instance, if the angle in which the cigar is held can affect its ability to evenly burn.  My question was answered amply suggestions that the cigar be held as level as possible, similar to the way it would sit in an ashtray but the most important factor appeared to be not the angle but the light and draw.  The general consensus was that a cigar when properly lit on an even plane will burn uniformly if drawn at regular intervals.  The cigar is a cylinder of tightly rolled tobacco leaves and a good cigar will be rolled evenly enough so that when the smoker draws or sucks air from the lit “foot” drawing smoke down to the “head” at his mouth the uniformly spaces leaves and air space between them will yield a perfectly uniform burn pattern.  In contrast, a cigar that is not evenly lit will burn more in none area of the cross section than another causing an uneven burn.  So while I am avidly discussing cigars with the other gentlemen around me I am also taking mental notes on how they hold their cigars and manipulate them whilst talking and sipping their fine whiskeys, brandies, scotches, gins, rums and such.  A cigar is a relatively small object but while one is smoking it one is continually conscious of its angle and location with respect to everything else in the immediate environment.

The Anatomy of A Cigar.  Two Common Cigar Shapes

The anatomy of the cigar is quite simple; the foot is usually but not always the cut open end of the cigar and the head is the rounded or truncated closed end that must be cut.  The smoker brings the head to his mouth to draw from so it’s easy to remember the smoker brings the head of the cigar to his head positioning the lit foot away from his face. One of the other factors that affects the way a cigar will burn is its gauge.  The diameter of a cigar is measured with a ring gauge varying from the smallest gauge of 24 to 64 and above.  The largest gauges will have a cooler, slower burn and of course the smallest gauges will burn much hotter and faster. 

A Dandy Smoking His Cigar Around The Turn Of the 19th Century

So I focused on how to properly cut the cigar, watching countless videos on the subject matter on YouTube.  As I built my expertise in the art of smoking cigars during my first year I began to acquire many different tools of the trade, the most important of which was the cutter.  There are many different types of cigar cutters but none of them can be any effective use until the smoker develops an understanding of how the way he cuts a cigar will affect the way it draws and burns.  So I bought a large selection of very differently shaped cigars and experimented with various cuts to see how it would affect the draw.  Not surprisingly the way I cut the cigar totally affected the way it burned and drew.  Most Americans prefer the higher ring gauges and it is with these broader cross sections that proper cutting pays off.  

A wide-gauged cigar such as a 50 or 64 gauge if not evenly lit can begin to burn on one side or in one area of the cross section where the draw brings the most oxygen to the fire.  When a cigar burns unevenly in this manner I call it “channeling” since it burns along an isolated channel or air flow pocket of the cigar.  If you see that your cigar is channeling you can re-cut the foot and re-cut the head so that you can draw more oxygen into the cigar evenly across its width.  There are many tricks of the trade and while many of them can be learned simply by hanging out with experienced and knowledgeable cigar enthusiasts there is always the fun of discovery through trial and error.  In the cigar realm however trial and error can be an expensive tuition since the cost of most cigars is at least $10.00.

A Ring Gauge Used to Determine Cigar Size

Holding his cigar is a gentleman’s unique signature, he can choose many different styles but whilst he smokes he should always be conscious of the manner in which his cigar is burning.  Most gentlemen actually rotate their cigar while they are holding it or laying it upon an ash tray the same way they do when lighting it.  This makes perfect sense because heat rises vertically causing the higher areas to burn faster than the lower ones if held horizontally.  I’ve noticed that experienced smokers are attentive to their cigars continually checking the burn pattern and I have noticed that maintaining a regular draw/burn and rotation ratio will typically keep an even burn.  So while there are no rules governing how a gentleman should hold his cigar there are some fundamental physical factors that impact the way a cigar will burn that drive the way he will handle it at any given point.  Like many of the things that make cigar culture attractive a gentleman can take his time perfecting a unique style for holding and smoking his fine cigars. Refreshingly, there are no rules of etiquette governing the manner in which a gentleman should hold his cigar.  If this were the case I fear the art would have long since died away.  Cigar smoking is all about relaxation not about adherence to any strict, aesthetic form.   

FIN

Written By: BIGDADDY BLUES

WWW.FORTHEBROTHAS.BLOGSPOT.COM

GALLERY

Various Cigar Shapes

CIGAR 101

CIGAR SMOKING 101 FOR BEGINNERS

When I first began to smoke cigars I was fortunate enough to land into a strong camp of support and knowledge for the arts.  Here is a list of things that a novice to cigars should keep handy:

1.     Invest in the basic tools required for smoking cigars but spend frugally at first:

a)     Double or triple torch cigar lighter between $15.00 and $35.00 at first.

b)    Two-blade cigar cutter between $5.00 and $10.00 at first.

c)     Disposable Humidifier Packet until you get a proper humidor  between $12.00 and $15.00 ea.

d)    Zip-Loc plastic liner to store your cigars until you get a proper humidor, (provided by most tobacconist shops).

e)     Single or double portable pocket cigar case.

e)  A portable humidor.

f)     Small pocket sized cigar diary (just use any small spiral bound notebook 3 inches x 4 inches and small glue stick to keep a record of the cigars you have smoked.

2.   Do not store cigars in Ziploc bags when traveling except after you purchase them going from the store to your humidor, constant abrasion will crush, bend, break and fray the delicate tobacco liner ruining the cigar causing it to draw poorly when lit.

3.   Do not store cigars in direct sunlight, do not refrigerate them or store them in hot, dry places.

4.   If your cigar goes out after sitting for more than 10 or 15 minutes carefully clean away the ash cut it clean and re-light it; do not smoke an old cigar it will have a bitter, burnt and or stale flavor.

5.   If lighting a cigar with a match allow the sulfur to burn off before drawing it into the cigar.

6.  Lightly toast the cut burning end of the cigar before lighting it with the lighter or match  to facilitate an even burn.

7.   Take time to develop a comfortable style with which to hold your cigar.

8.   Always keep cigars in a container where the humidity is controlled.  When you buy cigars from the shop and do not have your portable humidor purchase a disposable humidifier pack and have the purveyor place it into a Ziploc bag with your cigars.  If you are frugal ask for a second bag and place a moist paper towel inside it so that it does not touch the cigars.

9.  Save the ring labels of all the cigars you smoke and keep your cigar diary with you so that you can document the experience you had each time you try a new or familiar stick.

10. Go to local cigar bars/lounges, cigar functions and conventions to meet people who smoke, these people have many years of experience under their belt and will gladly take you under their wing.  Most of the important education you will get about cigars will come from seasoned smokers.

11.  Familiarize yourself with all of the cigar establishments in your area whether at home or while traveling.

12. Dispose of your cigars responsibly.  A lit cigar can cause a serious fire if thrown into a trashcan, a pile of leaves or if thrown near any flammable material; it will continue to smolder for many minutes after it appears to be quenched. 

13. If you are in a place of public assembly always ask those around you if they have an issue with your smoking before lighting up. 

14. If you are in public do not spit while smoking your cigar, if you must spit do so by discretely lifting a napkin to your mouth.

15. While smoking a cigar be mindful of the proximity of others who might be burned by your cigar and be careful not to place the cigar on surfaces that may be scorched and ruined by the cigar fire.

16.While you are experimenting with different cigar shapes and strengths try different ways to cut your cigar.  Each unique cigar cutter affords a different way to draw smoke there is the traditional cutter and the "V" or channel cutter and the "Hole-Punch" used for cigars with rounded ends.

FIN

BY BIGDADDY BLUES

GALLERY

A "V" or channel blade cigar cutter

A single-bladed cigar cutter

A portable humidor

A hole-punch

WHAT WOULD FREDERICK DOUGLASS THINK OF THE STATE OF BLACK AMERICA IN 2014?

AGITATE! AGITATE! AGITATE!

Frederick Douglass said with his last breath, “Agitate! Agitate!” before succumbing to a heart attack in the entry hall of his Victorian Mansion nicknamed Cedar Hill.  His sprit was again set free this time undoing a bond infinitely more crucial than earthly, mortal freedom it was loosed unto the eternal ages themselves.   From the familiar grounds of his home that sat high atop the southeastern hillside overlooking the Anacostia River in a neighborhood of Washington D.C. then called Union Town.  His second wife, a gently strong white woman named Helen Pitts-Douglass held his body lovingly as the last breaths fled his lips, his passing marked the end of a brilliant and tumultuous era in the struggle for human and civil rights in these United States. 

One might say that Frederic Douglass experienced it all; from the bitter whip of slavery to the sweet redivivus of a man who became renown intellectual, author, orator, banker, publisher and United States Ambassador.  His voice was ever in the willing ears of Abraham Lincoln whom he no doubt counseled to the cause of emancipation itself; he lived to see the sociopathic institution of slavery ended, he watched as reconstruction was planned, erected and substantially dismantled and he watched as a new, united and empowered Black American community began to create a sound economic infrastructure to buffer itself against the rising tide of racially motivated socioeconomic segregation and oppression that ensued as the century closed.  But throughout his long and remarkable life Mr. Douglass kept the pressure on, he lived his life’s philosophy to agitate, to push back, to challenge every atom of oppression be it racial, social, economic, sexual or otherwise; he was a bulwark for freedom!

Douglass would be both astounded and grieved were he able to visit America today 119 years after his passing.  He lived to see the beginning of a toxic and systematic wave of political assassinations intended to weaken the cause of universal freedom in general and to hold back the socioeconomic and political progress of Black Americans in specific.  Abraham Lincoln was the first target of a failed rebellion against the egalitarian ideals of the Enlightenment.  Killed by cowardly, seditious traitors that he lovingly welcomed back into the Union thinking to preserve it for posterity Lincoln became a martyr for universal, humanitarian freedom and lesson for the evil and relentless passion of racially charged revenge.   Future presidents, fearing this clear act of retaliation capitulated with the implementation of a broad array of racist laws as did other legislators from congress right down to the lowest civil servant on state and federal levels.  The crippling effects of institutionalized racism in America, much to the frustration of those who sought to keep Black Americans down had the reverse effect of causeing Black Americans to create their own institutions that would provide them the fair services and employment opportunities they were denied in mainstream American culture.  By America’s centennial Black Americans had created their own banks, news media and publishing houses, schools, businesses and community outreach they had proved themselves ingenious and industrious, tenacious and indomitable in the face of the determined forces of oppression and yet they remained peaceful and humble in the grim faces of their oppressors, they did not return hatred for hatred. It was this very infrastructure of black attorneys, clergy, professionals, writers and publishers, inventors and entrepreneurs and ordinary citizens that helped galvanize the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950’s and 1960’s.  Racially motivated hate groups having erected a fortress of fear to deter white politicians from reversing segregation and other ethnically driven laws were satisfied with the millions of lynching’s combined with physically and mentally brutal sociopathic acts  but they feared the inevitable presaged by W.E.B. DuBois’s Niagara Movement at the turn of the twentieth century and when it became evident that change was coming again they resumed their  latent policy of brutal assassinations beginning with the early Civil Rights leaders and ending with the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. , Malcolm X and President John F. Kennedy.  Once civil rights leaders had been neutralized racists could focus on oppressing the general population again without fear of a unifying cored and this included the implementation of a well-planned strategy to diffuse the focus of the black community lest it resume its former vigor.  But full credit cannot be placed on anyone but the black community itself for not reorganizing its ranks, analyzing the situation using its many think-tanks such as the NAACP and resisting the temptation to abandon the struggle for freedom and equality for mere existence.  By the time of the Civil Rights Movement Black Americans had sacrificed their lives for the cause of freedom in the Revolutionary War, the American Civil War, World War II and other smaller wars and skirmishes thinking that they had paid their debts to a country in a world where freedom most certainly was not free…  Furthermore, they had borne the burden of this country for over 300 years as a free labor source allowing a struggling America to rise to its role as an economic world power only 100 years after it became a nation.  Whatever had fueled the nation’s sudden wealth it was certainly not the blood and sweat of lazy southern planters sipping mint juleps, smoking Virginia Tobacco cigars, raping slave women, (and men) in their cabins and playing brutal games with the lives of millions of human beings stolen from Africa and enslaved under the assumption that they were somehow divinely preordained to be their lords masters.  America was built on the blood sweat and corpses of hard-working and ingenious Black Americans who were illegally bought to this country possessing all manner of technical skills and disciplines that the men who owned them did not possess.  This single factor has been one of the best kept secrets because were it to be universally acknowledged the myth that the African and American slaves were savages would be exposed as a lie.  The mind blowing fact about the issue of reparation is that  were we to attempt to assess the actual value of the knowledge, skills sets, technical contributions and labor compensation not to mention the physical and mental anguish owed to the Black American community it would be inestimable, America as we know it would not have been possible without slavery.  Southern planters would never have been able to make even a meager subsistence were it not for a highly skilled, physically and mentally formidable team of free laborers, without them profit would have been an impossibility.  Without slavery we would be looking at a far different historical outcome for America, one which almost certainly would have ended up as a string of struggling former English colonies just waiting to be retaken by England or some other European world power. 

The dismantling of the broad social reforms of the Civil Rights Movement has been a slower but determined process during the last half of the twentieth century and into the first quarter of the twenty-first such as the revocation of affirmative action.  The preservation of unreformed and obsolete welfare, drug abuse and other programs all of which have the stultifying effect of enabling a self-perpetuating class of impoverished and ignorant peoples is not, in my opinion, within the general intent of the Civil Rights Movement, they a perversion of its general intent.  These dysfunctional programs drain the vital resources from education and education is the empowering force that will ultimately reduce the need for subsistence and rehabilitation programs.  In concert with the gradual erosion of the freedoms gained during the Civil Rights Era there has been an intensification of laws that entrap black and poor men within the prison system such as the wildly unconstitutional child support laws that actually pull working and productive men without criminal records from their jobs and into jail whereupon they lose their source of income and independence hurtling them into a hateful jaws of failure.  None of these obvious forms of entrapment have been thoroughly challenged because the men who typically succumb to them lack sufficient income to launch a formidable legal battle and do not pose a formidable front for reform of current legislation.  One can argue that such obvious traps should not be tested, that it is the fault of the individual who knows of but does not avoid the pitfall but one must first look to the lack of leadership as the cause and then ask why there are no leaders.  The greatest blow ever dealt to the Black American community was the assassination of its leaders during the 1960’s.  Over the past 50 or so years since this horror played itself out on the streets of these United States the black community has fought an unsuccessful battle to reorganize itself around a central leadership strong enough to pull it out of decay.  The black intelligentsia has failed to galvanize the black community toward the pursuit of education and economic solidarity it’s universities are on the brink of failure while intellectually bankrupt social media including music and allied culture rake in millions…

In today’s news we see the rise of a modernized lynching regime aimed at young and mature black men.  In America it is open season to kill black men as it has always been, all one has to say in order to be exonerated from an act of murder in cold blood is that one felt threatened, threatened by the mere sight of a black man?  The lynching of black men is America’s first national sport but this generation will eventually bring it to an end!  No one has been more threatened than the black man in America and yet he has not risen up in arms against any other race but continues to believe in the possibility of a harmonious coexistence.  His image is perverted into the most reprehensible criminal as a means of justification for the abuse he continues to suffer.  To a racist provocation without effective resistance will always be interpreted as a clear sign of weakness.  The  laws of this country have been racially perverted since its inception and the negative images conjured by the media have always been utilized to make them appear just.  What would they do if Black American’s suddenly woke up and began to rebuild their communities?  What if Black Americans rejected a media that promoted ignorance and violence replacing it with wholesome music and culture that celebrated intellectualism and economic solidarity around a central theme of empowerment and core family/community values? Would the negative images disappear?  Would innocent black men no longer have to fear being murdered merely because they were seen as a threat by men fully armed? 

Frederick Douglass who was president of a black owned bank in the 1850’s would have been inspired to see the many wondrous economic and professional achievements being made by Black Americans in 2014.  He would be inspired to see the first Black American president but dismayed to see the rise of racism as a challenge to the presidents administration.  He would be appalled by the increasing ignorance and the dismantling of the family structure so earnestly yearned for by his peoples 150 years after emancipation.  He would be disillusioned to see that the black community has abandoned its media and businesses and was unable to provide decent and meaningful employment for itself, that it had relinquished its self determination to forces which had historically betrayed it.  He would have marveled at Blues, Jazz, Soul and R&B but mourned because the innovators no longer preserved their cultural and historical legacy.  I do not think it would be a good thing for Frederick Douglass to visit the twenty-first century today, I would be ashamed to walk him through the violent, decadent and depressed neighborhoods where he and I might be assaulted by other black men ignorant of our purpose.  If I knew he were coming I would bid him wait a while longer to give me time to effect a change. I know what he would say even in the face of what I fear he would think, he would look at the sad state of his peoples community and say that what looked like an ending could also be seen as a beginning, that positive change where there is none is always a beginning but one must fight in order to gain any ground.  He would say there is a formidable battle to be fought and that I should look for hearty men well-suited to the challenge and leaving he would repeat those words he last spoke advising me to Agitate! Agitate! Agitate!

FIN

Written by

BIGDADDY BLUES

WWW.FORTHEBROTHAS.BLOGSPOT.COM  

THE MATURE MALE SERIES PRESENTS A POETIC RECITAL: REFLECTION ON GROWING OLDER

GROWING OLDER…

life is a compression of many years,

not summarized in seconds,

the moment may refresh our hearts,

yet we are growing older,

were i to face my greatest fear,

the worst one would be dying,

each second burnt away from life,

brings death a little closer,

if i let passion drown my soul,

before death could claim it,

making a bonfire of my life,

would not make it bolder,

so i will look outside myself,

where there is need of healing,

to bless the future and the past,

when i look o’er my shoulder…

FIN

By BIGDADDY BLUES

FORTHEBROTHAS: A VIRTUAL, INTELLECTUAL & CULTURAL SALON

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