Mid November

But he can't be a man 'cause he doesn't smoke
The same cigarettes as me...
...I can't get no satisfaction

I can always depend on Uncle Ken to get the Old Dog chasing critters down one rabbit hole or another.  Ah, the sublime pleasures of pipe tobacco!  I remember Cherry Blend, but there were dozens of other flavors, many of which are no longer available according to the Google Hive Mind.  I was partial to Flying Dutchman myself, getting the stink-eye from the Drill Sergeants at Fort Polk when I would roll up a smoke in Zig-Zag Wheat Straw papers.  But I met a lot of good folks that way, too.  Rolling papers were a great ice breaker back in the day (nudge, nudge, wink, wink).

And no trip downtown would be complete without a visit to Iwan Ries & Co. on Wabash, in the shadow of the El.  If you wanted tobacco or accessories beyond the selection at the local drugstore (or cigar store, remember those?) Iwan Ries was the place to go.  Their Four Star Blend was excellent, as I recall, and the sales folk were eager to share their knowledge of all things smokable.  It's nice that they're still in business.

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And Mr. Beagles sent me squirrel chasing with his folk music comments.  I don't know what he means by "razzle-dazzle" but Spider John Koerner seems to be an old school classic folkie to me.

My memory of folk music on TV is fuzzy, seems like everybody was wearing a necktie except for the ladies who wore dresses of a respectable length.  Hootenanny was the main TV program of the day but I'm not sure if the music was legitimate folk music or variations of acoustic songs.  Pete Seeger, for sure, was a folk musician but he was blacklisted for quite a while.  Burl Ives was around a lot, and I remember a local guy, Win Stracke, who was on local TV a lot and one of the founders of the Old Town School of Folk Music.

Is Folk Music even a legitimate term or is it a marketing label, more palatable to the buying public than country, hillbilly, or race music?  Folk music always seemed so clean to me, showing very little of the true, gritty roots.  I'm depending on Mr. Beagles to set me straight.

Another question for Mr. Beagles: Is there a special trick for baking bread now that the weather is getting cooler and the humidity is dropping?  I'm not getting the same rise out of my bread; no changes to the recipe.

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This is neither here nor there, but it seems to me that Uncle Ken's recent postings of the rambling narrative persuasion are of a higher quality than the stuff he wrote years ago.  I pretty much skim over the political stuff and I'll let you guys gnaw on those topics as is your wont.

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If you hate a person that means they defeated you.     -Confucius

Saw that line on another obscure YouTube channel I've been following and  thought I'd toss it our there.

Here's another:

"Treat a work of art like a prince: let it speak to you first."     -Schopenhauer