Christ is Risen!
A blessed Bright Week to one and all!
As you all may or may not remember, several years ago my cousin’s husband, Mike Pappas, asked if I could publish some of his editorials on Monomakhos under the title of “The Man from Fly-over Country”.
Mike’s a good egg so of course I said “yes”. Anyway, life happens and under the Obama maladministration, it was all most of us could do to just keep up. You know, anarcho-tyranny. Anarchy for the malingerers and non-productive while tyranny for those who work hard and play by the rules.
Regardless, by a fortuitous confluence of events, Mike and Jenny passed through T-Town and we put them up at stately Monomakhos Manor. He asked if I had any stogies and after consulting with one of my brain trust, I was given a dispensation to light one up as we chewed the fat.
Long story short, Mike asked if we could discuss things spiritual and temporal in my high tech studios and I said “why the heck not?”
Things got quite wide-ranging so we decided to do something novel and that would be to produce two vlogs. In the first vlog, I would introduce to you all “The Man from Fly-over Country” and pick his brain on matters political. In the second, Mike would turn the tables on me and ask me about ecclesiastical matters (particularly the present mess that the GOA finds itself in).
Mike has some excellent insights into politics, business and culture and I impressed on him the necessity of taking up the vlog format so he could share his wisdom with the huddled masses.
So without any further ado, I take great pleasure in reintroducing you to The Man from Fly-over country!
Enjoy! It’s freewheeling and we had a lot of fun. I hope you all will as well!
Part I, in which I interview The Man from Fly-over Country:
And here, Mike turns the tables on your humble servant:
Yo, dude, remember when Jake banned priestly cigars because Cigar Afficionado did a pictorial of them from Clergy Laity?
ROCOR bans all tobacco for clergy and rightly so, in my opinion. I’m an ex-pipe and cigar smoker. I do like my Scotch and Irish whiskies.
George, I’m sorry to see you back on the weed. It’s true the Tsar Martyr smoked( one reason why some convert zealots opposed his canonization). But lets remember smoking was socially acceptable 100 years ago . We know now how harmful it is.
It was a one-time only thing!
Well, if you come this way, you’re still welcome to my stock of the “creature”.
I quit the daily cigar years ago, but smoke 5 or 6 a year. My sons and sons-in-law get me a few really good ones at Christmas and father’s day.
I also smoke a pipe, but again only “special circumstances”. I carry one in my back pack, and will smoke it around the campfire on backpacking trips; a few times per summer.
That’s my compromise to minimize the health risk, yet still occasionally have the ineffable pleasure of a cigar or pipe.
There’s no doubt that frequent cigar use is bad for you, and I know (knew) more than one unhappy example.
I love my cigars. Nothing wrong with a good cigar and good company.
Remember Mark Twain said: ”if there are no cigars in heaven I shall not go”.