I’m sitting at one of my favorite cigar shops having one of the better cigars I’ve smoked in awhile. While I’m not generally one to smoke a lot of box pressed cigars, I am absolutely loving this 20th Anniversary Perdomo. To be exact, it’s the Perdomo Maduro…and it’s fabulous! Definite notes of cocoa and coffee with a somewhat oily, rich brown wrapper. In keeping with what I feel is a trademark of most great Nicaraguan cigars, it doesn’t disappoint on spice and “punch” either. But there is a reservedness about this cigar, kind of like an AMG Mercedes… It’s refined and comfy, classically beautiful, but it can kick your ass if you aren’t careful. I’ve always been a big Perdomo fan, and this cigar is certainly among the best that this time honored brand has ever produced. Shame on me that it took me till 2014 to figure that out!

-photo by John M. Humphrey

Memoriam

Stones dot the rolling fields;
Gray and green broken up
by pastel splashes of plastic flowers and tattered flags.
Even at 12, I’d read the markers
and imagine the stories
that were buried there. This man
was a General in the Civil War.
He drank whiskey and smoked cigars and walked with a limp.
And Alice. She was a nurse from New York City who moved here to breathe the fresh air before she died.
My dad would be trimming and scraping, helping stone in its endless struggle against the grass. He always had a story as well.
“This was your grandfather,” he would say, “He tried to give
you his dog when you were about 4 years old. That was one of
the only times you met him.”
It was about the only time
my mother met him as well.
One other time she made my father go see him when my grandfather was dying. He wanted no part of it.
It was only as I got older that I realized … if my grandfather had given me that dog it would have been one thing more than he had ever given my father.

“Well that’s about it,” my father would say.
“Don’t step on the graves.”

I would zig and zag and hop to the car, fearful that I would disturb The General, or Alice, or the boy who
only made it to 8.

And the ghosts would follow us home.

“The proper drinking of Scotch whisky is more than indulgence: it is a toast to civilization, a tribute to the continuity of culture, a manifesto of man’s determination to use the resources of nature to refresh mind and body and enjoy to the full the senses with which he has been endowed.”

– David Daiches, Scotch Whisky 1969

-photo by John M. Humphrey

I think for me, one of the biggest challenges is “living in the moment.” Too often I find myself looking back or, even more frequently, looking forward. It’s easy to fall into this trap. In my work life (sales management) we are taught to always be looking ahead. Forecasts, projections, goals and targets… these are all forward oriented activities which are necessary for success. In this world very little attention is paid to the “now.”
While goals and aspirations are wonderful things to utilize in our personal lives, I think it’s important that we make a conscious effort to recognize the moments we are in. This is something I have been terrible at for a long, long time. And it is something I’m really working on. It is in moments that we grow. We learn, we share, we heal… we LIVE.

The Difference Between Time and Moments
Don’t get hung up on time. Time is a man made construct. Time does not heal, as they sometimes say – moments do. Moments are what make us grow, what help us progress, what make a life and not just a “living.” The key, I think, is to savor the moments.