Baeocystin

As another glassblower: Yes. Good god, yes.

And it gets really, really old. And I don't have any problems with weed at all. But when you want to talk about artistic expression and the creative aspects of glass design, and 99% of the people you meet think you're just in it for making trippy pipes, it sucks.

This is my favorite response on the Citadel.

I visited Mongolia the summer of 1992. We flew in to Ulan Bator from Irkutsk via a tiny MIAT plane. There was a Frenchman sitting in front of me, and he had a small, old Soviet-era map of the land we were flying over. The co-pilot noticed it during a stretch break, and asked if they could use it in the cabin, as it was much better than what they were using to navigate.

(The French fellow was happy to share.)

We stayed with a family of engineers who worked at the power plant before the Russians left. They were still in the process of getting things up and running at the time, and hearing about their trials and tribulations, as well as their incredibly positive outlook over the whole project, was incredible.

Later on we got to watch some guys play polo with a goat's head while the rest of the goat was being cooked from the inside out via fire-heated river rock. Good times.

One interesting thing about it is that you learn just how many people smoke. It's pretty much everyone. Easily 80% of the people I know have asked, from college-aged kids to old, stern-looking men.

(And I'm pretty sure that half of the remaining 20% haven't asked, simply because they prefer edibles or vaping.)

Part of the annoyance comes from the fact that I'm a furnace glass worker, not a flameworker. Furnace glass is softer, melts at a lower temperature, and gives you a longer working time before it sets up. There's less overlap than you might think between furnace work and benchtop flamework using borosilicate, which is what all the pipemakers do.

Here's a short demo showing how to pull cane using furnace glass.

For a great series of furnace glass demos, check out the Corning Museum of Glass YouTube page, it's got a lot of awesome stuff.

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None of this is to put down flameworking. You can do amazing work with it. Paul Stankard just got an award at the recent GAS conference for doing incredible work in paperweight-sized pieces, for example. It's just a different art form.

I just want to say that you are an awesome individual for having done this, and if you're ever on the west coast here in California, I'd be happy to buy you a pint. Thank you for caring, and I mean that sincerely.