Talbert Pipes- Major website catalog update! And yes, we are still alive!

Sun Nov 4 21:48:45 EST 2018

Hello world! Yes, we are still alive. Here we are back at last with a
pretty huge update, and possibly more pipes now posted to the site than
we've ever had available at one time before. There are many Talbert Briars,
both unsmokeds and estates-
http://www.talbertpipes.com/talbert.shtml

...several new Ligne Bretagnes -
http://www.talbertpipes.com/bretagne.shtml

...one pretty spectacular Goblin -
http://www.talbertpipes.com/goblins.shtml

...and even some estate pipes and rare tobaccos from my own collection on
our Pens & Misc page -
http://www.talbertpipes.com/misc.shtml

A couple of other things have come back to life also, including...

The Talbert Pipes Blog, which has gotten a new post about pipe
collectability -
http://talbertpipes.blogspot.com/

...and also our rather silly web comic, Giant Radioactive Monsters
Eloquently Discuss Collectible Tobacco Pipes, which has gotten several new
strips over the past month or two -
http://lizardsandpipes.thecomicseries.com/

So many people asked me about Pumpkins this October that I totally lost
track due to overload and hurricane chaos (more on that below), but there
IS one single Talbert Halloween Pipe in the works, which is a very large,
very sinister Pumpkin... but I didn't even get close to finishing it in
time for Halloween. Now I'm debating whether to go ahead and finish it, or
just save it till next October. Those of you who follow our Instagram page
have already seen it -
[image: 2018pumpkin.jpg]

Sharp-eyed folks might recognize it as the pipe from that little paper
sketch on the front page of our website.

https://www.gofundme.com/ColontoSemicolon
In other news, circumstances have pushed us into setting up a GoFundMe page
- https://www.gofundme.com/ColontoSemicolon - because, in short, my wife
had cancer AND a split and abscessed tooth, and her medical bills have
piled onto us in a not-fun monstrous way. The full story is on the GoFundMe
page. If anyone is able, please help out. Donations are simple and easy,
and we need every penny we can get, because...

Well, here's the story of our year. Ever since January, my wife's father's
dementia worsened rapidly. We spent the first half of our year struggling
to be caregivers while keeping ourselves afloat, barely - thus the dearth
of updates and new pipes since then. Eventually he was permanently
committed to a home for end-of-life care and for some months, our lives
revolved around him and helping and supporting Em's 86 year old mom
throughout the whole grueling experience.

Eventually, he passed away, with both his wife and his daughter sitting by
his bed holding his hands, which was maybe the only bright spot in all that
he went through those final months. Then there was the funeral to handle,
and after that, trying to offer Emily's mom as much support as we could.
Unfortunately, not long after her father's death, my wife had a jaw ache
diagnosed as a split tooth that had begun to abscess and worse, the dentist
could not do the needed surgery on her because her blood pressure was high.
Like, WAY high...

This prompted more medical tests which found that she had early stage colon
cancer.

Sooo... In late summer "getting back to work" flipped immediately over into
"hospitals and surgery". Over the course of one week, Emily had her tooth
extracted, had a horrible blistering welt skin reaction to the pain
medication which prompted an emergency trip for more meds, and then went
into the hospital for colon surgery at 4am that Friday.

[image: IMG_20180830_153104.jpg]

My September went from the "Working on Halloween Pipes" plan to going back
and forth to the hospital, then later looking after Emily as she recovered
at home.

One might think that was excitement enough for one year, but then Hurricane
Michael hit Greensboro in October. My 86 year old mother-in-law, just
recovering from losing her husband a few months before, was sitting in her
living room watching as the city power pole by her driveway snapped off and
crashed in the street, complete with exploding transformer, and another
tree fell across her car and front yard. We got the call in the middle of
the howling storm, which took out half the stoplights and power in
Greensboro, and by the time we got to her house, it looked like her
neighborhood had been bombed. We had to bring her home with us as her house
had no power and was draped with hanging electrical and phone lines.

And that was pretty much our October... We realized very quickly that
between the lost working time of the past year plus the HUGE hospital and
surgery bills capped with even more lost working time due to the storm and
helping with the fallout from the storm (car repairs, tree removal, etc)
that there was simply no way we'd be able to handle the mountain of crisis
expenses without help, thus our reluctant decision to create our GoFundMe -

https://www.gofundme.com/ColontoSemicolon

I do not like these GoFundMe things because my general impression is that
it has become a beggar's site overcrowded with people asking for free cash
for a new couch or whatever, but we talked about it and concluded that if
anything qualifies as a genuinely deserving cause, it would be all of the
grief and difficulty we've been through this year. So in closing, if you
can send a few pennies our way, it would be MUCH appreciated. Let's hope
the year has exhausted its supply of nasty surprises, because we're both
very ready to get back to making pipes again!

Happy Smoking,
Trever Talbert
www.talbertpipes.com
https://www.instagram.com/talbertpipes/
https://www.facebook.com/talbertpipes/
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