In earlier centuries there were political, religious and economical conflicts of interest around the new and exotic brew from roasted coffee seeds. Once these conflicts subsided, and coffee in households became an accepted practice, it was time to create and implement new limitations. Coffeehouses around the seventeenth century became sociocultural temples for the life of men but excluded the respectable woman. To celebrate society and culture, the Kaffeeklatsch became the women’s coffee realm.
Humans continue to demand freedoms and impose limitations, generally based on subjective reasoning to their convenience. However, the future of any limitation is always liberation. This is no different in the community of fine smoking, and subsequently, just like the man cave led to the she shed, once the leaf found brothers, it found sisters.
The premise of equal rights is as misguided an illusion as the newly inflicted ideal of political correctness. The sincere heart and noble mind will promote equal respect, rather than equal rights, and will be fair and gentle, not based on what politics do or do not allow but on what a clear and genuine human conscience dictates.
Luckily, plenty of Sisters of the Leaf do frequent cigar lounges — each with an individual and complex existential quality, entering as unapologetically as they might enter a shed, a house or a mansion. They may come with confidence or intimidation, with beauty and sensuality, with strength, purpose and wisdom. Perhaps they are girls looking for boys, ladies looking for gentlemen. Yet, all are welcomed with respect, warmth and inspiration.
This is a man’s world but it wouldn’t be nothing, nothing without a woman being in a man’s world.
Smoke and Minds 