The Trip West, Part One

Taos, NM –  two weeks on the road. Optimists headed West (it's what Americans do, non?) in search of something like a raison d'etre. It's a Boomer phenom, sad but true.  (Click on photos to enlarge.)

We left Maine early afternoon, an hour and a half behind schedule, after settling the T and the kitties in the Wendy House Chez Marcel, headed for New Jersey, to Bel and Marry's (our new nickname for that delightful crew). It was smooth sailing down the interstates to arrive Friday night for too brief a visit. Our plan was a good one: having rented a house in a funky, semi-chic (read:”safe”) area of Albuquerque in advance, we figured... four days on the road, then we can chill out; we were absolutely Destination Oriented.  Philly our next stop, a night in the B and B in West Philly I call the Funeral Parlor, an unfair moniker as the two fellas who run it are delightful. The ambience is just, well,  emphatically Victorian, complete with piped organ music. But the large garden is a welcome respite from the city's hot summer bustle; the hospitality first rate. After a brief (too brief, always)  visit with number One Son and friend, the Sunday morning farmers' market at Second and ? and a quart of deeevine strawberries to carry us through, we headed west.

So far so good, but two rather serious accidents just as we got outside the city on the PA Turnpike funneled us off the interstate into a maze of inadequate signage and an hour delay as we headed toward Pottstown and a road that seemed to go nowhere we wanted to be. But, Surprise! An hour off course there was the sign for I 81 south! We were saved, proceeding south into rural Virginia where the eye relaxes on rolling green hills, the Appalachian Range through the sweet Shenandoah Valley, the Blue Ridge Mountains to our left, veiled in a blue hue – a result of isoprene gas they release in the atmosphere that hazes them in that unusual color. Black cattle graze lazily across the soft hills, creamy in the afternoon light; the countryside rolls off in the distance through farms as far as the eye can see, freshly rolled hay strewn over fields of wandering horses, their equine splendor graces the richly endowed countryside of Winchester County. 

The Holiday Inn Express in Christiansburg (back in the land of Sweet Tea) is the hands down winner in "Best Bed" category of the four HIs we stayed in along the route West.  But where to eat? 

This is the important decision for me when I travel. If you've followed my blog at all over the last few years, you know this already. We consulted the desk clerk (a useful habit in Europe, but generally a non-starter in the US, I find,  outside New York, as most of them are young and rarely an inhabitant of where the hotel is located). We drove to the "best place in town" according to urbanspoon, yelp, and the like, a supposedly "French" place,  shells  of decrepit toilets greeted us in the parking lot, messy abandoned tables on the 'verandah', and virtually no one inside or out. I scarfed a menu from under the abandoned reception lectern; we voted an emphatic NO. Following other online recommendations, we found a mall restaurant, Mexican, figuring that might work, Nooooo. Noisy and the usual crappy chips and salsa to start, Margarita glasses the size of your head, and chirping, perky wait staff, too perky for tired travelers. In despair poor P got his first taste of Cracker Barrel’s uninspiring menu, it was just across from our hotel; we simply caved. Where anyone ever got the notion floating a massive slab of colby cheese, like you'd serve, say, with apple pie, is appropriate laid across a sea of iceberg lettuce and chipped chicken like a small raft, is anyone's guess. I wondered what I was expected to do with the thing. Do I cut it up, so to fork up bits with my lettuce? Am I expected to pick it up like a slice of toast?  I do like that they serve breakfast all day, and the gift shop is like a quick cheap and fairly harmless acid trip on the way out. 

Our bed was fabulously comfy, the size of a small island. Four stars.

The next morning we carried on South 81. A road sign indicated an upcoming town called Damascus. I couldn't help but wonder, what life changing experience prompted someone to call a town that back in the day? The curvature of land smoothed somewhat, hills powdered with white blossoms I couldn't identify (at 70 mph, I shouldn’t be expected to). Whatever caramel grasses carpeted the fields looked so soft and inviting a brief lie down crossed my mind. Hillsides wild with daisies, tinier than those in Maine, distributed perfectly equidistant from one another, tiny profuse dots everywhere.

We stopped briefly in Wytheville, for LO! a Starbucks sign doth loom! (a rarity on this trip) where we enjoyed a quick latte and a rice crispy treat, just a morning snack doncha know. Carrying on P pointed out that it's often hard to tell the difference between prisons and schools. This comment was made quite innocently, without agenda, and I had to acknowledge his point, based on what we were seeing. 

We just HAD to stop in Blountville, TN, for genealogical reasons. A charming town, but what with the Ten Commandments so prominent at the Courthouse, and really, all over town and all, I'm not sure I'd want to live there.  You gotta learn to read the signs.... If there's one thing I've learned living in Maine it's that if they call a state "Vacationland" you might want to limit your stays there to vacations – living there might not work out all that well – weather-wise, for one. New Mexico, for example, calls itself the "Land of Enchantment".  Would one want to live in a state of perpetual enchantment? A sort of continuous Holly Golightly mental state? Might that become a bit tiresome? (A guy in the bar here warned us it's really Land of Entrenchment, and frankly it DOES feel a bit like that, but more on that later.)

So here we are in the true South: Let The Ma'ams Begin! I can't get enough of it, truly. And another thing: the visitor centers, those places you stop in for maps when you cross into a new state, are some of my favorite places. People are friendly, wanting to put the best face on their respective state, naturally,  and you can pee and get a new up to date map of the state you're blasting through. Noice, as we say in Joisy.

The Tennessee welcome center's ladies room stalls each had a tastefully framed and mounted item on the back of the stall door. The subject matter? A campaign against, of all things, sex trafficking. Go figure. I thought it was a cool thing for them to do, and I had no idea that was an issue in Tennessee, did you?

Bar none, THE coolest town we stopped in was 








Knoxville, TN. Now there is a cool spot. We stopped for lunch, at Bistro Cru (below), and it was top notch.  Well, when you walk in and Nona Hendrix is wailing away on the box, you just know it's gonna be good. They didn't give me any crap about making my delicious tenderloin steak and shroom sandwich into a simple gluten free entree (and btw the gluten free thing is a given on most menus out here except Cracker Barrels and rib joints), and we shared a truly fresh (locally grown) delicious salad. Service perfect, we sat outside drinking endless sweet tea, content to marvel at this nineteenth/early twentieth century downtown that is resurrecting nicely with way cool coffee wifi shops and restos, and some very arty shops and practical things as well. Impressive. I'd live there in a heartbeat, lots going on, lots still to be done, groovy empty spaces screaming potential that are coming to life, to die for architecture and lots of it.  Friendly folks. I luuuuv Knoxville.

Let's just get back on I 40 and blast past Nashville. I can't imagine the effort it might take to go there. It's another of those massive intimidating metropolises that, to my mind, just send the wrong signal if you're traveling cross country. Rolling on, a long cruise through the verdant humid hills winding past Loretta Lynn's kitchen (one has to wonder...),  huge sex shop billboards tantalizing the innocent, and radio holy rollers, virtually the entire radio dial, exclaiming against such like.  We knew it was time to find a wireless thingy for the iPod.

So we stopped for the night in Jackson, TN, just east of Memphis, at another Holiday Inn Express freshly planted near a new mall by the interstate. Such “modern sprawling villages” have no community value or meaning aside from serving the incessantly mobile American and employing a few semi-locals at low wages. But I found some nice sandals (too hot for shoes by now) and Radio Shack saved us from having to traverse Oklahoma and Texas being railed at by irate preachers.  Our Mexican supper at Tulum (the best of a paltry lot) was friendly and good. We briefly cruised the small town of Jackson five miles or so from the hotel and found little to enjoy there but the Courthouse square, dismal and empty as rain threatened. 

sends a message

 Morning: back on the road a billboard of pure poetry caught my eye that read: “Skillets, Jams and Country Hams”. Isn’t that wonderful? Say it a few times. Skillets, jams and country hams. Just rolls of the tongue. Tennessee’s corn crop was already knee-high,  glossy green fields of it wending northward as the Jackson radio preachers go on (no NPR here) admonishing folks to “get out there and vote and get some changes on the Constitution!” – like that’s something, changing that revered document, you want to do, you know, Today and quickly.  And with a paintbrush or some other crude tool.

Pentecostals, Arkansas lovin the Lord

Despite our newly acquired iPod connector, I listened, fascinated, (not to say hypnotized) by the ranting (“pre-recorded”) sermonettes pervading the soundwaves for miles.  (They call it “good news” radio, and it’s sponsored by your local Town and Country realtors.) One particularly vehement fella actually shouted, nonstop, about “how much women put up with” and “how strong” they have to be to endure,  “like the Bible sez”. One of the things they have to put up with, he clarified, is “abortion”. Say what?  I’m waiting for the “good news”.  We pass an exit consisting of nothing more than a motel (The Old South Inn) and an adjacent sex shop.  The exit road goes nowhere else.  So.. it’s folks stopping for a quick frisson, slipping furtively into a room,  and….  Hmmm.. Can we call this a Sexit? Seriously. A brief wave of carsickness ensues.

Time to check out the iPod.

Driving across America one can’t help but note the profusion of small abandoned farms. You imagine the Dust Bowl, though it’s clear many of these farms were far more recently someone’s dream of a good life. Something they worked hard to realize. I find myself wondering why someone would go to the trouble of haying a field, and then just leave the rolls of hay to rot in what could be next year’s field. What great tragedy befell them? What overwhelming case of lethargy or sloth or pure despair would cause a person to let that much hard work go to waste? Sheer survival in these vast expanses might discourage the most hearty soul. We pass a dirt road curving gracefully down and around a low hill to end in the dooryard of an abandoned wooden two room house, its roof rusting adjacent to an overgrown field plowed hopefully years ago.  You can still see the furrows. I wonder: what strange fate befell that person, to stop his plow, abandon his field, his home, his dream, and leave it to time to reclaim? What level of despair does it take to crush a person’s dreams like that? To have them throw up their hands and say “Enough! I quit!”

“Shove me in the shallow waters before I get too deep” sings the iPod.

The Mighty Mississippi

On the Isaac Hayes Memorial Highway to Memphis local NPR reports recent research on the gender naming of hurricanes reveals that folks perceive female named storms as more threatening. Now here’s something I can chew on. My mind considers the subconscious guilt of the patriarchy where women are concerned. Now there’s a juicy idea. But no, apparently folks are prone to underestimate the intensity of storms with feminine names, and so, after the fact, are left with the impression they are “worse” than masculine named storms. Well, that’ll teach ya to underestimate a woman.  Clearly haven’t read their Shakespeare. Hell hath no fury, and all that.

Memphis. Well we were thinking to grab a coffee as it was easy on easy off to downtown.  And I thought, as I had the address, I’d find my grandfather’s 1929 (good timing, gramps) café location.  It’s now a hairweaving shop on Madison. And looks pretty crap, like most of the city we saw.  Plus I paid 4 bucks for an iced tea in a crappy convenience store. When I complained (quietly) the woman said: “Evehbody get ripped off sometime.”  True enough, like now.

The mighty Mississippi River into Arkansas. Endless Arkansas. White clouds whipped to a lather mounting higher and higher as we hear radio reports of baseball size hail and tornadoes just north of us. We boogie on westward, past seriously shocking tornado remains west of Little Rock. I’m imagining a new theme park: Hunger Games.  Actually I think I heard that on the radio,  for real.

We stop for the night in Yukon, OK, just west of Oklahoma City, the Meat Capital of America.  A sad place of stockyards, masses of short-lived, harmless beasts all waiting to die for my grilling pleasure, and the endlessly repulsive homogenous commercial sprawl that is the new American landscape.

Come morning we figure we can make Albuquerque in seven hours. We’re sick of hotels and are looking forward to being in our own place at last. It’s exhausting trying to find road food as good as your own. Folks here are friendly, they always say hello., never just look away just because you’re a stranger. A gorgeous morning, the storms having passed north of us leaving endless blue sky above the flat horizon.  There will be no rain after all. Once more I think of the Dust Bowl and consider how folks decided when to hang in and when to go. It’s always the same question for Americans, it seems.

The futility of trying to capture the color and vastness of Oklahoma and Texas becomes clear and I put my wee Canon away. Instead I simply breathe it in and feel renewed. The American West. It’s something to behold.

Weirdest thing happens all across Texas: the iPod, set on shuffle, only plays Texas themed songs. Example: Sister from Texas, followed by Texas  Flood, and more Texas tunes. We both think, woooooo….

Billboards repeatedly advertising “Big Tex! Free 72 ounce steak!” for miles before it's location im Amarillo.  I try to grasp this. That is a five pound steak, people. Five pounds. Would you really want it, even if it was free? Shouldn't there be some fine print there warning of irreversible meat coma?

Oh, Look! The Happy Trails Horse Motel– a motel for horses. Only in Texas.  The vast windmill farms appear, one elegant (to my mind) answer to our nation’s energy appetite.  Windmills by the thousands cartwheeling infinitely northward as I squint to try and see where they end but can’t.

The land changes, the color of the earth intensifies to red here and there, we climb for miles into high desert as the glorious still snow capped Rockies, the Sangre de Cristos, come into view to the north. And we begin a descent, spiraling down into the flat expanse of Rio Grande valley that is the city of Albuquerque.

Like I said, we shoulda read the signs.... next time 

looking north toward the Rockies waaay far away

Please Stand By

We're starting a new chapter.  So it's Goodbye to the cozy village life of

And Hello to the wilds of

Blog Post coming later today of present road trip from Maine to the Great American Southwest and recent adventures. It's a long 'un!

ciao for now

Man converts plastic into oil

We just KNEW this already had to exist, right? There ARE answers out there, just something of a challenge to get the info out over the din of Big Oil's hogging the microphone. It's astonishing this hasn't been on 60 Minutes or Bill Moyers. Maybe someone should bring it to their attention?



thanks to Av for the link...x

Hooker Pup?

Someone who is fond of animal videos (aren't we all, secretly?) sent me the YouTube below. It's cute, a wee bulldog rolling down a hill and variously flinging herself about a grassy knoll on a sunny day just for the helluvit. Or so it would seem. As I live a hermit's life in Nowheresville, Maine, I occasionally fall prey to temptation and browse the comments sections of various sites, you know, see what's out there, who's out there, even though experience has often proved this a fraught activity. Sane people know comment browsing, especially on YouTube, is never a good idea if one hopes to carry on believing the world a livable place populated by reasonable folks. Still, it surprised me to see a heated exchange had developed on the subject of this apparently fun-loving doggie. Assertions by various posters, arguments really (into which I've noticed most comments sections seem to inevitably devolve), ran along these lines:

What appears to be a pup having fun is a cruel lie, or as a politician might put it, misleading –  some asshole has straightjacketed her in a wee sweatshirt and she's doing everything she can to get the damn thing off. Oh! cruel humanity!

People are "trolls" (what on earth does this mean? Have folks taken to lurking under bridges? Are they homeless? Apparently it's an insult, judging by the bitter knee-jerk response of accusees).

English Bulldogs were bred (by aforementioned cruel humans) to flat faces and short stature in order to maintain a low profile and take some of the "bull" heat off matadors in the ring.  Hence "bull" dog. (This may be true, but for my money, it's the most absurd, not to say exploitative, notion, and the one for which humans should be tried and hanged forthwith. By animals, of course, a la Animal Farm?)

Bulldog births frequently require C-sections because humans have so contorted (read: bioengineered) the breed's appearance and shape for their own sadistic amusement that flat wide head just won't make it through mum's wee vagina.

One commenter found the poor doggie's T-shirt "disturbing" but refused to explain why (someone should probably check up on him, and soon. Not me though, you do it.)

Further assertions abound, to wit: Idiots love idioms; "adorbs" is the new "adorable"; people like animals better than people; bulldogs are known to skateboard, solo and voluntarily; dogs become morose if their master's videos are neglected by the viewing public; this video is doggie porn, this pup no better than a common whore, and her master a low life pimp.

I am reminded of an episode of West Wing when Josh can't resist commenting on his own fans' website, believing his eloquence will set them straight, and lives to regret kowtowing to his ego's need not simply to express itself but to dominate the commentary. Isn't there some Aesop Fable about this?

We report; you decide....  Is this cruel and unusual?

Bad Hair Day, Maine

The Most Godforsaken, Furthest From Everything That Matters, State in the Union.

Maine.

It's not enough that winter never ends until long after the wood disappears. That I have to travel and hour and a half to buy fresh burdock and lotus root or good olives or reasonably priced cheese or fish, or experience anything that even vaguely resembles civilization.

It's downright Godforsaken when it comes to hair.  Do you feel me?

After years of tragically disappointing pricey salon cuts in this supposedly high-class town, (even the barber! sure sign of desperation), long ago I took to regularly chopping away at my own hair. Undeniably the best result. But recently, in some rapture of hopeful longing to be normal, I defied negativity and followed my (rod- straight-haired) daughter's advice to try her new salon. To have a SALON EXPERIENCE!  No more standing before the bathroom mirror, trying to imagine what the back of my head might look like. I will trust someone. I will go for it! I will look fabulous!

Now, be aware. Experience has engendered caution in this area and the firm conviction that there isn't a haircutter worth her scissors in this entire state. I've tried dozens. Not one has proved me wrong. The whole damn geography that calls itself Maine is utterly devoid of a single human being with the skill and imagination to cut anything but rod straight locks. Unless you want the standard "Maine Man Cut", which most women up here seem fine with, to my neverending horror. Do they not know that's a man's haircut? I just want to look and feel like a woman. That means sexy. My hair is not straight, it has body and, cut correctly, it curls in a wonderfully natural feminine way I relate to. I like the "fresh outta bed look", kinda wild and easy. A hard thing to communicate to a hairdresser who may lack a point of reference, god help her (and may indeed feel such a louche look belongs on no one's head.)  Point of order: gay hairdressers, I've discovered, are more likely to empathize, but not always.

Heedless of the odds, I made an appointment – weeks in advance, mind you. It's de riguer  among the more soignee Maine salons, those pretending to, um, a more upscale cosmopolitan vibe, (bring a little class to the locals, you see) to perpetuate the impression they can't possibly book you today or this week as their gifts are so much in demand. The gal my daughter suggested I see did a decent job on her, as I mentioned, rod straight hair, so, ever hopeful she might perform adequately, I donned my Parisian cashmere for luck and ventured forth. (How bad can it be? Ah, how quickly we forget. After all I HAVE A PHOTO OF PRECISELY WHAT I WANT, emailed to the gal in advance.) Instincts at a high pitch, vibrating "no, no, not good, not good, bad idea",  in complete denial, I sashayed into the salon. I had washed and "defused" my hair so she'd get the wildly blown concept I like and to demonstrate how it might curl naturally if cut well. I needed some length taken off, some thinning in back, a few layers maybe in the parts I can't reach myself. I lugged along a laptop with the full screen size photo of the BEST haircut I've ever got.  I want this, said I.

But wait. Why you might ask, not just head back to that salon?  The one where I got the good cut.

Because, dear reader, that would involve a round trip ticket to France, a few nights in hotel, a goodly number of pastry shop visits, an appointment with Monsieur Leo in the 7th arr, Paris. and various other liquid 'outlays' not at my disposal just now. Well, I s'pose I could, so let's just say I was shopping local. Willing to believe the impossible. It's so.. American.

Sucker!.... my head is a disaster. I look like someone's bedraggled, underpaid, furtive and possibly illegal alien housekeeper.  No, too mild. Reflecting on my mirror image just now, I look like a defeated woman being herded to the "showers' in 1944. Utterly shorn and Truly tragic.

Here's how that came to be:

The gal was sweet, two years experience at the scissors bar (I came to discover after the fact), she offers me water with lemon (how chic!), gives me a "tour" (while I'm thinking: is this really necessary? I mean it's like 20 by 20 feet! I think I can find my way to the ladies') of the wee salon, its various areas dedicated to such specialities as the "color corner" (three hair dryers, Darth Vader black heads languishing over pleather chairs), the "color bar" (basically a shelf unit with containers of, one assumes, color), the "washing area" (where special chairs accommodate your neck angle), and lastly her chair, the one in front of the mirror where she will eventually do to me what Delilah did to Samson. But let's not get ahead of the story.

Before proceeding I fill out a 'form', like in the doctor's office. On it I'm to write about my worst haircut ever and why (I stated there were too many to elucidate), and information pertaining to my shampoo preferences, water temperatures, use of hair dryer, my 'feelings' about my hair. (Seriously?)

That she wanted to assess my hair, cut it "dry" a bit before washing, sounded an optimistic note with me. I glanced at the scissor holster suspended from her waist, exploding with chrome utensils. The sight of this gave me pause.  M. Leo only used one pair – but whatever. I showed her the Paris photo, she glanced at it briefly while I described in as much detail as I recalled the minimalist technique Monsieur Leo used to shape the cut (NOT many layers, and "this length",  I demonstrated). She insisted she 'got it', we agreed on a length, I was very clear on where to cut the sides, the back, cautioning her against 'too many layers' as that would leave my hair (please, trust me) flat rather than curly. Oh, yes, she gets it, lift, curl, etc. We proceed to the hairwashing area, I get a brief whiff of head massage (she's young, has no idea how women d'un certain age crave this). Once back in the chair she reaches into her impressive waist 'holster' with a dozen different scissors, takes one to the left side of my face and HACKS the hair so short I thought I'd have a heart attack. At this point, judging from the look on my face, she asks, "Are you about to have a heart attack?" and smiles. I insist, no no, carry on, but isn't that a bit short? OH, sez the gal, this will give you the LIFT you want, short underlayers LIFT the longer layers. Well., okay. Proceed. (God help me. God lift me!)

Our conversation went back and forth with every few scissor snips, I tried to be helpful while she insisted it would, in the end, be what I wanted. but the way she was cutting, I'd seen it before, waaay too many layers, nothing like the Parisian experience. Do remember... I've waited years to trust my head to anyone. This was a leap of faith. In addition, I have a reputation for being, well, not picky so much as DEMANDING, when it comes to spending money and getting something fairly close what I pay for. I mean, if I buy  bag of oranges, take them home, peel one and it SUCKS, all pith, no juice, I take the damn bag back to the store. That seems only right to me. Whatever... so I have this particular reputation. No, I exude it. Ditto re being frank, although I do feel my skills in the diplomacy department are highly underrated.  No one ever pats you on the back for shit that doesn't happen.

Anyway. Despite my rising panic and conscious of the above referenced 'reputation', I absolutely "maintained low tones" as I attempted to make suggestions, all ignored. She did not, as they say, hear me, she had her own ideas of how this was going.  I even tried to sound sympathetic, understanding. She just kept snipping and snipping and snipping and snipping and promising and promising as though CUTTING MORE HAIR would FIX IT! Okay... Not!!!

 I finally had to say, "Just stop, please, it's okay. (My heart sinking, my rapidly aging face sagging with it. This is So NOT okay. My brain shouting, "Red alert! Dyke cut! Oh, Nooooo, Mister Bill!")

"How's that?" she asks brightly. People, – I've suffered in silence too many times not wanting to 'hurt feelings. Now I refuse to lie. How is it doing anyone a favor if I do? Why perpetuate the myth/tragedy? "I hate it," I said quietly. "It's too short. It's not curling. It's not your fault, you tried your best,"  and carried on voicing every palliative thing I could think of because – and here's a prime example of what's WRONG with young America today – she actually believed in her little Mainer, never been anywhere heart that she could pull this snappy French haircut off with two years experience and a couple days at Sassoon. I mean, what the...? Where do people get the notion they can do great work without the correct training, skills, information and experience? The salon owner haughtily attempted to stress the Sassoon experience later on as I lingered hopefully at the register, thinking: Shouldn't someone apologize for this?  Sassoon cut no mustard with me.  Sassoon? WHERE THEY SPECIALIZE IN STRAIGHT HAIR. DO YOU THINK I'M AN IDIOT? The whole useless shebang took two hours, TWO HOURS! As though more cutting time miraculously translated into a better cut, the logical conclusion being: you're better off totally bald? This longtime-is-better crap is a snow job. Anyone with experience knows that if someone can't give you a good cut in twenty minutes or less they should not be wielding scissors near your head and most certainly not be charging you good money for it.

You know, I felt for the kid.  But I was heartbroken – and I was pissed.  When it was all over, despite her obvious distress, as she seemed sincere, I felt obliged to tell the young woman that Leo gave me that great cut in 20 minutes flat. She recoiled as though struck. Twenty minutes! But I'd done her a favor, and I knew it. I set a standard before her, whether she chooses to aspire to it is on her. With any luck she wasn't one of those unfortunate children raised to expect praise, "Good Job!" for, you know, brushing their teeth! On the way home (raging to self in the car) I recalled that, reviewing decades of haircuts, every good cut (alas, too few!) I ever got took no more than 20 minutes, that's it. So... New Rule: when making hair appointments, insist they only last that long. Set a timer when you sit down and tell them "Okay, I'm outta here when that goes off, so get to it, and don't screw it up." Bet you get a better cut. (Note to self.)

Poor thing,  25 and a haircutter in Maine, the Godforsaken State, probably trained at one of these beauty schools that are stuck in the 70s or some time warp I can't actually pinpoint.  The poor girl didn't want me to pay her. I insisted, and I tipped her too. But the best tip I gave her was this:

Honey, You wanna be a good hair cutter? Save your money; go to France; spend three months there at Monsieur Leo's knee, sweep his floors if you have to, but learn something! Spend days at the Louvre! Walk the streets, notice the women. Learn how to see, how to listen to your client.  Come back to Maine with a coterie of gay hairdressers from Paris and open your own salon. People will flock to you, you'll make a pile of dough and live happily ever after. And the women of Maine will be grateful. So grateful.

Til then, No, I won't be back so you can 'get to know' my hair. I'll cut it myself. It didn't look this bad when I walked in.

If I can white out my mug, I'll post both photos later..

A Man for All Seasons

Okay, this is the coolest story I've read this year. Read background story here, from BBC today. Just amazing. someone give this guy a MacArthur grant; where's Melinda Gates when you need her?

ScienceCasts: The Sound of Earthsong