HARRY & SONS BARBER

I went to Harry and Sons Barber in Cloverdale - Last week Christine scheduled an appointment for me with Troy at Michaud's, her hair salon. Well, not actually Michaud's since Troy has opened his barbershop next door to his ‘Michauds’.We discussed what he would do. Then he did it. Ohhh! Listen, hair cuts pour moi are non-essential. The top is barren soil. I manage the sides with an electric trimmer, as with the beard. But this … this was cloud floating. First, the golf green lawn mowing, short, short all over, head and face. Then hot towels on my face, and fragrant oils, then straight razor smooth as silk, and another hot towel & more delicate razoring, then a cold towel. $54 plus a $10 tip. It's a lavish experience. I will do it again, after I get a few more landscape and portrait commissions. -- Oh, and my daughter, Cari Unruh Locken, created the signage.

My Beard - On Again Off Again

A NEW LEARNING
Pogon is the Greek term for ‘beard’ and trophy a Greek term for nourishment or growth. Pogonotrophy is the growing of a beard and I was involved in it.

My beard was a test. What would it look like? How would people perceive me? How would I respond to peoples’ reactions? How would Christine respond to it? She has historically, not hysterically, thank goodness, voiced her objections to facial hair on me. Would it be different now that I retained it for a while? I started growing it during our family vacation at the end of August and I have maintained it for five months. Have you picked up on the past tense? Yes, it’s gone.

Here’s what I found. I did and I didn’t care what anyone thought. This maturity level delighted me. My vanity and autonomy were intact. No one rained on my one man parade. Younger generations affirmed me thinking the beard was cool and older women said it was sophisticated. Men daring to comment said it made me look like the artist I pretend to be.

I enjoyed my goatee. It was fun to wear it. I didn’t plan on removing it. I just woke this past Wednesday and knew this was a shave day. It was a practical decision. My goatee bumped into my lifestyle. I want to be in and out of the morning shower and I want to shave while I am in there. Mine was a high maintenance beard requiring daily trim time.

In my pre-beard days a hairy Hindu neighbour informed me that Jesus never told me to shave and he urged me to grow my beard. I will likely grow it again. Perhaps mine is an occasional beard, a seasonal fuzz, but it will always be an egotistical adornment. It does make me feel manly, feeds my ego and image. What my beard will not be is a faith associated growth as it is for Sikhs, Hindus, some Jews, Amish, Hutterites, Old Colony Mennonites, Eastern Christian priests and Franciscans. Neither will my beard be utilitarian as though I required it for warmth in cold weather unless the lower mainland becomes any worse in winter than it already was this year. I can still afford Mach 3 razor blades if I determine to pull even the dull ones across my mug.

Nuts, now a man walked past my house with a nice white beard and I am jealous.
Pogonology is an actual term for study of beards. How bored must one be, yet I wonder whether it comments on the sense of nakedness one feels when looking into a mirror at a smooth face where once there were whiskers?

A BLOG ENTRY ABOUT NOTHING - THAT'S SOMETHING

A NEW LEARNING
Last night I had no clue what I might write as a blog entry today. No theme stood out to me. Dumb-headed politicians had done nothing new that deserved comment. The writing muses who visit me got stopped in heavy traffic or something. They didn’t show up. I awoke with the thought that today’s entry would be about nothing.

Not only is that not implausible (oops, double negative). Take Two: Not only is that plausible (meaning conceivable, feasible, and possible) but also it is not precedent setting (an action to be used as an example for a similar action). In fact in a series of 1992 Seinfeld episodes called ‘the Pilot,’ a storyline unfolds in which NBC approaches Jerry and offers him the chance to make a pilot. He consults with his terminally unemployed, no talent best friend George. George suggests that it be a show about nothing. NBC executives are initially dubious about the merits of a show about nothing but they eventually give the go ahead. In truth, Jerry’s own ‘Seinfeld’ show was a series pitched by Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David as a "show about nothing," Relating the everyday happenings in the lives of Jerry and his friends, Seinfeld became one of the most popular and influential TV shows of the 1990s in the U.S., and ran for nine seasons. (HERE'S THE YOUTUBE CLIP)

We cut our own Christmas tree yesterday. We began this family tradition when our children were toddlers. With our daughter’s move from Edmonton in August, this became the first December that all our children and grandchildren went tree cutting together. There were puddles of water sitting in some of the tree fields. An old adage says that you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink. I learned another. You can lead children near water puddles but you can’t make them stay out of them.

I have maintained a mustache and goatee for the past two months. Christine does not appreciate facial hair. Everywhere we go, people notice and comment and they are customarily affirming to me. It makes me look distinguished they say. It fits my new place in life, my artistic concentration. Finally last night she kissed me goodnight, slowly, as if she was accepting that it is here for a while and she will live with it.

The flu against which I was immunized last year never arrived in Canada. This year I again got a shot, and I have contracted a head and chest cold that doesn’t leave. There may be no correlation. It simply bugs me.

When I was running three kilometres every morning no one in my family paid attention. No one followed my example. Mind you that was a few years ago. I have done some on again, off again walk/runs but I am not a consistent runner. I have some weight to drop. Lately my daughter and daughter in law are running with new friends from the Running Room and are enthusiasts. Last night my wife told me she had bought me a Running Room membership. I told her I didn’t want it. I don’t want to be told when to run, how to run or to be part of something organized.

I have been a leader all my life but in actuality, the women within our family and among our friends, come up with the ideas, set the plans, make the decisions and pass along the news to us men. I don’t think we men mind but we like to complain that we are always the last to know.

I had better stop. I could write about nothing all day long.

A Rambling New Me

A NEW LEARNING
I have sent a recent photo of myself to my family this morning to introduce my new look. I keep having to trim my five week old beard. It’s fun hearing the reactions from people who haven’t seen me for a while. Usually they affirm me and when Christine is accompanying at the time, that’s a bonus. As I told you earlier, this look is not her preferred persona for me. Some of my friends think I am keeping it to make her mad – not so! She is humoring me but hoping that I will ‘grow’ out of this soon. Candidly it’s far more work to maintain a neat beard that to sweep it off each day.

I am enjoying my concentrated time at art. All kinds of time to paint but I don’t stay at it very long. Too many other activities. The past two days it has been warm and sunny. Here in the lower mainland of BC you seize the moments. When you have an MX5 sitting in the garage anxious for the road, guess what? You get out there. Christine and I have been out driving the back roads and small towns south of the border in Washington State and then here through farm country. We stopped for pie and coffee yesterday on Lyndon Washington. It was $15 plus a tip for a $17 payout, and that’s $20 Canadian now. Our Looney has plummeted in two weeks to .77 against its USA counterpart. Bank of Canada may think the lower dollar helps the economy but it’s not helping mine. I’m retired.

Two weeks ago we were paying $1.50 per litre for gasoline and yesterday I happily filled up at $1.03. We are puppets on a string sometimes. At a buck fifty I would have to confine myself to driving up and down the driveway. Humor aside, I am realizing anew the crushing weight of the cost of things and the disproportionate share of our seniors’ incomes spent on the basics. Gas and food costs keep climbing. I am grateful for Canada’s medical help, even with its shortcomings because many in the US are crushed by medical costs. I know that everyone feels the sting of inflation but retirees on fixed income amounts feel it more severely.
But I am concerned for my children and their children. If the downturned economy is here to stay, different choices will have to be made as to lifestyle and that’s not easy to do when we have become accustomed to instant gratification. Who would have thought one year ago that we would have to reinvent responsible personal consumer practices to protect ourselves against credit card debt?