Sugar bobbed.

^Hairstyles of the 1920s created more controversy in hair fashion than in any other period of American culture.  And one hairstyle, known simply as ¾ “the bob,” would be at the center of this great debate.  First introduced during the Great War, the bob haircut would eventually cause a revolution in the way women would wear their hair ¾ forevermore.

^The free-spirited youth of the day readily accepted the new look and made it the forerunner of many fads and fashions which eventually led to new curling, perming and coloring methods.  When a woman had her hair cut short, she grew bolder.  Soon she began wearing ‘long beads, short skirts, rolled stockings, and rouge on her knees,’ an expression synonymous with ¾ the flapper.  The rebellious change in hairstyle was just the beginning of a major change in societal norms and values seen during the 1920s.

^On May 1, 1920, the Saturday Evening Post published
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s short story “Bernice Bobs Her Hair.”  This infamous tale depicts a sweet-but-dull young lady who submits to the barber’s shears and is transformed into a smooth-talking vamp by her fickle society-girl cousin.  The heroine would become a role model for many young women.

^Tears and smelling salts accompanied the sacrifice as shorn cascades of crowning glories tumbled to the floors of barbershops.  Men raged over the female invasion of the barbershop but at that time, the-cutting-of-hair was still a male-dominated occupation.  In some cities, long lines of women were reported standing outside barbershops while inside, many women patiently sat on floors waiting their turn to be bobbed.  In New York City, reports of up to 2,000 heads per day were being clipped.

^By 1925, the bobbed hair controversy still raged.  A teacher in Jersey City, New Jersey was actually ordered by her Board of Education to let her hair grow!  The Board claimed that women waste too much time fussing with bobbed locks.  Preachers warned parishioners that “a bobbed woman is a disgraced woman.”  Men divorced their wives over bobbed hair.  One large department store fired all employees wearing bobbed hair.

And to make matters worse, the bold and daring flapper pushed the envelope even further when she subjected herself to the shingle bob causing even more controversy.  In a letter to the editor of a professional hair publication, one parent deplored this newest version of the bob:  “From the rear, it is hard to tell a girl from a boy, since the advent of the shingle bob.”  And, “I’ve raised my girls to be women and my boys to be men, but since the advent of this shingle bob, I have to look twice at my own offspring to tell which is which.”

Text from www.hairarchives.com

Fanciful wants.

I’m full of fanciful purchasing thoughts. Yesterday I semi-seriously checked out a 1977 teal Volkswagen Van. I’ve been scheming up bohemian travel plans in my head since I saw the ad on Craigslist. Camping across Canada. Roadtripping to national parks. Tossing a half dozen friends into the back and making them all learn to play banjos and musical spoons as we bump along country roads.

At a good friend’s request, I left my checkbook at home so I didn’t do anything rash, like, say, buy it on the spot.  The owner took me for a spin. You know how young women are never supposed to get into a van with a strange man? It wasn’t until I was buckled in and barrelling down the freeway with Dave, a man covered in tattoos and face piercings, that I even considered my folly. Don’t worry, I made it back to the restaurant where my friends were eagerly waiting for me, in one smiling piece.

It was really fun to imagine that the van was mine.  MY van. I kept saying “I’m going to see MY van”. Ultimately, its not going to be MY van. I’ve promised myself that if I indeed invest in such an impractable collectible it would be precisely what I imagine it would be. It would have a pop-top roof and have  a little kitchen set-up like my Grandpa’s van did. And perhaps I’ll wait until I move somewhere where the winters aren’t so harsh. Most Minnesotan VW owners stow their vans for the entire winter.

My second fanciful idea came to me yesterday at a movie theatre. I played a game or two of Ms. Pac Man while I waited for a friend to finish up talking to another friend. I love that game and I’m really really good at it. You don’t see them around much anymore because there nigh on thirty years old, so whenever I do encounter them in arcades, movie theatres, or the occasional dive bar, I feed a half dozen quarters into the glowing red slot and narrow my eyes in Ms. PacMan concentration.

Then I thought…..what if I owned it? Like Tom Hanks in the movie ‘Big’, I could have a trampoline and my favorite arcade game in a sparse Manhattan loft. A girl can dream can’t she? Especially one who is always hungry for pellets and wears a super cute pink bow on her yellow head.

A pretty girl reads a book. And then another. And so on.

I’m in rehearsals once again. However, its a bit of a different situation this time around. Not to toot my own horn (such an odd phrase)  but for the past ten months I’ve been in five long running shows and have been on stage 90% of the time in all of them.

But in ‘Hedda Gabler’ I play Berta, the nigh-on non-existent maid of the Tesman household. This means while the rest of the cast continually spouts such Ibsen-isms as “People just don’t do things like that!” and “[When you kill yourself] do it beautifully, with vine leaves in your hair”, I’m backstage with my nose in a book. I’ve got a lot of glorious down-time! Sometimes I bring my laptop and do whatever office work I can do remotely, but most the time I am voraciously tearing through library books…consuming contemporary classics like ‘The Bell Jar” and “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn”, both of which I’m ashamed to admit I’ve never read (B.A. in classic BRITISH literature, not Contemporary American). I devoured the two hefty  Oprah’s Book Club books I got for Christmas  and by the end of January I had moved on to an John Updike book entitled “Gertrude and Claudius” which examined the relationship and supposed affair between the infamous royal Danish couple in ‘Hamlet’. My friend is now insisting that I read the fifth Harry Potter Seeing as I’ve read books 1 through 4 of Harry Potter no less than TWICE, I figure I should indulge in some fluff reading while on tour, if only to finally to put an end to everyone entreating me to read them.

In correlation to my re-whetted literary appetite, I’ve been quite active on Goodreads.com. Yes, it IS another one of those blasted networking sites, but it really is the best way to keep an account of all those books I’ve been meaning to read or have been recommended to me over and over gain. I can’t tell you how many of my friends have encouraged me to read “Infinite Jest” but  I can  never  remember to seek it out. Now I’ve got in on a list of books ‘to-read’, right along with a list of books I’m ‘currently-reading’, and a  list of books I’ve ‘read’. Savvy.

I used to read a lot. In high school and college I would read whenever I wanted to tune people out or when I was in a social atmosphere but didn’t want to be obliged to politely participate in small talk.

In high school I got in trouble for reading my book in English class. I was reading some John Irving classic like “World According to Garp” or A Prayer for Owen Meany” while my teacher lectured about how to write an autobiographical story. She had to say my name a few times to get my attention and then tutted her tongue at me for not keeping in stride with the rest of the class.

The first week of summer arts camp in L.A. I was uneasy. I felt like I was surrounded by phoneys. Snotty attention seeking rich kids who were used to being the best actor/painter/singer/dancer/fill-in-the-blank of their own school. Before I fell in with a crowd of similarly cynical young performers, I would sit crossed-legged in the corner of the lounge and turn page after page of some canonized classic work, completely satisfied and slightly smug.

I caught the eye of the charming R.A.. The one who  all of the young drama divas batted their mascara smeared eyelashes at. They chirped extra loud about their commercial agents whenever he sauntered by.

He stopped mid-stride in front of my repose and said something to the effect of :

“You don’t look like the type of girl who would be sitting in a corner hiding her face in a book”.

I think he was giving me a compliment. Saying that I was a pretty girl. But I was puzzled.

“Too pretty to be reading?” I blinked. He was very attractive. Beachy good-looks. Everyone in LA has beachy good-looks.

“No. I just mean. Most girls who are as pretty as you and who are here in LA, well um, they typically don’t have that much interest in reading literature.”

“That’s probably a gross over-statement. But, thanks?”

Six years later I met up with this same R.A. in New York and we went on a date. I was then 22 and he was 30. Our time together was bizarre primarily because I couldn’t shake the feeling that I had to impress him all over again. I had always been younger than him, of course that hadn’t changed, but something about the fact that he knew when I was even younger….well, I couldn’t help but  continually try to prove that I was his intellectual equal.  Ultimately, the dates were flat and insignificant.

And he didn’t remember that he had once said that I was too pretty to be reading a book.

Private Eyes

White board art

I’ve found a new medium. I’m petitioning for the return of spring on the residence white boards.

Yearning for the vernal equinox.

My Eagle Bluff getaway.

My friend and I just returned from a tremendous ‘Adult Getaway Weekend’ at Eagle Bluff Environment Learning Center (Adult? Me?Hmm). I don’t even know where to start describing how truly amazing our time was!

In a little over 24 hours we did ALL of the following:

* Learned how to identify a Sugar Maple tree and how to tap it for its sap with a ’spial’. Rudimentary ’spials’ are can be made out of hollowed out sumac twigs. It takes twenty gallons of sap to boil down into only one gallon of maple syrup!

* We went for a GeoCache hike through the woods, using GPS navigational gizmos to locate numerous folgers coffee cans with tokens and notebooks inside each one. (Jerome and I located 6 out 10, hiking a good 3-4 miles!)

* For our hour of free time before dinner Jerome and I seperately and simultaneously meditated, vitalized by all the fresh air and exercise we had just experienced.

*Indulged in a delicious gourmet five course meal complete with companion wines for each course.

Hors d’oeuvres
Baked Brie with Apricot preserves and dried cherries served with toasted Bagel rondo slices
Wine Selection:  Lunetta Prosecco ~a white sparkling wine from Italy, which is dry, fruity and frizante’ (slightly fizzy)

Salad
Blood orange salad consisting of Lolla Rosa, Radicchio, Romaine, and Belgium Endive Petals tossed in Blood orange vinaigrette. Garnished with Opal basil, Kalamata olives, Asiago cheese and Blood orange segments
Wine Selection:  Trivento Torrontes ~ made from a white grape from Argentina, which is aromatic with hints of apricots and jasmine and flavors of pear and peach

Appetizer
Marinated Jumbo Shrimp wrapped in Panchetta and sage placed on Italian style couscous cooked in a seafood stock and thickened with lobster cream garnished with Arugala
Wine Selection:  Martin Codax (1996) ~ made from a white Albarino grape grown on the galacian coast of Spain, some would say it was born to be paired with seafood

Palliating Item (to cleanse your palette)
Strawberry Sorbet

Main Entrée
(choose one)
Roasted Guinea fowl brushed with olive oil and Herbs de Provence
served over Risotto simmered in stock garnished with mirepiox
­OR­
Filet of beef roasted, sliced and napped with a brown sauce with Shiitake mushrooms
­OR­
Stuffed zucchini Florentine on a nest of linguini with a dollop of roasted tomato and red pepper marinara
Accompanied by root vegetables (beets, parsnips, carrots, and fingerling potatoes) slow roasted with veal stock
Wine Selection:  J Lohr (1996) Cabernet Sauvignon~this classic French wine is made in Pasoroboles California and has a dark berry flavor, low in tannins

Dessert
Leaning Chocolate Tower of Pisa Chocolate mousse filled pastry tower garnished with shaved dark chocolate and raspberries
Wine Selection:  Brachetto D’Acqui ~a sparkling red wine served chilled that has hints of cherry and strawberry

The meal floored me. The conversation at our table was inspired and thorough. A delightful dining experience.

• After dinner was the most magical event. The sky-lab! An inflatable dome with projections of the 3,000 stars we can see from our vantage point in MN. We learned folklore, mythology, and how to star-hop. Did you know that in the dark, our peripheral vision is much stronger than direct focus….so if you’re looking for a constellation you should look just to the right or left of where you think it might be in the sky.
• Bed time. My mind was racing with new knowledge and stimulated by the fresh air, so incredibly, I watched my cellphone leap from 1:59 to 3:00 am.
• Morning yoga with Nancy, gentle but thorough. Kind and holistic. Namaste indeed.
• Due to the rain/sleet the ropes course out of the question. Next best thing? ROCK CLIMBING. See attached photographic proof that Jerome and I made it to the top. Rational mind says “Gravity is gonna getcha”, but trusting adventurous mind says “Jerome’s got my back…and my limbs….and my precious precious head.”

• Archery. Steal from the rich, give to the poor, Robin Hood experience.
• Lunch, farewells, email exchanges.

I had a blast. And most excitingly, we made some friends! With the out-of-towners AND the young Eagle Bluff naturalists. They are eager to collaborate and curious to know about what we do at the Commonweal. I’m so very happy that I finally really experienced their learning center. What an invaluable asset to our community they are.

Mamamemamameme