Teased hair and other follicular torments

The New Neo Posted on by

I spent quite a few of my early teen years developing a skill I haven’t used since: the ability to coax hair into tangled masses and then smooth the top layer over the whole thing in order to create volume, a process known as “teasing.” It involved a fine comb, much patience, and iron will, things the teenage girl has in abundance when it comes to fashion and her hair.

It also involved another lost skill set, that of rolling the wet hair around large metal cylinders almost as big as Coke cans and then pinning them in place, tying the whole thing down with a hairnet, and sleeping on it. Yes, sleeping on it, which was perhaps the most acquired skill of all, involving the ability to stay in one position all night, carefully putting pressure only on the spot designated most comfortable (or rather, least uncomfortable).

It meant, among other things, that a girl couldn’t comb or brush through her hair once it had been arranged, until the next time it came to wash it. And unless you had very greasy hair that needed washing very often (I did not), you spaced out the washings as long as possible because hair teased much better when less than squeaky-clean.

I was reminded of all of this by a single photo I came across last week, in an article celebrating the music of Ellie Greenwich. I’d never heard of her before, but I’d certainly heard some of the songs she wrote—most notably “Be My Baby,” “Do Wah Diddy Diddy,” and especially “Leader of the Pack” (vroom, vroom!)—that spanned a long career as a very successful songwriter. Ellie died just a few days ago, and as I was searching the tributes I came across the following very fine example of the art of teasing. Blond Ellie is on the left, her husband and co-writer Jeff Barry in the middle (sans teasing), and on the right (and sporting the higher, and therefore better, “do”) is someone I believe to be Ellie’s sister:

ellie-greenwich-11.jpg

But these hairdos are models of restraint compared to the ones I frequently encountered—and sometimes sported myself—in the public junior high and high schools I attended. Alas, I have very few photos of myself in those years and none readily available for scanning. So you’ll just have to trust me when I say that I achieved great heights during the time I wore a hairdo known as the artichoke, which was a shortish (but not too short) and highly teased and layered coif.

Sorry, can’t find a good photo of an artichoke—even on someone else, even after a Google search—except for pictures of the vegetable. But here’s the beehive, courtesy of the singing group known as the Ronettes:

teasehair2.jpg

Lest you think that only black entertainers did this to themselves, let me just say that I recall a very Caucasian girl in my high school who daily sported an even loftier version of this very same hairdo, and she did it without using a false hairpiece or any such nonsense. Marie Antionette would have been proud:

marieantionette.jpg

The whole thing collapsed, as it were, sometime in the mid-to-late 60’s. First came post-Beatles British fashion and then hippies, and shiny straight hair was the thing.

You’d think that would liberate us females. But no, girls with un-shiny, un-straight hair (otherwise known as curly) had to decide whether to use straightening irons (or even regular irons, after protecting the hair by placing a thin towel over it and putting the iron on a low setting—not recommended!) or whether to go au naturale.

Curly hair came in later, of course, and then for a brief and unshining moment it was our straight-haired sisters who suffered through perms. Here’s an example of a typical bad, bad, super-bad one:

badperm2.jpg

But those days are gone—fortunately for all of us, curly and straight. Now, however, we have the odd habit of the fashionistas to flatten any natural tendency of the hair to wave or even to fall in any normal sort of manner. They straighten it via the ceramic iron. Here’s the desired result:

straighthair.jpg

To me it looks as though every ounce of life has been squeezed out of the girl’s poor tresses. But fashion is a cruel master, and twas ever thus.

[ADDENDUM: Here’s a video featuring stills of Ellie Greenwich. It’s a tour of some of the hairstyles I mention, from all sorts of teased do’s to the long straight look. Ellie’s the blond:

Honduras continues to matter…

The New Neo Posted on by

…and Obama continues to fight against Honduras’s efforts to retain its democracy, its constitution, and its autonomy.

And Obama’s alliance with Hugo Chavez and against the forces of freedom in Honduras continues to pass under the radar screen of most Americans.

And I continue to find the Obama administration more offensive with every passing day.

[Hat tip: commenter “huxley.”]

Wild fires

The New Neo Posted on by

Many years ago I lived in southern California in the hills bordering the San Fernando Valley. Every day I drove towards the city on the San Diego Freeway and then back again. Back then the traffic wasn’t as bad as it is now; there actually was a finite rush hour rather than a perpetual one.

One late afternoon I was on my way home. As I reached my exit I noticed a small patch of fire in the dry brush off the freeway to the right. It was small: maybe two feet square, maybe even less. It was summertime, very hot and very arid in the usual way of summer in southern California, so the fire had obviously just begun, perhaps started by a carelessly tossed match or cigarette.

I lived about two minutes from the freeway exit. By the time I got home I could hear the buzz of the helicopters and see them circling above. Although I couldn’t see the fire from the yard, I could smell the acrid smoke and feel the sting in my eyes.

I turned on the television to learn what I could. I was stunned by what I saw. In the two minutes since I had first spied that tiny fire on my drive home, it had become a major conflagration. Several large hills were fully ablaze, pouring thick smoke as the helicopters circled. I recall seeing water (or flame retardant) pouring from the planes, but perhaps I’m confusing that with later visions from other televised fires. There are many such visions when you live in southern California.

That particular fire turned out to be relatively easy to contain; it was over in few hours, with only a few blackened foothills to show for the trouble. Not so the fire a few years later that consumed the home of a good friend of mine. She lived on a high hill in a ritzy suburb of Los Angeles, with a panoramic view of the Pacific. When the fires came, she and her husband had a mere hour (but a precious one) to stuff their cars with whatever they deemed most important to save, say goodbye to their lovely home forever, and drive down the mountain road to safety.

Those who haven’t lived in southern California—or other areas equally dry—cannot imagine how fast a fire can spread there. I had read about it, but I would not have believed it had I not seen it for myself. I still find it hard to believe, even though I have seen it for myself.

So the news of the fire now blazing to the north of Los Angeles has a grim reality for me beyond the abstract. Here’s a description of its scope so far:

Even for a region used to enduring huge wildfires, the rate at which the Station Fire spread is staggering. Much of the city of Los Angeles is covered with a thick layer of soot, and authorities are telling residents of the city to stay indoors if possible. More than 2,500 firefighters are battling the blaze, using everything from hand tools to airplanes, but have only contained five percent of the fire, and don’t expect full containment for at least another week.

“We are making progress, but it is very slow and very dangerous,” U.S. Forest Service incident commander Mike Dietrick said at a press conference this morning. “We have to wait for the fire to come to us.”

I don’t have to tell you how brave firefighters are, and how dangerous their job always is. Two have already died in connection with this fire, when their car went off a steep mountain road. Let’s hope there will be no more casualties.

But the winds are due to pick up tonight.

Lamaze class and Obama: the morning after

The New Neo Posted on by

Whatever could the connection be between Lamaze class and President Obama?

When I was pregnant I went to Lamaze class to learn breathing and relaxation techniques that would help me during my delivery. I was a pretty good student. I practiced assiduously, and when my husband squeezed my hand (or whatever paltry exercise was supposed to simulate the pain of labor) I huffed and puffed right through it like a champ.

I made a tape of favorite music to soothe me between pains. I packed a little bag to take with me. In short, I was all prepared.

Except I wasn’t, as it turned out. Not at all. I don’t know about others, but for me Lamaze class turned out to be something between a cruel joke and a cruel lie.

I won’t bore you with the female equivalent of war stories. But let’s just say that the tools Lamaze class gave me were entirely inadequate to the task of dealing with the pain of labor and childbirth (which happened in my case to have included unrelieved back labor and the rather unusual situation of the delivery of a full-term infant in an unbroken sac filled with amniotic fluid. But I digress.)

What’s far more important, it turns out (surprise, surprise!) that labor is the least of the things for which a new mother needs to be prepared. After all, labor is short compared to eighteen or twenty-one years of raising a child.

For these I was almost totally unprepared, although in retrospect I think I stepped up to the plate quite nicely. But I remember wondering why everyone had seemed so focused on childbirth itself, as though that were an ending rather than just the beginning.

How does this relate to Obama? I think that he and his staff were focused mostly on the pregnancy and childbirth of the campaign and the election. It’s not that they paid no attention whatsoever to what would come after. But I’m not so sure they thought all that much about it.

Perhaps that’s true of many candidates. But for Obama and his staff, as competent as they were about the campaign, they seem so far to have been equally incompetent about governing.

I’m not just saying that because I disagree with nearly everything they’ve done—although I certainly do disagree with nearly everything they’ve done. It’s that they seem unfocused and naive. The vaunted “transparency” they promised not only has not been demonstrated, but instead a different sort of transparency has surfaced: the arrogance of their efforts to blame the American people for disagreeing with them, and the obviousness of their attempts to twist the economic forecasts in order to deceive the public about what’s happening and what the financial results (including needed taxes) of their proposed policies are likely to be.

Kyle-Anne Shiver chalks much of Obama’s problem up to his following the Alinsky playbook:

Alinsky’s power tactics are all about gaining power and have absolutely nothing to offer in the way of practical solutions for effective American governance. Even Alinsky alerted his acolytes to this glaring hole in the revolutionary garment he was devising…

So, when a politician jumps the gun and sprints for the presidential power-perch without first thinking through the country’s problems and trying to come up with some actual new things to try, he is sunk in a mudhole of his own making long before Inaugural Day.

Even supporters are getting frustrated at what seems to be the Obama adminstration’s incompetence and disorganization, as well as its lack of focus. Their concern is that Obama can’t “sell” his policies and get Congress and the American people onboard. For Obama opponents, these failures are reassuring, because they mean that Congress and the American public are starting to wise up to the far-Left nature of so much of the Obama agenda—perhaps in time to stop it.

Let’s hear it for the “Science Fiction Theater” theme

The New Neo Posted on by

This is for those among you who, like me, were huge fans of the early TV show “Science Fiction Theater.” It was the forerunner to a much better (and better-known) series, “The Twilight Zone.”

But “Science Fiction Theater” had its own charm. I was practically a tot at the time (yeah, right), but for me it was one of the most eagerly-awaited and anticipated half-hours of the week.

Not the least of the attractions—it actually may have been the greatest one, for me—was the intro to the show. It featured sweeping music that had an exhilarating quality. I always felt a thrill and a chill on hearing it. Host Truman Bradley, although nowhere near as mysterious, biting, and wonderful as Rod Serling to come, had a trustworthy demeanor that gave gravitas to the otherwise-flighty proceedings.

I was very pleased to find this clip at You Tube—hadn’t heard that music in centuries (or is it millenia?):

When the police fail: more on the Dugard case

The New Neo Posted on by

Word is that there were multiple and repeated failures of the law enforcement system in the Dugard case: police investigation, parole officers, prison system.

It turns out the Garrido was given a fifty year sentence for his earlier sex crimes but was inexplicably let out after only ten years. It turns out he was wearing an ankle bracelet for monitoring—but it seems to have done little good. It turns out he still had in his possession a car that matched the description of the abductor’s car given eighteen years ago by Jaycee’s stepfather. It turns out neighbors did complain to police that something shady was going on at the Garrido house, including the keeping of girls in tents in the yard, but the officer who came to investigate did not go beyond the front porch of the home.

And all this despite the fact that the man involved was a convicted sex offender of a serious and violent type. It’s enough to make your blood boil. A spokesperson says:

“We missed an opportunity to bring earlier closure to this situation,” Contra Costa County Sheriff Warren E. Rupf said. “I cannot change the course of events but we are beating ourselves up over this and continue to do so.”

“We should have been more inquisitive, more curious and turned over a rock or two.”

I wonder why they weren’t, actually. Police are ordinarily pretty keen on catching child rapists.

The return of the lost: Jaycee Lee Dugard

The New Neo Posted on by

By now you have probably read the remarkable story of Jaycee Lee Dugard, a twenty-nine-year-old woman who was kidnapped eighteen years ago by a couple named Phillip and Nancy Garrido. Jaycee was eleven at the time, and has been held in captivity ever since.

Dugard is another in a line of children abducted by strangers at a young age, sexually abused and co-opted into a perverse “family” situation, and held in various degrees of captivity (Jaycee’s appears to have been profound), then discovered by chance (or, in rare instances, through escape). I have written of the phenomenon before in some depth, but I will write about it again because it is so ghastly, and touches on fears so deep within us.

It is often said that there is nothing more awful to a parent than having a child die. And although that is generally true, there is something about these child abductions—in which the fate of the child remains unknown for a long time—that has an especially intense awfulness.

On the one hand, the child might still be alive. Although that would ordinarily be a good thing, the parents of a kidnapped child face the reality that, if true, that would mean that their precious child might be also suffering horrifically at the hands of an unknown but sadistic and perverted assailant.

Or the child’s suffering might have been intense but relatively quick, ending in brutal murder and burial somewhere in an unknown spot out in the wild world.

In any event, the parents of such a child face an extra measure of suffering at the hands of their own imaginations. And it doesn’t take an overactive one to imagine things that no parent should ever have to contemplate. Over the entire experience arches the element of the unknown; at any moment the child could be found relatively unharmed (although they are never truly unharmed) and returned to the family fold. As the case of Jaycee Dugard proves, even the passage of eighteen years does not preclude this possibility.

In the meantime, though, it’s necessary to figure out a way to get through the day. I hope that none of us ever has to experience anything remotely like what this torment entails for such parents. Spouses often cannot help each other; the marital separation that Jaycee’s mother and her stepfather Carl Probyn experienced is completely typical. If there are other children in the family, they are never unscathed, either.

Of course, Jaycee’s discovery is good news. She’s alive, for starters. She seems to be well physically. Now her abductor and his cooperative wife will be tried and sentenced. These are all good things. But, as Probyn says, there’s a lot ahead for this family. In the following video, he mentions that everyone will need therapy. That’s an excellent guess, but therapy is hardly a cure-all for the sort of deeply destructive experience all of them have undergone.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

For Jaycee, her chance at a normal childhood and young adulthood was snatched away. Instead, she was raped and imprisoned, in addition to having borne her abductor/rapist’s children while she was still a child. They are now eleven and fifteen themselves, and have never been to school; the Garrido’s backyard tents are the only homes they have known. Now they will also learn (if they didn’t know already) that they were the product of a criminal kidnapping and subsequent rapes.

Jaycee’s parents will have to face hearing things about her captivity that will shock them beyond belief—but at least that’s better than the state of not knowing (and imagining the worst) for all those long and terrifying years. Now Jaycee’s stepfather Carl can finally throw off the extra added burden of having been under suspicion himself all this time; until her return, he was the last one to see Jaycee alive, and had actually witnessed her abduction by a man and a woman who threw her into a car and sped away.

Jaycee Dugard not only was abducted, raped, and held prisoner—she was (and probably still is to some degree) a prisoner of the mind as well. As Probyn said, she bonded to a certain extent with the Garridos. How could she not? In my previous post on the subject of kidnapped children who return, I reflected on the case of Steven Stayner:

I am reminded of another story, that of Steven Stayner, who was kidnapped in the early ’70s at the age of seven…by a pedophile, and kept for over seven years.

Stayner’s captor used sophisticated methods of “re-education” on him, convincing the boy that his parents had forgotten about him and didn’t want him back, sexually abusing him, and encouraging him to regard him as his new father. Stayner was only found when his kidnapper hauled in new prey, a young child for whom Stayner developed a feeling of compassionate protectiveness. He planned to guide the boy to a police station, but the child was fearful and wanted Stayner to go in with him. In doing so, Stayner himself was detained, and the entire story ended up spilling out.

But Stayner’s re-entry into his joyful family was fraught with psychological problems for all concerned, some of them detailed in an unusually fine made-for-TV film entitled, “I Know My First Name Is Steven” (the words Stayner voiced to the police when he was first being interrogated.) There was a book, as well.

The problems were not surprising considering the dreadful trauma and dislocation all had endured–the fact that they had lost a young child and yet a teenager was returned to them, one who’d seen and endured things no child should ever have to face.

Stayner married young and had two children, but tragically, was killed in a motorcycle accident when he was only twenty-four.

Another kidnap victim, Elizabeth Smart, appear to be doing well these days (if you can believe articles in People magazine). But Elizabeth was “only” in captivity for nine months.

Nine months! For Elizabeth and her parents, that time may have seemed an eternity, each minute a slow agony of anxiety and pain. Jaycee and her family endured eighteen years of that hard school.

Now comes another hard part: Jaycee’s re-entry into the world and the family that was torn apart. I wish them luck; they’ll need it.

[NOTE: As for the Garridos and their punishment, as a previous sex offender Garrido ought to get the maximum in California, whatever that is (I couldn’t find the information).

In the video featuring Probyn, there is a part at the end that quotes Garrido as saying that this will end up being a “powerful, heartwarming story.” He’d not talking about the family reunion, either—he’s speaking of his own supposed redemption after the kidnapping/rape of the child. This sort of statement is hardly surprising; perpetrators such as Garrido are very good at coming up with self-serving stories of how the child “wanted it” and how they’re all happy as clams now. My opinion is that, although in some sense Garrido is probably mentally ill, his mental problems should not stop him from getting the maximum sentence allowable by law. What he did was, quite simply, evil.

The law seems to have been remiss, however, in not noting the backyard arrangement by which the Garridos kept Dugard and the children confined. Garrido’s parole officer apparently visited the home, but never investigated the rather odd setup there.

I also want to mention a terrible and grisly footnote to the Stayner case. His older brother Cary was convicted of the 1999 murder of four women in Yosemite. Although at one point Cary Stayner said he felt neglected by his parents after his brother’s abduction, he also said that he had fantasized about murdering women while still a very young child, even before his brother’s kidnapping. My best guess is that Cary Stayner’s problems very much predated his brother’s kidnapping, but that they may have been exacerbated by the family’s travails.]

Jelloburger

The New Neo Posted on by

Mmmm good!

jelloburger.jpg

Jell-O Mold Cheeseburger

Vanilla and walnut flavored Jell-O bun, pistachio flavored lettuce, cherry and cherry cream Jell-O tomatoes, chocolate and chocolate mousse flavored Jell-O burger, orange-lemon Jell-O cheese, lemon-lime Jell-O pickles and coconut flavored Jell-O onions.

[Hat tip: commenter “kcom”]

Private insurance isn’t perfect—but I’ll take it over the public option any day

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve been experiencing a tiny health care crisis myself. Sunday night, something or other happened to my knee—one of the body parts of mine that had always been A-OK till now.

I woke up in significant pain, and the pain increased day by day instead of decreasing, even though I was being very very careful. I’ve not been able to sit or exercise, and I limp rather badly. Steps are a nightmare.

Yesterday I went to the doctor, a knee specialist who fortunately had an opening so I didn’t have to wait. He initially thought I had sustained the most common knee injury of all, a tear of the medial meniscus cartilage. But when he examined me he said he wasn’t certain. It might be that; I had some signs and symptoms that indicated as much. But perhaps I had partially torn the medial collateral ligament, which can produce similar symptoms. Even though the latter is a less common injury, and usually the result of noticeable trauma (which I hadn’t experienced), he was leaning ever-so-slightly towards the ligament diagnosis. The exquisite pain I felt on the inside of the knee could be from either injury, but the location was somewhat higher than you’d expect if it was a cartilage tear.

But the only way to be certain which one it is would be an MRI. So he ordered the test, because cartilage tears almost always require arthroscopic surgery. Ligament tears, except for very major ones, almost always heal on their own, although it takes quite a few weeks. So the treatment of the two injuries would be very different.

I found out today, though, that my health insurance denied the request for an MRI. I just finished filing an oral appeal with them.

Despite the frustration of their initial refusal, I must say that my experience with the woman I spoke to for the appeal was extremely positive. First of all, she was kind and respectful. She even kept apologizing for a series of times she had to put me on hold for very brief waits. I dictated to her all the extenuating circumstances and details of why I thought an MRI was warranted, and she copied it all down and read it back to me accurately—these days, that’s a feat in and of itself. She even took the liberty of voicing her own (completely unofficial and completely meaningless, except in human terms) opinion that my reasoning made sense to her and that she thought they ought to grant my request.

Now I wait. It will take some time before they hear my plea and decide. Perhaps in those days I’ll get so much better the whole thing will be moot. Or perhaps they’ll say yes to the MRI. But perhaps not. If not, and I’m still feeling as lousy as I have been, I’ll have to decide whether to pay for it out of pocket, despite the fact that I already fork over so much money to my insurance company that they could give me a bevy of MRIs a year (perish the thought!) and still come out ahead.

But during this whole process, I’ve never for a single moment thought, “Oh, it all would have been so much better if the government were in charge!” At least with private insurance I have the threat/leverage of changing to another company. They have some sort of reason to think they must be at least a little nice to me (and millions like me) or lose my (our) business.

I can only imagine how a government employee would have handled that same phone call. I’ve had enough experience with those twin monuments to pleasantry and respect and efficiency, the IRS and the DMV, to know that it could have been far, far worse. Then there’s the passport office and the post office and various licensing boards, and almost any contact I’ve ever had with government when I want something from them and they don’t want to give it. Not good.

And I’m afraid that anyone who thinks the government would have been more likely to have allowed me to have that MRI more easily and more quickly is a dreamer. Likewise for Obama’s empty promises that of course, a public option won’t threaten private health insurance in any way. I’ve read far too much—that’s far too convincing—indicating just the opposite.

Leon Panetta: how does it feel under the bus?

The New Neo Posted on by

When Leon Panetta was nominated as head of the CIA, I objected on the grounds of his inexperience in the field of intelligence. The speculation was that Obama chose him for that very reason:

The real problem that seems to have led to the appointment of such a complete outsider was that everyone with any sort of background in intelligence was considered tainted by ties to the supposedly nefarious Bush-era CIA, which approved controversial techniques such as waterboarding.

So Obama decided to throw out the baby (intelligence) with the bathwater (coercive interrogation techniques). To find a CIA head with the properly squeaky clean hands, Obama had to find one with no hands-on experience at all. Panetta fit the bill, since he not only had the requisite lack of background, but he had also been outspoken in his condemnation of all CIA practices that could conjure up any suggestion that they might arguably represent torture.

Now it all makes perfect sense. Given Panetta’s background, Obama and Holder would have had every reason to imagine that he wouldn’t object when they decided to reopen the already-investigated-and-dismissed charges from the Bush administration and see what they could pin on the CIA.

But Panetta appears to have surprised them by defending his agency and crying “foul.” Don’t be too surprised if he quits his post—or is “encouraged” to leave and is then replaced with a more compliant public servant.

In the meantime, we have these observations on the CIA investigation report:

Although often discomfiting reading (one incident involved a power drill), the report also outlines the CIA’s nearly obsessive quest for legal guidance and its intolerance for unauthorized methods as piddling as blowing cigar smoke at detainees.

Consider the fate of the CIA officer who used a gun to frighten Abd al-Nashiri, the alleged mastermind of the USS Cole bombing.

He did it in 2002. The agency immediately called him back to headquarters. He faced an internal accountability board, suffered a reprimand and eventually resigned.

The Justice Department looked into the case because threatening a detainee with “imminent death” is torture, but declined to prosecute.

Proving torture in a court of law is much harder than braying about it on op-ed pages.

The CIA certainly didn’t act like an agency with a guilty conscience. It didn’t try to cover up any abuses, but undertook the inspector general investigation and forwarded the report to Congress and the Justice Department.

In one case, Justice got a conviction against a contractor who — in an obvious crime — beat a detainee to death.

But what possible public interest can be served in reopening murkier cases years after the fact, when the CIA already took internal action and [nonpartisan] career prosecutors already examined them?

Answer? No public interest at all. But Obama and Holder (I don’t for a minute buy the idea that they are really acting at cross-purposes) think there might be a political interest that could be served: theirs.