… and they have so many of them in Rocky Mountain National Park, near Estes Park, Colorado. Our three days there this past summer were a joy. This photo was taken at the half-way point of a five-hour hike. I forgot the name of the lake, but it was beautful, to say the least. We were almost out of drinking water and the snack supply was running low. We were close to eating bark on the way home. How soft we city folk have become.
Thanks goodness we have The Port Townsend and Jefferson County Leader to keep us abreast of the critical news of our times, like this piece about a guy who holds the world record for the longest eyebrow hair measuring in at an appalling three and a half inches. Yes, you might be thinking, Scott, that story is from 2006! Don’t you have anything better to do? To which I might reply, Yes, but I was impelled to Google “longest eyebrow hair” and that is what came up first!
I’m equally impressed by and saddened for this guy. He’s found a positive side to the plague of eyebrow growth that seems to attack middle-aged men, while laboring under the weight of eyebrows that look like bluffs overhanging the ruins at Mesa Verde in Colorado.
I deeply admire the common woman of uncommon courage who can rip eyebrow hairs out with no more worry than if she were picking lint off of a pair of slacks. These days I find that eyebrow hairs grow with a speed that makes me wonder if someone is covertly giving me a nightly Miracle Grow facial while I’m sleeping. One day I look like a man, the next day a hummingbird moth. And trying to get in there with trimming scissors too often results in an unintended swath of damage to innocent, well-behaved eyebrow hairs that were just minding their own business and have now been cut down in their prime.
My wife says it is time to use tweezers and that is downright terrifying. I don’t know how far those mutant hairs are rooted into my forehead. What if I pull a molar out in the process?
The physical body is such a silly thing. Sometimes I think little of it. Other times it feels like a leisure suit from the ’70s that needs to be dropped off at the nearest Goodwill. Isn’t it nice to know that there is so much more to us than eyebrows?
It is now clear to us all that our world is going through a rapid and lifestyle-altering change — a $100+ per barrel-peak-oil-war-causing-commodity-kind-of change. I recently re-read James Kunstler’s 2005 piece in Rolling Stone called The Long Emergency. It is even more sobering today. I found this quote especially thought-provoking.
America today has a railroad system that the Bulgarians would be ashamed of.
The speed with which these changes will come about — the ones that Kunstler writes about –is open to debate. But it is clear, to me anyway, that the Laningham transportation budget is starting to get out of whack.
Then I saw two toys hanging out together in our little boys room and it started to clear up for me. Hercules seems to be saying, Stop! Let’s think about this for a minute. Cars are bad for you. They make you soft. They make you indebted. On the other hand running, climbing, jumping and the sort make you alert, strong, tough, like me. Leather sandals and a skirt keep you cool. No need for oil-based products like rubber tennis shoes or air conditioning units. Yes, you have to have oil to make air conditioners. So I’m saying, junk the cars and start walking, you might even meet the neighbors, which you’ll want to do since you’ll be co-oping together instead of driving 10 miles to the grocery store.
I go for a leaner look than Herc’s, myself. I think he’s top heavy. Unless you’re taking on multi-headed dragons, all that bulk is really unneccessary. A basic Pilates program and lots of vegetables should be fine for the rest of us who only have to face small lizards on the back porch. But without those lizards, we’d all look like this dude.
