The Beard

by Ralph Maltese | Jul 30, 2017 | Uncategorized

The Beard

Last week I shaved off my beard.  It was time.  During my winter stay in the hospital, I was too weak to raise my arm, let alone put razor to chin.  As an incentive to use my energy to recover my health, I promised myself I would shave when I returned to relative healthiness.  So I let the hairs on my face grow, which, unfortunately, seemed to grow faster than the hairs on my scalp.  Over the ensuing months, the white growth made me look more like Father Christmas than Ernest Hemingway.  And not a day went by during that hairy time that I did not think of Joseph Palmer.

Joseph Palmer (1791-1873) was a “reformist” from NoTown, Massachusetts. A veteran of the War of 1812, Palmer settled in as a New England farmer, a successful one, and there his story would have ended, historical references to him evaporated, this blog unrealized except for one thing—his beard. The fashion of the day dictated that men go beardless. The townspeople continuously ridiculed him for his appearance.  Even the minister cautioned Joseph Palmer that the beard resembled the devil’s demeanor.  Palmer replied that he never saw a picture of the devil wearing a beard, but he did see pictures of Jesus sporting one.

His neighbors thought the wearing of a beard so unconventional that one day several of them tried to forcefully shave it off.  Joseph Palmer fought them off, inflicting a wound on one of them with his penknife, an injury which landed the bearded farmer in jail (basically for defending himself) where he was brutally beaten and severely mistreated for months.  Eventually his lengthy incarceration became an embarrassment to the authorities who begged him to pay the relatively small fine.  Like Socrates who refused to admit his guilt, Joseph Palmer stood his ethical ground. After more than a year in jail, he was released.  He hobnobbed with the transcendentalists like Emerson and Alcott, and he became an advocate for prison reform.  More on Joseph Palmer later.

After the big Shave Off, Polley wondered how long it would be before our friends of many years noticed that the beard was gone.  As it turned out, they never did seem to notice until Polley pointed it out.  The ensuing discussion made sense.  For almost forty years they knew me without any additional hairs on my face, so when they saw me, they saw what they expected to see—the old Ralph.  I thought about this for a long time.

We see and hear what we expect to see and hear, our actions dictated by our perceptions and our perceptions formed by whatever culture envelops us.  I learned this important lesson as a teacher (see blog entry Am I Who They Think I Am? September, 2016 achives)

Consider how much effort is made to convince others to see us the way we want to be seen.  Cosmetics is a multi-billion dollar industry.

“Skincare, hair care, make-up, perfumes, toiletries deodorants, and oral cosmetics are the main product categories of the cosmetic market. Since the early twentieth century, the production of cosmetics and beauty products has been controlled by a handful of multi-national corporations– L’Oréal, Unilever, Procter & Gamble Co., The Estee Lauder Companies, Shiseido Company, to name a few. Led by the U.S., North America made up 24.7 percent of the global cosmetic market. In 2015, the U.S. was considered the most valuable beauty and personal care market in the world. That year, the American beauty and personal care business reached a market value of 80 billion U.S. dollars….

Within the cosmetic category in the U.S., foundation was the most profitable segment. In 2016, about 985 million U.S. dollars were generated from sales of foundations in the U.S.. Mascara was the second most profitable segment, with sales revenue of 941.1 million U.S. dollars. Mascara was also the leading segment of the eye cosmetic industry in the U.S.. The segment also included eye liners, eye shadows, eye brow makeup and eye combo. Together, these segments generated more than 2.1 billion U.S. dollars in sales revenue in 2016. Besides foundation and mascara, lipstick was also a profitable segment within the cosmetic industry in the U.S., generating 630 million U.S. dollars in revenue for the lip cosmetics category in 2016.”  Statistics and Facts on the Cosmetic and Makeup Industry https://www.statista.com/topics/1008/cosmetics-industry/

I contributed my share to the industry by recently changing aftershave lotions, no longer able to squeeze out any drops of English Leather left over from my college days.  And, aside from those in the entertainment industry, who spends the most energy (and money) on making people see the image they want to see than our politicians?  Consider the recent special election in Georgia which pitted Karen Handel against Jon Ossoff.  A total of 50 million dollars was spent to shape voter thinking, to make the people see the candidates how the candidates wanted to be seen.  As if the voters had not already invested in the candidates what they wanted to invest.  50 million!  Could the disabled or unemployed or handicapped residents of that state used any of that 50 million?  Could any patients with debilitating diseases used any of that 50 million?  Could the infrastructure of Georgia’s highways and byways used any of that 50 million?  Could any of Geogia’s school children benefitted from that 50 million? As a society, how much do we spend on image building?

I used to be smug about people living in the Middle Ages.  How could they believe that a person’s “evil eye” was the sign of a witch?  And based on that belief burn the individual at the stake?  How could they spend fortunes on warring with their neighbors or on far away crusades?  How could they spend years arguing over how many angels could fit on the head of a pin.  Looking at our 21^st century priorities I am smug no longer.  One of my favorite lines in literature is expressed by the Stage Manager in Thornton Wilder’s play, Our Town.  “Wherever you come near the human race, there are layers and layers of nonsense.”

If I had a time machine, I would visit Joseph Palmer in the late 1860’s post American Civil War period, and I would love to ask him, after all he went through simply because he chose to sport a beard, what he thought about  hirsute trends in post bellum America.  An amateur student of the Civil War, I could not find any photographs of generals or politicians who were NOT wearing a beard. And our dear President Lincoln followed the fashion himself.  Poor Joseph Palmer—-wrong place, wrong time.  Apparently Joseph Palmer was, by all accounts, a thoughtful man.  I imagine he would say something like, despite all our flaunting of societal progress (which is usually predicated on the things we develop), far too many of us still suffer from the inability to accept people who do not look like us.  Our perceptions, based on what we expect of stereotypes, still rule our behavior rather than basing our judgements on a person’s actions.

So I am still the same person without my beard, although as my hairline continues to recede I notice I have more of my face to shave.  My friends did not seem to care whether I had a hairy face or not.  Maybe that is why they are my friends.

Survival of the Fullest

by Ralph Maltese | Jul 2, 2017 | Uncategorized

Survival to the Fullest

I can’t help it. I’m addicted to reality shows involving survival in the wild. Not the competing survival shows where teams subliminate their essential humanities and sabotage each other to win the grand prize of a trip to Hawaii or whatever.   I am referring to those shows where people choose a simpler life living, as Lennie in Of Mice and Men says, ”Off the fat of the land.” Except in most of these “struggling against the elements shows” there is not a lot of fat. Many of these programs are set in Alaska or above the Arctic Circle or other rough terrains. I’m partially drawn to these reality shows because of my fond remembrance of my dad and I roughing it in the Adirondacks.  But after our fishing and hunting trips we returned to an urban, and later suburban, lifestyle. Not so the people in the shows.  They are stuck in the mountainous terrain of northern Georgia, or the frozen tundra above the Arctic Circle, or the grizzly-inhabited forests of the Alaskan hinterlands.

In our more hectic moments of our daily lives, it is normal to seek simplicity in a rose-colored past. The nomadic caveman, having secured his daily meal, was free to lie on his back and make constellations out of the stars.  Some of us even support a nostalgic return to our evolutionary roots by adopting a Paleolithic diet, feasting on grubs, and nettles, and wild grass—all so we can supposedly live to the caveman’s ripe old age of 28.

I enjoy watching the ingenuity of these hearty livers in, and lovers of, the wild.  In one episode I watched, while eating my tuna salad lunch, a coonskin capped man, alone in a Georgia swamp, spend half a day whittling a tool to spear his opossum meat and forest-mushroom dinner.  “The food tastes even better knowing you trapped it yourself and eat it with a tool you made.”  I looked at the chunk of tuna impaled on my metal fork and wondered if this were true….if I was missing out on a taste sensation because I was devouring a foodstuff I purchased from a store and consumed it with a device we received as a wedding gift eons ago.  I plopped it in my mouth and savored the morsel.  Nope.  I don’t think I was missing anything.   On the other hand, I doubt my friend in the swamp in Georgia would ever enjoy a chunk of tuna.

And so it goes.  The gentleman living alone in the wilds of Alaska spends three icy cold November days chopping enough wood to stoke his homemade furnace so he does not freeze for two days.  The episode was so chilling I went to my thermostat and kicked up the heat for a degree or two.  Then there is the woman living above the Arctic Circle who walks two miles to cut a hole in the river ice so she could procure drinking water and bathing water.  This took several trips—her sled tipped over once.  Watching her struggle to obtain one of life’s basics made me thirsty, so I went to my filtered water in the refrigerator and drank a tall glass, then showered.

Then there is the couple in Montana who spent weeks planting and cultivating a potato patch only to have it ravaged by raccoons.  I felt their anguish.  One year I planted two rows of green beans and just before harvest rabbits devoured my produce.  After my disappointment, I went to my backup plan—Acme.

I get it.  There is a distinct pleasure and sense of pride that comes with roughing it.  I enjoyed starting and maintaining campfires which provided not only heat for cooking and warmth, but a social center.  I enjoyed breathing in the forest air, filling my lungs with the vitality of life, studying the signs of the woods, learning the lore that nature offers to us.  I get it.  What I find to be offensive is the comments by the survivalists impugning my choice not to live alone in a harsh environment.  As one father tells his children sitting on the cold arctic ground, “Isn’t this better than going to a store to buy food?  The people back in the city have no idea where their food comes from.”  The children nod in agreement as they sip their tundra-grass soup.

One of the best lunches in my life occurred during a hunting trip to the Catskills with my Dad.  The temperature was just above zero, the wind was blowing hard making it difficult to hear deer approaching, and snow covered the ground.  My father built a small fire behind a sugar maple, brought out a can of mushroom soup and two day old Italian bread, opened the can and placed it on the fire.  Within minutes we were dipping the bread in the soup and devouring it between icy cloud bursts of breath.  Delicious. Here is a reality:  when exercising outdoors, climbing mountains while hunting, paddling canoes all day while fishing, or simply chopping wood, everything tastes great.  In the wild things taste better because we are so incredibly hungry the bark of a birch tree looks like an enticing hors d’oevre.

Whatever life style one chooses is absolutely fine by me.  My problem is the smugness several of these survivalists exhibit when they imply my life style (which includes running water, indoor plumbing, and a varied diet) is inferior to theirs on some moral plane. If the people in these shows are happy combing the ice from their beards and slurping the marrow from squirrel bones, I am happy.  (line from the movie Christmas Vacation while Chevy Chase is trying to rid his holiday home of the terrorist squirrel—“Where is Eddie?  Doesn’t he eat squirrels?”  “No, Clark. He gave them up when he heard they were high in choresterol.”) They provide hours of entertainment for me as I put another log in the fireplace and sip my port.   After all, we all only truly need three things: food, water, and shelter. The difference between those rugged folk and me is that my three requirements need less time to obtain thus freeing me to do other things like read books, sit in my backyard and watch the birds, and, yes, write blogs. In the wild those three necessities fill most days.  Henry David Thoreau, one of my heroes because he backed up his beliefs by acting on them, went into the woods to “suck out the marrow of life,”   to learn what nature has to teach us.  Most people know this about the transcendentalist.  They should also remember that Thoreau wrote a subsequent essay, “Why I Left the Woods,” explaining that, having learned nature’s lessons, he returned to society to see how they applied to “civilization.”

Humans are, by nature, gregarious creatures.  We define ourselves in the company of others of our species, and sometimes this survival is the most difficult challenge of all.  Negotiation and compromise test our skills on an almost daily basis, and our escapist fantasies are usually filled with notions of being alone in the wild with our only decision being “what’s for dinner?”  Surviving in the wild or struggling in the wilderness of humanity?  Who is to say which is more difficult or more rewarding?