The Solstice is Past

The earth is journeying back toward the summer solstice in its perennial voyage around the sun, and the days are already growing incrementally longer. It's always struck me odd that we mark the beginning of winter by the moment that happens. Yet we all know the bulk of the weather patterns we associate with winter are still to come. The good news is that, by this time in January 2010, we'll have roughly 30 more minutes of daylight, and more to come each day until late June. Best wishes to all my readers at this holiday season built around the winter solstice, and best wishes, too, for a happy, healthy prosperous new year!

Hairdressing chez Chateau Page

Back in the winter of 1964, I took a brief fling at hairdressing for discriminating ladies of impeccable taste and ... uh ... je ne sais quoi (which is French for "I don't know what I'm talking about.") I was young and stupid then. Yes, yes, the only thing that's changed is I'm not young any more. Anyway, here is Monsieur making a high fashion statement with the coiffure of Mademoiselle. Mademoiselle WHO, you ask? Mademoiselle none o' your business, I say. Well, here you go...

The lady in question was simply delighted with the outcome of this daring fashion departure, as you see... And eventually danced the night away with a dashing young prince, who later became an obstetrician.... I love to think I played a role in this heartwarming drama. Oh, by the way, the thing with the prince and Mademoiselle never came to its warmly-anticipated fruition. But it WAS fun while it lasted.

And, instead of being a hairdresser, I practiced law for ... oh ... several decades. Eventually I got it right -- mostly. The law part, I mean.

Ain't life great??

A Holiday Pome

How about a nice cheezy Holiday Poem? OK, here goes... Happy Holidays! Season's Greetings! Christmas? Hell no, ACLU's bleating. Frosty's blaring in the malls, Crazed shoppers bouncing off the walls. We're rockin' around the (bleep-bleep) tree, While gagging on Diversity. The important thing is Buying Stuff, and Stuff and Stuff and Still More Stuff To strew beneath the (bleep-bleep) tree Belaboring Diversity. Baby Jesus? Forget that crap! We've got lots of Stuff to wrap 'Cuz here comes Santa Claus, Here Comes Santa Claus... *** Oops! There goes Santa Claus And to all a good night. Tomorrow we'll join the herd and haul All this Stuff back to the mall, And trade it in for still more Stuff. Pardon this doggerel; it's rather rough.

Cambridge, then and Now

In the early spring (read: late winter) of 1964, back when the Beatles were a startling new phenomenon in the pop music world, back when very few people much knew or cared where some place called "Vietnam" was located, I came with a gang of would-be Dartmouth College athletes from Hanover, New Hampshire (where the Connecticut River was still frozen) to Cambridge, Massachusetts. We were guests of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which bedded us down in the field house and let us launch our eight-oared shells from the MIT boathouse on the Charles River. We were training for the 1964 collegiate rowing season. On a calm day, as you see, the Charles was a fairly pleasant place to skim over the water... We never really amounted to much as a force to reckon with in collegiate rowing circles that year, but we worked hard at it and had fun -- and some of us damn near flunked out of the college. Eve and I went to Cambridge over Thanksgiving to spend the holiday with my daughters and their families. From our eighth-floor hotel room, we had a view of the Charles Basin that brought back some memories of those long-gone undergraduate days... Here's the Thanksgiving crew (minus yours truly, who was behind the camera, and Nora, who was slung on her father's back) on our Saturday trek from MIT to the Institute for Contemporary Art on the Boston waterfront -- a hike of no small distance on a cool, windy day. Well, I may be getting older, but I can still keep up with these kids who weren't even around back when I was pulling an oar on the dear old Charles.