Emma has been growing her hair out for over a year for the sole purpose of donating it to Locks of Love, a non-profit charity that provides hairpieces to kids suffering from long-term medical hair loss. Last night we had Heidi, the überstylist, lop off 10 inches for Locks of Love and style what was left.
Here are some photos of the big occasion:
The First Cut (is the Shortest)
10 Inches Later
The Long Process
The Final Result
On a completely unrelated note, Beryl Markham’s West With The Night is one of my favorite books and would make a wonderful gift for any discerning bibliophile on your Christmas list.
West With The Night
by Beryl Markham
“…she has written so well, and marvellously well, that I was completely ashamed of myself as a writer…she can write rings around all of us…I wish you would get it and read it because it is really a bloody wonderful book.”
— Ernest Hemingway
P.S. Oh, come on! I couldn’t pass up the oronym, and what other options did I have?
Locks Talk and Bear Ill? (Nah.)
Locks Tock and Bare Elle? (Macpherson, of course.)
Locks Dock in Barrow? (Nope.)
Locks Dog in Peril? (That’s really pushing it.)
I thought my choice, incorporating both the follicular announcement and my favorite little-known African aviatrix, was brilliant.
She never dreamed that a London holiday would change her entire life.
The huge jet liner was London bound.
And Elaine Gibbs had left thoughts of hospital routine far behind.
But when the stewardess asked her to assist a sick passenger, she couldn’t refuse. Then, she discovered that her patient was none other than Tommy Taylor, the rock-and-roll idol.
At the airport, Elaine helped Tommy avoid reporters–including the handsome young journalist who was her seatmate. And so, unwittingly, she embarked on a wild adventure that changed her entire life.
Cara’s secret identity involves her in a tangle of mystery, jealousy and romance.
Never in her nursing career had lovely Cara Merrill received so strange a request. But Brent Butler was so persuasive that she reluctantly agreed to accompany him to the fabulous Butler estate to be his debutante fiancée.
Cara’s real purpose, Brent told her, was to watch over his elderly uncle whose health had been mysteriously failing. Brent was suspicious of his handsome cousin Paul–and when both men declared their love for her, Cara had to make the most important decision of her life!
Could she extricate herself from deep involvement in a romantic triangle before it damaged her nursing career?
An accident emergency brought Tracey Talbot, R.N. from vacation pleasures to a hospital operating room, as a surgical nurse for the handsome young Dr. Shan Malone.
This emergency operation brought her more than she had expected to find at the small ranch community, where she was visiting her aunt prior to beginning her nursing career. It brought her the anguish of a romantic triangle.
Win or lose, she knew the battle of love could mean the end of her nursing career.
Today is Pioneer Day, the day we celebrate the arrival of the first Mormon pioneers to the Salt Lake Valley.
Last night, children throughout the state lay in their beds, desperately trying to stay awake in hopes of catching a glimpse of Brigham Young flying through the dusky desert skies in his covered wagon, bearing pioneer gifts for all the good boys and girls of Utah. But eventually their drowsy, uncaffeinated eyelids closed and they drifted off to sleep with visions of horehound candy dancing in their heads.
Young Kyson awoke to find a pair of suspenders hanging from his bedpost, while little McKelsey found the bonnet of her dreams tucked under her pillow. Then they rushed downstairs to find the pioneer boots they’d left on the mantle the night before filled with hardtack biscuits and salt pork.
Later, after a hearty breakfast of cracked-wheat cereal and reconstituted dried milk, the children will change into their pioneer costumes, grab their bikes, trikes, and little red wagons, and head to the church where they will recreate the great migration west by parading around on the sidewalk of the church for two and a half hours until they are almost delirious from heat stroke. Then they will gaze across the blazing hot asphalt of the church parking in much the same way that Brigham Young gazed across the arid, inhospitable Great Basin and declare, “It is enough. This is the right place. Drive on.”
The children will then break into four groups…
One group will divide the parking lot into a precise grid with “streets” wide enough to allow four bikes and a wagon to turn around easily.
West Side of East Temple Street, Salt Lake City, Utah
Another group will build an elaborate irrigation infrastructure capable of moving thousands of cubic feet of water to any block of the parking lot within seconds.
1000 South Canal (Looking West), Salt Lake City, Utah
And, in the center of the parking lot, the third group will start construction on a massive granite structure that won’t be completed in their lifetimes.
Laying the Capstone of the Salt Lake Temple
By 2:00pm the parking lot will have blossomed as the rose…at which point the fourth group, attracted by the affordable real estate prices, low crime rate, and high quality of life, will move in, take over the parking lot, and open a coffee shop on every corner where they can hang out and complain about the liquor laws.
In the evening, extended families will gather together for the traditional Jello buffet, showcasing all of nature’s bounty in suspended animation. Aunt Delsa will probably receive the “Best in Show” award again at this year’s Jello Mold-Off for her multi-tiered replica of Sleeping Beauty’s castle, constructed with alternating layers of lime Jello and baloney. Funeral potatoes will flow like a chunky, cheesy river, and there will be over a hundred “salads,” none of which will feature lettuce or any other type of leafy green.
Kids will bob for tater tots in vats of pink fry sauce and men will stand on the back porch, arms crossed, discussing this year’s vintage (rootage?) of root beers. Some will argue that A&W’s 2007 production has been disappointing, with a cloying vanillin sweetness and a weak finish, but just about everyone will agree that the 2006 Hires root beer, with its heavy sassafras notes, has only gotten better after spending a year in the food storage closet under the stairs.
Pioneer Day usually ends with the traditional Bonfire of the Zucchini, in which all of the neighborhood’s excess garden produce is piled into the middle of the street and set ablaze. Unfortunately, wildfire conditions this year have resulted in a strict ban on open flames, so most families will spend the evening indoors, baking dozens upon dozens of loaves of zucchini bread that they will then leave on each other’s doorsteps in the dark of night.
Then, as the children are tucked once again into bed, their parents will tell them harrowing stories of the hardships their pioneer ancestors endured so they could grow up to be the snotty, ungrateful, over-privileged, upper-middle-class layabouts with no sense of history that they are today. And they will explain to their children that they, too, are pioneers, blazing a trail for the generations of even snottier, more ungrateful, hyper-privileged, upper-upper-middle-class layabouts with even less sense of history that will follow.
Yes, we are all pioneers in our own snotty, ungrateful, over-privileged, upper-middle-class-layabout-with-no-sense-of-history way. And this is our day.
