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I saw my first piece of hairwork when I was 16 at an antiques show at the Crossroads Mall in Omaha, Nebraska. Among the postcards and other junk, I found a large button with a woven front of brownish fabric. Though the vendor assured me that the "fabric" was not hair, I bought it for 25 cents and later decided it had to be hair. It was creepy, and yet I kept thinking about the loving gesture of the hair enclosed by the frame of the button's edge.
When I was getting my doctorate in history, my thoughts returned to that oddly compelling button as I tried to understand how 19th-century Americans used both handmade and commercial objects to define themselves, their memories and relationships, and even death and life. And so I began to study hair art.
Hair was not just symbolic of the person, it was the person - her body, her living material. It was a far more potent carrier of memory than a photograph which only revealed the appearance of a loved one; hair physically brought that person close.
These days, if you want to feel close to a loved one who is far away you are likely to look at a photo, or even to browse their Facebook or Instagram account. But in earlier times, you might have looked at hair.
In 1828, a few days after Valentine's Day, Walter Mason Oddie, a landscape painter, was at his desk musing about the love of his life, his wife Julia. He unfolded a small scrap of paper to gaze upon a lock of her hair. Three years earlier, he had married his Julia, Walter wrote in his diary, and she was "the constant object of my thoughts (who) has remained an inmate of my bosom - Time has no effect upon my affection".
After that reflection, Walter folded the piece of paper and slid it back into a symbolic bed - an envelope marked "Julia's March 1824". It was a home for the hair and a memory for his heart. Possessing someone's hair was a deeply sentimental way to possess that person.
Hair could soften even the hardest of hearts in the most hard-bitten of men. In 1870, Adelbert Ames, a 35-year-old former US general in the Union army and a senator from Reconstruction-era Mississippi - not exactly a softie - met Blanche Butler from Massachusetts. Soon after they met, they were engaged and Blanche sent him a locket with her photograph and her hair. She teased: "I am now debating in my own mind the propriety of putting a lock of hair opposite the picture."
Adelbert swooned as only a well- tested fighter of a man could do: "Dear Blanche, I was very glad, happy, to receive your beautiful token - not beautiful, that is secondary - it was dear and precious. Your sweet face and a lock of your beautiful hair. Your hair seemed to bring you very near me. I thank you, Love, for the locket, the picture, and the hair. I shall always wear them."
For Adelbert and Walter, the hair was much better than a "likeness" or a photograph. Hair was a living part of the person: Its colour did not noticeably fade over time, the texture and feel remained the same as it did on the head of the person, and whether the person was living or dead, their memory resided in the lock of hair.
Photographic images distorted appearances. Hair was not just symbolic of the person, it was the person - her body, her living material. It was a far more potent carrier of memory than a photograph which only revealed the appearance of a loved one; hair physically brought that person close.
Hairwork in the 19th century could be as simple as Julia's lock of hair or Blanche's hair nestled in a locket on Adelbert's watch chain.
It could also be much more ornate, and more about friendship and family than romantic love. Hairwork was often made-to-order by jewellers, and the ornate pieces were often worn with a customer's best outfit. Hairwork could be finely woven beads on a necklace or bracelets of flat-braided and woven hair to be worn against the skin.
Hair was made into wreaths that hung in parlours, into three-dimensional bouquets of ornately knotted hair flowers and leaves kept under glass cloches. Catalogues offered page after page of the same designs, across the country.
This was not a curious gothic- inspired affectation at the time; wearing hair jewellery or displaying hairwork in one's parlour was to exhibit the best taste in fashion and sentiment. What was more, it demonstrated that the owner was woven into a web of friends and family and dear ones, displayed in her ears or on a parlour table.
Hairwork was also a perfect consumer product that worked with Americans' rapidly innovating retail culture. Deeply personalised in material, manufacture and meaning, it was also generically respected and understood. It was a material so innately personal that the market could not besmirch its sincerity.
American fiction, short stories in women's magazines, the advertisements for the jewellery all assured potential customers that hairwork, while mainstream, was about one's private sentiment. But that hairwork was likely made in large workshop factories, such as the National Artistic Hair Work Company in Chicago. This balance of the personal and the corporate is as familiar to us as the use of Facebook to share life's deepest experiences.
But in the 20th century, its meaning began to change. By the 1920s, jewellery wholesalers were selling ready-made hairwork (so, who knew whose hair it was made of!), but many saw hairwork as a mouldering relic of the Victorian age. It fell out of favour because clothing styles went towards lighter colours and fabrics, and decoration in houses emphasised clean lines.
More importantly, the way we showed sincerity changed. In hairwork's heyday, sincerity was a sentimental expression of honestly held emotions; by the 1920s, effusive shows of emotion seemed overwrought and the ornate lines of hairwork fussy and disingenuous.
Today, we strive to be restrained in our emotional displays - but some things have not changed. Jewellers sell upscale "personalised" beads and charms to represent one's children or family.
At my local grocery store in Ohio, the checkers wear rows of Badge-A-Minit pin buttons emblazoned with a daughter's basketball team photo or a grandchild's kindergarten portrait. As I interact with them, I know they are in a web of relationships - they love and they are loved by many.
We are still searching for ways to represent relationships that are not about work or the market - the most intimate connections we share with others we want memorialised in an object we can hold, store and go back to again and again. We want to buy a way to stop time, to remember the "real" person we love.
Walter folded his Julia's hair back up in its paper bed, and Blanche's locket still exists attached to Adelbert's watch chain. Time, as Walter said, has had little effect on affections.
• Helen Sheumaker is a lecturer at Miami University of Ohio. She is author of Love Entwined: The Curious History Of Hair Work.
•This article first appeared in Zocalo Public Square, a project of the Centre for Social Cohesion at Arizona State University and a not-for-profit "ideas exchange" that blends live events and humanities journalism.
The 13th annual derby run by the South King County chapter of Puget Sound Anglers has the largest payout, with $3,500 going to the winner. Fishing will take place from daylight until 1 p.m. in marine areas 10 (Seattle), 11 (Tacoma) and 13 (Olympia). Weigh stations will be set up at Point Defiance Boathouse, Narrows Marina and Des Moines Marina. The awards ceremony will be held at Point Defiance.
Ticket are available at Sportco, Outdoor Emporium, Auburn Sports and Marine, Point Defiance Boathouse, CJ Marine, Sportsman’s Warehouse and Narrows Marina.
Proceeds from the derby help fund the chapter’s salmon conservation efforts and youth conservation education programs.
Tickets: $35 per adult, kids fish for free.
This is the 19th edition of the Gig Harbor chapter’s derby, paying $3,000 to the first place winner.
Derby fish must be caught from daylight to 2 p.m. in marine area 11 and 13. Fish can be weighed at Point Defiance or Narrows Marina. There will be a barbecue and awards ceremony at Point Defiance at 4 p.m.
Tickets are on sale online and at Ace Hardware in Gig Harbor, Narrows Marina Bait & Tackle, Outdoor Emporium, Point Defiance Boathouse, Sportco, and Sportsman’s Warehouse in Puyallup and Federal Way.
The first-place fish will be worth be worth $1,000 to the angler that catches it during the third annual event. The South Sound chapter of Puget Sound Anglers is hosting the event for the third year. The group previously held a derby on Hood Canal, but made the switch hoping to attract more South Sound residents to enter the event.
Fish entered must be caught between dawn and 4 p.m. in marine areas 11 and 13. Fish can be weighed at Swanton Marina or Zittel’s Marina on Johnson Point. The awards ceremony will be at 6 p.m. at Swantown Marina.
Tickets are on sale at the chapter’s website.
All three derbies are part of the Northwest Salmon Derby Series, sponsored by the Northwest Marine Trade Association. In addition to cash and prizes offered by the individual events, the series also is raffling off an outfitted 21-foot River Hawk boat to adults who compete. For the first time, the series also is going to award a boat in the kids division, a 14-foot River Hawk Pro V boat.
Each angler is entered in the raffle for each series event fished.
The series also has the Mercury Marine Salmon Derby Challenge. At each of the 15 series derbies, Mercury will award prizes to the top three finishers in each derby if their boat is equipped primarily by Mercury outboard engines (2009 or newer), including $3,000 for first place.
Learn more about the series, and the remaining events for 2014, at northwestsalmonderby series.com.
Toplining a cast that includes Melissa Benoist, Xzibit, Allison Janney and Ed O'Neill, Michael Angarano plays a well-meaning but deluded oddball in Jennifer Morrison's directing debut.
Jennifer Morrison, the recently departed star of the ABC series Once Upon a Time, segues confidently to the director's chair with Sun Dogs, a comic drama that deftly navigates a tricky line. The story of a mentally challenged young man and his quixotic mission to serve his country could easily have turned cringe-inducing or merely ridiculous. But Michael Angarano, leading an excellent cast, inhabits the role of a single-minded misfit without the slightest hint of mawkishness, embracing his exasperating qualities no less than his endearing ones. Morrison balances her affection for all the characters with droll naturalism and an assured visual style.
Working from a screenplay by Anthony Tambakis (whose credits include the Morrison starrer Warrior, and who uses the nom de film Raoul McFarland for the new movie), Morrison has cited Hal Ashby's Being There as a key inspiration. The idea of a sheltered, innocent soul being mistaken for — and becoming — a heroic figure, à la the 1979 film's Chauncey Gardiner, is an essential aspect of Sun Dogs' story, and there's a strong '70s sensibility to the character-driven film. But it also recalls the more recent Lars and the Real Girl with its unforced emphasis on communal support for an oddball. The well-crafted feature, a world-premiere selection of the Los Angeles Film Festival, could parlay its name cast and engaging warmth into art-house exposure.
Like many Americans, Angarano’s Ned Chipley, who lives with his parents in rural California and does menial work at a casino, was galvanized by the 2001 attacks on the United States. But given his limited intellectual capacities — explained with just a few words, late in the proceedings — his goal of becoming a Marine is a delusion, albeit one that charms more people than it offends. Ned's mother, Rose (Allison Janney), a nurse who once dreamed of a life in New York City, gently encourages his sense of purpose, to the frustration of his cranky stepfather, Bob (Ed O'Neill), a trucker who feels adrift as he awaits a hoped-for insurance payout for a road accident.
On his birthday in 2004, Ned takes the bus through picturesque mountains to San Diego for his annual attempt to enlist in the Marines. His anti-terrorist fervor is a familiar source of fond amusement at the recruitment center (where Morrison cameos winningly as the Marine at the front desk). But the new master sergeant, Jenkins (Alvin "Xzibit" Joiner, pitch-perfect), is unprepared for Ned's talking points, manually typed out on index cards, and his gung-ho announcement that, "I have field readiness." Wanting to let the kid down easy, Jenkins convinces him to focus his attentions on the home front as a "special operative," not understanding the obsessive investigations this diversion will prompt.
In no time Ned is accosting strangers to assure them that he's on the case, the case being saving lives and protecting the country, and thrusting his fresh-from-Kinko's business cards in their hands. His take-charge attitude intrigues Tally (Melissa Benoist), a runaway at loose ends. Impressed that his preferred reading material is the 9/11 Commission Report, she becomes his civilian partner in undercover detective work, eager to help Ned prove his questionable thesis that his turban-wearing boss (Nicholas Massouh) is an enemy of the state.
Though their adventures in idealism might be misguided, the two outsiders forge a bond of true friendship, their mutual attraction and drastic differences in experience played just right. Benoist (Lowriders, TV's Supergirl) eloquently conveys the brokenness in Tally without overdoing it, making clear why she would spark to Ned as a man of mystery and action, his goofy awkwardness only deepening the image of someone hell-bent on saving the world. Her eventual discovery of the truth about Ned is the movie's most formulaic plot point, but Morrison's sensitive direction lends it nuance.
Angarano's self-serious Ned manages to feel both immature and old beyond his years, the character's quirky mannerisms subtly complicated by his unexpressed yearnings. Ned's determination to be helpful proves unexpectedly profound and powerful as the drama crescendos, along with Mark Isham's ace score, in an extraordinary moment that ties together key narrative threads.
These include Ned's love of war movies, specifically The Deer Hunter. He imagines himself in jungle combat — sequences that cinematographer Michael Alden Lloyd drenches in thick shadow, a striking contrast to the rich, golden palette that aptly bathes most of the film.
At its essence, Sun Dogs is a story about compassion. That's the subject of Ned's every meaningful interaction, whether tender or comically deadpan, and whether he's offering advice or receiving it. Rather than reaching for irony, Morrison lets the story's sincerity shine, not just in Ned and Tally's openhearted exchanges but in the unexpectedly paternal benevolence of Xzibit's military man and in the exquisitely lived-in performances of Janney and O'Neill as Ned's parents. Though their words may be tinged with regret, Rose and Bob are, in different ways, inspired by the indefatigable Ned, and still trying. There's no question, in Angarano's portrayal and the film as a whole, that this eccentric do-gooder would have such an effect.
ARKANSAS SPORTS HALL OF FAME Jones following his family's footsteps into Hall by Tom Murphy \| March 22, 2019 at 1:49 a.m.
Now the executive vice president and chief sales and marketing officer for the Dallas Cowboys, Jerry Jones Jr. is joining his family members in the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame as a 2019 inductee. - Photo by John Sykes Jr.
The third in a series profiling the nine newest members of the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame. The induction ceremony will be held March 29 at the Statehouse Convention Center in Little Rock.
FAYETTEVILLE -- Jerry Jones Jr. went to Washington, D.C., to play defensive back for the Georgetown Hoyas fresh out of Little Rock Catholic High School, but he never lost his passion for his home-state University of Arkansas Razorbacks, or his prep alma mater.
"Well, I bleed Arkansas Razorbacks," Jones said when asked about his football days at Georgetown. "My blood has been Arkansas Razorback growing up and seeing the impact and watching the passion that my father, Jerry Sr., had for it.
NOTEWORTHY Played defensive back at Little Rock Catholic and earned letters as a defensive back at Georgetown (1988-89) as a freshman and sophomore. … Oversees the Dallas Cowboys entire sales and marketing operations, and heads up Dallas Cowboys Merchandising Ltd. … Practiced law for a few years before joining the family business with the Cowboys. … Helped engineer gifts and pledges of $10 million to Little Rock Catholic High School from a group that featured the Jones family, the John York family and a third, anonymous family. … Instrumental in transitioning 65,000 season ticket holders from Texas Stadium into AT&T Stadium. … Played key role in developing the Cowboys’ headquarters at The Star in Frisco, Texas.
"There wasn't a Razorback game that we missed growing up that was played in either Fayetteville or Little Rock."
Now the executive vice president and chief sales and marketing officer for the Dallas Cowboys, the world's most valuable sports franchise, Jones is joining his family members in the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame as a 2019 inductee.
Jerry Jones Sr. (inducted in 1999), a member of the Razorbacks' 1964 national championship team, Stephen Jones (2015) and Charlotte Jones Anderson (2017) have all gone into the hall in the last 20 years.
"I'm just very excited, and what an honor to be put in such a prestigious group of hall of famers," Jones Jr. said. "Growing up there in Arkansas and being a big, avid fan of many of the sports there in Arkansas, especially the Razorbacks, to get to be in the hall of fame with some of those guys, those are things you don't necessarily ever picture or imagine growing up as a kid."
Jones' devotion to Little Rock Catholic is well known.
Jones was the point man for a massive financial donation to Catholic High that came from the Jones family, the family of John York, another Catholic graduate who owns the San Francisco 49ers, and a third family, which chose to remain anonymous, between 2013 and 2016, said Catholic High Principal Steve Straessle and a classmate of Jones.
"The three families got together and gave a total of $10 million," Straessle said. "The Jones family was a multi-million dollar gift alone and Jerry [Jr.] really engineered it."
Jones was a freshman at Georgetown in 1989 when his father bought the Cowboys, but it would be several years before he joined the franchise. Jones earned his undergraduate degree from Georgetown in 1992, then graduated with a law degree from SMU in 1995 and practiced law for several years.
He also serves as general counsel for the Cowboys and has been a primary force in franchise ventures that don't get as much publicity as drafting a Dak Prescott or Zeke Elliot or re-signing a Jason Witten.
He is CEO of Dallas Cowboys Merchandising Ltd., which manufactures and distributes merchandise around the world from its 400,000-square-foot headquarters located near the Dallas-Fort Worth Airport, and he oversees 35 retail locations. The Cowboys are the only NFL team that handles its own logos and trademarks.
Jones also had a strong hand in the design and planning of AT&T Stadium as well as a key role in the development of The Star in Frisco, Texas, headquarters of the Cowboys.
"With Jerry Sr.'s leadership and what he does with our organization, and with my brother and sister and I, we really try as much as we can to take the visibility of the Dallas Cowboys, and the NFL for that matter, and leverage it to impact things we're involved with," Jones said.
"Things like the Salvation Army or being involved there in Dallas with the Independent School District in Frisco, or the health care system of Baylor Scott & White. We continue to look at ways to impact either businesses or the community or anything that is on the initiative of the Dallas Cowboys to use that brand. We constantly have been doing that for decades and will continue."
Jones said the lessons he learned in the family and as a student at Little Rock Catholic are what drives his life.
"It's a credit to my grandparents, who have great Arkansas roots, to my parents, and even credit to Catholic High School," he said when asked what would go through his mind during the induction ceremony.
"I think, with respect to how our family operates, we always know where we started and know where our roots are and know we have dear, close friends throughout the state, especially there in Little Rock," he said. "Every time we get a chance to go back there and visit you feel like you've never left the minute you step on the ground."
Jones Sr. is pleased with the work of his namesake.
"I'm just proud of the work that he has done that has really contributed to sports as it pertains to Arkansas," he said. "I'm very aware of the visibility we have with the Cowboys in the state. And I know that many of the things that he has done have enhanced youth sports.
"I emphasize youth sports and I want to make the point that although we have a point of emphasis in the immediate area of let's say Texas, because we have such a national image or a national brand, everything we do with the Cowboys, in my mind, helps enhance interest in sports. It helps show what good comes from being involved in competitive sports at the amateur level. He's been a big engine in that, does a great job and I'm very proud of it."
Jones Sr. never misses an opportunity to tout the worthiness of youth sports.
"The fact that we've spent our lives in sports, have been lucky enough to spend our lives in sports, and been a part of the Razorbacks and a part of the Cowboys, shows the virtue of sports.
"My entire family, and in this case Jerry, have done the same thing. And we're not through yet. With this unique ability we have in the state of Arkansas and beyond ... we can really create interest and create activity among youth in sport."
The Jones family says Catholic High will always play a prominent role in their lives.
"You knew it at the time and you appreciate it more each and every day as time goes by, those four years at Catholic High with Father George Tribou leading the school and the impact he had on my life," Jones Jr. said.
"I have a picture of Father Tribou on my desk and it sits there every day as he looks at me. You don't have a conversation go by that you don't ask, 'What would Father Tribou expect you to do?' I would say he, just as much as my father, those two men influenced me as much as anybody in my life."
Jones will not enter the hall on the strength of his on-the-field achievements alone, but Straessle sees parallels between Jones' athletic endeavors and his contributions to his teams today.
"What he brought to the Cowboys is exactly what he brought to Catholic High," he said. "He's solid, he always gets the job done and he doesn't have to be in the spotlight. But without him, no one's in the spotlight."
A Chinese government program ripped out millions of home coal boilers, replacing them with electric and natural gas heaters, now many can't afford to heat their homes in the winter.
The rural areas surrounding Beijing get cold during the winter, with an average low of 15 degrees Fahrenheit in January.
To cope with the daily chill, millions of farmers and laborers have burned coal to keep warm.
But the coal—especially coal burned in a home furnace—came at the cost of air pollution, not only in the province of Hebei, but in Beijing itself.
Yet just like plans on the other side of the Pacific to launch a “Green New Deal,” there are consequences that government didn’t anticipate. People can no longer afford to heat their homes, even with government subsidies that are planned for the next three years. And while particulate pollution harms health, medical studies also tell us that cold kills—likely 20 times more people than does heat and about the same as particulate pollution, not all of which is man-made.
Xi, now president for life, rules from atop a one-party state that, theoretically, gives him virtually unlimited centralized power (a thing that some in the U.S. Congress can only dream of). So when the decision came to clean up the air in Beijing, the government went into action, targeting the removal of coal heaters in homes in 60% of the region’s rural areas, as well as in all the urban centers—by 2021.
The Green New Deal would take a more languid pace to completely remake the American energy landscape, aiming to hit 100% “clean” energy in 11 years.
Still, the government’s plans appear to have little consideration for people. The sky above Beijing is cleaner (though some skeptics attribute at least some of the pollution improvements to an unadmitted recession hitting the Chinese economy, the result of Xi’s centralizing impulses), though the cost is that poor rural households are unable to use their newly installed natural gas or electric heaters.
The South China Morning Post interviewed a rural construction worker who used to heat his home with three to four metric tons of coal over the winter. The coal would cost about $196, or 4.9% of his annual income of $4,400. Then the government tore out his coal-fired boiler and replaced it with a clean natural gas furnace. So far in the winter of 2018-19, the 50-year-old worker has seen his winter heating bill triple, now consuming 13.3% of his annual income, $587—and that’s while keeping his home far colder than he’d like. In addition, unlike the pile of coal he could stockpile next to his house, supplies of natural gas have been unreliable. Further, he worries, what will happen in three years when the government’s subsidies expire?
In a nearby village where government officials replaced coal with electric heat, the situation is even direr, with one man citing cost of $294 for only two months of heat—and that’s at a price per kilowatt hour at a little less than half of the U.S. average. The man in the electric village admitted that at night, when no one could see the black smoke, he surreptitiously burned coal to keep his children warm. He claimed few of his neighbors even ran their new electric heaters.
In another village, the authorities had removed residential coal heaters but hadn’t yet brought the natural gas heaters online. Communist Party officials then added insult to the cold by patrolling the town with sound trucks, blaring out warnings of the penalties for using coal. Police have even detained men for illegally using “low quality coal” to keep their families warm. People there sleep with all their clothes on.
A new natural gas pipeline from Russia, expected to be completed in 2020, may improve fuel supply reliability and cut costs for some residents.
The South China Morning Post piece concluded with an observation from a Chinese analyst who noted that “Clean energy is not the problem; low wages are.” That means energy and environmental policy must be viewed in the context of tradeoffs in a system with limited resources, which includes not just pollution and the use of natural resources, but also labor and capital.
In America, after the 1973 Arab oil embargo and the subsequent period of stagflation, energy costs rose, making home heating and transportation more costly. More than a million homeowners a year bought airtight wood-burning stoves to provide a lower-cost alternative to heating their homes with electricity, propane, natural gas or heating oil. One of them was in the author’s home in California’s Eastern High Sierra.
Every year, as the snow cover retreated in May, our family would go out on federal land, chainsaws in hand, and find dead trees that had toppled over, bringing home enough truckloads to accumulate about three cords of wood. This wood would generate about 45 million BTU of heat which, in an airtight stove, would provide about 36 million BTU of residential heating. Burning wood replaced about $1,737 in electric heating costs in 2019 dollars.
That airtight wood stove, and scores of others like it, would blanket our village of 350 people with a thin layer of haze on windless days. The unhealthful particulates generated represented a tradeoff with our warm homes and substantial cost savings—money that could be used to buy clothes, invest in a business, or send a child to college. Further, to the extent that the wood smoke increased the odds of lung and heart disease and stroke, a warm home decreased the likelihood of dying from complications of cardiovascular and respiratory stress.
As workers in rural China are painfully discovering, and Americans might, should the $7 trillion Green New Deal become reality, energy, and how we use it, is central to the human condition.
RONALDINHO Captain of Brazil team.Despite being blessed with breathtaking skill and almost supernatural ball control, the endearingly-modest Ronaldinho Gaucho still blushes when he is mentioned in the same breath as the likes of Zico or Pele.
Despite being blessed with breathtaking skill and almost supernatural ball control, the endearingly-modest Ronaldinho Gaucho still blushes when he is mentioned in the same breath as the likes of Zico or Pele. He may not pursue the kind of legendary status afforded to Brazilian greats Garrincha, Didi or Vava, but with each passing game the feeling grows that Ronaldinho could become one of the finest players the world has ever seen.

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