Your Tax Dollars at Work: Beware of Hippie-Toothpaste-Squeezing Terrorists

Filed Under All Posts, Environment, Prudence Baird, Travel | 6 Comments

The middle aged mom and her long-haired teenaged son snaked their way through the security line at Bob Hope International.  A short, dark haired woman stuffed into her TSA uniform bellowed, “Gels and liquids to the left!  Everyone else, straight!”

The mom heaved their overnight bag onto the examination table, unzipped it, and presented the regulation zip-locked baggie to TSA II, a grizzled man with spectacles flecked with bits of skin and lint.  He gripped it between latexed finger and thumb and examined the tiny shampoo bottle from a long-forgotten hotel and the almost empty tube of Tom’s of Maine Silly Strawberry Toothpaste for Kids, crumpled and rolled within an inch of its life.  Read more

A Parable of Woe or A “Hairy-Tale”

Filed Under All Posts, Beauty, Connie Stetson, Humor | 11 Comments

Frida Kahlo Self Portrait, 1940

On my father’s side of the family I am part Swedish (Ecklund) and part Portuguese (Frias)…Ooh…I’m a Porta-Swede.

Up until the time of the Menopause, the Swedish ruled the Queendom of Connie.  Fair, liberal and free of excess body hair, they ruled all parts of the Connie with good judgment, equilibrium and ease.  The Swedish in Connie laughed and played and worked in the warmth of youth and vigor, proud of her lack of excess body hair.  Little did she suspect that just under the skin, awaiting some deep genetic signal, a coarser, darker presence was lurking. Read more