Smell

By

Leo de Natale

Illustrations by Vince Giovannucci

          My name is Andy Di Coglione and this story involves me and my battle with the first Cranial Nerve, aka the olfactory nerve.   The situation occurred ten years ago, long before the Covid pandemic.

          The height of hysteria occurred during the winter that followed nasal surgery.  I will explain below.  Frantically pacing around my house, I continuously cupped a hand underneath my nostrils.  Can I really smell my after shave?  Sniff.  What about the coffee pot?  Is it my favorite New Orleans coffee blend? Sniff. I walk the dog after a snowfall, and , like a predator “air “ its prey, I raise my nose in the air.  I notice the irony.  Can I smell the smoke from my neighbor’s fireplace? Sniff, sniff.

          In some cases I could indeed satisfy  the  sensory inquiry but it was beginning to become maddening for me and my wife Kate who said I was rapidly resembling the persnickety  Odd Couple character Felix Unger.

          “Andy, will you please stop it!?” she would implore, referring to my breathing mask.  You’ll be fine. It just takes time.”

          As a daily ritual, I would conduct my smell check, yet this unrelenting anxiety of losing my sense of smell after surgery continued.  I finally understood what fear really is, especially for those who become blind or deaf after a lifetime of seeing and hearing.  Fortunately, a metaphysical slap across the face from one’s spouse – Thanks, I needed that!- does wonders.  Time itself is an incredible balm and spousal support finally provided enough perspective to achieve some inner peace.  And that is the perspective from which I write today.

          Olfaction, our ability to smell, is the bastard-child of the human senses.  Compared to vision, hearing or touch, smelling is often given short shrift or completely ignored.  Scores of songs and poems have been written about the eye and how it is the window to the soul.  The nose is, well, just the nose.  After a yearlong odyssey that started with what is euphemistically referred to as “minor surgery”, I have a very different story to tell and one based on the frightening specter of losing an elemental sense.

     I have always had an acute appreciation of my sensory world and something I call “sense memory”.  A particular sight or sound or smell that has occurred in my past trigger a Proustian remembrance of things past.  The smell of pine tree needles in the forest recalls countless memories of youthful summers at a New Hampshire Boy Scout camp spent hiking and camping.  The smell of cotton candy at a country fair harkens me to the Nantasket Beach amusement park with the smell of  popcorn on hot, sunny days.    There is the smell of my wife’s perfume.  During our courtship I purchased a bottle of aromatic Shalimar.  It became her signature fragrance.  There was the musty smell of  the Louisiana bayous.  I remember that peculiar odor traveling to New Orleans during Mardi Gras.  There was the childhood memory of the ocean in summertime when I would wade into the frigid salt water of New England beaches where my feet would become entangled with icky, stinky seaweed.

          During much of my adult life my sense of smell has had an historical glitch: hay fever and seasonal allergies.  I had always dreaded August and September because I knew that for six weeks I would suffer the afflictions of sneezing, sinus headaches, the constantly runny nose that are the defining symptoms of the hay fever syndrome.  It also affected my sense of taste.  Couldn’t really savor the barbecued chicken and beer.

Each year, the symptoms and duration seemed to lengthen and  2015 was perhaps the worst.  Until that time, I had accepted this seasonal affliction was my lot in life and was simply resigned to months of misery.  But all that changed when I consulted my new Primary Care Physician who discovered the root cause of such exacerbation: nasal polyps.  When first told of these microscopic nodules causing my problems I had images of tiny sea creatures inhabiting my nasal passages.  My surname changed from Di Coglione to Andy Di Nostril, the polyp king.

Seeking to reassure me, my doctor informed me that nasal polyps were commonplace and afflicted many.  He suggested having them surgically removed and referred me to several “nose men”, officially designated  as otolaryngologists, or ENTs for short.

On my physician’s recommendation, I arrived at the office of Dr.Benji Stone, a tall, thin , bespectacled ENT-man who apparently was a charter member of The Hair Club for Men ( I came to realize one should never trust a physician sporting a toupee).  During his examination he wore a mirror loupe that provided more light into the nostrils.  I watched him as he very adeptly- and carefully – removed the loupe from his head and avoided disrupting the bargain basement polyester hairpiece.

“Oh yes,” Dr. Stone decried after examining me and my polyps. “ You’ve got many, many in both nostrils.”

With off-handed bravura, Dr. Stone proceeded to tell me that endoscopic surgery –  a sort of nasal Roto-Rooter- would readily remove the polyps from hell.  Following the surgery, I needn’t be concerned about long term recurrences if I squirted  each nostril daily with  a low dosage steroid nasal spray.  The procedure would be day surgery and required general anesthesia.  I’d probably miss two to three days’ work, he said.

I must confess the thought of freeing myself from the ravages of hay fever season was alluring.  Many persons approach surgery with trepidation.  Yet I was so convinced of the straightforward nature of this procedure that I looked forward, almost embraced the concept of Dr. Stone and his hair piece sending his Ford Probe (what a terrible name for an automobile) up my nose with the self assurance I would finally have “the cure”.

Nov. 2, 2015.  It is 6:30 AM and I am strapped to a gurney in the pre-surgery center at a suburban hospital.  There are at least 12 of us there, each with an intravenous tube administering the Valium that leaves us smiling like idiots.  I can imagine how the surgical nurses view us: there’s a nose over there, a “D and C” here, a hernia to our right,  a laparoscopy to our left.  So many body parts being fixed day in day out.  This was my final observation before everything faded to black.

Six hours later, my consciousness pushed through the fog of anesthesia and slowly I had the groggy sense of where I was and what had happened to me.  I was in the hospital recovery room, my nose encased in gauze and an oxygen mask covering my face.  Theoretically, day surgery procedures are uncomplicated and recovery is quick and without incident.

I, however, seemed to be having some problems.  The nurse assigned to me said I wasn’t drawing a sufficient number of breaths per minute.  My situation was compounded by waves of nausea that wouldn’t stop even with administration of anti-nausea medication.  By 4:30pm I still hadn’t revived enough and the decision was made to admit me for “overnight observation”.  I would not be going home after day surgery.

Kate was by my side and I could detect nervousness in her voice.

“Andy, they tell me you’re not breathing enough,” she said. “Come on, try to take deep breaths.  I’ll be here first thing tomorrow.”

The poor bastard in the hospital bed across from me had sliced open his leg with a chain saw.  My wife told me later that the family was beginning to have dinner with Mr. McCullough, when wretched sounds of my post-operative nausea caused an abrupt scattering of all familial activity.  He got back at me in his own way.  Chain Saw kept his television on throughout the night and any efforts at sleep on my part were null and void.

I was discharged the following morning, a rainy, cold Friday.  My sole desire was to go home and begin recuperation.  The nausea had fortunately abated and discomfort was minimal despite feeling as if several hundred feet of cotton tamponades had been ram-injected up each nostril.  In fact, during the first day home, I drifted in and out of a sublime torpor. By Sunday I was wandering around the house but somehow felt abnormal and it was something that became increasingly obvious to me.

I was still feeling fatigued, unable to perform the simplest task before returning to bed for several hours’ sleep.  Later that day I tried walking the dog.  After traveling about a quarter-mile, I had to rest at a curbstone.  For several moments I felt panic: what if I didn’t have the strength to return home?  Fortunately I was carrying my cell phone and immediately called my wife.

“Kate, I’m freaking out here,” I said. “Don’t know if I have enough energy to walk home.  Please come and get me.”

She quickly arrived and we were home in less than five minutes.  I confess I was truly frightened by the notion of having that level of debilitation.  Clearly, something was wrong.

My plans Monday were to return to my office for a vigorous day’s work (Kate drove me) but even the simplest functions of showering and shaving knocked the snot out of me.  I arrived at the office and my secretary Pat commented on how wan I appeared – green around the gills was her exact comment.

I sat in my office chair and felt as weak as I had during the entire weekend.  It was patently clear I wasn’t in shape to perform a full day’s work.  In short, Dr. Stone’s 2-3 days turned into a week and my entire workload was rescheduled.    I did, however, return to Stone’s office Wednesday for a scheduled post-operative appointment.

“I’ll tell you what I think, Doctor, “ I said to my nose man as he went about the filthy task of removing tamponades filled with blood, snot and tears. “I think I was given too much anesthesia.   The pre-op was a circus – everyone was being medicated.  I  had an uneasy feeling about my  anesthesiologist before she administered  my happy juice.”

“Well, you know, you could be right,” Stone responded in a refreshingly frank manner. “I’ve had some problems with that anesthesia team in the past.  You shouldn’t be having this much difficulty.”

Egged on by the conversation, I telephoned the hospital’s chief of anesthesia, relayed my conversation with Dr. Stone and notified him I was filing an official complaint.  Guess what happened?  The powers that be rapped Stone’s knuckles so hard he sent a post-dated letter reversing the position he’d assumed during our private conversation.

Oh, I see, Dr. Stone.  It’s cover-your-ass time ‘cause everyone’s thinking potential lawsuit.  The events over the ensuing two weeks were predictable.  A hospital spokesperson sent another letter essentially apologizing for any discomfort and inconvenience and reiterated the hospital position that a review of my surgical procedure was within protocol.  Lastly, I was offered a bromide.

The letter stated that in order to prevent any ill feelings, the hospital was waiving my responsibility for the anesthesia and overnight hospitalization.  Two months later I discovered that what they really meant was I didn’t have to pay the health insurance co-paymnet of $86.54.  The hospital still charged and received from my insurance company $1,350 for anesthesia and $722 for the overnight stay.  They made a tidy profit and that, folks, is how medicine plays out in the big city.

Convalescence can be such a relative term.  A person recovering from heart surgery or broken bones can require varying time to recover from the trauma of these procedures.  I  learned there is a physical and psychological component from the anesthesia’s side effects.  The daily fatigue was abating.  I could finally walk my dog without feeling debilitated.  By December I began feel better physically, and there was no question I could breathe easily and freely  — my nostrils felt as wide as Boston’s Sumner Tunnel, though not as grimy.

It was at this time, however, that the psychological component kick in and my fretting began.  I became aware of my inability to smell things.  Agnosia is the medical term.  Arriving home from the office I couldn’t discern the aroma of my wife’s cooking.  I couldn’t smell the particular odor that  occurs after snowfall.  At first I attributed the deficit to post-operative trauma and the healing process.  The longer it endured, the more anxious I became.  I decided it was time for another appointment with Dr. Stone.

My relationship with Nose Man had become strained after the hospital complaint flak but we were in midstream.  Neither enjoyed the other’s presence,  sort of a bad marriage on the worst day.  I proceeded to articulate my concerns.

“I’ll tell you how bad it is, Benji,” I said. “I can’t smell my dog’s shit! For better or worse, his poop odor always snapped my head back.”

Once again, Nose Man probed and prodded my nostrils and discovered what he termed “crusting” – stuff, junk, crap up there that was contributing to blockage and my depressed sense of smell. He sought to reassure me I was experiencing a variation of the healing process.  Patience, dear Andy, patience.  Time is a great healer, he said using the hackneyed  expression.

          Several weeks passed, and I experienced a waxing and waning of smell sensitivity.  The hysteria, complete with the frequent hand cupping, began and at one point I thought I was losing it.  I decided a second opinion was necessary.  My PCP had referred me to the office of Dr. Yale Cornell (honest! , an older Nose Man whose bullet head and pencil mustache reminded me of a character in a low-budget porn film.

Dr. Yale gathered a detailed case history, examined me with his Ford Probe, and concluded my “crusting” was causing the problem.  He parenthetically told me I was cleaning my ears too frequently –“Let the wax build up. Stop using Q-tips and don’t worry, the ear is self-cleaning.”. I was beginning to think Nose Men were odd.  Must go with the territory of snot, mucous and ear wax.

          By spring, I oscillated between despondency over my agnosia and acceptance tempered with the hope that the surgery would at least ameliorate the underlying problem of seasonal allergies.  For my nose’s part, the sense of smell began to come and go.  There were more days where I was actually aware of most smells wafting my way although my dog’s poop continued to be seen but not smelled.  Thanks for tender mercies.

          Spring became summer and there was nary a trace of my usual discomfort.  The smell sensation remained about the same.  I was still waiting for the acid test: mid-August, the days of torment.  Days blended.  The weather forecasters reported ever-increasing pollen levels but, sniff, no allergy attacks.

          There were several days where I became sniffly but, hot damn,  I seemed to be riding out my first post-operative summer without a major incident.  By Labor Day I still hadn’t experienced the misery of previous years and by mid-September and the height of ragweed season, I knew I was over the hump.

          I had a year to reflect upon the olfactory odyssey and in retrospect the truisms have been accurate.  Time is indeed a healer.  I am extremely pleased with the surgical outcome.  Being freed of the torments of hayfever is truly a blessing.  I have come to accept diminished sensitivity although the dog’s poop can now be detected.  I also am pleased I’ll never again have to see Benji Stone and his toupee.

          The steroid spray snorts continue.  It’s nice to smell the roses…..well, at least some of them.

Caravaggio’s Son

By

Leo de Natale

Illustrations by Vince Giovannucci

          Some people have an obsession with colors.   There are many women who have a thing about purple.  They dress in purple, their homes are fifty shades of purple – sofas, wall paper, bathroom tiles.  Others prefer pink or orange.  A certain Rhode Island gentleman, however, chose a different hue.

          No one is really sure why or at what point in his life Arthur Di Nobili fell in love with the color black, especially black clothing.  His usual monochromatic attire consisted of black shoes and socks, black polyester slacks that crackled with static electricity in wintertime and black or sometime gray acetate shirts.  His left ring finger was adorned with a massive gold-and-onyx ring bearing the profile of a Roman Centurion.  Such apparel accentuated his swarthy southern Italian features that  naturally included a black mustache.

          In 1977, Arthur attended Princeton University,  on full scholarship (he  achieved three 800s on his SAT scores).   He was known at Princeton as the “Italian Johnny Cash”. He created an avalanche of sardonic laughter the day he wore to class his infamous black disco shirt festooned with hordes of scarlet parrots perched upon palm branches.

          He was  indeed a walking contradiction.  His outward appearance conveyed Providence Goombah — he was born in the Rhode Island city.  A virile six-footer, Arthur was the possessor of smooth, olive-toned skin.  His beard was so coarse, his friends teased, he could wake at 4:30 in the morning and  have five o’clock shadow thirty minutes later.  Arthur Di Nobili’s eyes were a deep penetrating umber and when, as he was so often, excited, his eyes would become bulged by the exposed white sclera as his eyelids retracted with emotion.  He also had the habit of voluntarily raising his eyebrow as a menacing emphasis.  His voice was deep and sonorous.

          Arthur was blessed with an IQ of 150 and relished such varied subjects as quantum physics, the Hegelian dialectic or Hittite pottery. He was engrossed with Baroque  art and his favorite painter from that era was Caravaggio, the master of chiaroscuro.

          His college dormitory cronies became enamored  with Arthur’s engaging personality.  He would regale them with such utterances as, “Look, all I care about is Nietzsche and getting laid.”  As the only child of divorced parents, he extolled the virtues of marriage, yet boasted of his womanizing during  visits to New York City.

          The crusty aristocrats of Princeton never knew quite what to make of this multifaceted personality.  He confounded them with his intellect (he was one of few to graduate with a straight 4.0 average). He had the uncanny ability to maximize the efficiency of his waking hours. 

For example, during his junior year Arthur was simultaneously on the dean’s list, co-captain of the varsity soccer team, president of the Dante Alighieri debating society and a member of the university’s a capella choir.

Perhaps the most unusual of Arthur’s many idiosyncracies was his obsession with the Mafia.  Although neither he nor his family had underworld ties, everyone presumed he did  because of his encyclopedic knowledge of what Arthur referred to as “America’s sub rosa General Motors”.  For years, his daily routine was to purchase four morning newspapers: the New York Times, the New York Post, Providence Journal,  and the Washington Post.  He would assiduously scan these for underworld news items- this was pre-internet.   On  his dormitory room wall he had drawn an elaborate and astonishingly detailed flow chart of the Mafia, complete with every chieftain’s name, moniker, place of birth, city of operation and the rackets therein controlled.

Once in New York City, Arthur and his Italo-American classmate,  Nick Volterra, a Type A personality from Westchester County, spent several hours in a Manhattan South police precinct for what Volterra called a case of mistaken identity. According to Nick (whom Arthur dubbed “Travis Bickle” for his resemblance to actor Robert Di Niro’s character in the movie Taxi Driver), the two spent a winter’s weekend in New York after a Princeton-Columbia basketball game.

“Arthur would always ‘dress up’ for a trip to New York,” Nick recalled. “He had this big, gray homburg hat he’d bought at the same haberdashery where Mafia don Carlo Gambino shopped.  He was wearing  his black Chesterfield coat and carrying that damned Samsonite brief case . Sometimes it contained only a sandwich but he liked taking it along for the “effect’” and I would say,  ‘What no violin case?’”.

          “Anyway, we’re on a bus on the West Side, and Arthur’s there telling me about the latest “hits” by the New York mob,” Nick said.   “He always got excited talking about that sort of thing, and his eyes got really beady and intense.  He was talking about the demise of a minor hood named Mario “The Nose”Granito.  He’d say ‘Yeah he was horning in on the Gambino’s loan sharking.  They garroted the son-of-a-bitch and stuffed him into a pink Cadillac. A pink Caddy, that’s a sign of real disrespect.  The Nose was a fag anyways.  He had no balls.’”

          Volterra said he became uneasy as he noticed two women in front of them exchanging fearful glances.  Suddenly, one of the women (it turned out they were Bellevue Hospital outpatients) yelled hysterically, “Murderers! Murderers! We’re going to be killed.”

          The bus driver pulled to a halt and tried to calm the women while Arthur, obviously enjoying the ruse, glared with those eyes and, as an emphatic gesture, grabbed his groin and shouted, “Hey right here’s your murderers, you scumbags!!!”

Three hours later, after undergoing interrogation at Manhattan’s Precint 4, Arthur and Volterra were released.  The police had questioned Arthur but discovered his identification.  Arthur gladly opened his brief case and displayed its contents: a jar of Skippy Peanut Butter, three changes of underwear and his four newspapers.

By his senior year, Arthur had decided to pursue a career in health care.  It was a tossup between dentistry and medicine.  He opted for medical school because he told friends he didn’t care for spending eight hours a day sticking his fingers into somebody’s mouth.  At Harvard Medical School, Arthur quickly established himself as the class eccentric.  No one could prove it but he was strongly suspected as the culprit who dressed an anatomy cadaver in monk’s robes, complete with a Chianti bottle in the corpse’s right hand and a lit cigar between the teeth of the body’s grizzled, formaldehyde-awashed face.

It was also at Harvard that Arthur was “thunderstruck”, as he put it, by Lori Johannsen, a  first year classmate from Minnesota.  If Arthur was polyester, Lori was crepe de chine; he was Mediterranean terra cotta, she was Scandinavian cut glass. Their often stormy relationship became a classic example of oil and vinegar, noir et blanche.   Light and shadow, just like the chiaroscuro paintings of Caravaggio, a major proponent of this technique and most often associated with a dramatic use of lighting.

Lori was at first glance a striking female.  She was tall, blonde, and blue-eyed.  She had an athlete’s lithe physique that developed from years as a varsity swimmer; her skin was alabaster-toned.  Arthur referred to her as his “Venus reincarnate”; others saw her as a flat-chested, weak-chinned hypochondriac who once told a fellow student she skipped classes because she thought her blood pressure would be elevated that day.  She could divine a common cold two weeks in advance.

 And for all Arthur’s sexual braggadocio, in actuality he reflected conservative attitudes of a second-generation Italo-American.  He could be and often was promiscuous with a coed here, or a comely graduate student there.  But Arthur had this Godfatheresque fantasy regarding the purity of womanhood he saw in Lori.  At times he fancied himself a latter-day Michael Corleone, the literary and intellectual Mafia character.

And so the relationship evolved, or regressed.  It was during the summer between third and fourth year of medical school that an event occurred that drastically altered Arthur’s life.  During summer break, Arthur and an old neighborhood friend, George “The Greek” Scatopolous, spent two weeks driving cross country to visit Lori and her family in rural Minnesota.    The two city slickers likened it to an urban Meriwether and Lewis expedition to the Northwest Passage.

For the first three years of medical school, the romance between Arthur and Lori ebbed and flowed.  It was a melodrama reminiscent of the old dime store novels.  She would harangue him over the rigidity with which he dearly held the Providence/Italian/Macho ethic.

“You’re as progressive as one of your grandmother’s zucchinis,” Lori yelled at him during one of their innumerable fights.

“Yeah well at least I take my clothes off at night,” he retorted, referring her distaste for nudity. “Your problem is you’ve always worn tight underwear!”

          Arthur arrived at the Johannsen home tired, hot and incredibly drunk on chianti.  A predictably ugly scene ensued at Lori’s doorstep.  Words were exchanged  with Lori’s livid father.  Arthur and “The Greek”, sped off towards Minneapolis via Interstate 84.  A thunderstorm with high winds blew out over the Minnesota flatlands.  Rain cascaded in sheets off the lightweight Chevrolet they were driving.

          Arthur could not recall precisely how it happened but a tractor-trailer containing 30 tons of feed corn jackknifed, swerved towards their car and sent it careening into a drainage ditch thirty feet away from the highway.

George was killed instantly as the car roof collapsed and crushed his cervical vertebrae.  Arthur was discovered outside the wreckage and was unconscious. 

For nearly a month he lay in coma at a Minneapolis hospital.  Lori visited once and spent the remainder of the summer horseback riding near her home.  She never saw him again.

          After Labor Day Arthur was transported to Providence and, as if by the influence of some magical elixir wafting through the city’s atmosphere, regained consciousness by September’s end.  The recovery, unfortunately, was incomplete.  Arthur was blind.  The neuro-ophthalmologist at Providence Hospital told Arthur and his anxious mother he had sustained significant trauma to the base of his skull called the occipital area, the location of visual processing.  The doctor said his sight might be restored within weeks or months but he might never again see the skyline of the Rhode Island city he called home.

          Arthur showed remarkable resilience.  “At least my world is colored black” he quipped with gallows humor.  But alone at night, and surrounded by internal and external darkness, despondency oozed through the crevices of his battered mind: “I’ll never see another Princeton-Harvard game,” he thought. “I’ll never see another St. Anthony’s feast in Little Italy…………I’ll never watch Frank Sinatra sing again.”

       Three days before his release from the hospital, a rush of noise entered his room.  He heard muffled voices and the air became heavy with the smell of sweet cologne and smoke from an expensive cigar.  As Arthur lay there, a large warm hand gripped his.  A man’s soft voice asked,

“Arthur, my son, how are you?” 

Arthur recognized the voice and immediately associated the face he’d seen at numerous Senate sub-committee hearings.  It was Raymond Patriarca, capo of the Providence mob. “Il Padrone” was a typical Mafia don: wanted and hated by state and federal law enforcement but revered by the Rhode Island Italian community.  He was, in their eyes, a modern day Robin Hood with garlic and prosciutto.

          “Arthur, you have made us very proud in the past,” Patriarca said in a lilting, paternal tone with an unmistakable Italian accent. “You have brought honor to this neighborhood.  You have gone to the best schools, achieved things that I hoped my own sons would achieve.  I want to help.”     

 As Arthur listened in near disbelief over the visitor now sitting beside him, Patriarca told him all his medical expenses would be paid.  Any rehabilitation or vocational training would also be subsidized.  This was the same Raymond Patriarca that two days prior had ordered an execution of Eugenio “The Tomato” Innocenti because of attempted burglary of his daughter’s summer home and the theft of three hundred pounds of provolone cheese from Patriarca’s underworld headquarters in North Providence.          

          Patriarca was good to his word.  The bills were paid. He provided Arthur  with a comfortable apartment near his mother’s home.  He paid for nursing until Arthur could fend for himself.

        It was at this juncture that Arthur experienced an artistic influence that shunted him along a different path.  As a child, his grandfather had taught him to play the mandolin, a stringed instrument that accompanies the Italian soul.  He had outgrown the interest for such an instrument but suddenly, in the dark world he existed, he took pursued even greater exponent of the heart – the violin.

          Jacob Cohen, a former virtuoso fallen on hard times, was discreetly contacted by Patriarca intermediaries.  He had once been concertmaster with the New York Philharmonic but a sour marriage, a few sex scandals  and his penchant for high living contributed to his downfall.  Cohen was now earning money by existing in a musician’s purgatory: tutoring would-be Paganinis.  Cohen admits today that mentoring Arthur was perhaps the salvation of his checkered career.  The publicity he later received, locally and internationally, catapulted him once again to prominence.

Working with Arthur was originally trying.  They traded ethnic slurs but after the initial feeling-out period, Cohen (referred to as a kosher Ichabod Crane, both in temperament and appearance) discovered the latent artist in Arthur.  Teaching a blind man to play violin, he would say, was simultaneously difficult and easy.  It was difficult because the musical notation had to be put into more abstract form; easy because the blind man’s remaining senses made Arthur more aware of  the nuances of music.

          The two men came to understand each other to such a degree they combined their talents.  They began playing duets and appeared at weddings, Bar Mitzvahs and musical events around Providence and throughout New England.

          Nearly three years to the day after that fateful evening in Minnesota, a miracle occurred.  Arthur was preparing for a concert before the Providence Jaycees when the sensation, the suggestion of light from an ancient, wooden bulkhead, appeared in the midst of his consciousness.  The light sprung forward, first slowly but then with greater rapidity, blur piled upon blur.  Gross forms were becoming discernible. Vision was coming back.  He could see!

  The news splashed onto local newspapers and television stations.  The national media learned of the blind, Princeton-educated violinist re-entering the world of light and images.  There were tears of joy.

Five years later, Arthur Di Nobili stood tall inside Providence’s Saints Peter and Paul Cathedral.  He wore black again but the black polyester was no longer an empty expression of poor taste in clothing.  It was  symbolic of the world into which he had been submerged.  Dressed in black, he played Mozart’s The Requiem at Raymond Patriarca’s funeral mass.  A thousand eyes cried.

By Leo de Natale

     The ochre-colored building sits ensconced on a hilltop in rural Agawam, Massachusetts.  At first glance it could pass for a warehouse or storage area for the potatoes and broad-leaf tobacco that are grown in this western Massachusetts town.  But the pungent mixture of horseflesh, manure and winter hay reveals its true identity.  The New England Equine Auction Center is indeed a stable.  For some horses it is a way station to the next  barn or riding school where 14-year-old pre-pubescents will yank the mouth and kick the body with insensitive spurs.

           For the remainder of those soft-eyed creatures with their coats of brown, black or gray, it means the proverbial end of the line: bidders for dog food companies – in the horse world known as “The Killers”- are always well  represented at the weekly Thursday auction.

          The horses stand there, row after row, peering over their steel-piped enclosures with as many stories to tell as the two-legged man/beasts standing astride and free on the other side.  One horse, an emaciated  gray five-year-old mare has escaped the noose.  A plump middle-aged mother and her two teenaged daughters describe how they’ve scraped together $500 on this admittedly doubtful reclamation project.

The horse’s exposed rib cage and pelvic bones, thrusting through the scruffy skin of its hindquarters and the whip scars behind the neck tell the story.  New wounds from horsebites demonstrate the equine pecking order that culls the weak from the herd.

The woman tells how the family intends to sustain its new charge as her daughter applies salve to the mare’s wounds.

“She put her head on my husband’s shoulder, almost saying, ‘Please’,” the mother said of the Quixote-esque horse. “We just couldn’t let her wind up in a tin can.”

The gray horse’s roommate, an old black-and-white pinto in the adjacent stall is destined for a different fate.  It stands there, listless, while the round-wormed parasites holiday within dark, diseased intestines and have ballooned the pinto’s abdomen to twice its normal girth. The pinto just stands, lacking the energy to swat as a convention of flies swarm unmolested around a motionless tail.  Within twenty-four hours the once noble beast will droop its eyes, gasp its last breath and crash upon the ground, its face covered with sawdust and woodchips.

Pinto horse has beaten the system.  No more trailers to untold places, no electric stun gun to shock its head into oblivion.  Rather, a backhoe will unceremoniously drag its hind hooves to burial in an adjacent meadow where new, young legs will prance over the bones. 

Requiescat In Pace, sweet horse.

Deus Ex Machina

By

Leo de Natale

         Illustration by Vince Giovannucci

I am old and  often contemplate the dehumanization we are experiencing at the hand of modern technology, specifically the ever increasing hydra-like control  the internet, computers and cell phones have over human beings.

          I’m not completely intimidated by social media, the internet, the constantly changing computer or software technology. I can adequately navigate through cyberspace but, like so many in my aging Baby Boomer generation, there’s an intimidation factor.  With increasing frequency, we’re becoming roadkill.  There’s one basic fear:  pushing the wrong button and, poof !, there’s a figurative explosion and you lose your emails, your texts and everything. I often think of the Dirty Harry quip,”A man’s gotta know his limitations.” We live in mortal fear of losing all data while the devices turn to dreck.

          Probably one of the most annoying aspects of cyberworld is the dreaded PASSWORD!  I’ve tried to use one basic password but the websites/servers seem to be constantly and arbitrarily changing: “Your password is not recognized”, “Forgot your password?,  Click here and reset” or, my favorite, “Are you a robot?”. “No!,” I respond, “Are you?”.   A broken man, I reset the password and it works–at least once.  But on a subsequent access it’s back to ground zero.  “Password not recognized”.   MIPS.  MIPS. It is so Devo.

          Of course more companies/websites are heavily relying on the annoying QR code, a Rorschachian symbol that permits entry into connections to many websites.  And I laugh phoning Apple because the android voice sounds eerily similar to HAL, the robotic voice in the classic film 2001: A Space Odyssey:  “Just what do you think you’re doing, Dave?” The cybernet  seems to say “I am your master.  You will do as told or will be denied entry.”

          Cyberspace is totally obtrusive and the more it’s used the more you realize what a hydra it has become.  It wraps its tentacles around us.  There was a time pre-computer/cell phones when humans weren’t constantly bombarded with junk mail, scams, hustles.  No one worried about being hacked or having identity theft.  In a mere quarter century, it has become the pleasure vs. pain experience circa 2025 and counting.

          My most recent clash with this pervasive phenomenon pertained to a pedestrian event:  my wife and I needed a new refrigerator.  The old Frigidaire was leaking and we proactively decided to replace it before the deluge and a refrigerator full of spoiled food.  There was a quick trip to Home Depot where Clarice, a frumpy middle-aged woman with technicolor shoulder length hair guided us through the various models and manufacturers. Her fingernail polish was flaking; some fingers had no polish.  Not a pretty look.

          “This LG model here is the most popular French door ‘fridge,” she said with a thick Boston accent. “We sell a lot of these ones.”

She was actually very pleasant and helpful and $2,000 later we were the proud owner of a new stainless steel LG Super Freeze model made in Korea (the Koreans have usurped appliance manufacturing – LG, Samsung produce and sell most refrigerators, televisions, washing machines et al).  

“And remembah, the LG has a twelve month extended warranty but you gotta go online to registah,” she said with some forewarning.

The unit arrived and had new bells and whistles.  One notable feature was punishment for not closing the refrigerator and freezer doors.  Fifteen seconds is all I got before ear ringing beeps yelled “close the door!”.

The stainless steel unit was slick and shiny, the interior was well designed.  After delivery, I started to notice little things that slip by when selecting an appliance.  Plastic trays on the doors were thinner and chintzy.  There was no rubber padding on shelves, so bottles and containers created unanticipated noise.  Quality used to be a watchword for household items but it’s the old story you pay more for something but it’s manufactured with inferior materials.  Of course I’m talking like a grumpy old man (“I remember in my day things were different!” blah blah blah).  Each generation succumbs to curmudgeonliness.

          Once our food was placed inside the refrigerator, it was time to register the unit and apply for the warranty benefit.  There was a time you could do this by telephone and speak to a human.  Today, you’re on your own.  The first hint there’d be gnashing of teeth occurred when the owner’s manual informed my wife and me there were data on the refrigerator wall detailing the process.  On the refrigerator’s left wall there was a 3×8 sticker that contained the usual – model number, serial number etc.  Also included was the aforementioned QR code, the increasingly ubiquitous symbol used by just about anything associated with the internet.

          Placing my cell phone in front of the QR’s squares and squiggles, I focused the symbol and was immediately shunted to a LG website with further instructions.  I was told to download a corporate app called “LG ThinQ”.   Switching to my laptop, I arrived at LG’s website, the vehicle for establishing an account and services provided.  I doggedly followed the usual prompts – name, email, address, telephone number. “Are you a new account?” the prompt asked.  Yes I am.   “You must register and provide – you guessed it – a password”.  Oh no, here we go again!

I knew the routine: password must contain a minimum of 8 characters; You must use at least one capitalized letter, a numeral and a character # or !, etc.  I dutifully typed in Sarge123! (we always use this password honoring Sarge, our first German Shepherd Dog).  Of course you are required to re-type the password for “security reasons”.  I received a stern message saying “This password is weak.  You must provide a stronger combination of numerals and letters!”.

 I retyped another password and was rewarded.   Like Ali Baba, the website opened. 

I then proceeded to complete the warranty application.  A creepy,  Orwellian phenomenon appeared before my eyes.  As I typed my surname the entire field was immediately filled.   The screen automatically included my address and zip code and then incredibly showed the last four digits of my credit card.   This has occurred before and my reaction is  wow!,  how  do they harvest this information, especially from a website I’ve never before visited?  This occurrence was eery and scary. I guess it really has come to pass.  Big Brother is watching you and all I could think of was H. G. Wells’ morlocks from his novel The Time Machine.  The subterranean ghouls control the robotic earth dwellers who are comatose and walk aimlessly while staring into their cell phones. I thought of young people today who cross streets without looking up or ride bicycles and simultaneously texting.

 For example, I recently was stopped at a red light.  A pimply-faced kid was driving a Vespa motor scooter.  With the scooter’s  green light flashing, he takes a left. His girlfriend is riding behind him on the guest seat.  Instead of paying attention and perhaps enjoying the ride she was- what else?- gazing at her cell phone.  We are doomed.

The only thing worse was watching  another kid following the Vespa  riding his electric bike.  Traveling at about 20 mph, he was helmetless and, simaltaneiously, texting and pulling wheelies.  He’ll eventually become an organ donor.  His young heart, lungs, kidneys and corneas will find a healthy home.

Of course, I just received an email from LG.  A reverberating circuit  informed  me the password was not recognized and then prompted me with the question “Forgot password?  Press here.”. Start from square one.

Dammit,   getting old is not fun.   I feel like yelling, “Hey!  Get off the grass!!!”.      Computers, phones, tablets are consuming more time and energy as we slouch towards the Wasteland.

 I wish it were 1965 again!!!!

“Arrrghh!!

Les Dentes de Roi

By

Leo de Natale

          As a child, I had a world class Bugs Bunny overbight.   Abnormal dentition ran in the family.  My mother and sister also had an array of crooked teeth.   As a rite of passage, my parents realized the social repercussions of malformed teeth and by Grade 6 I paid my first visit to  orthodontist Dr. Kaplan.   I joined the ranks of the select group of classmates who, for two to four yeas endured hardware in our mouths and wore the dreaded “night brace” that magically catapulted teeth into the desired position.

          Predictably, fellow classmates would rag on us – called us “barbed wire mouths” and made fun of us after lunch because of the food stuck in the metal jungle.  Tuna fish sandwiches were especially gross in appearance.  Foul breath was rampant.  So was the insufferable teasing.

          We all went through this orthodontic misadventure that was comparable to college fraternity hazing.  Unlike frat house initiation, there was not corporal punishment and the braces period eventually faded into oblivion.   Not so for me. During the rest of my life I nearly always observed and made mental notes about people’s teeth.  Besides the overbights, crookeds and John Kerry prognathic underbites, I’d note whether or not a person’s teeth were yellow, gray, missing/absent.

          Mike Myers is a comedic genius and his spoof film, Austin Powers, International Man of Mystery, is a paean to a nation besot of bad teeth.  Myers portrays the eponymous  character  Powers “superspy” and throughout the movie wears a set of large, yellow-stained  prosthetic teeth.  After being teased by his comely co-star, he admits the obvious.

          “Ok, the English have bad teeth!” he yells as the camera focuses on his gaping mouth. “They’re not shagadelic, Baby!”

          On the continent, it isn’t much different.  The late wall-eyed French existentialist Jean Paul Sartre had egregiously brown stained teeth from a lifetime of pipe smoking.  It was not a pretty sight.

          Austin Powers is considered a seminal comedic theme.  The movie is a spoof of the  1960’s James Bond movies.   The sight gags and plot lines satirized the genre to a point where the Bond movie’s producers completely changed the characterization when Daniel Craig was chosen to become the newest reincarnation in  2005.  A hairy-chested, toupeed, Sean Connery became a dinosaur.

          Segue to 2025.  My wife and I  became addicted to the British crime television series – Inspector Lewis, Midsomer Murders, Murdoch Mysteries et al. The programs are a British cottage industry and we noticed many of the character actors can be seen playing musical chairs in numerous programs.  It’s the British version of central casting.  In the English version of cinema verite, episodes would be sprinkled with a cast filled with ugly teeth. 

I began to think the producers regarded the tooth problem as a yellow badge of courage.  We’re Brits, godammit, and we’ll televise a physical trait that we gladly accept.

          American standup comedian Rodney Dangerfield had a famous joke about a man who seeks cheap dental advice:

“Hey, Doc, what should is do about my yellow teeth?” he asks his dentist.

“Wear a brown necktie!” was the response.  Badda Bing, Badda Boom!!

          My wife and I actually began playing a game.  We’d each keep a score tally of how many cast members were unabashedly demonstrating their genetic dental proclivities.  Most scores ranged between fifty and seventy five percent.  We realized there was a vast cultural divide between Americans and British.  We also noticed other countries – Ireland, Holland and Germany- were also infamous for eschewing orthodontists.

          The natural course of events led to the inevitable end stage: dentures.  The British Isles per capita consume more Poligrip, Fixodent and  the famous cleaner Efferdent than any European counterpart.

Which brings us to the title of this essay.   King Charles – boy, did he wait a lifetime to be crowned- is frequently in the news.  Everyone knows the British Royalty is a vestigial entity and purely ceremonial.  The Crown lost its governing powers after the 17^th Century.  The pomp and traditions still remain, however, and the Royal Family has become  a perpetual carnival with costumes, horse-drawn carriages and all the trappings of a society that lies in fairy tales and history books.

          The English still cling to the history and the what used-to-be  British Empire.  Now the Royal Family are merely a tourist attraction that’s perpetuated by  vicarious lifestyles that remain laced with palace intrigue.

          King Charles III is often photographed and, as the fictional Austin Powers, he does have bad teeth.  His lower incisors are an assembly of frozen corn niblets- yellowed crooked and with a mind of their own.  I stared at the photo and thought here is one of the wealthiest men in the world and Good Queen Bess didn’t care enough for her oldest son to slap him into a set of braces?  To this day he remains the poster boy for a quintessential Brit: not particularly good looking and accursed with ugly teeth.

Not to be undone, Britain’s island neighbor Ireland has teeth problems of its own.  It’s not unusual to meet a strapping young Irishman whose handsomeness ends when he opens his mouth.  Yep, there they are in full display: a set of teeth that are gnarled and blackened with rot.  I once knew an English fellow who was having trouble with his teeth.  He’d been suffering from abscesses.

          “I’m sick of these goddamn dentist’s bills,” he said .  “Yeah I made an appointment with the dentist and am having all of them yanked out.  I won’t have to worry about taking care of my fuckin’ teeth, guv!”

          The Brit didn’t realize that  over time a person’s gums shrink and the choppers have to be replaced periodically.  Otherwise his speech will be accompanied by the trademark denture whistle resembling a windstorm occurring as the prosthetic loosens.  And  over time the dentures turn yellow, despite using industrial strength Efferdent.

          According to history books, George Washington lost his teeth while growing older.   Dentures in the 18^th Century were primitive and made of wood – try putting those suckers in! His subordinates reportedly  referred to him as General Splinter Mouth.  Unsurpisingly,  no portraits of Washington exist with him smiling or laughing.  Just look at the $1 bill.  George doesn’t resemble a happy camper.

Perhaps the worst of it the dreaded denture breath, a rank odor that often compared to a Monday morning fish market.  As a young man famous actor Clark Gable lost his teeth due to poor dentition and prematurely needed dentures.  His breath was purportedly so foul that leading lady actresses gagged while kissing Gable.  They should have requested  hazardous duty pay.   Viven Leigh, his costar in Gone With The Wind, claimed her head snapped back during many of the movie’s romantic scenes.  She had neck  problems for the remainder of her career.

          In America we are the antithesis.  Cosmetic dentistry is a multimillion dollar industry.  It’s the Hollywood effect where movie stars historically needed/wanted pearly whites.  There’s an ever increasing influx of teeth whitening strips and tooth pastes that advertise whiter teeth.  A trip to the CVS tooth paste aisle is akin to the grocery store’s canned tomato section.  There are so many options one’s head spins: whole tomatoes, whole skinned tomatoes, tomato paste, chopped tomatoes, crushed tomatoes, stewed tomatoes, plum tomatoes diced tomatoes etc.

At CVS there’s a wall of  tooth pastes. It is a myriad of products that contain sodium bicarbonate whiteners and have proprietary names: “Sparkling White”, “Optic White”,” Baking Soda and Whitening”, “Baking Soda and Peroxide”, etc.

 All these products promise whiter teeth but skeptics abide.  Americans wanting refrigerator white teeth borrow  thousands of dollars required to obtain veneers or the more radical implant surgery.   We are, as Bruce Springsteen sings, blinded by the light. Just ask most politicians, actors or television personalities.

King Charles III, however, will carry on, fight the good fight, and not give a damn about his mouthful of chick peas.

Autumn Flame

By

Leo de Natale

Red.  Or is it scarlet?  The wind blows, reveals a cascade of blinding color.  Acer rubrum is  performing its annual Show

Neighbors standing mouths agape in awe on sunny days.  It’s a thrill really.  For a week maybe two the backyard is ablaze with red maple Leaves nature in full celebration

Like a snowflake each leaf is a variation; some totally scarlet others with Black markings, faint yellow stripes

Slowly, predictably, time takes control; leaves fall to the ground and Laughing grandchildren make snow angels in a sea of red

Street maples can  muster only ho-hum yellow and orange leaves; none Compare to rubrum’s splendor

Alas in the blink of an eye the performance ends mottle leaves turning Brown/black

The naked tree thirty feet tall now laid bare; I cannot wait for spring to arrive when the Autumn Flame begins anew.

Why A  Hulihee?

By

Leo de Natale

Illustration by Vince Giovannucci

“To shave or not to shave. That is the question!”

By the time a young boy morphs into a teenager, the subject of facial hair, beards, mustaches and any combination of the two have bounced around in his head.  Most sons growing up watch their fathers exercise the daily ritual of removing the five o’clock shadow and facing another day. 

          “Daddy, can I watch you shave?” a 10-year-old son will ask as he becomes fixated on this rite of passage.

          “Yes, Johnny, you can,” the father replies. “And remember some day you’ll be doing the same thing.”

The boy watches his dad wash the face, apply the shaving cream  – that’s a favorite – and slowly, methodically stroke the cheeks,  neck, chin and  upper lips.  On a rushed day, the father will yelp- ouch! too close and another razor cut.  Out comes the coagulating styptic stick  that staunches the bleeding.  An astringent after shave is then applied with an accompanying “Ahh”.  The aroma lingers and the  boy files the smell in his olfactory memory bank. 

Once in a while adult  males will sniff Old Spice, Brut, English Leather, Drakkar Noir or other popular colognes and will be catapulted back to their youth. 

Beards and facial hair have existed since the man became homo erectus and lurched out of his cave.  Across the millennia – especially dating back to the Greeks and Romans- beards have been an integral part of society.  Anthropologists claim in ancient times the hairiness  had several purposes. 

The beards created evolutionary pressures among tribes to enforce dominance hierarchies.  Beards = testosterone and they affected mating habits- the iconic Neanderthal  man dragging his female mate by the hair and grunting “Me take you to cave”.  Also, it is proposed that among warring tribes, beards were actually useful in reducing the impact of blunt force during tribal battles.  Had they lived in that era Giuseppe Garibaldi or Beat poet Allen Ginsberg would have protected themselves well.

In  appearance early humans weren’t much different from the rest of the animal kingdom.    We were all hairy beasts and evolution shows some things don’t change, especially in various places in the world.  You wouldn’t confuse Swedes with Moroccans.

Throughout modern history men’s facial hair has varied as often as hemlines (when women more commonly wore skirts and dresses).  Egyptians shaved their faces and scalps although Pharaohs were often depicted with long, well-oiled chin beards.  Along came the  Greeks where hirsutism was the accepted norm. 

In fact, Socrates and his disciples purportedly would play games and watch fleas jump from one beard to another.  Simple pleasures for not so simple philosophers.  Beards grew and predominated during the Hellenic golden era.

The Romans succeeded the Greeks and theirs was a distinctly anti-beard empire.  The emperors were predominantly clean-shaven from Julius Caesar, Augustus, Caligula, Tiberius et al.   It is evident in the various sculptures that have been preserved through the ages.  The invading Barbarians liquidated the Roman Empire and men’s facial appearances reflected their conquerors’ preferences.   The grandeur of Rome morphed into a region of scruffy, bearded, smelly infidels lacking in hygiene and good taste.  During the Middle Ages, hirsutism was the European norm.  Then Protestantism erupted.  There was a clean-shaven Martin Luther and bearded Henry VIII and John Calvin.  These gentlemen created a tectonic upheaval in Western history, religion and facial hair.

Regarding beards, the Protestant Reformation created  the proverbial line in the sand.  During that period, Roman Catholic Church clergy were clean shaven.  As a matter of physically making an ecclesiastic statement, Protestants – with the exception of Luther- donned beards.  The religious battles with the Church were longstanding and the political positions of European states would follow a centuries-long conflict – rebellious England vs. Defender of the Faith France are a prime examples.  Both groups presumed a Michaelangelo-bearded Almighty God was on its side.

Politics and beards aside, many if not most men living between the 16^th and 19^th Centuries were unshaven.  A fundamental question persists regarding the decision:  to shave or not shave.  And that’s hygiene.  Men and women during those times were- shall we say- not terribly clean. European peasants reportedly bathed themselves about three times per year.   Washing and bathing were infrequent at best – remember Socrates and his flea-bitten disciples. If men weren’t washing their hair it’s safe to say the beards weren’t earning extra attention and were a safe haven for bacteria, vermin, dirt and last Thursday’s meat loaf.  During that era B.O. could mean either body or beard odor.

Facial hair history does have an historic timeline but today beards and mustaches provide an even more important contribution: Humor!  The laughter begins with the names.  Each style has a history and each generation seems to add various alterations.  There are more than twenty distinct beard styles with such names as The Garibaldi,  Monkey Tail,  Friendly Mutton Chops,   Verdi and, of course, the Van Dyke.

          Many famous men have sported beards that become eponymous or create visual memory lasting a lifetime.  For example, Transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau was known for his masterpiece book “Walden” and other essays.  Thoreau was photographed with a beard style called the “neck beard”. While spending his time building a log cabin on the shore of Walden Pond, Thoreau decided the grow a beard that included only his neck.  His face was clean shaven that highlighted his crystal blue eyes.  During the 19^th  Century many strange things occurred in Concord, Massachusetts and Thoreau’s facial hair was one of them.

          It’s uncertain if Thoreau was a trendsetter but it turns out New York publisher Horace Greeley also grew a neck beard.  German composer Richard “Die Meistersinger” Wagner also followed suit.  Henry David was in famous company.  Wagner’s contemporary Guiseppe Verdi sported a beard that became associated with the world’s most famous opera masterpieces.  From an historic standpoint, maverick Roman Emperor Nero purportedly wore a neck beard.

          Facial hair has always had a humorous aspect.  Beards and mustaches obviously alter a man’s physical appearance.  A white bearded Santa Claus evokes childhood memories of a fictitious character who represents mirth and holiday cheer.  Segue to a rock music Frank Zappa whose mustache/goatee combination was so well known that his style has become eponymous.  Seeing his facial hair evoke memories of Zappa’s record album Weasels Ripped My Flesh.

          One can’t help but laugh at some of the outrageous names attached to beards.  At the top of the list are the Mutton Chops and its offspring, the Hulihee and Friendly Hulihee.  Also included are the “Claus”, Shenendoah, Old Dutch, ZZ Top, Handlebar Chops, Friendly Chops, Anchor and the Full Spade. 

Not to be denied, there are numerous mustache styles, some visually descriptive: Chevron, Lampshade, Painter’s Brush, Pencil – and the Parted Pencil .  Others evoke chortles: Walrus (think Kansas City Chiefs coach Andy Reid), Handlebar, English, Hungarian, Dali, Fu Manchu and the Horseshoe.  There’s the arcane Imperial Kaiser Wilhelm mustache and a hybrid called the Beardstache.

There’s plenty of history with these names.  Civil War General Ambrose Burnside – considered the worst Union commander – carved a niche in facial hair history.  Gen. Burnside started his career by growing hair adjacent to the ear.  He popularized the look that eventually was named “sideburns”, a style contemporarily popularized by Elvis Presley.  Of course Burnside wasn’t finished.  His facial hair eventually morphed into another signature style: Friendly Mutton Chops.  No one ever took Gen. Burnside or his beard seriously.

          Noted Harvard trained paleontologist Dr. Keith Vitalis has dedicated his life to tracing the long hairy history of man’s obsession with beards and mustaches.

          “Men have a schizoid approach to mustaches and beards,” he said. “We either love them or hate them, myself included.”

          Vitalis speaks from experience.  He long ago decided to adopt a Janus-like appearance: he shaves only the right side of his face.  The left side has a bearded appearance resembling the full beard Garibaldi!

          “I do it for effect,” he said. “Some men love their facial hair; others are psychologically confused. For example, young men regard beards and mustaches as a rite of passage. Growing facial hair states ‘I am a man!’”.

          According to Vitalis, facial hair has psychological associations.  Men with weak chins or who have poor self images while shaved will hide behind a curtain of hair.  Other men try to make a social statement.  Today’s rock musicians are often bearded and express a counter-culture appearance while becoming millionaires with their musical success.

          What about old men who often sport a white mustache and/or beard?

          “Some men think growing a graying mustache/beard gives them an avuncular or perhaps patriarchal appearance,” Vitalis said.  In reality many of these men are hiding behind a wizened mask. Older men with beards think the grey hair hides aging skin or a sagging gullet – the bain of all elderly men and women.  A 73-year-old man with a gray beard is simply calling attention to his chronological age.  Can you take any man seriously if he’s wearing a white Fu Manchu?, Vitalis asks.

          Hairy faces have been with mankind since the dawn of time.  In  this era of computers, software and apps there is still room for fun.  Two ingenious apps, Beardify and Stachify, allow a man to create virtual and instant beards and mustaches.  One moment you’re Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox or Moses parting the Red Sea.  All in the flick of a finger on a cell phone.  You can even transform women’s photos into a band of bearded ladies.  The laughter created by facial hair never ends.  It grows and grows and grows.

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This is my blog essay number 60.  What started out four years ago as a diversion from the Covid 19 nightmare became a reinvigorated passion to write.  I’ve had fun stringing together essays and poems.  I want to thank my wife Kathy who’s been supportive in my endeavors.  She’s also my editor extraordinaire.  Thanks also to my dear close friend, optometry school classmate and colleague  Vince Giovannucci whose artwork and cartoons have  added such zest and humor to my essays.