No advanced civilization has been sustained without barbers. The more the better. There are few things more beautiful or emblematic of strength and order than a man’s neck, freshly-shaven. Some societies have found long hair in men attractive and masculine. These societies have disappeared, as well they should have.

The barber closest to where I live is a nice, but messy person. He sweeps all the day’s hair into a hole in his floor. The hair rains down into the basement, where he leaves it accumulating in a massive hill of human locks. I once took my son down to the basement so that he could use the restroom. We both almost fainted in disgust. The hill was illuminated with the ghostly light shining from the hole above.

For this reason, and out of thrift, I have long been my husband’s barber. I have cut his hair for about fifteen years. I have a few rules. One, I don’t talk sports. Most men enjoy mulling over the latest scores while getting their heads shorn. Tough luck.

I also reserve the right to break out in laughter. There’s a reason why there are barbers. It does take some skill and training. Worse comes to worse, my husband can wear a baseball cap for a few days. Don’t misunderstand me. I take the job seriously. What woman wants her husband to appear with unintentional corn rows?

“Thanks,” my husband said recently after a hair cut. “It needs to be done.” He was quoting Richard Nixon. In his famous conversaton with John Dean, Nixon spoke of the need to use the FBI and IRS against political enemies.

“Oh, what an exciting prospect,” said Dean.

“Thanks,” said Nixon.  “It needs to be done.”

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  Artists give up everything - money, security, normalcy - for their art. Why do they do it? Lech is an Abstract Expressionist painter and a friend of mine. He once explained to me the reason why he has devoted his entire life to art. "I love the smell of paint,"  he said. "I can never get enough of it."    

  Bessie Huey was a fixture of the working-class Pennsylvania neighborhood where my husband spent his childhood. Bessie used to show up now and then at my husband's house, which was filled with children, boarders, relatives, cats, and dogs. Boo, hoo. Boo, hoo, Bessie would cry. I saw you all sitting around the table last night and it was so beautiful. It was so beautiful it made me cry. Bessie once called the police to her home with a report of domestic violence. She claimed her husband, who weighed 90 pounds and was incapacitated by illness, was beating her. Bessie was a large woman, about 200 pounds, and strong. No report was ever filed. Bessie, who favored tent-like dresses on her ample frame, appeared to idolize both domestic health and domestic un-health. Bessie was an eccentric. Healthy neighborhoods include eccentrics. It's the sterile, unbalanced place that does not. My husband grew up in a normal place, with children playing in the streets, mothers at home, couples yelling at each other instead of divorcing, and taverns filled with men at night. It was a normal place, not a perfect one. A big reason why it was normal was that it had a healthy economy. There were plenty of factories and plenty of jobs. That town is gone. Much of America is gone. It's disappeared because Americans have decided they don't need an industrial economy. America has given away its factories to the world. The whole stunning transformation of the…

  Does a child need both a mother and father in his life? Many people today say, 'Not quite.' I was trying yesterday to explain to a friend who is a passionate supporter of same-sex marriage why the answer is yes, but the reasons are so abstract as to be almost unreachable. Many common sense truths, what C.S. Lewis called the Tao of living, are like that. They lie partly beyond our ken. Then I came across this excellent quote by Felix Adler, author of an early 20th century book, Marriage and Divorce. He said: "The child needs father and mother; but it does not need them only as some think, alternately, now the father's influence and then the mother's or in some things the father's influence and in other things the mother's. The child needs the father's masculine influence and the mother's feminine influence always together, the two streams uniting to pour their fructifying influence through the child's life into the life of humanity."  

In this entry, Rose, a “conservative lesbian,” responds to the charge in the previous post that she is self-glorifying and guilty of idealizing woman love. Among her most interesting comments is this: “Eccentrics need a stable society in which to be eccentrics.”

Rose writes, initially quoting the female commenter Kidist Asrat Paulos:

“In a way, she is saying that there is no non-romantic, Platonic (or otherwise) relationship possible between women. She doesn’t say this explicitly, but I have a feeling she believes this.”

I, in fact, do not believe this, and rather agree with what Heather Elizabeth Peterson writes in “Romantic Friendship: Not Just a Code Word for Gay” and “The Misguided Search for ‘Homoeroticism’ A Plea for Research on Friendship.” As you’ve stated, the sexualization of our culture has helped destroy the possibility of nonsexual closeness. A modern Wordsworth would hide the extent of his love for his sister for fear of accusations (as I have read about William and Dorothy) that his regard was incestuous.

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The following is a critique of the widely prevalent notion that the ideal life for a woman is one of “balance,” the judicious mixing of career and home. I call this the “Balance Myth,” one of the central ideas of mainstream feminism.
 
On the face of it, “third-wave feminism,” as it is known, seems reasonable,  an appealing counterpart to middle class virtue. In fact, it normalizes the radical tenets of feminism. Thanks to the Balance Myth, the casual neglect of children, marriage and home are now mainstream phenomena. This seemingly harmless idea wears a soft and pleasing exterior. But, it offends exactly what it purports to uphold: the intelligence of women and their innate desire for meaningful work.

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  This article in today's New York Times states an amazing fact. Apparently, female artistic directors and literary agents have a tendency to discriminate against female playwrights. Are women naturally more competitive with other women? If so, the more women in positions of influence the harder time women trying to break in will have. In other words, the idea that women will be kinder to women is false. Or do women agents, sick and tired of the feminist claptrap that lands on their desks, secretly wish to purge the field of all women? Whatever the answer, the solution is this: Feel sorry for women. Here's another question: Is it possible for artistic endeavour to survive in a world where people are charting its progress?