June 02, 2009

• I can't bring myself to click through, because just the thought makes me want to retch a little. But do either of the articles go into the Southern fascination with human hair? A lot of creepy art (craft?) got made in the South in the 1800s from human hair. I would go find some links, but... I can't bear to.
• I personally installed elaborate, framed displays of curled human hair at the *Ripley's Believe It or Not Museum* in Williamsburg, Virginia... I wondered about it then. Compared to a lot of the other stuff, it was tame. But then I tried to picture how the artisan had probably scraped each lock of hair, the way we curled paper fringe back in childhood... Some things are immutable - the coiled helmet, the ephemeral grasping at immortality thereby...
• Doesn't anyone keep hair throughout their life? I have some from when I was a baby, and 2 long pony tails one from 9 years and one from 36 years. I also have a locket of my mothers hair from when she passed away. Hair is a LOT less weird than fingernails as a corporeal memento. The houses of hair though are a bit twee however.
• Gomi: I've kept locks of hair from my children's and grandchildren's first haircuts, but not hair from complete strangers. (ick!) As an aside: Offered to take the 8 year old middle grandkid to get her hair cut when I had mine done yesterday. She had said something about keeping her long hair. No doubt she got that idea from my keeping horse hair for braiding when I trim tails. When the stylist told her she had enough length to donate her 'tail' to Locks of Love, she was quite excited at the thought of helping someone and immediately filled out the form. GramMa was proud.
• No horse hair sofas or fiddle bows from strange horses for me either!
• Dan, that's really interesting about installing hair displays. One of those jobs that no one would have ever guessed on "What's My Line?" Enter and sign in, please.
• That was part of a display on antique funeral artifacts, actually. I also had to handle some very, very sharp cadaver cleavers, wipe off the petroleum jelly encasement and try mightily not to obsessively touch their hideous sharpness. As for handling (my own) fiddle sticks from strange horses, they must have been Chinese. The stinkin' hairs all fell off within six months, even stored slack while not in use...
• Not that they couldn't ever make better bows with their horse hairs, but only that these were bottom of the line, cheap ones...