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The ADVANCE, May 26, 2021 /Page 5A
OPINIONS
“I honor the man who is willing to sink
Half his repute for the freedom to think,
And when he has thought, be his cause strong or weak,
Will risk t’other half for the freedom to speak.”
—James Russell Lowell
editorials
6/...1 Scissorhands
I heard the snip,
snip, snip of my
hairdresser’s scis
sors and watched as
two-inch sections
of my wet hair fell
to the floor of the
salon last week. I haven’t visited Marcy
or the hair salon in fifteen months, and I
was tickled to sit in her chair and chit chat
about nothing.
Last year, just after the pandemic
swept across the globe, my husband and
I began hearing of friends and associates
who contracted COVID. Some sailed
through the illness with barely a cough.
Others were hospitalized for long periods
of time with complications. A few died
(and died alone), as family members tried
to make sense of it all.
My husband and I made the decision
to protect ourselves and others by limiting
our exposure to the outside world as much
as possible. We picked up our groceries at
the curb. We used a phone app to deposit
our checks into our bank account.
“I’ll learn to cut your hair,” Gene said
to me one day as we sat in front of the tele
vision watching the evening news. “I’ll
watch some videos on YouTube, and I’ll
learn how. I’m pretty sure I can do it.”
“I think you can, too,” I replied. “But
Marcy also covers up the gray strands ev
ery couple of months. I’m not sure you and
I can color my hair without damaging it.”
He nodded in understanding.
My hair and scalp are fragile things.
Someone looks at me wrong and my hair
falls out. Someone dies in our family, and it
falls out for four or five months and leaves
bald patches. I’ve dealt with hair thinning
and breakage for years. For those reasons,
I’ve gone to an Aveda salon for the last
three years. Their color and coloring pro
cess seem to be gentler than most.
A few weeks after the initial conversa
tion, I returned home from work to find a
box of hair color on the kitchen island.
Gene rushed into the kitchen and
pointed to the box.
“Look! Madison Reed!” he said.
“How did you even know what color
to order?” I asked.
“I chatted with one of their colorists,
and she and I figured it out,” he answered.
I opened the box and looked at the
name on the bottle — Bologna Blonde.
The color didn’t sound very appealing to
me.
“Bologna?” I asked.
He smiled and nodded.
I did their strand test, and it seemed
to look pretty close to my real color. The
following night, Gene and I huddled in
the bathroom. I read the instructions to
him, as he squeezed colored goo out of a
plastic bottle onto my parted hair like he
was squeezing mustard or ketchup onto a
hotdog. We massaged the color goo into
my hair with gloved hands and set the tim
er. A half hour later, I rinsed my hair and
watched the colored streams of water dis
appear down the shower drain.
While my hair was still wet, we combed
it straight, and with nervous hands, Gene
carefully clipped off the ends.
“Don’t worry about trying to cut lay
ers into it,” I said. “I can live without layers
for a while.”
After drying my hair, I admired the cut
and color in the bathroom mirror.
“Hey, it looks pretty good,” I answered.
“Thank you!”
We were both relieved when my hair
didn’t fall out in the days that followed.
I shared photos with my friends and co
workers, and they were quite impressed.
Many confided to me that they wouldn’t
let their spouses touch the hair on their
heads with ten-foot poles.
So during the pandemic, Gene cut and
colored my hair three times, and my hair
seems to be healthier than it has been in
years. I reciprocated and cut Gene’s hair
about ten times, and I did pretty good, too.
Still, I was happy to have Marcy ap
ply lowlights (darker streaks) last week
and snip the ends for me. It made me feel
somewhat normal again.
I feel fortunate to have a husband who
cares enough about me that he’s willing
to step outside the box and learn how to
do things he knows will make me happy. I
know I can depend on him for anything -
anything. Thank God I found him.
From the Porch
By Amber Nagle
Miss Jewell's Elderberries
By Joe Phillips
Dear Me
Bow to the queen.
As I write this,
the Queen Ann's
Lace is blooming
beside highways and
open fields.
They have white
flowers and leaves
that look like that of
a carrot, and it is a
good thing, too, because another name
for the plant is “wild carrot.”
The connection between “Daucus
carota” and people goes back a very long
time. Before there were orange carrots,
there were these.
The lacy bloom is actually an um
brella of tiny white flowers.
If you'd like to try your hand at find
ing natural food, this is a good place to
start.
The tap root gets woody as the sum
mer goes on, so now is an OK time to pull
a few.
Loosen the ground around the plant
with a tool to prevent breaking the thing
and gently pull the root out which is
white, not orange. The root is long and
skinny.
If there is any doubt whether or not
you have a wild carrot, scratch the root
and smell it.
After you have it in your hand, the rest
is up to you, but you can then just treat it
like a carrot.
Elderberry bushes are in full bloom in
south Georgia and just beginning to show
above the fall line and in the Midwest. You
find them along ditches and fences.
Like the wild carrot, what appears as
one large bloom is really a bunch of tiny
blooms, but they are huge.
This is a good time to mark elderberry
bushes because once they ripen, they are
difficult to see.
Some people, such as Miss Jewell,
raise elderberries to make jelly and other
wonderful things.
Jewell started her line on the back
fence by pulling suckers and replanting
them in her back yard. She found a par
ticularly desirable elderberry plant with
large berries and rooted a number from
that one plant.
I enjoyed elderberry jelly but went
about picking the tiny berries off the head
in totally the wrong way. The ripe berries
are easy to squish, so you will only get a
few berries, no juice, and stained fingers.
Miss Jewell said that when the berries
turn dark and birds start showing interest,
take a plastic grocery bag and cover the
head, then secure the handles with string.
Snip off the head from the stalk with cut
ters and put that in the freezer with the
head still in the plastic bag.
Once the berries are frozen, throw the
bagged head on the floor. The frozen ber
ries will pop off the little stems and stay in
the bag. Pour the berries into a dish pan of
water. The berries will sink and little bits
of stem and trash will float.
Pour off the water and you have clean
berries to do whatever you like.
Miss Jewell's hoard of plants produces
(maybe) a gallon of juice.
I asked her once how she manages to
make that much jelly, and she replied that
“not everybody makes jelly.”
“Some people might make a little el
derberry wine, but we're Methodists.”
joenphillips@yahoo.com
Cows Have Legitimate Beef
With Climate Change Crowd
Okay,
enough is
enough and I
have had
enough. I have
had to endure
watching
lawless thugs
firebomb
buildings and
claiming we
need to defund
the police. And another bunch of
lawless thugs calling themselves
“patriots” while inciting a riot in the
United States Capitol. And don’t
forget a bunch of kids doing their
best Taliban imitation by tearing
down statues they don’t like, proving
that those who don’t know history
are destined to repeat it.
In all of the above cases, I
consider the source and none of them
are worth the time and effort I have
just expended talking about them.
But now, things in this world have
gotten a bit too up-close-and-
personal.
I read recently that a number of
restaurants will no longer have meat
on their menus. Not only that, but
schools and universities are beginning
to promote “climate-friendly” meals
- code words for “don’t eat meat.”
Don’t eat meat? Are you kidding me?
Where’s the beef? The politically-
correct crowd says it’s the cows’ fault.
When they eat grass and feed (the
cows, not the politically-correct
crowd), their digestive systems
ferment the contents. That
fermentation turns into methane.
Methane is a greenhouse gas, said to
be 25 times more powerful than
carbon dioxide. Cows burp the
methane out. (You have to admit it
beats the alternative.) The do-
gooders say all that burping
contributes to global warming. Don’t
eat meat and - voila! - no more
burping cattle.
If cows could talk as well as they
can burp, they would probably ask
that if they are responsible for global
warming, why did most of Texas
freeze over earlier this year? A lot of
cattle happen to live and burp there.
Also, burping is considered a sign of
appreciation in China and India,
where there are a lot more people
than cattle. You don’t see the
Birkenstock crowd criticizing them.
Those are excellent points. Cows can
make a lot of sense.
In fact, I would trust a cow before
I would Bill Gates. It seems the little
dweeb had been busy encouraging
everybody around the world to give
up eating beef. I have a feeling this
issue may not be at the top of Bill’s
to-do list at the moment. News media
have reported he had an affair with a
Microsoft employee and also was
alleged to have been hanging around
with convicted sex offender Jeffrey
Epstein. Now, wife Melinda Gates is
giving him the boot. Cows must be
laughing their heads off and hoping
he is eating crow and burping a lot.
It isn’t enough that our bovine
friends are being blamed for melting
all the icebergs in Antarctica, they are
By Dick Yarbrough
also accused of being bad for our
health, as well. A recent poll said 58%
of people surveyed think we would
be healthier if we ate more fruits and
vegetables and less meat. I must have
been out when they called.
Another study claims vegetarians
live almost 8 years longer than meat
eaters. If that means 8 years of more
broccoli and tofu burgers and fewer
sides of barbecued ribs, beam me up
now, Scotty.
By the way, a vegan diet generally
lacks Vitamin B12, an important
vitamin for proper brain function.
Left ignored, it can lead to delusions,
such as thinking pine nuts taste better
than a medium rare filet smothered
in peppercorn sauce. I need to do a
bit more study on the subject, but I
think alack ofB12 can also cause one
to firebomb buildings, tear down
statues and/or put on buffalo heads
and go desecrate the U.S. Capitol.
While futurists claim that global
meat sales will decline by a third over
the next two decades, U.S.
consumption of beef is actually up
and has been going up since 2015.
Last year, we consumed almost 56
pounds of red meat per person.
Modestly, I have tried to do my
part, thanks to Carla, who runs the
Yarbrough household and all that is
within it. Let it be known that Carla
could saute a tin can and make you
want to come back for seconds.
We are a great team. She cooks it,
I eat it. I don’t foresee the day anytime
soon when Carla will be feeding me
organic Brazil nuts with avocado
vinaigrette dressing. Instead, she sees
to it that I get my regular daily
allowance of Vitamin B12, zinc,
selenium, iron, niacin and all that
other stuff a growing boy needs.
Where’s the beef? On my backyard
grill, of course. Burp!
You can reach Dick Yarbrough at
dick@dickyarbrough.com; at P.O. Box
725373, Atlanta, Georgia 31139 or on
Facebook at www.facebook.com/
dickyarb.
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Publisher & Managing Editor:
WILLIAM F. LEDFORD JR.
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