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Ariel, if as you say, you are follically challenged,
bald, then all I can suggest is -- may I have a drum roll please? -- Shine!
posted by
Pat_B
on July 7, 2006 at 6:36 AM
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Ariel,
Aren't ordinary people doing extraordinary things in dire circumstances the definition of a hero? or heroine, in your mother's case. In virtually every story of someone rescuing another, the rescuer always says, "I was only doing what needed to be done". The right thing at the right time. That's what I aspire to in every occasion.
I agree, the flu is a horrible way to go.
posted by
Blanche.
on July 5, 2006 at 6:02 PM
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What a story!
I think we Americans forget about how tough it was back in the olden days. Though our soldiers these days do have a hard life, it's nothing at all like you describe....dysentery, malaria, that's some very serious stuff.
posted by
Passionflower
on July 5, 2006 at 5:55 PM
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Ariel70, the hair crunching works. Last evening I went out and got some of that stuff that is supposed to add fullness and followed Justi and Pat_B's directions after my shower/shampoo this morning. Even though it was my first time and I was inexperienced, my pink scalp disappeared under fuller-appearing hair and the wispy strays have stayed out of my eyes today.
posted by
TAPS.
on July 5, 2006 at 3:23 PM
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Pat B
Er... yeah, well, okay .... see what you mean. Trouble is ; I'm bald. Or as one might say, if one was one of these PC fruitcakes ; follicularly challenged. Any suggestions?
posted by
ariel70
on July 5, 2006 at 3:22 PM
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As for crunching your hair...
it's much faster than rolling and pinning. It's got to be a short haircut. You wash it, blow dry, and then use a little mousse to slick down the fringes at the neck. No combing, no brushing. Then hair spray the top & bangs, a section at a time -- crunch the hair in your hand as you go. In desperate cases, tease it high first. It's the tossed salad look. Improves in wind or rain -- and as the day wears on, you can wet your fingers, run them back through your hair and make it look newly done.
These beauty secrets are not available in stores or on TV. No operators are standing by.
posted by
Pat_B
on July 5, 2006 at 3:15 PM
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Blanche
Like us today, they were ordinary, and yet extraordinary people in the way that they surmounted the obstacles in their way.
Later on, you'll learn what an extraordinary woman Ma was, and how, without her sheer grit and resourcefulness, our lives would have been dire indeed.
The great flu pandemic of 1919 killed more people than the Great War : I think about 20,000,000 people. It was particularly virulent because it was a shifting antigen disease that affected people who were already weakenend by hunger and poor conditions. they caught it, got better, then succumbed to the mutated virus.
Those stricken actually drowned in their own body fluids ; a horrible way to go.
posted by
ariel70
on July 5, 2006 at 11:50 AM
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Ariel, and now the plot thickens...
Your mother and father were dismantling munitions in 1920? One thing that is never really emphasized about WWI is the vast number of deaths due to influenza. Three of my great-grandfathers worldwide died of it: one in Russia and two in the United States.
My grandfather swore by eating garlic as a prophylactic for the flu. He said a frenchwoman during the war told him to eat garlic every day. He did and he lived through the war, although, of course, who knows if it was the garlic.
I like PatB's take on family history: at first we think our families are like everyone, then they're not like anyone, and then I piece together my family history and see they really are ordinary people.
posted by
Blanche.
on July 5, 2006 at 11:43 AM
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TAPS
Crunch your hair???? What a bizarre habit!
Freud would say " Aha! Vere you not preast fed ven you vos a baby, hein?" Or, in one of his more imaginative moments," Perhaps it iss becos you vere seeing your grandmother shaving!"
Are you in some kind of female conspiracy with them other two?LOL
posted by
ariel70
on July 5, 2006 at 10:20 AM
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Ariel70, I promise to only crunch my hair (on suggestion from Justi and Pat_B).
posted by
TAPS.
on July 5, 2006 at 10:16 AM
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TAPS
Thank you. The plot thickens in further riveting episodes! Watch this space, but please don't crunch popcorn, or gnaw chicken legs during the love scenes.
posted by
ariel70
on July 5, 2006 at 10:03 AM
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Ariel70, I just love family history tales. This is a good one.
posted by
TAPS.
on July 5, 2006 at 9:10 AM
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.Dave
Thank you. And ouch!
You should definitely do it.
posted by
ariel70
on July 5, 2006 at 8:05 AM
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Pat B
Yes indeed. I mean, everyone's parents were born by parthenogenesis, were't they?
Lady Ariela was once a market research supervisor, and she would hear the most incredible stories of bravery, compassion and such from the most ordinary seeming of people.
posted by
ariel70
on July 5, 2006 at 8:04 AM
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What you think your life is about
is probably wrong. We start by thinking everyone is pretty much like us, and then something happens and we think our family is practically outcast from society. Our mother is just that - only decades later do we discover that she was a girl with ambitions and dreams which we interrupted. We don't think of our parents when we see a movie love story, but sometimes we find out their story was greater. And sometimes, when your mother is eighty she tells you what was really going on when you were twelve, and you have to re-think everything you thought you knew.
posted by
Pat_B
on July 5, 2006 at 7:32 AM
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I love this stuff, Tel. I know very little about my family history and you're making me want to find out more. I saw my Dad recently and he told me a load of stuff I never knew before. I should write it down and piece it all together.
Lovely work.
You've nined one of your brackets in paragraph 3 by the way. Painful that.
posted by
_dave_says_ack_
on July 5, 2006 at 6:41 AM
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Ariel
posted by
bel_1965
on July 5, 2006 at 5:24 AM
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Bel
You bin readin' our file, eh? LOL
posted by
ariel70
on July 5, 2006 at 5:21 AM
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LOL Ariel
We know that she knows EVERYTHING!!!! 
posted by
bel_1965
on July 5, 2006 at 5:19 AM
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Bel
Aha! You've been talking to Theresa, have you? LOL
Thanks for dropping in, and I'll certainly do that, when she gets back from Canada.
She'll be coming over here some time after that.
posted by
ariel70
on July 5, 2006 at 5:16 AM
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Interesting mystery
There is nobody else in your family that might have some idea? Ask your sister, I bet she knows LOL!
posted by
bel_1965
on July 5, 2006 at 5:13 AM
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