Reunions

Don't know what I was thinking when I held up the giveaway and determined that new T-shirt would fit on this old body. 

I can't even blame the disconnect on alcohol. My drink of choice at The Temple News reunion had been a diet soda. A lot of us were drinking sodas. 

Maybe it was the adrenalin from reconnecting with my newsroom buddies. The weekend visit to the campus and Temple-Army football game was more than a flashback. It was quantum leap back for a lot of us who have raised our own college students. Some of the AARP card carrying Temple News crew had children raising children. 

The reminiscing about putting our all important (at the time) college paper to bed four nights a week got our juices flowing. We were once the infantry of the Fourth Estate. Very few of us assembled last month were still in the newspaper business, but we still had great affection for it. 

And those of us from the 70s were sad to see very little of our work on exhibit, during the party, with the selected archives of the school newspaper's storied history.

Hey, stuff happened during our watch. Nixon resigned, the Vietnam War ended, tuition  increased, Gene Banks picked Duke over Temple and the city's Big Five basketball programs. Philadelphia newspapers went on strike, and for three days The Temple News changed our on-campus focus to provide the entire city with a printed local paper. 

We romanticized about punch cards, cropping wheels and pica poles. The slide rules of our time. 

The kids mingling with us were more interested in careers as social media specialists, than bringing down the university administration in a three-part reporting series for a newspaper. 

Some of them could not wrap their heads around one of the round table speakers -- a Hall of Fame professional beat writer for more than 30 years and a News alum -- not owning a cellphone. 

Apple computers graced the tabletops of their work spaces as we toured the Newsroom earlier in that day. Editors are now being paid for getting the paper out and reporters are being paid for stories per published bylines. And the paper only comes out once a week. Today's News reporters stream news live by tweeting to their followers between deadlines and post editions on line. 

When most of us worked at The Temple News back in the mid 70s we practically lived there. If you didn't have work-study money, you worked for free. Most of us commuted to our urban campus from the suburbs. No way, after rush hour, could you take the subway safely. At least you would never tell your parents if you did.

We cooked out of the blue box mac n cheese dinners and soup to sustain ourselves, drinking the worst coffee for days while editing the paper late at night. We started our days before class -- some of us remember going to class -- with coffee and breakfast off food trucks ( a fixture on campus even before they universally became trendy and fashionable), while reviewing the morning's edition and thinking about the next one. 

At the reunion we talked about now dead professors and  colleagues. We vowed to make other staffers come to the next gathering and to make sure our work was represented next time in the archive display. 

Funny, most of us had time-faded, hard copies of our editions buried somewhere at home. 

I bet I am not the only one who will exhume the yellowed copies this winter. 

In the meantime, I am going to hand wash my Temple News t-shirt in cold water and get back into shape to wear it more comfortably. I am going to Link-in with former staffers -- including that cub reporter I sent out to wrestle a bear for a soft sports feature, who is now the editor-in-chief of a famous tabloid.
I vow to stay in touch and follow the careers of current staffers. Especially the kind media specialists who handed me their Temple News business cards and attempted to teach me a trick or two on Twitter.
And I am going to continue blogging.  And maybe some of them will join me on my new writing adventure. 

Hair raising issues

I had just barely recovered from thumbing through the October issue of Oprah Magazine.

You have seen the edition. The one with the bright orange cover and Oprah, who has always been obsessed with her own hair, donning a Diana Ross epic fro. 

The issue offered every conceivable angle on hair 

No follicle was left untangled 

I am relieved her staff took the time for such an indepth look at everything you could possibly want to know on the subject. 

Apparently a lot more people than I had ever thought possible are really into their hair.

"Just look," my colorist Katie said, last week, pointing her magic wand at the gooey-headed gals filling all the chairs in her Long Grove (IL) Red Cottage Salon. 

I'm happy for Katie and her business partners that all of us wearing tarps and hair dye are too cowardly to do it ourselves. Oh the commercials make it look like Sarah Jessica Parker can process herself, but I can't imagine she scrubs the grout after that final color rinse. 

I also don't think she has ever feared leaving a salon with "I Love Lucy" locks.   I hail from  a family of receding headlines and redheads. I still wince at the nicknames Ginger and Red. The upside, I never felt more at home than during a visit to Ireland. 

The downside, redheads are on the endangered species list. While growing up only one in three people had red hair. Recent report out of England warn we red-haired baby boomers are heading for extinction. Sadly, it is up to the Prince Harrys of the world to make us more desirable. 

While living in Florida I would perm my locks to keep the humidity hair in check so it would not injure people with the turn of my head. Now I keep it shorter to prevent incidents.

When we moved to Chicagoland my first hairstylist went home sick before finishing my new haircut. Not every stylist wants to mess with my kind of kinky coif. When I latch onto a brave stylist who can send me out the door with a haircut that will tame these tresses, I am loyal to a fault. I will follow that artist from shop to shop. While living in Florida I would cross the state from Cocoa Beach to Tampa Bay to stay with a certain stylist. I have even remained the client of one of my favorites after she accidentally snipped my ear while we were lost in laughs and conversation.

I have had the same loyalty with my colorists. You don't have to be a hairdresser to know for sure that this color is not my natural color. My real hair after having and nurturing two children is the color and texture of dental floss.
A day or two before going for color I sometimes don't want to leave the house. I time the appointments with calendars of engagement dates and full moons and around mostly Katie's schedule. So, when I got the call before going into Philadelphia last week for a college reunion (a much better topic for those of you who want to check back next week) and a family gathering telling me Katie's children were ill and my back-up colorist was off that day, a wave of panic washed over me. They promised all would be righted the next day. This was almost as bad as having to pay for reticketing my flight because of my own  booking mistake that cost almost as much as half a year of hair color.
When I don't stay on top of this color schedule I have been mistaken for my sister's mom, my children's grandmother. Cruella hair. Get the picture? I don't know how Bonnie Raitt has carried off her signature white-streaked look so long.
I am waiting for grandchildren, or Katie's retirement before I give in and go completely white-haired.

After recovering from reading the Oprah chronicles on hair I was mentally challenged, again, soon after on a train ride into the city. Four beautiful college-aged girls with lovely locks talked up hair the entire hour into the city while twisting, flipping and splitting their ends. Shootings on the Southside, trouble in Syria, not on their minds.

My sister used to sleep with orange juice cans on top of her head to get the look they were complaining about having, as they primped and played. 
Over the weekend, while standing in line for alum-tent-hamburgers at the Temple-Army football game, my college friend Donna, who I don't get to see all that often, found me easily in the crowd of 25,000-plus.
And it's not like she recognized me on Facebook (don't have it), or by my Linked-In profile pic (don't have one for reasons of national security), or this blog (which I try to write anonymously).
"Saw your hair she said," as we exchanged hugs and told each other how fantastic we looked.
Thanks Katie.