Readings and Greetings; All There Is--Love Stories from Storycorps

Love stories, isn't that the right theme to be reading in February?  But this is a book for all seasons and reasons: love, loss, human touch, joyfulness, heartbreak, devastation, and reuniting.  Every story in the book is a condensed story of love, from 40 minute interviews taped at a Storycorps location around the United States.  The book is divided into three themes of love:  Found, Lost, and Found at Last.  My favorites run deep because they were told with love, humility, and devotion.  Deep inside my core I felt each person talking, touching, giggling, kissing, dreaming, and crying.  I cried, too.

Dave Isay, the Storycorps founder writes in his book, All There Is--Love Stories from Storycorps, "Over the past eight years I've been astonished and delighted by the stories that spin out of our booths and land on my desk each week.  They speak to the enduring and redemptive power of love.  They make my spirit soar.  In a culture that often feels consumed by all that's phony or famous, these stories give me hope and remind me to try to live life without regrets.  I hope they do the same for you."

The stories of love cover the ages, cultures, and circumstances of love.  You can read about Hunny Reiken, 80, who talks with her husband Elliot Reiken, 86 or listen to their story on the website <storycorps.org>: Hunny speaks:  "I have a twin sister, Bunny.  And you have a twin brother, Danny.  When we met we were sixteen and a half, and we were waitresses in a hotel.  You and Danny were musicians in a band." The story of the two sets of twins marrying the same day brings a smile to the readers face but it is Hunny's reflection I like best, "When two people get married, they say two people become one.  No, I don't agree.  Two people should remain two people and walk side by side.  I've not become Elliot.  Elliot has not become Hunny.  We remain Hunny and Elliot.  And to me, that's important." Elliot responds, "You made my life complete.  And I hope we'll go on for another fifty years."  Hunny, "I'll take five good ones.  Five good ones, and I'll say, 'Thank you, God!'"

A story collected in Wichita, KS  tells of a time of war when a young man working for a radio station located in the tenth floor of the Lassen Hotel meets a young woman on the elevator, but a war comes between them for a time.  Paul Wilson, 93 talks to his daughter Marty Smith, 61 to tell his story.  Love was torn apart on the day the terrorist attack New York and the Pentagon.  Beverly Eckert, 55, remembers her husband Sean Rooney, who worked on the 105th floor in the South Tower.  She speaks: "In the end, as the smoke got thicker, he just kept whispering  'I love you,' over and over.  I was pressing the phone to my ear as hard as I could.  I wanted to crawl through the phone lines to him to hold him one last time.  Then I suddenly heard this loud explosion through the phone.  I heard Sean gasp once as the floor fell out from underneath him."

I hope you each buy the book as a gift of love, or check it out from the library, because Beverly's story doesn't end there.  Make sure you carry Kleenex with you as you read.

How to Change (Really Change) Your Hair Coloring

California girl with her daisies.

Like my mother before me, I've not really known my true hair coloring for the last few decades.  I was born a blond in southern California.  I graduated from high school a brunette, and in those seventeen years never once changed my hair color, well maybe just a streak of blonde.  A dear dear mentor, Mabel Hotz a golfer from Tulsa, once suggested, "Letty, don't ever change your hair color, stay golden.  I think one of the greatest test in life is stay true to yourself."

I just heard the words "stay golden" and that was before another person in Tulsa, S.E. Hinton made the phrase "stay golden Pony Boy" popular.  Golden indeed, thanks to Lady Clairol and many trips to the "beauty shop" to correct a few mistakes along the way I became a blond of many shades.  So began my sojourn into a rainbow of hair colorings.  I can't report that they were all pretty.  One of my students in Greensburg, KS, Gary, who loved to roll his wheel chair into the library once declared, "Ms. Rains, you are the only teacher I've ever known with orange hair."  Orange, now that sent me back to the bottle!

A date was even cancelled when I lived in Greensburg, because Lady Clairol turned my hair green.  It took a panicked trip to a beauty shop in Pratt to fix that problem.  Still I never fully succeeded in that golden color. After that experience I began the trial of letting my hair color grow out naturally.  Those were the really short hair times in school pictures.  The brown didn't last long, boring as they say.

After years of home experiences I decided that a hair salon might be a smart but costly move, after all living on a teacher's salary has it's limits, but then pride has it's price!  Frosting  hair was popular for years (decades) and I loved it.   One day,  I discovered that my roots were a different color, actually no color, rather "translucent" as my friend Jeannette calls it.  In a bold decision in this new century I decided it was time for me to color my own hair. This time L'Oreal would be the perfect "color the gray" product.  I must say L'Oreal treated me kindly.

But the best intentions sometimes create dramatic effects.  Here are the steps to creating a dramatic hair color change:
* use a new or different product guaranteed to cover the gray.
*definitely look at  the directions
*then pick a short easy project to complete while the hair is absorbing the new color--
  This is the KEY, don't learn how to send photos to be developed at Walgreens while color is on the hair.
*use a timer (too, late for this piece of information)
*suddenly look up and scream and scurry to the bathroom.
*shampoo and scrub with all the strength that adrenaline will allow
*shower and shampoo again just in case
*blow dry while bent over so as not to see the color until it's dry.
*then be ready to gasp or laugh out loud.

There will be no pictures posted of this color.  Hopefully, a brief description can make the picture clear:  What once was quite blond is now slightly gray green or perhaps it is dirty ash.  What was once brown is now dark gray.  I must have made a mistake somewhere along the line.

Anybody else ever make a hair coloring mistake?