↓ Archives ↓

Posts Tagged → skin

Hallelujah, fur is back in style

A wonderful evening stroll down Fifth Avenue reveals that among the world’s top fashion professionals, natural fur has made a 100% comeback.

Clothing that even I recognize and admire as stunningly beautiful is covered, trimmed, made of, and surrounded by natural furs from many species of animals.

Recall that animal fur was denigrated as cruelly gotten, and bored activists would scream at people wearing fur, sometimes throwing red dye on them. The shallow activists never addressed how their leather shoes and belts and purses and car seats squared up with their public opposition to people wearing other sorts of animal skins.

If hypocrisy is a hallmark of screechy activists, fur was the best example.

Fur is, after all, natural, biodegradable, renewable, and under modern wildlife laws, sustainable. Those are all rare qualities in a world filled with cheap plastic junk manufactured in an enormous prison camp called China.

The luxurious furs I looked at represented incredible skill. From the trappers who artfully snared the critters without damaging the pelt, to the tanners who carefully turned them into soft leather capable of being worked, to the cutters and seamstresses who took the supple leather (with the hair on, like a cow hide) and turned them into gorgeous clothes, throws, and warm accoutrements, the entire process is a long chain of long-enduring skills and appreciation of natural beauty and utility.

If fur was long politically incorrect, but now it is acceptable among the PC elites who run the fashion industry, what does this say about the philosophical leanings of the individuals behind this surge? One cannot help but think that the many gay men in the fashion industry, once emancipated in general society, would eventually hew to a more pragmatic view of life and politics.

After all, once you own a home and work for people willing to spend thousands of dollars on a single garment, you really do have a stake in the capitalist enterprise.

Perhaps the fur on display at Bergdorf Goodman, Saks, and other stores I looked at is a social statement by a bunch of quiet pragmatists, who have also had it with the faux anger and the overwrought hostility and the ubiquitous unhappiness that characterize Leftist politics.

Well done, chums.

And as a pretty bad but committed trapper myself, thank you.

Chapped hands? Recondition your winter boots

My hands have been badly chapped for weeks now. Outdoor work and play, and cold weather have chewed up the thumbs and finger tips on both my hands.  You’d think I actually worked for a living to look at them.

This morning I was reminded about the best way to fix that chapped skin: Recondition leather work boots and hunting boots. Whether it’s Sno-Seal, Danner Boot Cream, or some other natural salve for dry leather, it also works healing wonders on the hands that apply it. And sitting by the warm fire helps, too.

When staying positive is challenging

Witnessing the lynch mob and witch hunt surrounding George Zimmerman, and the supposed adults leading it, and the hatred, racism, and bigotry on display at the public events purportedly against racism and bigotry and for peace and justice, it is hard to stay positive.

After all, a lynch mob is exactly the opposite of peace and justice.

What makes me so sad is that black people still inspire me. As the product of a home where racism was not only absent, it was forbidden, and where everyone of all walks of life, all skin colors, and all faiths sat at our table, I grew up with a positive fascination with blacks and a passion for their success.

To me, American blacks are the modern equivalent of the ancient Israelites. With the legacy of slavery propelling them forward, blacks were supposed to be integrated into every facet of American life, business, law, medicine, politics, you name it. Very much an American story, from rags to riches, from poverty to great material comfort, and so on. In other words, blacks embody the potential of the American dream, and that is something so many fail to understand: Whites very much want blacks to succeed. Because it is a reflection on the promise of America, a reflection on all of us.

But in my lifetime, I have seen blacks going backwards, into self-segregation, into naked, open, raw racism and bigotry against so many other groups. Hatred is justified as “justice.”

So very few of the white people I know have any inclination towards racism. Skin color means nothing to 99% of the whites I know (and whites are most of the people I know, so I know their views). And yet whites are still accused of oppressing and hurting their fellow Americans because of skin color. It’s simply not true. In fact it is racist to accuse people of racism because of their skin color.

What’s sad about this is that eventually people are going to become worn out with being accused of something they are not. Calling someone a racist will lose its meaning. Maybe that is inevitable in a country that is rapidly turning brown, but it shouldn’t happen because the accusation becomes so hollow that it ceases to mean anything.

I still hold hope that things will get better. That requires everyone to have an honest discussion about these issues.