I don't like hats, but the doctor said....

If you'll pay attention to old photographs from about the turn of the 20th Century through about the 1950's +/- you'll see that men, all men, wore hats.  They wore them to church on Sunday, they wore them to their offices or to work on the assembly lines on weekdays, and they wore them to sit on the porch and whittle on Saturday afternoons.  

Where'd they go? 

After a little research I found out that President John F. Kennedy personally didn't like hats and refused to wear one, and because of his immense popularity at the time....Camelot and all that....he pretty much squashed the men's hat industry in the US. 

Young urban men of a certain age and rappers still wear them today as part of their "statement"....

....and drugstore cowboys like to wear them while they're out the on the range rounding up stray doggies.  (Haha....on their Wii's maybe!)

They're about it.  Otherwise, it's all about baseball-style caps. Hands down, if a man is going to wear a hat at all, they're the hat of choice today.

I bring all this up because about a year ago I was told by a dermatologist that the hair (singular) on my head wasn't enough to protect my scalp from the blazing Texas sun, and that I could look forward to hats/caps being part of my wardrobe from now on.  My recent bout with skin cancer brought that home.

I'm with Kennedy....I don't like hats either.  Still, it beats smearing that nasty sun screen all over my head before I go out every day.  I have a collection of a few hats....

 ....but I'm thinking I might get something a little more stylish for the spring / summer.

I'm thinking something like this ^.  It seems to work well for Sean Connery, and I like to think he and I have a lot in common....you know, the rugged good looks  that macho air of confidence  the moustache.  Then there's....ummm....

Maybe I'd better keep looking.  *sigh*

S

It's always something!

Yesterday I went to the doctor to have him check out a bump on the bridge of my nose underneath where my glasses rest.  Turns out it's skin cancer.  Not a biggie, but still another nuisance that I have to deal with.  Of course they're reminding me to slather on the sun screen, but I hate the stuff.  Isn't a hat enough?  Jeez!

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Looks like it's "sink or swim" time for FEMA, pardon the pun.  The Federal Emergency Management Agency is responsible for coordinating federal, state, and local response to national emergencies, such as hurricane Sandy. (The actual work of putting things back right again still falls to the governors and the states.) 

They botched it big time after hurricane Katrina all but destroyed New Orleans.  Now we'll see if they've learned anything since.  Any time there's a federal bureaucracy involved I'm skeptical.  I hope I'm wrong.

The images coming out of the aftermath of the storm are incredible. The cleanup looks like an impossible task.  Where do you start?  They showed how things were down in the underground subways.  Yuck!  I can't imagine how long it will take to get it put back like it was before, if they can at all.  

Looks like unemployment in the area will fall to near zero for years to come, just by putting everyone to work hauling off debris.  For building material suppliers I'm sure they'll be producing stuff as fast as they can to replace what was destroyed, which will mean upward pressure on material prices nationwide.  Yes, we'll ALL probably feel it with every trip to Home Depot.

Wouldn't it be great to have things all going our way, smoothly, as planned, even if only for a few days?  What was it SNL's Roseanne Roseannadanna said?....It's always something!  *sigh*

S