"What I do is nothing more than a shampoo away from being nothing."

Said Kenneth Battelle, "the first celebrity stylist" (known for doing the hair of, among many others, First Lady Jackie Kennedy).

The quote appears in the obituary of another celebrity hairdresser: "Brad Johns, Celebrity Colorist Known for His 'Buttery Chunks,' Dies at 70/He made blonde highlights a fashion sensation. But when he shared details about his relationship with Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, he ran into trouble" (NYT gift link).

"Buttery chunks" is good. Have a name for your something more than nothing. And why be modest like Kenneth? Why not be prideful?

"I’m really proud that I made hair buttery instead of ashy. I brought these words to hair color: butter, caramel, cinnamon. These words made people smile, and so they would come to me, asking for chunks, chunks, chunks. I made highlights that weren’t these teeny-weeny capellinis, but big golden chunks, like a child at the beach would have." 

When you think of hair, why not think of eating? Even though people hate hair in their food and food in their hair.

A word about his parents (he grew up poor):

Steve Hilton, the GOP nominee for Governor of California, talks to Joe Rogan.

Joe and Hilton are old friends, and this discussion goes on for 3 hours, so this should be a major boost for Hilton. I'll just jump in at the point where they are talking about the waste of money on nonprofits that deal with homelessness:

Steve Hilton: This woman runs a homeless nonprofit, 1.6 million dollar salary. Homeless nonprofit.... There's another one...  2.6 million a year....

Joe Rogan: And here's the most important thing. The homelessness only got worse. Like if in the private sector, imagine if you were a CEO of a company that was just losing insane amounts of money and never completing its tasks, never doing the thing that it set out to do....

Steve Hilton: The more I look at it, the more insane it is. And everyone just looks at it and no one's ever pointed this stuff out.... The government just makes everything so expensive in California. Everyone says, oh, it's so expensive. What are we going to do? We'd better give them more welfare benefits... we better have a billionaire wealth tax.... They don't have that mentality of cutting costs like every normal business.... And this is what happens, I think, when you've got this one party rule thing that's been going on for 16 years now. They've run everything. They don't care because they think they'll be in power forever and it just doesn't matter....

"Decades ago, the world of fashion was smaller and feistier, dominated by eccentric, visionary designers trying to express themselves...."

"In 2000, John Galliano showed his infamous 'homeless chic' couture collection. Alexander McQueen’s 'Highland Rape' show of torn dresses shocked the industry in 1995. Rei Kawakubo’s spring 1997 line, known as 'lumps and bumps,' remains one of the most significant collections of the century because it rejected traditional sex appeal, distorting and reimagining a woman’s form. It would be impossible to defend 'homeless chic' or 'Highland Rape.' Or Mr. Lagerfeld's disdain for fat bodies, a part of his personal brand, or Mr. Galliano’s antisemitic tirades.... But as fashion becomes more consolidated and homogenized... it hasn’t seemed to figure out how to provoke and shake up aesthetics and culture, creating crazes that people open their wallets to be part of...."

Writes Amy Odell, in "The Rise of Fashion Slop" (NYT).

A Monday morning juxtaposition. .

I see this at the top of the NYT right now:

Sterile wealth, romanticized poverty, and mindlessness about sleevelessness.

1. The family of 5: "'Money right now, there’s not enough. Literalmente,' said Ms. Torres, speaking Spanglish. 'Sometimes I feel bad, like I can’t do enough for my kids.'"

2. The Biebers: "The 2,792-square-foot apartment has two kitchens — an open-plan kitchen for entertaining, with marble counters and Scandinavian larch wood cabinetry, and a secondary chef’s kitchen with stainless steel and matte aluminum cabinetry. The primary suite looks out to the Hudson River..." The living room, I see, looks out onto a big TV screen and turns its back on the uninspiring skyline of New Jersey.

3. The presumed dearth of sleeves: "In all of the discussions about body positivity and loving the different parts of you, including the parts of you that decades of social conditioning have deemed potentially problematic, arms, especially the upper arms, are often overlooked...." The letter writer is urged to "rethink the issue" and "learn to love your arms."

Squelching.

I'm reading a letter to the NYT "Ethicist" in "I Think Someone Is Living in the Storage Unit Next to Mine. What Should I Do? I was so uncomfortable I just threw my things inside and left":

"... there was a man in the unit directly across from mine — bags in the hallway, sitting on a five-gallon bucket, barefoot, writing on a notepad and eating cup noodles. As I approached, he pulled down a makeshift curtain of old plastic sheeting hung on a rope where the door would close. I was too surprised to get a good look inside, but I did see a large jar of yellow liquid and a semi-used roll of toilet paper, along with floor-to-ceiling bags and boxes that looked as if they had been there for many years. Behind the plastic it sounded as if he just continued to write. I had planned on organizing my unit that day but was so uncomfortable I just threw my things inside and left. On almost every subsequent visit of mine, he has been in there. He always pulls the plastic down, but it doesn’t cover the whole doorway, and it’s deeply uncomfortable shuffling around my own things (or using the hallway) while someone sits there five feet away. We don’t interact; sometimes I think I hear a pen scratch, but once I heard rhythmic squelching and got really grossed out jumping to an obvious conclusion...."

Observing the structure of my own thoughts — you can tell me yours — I saw:

Is it possible for an American to maintain good health while spending $65 a month on food?

I'm reading "The Fantasy of a Comfy Retirement Has Always Been a Mirage" (NYT), which begins:

On Thursday, a woman named Sharon from Minnesota called into C-SPAN’s “open forum” to express her despair about the cost of living. “I’m 65 years old. I’m legally blind. I’m on disability. I went to my doc, and I lost 28 pounds in the last year. I did not need to lose 28 pounds. I did not try to lose 28 pounds. I lost the 28 pounds because I cannot afford to eat anymore,” Sharon explained, speaking clearly even though she sounded near tears. Because of Trump administration cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, and the high cost of groceries, gas and electricity, Sharon only allows herself $65 a month for food....

Of course, that sounds shocking and horrible. I have empathy for Sharon and do not like to see anyone struggling so hard, but I wondered whether it was a least possible to maintain your health while spending only $65 a month. Grok assures me that it is possible. I think we all know what this diet would consist of — lots of oatmeal, rice, beans, potatoes, cabbage, and carrots, along with some apples, bananas, and eggs. It's terrible to allow yourself to lose 28 pounds (that you couldn't spare) before switching to this basic diet or going to a food pantry, but not everyone has enough energy or mental clarity to make the adjustment.

Anyway, to be clear, I'm not saying the government shouldn't help people in this circumstance. On the contrary, I think the country deserves excellent food policy. I'm not a source of advice on what that would be.

"As a lawyer, I feel most strongly about the least-discussed benefit: Eliminating bus fares can clear junk cases out of our court system..."

"... lowering the crushing caseloads that prevent our judges, prosecutors and public defenders from focusing their attention where it’s most needed. I was a public defender, and in one of my first cases I was asked to represent a woman who was not a robber or a drug dealer — she was someone who had failed to pay the fare on public transit. Precious resources had been spent arresting, processing, prosecuting and trying her, all for the loss of a few dollars. This is a daily feature of how we criminalize poverty in America...."

Writes Emily Galvin Almanza, in "Something Surprising Happens When Bus Rides Are Free" (NYT).

Speaking of poverty and traveling about, I see the NYT pushes this headline at me as the next thing I ought to click on and read: "Help! JetBlue Mangled My Vintage Louis Vuitton Bag and Won’t Pay Up."

"It’s a tough time to have a civic-minded election about municipal services. If anything takes us down, it’s going to be this 'to hell with them all' approach to government."

Said José Vela III, of the Austin City Council, which voted for a big property tax increase but must abide by Texas law that requires a referendum.

Quoted in "Austin Asked Voters to Raise Taxes for the Homeless. It’s Not Going Well. A proposed tax hike before the city on Tuesday has become a referendum on governance in the fast-changing Texas capital" (NYT).

"I'm not owed eternal agreement from any actor who once played a character I created. The idea is as ludicrous as..."

"... me checking with the boss I had when I was twenty-one for what opinions I should hold these days. Emma Watson and her co-stars have every right to embrace gender identity ideology. Such beliefs are legally protected, and I wouldn't want to see any of them threatened with loss of work, or violence, or death, because of them. However, Emma and Dan in particular have both made it clear over the last few years that they think our former professional association gives them a particular right — nay, obligation — to critique me and my views in public. Years after they finished acting in Potter, they continue to assume the role of de facto spokespeople for the world I created."

Writes JK Rowling, on X, responding to a video you can see at the link.

Rowling has kept a silence as long as her antagonists were children, but now she's decided to speak — to write — and no one can out-write her. She continues:

"The Communist Party believes in building enormous projects to boost the economy and burnish political prestige."

Dan Wang, author of "Breakneck: China’s Quest to Engineer the Future," quoted in "China set to open world’s tallest bridge, expanding infrastructure push The Huajiang Grand Canyon Bridge can fit almost two Eiffel Towers under it and will be touted as evidence of China’s engineering prowess when it opens this month" (WaPo).

Last month, Premier Li Qiang stressed the need to “harness the exemplary and galvanizing role of megaprojects”....

Poor and inland provinces... have been the target of this effort as the central government has pushed a “strategic hinterland” strategy. Despite its isolation and relative poverty, Guizhou — roughly the size of Missouri — boasts an extensive infrastructure network, with 11 airports, tall bridges and new roads.

These megaprojects are “not bridges to nowhere,” [said Li Mingshui, a civil engineering professor at Southwest Jiaotong University in Chengdu]....

ADDED: Why is the unusual word "hinterland" used? It's a word I sometimes use but only jocosely. I call my own location (in Wisconsin) a "remote outpost" and l sometimes say things like "here in the hinterland." It's funny to me to see it in the bureaucratic, leadenly serious context. I know it's translation from Chinese, so that might explain the oddness of this usage.

I invited ChatGPT to engage with my observation, and it said:

If people are poor, give them money.

I've heard that said as if it's obtuse to concoct more complicated policies. But now I'm seeing:

[A] rigorous experiment, in a more direct test, found that years of monthly payments did nothing to boost children’s well-being.... After four years of payments, children whose parents received $333 a month from the experiment fared no better than similar children without that help, the study found. They were no more likely to develop language skills, avoid behavioral problems or developmental delays, demonstrate executive function or exhibit brain activity associated with cognitive development....

It has long been clear that children from affluent families exhibit stronger cognitive development and fewer behavioral problems, on average, than their low-income counterparts. The question is whether their advantage comes from money itself or from related forces like parental health and education, neighborhood influences or the likelihood of having two parents in the home....

From "Study May Undercut Idea That Cash Payments to Poor Families Help Child Development/Rigorous new research appears to show that monthly checks intended to help disadvantaged children did little for their well-being, adding a new element to a dispute over expanded government aid" (NYT)(gift link).

"The Pope’s decision to holiday at Castel Gandolfo is one of several breaks with the choices of his predecessor."

"Singing in Latin, wearing a traditional red shoulder cape known as a mozzetta, putting a brake on personal charisma and taking respite in the Alban Hills all distinguish him from the dour intensity of Francis."

From "Pope Leo to take two-week holiday in break with ‘pauperism’ of Francis/The pontiff, a keen tennis player, has also ordered a court to be installed in the extensive grounds of a 17th-century villa where he will escape Rome."

Tell me about the "pauperism" of Pope Francis. A question for ChatGPT. Answer: "The 'pauperism' of Pope Francis refers to his radical focus on poverty and simplicity, both personally and theologically. Admirers see this as a prophetic return to the Gospel’s core, while critics worry it may neglect the complexity of economic life or idealize poverty in unhelpful ways."

"Whether he was high as a kite or hungry as a hippo, he didn’t deserve to be crushed."

Said Darlene Chaney, cousin of Cornelius Taylor, quoted in "In Cities’ Rush to Clear Homeless Camps, People Have Been Crushed to Death/Atlanta’s mayor began a drive to clear homeless encampments. But when heavy equipment came to raze one, nobody noticed that Cornelius Taylor was still inside his tent" (NYT).

In the modest home where they shared a childhood with Mr. Taylor, Ms. Chaney and her brother Derek, both truck drivers, described him as a bright, kind man wounded by a dark teenage episode they did not fully understand. He dropped out of high school and resisted their efforts to help, while complaining that many people view the homeless with disdain. His baptism in a prison chapel raised hopes for change that went unmet.... On good days, friends found him protective and kind. Bad days evoked his street name, Psycho. “If he didn’t get his way, all hell would break lose,” [his girlfriend Lolita] Griffeth said.

"Once considered revolutionary, the notion of empathy and advocacy for the poor is now a central tenet of Roman Catholic social teaching."

"Once considered revolutionary, the notion of empathy and advocacy for the poor is now a central tenet of Roman Catholic social teaching.... Father Gutiérrez’s theology was not without its detractors. It was criticized by scholars living in capitalist countries for its use of Marxist social analysis to expose unjust political systems in the third world, many of them supported by first world powers.... More recently, his theology found favor with Pope Francis.... [T]he pope declared that liberation theology can no longer 'remain in the shadows to which it has been relegated for some years, at least in Europe.'... [Father Gutiérrez wrote:] 'Latin American misery and injustice go too deep to be responsive to palliatives.... Hence we speak of social revolution, not reform; of liberation, not development; of socialism, not the modernization of the prevailing system. "Realists" call these statements romantic and utopian. And they should, for the rationality of these statements is of a kind quite unfamiliar to them.'"

From "Gustavo Gutiérrez, Father of Liberation Theology, Dies at 96/Once considered revolutionary, his notion of empathy and advocacy for the poor has become a central tenet of Catholic social teaching" (NYT).

"Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered California state officials... to begin dismantling thousands of homeless encampments..."

"... the nation’s most sweeping response to a recent Supreme Court ruling that gave governments greater authority to remove homeless people from their streets....  His executive order could divide Democratic local leaders in California, some of whom have already begun to clear encampments while others have denounced the decision from conservative justices as opening the door to inhumane measures to solve a complex crisis. The order also comes as Democrats are uniting around Vice President Kamala Harris, a former senator and prosecutor from California.... Republicans have frequently pointed to homelessness in California as an example of the state’s purported decline.... In his executive order, Mr. Newsom advised California cities and counties on how best to ramp up enforcement on a signature issue of his administration. He cannot force them to take action, but can exert political pressure through billions of dollars the state controls for municipalities to address homelessness...."

From "Newsom Orders California Officials to Remove Homeless Encampments/The directive from Gov. Gavin Newsom is the nation’s most sweeping response to a Supreme Court decision last month that gave local leaders greater authority to remove homeless campers" (NYT).

"There was some flooring that was laid down. A mini desk. Her clothing. A Keurig coffee maker. A printer and a computer – things you’d have in your home."

Said a police spokesman, quoted in "Michigan woman found living inside rooftop store sign with desk and coffee maker/The woman told police she had been living inside the grocery store sign for roughly a year, and had been able to get electricity" (The Guardian).

"I honestly don’t know how she was getting up there. She didn’t indicate, either."

This is an interesting and ingenious person. Who is she and what is she doing now? They're not telling.

"Do you think that someone who is a drug addict is absolutely incapable of -- that all people who are drug addicts are absolutely incapable of refraining from using drugs?..."

"All right. Then compare that with a person who absolutely has no place to sleep in a particular jurisdiction. Does that person have any alternative other than sleeping outside?... They have... none. They have absolutely none. There's not a single place where they can sleep.... So the point is that the connection between drug addiction and drug usage is more tenuous than the connection between absolute homelessness and sleeping outside."

Said Justice Alito, in yesterday's oral argument in City of Grants Pass v. Johnson. There's a precedent, Robinson v. California, that found it to be cruel and unusual punishment to make a crime of the "status" of drug addiction. The 9th Circuit said that the city — by prohibiting sleeping outdoors — had made a crime out of the status of homelessness.

For more detail, see the SCOTUSblog coverage: "Court divided over constitutionality of criminal penalties for homelessness."

"Supreme Court to Consider How Far Cities Can Police Homelessness/A group of homeless people in a small Oregon city challenged local laws banning sleeping in public."

A NYT article about a case up for oral argument today.

The plaintiffs’ argument rests in part on a 1962 case, Robinson v. California, in which the Supreme Court held that laws imposing penalties on people for narcotics addiction violated the Eighth Amendment because they punished a state of being, not a specific action, like drug possession or sale. 

In a similar fashion, the plaintiffs contend, Grants Pass is punishing people for being involuntarily homeless, not for specific actions.

"It is the driver who takes tourists on Jeep tours. It is the veteran who works as a carpenter. It is the person who works at the Whole Foods..."

"... that sells sashimi-grade salmon for $44.99 a pound. They all live a precarious life sleeping every night in their cars parked somewhere around Sedona, Ariz. It’s become a big problem for the tony tourist town, which is why the Sedona City Council approved a program last week that temporarily converts an empty parking lot into a place where families or workers or students can live while trying to find a permanent home.... There was an outpouring of emotion from both sides of the issue.... 'The site is likely to become a magnet for chronically unemployed people who come to Sedona seeking an essentially free place to sleep,' wrote resident William D. Noonan.... Another resident, Joanne L. Makielski, wrote that it was unfortunate that it had to be considered, but it did. 'These are people who work in our town and we all depend on them. We must support them....'  [Mayor Scott] Jablow said... 'Who’s gonna run the food stores?'..."

From "Wealthy Sedona’s answer to housing crisis: A parking lot to sleep in" (WaPo).

"Rahmatullah Anwari, 30, who used to grow rain-dependent wheat... borrowed money to feed his family of eight and..."

"... to pay for his father’s medical treatment. One of the villagers who had lent him money demanded his 8-year-old daughter in exchange for part of the loan. 'I have a hole in my heart when I think of them coming and taking my daughter,' he said. Mohammed Khan Musazai, 40, had bought cattle on loan.... The lenders took his land and also wanted his daughter, who was just 4 at the time. Nazdana, a 25-year-old who is one of his two wives and is the girl’s mother, offered to sell her own kidney instead — an illegal practice that has become so common that some have taken to referring to the Herat encampment as the 'one-kidney village.' She has a fresh scar on her stomach from the kidney extraction, but the family’s debt is still only half paid. 'They asked me for this daughter, and I’m not going to give her,' she said. 'My daughter is still very young. She still has a lot of hopes and dreams that she should realize.'"

From "Barren Fields and Empty Stomachs: Afghanistan’s Long, Punishing Drought/In a country especially vulnerable to climate change, a drought has displaced entire villages and left millions of children malnourished" (NYT).