Shirley

Book Report, or Open Letter to the Author Dear Kirsten, It lay around. I finally picked it up. Pored over the magic you mentioned, sleepy Harold and sweet Elaine, Briery Branch’s rages, the chicks you named Rotisserie and Giblet. Clear genius. And then the bees bees bees (not until yesterday did I reach this part). The chapter had the strangest beginning. They needed warmth. Some made a circle around their queen, burning honey for heat by shivering, as you put it. The undertaker bees, when on mortuary duty, dragged the dead to their resting places in the grass. Only this morning did I get to the chapter’s end. I guess I’d give your book a 15. Love, Shirley   Kirsten Eve Beachy, Martyrs and Chickens , Cascadia Publishing House 2025  

Before this, I belabored our posters . Even using fat, chisel-type Sharpies, it took me forever. But a couple of days ago, lecturing myself on slobbiness’s advantages, I simply patched and pasted and Scotch-taped together enough pieces of paper with words on and put them in the car. An oldish fellow—one of the regulars, which I’m not—was already there when I turned into the parking lot next to Representative Cline’s office. You’d think Oldish has a degree in law or maybe political science. He’s precise about his knowledge, genteel, yet blunt. His posters are never spectacular. When I got out of my car with my poor excuse of a billboard, he was photographing a man in an orange T-shirt. Orange looked at me. “You can’t park here.” “Who are you?” I asked, in my best belligerent good-Christian voice. Between the two of them, something unpleasant was going on. In front of Cline’s office, all over the sidewalk, lay construction-worker equipment. “The owner. You have to move your car....

The final installment in our haircut trilogy, for which I actually hired Grandgirl, for her help, we bickered, some, over her pay. I thought $20. She emailed back, noooonononono thats way too much lol … how about 15? Okay, and your tip is $5. Now stop arguing. But then my husband objected. I had to back down. Granddaddy says I’m railroading and I should honor your suggestion. Haha, she wrote. $10, $5 tip. That was for the  Xavier-and-The-Cowsills assignment. I’d not offered her cash for the Ray Stevens job. That one, when I  asked what she wanted for payment, she  said peanut butter cups. I had a whole unopened bagful in the pantry, the salacious Aldi kind I use for ramping up chocolate cakes . Well sure, I said. Grandgirl was thrilled. We stored them in the fridge. Every time she came over she could help herself. A bunch are still in there shivering, tantalizing, beckoning. For the Lady Gaga bit, the first video, I’d promised Grandgirl a tomato sandwich, somet...

Hair, Chapter 4: In Conclusion And here’s Grandboy Youngest just the other week. You can see the mix-up in parentage. As with his sisters, the Japanese deoxyribonucleics overtook the pure unadulterated Swiss-German genetic material. Instead of a butter pale flavor we got lush yummy 90% cacao. I was only c utting back on the chocolate. He only wanted a trim. He had Xavier along, a Pittsburgh buddy. So Xavier filmed. He caught me prodding at Grandboy to hold the comb, and I’m perplexing, now, about what real hairdressers do—the trained ones—with the comb when they’re cutting. Certainly mine didn’t make me hold theirs. Did they have aprons with pockets? Are the professionals so adroit they can wedge the comb—tiny size, not a lunker like I use—between a pair of fingers not occupied with slicing and dicing? It’s just a question. I’m not in some big rush to learn a new trick, not at this late date. (Layering—The Cowsills—by Grandgirl. I’ll say a bit about her later.)    

Hair, Chapter 3: Theirs All three children came out bald. Just blond baby-chick fuzz. Just enough nest on top to bury my face and breathe in. When they grew enough of a crop, cornsilk golden, they got bowl cuts. I used incentives. I’d start telling a story, made up, with shocking twists and turns, and as long as the child held still I kept going. Nothing gold stayed. I figured out how to do all-over trims on the boys. Always the same cut, the right amount of ragged to tag us as pinch-your-pennies diehards. When fourth-grader(?) Christopher, wising up, pleaded for a mohawk, I said no. I now think it was wrong of me, but I’d probably still do the same thing. And the time we came home from somewhere to find he’d played barber on Zachary, I had a fit. That, too—my hysteria—seems wrong. Gutsy boys, smart boys—what more does anybody want? (With Jennifer I did more plaiting than snipping, though not for salvation’s sake. Fold over, fold over, smooth, pat, sigh and moan, borrow from a plu...

Hair, Chapter 2: His While I’ve shelled out how often for haircuts, not so my husband. Only once that I remember, in all our years, has he visited a barber. He’d gotten fired from his teaching position. (The story is here . Also here .) Now he was job hunting. Maybe we thought his interview coming up in some hillbilly hick county in South Central PA demanded an upgrade in his presentation—more sleight and polish. He came home from the barbershop looking like a skinned rat. It must’ve frightened the bosses in the county office. No job offer resulted. Generally I just do an all-around hack job. I swipe at the lone wisps up on top waving in their glassy sea of nakedness. I prune the rampant shag in back. I nip at his neck scruff, careful not to proceed on down past his c ollarbones , as I like man hair. I’ve thought about a buzz cut, but we’re both dubious. Would he be him, anymore? (Film footage by him. Layering—Ray Stevens—by Grandgirl.)

Hair, Chapter 1: Mine My mother forbade her girls haircuts because so did the Bible. Instead I had pigtails, thick, spit-spot pristine or gone scruffy. But one time she clamped the bottom of each braid with a barrette and singed the ends, using a candle. Where she’d heard about this, I can’t say. Was it supposed to seal in the healthful oils, or what? The scriptures didn’t prohibit torching. So not until high school did the first inches fall. It happened in the dorm. I wanted a smaller bun. Pinned under the Mennonite prayer cap—see-through—the bun ’s bulk still told a story. A girlfriend did the whacking—maybe my roommate. If I were to rank according to their knack (not effort) all the people who’ve since taken swings at me, my husband wins last place. Maybe his line of sight is skewed. I’d always end up lopsided. “Look,” I’d wail. “Look at this side and that side. The slant. And that clump hanging down.” Even those I paid, even if they rightly steered the scissors, failed to wor...

When wrongs pale. When from the sky fall diamonds.  

Where do Trumpies go when they die? It’s a question. One I knew is in a box now, in crumbs, covered over with plain graveyard dirt. The stone doesn’t say Here Lies a Man Who Voted for Bully. But it’s true. He grinned—this was maybe 2016—when Bully’s name came up at the dinner table, and I snapped, “Don’t you ever laugh about him again.” Something like that—I forget what, exactly. It wiped the smile right off his face. But not for long. Then, that a proud pussy grabber could be running for president was what dominated the headlines. We weren’t talking pardons for insurrectionists, techie DOGE boys accessing government information (old news, yes yes), a police-run society . Obviously, nobody burned to a powder can ever again cast a ballot in favor of a lecherous narcissist, but voting as the man reduced to crumbs did, twice, is now his spiritual legacy. Tuesday, Heather Cox Richardson posted this: “While the Senate considered the [Big Beautiful Bill] today, President Donald J. Trum...