Girl Jungle

The Devil made me do it.

I've always hated those women who trot into the local beauty barn armed with a picture of their favorite starlet ripped from the pages of "People" hoping against hope that miracles can come true.

You know the deal, "Like, I really LOVE Jennifer Anniston's hair. I want to BE her." (As if a hair cut could transform any of us. As if we'd want it to.)

But, alas, pride goeth, as they say, and I, your faithful correspondent has now lost what ever moral highground she might have posesssed since yesterday she saw a movie and changed her hair.

Okay, so it's not quite that simple. Like many women of a certain age, I have been enjoying better living through chemistry in the form of monthly trips to the salon to cover my gray since, oh, 1985 or so. My red-headed self -- tho original -- wasn't real and hadn't been for some time. The grayer I became, the more time and energy (not to mention cash) I was investing in helping time stand still.

Enter Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada. If you haven't seen the movie, (or read the book) let me provide a short synopsis. Mature Powerbitch runs influential fashion magazine trading all shreds of humanity for careerism. Young ingenue nearly falls for seduction of PB's world but, at the last minute, chooses right over white. (White being the color of Powerbitch - aka - Streep's hair.)

Now choosing to model one's mature self after a horrible caricature of a powerful woman doesn't exactly seem noble (or even smart, for heaven's sake...) but... the hair. Oh, the hair.

Gorgeous. Natural, grayish white. Mature but vibrant. Beautifully cut, elegant. Stylish, modern. Fabulous.

So on the eve of my 49th birthday, I decided. Enough of this charade. Time to own it. Own my age, own my real self. So off to the salon I go...Streep photos in hand.

The miracle Brenda, (we call each other "The Other Brenda") owner and creative director of Amore Styles in Portland, Maine and I set up camp for the duration. Four hours and a bottle of Pinot later, having endured the seven shades of red removal (from Safety Orange to Pink Shrimp to Frightening Rock Star Yellow to Unbaked Bread) and trial and error with violet toner, I am now, happily, naturally grey.

I must confess my risk mitigation (otherwise known as, OHMIGODWHATHAVEIDONE insurance) took the form of returning to the original red. But once it was done, I, The Other Brenda, wonderman, all my friends and colleagues and even perfect strangers looked and me and said. Wow. What took you so long.

Wow indeed. Thanks for the inspiration, Meryl. I'll try not to be devilish.

Bowling for Moslems

So some ignoramus decides it would be a jolly joke to roll the frozen cranial remains of his recent pig roast down the center aisle of Lewiston, Maine's storefront Mosque. (This, the same Lewiston that gained national attention after a crazed neo-Nazi group decided to hold a rally there in support of a well-meaning (I guess) but clueless letter from a former Mayor asking the local Somali population to tell their friends to stay home.)

For generations, cities like Lewiston have welcomed (sort of) wave after wave of immigrants from Irish to French, Polish and Greek to Jew and most recently, Somali. A mill town melting pot on the banks of the Androscoggin River. And like everywhere a community stew is brewing with ingredients separated by their looks, language and faith, the most recently added morsels nearly cause a boil over. Every time.

It wasn't so long ago that Lewiston seemed more like an outpost of Quebec's Beauce region than a northern New England college town. In fact, when I arrived in Lewiston as a student in 1975 it was still common to hear French spoken almost everywhere. (Despite the fact that many a young knuckle came home from public school bruised when teacher applied the ruler rap to drive French out and English in.)

Truth is, everyone's people have endured hazing of one kind or another. (Save the Native Americans, I guess, but you know what happened there...) And you should pardon me for not getting totally enraged at young yahoo's bogus ethnic bowling stunt. Should he be punished and ostracized for such horrid, disrespectful behavior? Of course. Should we be societally mortified, on the other hand, that such acts of intolerance and ignorance occur? Please. We are human. We have a history here. This behavior, though horrible, is not new. It's regrettable but predictable. It's what happens as disparate groups learn to assimilate. (It's also why we have laws and social mores that discourage this sort of acting out.)

But let's cut the political correctness and public piling on that seems to accompany every unfortunate act of bad judgement and call it what it is. We are an immigrant society. Whether our family tree has roots that go back to Plymouth Rock or Ellis Island, we were all once newcomers to a new land. Sociologists have observed the behavior of in-group/out-group politics for years. What happened in Lewiston is what always happens.

Newcomers upset the status quo. Not only are they different in many observable ways, they are also threats. Theats to jobs, a drain on scarce social resources, and our "way of life." But oddly, our way of life wouldn't exist were it not for the constant shaking up we get when outsiders move in.

What we fail to realize is the value newcomers provide to our society. They contribute to the economy by doing work many of us are unwilling to do anymore. They bring intellectual and cultural capital that strengthens and improves our world. They pay taxes, build communities and, in short, become grateful citizens. And exactly what's wrong with that? It's what brought us all here, for heaven's sake.

And of course we're scared. Nobody likes change, our natural instinct is to protect what we know from that we don't. It's when we begin institutionalizing this notion of "us vs. them" in our immigration policy that the real trouble starts.

Our recent national policy seems to be "ignore, underfund, and push under the rug the immigration problem unless it's politically expedient to persecute." Such attitudes do nothing but exacerbate predictable community tension. If we actually planned for and welcomed new Americans, (and provided for their needs adequately while helping them to assimilate) we might reduce a lot of the hazings and community tension.

Immigration policy that relies on guns and barbed wire and zenophobic rationales rather than sensible, growth-managing legislation to control the influx of new Americans seems like slamming the gates on our past, if you ask me. (And far more hurtful, in the long run than Mr. Sensitivity's pig headed stunt.)

Truth is, assimilation is messy. And expensive. But without it, where would we be?