My 22nd Annual Hair Cut

Every Spring, between the last week of April and the first week of May, i have my hair shaved down to about a sixteenth of an inch. It's a program i have maintained since 1988. Auspicious coincidences and occurrences are tied to this hair cut. Here's the story of its genesis.

I was really into rock and roll as a kid. By my teens in mid-1970's i wanted bell bottoms and long hair. My parents are 41 and 46 years my seniors so they had no interest in the rock scene. So we fought over my hair.

I finally won the freedom to wear my hair as i chose at 14, but that didn't mean i had approval. My parents hated my hair long, more accurately, they hated my big hair because my hair is so curly that it grows big instead of long. They were just getting used to my long hair when i took to punk rock, in about 1980. My first great punk do was gradations of purple with a sort-of rib-cage on the back of my head. Later i had a skunk stripe. Later in the 80s, i grew it big again and even tried dreadlocks for a while in 1987 but i hated the way the dreadlocks felt. Anyhow, my parents really didn't care for any of these hair styles.

In 1988, my friend Larnie Fox asked me to perform an opening piece for a more substantial performance art piece he was going to do at the Salt Lake Media Center and i agreed. When i learned the venue and the date i realized that it would happen on my father's birthday. At that time, i hadn't cut my hair for a few years. I had a massive dark tangle on my head.

So i decided that my performance art piece would be, "Mom Cuts My Hair for Dad's Birthday," a re-enactment of my childhood haircuts which were given by my mother while i sat on a tall chair in the kitchen with a towel wrapped around my neck. I asked my parents, who liked my performance projects about as much as they liked my hair, if they would participate. They agreed.

The audience numbered about 100. I introduced my parents to the audience and from underneath my big hair i explained the conflicts we had had over my hair for so many years. My dad, Sam Weller, is a ham. He prepared for the evening by bringing one of my high school photos in which i had mysteriously looked respectable. He passed it through the crowd while making strong assertions about how good i could look with the right hair cut. Then, with a flourish he pulled the longest scissors i had ever seen from a pocket within his jacket.

Definitions of performance art have always been vague and it is common for some members of an audience to think that performance art is theater, dance or music. I guess some in the audience thought that this was some pretend thing. I was surprised as the gasps of horror that were emitted when my father cut off the first sizable handful. Then my mother took over with her own normal-sized scissors and finished the job. It was very casual and homey. And i was surprised at how much the audience seemed to enjoy it. Annie, a film maker who was also a hair stylist complimented the piece at the end of the evening. So also said that the cut was a bit crooked and offered to fix it free of charge. I accepted her offer and visited her within the week.

That evening, after the performances, about a dozen of us ended up in Juniors, a bar, together. A friend of mine, Catherine Cheves, was among the group. I had known Cat for about seven years and always been attracted to her. I attempted to flirt with her but was so inept that she couldn't tell what i was doing. My last ditch effort was to offer her a ride home upon learning that she needed one. So i took her a her friend to her apartment at about midnight. She invited me in for another drink and i decided i would just hang around waiting for her friend to leave. I didn't know the friend was staying there at the time and couldn't even go to bed until i left. After too many drinks, i left at about 3:00 a.m., thwarted in my romantic efforts.

I was so annoyed with myself that when i got home, i wrote a drunken confessional letter to Catherine and delivered it the following day. It included an invitation to dinner and a play, the following week.

So on May 1st, 1988 with my new short hair, i had my first date with Cat. We are both careful people but years of friendship, numerous mutual friends, many common interests, and apparent mutual attraction caused us to fall rapidly toward one and other in love.

Meanwhile, my mother had gotten the inaccurate and hopeful impression that i had turned over some kind of new leaf with my hair. She tracked down Annie, and bought me a gift certificate worth six hair cuts. She thought it might last me a year. She was wrong. Now my relationship with Catherine seemed to also be linked to that haircut. I had been a longhair and a punk and had become sure that nothing i did would please everyone. I enjoyed the wildness of long hair. But I am also a late sleeper and impatient groomer. For those reasons, short hair was appealing. So with six free haircuts in hand, i decided i would cut my hair once annually in Spring and get a bit of both realities. I would be 1995 before i had to pay for the annual buzz.

Seven months after Cat and i fell in love, we bought a house together. On May 1st 1990, i proposed to her. On May 1st 1991, we married and guess what? I got a haircut that day.

And i just kept getting that one haircut each year at right around the same time.

In Spring of 1997, Catherine was pregnant with our child who was expected in mid-May. Our impatient daughter decided to get herself born a little early and Catherine entered labor on May 5th. It took long enough that Lila Ann wasn't born until May 6th, early in the morning on the day i had scheduled my hair cut. I was desperately tired since i had been mostly awake for nearly 36 hours. Nonetheless, i kept my appointment and Annie shaved my head yet again, for the tenth time in as many years, about four hours after the birth of my daughter.

Now i have just recently received the 22nd of these annual haircuts. I maintain the habit because it is seasonally appropriate and the act, in a vague and goofy way, seems to commemorate the births of my father and daughter as well as my courtship and marriage to Catherine. Those who know me track Spring by my haircut. We know the season of any photo i'm in by the length of my hair. I've done it for so long now that it would feel very odd to stop. Here are before and after photos of the 2009 removal.

Bone

First Blog Written as Old SLC Bookstore Announces Historic Move

This is my first blog post. I've been meaning to blog thing for months now. A coalition of younger booksellers convinced me i must. But who reads this stuff? Aren't we all too busy? So i drew myself an outline of all the fascinating things i want to write. But other tasks always pushed blogging aside and i have always striven to put a wall between my work and my home. It takes effort since Catherine, my wife, and i operate the bookstore together. But tonight i am writing at home, when i want to be in bed. This night is second in surreality only to the evening of February 27th, when the scale of my judgment tipped and Cat and decided that we would be moving our old giant bookstore.

And since i know no better, i am writing in a word doc until someone shows me again how to post. That's also the reason why what was largely written last month, is only being posted today.

For my first blog, i had wanted to describe my strenuous relationship with language to you, as way of explanation, or excuse. But considering what other stuff has been happening, that will have to wait.

I am writing this only hours after delivering the press release announcing the immanent relocation of our 80 year old family-owned bookstore, Sam Weller's Books, also known as Zion Bookstore.

Late this afternoon after about two weeks of intensive planning, we announced that we have begun a search for a new location. Our store occupies 37,000 square feet. The public accesses 20,000. The other 17,000 is used for work space and storage, much storage. Some of it is well used. Since 1961 we have grown within the bounds of the David Keith Building, built on Salt Lake City's Main Street in 1902. Since my parents, Sam and Lila Weller, moved in here i think we have tripled in size with small expansions being nabbed when opportunity and necessity coincided. Our last expansion was in about 1996. When i think of what that cost and the last 13 years i wish i had invested in computers.

Catherine's and my decision to relocate this giant old bookstore did not come easily nor as quickly as it may seem. We have lived bookselling for many years. Like most booksellers, we love books. We are people shaped by books and certain of their importance to sane and civil society, and their relevance to the mind and one's sense of being. I have worked in books since i was 10 but when asked i start the ticker at the age of sixteen, so let's say i have been a mostly cognizant member of the trade since the late 1970's. Before computers altered our lives, i read Alvin Toffler's Future Shock and understood that change's pace continues to increase and that things are going to get faster and more fractured. I read Marshall McLuhan's Understanding Media and knew that changes in technologies had unpredictable but definite effects on not only society but the workings of our minds and the physiology of our bodies. We see differently than our ancestors. We taste differently. We think differently.

So i am not really surprised to now be facing the prospect of moving the best of this giant old bookstore into a yet unknown location, in a manner derived to no small degree from my dreams. I am excited by the mere idea of putting our substantial experience to the task of creating a new kind of bookstore. I am overflowing with ideas and the grounding knowledge that only some can work. Oh but a lot of work precedes. I have moved from despondency to idiot glee.

Our press release went out at about 5:45 last night. Between then and 8:00, i gave four interviews and have two more coming. I saw it covered on television tonight and the sentiments caused me to briefly question our decision despite the years of analysis and consideration. But though i feel a certain affinity for Don Quixote, i cannot tilt further against the windmills of time. I have gone from dread to excitement.

We recognize that the market for books is shrinking. We are also certain that there are parts of the book trade that will endure. I'll write more about that some other time. Right now i am spinning darkness into light.

I am too tired to go on. The date is 12 March 2009. It is the day we announced the movement of an icon and one of the last remnants of an era i will miss.

I will awaken tomorrow, face more inquires and bargain hunters. Face the giant task of steering a massive boat into a tight harbor. Resist making too many plans until our new home is determined. Brace myself to greet my friends.

Bone