Manners, Letters and Haircuts

We here at the Manor are rather old-fashioned in many way. Among those ways are manners (or etiquette), the writing of proper letters and proper haircuts. And while those who run around glorying in their rudeness to the supposed barista at Starbucks because said barista is a kid from Downey, California instead of a middle-aged man from Milano, Italia and thus deserves a good dissing because the kid is a posuer because he or she is not a real barista, we prefer to be polite to everyone, if possible. Proper manners and etiquette are really gifts that one gives to oneself that is reaped by others. Why go through life like a drunken German baron living in the Middle Ages (or even the late 19th century in Prussia) dealing with peasants when one can take the higher road and treat other people kindly while still being drunk.
Many years ago, when this writer was a bit of a rounder, he and his brother used to frequent topless bars on a monthly basis. That was back in the days before the dives were called "Gentlemen's Clubs." Your faithful correspondent and his brother were popular patrons at those establishments. And the reason was not because we were big tippers. We were average tippers. What we did was treat each dancer and waitress as a valued individual. We were very polite. We showed an interest in the person and not the body of each woman. We made it known that we were not looking for a quick lay. And the result was that we were considered odd in that we showed an interest and proper and formal attention toward each woman. One dancer even said, "We don't know what to make of you guys. You're so polite." And even though they didn't know what to make of us, they liked us because we treated them like people and not breasts.
The contemporary person in the US seems to have lost the art of writing a proper letter. By this your writer does not mean only a letter written on paper with an ink pen. The modern man and woman seems to have lost the talent to even write a proper e-mail based on the letter model.
Now-a-days e-mails are written in such a staccato style that they make the old Westren Union telegrams appear models of the literary art. It is troubling.
If the reader is of an age, the reader may remember waiting almost with bated breath waiting for a letter sent through the post for a letter from one's friend, pen-pal, uncle, aunt, granny, the movie star one had written a fan letter to, or the House of Humor and the sense of joy that one got when one actually held the envelope in one's hand. The letter could be saved in an old shoebox, be stuffed under a mattress to be read and re-read or torn up in anger. The Save and Delete deals on one's e-mail account do not have quite the same impact or physicality.
And the physical distance of the writer from paper in using the electronic forms of correspondence seem to have removed the writer from a form of expression that a pen and paper or typewriter offered. A letter on a CRT is not real. A letter printed out on a printer is not real. They are not real in the same way that a hand written or typewritten (and that means on a typewriter) are real. A handwritten or typed letter is a more physical expression of friendship, whether there are mis-spellings or typos. There is no spell or grammar check. There are blots and erasures and cross outs in real letters. The slowness of writing a real letter gives the writer a bit of time to think before he or she adds another word. The computer, because of its sense of speed and urgency, does not. Ask your self this question: How often have I re-read what I have written after I have written something in an e-mail. This writer would be willing to make a bet that it has not been very often. The editing has usually been limited to a spell-check.
Now, in fairness to the computer age, this writer does not blame e-mail for the death of proper letter writing. He does not even blame the telegraph or radio. This writer blames television. Television gives the viewer a sense of urgency unlike any other medium. One cannot really write a letter while watching whatever permutation of CSI in the same way that one could write a letter while listening to Fibber McGee.
But this writer also blames the school system. Children are no longer taught to write. They cannot write longhand and they cannot write a proper sentence. Writing is now being considered an option. The result will be the death of great letters and diaries and the promotion of texting talk and unthinking nonsense.
If you are a man do not go to a hairstylist to have your hair cut. Go to a proper barber with a red and white or red, white and blue barber pole outside the establishment. Hair stylists, especially women, have no idea about how to cut men's hair. A proper barber, man or woman. knows how to give a haircut. Stylists have no idea. If you walk into a haircutting place that has in the magazine rack copies of Vogue, People or Cosmopolitan instead of Field and Stream, Popular Mechanics or Hot Rod, run out. If you don't youo'll end up walking out looking like some sort of Muppet.