St. Patrick's Day

St. Patrick's Day in it's native Ireland is a significant cultural holiday with parades and such. Here in America, it is an excuse to get blind, stinking drunk. Assuredly there are parades and pride in Irish heritage and history to be found but millions of people who aren't even remotely Irish pack themselves into pubs and drink massive quantities and, inebriated, then pour themselves out into the streets in search of another source of cheap alcohol.

I am no supporer of teatotalism but I am embarrassed by my countrymen. Especially if they are so disgracefully bearded.

In the 1860s, there was no such convenient excuse and people became drunk and they evolved into drunkards for their own personal reasons, as this photoset is intended to portray.

Before Duck was a Dynasty

Duck hunting must be very serious business. Note, the glowering expression, the raptor-sharp nose and the neckbeard. This man is no poseur and knows the true call of the hunter to kill only what he eats and eat all that he kills.

Serious business, indeed.

Not a goatee

It is no secret that I browse through the intertubes for the collection of beards that I herein present. And if there is one thing that curls the hairs on the back of my neck, it is the misuse of the term goatee.

"I do not think that word means what you think it means."

In point of fact, I know by definition that that word does not mean what you think it means. A goatee is a beard on the chin. That's it. Only on the chin. If you have hair above your lip, it is no longer a goatee. And while the website My Ear-Trumpet Has Been Struck By Lightning provides many pictures unique and not available anywhere else, the owner makes the mistake of calling John Schwinghammer's beard a goatee. It is most assuredly not. It is a Van Dyke. Named after 17th century Flemish Baroque painter Anthony van Dyck, it specifically consists of any growth of both a mustache and goatee with all hair on the cheeks shaven.

Ahhhhhh!

OK, I am much better now that I've gotten that out of my system. But really, that is a very nice beard, isn't it?

The End of an Era

It was just about a century ago that the century of the beard ended. And while Captain Edward John Smith was by no means the last man with a beard and the sinking of the R.M.S. Titanic had no direct effect on the changing fashion, that dramatic event and the Great War that loomed on the horizon bookended what had been a short but dramatic resurgence in the wearing of facial hair.

In Russia, beard grows you

Some beards defy classification.Some are merely difficult to define because of the limitations of technology and time. For example, this Russian gentleman has some spectacular mutton chops.

Or are they?

Do those amazing wings growing on each side of his chin connect to his hairline with sideburns? If so, then these are mutton chops. If they also connect to the mustache then they are a subset of mutton chops called friendly mutton chops.

But what if they don't connect to his hair in front of his ears? What if the upper part of the cheeks where sideburns would go is clean shaven? It's difficult to tell from this photograph. If so, it might be classified as a hollywoodian except for the chin being clean shaven.

And what if the beard is not actually connected to the mustache. I can't even begin to determine how to classify that. "Freestyle" seems to be the convention in the modern taxonomy.

And the entirety of this confusion comes from the photograph. Were this gentleman standing before me, it would be easy to tell where there was hair and where there was not. It may be a little more difficult to classify but at least we would have a starting point

So, for simplicity, I shall declare that there is, in fact, hair in front of the ears and the mustache is connected to the beard, therefore: friendly mutton chops.

Cowlick

Oh, yea. He knows absolutely that he has it going on. From the assertive smirk to the massive shirt pin, from the goatee on his chin to the spectacular cowlick atop his head.

This man could probably not only convince you that the moon was made of a specific variation of cheese (similar to a North Wiltshire blue) but could also convince you to invest substantial funds in his soon-to-be-constructed cheese mine.

Chook chooka.

Jealous

"Have you ever seen so full and mighty a beard as this?"

Of course you haven't, because this is Sir Sanford Fleming, inventor of time!

OK, so he isn't a Time Lord and didn't actually invent time itself but he was instrumental in convening the International Prime Meridian Conference in Washington in 1884 and the subsequent establishment of global universal time. You see, it works like this: Local time is set by the sun. Noon when it reaches it's zenith. But move 20 miles west and the sun will reach it's zenith a little under 2 minutes later. Not a big deal when you can walk that far in a day but when you ride a train for a day, those miles and minutes can add up to a significant difference. There's a lot of math to be done to get the time correct and then everyone has to do it right, from the train conductor to the guy who sets the town clock tower and if those things don't match up, connections get missed, people are late and all of society breaks down into chaos and general panic.

Additionally, there's that pesky A.M. and P.M. thing. Fleming spent an uncomfortable night in a train station in Ireland because the schedule mixed those two things up. Fleming proposed both the 24 hour universal time clock and the standardized 24 hour time zones so that no one would have to muss their magnificent beards sleeping on a hard, wooden bench in a drafty station ever again. (At least, not because of time miscalculations. )

Thus, civilization was saved.

Bellingham’s Stimulating Onguent

Mad Doctor

"Mad" angry or "mad" crazy? Either way, I would not want this man as my physician.

He does, however, have a distinctive and impressive beard, so that should count for something.

The First Steampunk

The gears of progress are driven by inherently dangerous mechanical contraptions that often emit fine particulates and occasional high-velocity shrapnel so it is imperative that one wear sufficient ocular protective devices at all times so as to avoid unnecessary injury and inconvenient diminishment of vision.

And this gentleman is totally rocking the mad scientist vibe.

Definition

When I say the word "goatee", what springs to your mind? The mirror universe Mr. Spock from Star Trek? Ming the Merciless from Flash Gordon? Perhaps you are thinking of Captain Jack Sparrow.

You would be incorrect for those beards are not goatees, though the modern media and contemporary colloquialism keeps calling them that. No, having a beard and mustache around your mouth not connected to sideburns is not a goatee.

This, my friends, is a goatee. A quintessential example of "a beard formed by hair grown only on the chin area." Add a mustache to the equation and, by definition, it is no longer a goatee.

So, now that today's lesson is over and you know what actually constitutes goatee, when someone says the word you will not embarass yourself by thinking of Tony Stark, you will be thinking of Norville Rogers.

Steampunk World's Fair

Entrants in the General G. Rappleyea Memorial Beard and Mustache Competition of the 2011 Steampunk World's Fair, Somerset, New Jersey. There were many more competitors this year and some grew out their beards specifically for this event. Huzzah!

The Greatest Generation

The Smithsonian (courtesy of the fine pogonologists at Wondermark) announces a contest for “Who Had the Best Civil War Facial Hair?”

Vote Here!

Four Brothers

Daniel, George (with the beard), Michael and my great-grandfather Elder John.

Shave for Honor

Brigham Young was a man's man. He founded his own de-facto nation in Utah. He was said to have the power of God. He sanctioned the massacre of pioneers. He was a world class bigot. He wore magic underwear. He may have been a delusional religious tyrant but, with 55 wives and nearly as many children, no one could doubt his bearded virility.

So, it is with some irony that the Mormon university founded with his name has beardlessness as a part of it's student code of honor. To violate this code is to be removed forthwith. Brigham Young would be expelled from his own university for violating the honor code.

There are exceptions, however. One is permitted to grow a beard with a medical exemption from university doctors.

A student who wishes to obtain a beard exception must visit a BYU Student Health Center doctor by appointment (422.5156). The doctor will fax his recommendation. The student then needs to come to the Honor Code Office to fill out some paperwork and receive the letter allowing the growth of the beard, if approved. If a yearly beard exception is granted, a new Student ID will be issued after the beard has been fully grown, and must be renewed every year by repeating the process.

If a request is granted for a temporary or more permanent beard exception the student will be notified by the Honor Code Office; at which time the student will come into the office to complete the necessary paperwork. After completion of this process the student may then grow a full beard according to the guidelines given.

Wearing a beard is dishonorable? Heresy! Sacrilege! Sure, BYU bans sex, swearing, plagarism and shorts or skirts above the knee, which shouldn't be surprising for a religious university, but beards? And tea! Can you believe that they ban tea as being somehow unwholesome?

That's just not civilized.

Adaptable

One of the (many) advantages of having a longer beard or moustache is that of styling. Men with close cropped beads have no oppotunity for variation short of shaving and then they are caught within that particular style until the follicles grow back out.

But a man with longer bears can move the hairs this way or that to elicit a particular effect. I give you Frederick III, at this time in 1870 the crown prince of Prussia and later to serve as Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. Many of the paintings and photographs that I have seen of his royal majesty present him with a somewhat conventional beard. I have seen others where the beard is somewhat split in the middle, slightly less conventional but nothing too dramatic.

But here, he has taken the comb from the center of the chin and drawn it horizontally, in some ways extending the horizontal pull of the moustache down across the chin.

Spectacular.

It may perhaps have been effected for a practical purpose of revealing the medal at his throat rather than having it concealed by a vertically combed beard.

I like to think it was more than that.

Not a fool

I have been cultivating my beard for quite a number of years and, while I have been inspired by the beards of over a century ago, I have endeavored to be somewhat unique in its styling. And yet, I continued to search archives in hopes of finding someone else who shared a similar beard so that I could make the claim that my beard was, in point of fact, period. So many beards and yet none that I could point to and say, "See! men of culture and style really do have such beards as this."

And here I find one that seems to add to that claim. This gentleman's beard is a circle beard but with some enhancements, specifically the moustache separated from the beard by being styled straight out and, even more unique, the "horns" on the beard trimmed to the center of the chin. Not an exact match to my beard, mind you, but certainly similar enough to be considered in the same taxonomy.

Culture. Style and the adoring gaze of his loving wife. And observe that she is gazing upon his fine beard. OK. So maybe she's actually looking at the sheet music but that is only for this illustration. Surely she must approve of both him and his beard all the other days of their lives. No fool he.

Unfortunately, I do not like wine so more the fool am I.

Taking stock

When the father discovered that his son was writing rather than studying law, he promptly withdrew his financial support. The young aspiring author was forced to support himself as a stockbroker, which he hated despite being somewhat successful at it. Even so, he persevered and became on of the most influential writers of the 19th Century.

This is, of course, Jules Verne at the age of 28 before he hit the big time, born this day in 1828.

A Chance Meeting

Photographers Abel J. Whalen and Abel J. Whalen both pose for a picture of themselves and their beards. Beards were not a novelty in the early days of photography but multiple exposures allow one the unique opportunity to see both profiles of a beard simultaneously.

Flattery

After a panel at an Ohio convention, an attendee came up to me and said:

"When my beard grows up, it wants to be just like yours."

I was, of course, flattered. And while I do not have what I consider to be an epic beard, one worthy of international accolades in the arena of competition, I am quite proud of my facial adornment and pleased that inspires others.

And yet, I am slightly hesitant. I have spent years cultivating a beard which I think is unique and would be sorely disappointed should someone choose to imitate my particular style.

So, allow the Century of the Beard to inspire you in finding your own path.The men featured here certainly did not mimic or parrot those around them. Nor should you.