Sunday Photo: The Beards of Yesteryear

This photo shows me several decades ago with the inevitable beard and Andy Capp cap. Although the curly beard has a certain charm, the truth was that I was always more bourgeois than Bohemian. A good thing, too. I raised a daughter, now 39, for much of the time without a mother, avoided drugs, and mangaged to be singularly ineffective in my misguided lefty political adventures.

Not to say I wasn't bad in certain ways, but my elder daughter's good sense suggest that the discipline and common sense my parents inculcated in me were sufficient to keep me from total irreponsibility. That I have not contributed to the world what I could have done, is a riff for another time.

But every young man should try growing a beard. If you wait too long, it will be white, which is another thing altogether.