Open Writing

Sam Smiles, author of the first self-help book, "Self-Help," published in 1859, must have been grinning in heaven when "The Art of Shaving" by Myriam Zaoui and Eric Malka was published. It's packed with a bevy of solid information for new shavers on the proper tools and techniques. Some I learned the hard way, such as the importance of water. Human hair is made of keratin, "a highly complex protein that's not soluble in water but capable of absorbing water and oil. When the hair is wet its elasticity increases by about 90 percent, and it loses about 60 percent of its strength." Make that water hot; "cold water constricts blood vessels, tightens pores, and makes hair follicles stiff, making the razor blade pull the hair some before cutting into it." This, along with improper technique, like shaving against the grain, can cause the dread ingrown hair.

Alaskan's know about cold water, and an Army officer stationed in the early 1900s to Alaska at Fort Gibbon, near Tanana decided to do something about it. Jacob Schick, a life-long inventor, was promoted to lieutenant during his service in the Philippines, where he contracted a severe dose of dysentery. The doctors sent him to Alaska for his health, which improved, and Schick helped lay the state's first telegraph lines until he sprained his ankle.

It turned forty below during Schick's recuperation, challenging his determination to be properly clean-shaven. To cope he designed an electric shaving head driven by an external motor. Several manufacturers rejected his idea, World War I came along, and it wasn't until 1929 that Schick's own company produced the first electric dry razor.

Dry whiskers remain stiff and tough, regardless of the razor, so are the promises of close, effortless shaves made by electric razor manufacturers at Christmastime evidence of Hanlon's Razor? "Razor" means "a guiding principal" in this sense, but it originally comes from the Latin "rasare," meaning "to scrape, shave. In the 1400s the French used "rasen" for "to scratch, slash, scrape, erase," which sounds much like Alaskan cold-water shaving, and by the 1500s it also meant "pull or knock down."

Occam's Razor, for instance, recommends theoreticians "shave away" convoluted solutions to problems because "the simplest explanation is most likely the correct." Hanlon's Razor is "Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity." The possibly apocryphal Robert Hanlon was credited with coining it in a 1980 joke book, "Murphy's Law Book Two." Murphy's Law, or "Anything that can go wrong, will," is a whole other twisted tale, but Hanlon's Razor's also mystery-shrouded. Some think it should be called Heinlein's Razor, after science fiction author Robert Heinlein, who wrote in a 1941 short story, "You have attributed conditions to villainy that simply result from stupidity." But Napoleon said something comparable around 1800, as did Goethe in 1774, and the Persian scientist Alhazen in 1000.

Heinlein cranked out a string of sci-fi novels for young people in the 1940s and 50s, followed by well-received adult novels, like "Stranger in a Strange Land." His boy's books, like "Space Cadet" and "Starman Jones," captured my middle schooler's imagination and kept me reading. "Shave" comes from "scaben," an Old German term meaning "to remove with a razor." In the early 1500s "shaver" meant "one who pillages or plunders," but, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, by 1600 it meant "fellow, chap, also a humorous fellow … now commonly a youth, with the epithet 'young' or 'little'."

Lots of little shavers are enjoying the public library's award-winning Guys and Gals Read programs, thanks both to teams of selfless volunteers who read fun books to 4th graders during lunchtime, and to donations by the Rasmuson Foundation, the Fox Lions Club, Design Alaska, and other local donors. The goal is to help kids see the fun in books and reading, because reading for pleasure leads to reading better at school and work. Moreover, sixty percent of the U.S. prison population is functionally illiterate.

As Ben Franklin put it, "If you teach a poor young man to shave himself and keep his razor in order, you may contribute more to the happiness of his life than in giving him a thousand guineas."