Monday, January 30, 2012

Burns Night Preamble


Last Wednesday was Robbie Burns Night, and while I threw on the kilt and glengarry, it was not exactly suitable for the office.  I kept that assembly a little easy during the day.


A Black Watch jacket I've had for some time usually comes out for winter parties and for Robbie Burns Night... or when tartan is needed... which is rare.  


It's soft and very comfortable, and I like it with a bow tie which, it was pointed out, was upside down.  "It was right-side-up when I got here" was my slurred response as I raised another glass of of Scotch later that evening.  Same shirt, tie, and shoes as I shifted into the evening wear.  Joined by friends Giuseppe and James Fox, all interpretations of the style were excellent.  AAW has a nice post on the rest of the evening.

Next year, maybe Toad and his balmoral will join us for three holes of indoor urban golfing and plates of seasoned ground innards.


Not quite cold enough in Boston for curling (not that I'm a curler), but here are some great North American Scots enjoying their fascinatingly cool style:


Thursday, January 26, 2012

Pressure

In Atlanta visiting friends and one of my (formerly hot-tempered) cousins.  A house full of sons somehow cooled him into a stoic oak(?).  On one of the nights we went out for drinks, I kept looking for symptoms or signals of that slowly simmering pressure-pot to show up in somewhere, either in his speech, manner, or interactions with others.  It didn't.  Is he now a mellow father with a very long fuse?  I wasn't buying it. 

An architecturally dizzying hotel interior. 


It took me a moment to realize what "tnurnb" was. 
This company writes their instructions the way I write this blog.

As youngsters, he would be the first one into a scrap-up, and the last one out of it.  Fast, wiry, and wild, he was a deadly athlete and lived everyday like it was a hopeless stand-off in a canyon ambush.  He is a few years older than I am, and as kids, he provided me with diplomatic immunity from the ill-intentioned older children, who all feared his hot-blooded willingness to engage in a hay-maker tornado with absolutely anybody.  I looked up to him, and loved spending summers with him.  We are both at the younger end of that line of cousins, but he has taken control of the family affairs for most of us, cataloging and preserving thousands of photos, interviewing family members to preserve the taken-for-granted knowledge they never seem to write down, including the bizarre stories.

Ever defensively on guard for his family and relatives, his fraternity party fist-fights have now been replaced with his squad of lawyers; his once-hay-makers are now legal letters to the aggressor.  Mother has trouble with a house-painting contractor?  He calls the contractor.  Not resolved by the next day?  He gets on a plane.

Everyone thought he'd be the eternally unbridled one, maybe moving far away and working on a remote fishing vessel or pipeline in some desolate wilderness.  Instead, he started a company, built a house, had a family, and found a way to direct his volatile gasoline tendencies into efficient, loyal, successful, and honest day-to-day life.



-A reminder-jab aimed at Ralph Lauren?-

He was in high school and then college during the 80's, and wore cardigans, Sebagos, and went skiing in turtlenecks with Vuarnets.  By that point, he could keep the buttons attached to his blazers, and I saw him less frequently in the summers.  He always had three or four jobs at once when he was young... two during the day, one at night, and another on the weekend.  I always thought it was because he needed the grind to diffuse his energy, but I now realize that it was because he never liked to ask for anything.

Brooks Brothers thought "Knitted in England" 
sounded better than "Made in UK".  I agree.
---
I wear cardigans today with my jackets and suits because I always saw him wearing them.  As a boy, he gave me many of the shirts he outgrew.  In those days (the 80's), they were called "Izod" or "alligator shirts" and not Lacoste.  His siblings were (and still are) all good looking as well, pictures of their three golden catalog smiles were on every table of my aunt's house, and because they were older cousins, I learned important lessons by example: men look good in pink shirts, how to sleep during church service, Grandmother sees everything, and always stand up for others.

Grosgrain ribbon on the inside of the cardigan is harder to find these days. 
It's an older sweater.


He's now a dedicated father who is never to late to anything or too busy for his family, cousins, nieces, nephews, etc.  He never hesitates to help anyone at any hour anyplace.

By evening's end on my last night, I was certain that his outward cool-headedness was here to stay, but I also found it comforting once I had decoded the nearly undetectable manifestations of his inner powder keg. They were still there, but the fuse no longer hissed, and we both accepted the way time turns leaves over, like it or not.

Monday, January 23, 2012

Reader Question: "Hoodies"


Dear YWP,

In general, my beau has an excellent sense of style. While I wouldn’t put him in the cuff-links-and-velvet-blazer category, he owns and wears several very nice shirts, and has good taste in Japanese denim. I am, however, increasingly concerned about his addition to hoodies. Nice shirts can feature spiffy interesting, elegant patterns and lovely collars, but if they’re buried beneath a gray hooded sweatshirt with a silver metal zipper, they will remain significantly underappreciated.

Can you recommend an alternative to the hoodie, something comfortable that can be worn informally when one is out and about? Or should I just accept the superior wearability and perpetual teenaged nature of the hoodie?

Sincerely yours,
New Haven Co-ed


--


Dear New Haven Co-ed,
Nice to hear from you again. My advice is to not push for a cold-turkey termination to his "hoodie".  I would consider replacement therapy and systematic desensitization.  Fewer things are as unflattering and, at times, as demeaning as the zip-front hooded sweatshirt. What better way to insult your date, host, and self all at the same time?  There ARE times when it is appropriate and harmless, but when is ruins the mood, evening, or outing, it may be time to consider upgrading.  When I played sports in high school and college, hooded sweatshirts were perfect, just as they were when the electrician and I crawled through the filthy underside of the house to examine the joists for drilling.  


Almost anything looks better than a hooded sweatshirt on an adult.  Since your beau wears a zip-front garment, I will not stray into any over-the-head types of clothing.  I tried to think of clothes that would allow easy-on/easy-off wearing, opening fronts, versatility, comfort, and warmth.  

A friend of mine wears a hooded sweater as his knock-around outer layer.  Unlike the photo, his is plain.




Another friend wears his waxed vest over EVERYTHING... suits, running clothes, sailing duds, weekend attire... you name it, he'll pair it.


A zip-front sweater might be a sensible upgrade, but it may be a tough sell.  I have long-advocated for curling sweaters, but they can be a little eccentric looking.  I wore mine to a party this winter, and as I stood by my host's magnificent fireplace, his pre-teen daughters giggled at it overtly when they weren't too busy texting, eventually asking me if I was "warm enough".




A cotton jacket is one of the most versatile garments, wearable in a wide range of temperatures and weather. 

  


Another option is the lined shirt or "shirt jacket" as some call it.  I keep one of these at the office, one at home, and one up north for the cool evenings (even during summer).  It's comfortable, warm, and like a zip-front, it is easy to wear and remove.



None of what I have listed above is a style grand-slam, but it will be a good start.  Since this isn't a catty-male style forum, I can be realistic about this.


I would suggest voicing your concern (be cool about it), ask for occasional compromise in the matter, and provide an alternative for him... preferably one that he has approved.  Remember though, if it is not similar in use to the "hoodie" (easy-on/easy-off, opening front, versatile, comfortable, and warm), it will not likely catch on.  He wears it because he likes it, and while some people (myself included) think that this garment often looks horrible on adults, the majority of the population finds them applicable to nearly any setting and situation.  You need to accept it in moderation, but don't settle for it completely.  If you push a guy too much, he will latch on to it out of pride and you'll have to move on in one way or another, with or without him.

Friday, January 20, 2012

Clark Rockefeller




Perhaps because he is in the news lately, I have received numerous emails asking me about him and his life in Boston.  There are several articles in publications around the country that shed some interesting light on the topic, most of which were written between 2009 and 2010.  I wanted to give a slightly different version of the subject for the record, and while it is not salacious or sensational, it is the truth.


Of the misconceptions surrounding Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter and his time in Beacon Hill, I’ll address the most common:

Rockefeller/Gerhartsreiter “infiltrated Boston high society.”
This was a particular favorite sound-bite because it kindled inherent social resentment and the media were quick to gloat.  I have yet to identify the “high society” referred to in the stories, mostly because it does not exist in any of the ways that people like to think it does.  R/G was socially active not by calculating “infiltration”, but because he bought tickets to charity events just like everyone else did and he went to museum and gallery functions just like others did.  Often.  If you donate as little as $25 to certain causes, you get invited to their “galas”, which are often pretentious crap-cuddles (that deserve harsh dissection in a future post).  R/G went to parties and was involved in volunteer committees around the city.  He showed up at a few of my parties as well.

The Rockefeller alias got him access to a world he wanted to be a part of.
This one is subtle, so stay with me.  R/G was not appointed to boards and committees because of his alias.  Like any city, there are plenty of famous lastnames in Boston (and nobody cares), and the reason he was invited to participate in the programming at several institutions is because he had free time and he had an interest and enthusiasm to do it.  If someone can show up for a mid-day meeting to evaluate art submissions to a local gallery, he is likely to have a spot.  He generally dressed pretty well, and he was an indefatigably doting father who attended the local church.  That being said, he was an unlikable goof-ball who forced his (invented) education, family gravitas, and self-anointed cultural authority every chance he got.  He was generally disliked socially, but I know several people who say that while he was a laughably pretentious twit, he would work nicely to put together events and parties for people. 

Here is the important part:  Very few people cared about his supposed lastname.  He would introduce himself as “Clark ROCKefeller”, over-articulating the lastname to drive the point home.  99% percent of women who met him left feeling creeped out more than anything.  I, like my friends, had no reason to doubt his claim, and felt that he was just another trust-fund man-child who was clearly coasting on his family reputation, having done nothing on his own of measurable worth.  There are PLENTY of those types around already.  Nobody likes a snotty prick, but new batches of them surface every few years, burn through their good-natured neighbors, occasionally break some hearts or bank accounts, and ultimately move away in disgrace.  Between his staggeringly ludicrous lies at parties, most had him pegged as a liar pretty quickly in terms of his claimed achievements, but most had (as I did) no reason to doubt the name he used.  It is important to realize that even in the perceived "high society" circles, there are still droves of young losers and cads, drifting aimlessly and squandering family money, soiling the coattails of their hard-working ancestors who provided the largess. 


His claims were beyond dubious.  He regularly told people that besides consulting for NASA on cutting-edged propulsion technology, he was a counter-espionage consultant to the CIA, all while "assembling one of the country's greatest art collections" in his spare time.  He also, never disclosed his class year at one of the several schools he claimed to have attended, so most people thought that he had been a drop-out.  He was also snobbish the way a movie caricature would be, with the comically lilting swish in his speech, half-closing his eyes as he uttered something dismissive from his up-turned nose about wine or about Dutch portraitists.  At a party I hosted (NOT in my home, thank God), he trotted around the function telling women that he was “a widower”, though his estranged wife was still clearly alive.

His wife had been hoodwinked by him
Many in Boston have their doubts about this one.  His wife was an MBA workaholic with an impressive paycheck from a behemoth consulting firm.  Several websites interestingly accused her of being a bigger con-artist than he, as she had apparently advised in her professional capacity that the world financial markets were stable and worthy of further investments… in 2006 and 2007!  I assume that she is horribly embarrassed by the entire ordeal, but she had to have ignored hundreds of red-flags along the way to get where she had with him.  As for the accuracy of her world financial forecasts, history has already dealt her credibility a cruel check.

His role as a father
Of all the fakery he constructed, and all of the pompous non-sense he spouted, one thing that was real was (and likely still is) his love for his child.  He was a fixture around Charles St., tweed jacket or blazer, hand-in-hand with his daughter going in and out of markets and stores.  He dressed her well and he was envied by many other fathers who would have also liked to spend their days with their children instead of working at offices.  The unsanctioned flight to Baltimore with his daughter likely had little to do with his alias and his general jack-assery, and probably had mostly to do with his desperation and love for his daughter combined with his lack of sound judgment.

R/G was liked and accepted
In a few cases he had friends, but most people who met him distanced themselves from him when he turned on the stupid snob-act.  “Oh God… here comes Clark Rockefeller” was a common saying accompanied by two or more people rolling their eyes at parties, pubs, restaurants, and events as he approached. To most he was an eccentric braggart who was tolerated more than liked, but who was also often avoided. 

One normal friend of mine was invited to his house for “some food and to examine the art collection he was considering donating”.  As an artist, she hesitantly accepted.  His spacious Beacon St. house was empty of furniture, save several cardboard boxes and crates, and he treated her to a dinner of white rice (from a rice cooker) and a few slices of deli meats on a paper plate… no utensils.

Not a single person reading this blog would have been fooled by the claims of achievement R/G made regularly had you had the odd experience of meeting him.  You would have found him immediately to be a boob with few redeeming qualities.

While his story has entered into the Hollywood-caliber pages of history, it is not unique.  I can think of at least a dozen people I dread seeing at parties because of their gas-bag personas, their relentless name dropping, and their toxic social climbing.  Yes… I get it… you went to [Ivy-league institution]… you’ve mentioned it six times during this conversation.  Nobody cares.  Yes… we’ve heard about your family estate in on the coast… nobody cares, and you’re also a terrible neighbor… go back to hitting on the twenty-somethings.  While R/G certainly had a more interesting back-story, he was hardly the first puffed-up self-aggrandizing buffoon to hang around at museum and library foundation parties telling people about his privilege… and he will certainly not be the last.    

Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Loafers and Loaves


 A new pair of loafers arrived in the mail, and were immediately returned-to-sender... they hurt in a way that I recognized, and I knew that they would never be broken-in.  I would go into detail, but I've been bad-mouthing the company enough lately.  On the walk home from the waterfront, I found this new hidden bakery off of Hanover St.

 
An alley hidden in plain sight. 



A stroll down the tiny passageway. 

Go in the door, and take the stairs down.


Excellent bread.  A full bag cost me $3.

The alley out.

Hard to find.  Well worth it.


----


The North End is also home to the "Skinny House"... one of America's famous spite houses.  I can identify with this type of operation.  There is often a pleasantly bitter taste is petty retribution... like the flavor of Angostura, but mixed with smug self-satisfaction and shaken with ice.


Sunday, January 15, 2012

Ralph Lauren Gets It Wrong


The crest on a velvet jacket at Ralph Lauren's store in Boston a few days ago.






Polo Ralph Lauren was established in 1968*.  However, when they "borrowed" King Henry VIII's crest for one of their velvet jackets, someone got the banner wrong when they printed "MCMLXII". "1962"  
The crown is a hilarious touch.


Henry VIII's crest.

Fleur de Lis in threes and Leo in Trio.

For all the time and money they spend, they can't even come up with their own fake crests?  They have resorted to stealing those from the likes of Eton and others.  Emulating is one thing, but thievery is another... besides, I'm sure that Henry VIII would have been able to correctly write his Roman numerals. 

For the record, I rarely take crests seriously.



-----



I have clothing with the little horse on it, and I don't really mind that small quantity.  


But "RL" on your slippers?  Your name better be "Randolph Lattersly" or something similar. Why not put his initials on your stationary as well, or just go all the way and legally change your name?  Maybe you're actually a descendant of Marco Polo, in which case, I'll shut my mouth.



*There are conflicting reports as to when the company was founded, possibly mincing the actual incorporation with the concept launch.  I go with the business documents that all say 1968.

Friday, January 13, 2012

Foul Weather and Wearing Day-Glo




A reader recently emailed me about this photo:


He asked why I thought "that neon [was] still possible on any man after 1988".  While these socks are bright, they don't quite qualify as neon/Day-Glo/Hi-Viz, or any of the other industrial names associated with safety and visibility.  It's good to get a little peppy (I said peppy, not preppy) with the clothing now and then, but I must respond with an answer that will twist the stomachs of the holier-than-thou.  These colors are meant to draw attention to themselves for increased visibility.  I see this color very often in my daily life as well, and the most common uses span every strata on the "cares about what they wear" index.  Stay with me on this one... I'll come back...

-Police officers and road crews wear them for obvious reasons... SAFETY.  Anything that gains someone an additional second or two to avoid being plowed into while managing our infrastructure is fine with me.  This is an appropriate industrial application.  The yellowish/green version has been common in Europe for a while, and has only recently replaced the high-visibility orange once favored industrially in America.  Stay with me here...




-My neighbor (a technology entrepreneur) wears this color while bicycling to his swank office everyday.  Again, he is interested in arriving to work in a state of not having been killed.


Now, on to the meat of it.  I ended up wearing said color yesterday after the wind and pouring rain worked my wax-cloth jacket beyond capacity.  Actually, only the hood of my jacket was the hue in question.

---Wax-cloth jacket and LL Bean Jones Cap... good for light rain---

When a little drizzle with some wind is the forecast, the wax-cloth can suit you well.  When the wind picks up enough to destroy most umbrellas, if you are doing more than just running from car to building, a heavier jacket is needed.  The off-shore and coastal sailing jackets come out and that is when you start to see neon.  You can often see men with nice shirts and ties dashing through the financial district with their neon yellow hoods over their heads and suits, having given up on their long Brooks Brothers raincoats.

The hoods are neon because when you fall in the water, only your hood and cuffs are visible.  On the deck of a boat, the neon hood lets you quickly see where all of the vulnerable craniums are.


When the weather get REALLY ugly, all style bets are off.  The tall soft-fleece collar feels nice around the ears, the jacket is warm, the fleece-lined pockets are deep, and the wearer is guaranteed to not get one drop of wind-driven rain on his clothing underneath.  Is it stylish? Not really.  Am I asking questions and then answering them myself?  Yes.  Yes I am.  

W HYDROPOWER RIGGING COAT

If you are the pretentious type who wants to advertise to everyone that you have experience with boats, you can rest assured that your branding message will be driven home because of your offshore jacket (the same way people do with their ski jackets).  So there you have it... either someone is wearing the neon hood to draw attention to themselves about their boating skills or they want to stay dry and they don't care how odd they may look in it. Two opposite approaches under the same ugly neon hood, and you'll have to decide into which category they fall.


Also, if you enjoy genuine blogs that capture the visceral joy of sailing, you'll love Earwigoagin.

Tuesday, January 10, 2012

What is Really Worn: More Preparatory School Myths

As Massachusetts is a hotbed of excellent schools, I thought I would continue my series of reality-based blogging.  I excluded the co-ed schools, because the fetishistic mythology in the blogosphere seems to wax delusional about boys-only academies in particular.  Brooks Brothers and Ralph Lauren imagery is happily absorbed and regurgitated as factual in the same way the Barbour catalog scenery is assumed to be real and on-going if one just knew the right person and could just get the right invitation to join.  Again, it's mostly nonsense.  Private schools very often make horrible decisions like everyone else.


Criteria for my research:

1. Had to be a private boys-only school

2. Had to have a daily jacket and tie requirement

3. Had to be in Massachusetts



...just in case anybody thought that this kind of stuff is real.




What is overwhelmingly the most popular style of shoe for young lads at the best Massachusetts boys-only schools?

I'm not joking. Boat shoes are a distant second, but suede bucks, loafers, or more English style lace-up shoes are rare.  I'm not saying that this is bad either, I'm pointing it out to dispel some of the  misunderstandings.  I was recently told via email that I was wrong because the information I was conveying was not corroborated by 1980's "preppy" movies and did not have specific mention in The Official Preppy Handbook, an eye-rolling chuckle that is now decades old but still referenced piously as manifesto  by young perverts.  I own a copy of several birding handbooks, but I don't dress like the birds in the descriptions... same for my mushroom handbook.

Monday, January 9, 2012

Winter Firewood Wear and Warm Drafts




Just in time for the warmish weather snap, the firewood arrived (the above photos are not mine). For the house in the city, I can get through just about half of a cord... maybe 3/4 of a cord.  Between travel and a reconfigured heating circulator, burning through a full cord in one winter is almost impossible for me.  Swinging a new Estwing one-piece into the nicely seasoned hardwood gives the shoulders and hands a familiar sensation... a youth and young adulthood spent swinging an axe regularly.  Getting to know the season of each round rested on the splitting stump, practicing the angles, the accuracy, the solitude and the strange intimacy that comes from repetition and focus. Start the task with a jacket, shift into sweater, then rolled sleeves, and occasionally into a tee shirt in the snow.  The number of garments removed correlate directly to the length of time splitting.  My father used to say "come back in when you've worked yourself down to your shirt."  I would put the axe and the maul into the bench-vise and sharpen the edges with the hand-stone, wiping them with a slightly oiled rag.

These days, after the wood is delivered to the city, several neighbors come by to take their share of the stack, and though they all pitch in to the order, cherry-picking is not allowed.  We all haul the wood into each other's houses, sometimes hoisted by gantline to top floors, sometimes stacking it into basements, but always ending with a neighborly glass together.


My 1/2 cord stacked in the courtyard (above) with a sweatshirt over cuff-links (below). 


Every winter, I buy my wood from a professional woodsman in-state.  He wears old running shoes, a Boston College Eagles Footlball sweatshirt, and regular jeans.  He's young, and makes his living cutting trees, milling them into planks or cutting them into rounds, and even splitting them.  He doesn't wear silly $80 flannel shirts, and he sure as hell does not wear $350 boots.  He recently had to hire two other guys because his hard work has been paying off.  I imagine he has no use for the trendy Urban Lumberjerk.  

----

Later that evening, an annual black-tie party in the city with some showy socks on my feet.


Slightly obnoxious

In New England winters, one stands or sits in front of the heating vents in the drafty old city houses, and lets the warm air get very familiar with your lowers.  C'mon... it works.  


In Northeastern winters, a bundle of four or five split hardwood log segments is an acceptable gift to bring to a party, if you are tired of bringing wine... just make sure that your host has a method for burning the logs.

-----





Wet socks, gloves, hats, and kitchen towels steam and then stiffen at the fireside, a fireside made possible by genuine honest-to-goodness woodsmen who don't own or wear foolish designer outdoorsman outfits.  

Thursday, January 5, 2012

Dumb Trends that Endure, and How Southern Women Can Save Us


Fashion is for people with no style, it is often said.  On the near-empty subway home from a very pleasant dinner of sushi and martinis, I sat next to an abandoned copy of GQ (January 2012 issue), and started spinning through it.  To my schadenfreudian pleasure, I saw that it was still borderline useless, designed by man-boys for the specific consumption by other man-children. 

Look very closely at the images below.  If you have a pulse and are awake while viewing these pictures, you will see that the trend clobbers your style sense with its ugly style agenda.













There is nothing wrong with socklessness in moderation, but the high-water/pegged cuff-with-dress shoes trend is just that: a trend.  And it's dumb. Very dumb.  It's for children and not for men.  It was almost charming when young Londoners did it in the 60's, and it was almost funny when Pee-Wee Herman did it in the 80's, but today it still looks dumb.  I try to avoid saying that this or that is right or wrong, but many trends can generally be dismissed out of hand as suspect at best, and subversive at worst.

Not that this should come as a surprise within the pages of "men's" magazines... especially when they are publications that encourage men to undertake grotesque body-building (unrelated to athleticism, by the way), practice sporadic abstinence with shaving, and to pain endlessly to achieve a pseudo bed-head hair style.  I generally tend to be laissez faire when it comes to style, preferring that people do and wear what they like if it is no harm to me, but when it becomes wedged down one's throat, my hackles get crackled. 

Consider this "fashion advice" from their long-running column:



Since a bow tie conceals the collar points, I find this advice especially moronic. Below, I have a spread collar with a bow tie... what's the problem?

  

 
"YWP, If you don't always like GQ, don't read it."  An appropriate suggestion since I just said "laissez faire" a few lines ago, but it goes deeper than that.  It is clear that there is a resurgence in style-hungry young men, and like you, I quietly bristle (as unsanctimoniously as possible) at that to which these eyes turn.  Should they be looking to blogs?  Maybe as a last resort.  Magazines? No.  They should have been guided by an older generation of fathers, grandfathers, brothers, uncles, teachers, and even public figures.  Further, they should be guided (by insistence) by mothers, sisters, girlfriends, and wives.

Southern women are the best for this... they lay it out plainly about what their boys and men should wear, how they should act, etc., and they stubbornly adhere to their expectations in a way that is always refreshing and appropriate.  I always love spending time in the Mid-Atlantic and South for this reason.  They insist that men dress and behave in a certain way, and it pays off.  As a Yankee (who married a Yankee) who travels several times per month, I assure you that the contrast is vivid.  That is not to say that there are not appropriately strong-willed and exceedingly hospitable women elsewhere who refuse to abdicate to lower standards.  In New England there are many, and I imagine that it comes from family, school, friends, or any combination of those, or even from an innate sense of self-assuredness and certainty of how they choose to interact with the world (a nod to the Fowler sisters, M.F and K.F.).


In Boston, men will pretend to sleep or read on the subways and buses to avoid giving their seats to the elderly, the injured, or even very pregnant women.  When the offense becomes too glaring, it will normally be the smartly dressed gal with a sweet southern lilt (student or transplant) who will be the first to insist that "At least one of you able-bodied men will SURELY give you seat to this woman."

My close friend with three girls says that if he had three sons, he could only teach three boys how to behave... but with three daughters he can teach the whole town... and he lives in Maine.  Sound philosophy.