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Volume 11, Number 27 | August 15, 2019
INKED Maybe a little late to the party, but here to stay
By Jeanne Souldern Sopris Sun Correspondent My birthday is in August, and with true Leo fashion, I give myself a present every year. I do that because I know I will always get something I like. That way, it is never a disappointing birthday. I started thinking of what might be meaningful for my 66th birthday. Last November, I moved to Carbondale from Minneapolis, and I wanted something that made a statement about my new home. One noticeable thing here is the number of tattoos. Carbondale loves its ink. I have thought about getting my first tattoo for a couple of years and had a design in mind. It was a lioness. In my mind’s eye, she always had a calm and fearless look. It was an image I gravitated to because it portrayed the opposite of my own reality of dealing with the issues of anxiety and depression. That is one thing most tattoo artists will tell you. A tattoo is a form of self-expression. It can serve as a mantra of who you aspire to be. It can also serve as a reminder of how you want to present yourself to the world. In my younger days in the Midwest, I had a 20+ year career in banking. Tattoos were taboo in the conservative work environment, but my banking days are behind me. The more I thought about it, the more I wanted to get a tattoo. One day, I stopped into Defiance Social Club at 234 Main St. Tattoo artist Matt. E. Hayes greeted me and I asked questions about tattoos. I asked about where on the body it is less painful to get tattooed. He assured me that fleshy parts of the body and not directly over bones is a less painful process. I had concerns about how sanitary the process is and Matt said they now use disposable, one-time use only tubes, as opposed to the days when tubes were run through an autoclave for sterilization. And, yes, I asked the obvious question for someone of my age — what about sagging skin? He said skin does lose its elasticity as we get older, but that it was my decision on where on my body I would want my tattoo. I talked to my acupuncturist, Dr. Kelsey Cotter of Kelsey Healing Arts in Carbondale, who told me the story of Ötzi the Iceman, whose mummified remains — discovered in 1991 in the Ötzal Alps — had multiple tattoos. Scientists mapped 61 of them. Archaeological evidence revealed that Ötzi, who died in about 3300 B.C.E. Continued on page 6.
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