City Voices

CONNELL SANDERS

Sage & Grace offers safe hair care options for expecting moms

Sarah Connell Sanders

Special to Worcester Magazine | USA TODAY NETWORK

One thing about being a pregnant lady is that people have lots of opinions on my body. I’ve noticed that if I wait in the Honey Farms checkout line long enough, strangers will take it upon themselves to tell me what I should be putting in my body and on my body.

Here’s where I stand. Unless your name is Justin Randall Timberlake, I don’t need you to tell me how to rock my body and I especially don’t need you to touch my body without permission. Please let me buy my cheddar cheese Combos and eat them in peace.

I’ve taken certain prenatal restrictions more seriously than others. For example, occasional morsels of unpasteurized cheese have passed through my lips over the last eight months. “Just pretend I’m a French woman,” I instruct any concerned parties in my presence. Nevertheless, I abstain from raw fish, alcohol, cold cuts, and balance beams. I have even put off going to the salon since I found out I was pregnant.

With a handful of formal events approaching and the equivalent of a three-pound cabbage swimming just below the surface of my naval, I am in dire need of some glam. One of my friends recommended I try an organic salon called Sage & Grace to keep my baby and me healthy and free from chemicals.

Sage & Grace opened at 218 Shrewsbury St. about six weeks ago, but owner Brittany Danna McGlone has been in business for nearly a decade. The new space embodies her vegan values, flush with botanical murals on the walls and plenty of nourishing sunlight. Sage & Grace only works with products free from sulfates, parabens, synthetic fragrance and sodium chloride.

On my first visit, stylist Kelsey Bailey applied a partial foil to brighten up my highlights while McGlone worked with a 5-year-old client across the way, dying her little locks vibrant shades of green — fitting, given her environmentally-conscious business model.

“We have a lot of adorable kids come in here,” Bailey told me. “Parents appreciate our high standards when it comes to avoiding toxic chemicals and carcinogens.”

Bailey explained that my color might take a bit longer to process than I was used to. She brought me a steaming cup of peach tea while I waited with a good book. I was in and out of her chair for wash, cut, and color in under three hours — quick, by my standards. I loved the depth of her workmanship and the bright natural tones she had summoned on my scalp. “Our organic products offer me more control,” she said, adding, “I’ve become a real student of the color wheel.”

When I got the bill, I was surprised by Bailey’s very reasonable “junior stylist” rates, given the high-quality services I had just received. I decided to treat myself to bottles of the plant-based Neuma shampoo and conditioner she had recommended. It felt wonderful to do something nice for myself, free of judgment.

Despite Sage & Grace's strong ethos, no one tried to push a vegan lifestyle on me or tell me what was best for my pregnancy. They simply made me feel well cared for. Nothing rocks my body like that kind of respect.

Sage & Grace is open Tuesday through Saturday for hair, nails, and makeup. Call to make an appointment at (508) 752-1727.

Organic salon Sage & Grace opened at 218 Shrewsbury Street six weeks ago. SARAH CONNELL

SANDERS/SPECIAL TO WORCESTER MAGAZINE

Fox

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confused up-and-down look, to which Joslyn replies with a wink and a conspiratorial smile.

Joslyn says he remembers thinking, “’I hope that’s the scene they go with.’ I thought it was cute. It was pure magic, it just happened, we never had any verbal interaction with each other, so to me that nonverbal communication was important.”

The scene – which also features Boston rocker Gene Dante as a singer in drag – is crowded and busy, but, the brief interaction is actually kind of important: It symbolizes Julia’s entrance into a world in which she’s well outside her comfort zone, a theme of the episode as she wrestles with sudden celebrity. For Joslyn, the experience was something also a little outside his normal experience.

“I had my experience doing ‘RuPaul’s Drag Race,’” he says, “so there was kind of an air of being familiar to production side, but it’s interesting: I still felt like the new kid … It was very humbling, of course. It was kind of a neat experience to feel like this is different than what I’ve done before ... I remember I was shaking, I was sweating I was so nervous. I sweat all my makeup off. They had to bring me to the makeup artist to redo my makeup.”

Although the part was small, that doesn’t mean it was quick: Joslyn had to drive to Boston for a COVID-19 test before every step, including for costume fittings and rehearsal. Still, he found even the seemingly routine parts of the job were interesting.

“I did my fitting,” he recounts. “I tried on a lot of dresses, and eventually found the one I was going to wear for the shooting. It was a really cool experience, sitting in front of the mirror, trying on this dress, pinching sides so a tailor can make it fit me. It was the kind of experience that a typical actor would have for a movie or a TV show.”

Does this mean there’s more TV or live drag performances in his future? Possibly, but they’ll have to happen when the WooSox are away, because his job DJing music at WooSox games has become not just a priority, but a passion.

“The fun is,” says Joslyn, “I have to play certain songs when something happens. If they score a double, I play the song ‘It Takes Two’ (by Rob Base & DJ E-Z Rock). There are a lot of puns … I love to play those kind of ‘gear up’ songs, when a batter is walking up to the plate. I want to get them amped up, but I know it gets the whole crowd amped up, too.”

For Joslyn, the Polar Park gig is about more than just the game.

“When I was a kid,” says Joslyn, “I used to go to the Ice Cats game every (week). I remember whenever the music was playing and thinking, ‘My goodness, wouldn’t it be so fun to play songs that make this place sing along or dance along,’ so essentially, it’s always been my dream job … I really do love it. It’s been a long time since I’ve had a job that I loved that much.”

BAD ADVICE

A scene from “Dead Poets Society.” BUENA VISTA PICTURES DISTRIBUTION

Considering teaching as a career change

Shaun Connolly

Special to Worcester Magazine USA TODAY NETWORK

DEAR SHAUN: I have worked in market research for the last 15 years. Between the pandemic and having to work from home, already having the sensation of selling out my soul, and feeling stuck in the middle of a corporate ladder, I have been seriously considering a career change. I have been considering getting into teaching. I actually studied education as a minor in college and think this could be a great way to give back to my community, get a new job, and work on a new future for myself.

DEAR JOHN KEATING (THE TEACHER FROM DEAD POETS’ SOCIETY): O, captain, my captain our fearful trip is done. The ship has weather'd every rack, the prize we sought is won. I know when people think of teaching they think of how much they loved their favorite teacher. They think of scenes like the students reciting Walt Whitman to Robin Williams. Or you may think of Edward James Olmos getting a bunch of Mexican-American teens to love math. Or maybe even Tina Fey rolling her eyes at a bunch of very mean girls. However you remember it when you are trying to convince yourself that you may like teaching, you must also remind yourself that for every good memory you have about education and teaching there are also 1,000 that your mind chose to forget. You most likely had a teacher shame you in front of the class, or not give a point or two extra to help you pass a test or pile homework on you and not give you the extension because you have a lot on your plate. Know that the teacher never did any of that out of spite or to hurt you. They most likely were just burnt out and had a moment of human weakness. Teachers are always working when they are not working. Especially with how easy it is to contact anyone all the time, teachers are constantly being asked questions or grading or calling someone because they are concerned about

FIRST PERSON

These are times that merit a spiritual pilgrimage

Richard Klayman

Special to Worcester Magazine USA TODAY NETWORK

Sometimes we need a spiritual pilgrimage, when we are lost or almost lost, out there in space, away from Trump, crypto, COVID-19 and especially Putin. We need to restore ourselves, and a pilgrimage for ourselves and to ourselves, however long it may be is exactly what we need. But what does a pilgrimage actually mean? It may mean getting us back to whom we are, truly, undetermined by all that just happens to us. It is to restore us from that little bit of a world, forever, at war. That is as much of a pilgrimage as anything we can construe. It returns us, to home or far from home, maybe in a straight or easily discernable line, or some long way, unmistakably, from all we knew. How did we ever get so lost to begin with?

Ah, that is for us, and the world to decide; but we endure, entrapped.

Sometimes we cannot help it.

Look at Franklin Roosevelt, locked in combat with Hitler in World War II.

During World War II, Franklin Roosevelt used the presidential yacht, the USS Potomac, to contemplate the war and relax, as well as he might. But now U-boats haunted the Atlantic and Roosevelt required his own spiritual pilgrimage. He visited a place 100 miles from Washington, located in the Catoctin Mountains of western Maryland, and this became his respite, a place with streams in which he could casually cast a line. In a photo, Winston Churchill visited him and there was Roosevelt, in thought, and a spinning rod, but engaged in struggle for the world.

Before it later became known as Camp David, named by President Eisenhower after his grandson, but not before Roosevelt called it by another name, after reading the best selling book and named it Shangri-La. Using James Hilton’s novel, “Lost Horizon,” published in 1933, maybe Franklin Roosevelt had an alternate name for the Presidential retreat, and all the magical thinking the book proposed, located not in the Alps, but outside Washington, to offer a dream, just a bit.

Maybe that is what a pilgrimage is all

See FIRST PERSON, Page 13

Maybe that is what a pilgrimage is all about: we lost and regained a piece of ourselves. Just another sketch of who we are or thought of ourselves, just a speck of someone like us: again, essentially cajoled from the soul but timidly unsure as to how to proceed. JILL WELLINGTON

POETRY TOWN

‘Name Those Worcester Hills’

A view down Greenhill Parkway and the hill beyond. CHRISTINE PETERSON/TELEGRAM &

GAZETTE

John Gaumond

Special to Worcester Magazine USA TODAY NETWORK

Folks who live in Worcester know hills, and they tell me there are seven. When I ask seven different people to name those seven hills, I get seven different answers. So, I do a little scholarly research. Seems that two hundred years ago, only three of those hills had names: Boggachoag, Millstone, and Tatnuck. Ah, Tatnuck, there’s one we all recognize. Let’s not get too excited because, twenty-five years later, Tatnuck does not appear on a list of eight. Yup, eight hills. Boggachoag is renamed Pakachoag and we get Newton, Chandler, Fairmount, Kendall, Sunnyside, and SAGATABSCOT. Now, there’s a name to remember. What’s the big deal if it’s eight, instead of seven? Let’s not make a mountain out of a mere hill. But that’s what Donald Tullock did in 1914 In his History of Worcester, where he named fifteen hills. Can you believe … fifteen? He includes Bancroft Heights and Mount Ararat. Topographic technicalities – to be sure. Fairmount becomes Messenger, And Tatnuck is back as Parker. Newcomers are Bigelow, Hancock, Wigwam, Winter, Green and Oak. Pakachoag, Chandler, Millstone, Newton stay, and so does SAGATABSCOT.

Then, in 1932, Mr. U. Waldo Cutler of the Chamber of Commerce rolls the first seven in this Name-a-Worcester Hill game. He decides Bancroft is a hill … not a height. What a relief! He holds onto Pakachoag, Chandler, Hancock, and Newton, changes Millstone to Green, and says that good old SAGATABSCOT should really be called Union. Voilà! Finally, we have the SEVEN! In alphabetical order they are: Bancroft, Chandler, Green, Hancock, Newton, Pakachoag, and Union. But wait! This game ain’t over. Five years later, William Lincoln agrees with the number, but not the names.

He keeps Chandler and Pakachoag, resurrects Oak, Winter, and Wigwam and turns Green back to Millstone and whatdya think happens to Union? You guessed it … back to SAGATABSCOT.

Sid McKeen, a Worcester Telegram and Gazette columnist, decides in 1977 that U. Waldo Cutler had six of the seven right, but Pakachoag should be called Mount Saint James or College Hill. So, again we got seven. Only problem is, there’s one hill with two names. Wait a minute! Here’s an idea!

How about we give seven names to one hill? That would end the confusion, except we probably could not agree on which hill, or what’s worse, which seven names. If, after this, any of you might wanna play “Name Those Worcester Hills,” here are some I ain’t even mentioned: Airport, Bell, Belmont, Boynton, Burncoat, Crown, Dead Horse, Dungarvin, Grafton, Hermitage, Indian, Laurel, Lincoln, Moreland, Rattlesnake, St. Anne’s, Vernon, and Poet. So, I wonda if on Poet Hill they say stuff like: “A hill is a hill is a hill or a hill by any other name is still a hill.” John Gaumond is a poet and photographer living in Worcester.

First person

Continued from Page 11

about: we lost and regained a piece of ourselves. Just another sketch of who we are or thought of ourselves, just a speck of someone like us: again, essentially cajoled from the soul but timidly unsure as to how to proceed.

Maybe we are can take the pilgrimage plunge without going anywhere?

Why not? We may do this anytime, anywhere. We are essentially there, one might reflect. There is no mysterious valley to be unearthed. No sea to chart a different course. No magical city up there, in the midst. There is nothing, however, lofty or grand to be observed. Can we just plod along? Is that not a pilgrimage, too? We use the world but do not consecrate it, or alter what our humble day and every other moment is about; this is a pilgrimage, too.

Surely, wherever you think you may have been, every pilgrimage takes you back home, or around a would-be home where every spirit or inclination is rooted. So true, home is where it all began. It is your “core,” an assessment of our mentality, stretched out in our minds and eyes. Yes, back to the roots.

Did not Henry David Thoreau see ourselves transcending all of this in an earlier age; again, searching for who we are by reclaiming our position in the world?

A spiritual pilgrimage is not something that occurs in and out of our politics. Sure, at Camps David, President Eisenhower meet Nikita Khrushchev, and President Jimmy Carter courted Sadat and Begin, and even President George W. Bush saw something in the eyes of Putin, too. Maybe that happened, too. Episodes involving President Kennedy and the Bay of Pigs, President Ronald Reagan hosting Margaret Thatcher, these too, captured what Franklin Roosevelt unearthed in his search of a fragmented spirit.

We need journeys to restore us, keep us young, make us see what we ignore, make us see what is truly and immediately there, and-maybe return us to our place.

Maybe we need a pilgrimage right now, when our balance in the world is anything but sane; right now, in the absence distance places from which we have gotten lost.

Maybe it is about it is about you and me.

Shangri-la was associated with a lost pilgrimage, clearly a spiritual pilgrimage, and a fantastic story, something that we in America need right now. Biden and all the other players in Ukraine and Russia, and our allies in Europe, might find it useful to draw on an endless conversation to resume and, somehow, recover.

Unlike Shangri-La, we do not need to live forever in some extended time.

But a touch of Shangri-la might work, too.

Richard Klayman, PhD., Emeritus, taught at Bunker Hill Community College and the author of “The First Jew: Prejudice and Politics in an American Community, 1900-1932.”

Bad advice

Continued from Page 11

their well-being or progress. Sure summers are free, but when I used to teach I coached three sports, ran the drama club and taught over the summer, just to make ends meet. I’m no longer teaching and I am happy about that. I miss the fun stuff, I definitely look back at my time teaching and think of it fondly and miss it from time to time. But then I remember getting roasted by teens on a regular basis, getting disciplined by a principal who hasn’t taught in 10 years and doesn’t remember how hard it can be, or just crying in the bathroom because a kid said I looked like Jimmy Neutron if he was sad. I get being in a dead end job and wanting to do more. But some teachers feel like they are doing that right now. Maybe you do go and teach kids, but inspire them differently. Maybe they all stand on their desk chairs in solidarity and recite the specifics of your teaching contract about time off and the necessity of mental health. That would bring a tear to my eye.

Worcester comedian Shaun Connolly provides readers bad advice in his weekly column. Send your questions to woocomedyweek@gmail.com.

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