A little bit of style goes a long way. . .

A little bit of care put into your personal appearance goes a long way. And you don't even need to be as pressed and starched as Don Draper (played by John Hamm) from Mad Men.

“Since the time it was introduced in the seventeenth century, the modern suit has been about two things: power and sex. If you doubt us, try this simple experiment. Some evening, go to a nice hotel bar where you don’t know anyone, wearing jeans and a t-shirt. The jeans don’t even have to have holes in them, and the t-shirt can be clean. Now, return to the same bar the next evening wearing a nice suit. Take note of the difference in reaction from the bartender and of the other patrons in the bar. Remember them.” - Esquire Style Handbook

Well, I don't know about the power and sex bit. But, I have noticed how a blazer or sports jacket with a clean shirt, a clean pair of jeans worn with a belt, and some kind of LEATHER shoes (or even cowboy boots), to say nothing of a suit and tie, still wakes people up and gets them to pay attention. Fast.

Service people of all stripes snap to it quickly. And everyone else you cross paths with -- women in particular, though my wife refuses to believe me -- will react much more favorably to a guy who looks like he's got his act together than might otherwise be the case. I've experienced this everywhere from university campuses to airports, on planes and in trains, from Barnes&Noble bookstores to the hospital, from large cities to small towns.

It's amazing how just a smidgeon of care about -- and effort put into -- one's personal appearance and the message it conveys will grease the wheels of life. Considerably. Try it yourself and see.

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Up North Style. . .

Bad Dad makes a friend. YMP and Bad Dad on the shores of Lake Michigan. Or was that Crystal Lake? The Grand Duchess takes a selfie in her kayak. How NOT to impress the girls sunning themselves along the river. YMP and Bad Dad kayaking on the Platte River headed toward Loon Lake. J ust back from a week in Northern Michigan in a charming and spacious house on the banks of the Betsie River outside of Thompsonville. A largely pleasant seven days despite some challenging episodes with the Young Master, who has picked up some very questionable habits and language from his friends in the 8th Grade during the school year just ended. But otherwise, we enjoyed ourselves and contemplated remaining for a few days longer since the house was available. In the end, we decided to return home as planned originally since neither my wife, nor I wanted to spend the remaining days chained to our computers in Zoom meetings from our vacation destination. I actually managed to leave the laptop and ip

Mid-June Thursday Style. . .

A nother pretty typical variation on the theme for late spring, summer, and very early fall. I'm a huge fan of Madras and have several such shirts in the seasonal rotation. Lightweight, exceedingly comfortable, and even dressy when pressed and tucked in, which is the usual way of things here at Totleigh in the Wold. Now, if I had my druthers, I'd still rather be skiing the trails in the upper half of "The Mitten" (of Michigan), in the Upper Peninsula, or Ontario. But summers ain't so bad either, and I'd look pretty funny walking around in cross-country ski attire during June. -- Heinz-Ulrich

A Lazy Saturday at the End of June. . .

A sleepy first half of the weekend here at Totleigh. Warmer and quite humid ahead of an approaching cool front here in Mid-Michigan. Perfect for yet another pair of chino shorts an a seersucker shirt -- tucked in of course -- with the usual leather deck shoes and ribbon belt. Otherwise, not much accomplished beyond a page or so of writing and monkeying around with audio settings for an upcoming podcast episode. However, I was not completely useless yesterday! I made a huge fruit salad for dinner, which the Grand Duchess and I enjoyed a short while later at the table on the back porch. The Young Master, as is his wont on Saturday evenings, took his dinner on a tray in the TV room upstairs where he whiled away a couple of hours on Flight Simulator, flying some sort of commercial airliner to some destination across the Atlantic or Pacific. I would have loved that sort of technology at about nine or 10 way back during the late 1970s, aka The Stone Age. As it is, my sister and

Classic Style

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