My wife enjoys that program, and I sometimes watch it with her in order to spend more time together, despite the fact I don't really enjoy it. Let me pose a question: What is with all the dipshit names? Babe, Kendall, Spike?

Also, with regard to hair extensions, I think I know why they're so popular: Men can't distinguish between hair extensions and real hair. Women (and probably gay dudes) can, somehow, but we can't (I have never, even one time in my life, been able to indentify a person as wearing hair extensions; I'm forced to take it on faith that such things even exist). Yet my wife can spot them a mile off. But my wife's isn't part of the target audience for hair extensions, while I am. And they fool us men just fine, which is what they're supposed to do. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

I love Camille Pagilia's editorials. However, she is still spouting the old Vietnam War histories. South Vietnam was conquered my conventional military forces supplied by the Russians in 1975. Americans won every battle against the RVN and NVA. The biggest problem was our politicians would not allow us to attack the Ho Chi Minh Trail, and strike military industrial targets in the North.

In Vietnam, we won the war but lost the warl politically.

In Iraq, we need to cut off the head of Iran and Syria. Instead, we are using the military strategy of Vietnam Redeux.

WWII we destroyed the enemy.

Please, Camiille, get your historical facts correct.

Kurt Olney

Vista, California

Camille, love your column. But in regards to an African American soap, NBC attempted one in '89 called Generations. The cast wasn't all black, but many of the characters were, as was the central family. Don't remember it being very good, as it barely lasted two years. But Passions, as silly as it is, has the most diverse cast on daytime soaps.

Dear Camille;

Your proposed re-valorization of the trades needs a reality check. I’m a recent Vassar grad who worked for seven months in the field of commercial masonry before I got fed up and quit. The people with whom I worked had been getting fed up for decades, but couldn't quit because they had little or no prospects anywhere else. It's telling that calls for a re-valorization in your letter and in your chosen responders all come from people in education, not tradesmen themselves. Why is that?

In the first days of the job I felt new energy coursing through my veins. Rising with the sun, feeling scabs bud on my palms, and slurping coffee on the tailgate of a buddy's pickup paled the last four years of sex-and-drug-withered existential petrifaction. However, the infusion of testosterone derived from stacking concrete masonry units in shoulder-high piles gives way to the exhaustion that characterizes the lives of most of these men (sorry, there aren't many lady-masons, although there was a wonderfully crotch-scratchin' female electrician called "Barb" on our jobsite).

The age of the tradesman is over, and perhaps it’s a good thing. Most of the breathtaking achievements of the trades were constructed under conditions impossible an undesirable in whatever mess we've made for ourselves in "the present." We are a much more populist society, and it reflects in the design of our buildings. When a project is conceived for an office building or a Wal-Mart, it has a lifespan. Many buildings that go up are predicted to last between ten and twenty years, a far cry from the foresight of our ancestors.

Design and architecture have been reduced to structural uniformity by the demands of the market. While inside a multi-national department store chain the neon panoply of products that capitalism brings forth shiver in their throbbing, android fecundity, the exteriors of these structures are squat and banal in the extreme. What does this mean for the worker? Erector-set construction, quick and sloppy. A count for how many CMU's he needs to put in by the end of the day. A lingering sense of his own unimportance. I hate to say it, but stacking block for eight hours a day makes Marx sound like a comforting friend with a hand on your shoulder.

Vocational training for kids is a great idea. Teach them how to build the machines that can stack block so they won’t have to. Re-valorization of the trades is fabricated nostalgia. Excepting historically oriented restoration, I think many tradesmen would join me in saying that a machine could do their job better. They constantly asked me what the hell I was doing there and exclaimed their regret that they didn't go for a college degree. Are they brainwashed by society’s archetypal projection of a successful man? I'd give them a little more credit than that. I don't know what in the trades contrasts to the "sterility" of prestige office jobs but don't make the mistake of imagining “the trades” as vital or virile (fertile?). Vital and virile people are employed in constructing the massive concrete chunks that dominate the American landscape (for better or for worse, I won't look down my nose at Wal-Mart) but the demands of building them wear down and exhaust the body.

Chris Wait

Its interesting that the definition of Christianity is here often left to non-believers, liberals and Mormons of various kinds. However, just as we would expect Jews to define Judaism or Muslims to define Islam, Christians have defined Christianity and this definition excludes Mormons.

Mormons are free to believe what they wish, they are entitled to define themselves, they can borrow from whatever faith tradition inspires them or they can create their own but Christianity is not some open category that includes any claimant. Call it what you want but leave Christianity out of it.

Like everything in Mormonism (and the world), sometime temple garms work the way they are supposed to -- then again, likely as not, they don't. When they work the person who puts them on feels cleansed, holy, set apart, and special. The garments serve as a reminder of deep commitments and sacred vows. More often, however, they are just the underwear of the society this person is in. They are like jeans. You wear 'em. What's to say. If you were in the right place in India, it would be a turban.

There used to be many Mormon urban legends about temple garments, of people who were miraculously saved from injury by their garms, as if they formed a shield from God. You don't hear that so much any more. It's more of the old-timey hick Mormonism so many want to leave behind.

Temple garms used to be very visible in Mormon society -- and not just that they were like a bad old-fashioned slip, the kind that crept down, became visible in a very unsexy way -- although that's true too. They are making garms that fit women better so women can wear tees and other pretty, sensible clothes over their garms. Garms are disappearing -- in more ways than one. I've noticed that many people just don't wear them -- or at least there is no visible line, no visible effort to choose clothes that will cover. Mormon women used to have a very distinct look that went far beyond the garms. Today that's not true. It's hard to tell a Mormon woman from any other at the mall. I would guess that many choose not to wear them all the time, others have abandoned them altogether, and those who want to keep the tradition alive have pressured for decent garms they can put under a stylish look.

There are still people in the old tradition that held wearing garms or not wearing garm made a profound statement. I've heard tales of guys putting their arms around a brother (fellow church member) so he could feel for that garm line. I've heard of mothers patting their sons backs and bursting into tears when they couldn't feel garms. The garms are very much an You're-On-The-Bus-Or-You're-Off-the-Bus religious statement -- at least for some.

Garms are also part of large and small Mormon cons, something the Mormon world is infamous for. The way it goes, for what we call a True Believing Mormon (usually designated TBM), if they meet someone who is wearing garms, the TBM feels as though they can trust this person. Some people know that and do whatever they have to do to get some temple garms so they can then have many people instantly trust them, feel they are part of this brotherhood. This is part of why Utah is always at the statistical top for fraud. In a more insidious way, milder frauds are woven into the very texture of Mormon life. Until very recently, a good salesman knew he had to had the garms -- people wouldn't trust him, like him, let him in the door if he didn't. So he goes through the temple, maybe wryly, maybe thinking it's quite the crock. But he plays the game. He knows if he wants to do this work in Utah he plays the game.

It's not all cynical though. It a big picture. There are a lot of details. I think -- I hope -- for most people who wear garms there is at least a moment when the garms feel special, *sacred.*