Veteranscribe's Blog

The first big year, that breakthrough season, of the Cathy Inglese era of Boston College basketball was 1998-99, Cathy’s sixth as head coach. The team went 22-8, made it the NCAA Tournament for the first time ever, and knocked off both second-ranked UConn and tenth-ranked Notre Dame along the way. The reasons for the surge were many. But none was so important as the emergence of junior guard/forward Alissa Murphy.

As Inglese puts it, “If Alissa didn’t step up to the plate, it would have been a much different season. The freshman class stepped up too, but we had a leader in Alissa and everybody looked up to her.”

Murphy had been a solid contributor to the team for her first two seasons. She had averaged about 24 minutes and seven points per game. In mid-season of her junior year, Alissa’s roommate, co-captain, and future Hall of Famer Cal Bouchard went down with a torn ACL. She was gone for the year.

The team needed to replace both Bouchard’s scoring and her leadership. Inglese called on Alissa Murphy and showed why the judgment call she’d made in recruiting the San Diego native three years before was spot-on.

Alissa was more than ready for the challenge. She led the team in scoring with 16 points per game. She scored in double figures in all 30 contests. She led the team in three-point shots. She led the big East and was third in the nation in free throw percentage. She bagged a career-high 32 points in a monumental 78-66 win over Connecticut. The Big East named her its Most Improved Player.

“Alissa wasn’t a prize recruit, but I liked when she came out East to go to a camp. She had a scorer’s mentality, and you can’t teach that,“ said Inglese. “I could see that she loved the game and she brought the intangibles. She wasn’t overly athletic, but she had that mindset and a nose for the basket.

“She heeded our advice and made her shot release quicker. And she went above and beyond with what she did in the weight room and watching what she ate. She transformed herself from a medium build to someone who was strong and aggressive.”

Murphy had always been a diligent worker. But the summer between her sophomore and junior years was when she molded herself into a scoring machine. Every day she worked on her shooting technique with assistant coach Kelly Cole.

“She overhauled my shooting motion. I started at three feet away, then four, then five. She’d rebound for me and I’d shoot until I got the form. I locked it into muscle memory, shooting the same was every time, until it was as smooth and as quick as it could be. It wasn’t until the end of the summer that I made out to the three-point line,” said Alissa.

Becky Gottstein Holden, another who’s already made the BC Hall of Fame, was in that year’s freshman class that also included Nicole Conway, Brianne Stepherson and Kim Mackie. She gravitated toward Murphy, remarking,

“You have to re-learn how to work hard when you get to college. And with Alissa, it was what she did outside of the game, in practice, taking extra shots, making sure she was in great shape. There was always that extra piece to be sure that she was a strong competitor.”

Wherever the Eagles needed her, Murphy would play. She could be the point guard, the shooting guard, or the small forward. She was also aggressive under the boards and a rugged rebounder, a trait she’d developed back in California when she played mostly on boys’ teams until she got to high school.

Alissa is from a family of athletes. Her brother Michael played rugby in college and for a U.S. national team. Her brother Sean played college soccer. She was into every sport as a kid, but she especially loved basketball. There were no girls’ leagues, so she’d go to the next town, Mira Mesa, and hang out at the recreation center with the guys.

By the time she got to Scripps Ranch High School in San Diego, Alissa was almost college material already. She started for the varsity as a freshman. She led the state of California in scoring as a sophomore, but she’d always wanted to travel east for school. One of the summer development camps she attended just happened to be at Boston College. Mutual interest quickly blossomed, and Alissa became an Eagle.

“I don’t think BC had great aspirations for me,” Alissa said. “I wasn’t a heralded recruit, and San Diego is not really known for basketball. Coach Inglese was always on me. I didn’t like it at the time, but she’s the reason I was successful She was always asking me for more.”

Her senior year was almost as successful as junior year, for both her and the team. She averaged 13.5 points, was second in team scoring, and led the big East in free throw percentage. The Eagles finished 26-9 and again made it to the second round of the NCAAs.

Alissa finished her career ranked fifth all-time on BC’s scoring list with 1,361 points. She became the 12th BC player to score 1,000 points and the sixth to have 1,000 points and 500 rebounds. At the time of her graduation she ranked in among BC’s top six in rebounds, three-pointers, free throws made and attempted, and steals. She also holds the Boston College record for most points in an NCAA Tournament game with 26.

After graduating, Alissa hit the road and played basketball in five countries over five years – Israel, Sweden, France, the UK, and New Zealand. While in Christchurch, New Zealand, she got engaged. Her now-husband Adam, whom she’d met at a barbecue, flew all the way down there to pop the question.

Adam and Alissa live in Poway, California with son Adam, 7, and daughter, Mia, 5. Alissa teaches physical education at Adam and Mia’s elementary school.

The prophet Isaiah, foretelling the harsh judgment of God against both the sinful people of Israel and of the surrounding kingdoms, writes (21:6) “For thus has the Lord said to me, ‘Go, set a watchman. Let him declare what he sees.”

The watchman sees chariots, and horsemen, and a lion, and more chariots approaching. Destruction and divine vengeance are upon the land. “Babylon is fallen, is fallen. And all the carved images of her gods, He has burned to the ground.”

Harper Lee’s long-anticipated second novel, Go Set a Watchman, tells also of destroyed images and harsh judgment. The biggest image, the most revered icon, is that of Atticus Finch, father of 26-year-old protagonist Jean Louise “Scout” Finch, the tomboy heroine of To Kill a Mockingbird. The harsh judgment is hers, delivered on her father, her town, and in her bewildered anguish, on herself as well.

Scout is not the only one who is disillusioned. All of us who grew up with Ms Lee’s first book have always considered Atticus Finch one of American literature’s greatest heroes. He was noble, and pure, and motivated by holy charity in his search for justice. Well, not so fast. We, like Scout, find that it’s a little more complicated than we thought.

In her climactic confrontation with Atticus, the shocked and appalled Jean Louise was allowed to “break her icons, one by one,” as her uncle, the eccentric but learned and worldly-wise Dr. Jack Finch, subsequently explains to her.

Author Harper Lee

Jean Louise, home from New York for her annual two-week vacation, had seen her 72-year-old father taking part in a local council meeting in Maycomb, Alabama. Her icons are not the only ones that get broken; as Atticus comes down from his pedestal, one of ours does too.

That council had been formed to resist the workings of the NAACP, the Northern do-gooders, the Supreme Court, and all other external forces that had gathered to end the century of Southern Democrats’ resistance to the full emancipation of their former slaves. Repulsive, rodentine characters take the stage and spew racist, reactionary invective. Jean Louise slips into the building and watches from the “colored balcony.”

Though Atticus doesn’t engage in such speechmaking, he’s up on stage with them. So too is Henry Clinton, his young law associate who wants to marry Jean Louise. She can’t deal with it. She yearns for her own personal watchman, to help her declare what she sees.

I don’t think I’m giving away too much by reporting that Uncle Jack tells her that he, and not Atticus, had to be the one telling her what had happened during the daughter-father blowout. She would not have listened to her father, who had been like a god to her and “Our gods are remote from us, Jean Louise. They must never descend to human level,” as Jack puts it.

Uncle Jack, and Harper Lee, speak to all of us when he says, “…every man’s island, Jean Louise, every man’s watchman, is his conscience. There’s no such thing as a collective conscious…Remember this also: it’s always easy to look back and see what we were yesterday, ten years ago. It is hard to see what we are. If you can master that trick, you’ll get along.”

The book deals with the most serious of themes, but it’s also loaded with humorous asides and biting insights into human nature. Lee introduces the watchman quote during a church service that Jean Louise dutifully attended but “slept through with her eyes open.”

Of Mr. Stone, the youngish preacher who delivered the quote, she says, “There was nothing whatever that was wrong with Mr. Stone, except that he possessed all the necessary qualifications for a certified public accountant: he did not like people, he was quick with numbers, he had no sense of humor, and he was butt-headed.”

Mr. Stone had been dispatched to Maycomb by the Methodist Church Conference. Uncle Jack sums him up with “We asked for bread and they gave us a Stone.”

Jean Louise also sits through a “Coffee” run by her Aunt Alexandra. She endures the inane chatter of the ladies – the “magpies” who “wore gloves and hats, and smelled to high heaven of attars, perfumes, eaus, and bath powder. Their makeup would have put an Egyptian draftsman to shame.”

The subgroups of those Southern belles included the Newlyweds, the Diaper Set, the Light Brigade, and the Perennial Hopefuls. Reading Lee’s acerbic descriptions made me think of the beehive-coiffed and bigoted females of that terrific movie, The Help. Jean Louise would get along famously with Emma Stone’s heroine, Skeeter Phelan. Alison Janney’s character, Charlotte Phelan, would be instant simpatico with Uncle Jack.

Along the way there are several flashbacks to Scout’s childhood, to adventures and misadventures with her now-deceased brother Jem and their friend Dill, and to the trial of the falsely-accused Tom Robinson at the heart of Mockingbird.

Go Set a Watchman was written by Lee in the mid-1950s, which was right around the time of the Brown vs. Board of Education decision. Governor Orval Faubus may or may not have already fomented the 1957 crisis at Little Rock Central High School, which prompted Republican president Dwight Eisenhower to send in the 101st Airborne Division to restore order.

James Meredith, Bull Connor and Selma, the Freedom Riders, Strom Thurmond and the Dixiecrats defiantly raising the Confederate Flag in South Carolina – all these lay in the future. But Harper Lee saw what was happening. And like Isaiah’s watchman, she saw what was coming. She’s written another wonderful book. I’m only sorry she waited so long to let it be published, and I’m sorry that during her long life she didn’t see fit to write more of them.

Go Set a Watchman will probably never be as prominent in the canon of American literature, or as beloved, as To Kill a Mockingbird. But no matter. It’s a superb book. If you liked Lee’s first one, I think you’ll like the second – and may appreciate it even more.

Those who know me won’t be surprised that when I saw a review of Red: A History of the Redhead by Jacky Colliss Harvey, I ordered it immediately and devoured it as soon as it arrived. I wasn’t disappointed – but then again, what guy would ever be disappointed when the topic is redheads?

Harvey’s academic background in English and Art History as well as her work in museum publishing make her a natural to do a book like this. But she obviously worked very hard and researched energetically in other disciplines as well – biology, genetics, chemistry, physiology and business among them.

Early in the book, Harvey explains the quirky MC1R gene that produces a substance called eumelanin, which makes for dark skin, eyes and hair. Sometimes, however, the gene produces another substance called red or yellow phaeomelanin. It also teams up with another gene, HCL2, to bring forth all sorts of variants in hair, eye, and skin color.

Biology dictates that redheads don’t do well in strong sun and tropical climes. They’re more suited to higher latitudes like Scotland and Scandinavia. Their pale skin does a good job of processing Vitamin D from sunlight, and there’s less sunlight up North.

Redheads also smell different. The genes make their skin more acidic than that of blondes and brunettes, and it reacts differently to the chemicals of their perfume. So that’s why. I always thought it was nothing but pheromones – with which they are obviously abundantly blessed as well. Yikes. As if they actually need any help in that area. But moving on…

The parts I especially liked had to do with history: political, art, and cultural. If I want to understand why things are the way they are now, reading up on history generally provides solid clues. So does re-reading some of the books we had to get through in high school but never really appreciated.

Harvey unearths many of those clues. She goes back to Biblical legend as well as to our fourth-grade history and the mythology of ancient Greece and Rome to show how redheads have captivated and intrigued the rest of humanity. Seems it’s always been this way.

A fresco unearthed in the home of M. Fabius Rufus – whose name means “red” – in Pompeii depicted Cleopatra with red hair. The author surmises that the painting is probably one of Cleopatra, anyway, and that it’s not very likely that she did have red hair. But the point is that she acted like a redhead, and so was painted that way.

Cleopatra was a formidable and powerful woman, Mark Antony’s lover, and thought to be typical of the redhead stereotype that has stayed with us: a “flame-haired seductress, exotic, sensual, impulsive, passionate.”

In 403 A.D. Saint Jerome, the guy who translated the Bible, wrote to a woman about her daughter, “do not dye her hair red, and thereby presage her for the fires of hell.”

Lilith, the legendary lady of creation who thought herself Adam’s equal, unlike Eve, “refuses to lie beneath.” She rebelled and left him to live in the wilderness, and she is frequently depicted with red hair by religious artists.

The resurrected Jesus meets with his redhead disciple Mary Magdelene.

Then there’s Mary Magdalene, perhaps my favorite Biblical character. I’ve come to believe that she was the truly indispensable disciple of Jesus. Even the Scriptures back this up. She was the first one to whom Jesus revealed himself after his resurrection. But she has gotten a raw deal from the guys who ran the Church in later centuries. They rewrote her story and made her a bad girl.

Pope Gregory (the Chant guy), in 591, declared that the “woman cured of seven devils” in Mark’s gospel was actually Magdalene. She took her unguent, “previously used to perfume her flesh in forbidden acts,” to wash Jesus’ feet. She had once “displayed her hair to set off her face,” but now that hair is what dried her tears of repentance. And what color is that hair in devotional paintings? Why, red, of course.

Jacobus de Verigine, an early author who compiled the lives of saints, writes that Magdalene was wealthy and “shone in beauty.” Moreover, her sins were her pleasure in looks, and riches, and in “giving her body to ‘delight’ rather than straightforward prostitution.” In other words, she loved it. And so she flouted all of the taboos of the medieval Christian Church. How could the popes and bishops possibly approve of Magdalene’s closeness to Jesus? They didn’t, and so they smeared her – before they also admitted that she repented.

The painting “Noli Me Tangere” (“Don’t Touch Me”) by Martin Schongauer shows a strawberry blonde Magdalene with the risen Jesus on Easter morning. And there was another redhead present at the crucifixion, as shown in “Calvary” by de Messina. The unrepentant “bad thief” is also a redhead.

Red-headed Judas leads the soldiers to Jesus in Gethsemane.

Going back to the night before the crucifixion, “The Agony in the Garden” painting in the Bavarian National Museum shows a red-headed Judas leading the soldiers towards Jesus. It is but a short step from there to one of the fueling elements of anti-Semitism: the treacherous, redheaded Jew.

Freckles were called “Judasdreck” in medieval Germany. Shylock, the Jewish lawyer in “the Merchant of Venice,” is usually depicted as a redhead. Fagin in Dickens’s “Oliver Twist” is “a very old, shriveled Jew, whose villainous-looking and repulsive face was obscured by a quantity of red matted hair.”

Those sexual taboos and those attitudes toward red hair didn’t die out in the Middle Ages, either. They remained around for a long, long time, and they haven’t entirely disappeared.

There’s much more than religiously-oriented historical discussion in Harvey’s book. But religion has been so powerful in shaping humanity’s behaviors, I thought it worth delving into here. And next time you’re grappling with some thorny issue and ask “What would Jesus do?” think of “Noli Me Tangere.” Jesus would pick the redhead.

Queen Elizabeth I portrait in Britain’s National Gallery.

Other famous and infamous redheads, real and fictional? How about Henry VIII and his daughter, Queen Elizabeth I? She supposedly had eighty wigs, and she liked to be seen in them to play up the connection with her father, who had declared her illegitimate.

The lists go on and, as we’d expect, pay a visit to Hollywood and its red-haired goddesses: Clara Bow, Rita Hayworth, Lucille Ball, and their many successors in movies. And in cartoons: The Little Mermaid, Jessica Rabbit, and Red Hot Riding Hood.

Millions of women want to be like them, and millions of men cheer that development. Red hair tint outsells all other hues. In 1970, L’Oreal sold only two shades of red hair coloring. By 1989, they were up to 16 shades, while Redken had 29 shades of red and Clairol had 43.

Lucille Ball once said, “Once in his life every man is entitled to fall madly in love with a gorgeous redhead.” For once, she’s not got any ‘splainin’ to do.

Lucille Ball

The author also quotes a firm named Upstream Analysis, which points out that up to a third of all TV advertising features a redheaded character, but redheads make up only somewhere between 2 and 6 percent of the population. So we all pay attention to redheads. They sell.

In the book’s last chapter, where she tells of her visit to Redhead Days in Breda, Holland, Harvey says that “gingerism” endures as one of humanity’s prejudices. I don’t watch “South Park,” so I was unaware of its episode on “Kick a Ginger Day.” OK, agree, kids can be cruel. They will pick on people who are different from them, and redheads are definitely different.

But savvy redheads are battling back against bullies and turning negative stereotypes hip and cool. A Canadian comedian responded to “South Park” by co-opting the Canada Dry logo and setting up “Kiss a Ginger Day.” Good for him. Sign me up.

Redhead Days brought together 6,000 of them from all over the world. I have to put that event on my bucket list.

I’d also love to take the redheaded Jacky Colliss Harvey to lunch, just to learn more about her research and her other work in museum publishing. She has an easy, enjoyable writing style, and she’s done a most interesting book on one of my favorite subjects.

Rita Hayworth as Gilda.
“Men go to bed with Gilda, but they wake up with me.”

He was so renowned and prized as the hairdresser to the Russian court that he did most of his work under military guard. But when he married secretly without first securing Czar Nicholas II’s permission, he had to flee the country. Faktorowicz used his own makeup to fake symptoms of jaundice in order to leave Moscow for America in 1902.

His early times in America were tough. A business partner defrauded him of most of his savings at the Louisiana World’s fair. His half-brother became known as “Jake the barber,” a notorious Prohibition gangster who once, literally, broke the bank at Monte Carlo.

But Faktorowicz was a resilient sort. He headed west, and in 1908 he set himself up in Hollywood with a business that hired out wigs to film extras. Then he did the extras’ makeup. Then he graduated doing makeup for the stars. Then he invented the term “makeup.”

In 1935, he was so popular and so much in demand that he opened his own “Makeup Studio.” It had color-coded rooms for his clients: one with salon-peach walls for “brownettes,” one with powder-blue walls for blondes, and a mint-green one for redheads. “Whenever there is red in the composition of the hair,” he said, “green will be becoming.”

Faktorowiczs’s many successes included the heart-shaped lips of Clara Bow, Hollywood’s “It Girl” and perhaps its first

Maksymilian Faktorowicz at work with his “beauty micrometer,” which detected tiny flaws in actor’s faces. Without a treatment of some sort, these flaws would show up on the big screen. The solution? Pancake makeup.

famous redhead; the platinum blonde look of Jean Harlow, which she maintained with a weekly wash of ammonia, Clorox, and Lux soap flakes; and the glorious copper curls of Rita Hayworth.

Clara Bow, Hollywood’s “It Girl” (colorized).

Hayworth is the star that most frequently comes to mind when you say “Hollywood” and “redhead” together, even though her films were shot in monochrome rather than in color. She drove men wild with desire in many roles including that of the seductress and society girl Gilda, on stage and in a 1946 film. Her complaint about that role? She once sighed, “Men go to bed with Gilda, but they wake up with me.”

If, in my next life, I come back as Maksymilian Faktorowicz, I’ll take that as God’s message that I was a good boy in this life, and that I deserve a nice reward.

And you know who Maksymilian Faktorowicz is. We’ve all used his products.

Max Factor.