"Choices I Don't Regret" - A Man To Be Proud Of, With Or Without Facial Hair

Just a couple of very quick notes before heading out for what is going to be a long day of Ho-Ho-Ho-ing...

As can be seen in this Telegram  photo and blurb, Alan and the rest of the Daffodil Place  fundraising team are still working hard, and with continuing success, to make the dream come true:

The Newfoundland and Labrador Credit Union charitable foundation announced Friday the Charity of Choice for the 2008 Walk-A-Thon will be Daffodil Place. Attending the announcement were, (from left) Alan Doyle , co-chairman of Daffodil Place, Ray Piercy, foundation board member, Allison Chaytor-Loveys, foundation chairwoman and John Steele, co-chairman of Daffodil Place. — Photo by Rhonda Hayward/The Telegram

Some people do make it very easy to think well and be proud of them. Yes, I noticed the clean-shaven appearance. I did say he's gorgeous either way. And beards do grow back, after all.

Bob's doing his own share of holiday-goodwilling too, joining other Newfoundland performers in helping to raise funds for the Newfoundland & Labrador Folk Festival  - along with taking part in a celebration of the memory of the much-loved Dermot O'Reilly - at this year's Gower Wassail, an event Alan performed at last year:

Money made at this year’s Gower Wassail will be put into a “rainy day fund” to support the festival and ensure the event gets off on the right track.

Saturday’s performers include Newman Sound, Anita Best and Pamela Morgan, Ralph O’Brien, Bob Hallett, The Palmer Sisters, Chris Andrews, Dan Mills and the Young Folk Musicians, the Pantings, Julia Halfyard, Kellie Walsh and Brian Way and David Chafe and Andrew Dale. - Danette Dooley, Special to The Telegram

I guess I'm not going to be able to resist putting up at least one Sexy Bearded Alan Doyle photo in response to that Telegram photo:

Sure enough...gorgeous either way.

Comments

[Laura]

Oh. Danm. I liked the beard. He's cute as ever w/o it but I really did like the beard. :(

[Stephen]

Since the beard is what got cut off I'm glad the beard is what I was envying and nothign else. Yeeeeouch!

I may be projecting about the causes of the hair removal based on my own obedient experience. I hope he's the master of his own face. Somebody ought to get to be.

The government doesn't fund the Nfld. folk fest? Really? That surprises me.

Man, I bet you're glad you're not traveling this weekend. I sure am.

[mary]

I saw a Christmas miracle today, and I thought of you and your story about the Christmas tree. Some one had a new iPod that they didn't need and they are giving it to someone who thinks they will never have one but still desperately want one.

Merry Christmas Lynda and all the regulars too.

Mary

[Lynda]

Mary, I love Christmas miracles. Thank you for sharing about what sounds like a wonderful act of sharing. It's good to have an act of kindness as a reminder that unkindness need not rule the day.

And what a coincidence to hear from you in regard to a Christmas story, since I am right in the middle of writing yet another Christmas story, this one ostensibly fiction (so far), and the main character's name in this story is...Mary. I'm trying to get that one up here by Christmas, or at least by New Year's.

I hope you and the kidlets have a wonderful Christmas. I'm also hoping I get to see you sometime in the coming year.

Stephen, yes...ouch indeed. Much safer to stick with envying the beard.

Hah...your "master of his own face" reminds me of the Seinfeld routine about being "master of your domain". I don't know how much mastery Alan has over his own bearded or beardless state - especially with all the potentials for pressure both personal and professional - but I am quite persuaded that he is not the master of his domain...speaking in the Seinfeldian sense, that is. At least, I hope not. Some exercises in self-control are purely pointless.

I honestly don't know if the government kicks in to support the N & L Folk Festival (how's that for a topic switch?). They certainly should be doing so, at the very least something from the Tourism Bureau should be helping keep the festival running. That festival brings a lot of tourists into town (and to other towns in the province as well), and those tourists wind up spending plenty of money on hotels and restaurants and whale-watching tours and idiotic (and more to the point - costly) booze-laden screeching-in ceremonies. I've met a whole lot of tourists in Newfoundland on their second or third or fourth vacations there who say the Folk Festival was their first exposure to the culture.

I'd be very surprised if there were not some grant money going into the Festival kitty to help out in some manner. But it does not look as if the festival is not getting a steady supply of income over the course of the whole year, which really is a shame because it leaves them so vulnerable to the vagaries of weather in a place where weather is reliably unreliable.

Yes, I am very glad not to be travelling right now. I have been out and about in this kind of weather before, in airports and in bus terminals, and I'm sure I will be again in the future, but not this time.

I do feel very sorry for the Newfoundlanders trying to make it home for Christmas; with everything coming into St. John's booked so solidly before Christmas, any hiccup at all in the system can create a nightmare wait for them. I hope everyone who wants to make it home manages to get their wish.

Laura, I really like Alan's beard too. It may be gone for now, but as brief (and lovely) as seeing it was, it sure was an enlightening experience for me, and, who knows, perhaps for Alan too, if this was his first fling with a beard. Maybe until now, Alan didn't realise how great he looks with a beard any more than you or I or anyone else who loved the beard realised it.

I sure never would have imagined Alan could look so good with that beard, nor carry it off with such style and assurance. That he did look so good, and that he did carry it off so well, tells me a few things about him that I didn't really know for sure before this. And I like those things I'm being told.

You could say, if you wanted to be just a bit foolish, that even with a clean-shaven face, Alan's "inner beard" will still be apparent to the discerning (and admiring) eye. Which is quite the wonderful way to see him as being both kinds of gorgeous all at once.

[mary]

You have a good Christmas too. We will since it is Beth's 18th Birthday on the 25th. I am very old now I think.

Mary