The Skinny on the Skin

It has been a month now since I started paying attention to my skin, and I have made quite a few discoveries.

Bella kindly pointing out my Cholesterol Deposits

1)  Bella loves to see others in pain.  She will get inside your head with her ready-for-a-horror-move-scream voice and tell you in advance just how pulling-teeth painful something is going to be, just to see you squirm.  This strategy actually works on me.  I get so dang nervous that the pain is amplified to a ridiculous level.

I have had all the different treatments twice now.  The first time, it was traumatizing.  More to the point, Bella was traumatizing me.  The second time, when I tuned Bella out completely, it was uncomfortable, but it didn't even really hurt - and that was using a higher setting.

Lesson Learned:  Don't go with your femme faille girlfriend, expecting her to hold your hand and lower your anxiety.  Not if her name is Bella Coley anyway.  Oh, and if you do take Bella with you, expect to be publicly ridiculed.

2)  Kelly Whitworth knows her stuff.  It sounds like she is making up words when she explains the science of what she is doing, but that is just her Alaskan accent coming through.  Alaskan and Latin don't mesh well together.  Kelly has a great bedside manner, which is just as important as being technically proficient.  And she is remarkably gracious with people (Bella) who drill her incessantly, as if she signed up for taking an oral exam while performing the procedure.

Lesson Learned:  Use a licensed Esthetician whom you trust.  They should be able to explain things to you in words you understand, and what they are saying should make sense to the common guy.  This is your face, it is a bigger deal than your hair, so don't go to the cheapest, go to the best.

I have been using Exquisite Skin Esthetics at the Alyeska Center for Facial Plastic Surgery because I appreciate the safety net of having Anchorage's "Face Man", Dr. Jack Sedwick, being accountable what Kelly is doing.  Just an extra layer of security and comfort in an area where I am not messing around.

3)  Not a Do-It-Yourself project.  DO NOT pull a Sarah Nan and buy professional grade product such as acid off of E-Bay, and decide to ask your girlfriend who knows absolutely nothing about chemical peels to apply it for you.  Especially if you live in Seward, where it takes a helicopter to get you to Anchorage medical care.  There is serious science, don't build a bomb in your bathroom and have it explode on your face - the damage can be irreparable.

Lesson Learned:  Hard to pass the red face test when you know from the start you are going to be walking out of the office with a red face.  Not all procedures are for everyone, they should be able to defend not only what procedure they are recommending, but how they are going to apply it to you.

4)  Results are worth it!  I had no idea what to expect, but I understand now why this is a growth industry.  I am pretty comfortable with how I look, but, as I was aging, things were starting to change - and not in a good way.  Age spots were connecting on my face, giving it a splotchy tan fade.  A hundred bright cherry red dots had appeared when I got pregnant with Casmir, and they never went away.

Flaws Enhanced for Photo Shoot

The skin on my lower cheeks was starting to get crepey, add a few years and that is not attractive.  Fine lines created crows feet that were accentuated with Anchorage's dry air, and these growths of skin kept popping up on my face and just would not go away, despite numerous inquiries from numerous doctors.

Okay, so I asked my eye doctor and my gynecologist, and they expressed them and sliced them off, but they kept coming back.  On my face.  Cholesterol deposits.  Ewh!

Its been a month, and almost all of those spots are gone from my face.  The age spots, the red dots, and the cholesterol deposits.  Almost completely away, as if they had never been there, and I have every reason to believe that this time next month...nada.  My skin will look like it did when I was 20...translucent white.  The little broken veins on my frostbitten nose are even gone.

The fine lines and the crepey cheeks are still there, but improvement in making them disappear is noticeably, I would say they have diminished by 30%.  I don't think they will disappear entirely, although Kelly suggests that if I were willing to get a little shot of something, temporarily, they would.

There is another option, which I am exploring, that is the same theory as the Susan Sommer's FaceMaster Facial Toning System that she is pimping on the home shopping network...only the difference is instead of something passively lying on your face, Kelly plays the role of personal trainer and gets the muscles you want to focus on to exercise in a manner that is going to achieve your desired result.  I saw before/after photos on this one - the result is astonishing.

I had one session, and intend to complete the series.  Not as drastic or expensive as mini-face lift, and for me it appears to be a viable option.

1957 Pioneers of Alaska Grand President Robert DeArmond Passes

DeArmond's Alaska State Flag design contest Submission

At age 15, Robert Neil DeArmond of Sitka contributed a design for the flag of Alaska contest in 1927; it is housed in the Alaska State Museum.

DeArmond was educated in Sitka and Tacoma, Washington; he graduated from Stadium High School in 1930.

He spent a year at the University of Oregon. DeArmond returned to Sitka after college. There, he worked in the fishing industry for 12 years.

He worked in a salmon cannery in the summer of 1930, and later received a reporting job for the Stroller's Weekly in Juneau.

1930 High School Graduation

In 1931, he traveled by rowboat from Sitka to Tacoma; DeArmond wrote a book about his travel, A Voyage in a Dory, in 1999.

In 1938 he helped found the city of Pelican, Alaska, where he served as a storekeeper and the postmaster.

The DeArmond family moved to Ketchikan, Alaska, in 1944, and Robert returned to journalism.

He worked for the Ketchikan Daily News, the Juneau Empire, and other publications in covering the Alaska Territorial Legislature.

DeArmond worked for territorial Governor B. Frank Heintzleman in the 1950s and lived in Juneau during this time

In 1958 Robert DeArmond bought Alaska Magazine. 

A preeminent historian, he has authored several books on Alaska, as well as articles in the Ketchikan Daily News, Alaska Daily Empire, Alaska Sportsman, Capital City Weekly, Anchorage Daily News, Alaska Journal, Alaska Life,  Alaska Review, The Sitka Sentinal, the Alaskan Southeaster, and The Sea Chest, among others.

Robert married artist Dale DeArmond in 1935, and they both resided at the Sitka Pioneer Home.  Dale died on November 21, 2006.   Robert passed away November 28, 2010 at the age of 99.   They had two children, William and Jane.

Robert wrote, "I got something of an early start in the Pioneers.  At the beginning of the year 1931, I was working in Juneau when the Grand Igloo decided to start two new organizations - Sons and Daughters of the Pioneers. 

Membership was limited to the offspring of actual members of the Pioneers of Alaska.  I was eligible by reason of my father’s membership, and I joined.

Robert DeArmond circa 1940

The idea of the Sons and Daughters, as I understood it, was that membership in the Pioneers of Alaska would eventually be limited to individuals who had either come to Alaska before 1910 or who had come up through the Sons and Daughters.

So far as I know, Juneau was the only place where the junior organizations were started.  I left Juneau later that year and it was not until 1945 that I again lived in a town where there was an active Igloo of the Pioneers. 

That was Ketchikan and I had not been there long when the secretary of Igloo No. 16 invited me to join.  I pointed out that under the rules then in force, only men who had been in Alaska before `910 were eligible and that I was not born until 1911. 

In the course of our conversation I mentioned my membership in the Sons of the Pioneers some 14 years earlier.  He said that was good enough and I was taken into Igloo 16 and have been a member of it ever since.

Now to the Grand Igloo meetings, by 1939, partly because of travel difficulties and perhaps even more be a use of economic conditions in Alaska, the attendance at Grand Igloo meetings had dwindled almost to the vanishing point. 

In an attempt to remedy that condition, at the Grand Igloo meeting in Anchorage in January 1939, Fairbanks Igloo No. 4 introduced a resolution proposing that the Grand Igloo would meet only every other year and would meet in Juneau while the Territorial Legislature was in session.

Official 1957 Grand President Photo

At that time nearly all of the 40 members of the Territorial Legislature belonged to the Pioneers, and for the next couple decades, the every-other-year sessions of the Grand Igloo at Juneau had representation from all parts of Alaska.  In time, of course, as conditions changed, the Grand Igloo began to meet annually and at various locations.

In reading about the 1939 Grand Igloo meeting, I noticed one other thing that was different.  Dr. Will H. Chase of Cordova was the outgoing Grand President and he was also the Grand Historian had had been for many years. 

Under the system then in force, the Grand President chose the Grand Historian, and when one was found who would actually work on the history of the organization and its members, he was retained year after year.

One early Grand Historian who lived at Valdez started a monthly magazine called The Pathfinder, and with the help of other officers and members, kept it going for a number of years. 

It was full of information about the various Igloos and their members.  Doc Chase was the Grand Historian for at least 15 years and during the time he gathered and preserved a great deal of information about the Pioneers of Alaska.

Some years back the office of Grand Historian was made of the chairs in the progression up the ladder to Grand President.  A number of hot issues were on the docket. 

There were those who wanted to move the admission date from 1911 to 1920.  Others wanted to observe a 30-year waiting period, and many wanted no change at all.   They said changing the date would change the membership from one Pioneers to one of Cheechakos.

One group wanted to go back to annual meetings in different towns, but others said that would kill the Grand Igloo.  That afternoon the delegates decided not to decide on any of the issues and no one seemed to care."

Alvin Amason Delights

Alvin Amason mingles at his Alaska House: New York show

Sugpiaq artist Alvin Amason developed his world view in a remote Unangan village on Kodiak.  A somewhat charmed past, for the bold use of color and whimsy which define his work whisper of happy afternoons exploring with his maternal grandfather.


Eli Matrokin was a tradition bearer and a bear guide, and their adventures were captured as the boy drew fanciful depictions of the animals that surrounded them.

Amason left the Rock to study art at Central Washington University and Arizona State.  While he was inspired by the expressionistic viewpoint of Dutch American abstract artist Willem de Kooning, Amason's large, loose, and colorful style focused on the familiar territory of Kodiak's land and sea animals.

A seabird flies in front of Amason's walrus

Good natured and insightful, Amason's work often includes appendages, an idea that sprang from the oil lampadas which project from the walls of Kodiak's Russian Orthodox Church.

Several of the paintings currently available include appendages of trees and birds, but his bears dominate the collection gathered from Alaska House New York's holdings. They are delightfully larger than life, and often engage in playful confrontation.

Amason is currently the director of Native Arts at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, and one of Alaska's best known contemporary artists. His wonderful expression is featured at the Anchorage Museum of History and Art, the Alaska Native Heritage Center, and the Ted Stevens International Airport.

Peeling, on Purpose

The only really bad sunburn I recall was when I was in my late teens.  Diana Gross, my Chugiak High School debate partner, and I went over to Hawaii on a Mark Air special - not the Captain Bly Standby, but something cheap enough that two high school students could spring for it on a weekend getaway.

Lesson Learned:  Pale is Good

We stayed at her parent's timeshare condo, and I couldn't really afford to do anything.  Anything.  I think I came to Hawaii with $50 in spending money.

Diane sprang for us to go out on a catamaran booze cruise, only we didn't drink, and I don't recall eating either.  What I DO remember is laying out on the boat, the sun reflecting in the water, reflecting off my skin, making Diana twice as brown as her normally olive colored skin turned dark and sexy.

Pasty white girl over her, I burned.  Lobster Red.  I knew I was burning on the boat, but had no suntan lotion with me.  Nothing to protect me at all as I grew redder, redder, and still redder since the boat wasn't going to turn around for silly naive me.

The salt from the ocean crystallized in the blister pustules in my burn.  When we got back to the condo Diana tried to cool me down with aloe, with ice, with Benzocaine burn spray.  Nothing helped.  I was miserable, and continued to be miserable for about two weeks.

The peeling was of lepros-ratic proportions.  The insides of my clothes would be covered with rolled up bits of skin, and the tan lines from that swimming suit stayed with me for several years - re-appearing every time I even glanced at the sunshine.  If I ever end up with skin cancer, this is the reason why.

When Bella suggested to me that a chemical peel felt like a really bad sunburn, I knew instantly this was not something I was volunteering for.  I don't care how much she coo-ed about how soft and smooth your baby skin was after the week of peeling.  I don't care how she says she would get the most invasive peel that a doctor would do, because the results are SO worth it.  I don't care.  I have NO interest in ever feeling that REALLY BAD SUNBURN feeling again.

Kelly Whitworth and her Perfect Skin

So here is Kelly Whitworth, who has been totally straight with me about the whole skin care thing, suggesting I needed a chemical peel.  Bella jumped from her chair, screamed in delight, and did a happy dance.  I looked at Bella.  I looked at Kelly.  I looked back at Bella.  I had this sinking feeling I was being set up.  Looked around the Exquisite Skin Esthetics area at the Alyeska Center for Facial Plastic Surgery and ENT for the nearest exit.

I thought I recalled Kelly giving me a chemical peel two weeks earlier before my microdermabrasion treatment.  It was uncomfortable, but not so uncomfortable that you would write home about it.  She put a layer of "friendly" acid on my face to take off a layer of the skin mantel so that the skin vacuum could do it's stuff more effectively.  It really wasn't that big a deal.

Well, Kelly told me that I needed the same thing, only two or three layers of "friendly acid", since the effects are layer dependent.  I also remembered some idle chit chat two weeks ago about the pain going up with each layer.  So three layers would mean three times the pain as the first one.  How uncomfortable was that first one?  Not so uncomfortable that I am really remembering clearly.  That is a good sign, right?

I look at Kelly, her perfect skin glowing back at me like the poster child of health.  I look at Bella, who is smiling from ear-to-ear.  Kelly, serene, calm, reassuring.  Bella, her eyes flashing with unbridled enthusiasm.  I close my eyes and listen to Kelly's steady voice telling me that this is only going to take about half-an-hour to 45 minutes, and the effects are really going to be noticeable.

My brain really didn't click in until it was too later.  I was in Kelly's room, wrapped in a warm blanket, with a hot towel over my face, thinking of a joke that was passing around in anticipation of Alaska's next senate race.

Mark Begich and Joe Miller happened to end up in the same barber shop the day before the election.  Both barbers were careful not to say a word, less a firey discussion about politics broke out and their client got so distracted they forgot to tip well.

Miller's barber finished first, and went to grab the aftershave when Miller said, "No, none of that flower water for me.  I don't want my wife thinking I smell like the inside of the Bush Company."

Begich's barber finished a few seconds later, and Mark said, "You can go ahead and use aftershave on me.  My wife has never been to the Bush Company."

I was chuckling to myself when Kelly put on the first layer of acid.  Not a big deal at all.  Then the second layer.  A little uncomfortable, maybe a two on a scale that goes up to ten.  Third layer brought that up to a four.  It really wasn't "hot", especially with the fan blowing on my face, it was just uncomfortable.  Like things are moving around on your face uncomfortable.  Buggie.

Glowing with Gov. Sean Parnell at Jewish Cultural Gala

Kelly said that was uncomfortable enough, put on some neutralizer, and that was the end of the big chemical peel story.  We all met up at the Mixx Grill for the Holiday Wine Expo afterwards.  I was glowing like an angel.  Went to the Jewish Cultural Gala the next night.  I was glowing like an angel.

No sunburn pain, not like I remembered anyway.  Skin was a little tight, bit scary in the mirror in the morning.  But I was solid in my post care, and that went away with the application of the lotions and potions Kelly hooked me up with.

Then the peeling started.  Peeling like you can't imagine.  Lizards, snakes, they had nothing on me.  Was more like a malemute husky's seasonal shed.  You know when every brush of the dog fills the brush up. Yep, that was me, shedding my skin.

Truly disgusting.  Dead skin rolls everywhere.  That went on for four nasty days when I really wanted to hide in a cave.

And then it stopped.   Now my skin is soft, supple, like baby new skin.
Would I do it again, in a heartbeat, like Bella suggested?   Well.  Yes.

All Toned Up Without 5 Minutes of Working Out

You know, I am kinda enjoying being the "in the know" guy for skin care.  Normally, my cousin Kim Kashevarof is the family expert.  Her skin is f-l-a-w-l-e-s-s from decades of being kind to it.  You would have thought I would have gotten a clue, and started out earlier on the take-care-of-what-you've-got,  but instead I am working from the better-late-than-never platform.

The Flawless Kim Kashevarof

It is the curse of Anchorage.  You hop out of a nice, long, hot shower and before you can even towel off you can feel your skin start to tighten and dry out.  Look in the mirror and you suddenly feel 10 years older, and you look that way to.

The toner that Kelly Whitworth hooked me up with has softened that experience for me.  You stick a squirt or two on a cotton ball, rub in on your face, and instantly, like a modern day miracle - all the scratchy, crackly, dry, and crinkly smooths out to normal skin.

The product has one of those really fancy pants names, Nutrient Toner.  Hell, I can even remember that one.  The box says that a combination of vitamins, enzymes and lactic and citric acids provides added nutrients to the skin.  This solution is designed for normal to dry and mature skin, as well as those with sensitive, break-out prone skin.

Mature skin.  Isn't that polite for bag lady?

Anyway, the four ounce clear container is filled with water, pumpkin ferment extract - which is probably where its earthy woods in autumn smell comes from , sucrose - which is a type of sugar NOT a type of rose, lactic acid - I'm going to pass on that one.

Propylene glycol - to blow up those red spots, citric acid - which comes from fruit trees that grow in much warmer climates than Alaska, Glutathione - the Greek Goddess of Thanksgiving dinner, Aminoguanidine HCL - which is something they made up to sound like some sexy secret ingredient that scientists would test in a lab, yeast - yeast?  Really?

Dorene is Ready for Winter Skin

Eugenia Caryophyllus - which is not some southern matron but in fact another name for cloves - Leaf Oil, Cinnamomus Cassia Leaf Oil - no wonder there is a definite pumpkin pie thing going on in the notes of this product, Zingiber Officinale Root Oil - Ginger?  Are they topping it off with whip cream as well?

Nope.   Looks like they are finishing up with some Alcohol Denat instead.  I wonder if it is a port wine or a dessert liquor.  Let's see, official spin...Pumpkin Wine.  Sounds like a really pretty muted burgendy-burnt orange paint color.

The Nutrient Toner is made by a company called PCA Skin.  According to their website their "medical grade products incorporate the latest in medically and scientifically researched ingredients to nourish, hydrate and rejuvenate skin, delivering optimal results."  Well, this toner is definitely doing the nourishing, hydrating and rejuvenating job on my face.

"Free of color additives, synthetic fragrances, harsh alcohols, comedogenic oils and other known sensitizers, they are designed to deliver results without irritation and are especially effective for helping to treat such varied skin conditions such as acne, psoriasis, hyperpigmentation, rosacea and fine lines and wrinkles."  I've been using their products for two weeks now, and it is night and day.  The winter dryness is no longer an issue, and I don't scare myself when I look in the mirror anymore.

Don't go looking for it at the drugstore or Nordstroms, you won't find the really good stuff there.  You can only pick this up at the doctor's office, find Kelly the same place I did, Exquisite Skin Esthetics at the Alyeska Center for Facial Plastic Surgery and ENT.

Going Skin Deep without a Tongue Bath

Spynx are hairless and creep me out.

Microdermabrasion. It's a long word.  Actually, it maybe a couple words that I just say together really fast as if they were one.  I'm not really sure.

It means superficial damage to the skin, and, when done on purpose,  Kelly Whitworth tells me with a straight face that it feels like a cat is licking you.

I actually own a cat, Maggie.  I don't let her lick me.  It's nothing personal, I don't let the dog lick me either.

I didn't intend to own a cat, not yet anyway.
Eventually.   I plan on being the scary old lady with white scraggly hair that lives at the end of the street and has wild cats running everywhere.
The one that everyone whispers is a witch.  But, that isn't until AFTER my run for the US Senate as a Tea Party Candidate.

The girls asked me for a cat for Christmas last year.  They wanted one that didn't have any hair, a breed they call the Spynx.  It is a relatively new breed that comes from Canada where a stray female produced hairless kittens.

There actually is a decent Spynx cattery in Alaska named Woolies, which claims on their website that these in-your-face pets are perfect for everyone.   I know.  And later, after the disclaimer that the Sphynx is NOT hypo-allergenic, they also tell you that the Sphynx requires frequent bathing which removes the dirt, oil and dander that cause allergies.

I could not visualize myself giving a shivering hairless cat a bath once, and there is no way that it was going to happen frequently.  The wrinkly folds of their skin made me feel 20 years older just looking at the picture.  I tubed the idea immediately.

The girls did some more research and determined that male black cats are least likely to be adopted from a shelter, also known as more likely to be killed, so I agreed to a mature, housebroken, neutered, black adult male cat.

Craigslist pointed us to a local cat adoption operation known as Clear Creek Cat Rescue which picks up all the strays from Sarah Palin's pound and finds them new homes.  They charge $60 and offer a 10 day return for any reason with a full refund.  Didn't think you could get more reasonable than that.

Boris-Poe-Maggie, a black Angora

Of course, as luck would have it, they had a rare breed kitten that was solid black and was dumped because the breeder couldn't sell him.  They named the Angora "Boris," and put him in with a half dozen other fosters in a trailer, where he spent most of his time hiding.  He came home with us.

Boris wasn't mature, adult, or neutered, but he was housebroken.  His name change to Poe, after Edgar Allen.  He liked to eat the power cord to my computer, and knocked down a lamp when he got zapped, which crashed into the screen of my laptop causing the immediate unresurrectable death of my iMac.  The one I perform all my work product on.  The cat and I hit it off really well early on.

Oh, Poe could NOT be neutered, I discovered when I took him to the vet, because he is a girl - which is why he is now named Maggie, after the cougar in the Rod Stewart song.

Back to microdermabrasion.  I went over to Kelly's office, Exquisite Skin Esthetics which is part of the Alyeska Center for Facial Plastic Surgery to get the dead skin vacuumed off my face.  Well, that is what it is, really.  Your face is no different than any other surface, and there are two ways that professionals use to get stuff that is stuck on off - they either sandblast or use a bagged sander.  Sandblasting is when they use crystals, while a diamond head works more like a sander.

Broken capillaries ruined my porcelain doll complexion.

Microdermabrasion isn't going to work as well for me as it does for other skin types, because I have skin that is easily broken - hence the red spider web of broken capillaries that have cropped up from extreme cold and sun exposure when I was climbing McKinley without oxygen back in the early 70s... or walking to Homestead Elementary School in winter, whatever.  Kelly suggests a light microdermabrasion will lift off all the lint and leave a clean surface for the next procedure, the IPL Photofacial.

After having experienced the microdermabrasion, I can say that there is more grief involved in figuring out how to say it and how to spell it than the procedure itself actually brings.  Kelly showed Bella all the dead skin she lifted off my spanking-clean-to-start-with skin, it was a tidy pile I chose not to look at.  Skin lint.  Ewh.

In Make Up an hour later.  No worries.

There was a little bit of redness that went away after an hour or so, nothing really to get excited about, and it was easily covered with make up for the Pamyua music video appearance I had scheduled right after that.

Microdermabrasion didn't feel like a cat licking my face, it wasn't wet and scratchy at all.  Instead it felt like the time I got bored and decided to put the vacuum cleaner hose over my eye and came up with a hickey...only with less suction.

No, there are no photos of that, but I told everyone that my then-boyfriend, Bryan Schutt, accidentally caught me with his elbow, and he was kind enough not to correct me in public.

Microdermabrasion isn't painfully expensive,  $120 a session as a stand alone or $75 when combined with another treatment.  It buffs away the surface skin cells while improving circulation and product absorption.   Kinda like sanding the wood's surface before you paint.  I figured if I was going all out with the IPL Photofacial it only made sense to do what I could to obtain the best possible result, I know a little prep work in refinishing wood can make all the difference in the success of the finished product.

Come join me on my appointment with Kelly and Bella, and see how things went first hand.  Watch the three 5 minute videos now by clicking here.