Mohawks for Masks

My neighbor Bert and I were feeling a little useless the other night as we drank beer within our little bubble of social isolation and looked at the news of doctors and nurses on the frontlines of the Coronavirus pandemic. That was followed by the good news story grandmothers in Michigan sewing face masks. What could we do?

Then my son came in and asked if he could get a haircut, like the perfectly oblivious 15-year-old he is, and we had an idea.

Let’s get Mohawks! Like the 15-year-olds we wish we’d been. So we are shaving the sides our heads and challenging you to do the same to raise money for medical supplies to keep these brave people safe.

It’s a great time to experiment with your hair: No-one has to see it, and, let’s face it, nobody on a zoom call notices what you look like unless you are butt naked.

Plus, if you don’t like it, we’ve still probably got a couple of months of isolation it to grow back.

We’ve found a charity, Direct Relief which is already providing much needed supplies to hospitals; not just masks, but all forms of personal protective equipment.

1. They are highly rated on Charity Navigator, so you are not getting scammed.

2. They are already working in the space; the last thing manufacturers and hospital administrators need is a well-intentioned bloke with a mohawk trying to reinvent the already stressed supply chain.

3. We don't have time to go through the logistics of setting up a brand new charity. We need to act yesterday.

So if you can’t sew or operate a 3-D printer, get the clippers out and give yourself a Mohawk like my friend Jeff in Austin did. Here are some tips, but that takes a steady hand and mirror vision, so better yet, get one of your inner circle to do it for you. 

Then challenge your mates. The best estimates are that a person infected with novel coronavirus is likely to infect 2-3 other people, so let's try and replicate that and get 2-3 other people to donate to this cause.

Sure, it's a bit more a commitment than dunking your head in a bucket of ice or standing on your balcony and applauding at 8pm, but really it pales in comparison to what the ambulance drivers, orderlies, nurses and doctors are doing every day.

Go on, this is your chance, you know you’ve always wanted one, so let’s make Mohawks for Masks go viral! 

#MohawksforMasks

A Nerdy Postscript

The Mohawk are an indigenous people, the eastern most group of the Haudenosaunee or Iroquois Confederacy of what is now is upstate New York.
Historical accounts described them plucking the hair from the head leaving a small square on the crown of the head. What we call Mohawk hairstyles have appeared in numerous places over time, including other among other Native American peoples. 

While we are thinking about pandemics, recently historians have elevated the role of novel diseases, small pox in particular, in the colonization of the New World. The disease often ravaged the indigenous populations, before they were brought under European control. During an account of Cortes defeat of the Aztecs in 1521, after earlier being repelled, one of the priests accompanying him described how the locals had “died in heaps, like bedbugs” when they entered the Aztec capital.
The 1633 small pox outbreak in Plymouth, Massachusetts, reached the Mohawk nation a year later.

Today, Native American health services are a neglected part of the American health system. There is a COVID19 outbreak among the Navajo Nation .

If you want to support Native American causes, there are some on JustGiving.com. Search Native American or American Indian and scroll down to charities. I’ve donated to the College Fund which supports Native Americans pursuing higher education and is working to ensure students can continue to study at this time.