For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as the Lord does the church.
December 19, 2010
By Paris Achen
Medford, Oregon
Mail Tribune
While other downtown Medford shop windows went dark during the recession, Phat Kat Tattoo and Piercing on South Riverside Avenue was expanding and renovating.
Although owner Jeff Rahenkamp attributes much of Phat Kat's success to its clean and friendly environment, the shop is not an anomaly. In fact, the tattoo parlor is a microcosm of an industry that has continued to grow and thrive in spite of the economic downturn.
“When people are losing their homes, their cars and everything, you can't take tattoos away,” Rahenkamp says. “They're mine. Unless you're taking my skin off, you aren't taking it.”
Nearly one in four Americans had a tattoo in 2006, according to a study published in September of that year by the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology.
“It's no longer just bikers, drifters and people who don't want to conform to society who have tattoos,” Rahenkamp says. “Now, we're tattooing doctors and lawyers.”
For the rest of this story go HERE.
Is it true that people still continue to tend to their appearance and persona even though their pockets jingle with only a little change and their bellies are hungry? Some point out that surrounding the times of the GREAT DEPRESSION the market was double bullish with respect to personal cosmetics and perfumes.
Evidence from Avon, the famous perfume and cosmetics company:
“California Perfume issued its first product catalog in 1896, which contained descriptions of items but no photographs. In 1897, McConnell [David McConnell, a 28-year-old, who launched Avon] had a three-story, 3,000-square-foot laboratory constructed in Suffern, New York, to develop new cosmetic products for the company. In 1906, its first print ads appeared in Good Housekeeping and its first color catalog was issued. Disaster struck that year when CPC's San Francisco office was destroyed in the great earthquake that decimated the city. A new office soon opened, as did new branch offices in Luzerne, Pennsylvania, and Davenport, Iowa. By the end of the year, the company had ten thousand sales representatives and managers, and offered 117 different products.
G. Mark Sumpter
“Still He blesses those on whom He sets His love in a way that humbles them, so that all the glory may be His alone. Still He hates the sins of His people, and uses all kinds of inward and outward pains and griefs to wean their hearts from compromise and disobedience. Still He seeks the fellowship of His people, and sends them both sorrows and joys in order to detach their love from other things and attach it to Himself. Still He teaches the believer to value His promised gifts by making him wait for them, and compelling him to pray persistently for them, before He bestows them. So we read of Him dealing with His people in the Scripture record, and so He deals with them still. His aims and principles of action remain consistent; He does not at any time act out of character. Man’s ways, we know, are pathetically inconsistent—but not God’s.”
