The blessing of a beard can be harnessed for more than just personal beauty -- About 20 men from Bally are taking 4+ months to grow long, true beards -- many for the first time in their lives. Growing them will be a journey, and often difficult. They will have to re-learn how to eat, how to groom, and re-learn about personal identity. If any of this is difficult, shaving off this new part of themselves in March should be an even more shocking change. We'll be posting pictures of our beards' progress as they grow. One member has a brilliant idea to take bids on silly styles to shave his beard into for the work week after the event -- a reverse beard-hawk maybe? One is letting his hair go as well as the beard, and will go neanderthal to cue-ball. Maybe one member is particularly miserable in his bearded glory for some reason -- well, he'll just have to stick it out until he can hit his pledge-goals to pay for his early disgrace. There's a lot of fun to be had here, but in the end it's just an excuse to try get more people participating to raise money, do real good, and help some folks who don't have the privilege to do some silly things we take for granted, like grow hair. Let's try to make the difference we can!