Rewarded For Her Advocacy

Every month, the Post and Courier of Charleston, South Carolina gives its Golden Pen award.  The most recent recipient won for a letter on a topic that's too often ignored or reported in an uninformed way.  

Rebecca Vaughn of nearby Mount Pleasant and her husband are committed to depending entirely on their bicycles for transportation at least one day every week.  They are able to get around safely, she says, because of an established network of bike lanes in the town.  Once they venture out of their hometown, however, "the lack of safe spaces, particularly along the Highway 17 and 61 corridors is evident," she wrote.  

In her letter, she also notes that there is no safe way to cross the Ashley River by bicycle.  That is particularly frustrating, she writes, because in West Ashley, on the other side of the river, there are bike lanes that make it possible to navigate much of the town on two wheels.

In her letter, she noted that a bike-and-pedestrian bridge over the Ashley River would allow cyclists like herself and her husband to cycle from their homes, through downtown Charleston and into West Ashley and beyond.  This linkage would provide community benefits and help "unlock a piece of the puzzle that will allow residents and visitors to enjoy a safe transportation choice," she wrote. She concluded by urging her senators--Lindsey Graham and Tim Scott--to lead the effort to secure the necessary federal funds.

As part of the Golden Pen award, Ms. Vaughn will be invited to a luncheon with the Post and Courier editorial staff.  I assume she will ride to it.

Santa In The Spring

I am an educator.  It's still strange for me to write those words.  You see, I resisted becoming one and  quit for a few years when I was having a midlife crisis.  I then realized that I didn't need to change jobs:  I only had to change my gender.

Anyway, one of the reasons I tried not to become a teacher (which was the only kind of educator I knew about) was that I hated most of my teachers.  I guess that's not so unusual because, well, most kids hate their teachers and some of my elementary-school teachers were Carmelite nuns. Yes, they wore the black habits.

I did, however, have teachers I liked, and not necessarily because they were "easy".  Rather, I realize now that they "got" me:  I wasn't the best-behaved or smartest kid, butI wasn't destructive and I loved to read and write.  So they encouraged me in those areas and even showed interest in whatever happened to interest me at the time.

Cycling wasn't one of those interests, though.  It wasn't that I didn't like to ride:  The reason why they couldn't help or encourage me in those areas is that none of them rode.  Actually, through all of my pre-adult life, adults didn't ride bikes and most assumed that a kid would "grow out of it", probably upon getting his or her driver's license, or not long after.

Now, I don't know whether South Carolina elementary-school teacher Katie Blomquist pedals to her school, or anyplace else.  But she surely understands how much having a bike means to her kids.  She also knew that many of them, or their families, couldn't afford one.  

So, last summer, she decided she would play Santa Claus and make sure all of the kids in her school got a bike for Christmas.  She started a GoFundMe campaign that would raise $80,000.  Donations came from as far away as France and Australia.  In the meantime, she worked with a local bike shop called Affordabike to pick out color schemes and other aspects of the bikes.  Affordabike also provided the kids with matching locks and helmets.




Katie's Kids, if you will, didn't get their bikes for Christmas.  But yesterday the bikes, helmets and locks were delivered to the Pepperhill Elementary School in North Charleston, South Carolina.  The largesse wasn't limited to the pupils of her class:  All 650 Pepperhill pupils received the bikes, helmets and locks.

So, while they didn't get the Christmas gift every kid dreams of, their wheels are ready for the beginning of spring break--and summer.

Pepperhill is a Title 1 school, which means that it receives extra funding from the Federal government for its students, many of whom come from low-income families. But, for a day, they were all equal in the wealth of happiness they experienced--and the kindness of a teacher they, I am sure, will always recall fondly! 

Massacre In South Carolina: The Confederate Flag Still Flies

Today I’m not going to stick to the topic of this blog.  Instead, I want to talk about something that, I’m sure, you’ve heard about by now:  the massacre inside the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina .

One of the cruelest ironies is that members of a Bible study group—including the church's pastor, who also happens to be a  South Carolina State senator—in one of America’s oldest historically black churches were gunned down by a young white man who sat with them on the eve of Juneteenth— a few days after the 800^th anniversary of King John issuing Magna Carta.

And the Confederate Flag flies in front of the State Capitol.

A century and a half after slaves in South Carolina and Texas and other states got word that they were free men and women, a young man hadn’t gotten the message that the Fourteenth Amendment of the US Constitution guarantees all citizens, regardless of their skin color, the rights enumerated in the first ten amendments (a.k.a. the Bill of Rights).  Heck, he didn’t even get the message that there’s no such country as Rhodesia anymore.  He was simply acting from the same sort of ignorance, the same sort of hate, that left earlier generations of young African Americans hanging from trees or at the bottoms of rivers.

And the Confederate Flag flies in front of the State Capitol.

More than a century and a half after the Emancipation Proclamation, in the state in which the opening shot of the US Civil War was fired, a young man entered a Bible Study group and waited for the “right” moment to shoot someone nearly as young as he is, people old enough to be his parents, grand-parents and great-grandparents.  He shattered the peace and sanctity they found in what, for many generations of African-Americans—and, perhaps, for those members of the Bible Study group—has been their closest-knit, if not their only, sanctuary.

And the Confederate flag flies in front of the State Capitiol.   

From the church's website.

A pastor was killed along with a deacon and laypeople.  Families lost sisters, brothers, mothers, fathers; friends lost friends and people lost spouses and other loved ones.  They loved and were loved; they raised families and were raised by families.  And they contributed to the lives of their communities through their professional and volunteer work, and the loves and interests they shared with those around them.

And the Confederate flag flies in front of the State Capitol.

Dylann Storm Roof, in an instant, ended the lives of Rev. (and Sen.) Clementa Pickney, Mira Thompson, Daniel Simmons Sr., Cynthia Hurd, Rev. Sharonda Coleman-Singleton, Tywanza Sanders, De Payne Middleton, Ethel Lance and her cousin Susie Jackson. All of them, one hundred and fifty years after Juneteenth.

And a Confederate flag in front of the State Capitol hasn't even been lowered to half-mast.