16=6,000,000?

 June is only two days old. Yet this month already includes two milestones for this blog.

Yesterday, this blog’s total number of views reached 6 million. That may not seem like a lot, at least in comparison with some other blogs.  But recently, days of five-figure viewer counts have become routine; a few days have included more than 100,000 visits.  When I first started this blog, I felt fortunate to have a double-digit daily viewership.

That was 16 years ago today. What, aside from the numbers, has changed? Well, this blog began as a sort of spinoff from “Transwoman Times” as I was returning to cycling after my gender reassignment surgery. I wasn’t quite sure of what recounting my experience as a transgender cyclist would or could mean. But I felt my gender affirmation was a turning or “middle” point on my life and, for the first time, I realized that if I didn’t know, exactly, when my life would end, I am still in the middle of it,That is one reason why I chose to call this “Midlife Cycling” rather than something like “Trans-portation” or “Tne New Girl on a Bike.”

( No, I won’t rename this “The Six Million Viewer Blog” because it sounds too much like “The Six Million Dollar Man.”)

Turns out, that title has given me flexibility: I do not have to write exclusively about cycling, bicycles, gender, age or anything else.  I realize now that what I’ve always wanted is a writing forum that allows me the freedom to go wherever my thoughts, dreams, memories—and wheels—take me. But I also wanted something that would seem, or at least feel, more meaningful, if only to me, than the diaries and journals I’ve kept at various times in my life. 

Now you know why I have not monetized this blog. After sixteen years and six million views, I want it, and my other journeys (on or off my bike) —and I—to continue wherever and however we want and must.

His Offense?

 I am not a fan of parades.  I’ve marched in a few, mainly because of social pressures. In some cases, like the Pride March (formerly known as the “Gay Pride Parade), I was in solidarity with the people, and wanted to commemorate the occasions, it represented. But I don’t like being forced to be on display, or part of a crowd, and nonstop loud noise drives me crazy. Also, I question the motives of many, especially politicians and other celebrities, for showing up.  Call me a cynic, but I think their appearances are mainly for photo ops and, in the case of politicians, endorsements and votes.

That said, I can understand why some were upset when the Mayor of my hometown didn’t appear at its Israel Day parade. I won’t get into what I think of the country’s leadership during the past few decades—that is well beyond the scope of this blog—but, having visited the sites of Jewish arrests, deportations and executions, I can understand the desire, and arguments for the need, of a Jewish state.  On the other hand, having seen people who are now Muslims, Arabs, Turks, Armenians and of other Middle Eastern religions and ethnicities on lands occupied by their ancestors before they were called Muslims, Arabs or any of their other names by which we call them today, I also understand their ties, and their rights, to those lands. And because I have experienced decency, kindness and hospitality from members of all of the groups I’ve mentioned, I can bear no ill will toward any of them.

Having said all of that, I can also understand some of the criticism of Mamdani (for whom I voted) for being the first New York City mayor to skip the Israel Day Parade since it was first held, in 1964. After all, New York City has the second-largest Jewish population of any city or metro area in the world. (Interestingly, the only city and urban area among the top ten that isn’t in Israel or the United States is Paris, France. And the only two others in the top fifteen are London, UK and Buenos Aires, Argentina.) And Mamdani is Muslim, albeit of Indian heritage and Ugandan birth.

Therein lies one of the complications in making his “no-show” at the Israel Day Parade into a Muslim-Jewish conflict. For one thing, his background (and that he doesn’t seem to be an overtly devout Muslim) doesn’t place him in the typical narratives about such a conflict.  Also, the only US metropolitan areas with larger Muslim populations than New York’s are Los Angeles and Detroit. Moreover,  Muslims in New York come from a wide variety of sects and cultural backgrounds spanning every continent except Antarctica.  (Just blocks from my apartment resides one of the largest West African Muslim communities outside of West Africa, and barely a mile from that is the largest Yemeni Muslim community outside of Yemen.) Thus, someone practicing, or simply descending from, Islamic roots is more likely to have something in common with someone like Mamdani than the young men who flew planes into the Twin Towers and Pentagon.

So…what to make of Mamdani not showing his face at the Israel Day Parade? Perhaps better minds than mine can answer that one. But the New York Post did what you can always depend on it to do: get it wrong.

I mean, they would have you believe that going for a bike ride on a beautiful Sunday afternoon was as big, or an even bigger, offense.

For Olivia Hooker, And Those I Never Will Know

 Nearly a decade ago, I wrote something that, whatever its merits or lack thereof, is far more important than anything I’ve written on this blog.  I am mentioning it here,  not to promote it or myself, but to help keep the memory of its subject.

When I wrote that article, I, like many other people, was just learning about the incident I described. Though only a decade has passed, the day it was published seems like a lifetime, even an historical era, ago. During the previous few years, historians, public officials and the few remaining survivors of that tragedy were doing everything they could to ensure that it isn’t forgotten.  Now in the US, we have officials at every level, from the President to school board members, who are trying to keep it—and anything else that makes them uncomfortable—from being taught or even mentioned.

I am referring to the Tulsa Race Massacre, which took place 105 years ago today.  Like too many other tragedies, a false rumor sparked it. And, like too many of the most horrific episodes in history, it resulted in the destruction of, not only individual lives (the exact number will, most likely, never be known) but of a community: Mobs of white residents, deputized by the governor himself, wiped the Greenwood district off the face of the earth.

I have told my students they should take history personally. Possibly my worst failing or, at least, one of my biggest disappointments, was knowing that none of the students in a Women’s Studies class I taught seemed to understand as much.  In fact, some resisted the idea:  They were required to take the course as part of a program and, I now realize, were resistant simply out of resentment.  Then again, I remember when my mother, even when she did paid work, couldn’t open a checking account or get a credit card without my father’s signature. I also remember girls smarter and more talented and ambitious than I was being discouraged from, or outright denied the opportunity to, attend college because “It would be a waste of time, you’re going to get married anyway.” 

And when I wrote that article, a few survivors of the Tulsa Race Massacre remained. I came into contact with one:  Olivia Hooker, who witnessed the pogrom as a little girl and was 101 years old when that article was published. She passed away two years later. I hope that, if I have done nothing else, I have honored her memory—and those of hundreds, possibly thousands, of others whose names neither I nor the rest of the world may ever know.