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.

A Lesson Refreshed, Decades Later

 Some of the lessons you learn while you’re in school have nothing to do with school itself—or, at least anything that happens in a classroom or laboratory.

Sometimes you don’t realize you’ve learned those lessons—or they don’t make sense—until much later.  The reason could be that you forget, or don’t think about, whatever brought about those lessons for a long time.

Yesterday I took an afternoon ride to Randall’s Island and came back via a series of paths and streets that more or less parallel the Harlem River. As I passed Yankee Stadium, I thought I saw a somewhat familiar face. Indeed he was: a neighbor with whom I’ve exchanged friendly greetings. He was selling baseball caps and other souvenirs of the baseball team and New York City, he said, not because he needs the money, but to “get out of the house.”

I told him I understood: It’s one of the many reasons I ride my bicycle.

“And you look so strong, so confident,” he said. 

I demurred. “ Well, I’m not so strong…”

“You are. And you look so happy.”

Vicki told me the same thing, almost verbatim. She’d seen me spinning my pedals—on my Nishiki International, if I remember correctly—from Buccleuch (Rumor had it that spelling it correctly was a requirement for graduating from Rutgers) onto College Avenue.

We met in a class and went for a beer. (You could do that as an 18 year old in those days.) The attraction wasn’t sexual, at least as best as I could tell, nor was it “spiritual” or even platonic. We simply “got” each other: We were exploring creative and intellectual endeavors, and learning about ourselves in ways we never could have in the milieux each of us left.

One thing she immediately noticed about me was my lack of confidence in myself: something I still struggle with.  “But I saw a whole different person on your bike.”

“Nobody ever told me I wasn’t good enough to ride my bike.”

“The way you rode your bike, you’re good enough for anything.”

I thanked her, even though I didn’t believe what she said. I don’t think she was trying to give me false hope; she simply was describing who she saw riding by the Rutgers campus.

I hadn’t thought about that moment, or Vicki, in decades. And it took a random encounter with a neighbor selling baseball caps by Yankee Stadium to give me a “refresher.”

Playing Chicken On Memorial Day

 Today is Memorial Day here in the US.  I suspect that some people in this part of the country are not having the picnics, cookouts or other outdoor events they might’ve planned for today.  It has rained or drizzled almost steadily for the past two days and the heavy clouds hovering over us are trapping dampness that could turn to rain at any moment. That is one reason I am not at the Tour of Somerville.  That, and I woke up later than I’d planned.  But I might play chicken with the rain later today and sneak a ride in.

I Needed Him More Than I Knew

 In my previous two posts, I reminisced about things that would change my life, and the world—even if I didn’t realize it at the time—that began during this time of year, specifically during a too-early-for-the season heat wave.

My most recent post described how a morning ride with a friend became a journey to the end of fifth grade, a time just before my body and so much in my surroundings would change irrevocably.

That was May of 1969. Now my “Time Machine”—in this case, Tosca, my Mercian fixie, on which I took another early ride—will bring us to 1991. 

My bikes in those days:  a Colnago Arabesque and Bianchi Aelle.  I’d spun the Colnago’s pedals up and down the “seven sisters” on the Jersey side before crossing the George Washington Bridge back to my place.  After showering and eating, I took the subway downtown to a workshop led by poet Martha Rhodes.

One of the workshop’s participants had a cat who’d just had kittens.  As much as I love anything with whiskers that meows and purrs, I could have understood had Martha been annoyed at my fellow student bringing her little ones to the class. But Martha adopted one.  I took another. Or, rather, he took me:  He gave me a look that combined vulnerability and confidence in a way I’ve never seen in any other living being before or since:  He seemed to say, “Oh, I’m just a little kitty” and “You know you’re taking me home” at once.

We didn’t look away from each other on my way home. When I brought him to the vet, the receptionist, technician and vet himself fawned over him: He seemed to be cuter by the minute. And he would develop a bond with me and Caterina, my other cat, that deepened.

I quickly became as impressed with his intelligence as his friendliness.  But at the time, I didn’t realize how much, and how soon, I would need him.  That is not to say that Caterina wasn’t loving. She was already eight years old (according to the vet) when I adopted her five years earlier.  My new “fur baby,” on the other hand, would become the first—and, to date, only—friend I’ve had from the beginning (He was two months old) until the end of his life.

I named him Charlie. Why? It just sounded right—like a “buddy” name.  Like someone who showed up at just the right time.

My ex and I had separated; it would soon become a divorce. Although I wanted our (dis)union to end, it was difficult. For one thing, she fought it, at least in the beginning. Part of me said I should give it one more try, because she wanted it,  but I knew, almost from the beginning, how untenable our relationship was. Also, as much as I wanted out of it, I never realized what else would end with it. Even in a bad relationship, there are some things that are pleasurable or meaningful only when you are together—like the cafe where the waiter knew us. I never went back. 

Sometimes the very people who knew your relationship shouldn’t have happened in the first place are the ones blame you for “abandoning” your former partner. Or you find out that people with whom you thought you would remain friends were really friends of the couple, so to speak, not you.

On the other hand, the breakup gave me a chance to do things simply because I wanted to: the bike ride, taking Martha’s workshop, adopting Charlie.

I joke sometimes that he got me through my first semester of graduate school and college teaching that Fall. Who do you think helped me read and write all of those papers? Seriously, though I was happy to be doing those things, they were at times stressful because they were new to me (and because I didn’t get my first paycheck until the middle of November even though I started teaching in late August). I had to relate to people—my students, my fellow students and colleagues—in ways to which I wasn’t accustomed, in part because more than a decade had passed since I was last a student, and because the environments in which I’d worked had been very different. And, of course, I looked at relationships, all of them, differently as a result of my marriage.

Oh, and there was one other reason why I would need Charlie in ways I could not have foreseen. A week and a half after I adopted him, I learned that a college friend, Robert, had died. While I stayed in touch with him episodically after we graduated, he was always important to me because he was the first person to utter the words, “I am gay” in my presence. I had suspected as much, but it mattered, in ways I couldn’t realize at the time, that he would make such a declaration. He wasn’t trying to get a date with me; it simply came up in the course of something he, another friend and I were talking about. In that place and time, such an admission could be anything from risky to deadly. To this day, I really don’t know why he told me; I don’t believe that I was one of the more sensitive or open-minded people, even in that environment.

Since we are in 1991, you might have surmised what took his life:  AIDS-related illness. By Christmas of that year, four other friends or friendly acquaintances would die the same way. Another took her life; still another was murdered. (Actually, I consider the AIDS deaths, like those from COViD, to be murders because they resulted, directly or not, from what health and government officials did or didn’t do. ) And on the day before Christmas Eve, Caterina passed away.

What would I have done without Charlie—or cycling?

(Note: The cat named “Charlie” in this post is not the same as the one I mentioned in some of my early posts, although they were eerily similar in looks and personality. Charlie II came into my life as an adult cat a few months after Charlie I died. Charlie II was rescued; his rescuer named him Charlie.)

From An Island To A Memory Of A Street

 

My friend Sam—one of the first people I met when I moved into my current apartment—took an early ride: me, on Tosca, my Mercian fixed gear and he, on the aluminum Trek road bike I fixed up for him.  The breeze we felt as we crossed the bridge into City Island and at the end of the island itself would be the last relief we would feel before the sun would turn brick-lined streets— which we followed from Pelham Bay  to Bronx Park—into ovens.

The bricks—faded, cracked and pockmarked like faces who have survived winter, poverty, betrayal and the births of those who have died along those streets—smoldered with their remains and the last buds blown away from cherry blossoms, magnolias, crabapples and early spring flowers like tulips and hyacinths planted around those trees.

The too-early-for-the season heat, which reached 95F (35C), turned their shadows, all of them, into the pores, wrinkles and cracks in bricks and concrete slabs that will endure, perhaps, longer than the street—at least, as I have know it—will.

I walked down a street like it, a couple of blocks from where I lived in Brooklyn, on a day like this, which had followed and preceded another like it, near the end of my fifth grade year.  1969: The world was about to change because of events I would know about as they happened—Woodstock, the Apollo 11 moon landing and protests against the Vietnam War and racial prejudice—and ones I wouldn’t know about until later, like Stonewall.

But, even though summer had not officially begun, it seemed to have always been. The faded, flaked bricks and pinks, purples and yellows turning green felt suspended in the haze of that heat. Just as the world beyond it was changing, I somehow knew that what I was seeing and feeling that day wouldn’t be there forever. Nor would I. The heat was no longer only a meteorological phenomenon: I felt, in a way I couldn’t describe, that it was flaring within me.  And within a year it would change me, as it would change my neighborhood.

On my way home that day, I saw a man who, at the time, seemed ancient to me, sitting on his stoop, as he did nearly every day. I would never see him again.

Sam and promised each other we’ll ride again, perhaps tomorrow morning. The afternoon is forecast to be as hot as today.

(More to come.)

Heat: A Harbinger?

I have taught my last class. Now I am reading stray overdue assignments, writing reports and doing the other bureaucratic things faculty members have to do at the end of a semester.  Oh, and I have been exchanging emails with the students I mentioned in an earlier post.

The AIDS walk has just ended in Central Park. I don’t know whether this particular date was chosen for any reason. But it just so happens that yesterday was the anniversary of what some have argued was the beginning of AIDS in the US, even if no one—including the young doctors who treated the first patient—knew it at the time.  Robert Rayford, a 16-year-old Black boy who had never been outside of his home town of St. Louis died.  The ostensible cause was pneumonia, but the two-year-long downward spiral of his health, in which his immune system basically shut down, baffled the doctors so much that they saved samples of his tissue for nearly two decades.

I could say something about why Rayford, raised by a single mother, was not recognized as “Patient Zero” even after tests confirmed the presence of AIDs proteins during the late 1980s. As a poor Black boy who never left his a hometown of St. Louis, his story didn’t fit the narratives constructed by LG (we—T’s and B’s—weren’t included) organizations, which were dominated mainly by White affluent and middle-class gay men.  

Anyway, I mentioned that episode because, in a way, it’s emblematic of this time of year, at least for me. We are in that part of Spring that’s a prelude to Summer and, perhaps, changes no one is anticipating.  An early heat wave is beginning today.  A week from tomorrow will be Memorial Day, the “unofficial” beginning of Summer, even if a cold spell, possibly accompanied by wind and rain, will strike before the “official” beginning of Summer.

That chronological and weather pattern transpired several times in my life, and each time was a prelude to changes in my life, or changes in the world that would affect me, whether or not I recognized, or even could recognize it at the time.

(To Be Continued )

Ross Willard R.I.P,

 About two weeks ago, I mentioned finding a Bike Library in Shirley Chisholm State Park. Until then, I was aware of only one bike library, in Iowa City, which I learned about by chance.

If the idea is spreading, I shouldn’t be surprised. After all, when I first encountered Recycle-A-Bicycle in my hometown of New York, I thought it was the only program of its kind. Now I see that the concept—which involves fixing bicycles for sale or to distribute to kids and people who can’t afford them—has spread all over the country.  Those programs often involve classes in which kids learn to fix, and earn, bikes as well as volunteer opportunities. 

One thing I have always loved about such programs is that they bypass the elitist racer mentality that intimidates people when they walk into shops.  I was once one of those cyclists who believed that if you weren’t pedaling what Grand Tour riders used and didn’t  live on and for your bike, you weren’t a real cyclist.  I now realize that riders like me were a reason why the US didn’t (and in most areas, still doesn’t ) have a cycling culture.  On the other hand, programs like Bike Recyclers show people that bikes can be a viable form of transportation and that you don’t need to have the newest, latest and most expensive, any more than you need a Formula One car to drive to your family’s holiday get-together in another state.

Folks like Ross Willard are the reason why at least some people understand that new bikes aren’t the only good bikes and,  most importantly, how tomake cycling practical and safe.  Best of all, he started Recycle Bicycle Harrisburg in a city that, while it’s Pennsylvania’s state capital, has faced economic challenges. Also, because it’s more spread out than, say, Philadelphia, and lacks public transportation, residents rely heavily on cars. 

Like most worthwhile change, the shift toward bicycling and other forms of non-automotive transportation has come slowly. But Ross Willard got the wheels rolling, if you will.  He, who passes away last weekend, should be remembered and honored for that.

Happy Mothers’ Day

 Happy Mothers’ Day!

Leaving: The Road Ahead

 

Yesterday I rode down to Rockaway Beach. From there, I pedaled into wind that, at times, reached 40KPH (25MPH) to Brighton Beach.

Along the way, I thought,  among other things,  about the encounters with students I mentioned in my previous post. They could’ve changed my mind about a decision I made earlier. But something one student said made me realize I made, if not the right choice (if there was one), but one that could work out in ways I hadn’t planned.

Someone asked a food writer or chef—I forget which—what he would choose for his last meal. “Wait—I thought you hated those foods,” the interviewer interjected. “Exactly. I don’t want to be unhappy about leaving this world.”  For me, the conversations I had with the two non-binary students, particularly a comment one of them made, left me satisfied that this coming week, I will be teaching my last classes.

Not long after I had the dream about a classmate I hadn’t seen since graduation—and finding her name on my high school’s “In Memoriam” list—I wrote my letter stating my intention to retire as of 1 June, just after the semester ends. While there are ways in which college teaching has changed that are not to my liking (e.g., online classes), I am not leaving because of dissatisfaction or even burnout, though I find that the work seems to take more of my energy than it did years ago. Rather, I am satisfied that I am leaving on a good note: The in-person class that included those two students is one of my favorites, and the two online courses I taught this semester at least had students who seemed friendly and worked diligently.

My student is right: Wherever I go and whatever I do next, I will offer people like them, young and old—and myself—what  I have given them and what I did not have when I was their age or when I started my gender affirmation process.

What Next?

 The semester is ending. Although my workload hasn’t been greater than in previous years, this has been a pretty intense time. Some of that has to do with the students themselves, though not entirely in a bad way. But I have also been experiencing things outside the classroom—or, more precisely, within me—that have made my interactions seem more fraught and rewarding at the same time. 

The ride I took to Point Lookout on Saturday and a Sunday visit to the Botanical Garden were what I needed: both invigorating and restorative. I will return to them again, barring some unforeseeable (for me, anyway) tragedy or disaster. Monday, on the other hand, included the last session of one of my classes. Students thanked me as I’ve never heard before. One stayed after to tell me that, for the first time, they felt confident about their future.

You may have noticed that I used gender-neutral pronouns. The student identifies themself in that way. I “outed” myself in that class: something I hadn’t done in any class in some time. “That made me realize the life I want is possible,” they explained. I urged that student, and another who identifies as non-binary, to stay in touch with me, and not only for a reference or letter of recommendation.

I told them a bit about how I began my gender affirmation process. Although I participated in support groups and was working with a therapist who helped other trans people through their affirmation processes and a clinical social worker who was a trans man, I didn’t have role models in my day-to-day life.  Some lesbians and gay men were supportive, but their journeys were, in some ways, very different from mine. For them, not to mention family members, friends, co-workers and other people in my life, I was the first person they knew who was making that “transition.” “Now I hope,” I told those students, “I am giving you what I didn’t have.”

I confided to them that I’ve been thinking about leaving the US. Sometimes I feel I need it for my mental health. Other times I feel I should stay because of people like them. “Well, whether you stay or go, you’ll offer the same thing you’re giving us,” one student assured me. “If you move to France or Italy or wherever, there are young people like us.”

Where, and how, will my midlife journey continue? Perhaps there is no right or wrong answer—as there is for so many of the questions I, and they, pose.

When Your Cup (Or Bladder) Runneth Over

 What determines what your ride will be like?

Is it the weather? The kind of bike you ride? Its condition? Or, maybe, what you had for breakfast?

Did you drink tea or coffee? If you did, did you have o e cup too many?

Pure Spring

Perhaps I should have taken this day more seriously.

After all, on this date exactly 140 years ago, more than 300,000 workers in the US—50,000 in Chicago alone—went on strike for an eight-hour workday. The walkout in the Windy City led to the Haymarket Riot.

In other countries, this date—May Day—is observed, formally or informally, as Labor Day was in the US before it became an occasion for “last chance” summer parties and sales on stuff nobody needs.

Today, though, it was easy to forget how solemn this day could be. The sky was bright, the air clear (for NYC anyway) and brisk and the colors bold. It wasn’t like days in late March or early April that carry memories of a brutal, seemingly endless Winter that one has somehow survived, nor did it mirror or echo hints of Summer heat. It was Pure Spring.

So what did I do? I took Tosca, my Mercian fixed gear bike, for a spin among blossoming magnolias and beds of red, white, yellow and violet tulips on Randall’s Island.

And when I got home, I turned on music. Tchaikovsky’s “Rites of Spring?” Not quite. The Beatles’ “Here Comes The Sun?” Not even. Rather, I clicked onto a YouTube video of pure bubble gum:  The Monkees’ “I’m A Believer.” 

It may not be deep, but it expresses a moment when someone loses his cynicism—in this case, about finding love. Perhaps I chose it because the first time I can recall hearing it was on a day like this: Shadows of the past (of which, to be fair, I was too young to have very much of) did not cling to it; if a darker future lay ahead, I had no hint of it.

It was the first Pure Spring day I can remember. Others followed; perhaps more will come. I can only follow the journey, I can only ride through and with it.

What Are The Chances?

 People have claimed to see their entire lives flash before their eyes.  I am glad not to have had  (I think) such an experience. But during the past week and a half or so, I feel as if I’ve seen parts of my past unfolding in slow motion.

I believe it began when I had the dream about a high-school classmate I hadn’t seen since graduation and hadn’t thought about for almost as long.  I Googled her name and found it on the “In Memoriam” list of my high school reunion webpage. 

Since then, I have encountered three people I hadn’t seen, collectively, for about 50 years. One of those meetings was planned, with a former colleague and, I realized, friend . The other  two I met during bike rides because I deviated from my originally-planned routes. 

 One gave me a temporary job during Citibike’s first year, when riders and the program’s coordinators and mechanics were discovering the bikes’ “bugs.” I fixed some of them (for good, I hope).  Now she’s running the “bike library” in Shirley Chisholm State Park, where my ride took me when I decided to turn left from 84th Street in Howard Beach onto the Shore Parkway Greenway instead of going straight ahead to the Rockaways. 

The other chance encounter happened when I crossed 167th Street at Bryant Avenue. I was about to turn right so I could access the path that runs through Concrete Plant Park. Instead,I pedaled straight through the intersection toward the Bruckner Bike Lane. “Pro-fessor Jus-time!” A student I had about a dozen years ago but with whom I’d been in touch only on Facebook since then ran up to me. Turns out, she’s running a youth program in the neighborhood.  

Some might say there was a reason for all of those meetings and that dream. Perhaps they will be part of a journey—or ride.

Don’t Stop!

 If you ride, or have ridden, a fixed-gear bike with no brakes, this video might remind you of your first, or only, attempt.

When Cycling (and Pedestrian) Safety Is Social Justice

 Yesterday I crossed the Rubicon.  All right, it was a Boulevard of Death.

Several New York City thoroughfare have earned that moniker over the years. I regularly crossed two of them—Queens and Northern Boulevards—when I lived in Astoria.  The, like the one I traversed yesterday, are what transportation planners call “stroads.” While classified as city streets because of their urban settings, they have four or more long, straight lanes with long stretches between traffic signals. This setup encourages motorists to drive well over the speed limit.

“Stroads” often  include merges with, and on- and-off-ramps for, major highways. They usually pass through commercial areas, which provide constant streams of cars pulling in and out of traffic. The stroad I crossed yesterday, however, cuts through residential areas.

Those residential areas include what have been, for decades, two of New York City’s poorest neighborhoods. In addition to the other difficulties of growing up and loving in poverty, residents have some of the worst health in the city and nation:  Heavy traffic contributes to high rates of asthma and other respiratory illnesses and its un-walkability and lack of green spaces means that people don’t exercise much. (There also isn’t a gym, which most residents couldn’t afford anyway,) And because there aren’t supermarkets or even bodegas along the way, fresh fruits and vegetables, and other healthy foods, are difficult to come by.

And, in contrast with Queens Boulevard, under which a city subway line runs, and Northern, which includes stops for other lines and the Long Island Rail Road (yes, they spell it as two words), the “stroad” I’m talking about is miles from any train station. Local buses run along parts of it and on some streets that cross it, but it’s difficult to piece together a route from where people live to where they work, go to school or shop, let alone visit family and friends in other areas.

Oh, and many people who live along and near Linden share a trait shared by others, rich and poor, in the Big Apple:  they don’t have cars, or even access to them. Thus, they are not the ones contributing to the nightmarish traffic situation.

The “stroad” in question is Linden Boulevard. It begins in Brooklyn, at Flatbush Avenue, and runs south and east for 20 kilometers (with an interruption at Aqueduct Race Track) to the Queens-Nassau County border, passing near JFK International Airport along the way. .In Brooklyn, Linden cuts through Brownsville and East New York, home to the greatest concentrations of public housing and percentages of residents—including children—living in poverty. Many of those kids must cross eight lanes of traffic—on some stretches, with no pedestrian islands or other barriers in the middle—to get to their often-overcrowded and under- funded schools. Some, and some adults going to work or to catch the bus, didn’t make it.

Linden Boulevard, like otner “stroads,” cries out for, in addition to pedestrian islands, dedicated bus and bike lanes and other improvements to mass transit and safety for anyone who is getting around without a car. Our new mayor, Zohran Mamdani, has announced plans for a redesign of the most dangerous stretch of Linden, which includes the intersection I crossed during yesterday’s ride.  While nothing is mentioned about bike lanes, the other improvements I mentioned, including more points where pedestrians can cross, should at least help to cut down on the reckless driving that plagues it.

Redesigning “stroads” like Linden Boulevard, therefore, isn’t just a matter of convenience: It’s imperative for safety—and social justice.

The Baby Christian Jesus President

 Today I am not going to write about cycling or midlife.  But I somehow believe that what I am about to say is a midlife reflection of the sort I might have during a ride.

I was brought up Catholic. Later I became an Evangelical Christian. I explored other religions.  Though I can feel some affinity, and great respect, for Buddhism (mainly because I don’t see it so much as a religion, at least as I understand it, as a way of being centered on learning and teaching), I identify as an agnostic non-theist.  That is to say, I don’t believe in a “higher being” but, because no one has been able to prove, or disprove, the existence of such a being, I cannot dismiss the possibility of its existence.

So why am I mentioning what I do or don’t believe? Well, reading Bruce Gerenscer’s post today got me to thinking about how Evangelical Christians (like the one I was) and conservative Catholics give their full-throated support to Donald Trump.  And the more un-Christian (at least as I understand the faith) his behavior, the louder and sometimes more belligerently they defend him.

What really got me thinking about this phenomenon, however, was a particular point Bruce made. Six decades ago, many people—some not even particularly religious—took umbrage at John Lennon exclaiming “We’re more popular than Jesus.” Actually, the outrage was, and continues to be, over how the tabloids misrepresented, and the public mis-remembers, what he said: that the Beatles were “bigger” than Jesus.

Even if John, normally the most articulate Beatle, could have said it differently, his point was valid:  His group and rock’n’roll music generally had more influence on young people than Christianity or any other religion. I think church leaders, and many everyday believers, were more worried that they were losing their authority than over a band’s or a musical genre’s popularity.

I was a young child at the time, and I recall that many kids weren’t allowed to have Beatles’ records or albums, or even to listen to their music on the radio.  I wasn’t subject to such a ban, mainly because my parent’s didn’t listen to the Beatles or other British Invasion bands: Their tastes ran more toward Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons and Concetta Franconero, a.k.a. Connie Francis. (I think every Italian-American family in my milieu had a similar playlist!) 

Anyway, in contrast to the anger, some from not-particularly-religious people, at Lennon, Evangelical and Fundamentalist Christians, and conservative Catholics, raised barely a peep—some even applauded—when an AI-generated image of the Fake Tan Führer as a Christ-like healer spread across the web and airwaves. And when he excoriated the Pope for denouncing the war (let’s call it what it is) against Iran and being “soft on crime” (last I checked, the Vatican had the lowest crime—at least as it’s defined by law enforcement and investigative agencies—rate of any country). If anything, they justify “Baby Christian” Trump’s belligerent words and deeds by admonishing his critics not to “judge, lest ye be judged.” Perhaps that’s also their rationale for not calling out J.D. Vance—a recent convert to Catholicism—when he told the Pope to “be careful” about speaking of matters of theology.

Perhaps the most ironic aspect of the events I’ve just described is that the most pointed critiques of Trump’s and Vance’s blasphemies have come from people who aren’t religious: secular Christians and Jews, even atheists and non-affiliated believers.  I must admit that I, too, feel even more ire at folks like Trump and Vance hijacking religious beliefs and iconography, and attacking religious leaders, than I might have were I still a believer. Why? Well, as I said earlier, even though I don’t believe, I still have respect for those who actually do and, more importantly, use it as a moral foundation for their lives rather than as a cloak over their calumny. After all, I can no more prove that their God doesn’t exist than they can prove he/she/they/it does. They have a right to believe, just as I have right not to. If the Pope is a guide and Jesus is an avatar for them—or if any other religious leader spreads a message of love—I am willing to denounce anyone who dares to defame or mis-appropriate them.

Red And Gray

It’s been a while since I last posted. The past two weeks have been busy. I finally did a long ride yesterday, to Point Lookout, Coney Island and into Manhattan via the Manhattan Bridge before hopping onto the D train at Grand Street, in Manhattan’s Chinatown. In all, I covered about 150 kilometers, or just over 90 miles.  It actually 130 km ride I did the previous Saturday because I had the wind at my back or side all the way from Point Lookout to Manhattan, whereas I was pedaling into the wind on my way home from the previous ride.

The weather has been strange, even for this time of year. On Wednesday and Thursday, the temperature reached 90F (32.2 C), which would have been the beginning of a heat wave in July or August.  While the weather had cooled down (70F/21C) by yesterday, it felt even cooler along the ocean. And although the sun didn’t feel intense—in fact, skies had grown overcast—I still managed to get sunburned,  (Use sunscreen even if you don’t think you need it!).

How is it that my limbs and face burned tomato red, yet steel gray cables and towers (in this case, the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge) were bathed in the even grayer mist and clouds?  The mysteries!

As I Ride, A Season Unfolds

 This year, January and February were the coldest months I could recall for a number of years.  March was a roller-coaster, weather-wise, as it normally is, though I saw piles of snow and ice, reminders of the previous two months, almost until the Spring equinox.

Some people want the memory of such a winter erased, quickly and thoroughly. They want Spring to literally spring straight into summer.  Me, I enjoy seeing the season unfold. Cycling allows that: One day, I see cherry blossom,magnolia and crabapple petals folded into each other:  Are they hands holding the life they’re trying to protect, one not quite ready to come out to the world? Or are they begging, pleading, praying for a respite from the harshness of the season that might not be finished?

A day later, I see those same trees—or other cherry blossoms, magnolias and crabapples—with petals opened ever so slightly, as if they want to be sure that raindrop isn’t too cold or that ray of sunshine too strong to catch. The day after, they open still a bit more and are starting to flower.

And there is the sunshine of this time of year: clear, without the sharp edges of winter or summer’s haze. As much as I love it, I still can’t decide whether I prefer to see buds throbbing open and pulsating their colors reflected in the sun’s rays, or defiantly displaying their hues against an overcast sky, just ahead of a Spring rainstorm.

I love the seasons I experience on my bicycle.

 I hope your Easter is “out of this world.”

By Sebastian Millon