How Is It Aging?

Aged 12 years.

When I saw that phrase--on a bottle of Scotch whiskey--I wasn't 12 years old.  I couldn't quite fathom that grown-ups drank something older than I was.

Now I am at an age when I don't think of something as having occurred 12 years ago.  Now I'm more likely to round it up or down to 15 or ten years.  Someone, I forget whom, told me that it happens when "you get to a certain age":  According to that person, you start to see your life, and the world, "in five- or ten-year increments."

There are, of course, some things I can pinpoint in time.  One of them is the subject of today's post.  

Exactly twelve years ago today, this blog was born. At least, that is the day on which I wrote and published my first post.  For two years before that, I'd been writing another blog, Transwoman Times, which I continued for a few years into the life of this blog and, in a way, this blog is an extension, continuation or simply a relative--I'm still not sure of which--of that one.

Now, some might say that I've reached an age when I can no longer say I'm in "mid-life."  To them, I'll repeast something I've said in this blog, and elsewehere:  If I don't know how long I'm going to live, I can't know whether or not I'm in the middle of my life.  Given the typical and even the longest lifespans of humans, I can't plausibly say I'm at the beginning or even early in my life.  But as long as I don't know where I end, I'm in the middle--just as I can't know whether a ride I take will be the last, or one of the last--or even whether it's the last time I'll take a particular ride, such as the one to Greenwich or Point Lookout.

Whether you've been reading this blog from its beginning, or found it yesterday, I thank you for taking the time to read it.  And however long this blog--and I--last, I hope you're with me for the journey.  We're only in the middle of it, after all!

Lights Out And Broken Glass

We often say, "There's good news and bad news..."

Well, on this date in history, there is a bad event and a terrible one.  Neither relates directly to cycling, so if you want to skip today's post, I understand.

Anyway, I'll start with the bad news in history.  It's an event I remember pretty well, especially given how young I was. If you are of a certain age, you might have lived through it, too.

On this date in 1965, it was "lights out."  Yes, that's the literal truth:  The lights went out in the northeastern US and the Canadian province of Ontario.  It was the result of failures in power generating station, beginning with one near Niagara Falls.  



My family and I were living in Brooklyn.  We weren't in the dark for as long as some nearby areas:  Around 11 pm, power gradually returned, after about six hours without.  O the other hand, some parts of Manhattan and other boroughs and states didn't have "juice" until the following morning.

In some senses, we were lucky:  It was a classic autumn evening, crisp but not too cold.  More important, perhaps, were the clear skies and full moon.  People did what they could outdoors, but some homes (including ours) had at least some light coming through our windows.

And, even all of these years later, I recall how calm and even helpful most people were.  My father couldn't get home from work, as the subways stopped running,  but he was able to call us from a pay phone (Remember those?)  and assured us he was OK.  There were also some funny stories, like the one about people who got stuck in Macy's furniture department and slept on the showroom beds.

Such an atmosphere was in contrast to another blackout a dozen years later that affected mainly New York City.  It was a hot summer night and that year, it seemed, the city was in chaos, what with Son of Sam was shooting and the Bronx was burning.  Well, it seemed that the gates of Hell or some Freudian subconscious opened:  More fires were set, and stores all over the city were looted.  New Pontiacs were driven off a dealers' showroom on Jerome Avenue in the Bronx; the Brooklyn neighborhood of Bushwick suffered devastation from which it would not recover for another three decades.  Lots of glass was broken that night.

And on the night of 9 November 1938 as well. Many fires were set, too.  On this date in 1938, what is often seen as the opening salvo of World War II occurred.  At the very least, it changed the nature of hatred in a nation.  Up to that time, Jews in Germany, Austria and other European countries were losing their rights--if they had them in the first place--in much the same ways African Americans lost rights during the Jim Crow era.  (I am not the first to draw this parallel; some scholars have said as much.)  For a brief shining period--about a decade or so--after the US Civil War, newly-freed slaves and their descendents enrolled in schools and universities, earned licenses to practice nearly every kind of trade or profession (including medicine and law) and were even elected to public office.  Those rights were withdrawn, as they were for Jews, and worse things came.

In the US, the Ku Klux Klan as well as other groups and individuals intimidated, harassed, beat and even killed black people who stepped out of "their place."  The Jews of the Reich didn't even have to do that:  On this date eight decades ago, bands of Nazis--as well some freelance thugs--destroyed synagogues and Jewish businesses all over Germany and Austria.  The police were under orders to do nothing except prevent injury to Aryans and damage to Aryan-owned homes and businesses.  

Although Jews were harassed, beaten and even killed--and their homes, businesses and synagogues vandalized--before this date, this event--known as Kristallnacht, the "night of broken glass"--marked the first mass, systematic terrorization of Jews.  And it shifted the means of expressing hatred of Semitic people from the legal and social to outright physical violence.  That night, more than 100 Jews were killed and 30,000 able-bodied men were arrested and sent to death camps in Dachau, Sachsenhausen and Buchenwald. (Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen had not yet opened.) Thus began the first mass deportations of Jews (and other "undesirables") to the camps: Until then, the arrests and deportations were less numerous and widespread.

In the US, citizens were outraged--at least for a while.  Newspaper editorials condemned the violence; no less than the New York Times suggested that the German government instigated the violence to line its coffers, both with the possessions seized--and fines levied on--Jews:  "Under a pretense of hot-headed vengeance, the government makes a cold-blooded effort to increase its funds."

Yes, the Jews were forced to pay for the violence they "instigated."  Sadly, Nazis and their followers in the Reich weren't the only ones who believed that the Jews brought it on themselves:  Father Charles Coughlin, and influential Catholic priest, said as much in his radio broadcasts, which reached tens of millions of Americans when the nation's population was about a third of what it is now.

Worse, though, was the initial inaction of the US government and others with power and influence.  At least some of it was a result of unconcious anti-Semitism, but I think a larger reason was that, for one thing, by that time, more Americans came from German ancestry than any other.  And people whose parents and grandparents came from other nations simply couldn't--or weren't willing to--believe that such systematic brutality could happen in "the land of Mozart".

Homes and synagogues burned as glass was broken and the lights went out.  I guess my family and city were lucky twenty-seven years later:  Our lights went out, but there was no broken glass.  And nothing burned.

Loving And The Dandy Horse

Today is the 50th anniversary of one of the most important (in my opinion, anyway) legal decisions in the history of the US.  On this date in 1967, the Supreme Court ruled that laws against interracial marriage ("miscegenation") were unconstitutional.

Earlier this year, I saw "Loving", a film inspired by the case.  I'm surprised the film isn't better-known.  For one thing, few cases or films ever had a more apt name.  Mildred Jeter was a black woman who married her childhood sweetheart, Richard Loving, nearly a decade before the Supreme Court decision.  Because their home state, Virginia, had "miscegenation" laws on its books, they went to Washington DC to get married.  Then they returned home, where their union was illegal. So, acting on what is said to be an anonymous tip, police officers of  Old Dominion dragged them from their bedroom just five weeks after they married.

They pleaded guilty, and the judge allowed them to flee to Washington DC.  But the Lovings were country people; city life did not suit them.  After five years in the nation's capital, one of their children was struck by a car.  

That was the "last straw" for Mildred.  She wasn't looking to "make history" ; she simply wanted to go back to Virginia and live in peace with her husband and kids.  She appealed to then-Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, who referred them to the American Civil Liberties Union, whose lawyers took the case to the nation's highest court.

A few of my students saw the film, which sparked discussions in class.  They were astonished to learn that the entire story unfolded during my lifetime:  The Lovings, in fact, married one week after I was born!  My students--save perhaps for those who come from cultures in which marriages are arranged--simply can't imagine not being allowed to have relations with whomever their hearts dictate.

Anyway, I know none of this has anything to do with cycling, so I will tell you about something that does:  On this date 200 years ago, Karl von Drais took his "dandy horse"--what is now commonly called the "Draisenne" or "Draisine"--for its first relatively long ride.  That is seen as the day when the potential of his creation--commonly acknowledged as the first true ancestor of the modern bicycle--was first recognized, much as the Wright Brothers' flight over Kitty Hawk showed the possibility of flight.

Of course, much of the "buzz" today concerns electric bicycles.  So, perhaps it was inevitable that to commemorate this bicentennial, someone would come up with--you guessed it--an electric Draisenne.  

And what is it called?  The Draisine 200.0, of course!

What would Karl think of it?