Where Have We Gone In The Last 130 Years?

I have to admit, once or twice...well, okay, maybe three or four times...I've attended concerts, readings, plays, lectures or other events because I liked the advertisement for it.

Now tell me you wouldn't attend a lecture after seeing a photo like this.  Of course, it combines topics as close to my hearts as my Mercians:  cycling, history, women's history and gender identity.  Tessa Hull, who gave the lecture, didn't come to her topic--summed up in the lecture's title, "Women, Trans and Femme Riders in Early Cycling History"--through a women's or gender studies program.  Instead, she encountered it while on her own journey, literally:  She's cycled alone from Southern California to Maine and in Alaska, Cuba, Ghana and Mexico.  She said that, wherever she went, people were generous, but she heard the same warning:  "You know, a woman can't travel alone."

Well, I know that's not true!  And so did some women in the late 19th Century, during the first "Bike Boom."  Although there probably are more women cycling now than then, she believes that the culture around women and bikes has retrogressed in some ways. In the old bicycle ads, she explains, "you see packs of women riding bicycles, and women riding on the front of tandems," none of which is "really a norm now."  She feels we are "trying to get back to where we were in the 1890s " and warns, "[I]f you don't keep pushing for the advancement of culture, things can quietly digress."

I have to admit, even I--who, if I do say so myself, knows a thing or two about the history of women and cycling--was surprised to see women attired as they are in the photo. And they have rather athletic builds.  These days, it seems that most women in bike ads are there to entice men and look as if their limbs would break if they actually tried to pedal.

Riding Like A Rockefeller

I am writing from this desk

after eating lunch in this room

with an audience

in this house

All right, I was exaggerating, well, a little.  After all, if I were writing and eating in a place like that, I probably wouldn't have gotten there on this

Or maybe I would have.  After all, the person who is the reason was known to ride a bicycle, even after the automobile--which he loved--became common in the US. In fact, he loved autos so much that he was a denizen of the "birthplace of speed."

That cradle of velocity is a beach something like this one

in a city that borders the one best known for its race track.

That city, of course, is this one:

and the 'burg on its border is Ormond Beach, home to the "Birthplace of Speed" and the house I visited yesterday.

The house is known colloquially as The Casements.  John D. Rockefeller. Contrary to what some people believe, he didn't actually commission it.  He did, however, put his unmistakable stamp on it.  And, the fact that he lived in it for the last two decades of his life is probably what saved it from the wreckers' ball when it fell into ruin after plans to turn it into a resort hotel never materialized.

Another misconception about the house is that it was the first to be built with casement windows.  Actually, the style existed for about two centuries before they were incorporated into Rockefeller's residence.  One could argue, however, that the house helped to popularize them in the US, particularly in Florida.

After my date with royalty (or, at least, the closest we come to having it in the US), I rode to Daytona Beach and back up State Route A1A, where I could spend days taking in the views of the ocean and flora and fauna.

After pedaling through Painters Hill (I'm still looking for the hill!), I turned away from A1A and the ocean.  After crossing the bridge over the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway, I rode the path along Palm Coast Parkway and saw some of the prettier roadside vegetation I've encountered.

All of that, and 120 kilometers of cycling.  Not a bad day, I'd say.

I'd Join Their Club If...

Most bicycle clubs I've seen have just one requirement for membership:  Pay your dues.  That sounds worse than it actually is.  Let's say you're in such a club and something comes up in your life that keeps you from riding with the club for, say, a few months.  Well, if you can keep up your membership, at least you can stay in touch with fellow riders--and partake of whatever benefits the club might offer, such as discounts at local bike shops.

Then there are clubs that have other requirements for membership, such as age or gender.  Others--usually racing clubs--want riders who can keep up with everybody else in the group.  

Sometimes these bars to entry are placed to keep the club focused, whether by interest or simply people's level of comfort with one or another.  I've heard of a few clubs that simply want to stay small (or, at least, no bigger than X number of riders) for whatever purpose(s).

But there is one cycling club in London that limits its size for a possibly unique reason, which has to do with its name.

The Pickwick Bicycle Club, founded in 1870, is said to be the oldest continuously-operating bicycle club in the world.  In following a custom that was fairly common in England at the time, the Pickwick wasn't just a group of cyclists; it was also a sort of literary club.  Specifically, its members were dedicated to a particular work by a writer who died in the same month the club held its first luncheon.

The club's name is "Pickwick", as in "Papers".  Because he died just as the club started--a year after the velocipede appeared in London--Charles Dickens probably didn't ride a bicycle.  Characters in the "Pickwick Papers", or any other Dickens story, didn't, either.  At the time the club held its first rides, however, he was at the peak of his popularity:  Clubs and other organizations existed solely for the purpose of public or group readings of his works.  And, it just happened that the sorts of people drawn to those groups--mainly middle-to-upper-class city dwellers--were also the same sorts of people who took up the then-new sport of cycling.

Pickwick Bicycle Club riders at Hampton Court, 1877

The Pickwick Club's membership has always been limited to about 200.  If you want to join, they won't quiz you on the PP or any other Dickens work.  It does, however, take a certain amount of knowledge of the Dickens oeuvre to pull off something the club requires:  that you become one of the novel's characters.  At least, in club circles, you have to be known by that character's name.

As you can tell by the number of club members, there were a lot of characters--mostly peripheral, but in the book nonetheless.  That is because Pickwick Papers was originally a serial that was later assembled into a book.  Every novel, however--even one as sprawling as War and Peace or Les Miserables--has a finite number of characters.  So, even at 200 members, Pickwick is a fraction of the size of other clubs I've seen, and of which I've been a part.

Can you imagine if bicycle clubs today limited their memberships to the number of characters in a novel--or a TV show or movie?  I must admit that, even though I didn't like Batman Forever, I would join any cycling club--hey, any club at all--that would allow me to be Dr. Chase Meridian, even if I wouldn't look as good doing it as Nicole Kidman did!

P.S. Even if I were a famous racer or writer, or someone influential in the cycling industry, I couldn't join The Pickwick Club:  It's still a men-only affair!

In Cuba: Away From Bikes, And Back

It happened in the US after World War I.  It happened, perhaps to a lesser degree, first in England, then in Continental European countries, after World War II.  And it happened in China and Cuba during the early years of this century.

The "it" is this:  Greater prosperity led people to forsake the bicycles they had used for transportation and recreation in favor of automobiles.  When it happened in the US, surviving bike manufacturers sold the public on the idea that a bicycle is a toy--or, that if it is indeed useful as transportation, it is suitable only for those who aren't old enough to drive.  On the other hand, in England and the rest of Europe, adult cycling survived mainly as a recreational activity practiced by a slowly but steadily declining portion of the population.  

In the US, England and continental Europe, those who switched from cycling to driving seemed, as often as not, to see the bicycle as a symbol of privation--or of those things which they had "grown past" or "grown beyond".  This was particularly true for poor or working-class people who acquired the means to own a car:  They simply would not dream of "going back".  I believe that this is one reason why we see more bicycle disdainers among people who are, say, over 50 than among the young.  

Similar phenomena have taken place in China and Cuba.  In both countries, especially China, the bicycle was a, if not the, primary means of transportation-- particularly in cities.  The leaders most identified with those two nations--Mao Tse-Tung and Fidel Castro--had much to do with turning people into cyclists.  Both rulers saw the bicycle as a "people's" way of transportation, and the "Communist"* parties they led promoted it as such. 

But while the numbers of bicycles and cyclists in China grew steadily from the time of the Revolution (1949) until the end of the century, Cuba experienced a surge in cycling during the 1990s.  The Soviet Union, the island's chief benefactor, had just collapsed.  In its wake, the supply of cheap petrol that had flowed to the Pearl of the Antilles dried up.  So did the cash subsidies from Moscow, which meant that less was spent on public transportation and other infrastructure improvement.  

And so did the supply of bicycles from the Soviet Bloc.  Some people bought bikes from foreign tourists or other sources.  It was at that time that the first bicycles were manufactured in Cuba:  one model, called the Minerva.  It left most people wishing for imports and black- or gray- market bikes:  The Minerva was of "poor quality," according to Lazaro Pereira, a bicycle repair specialist in the city of Cardenas.  "The forks split, and when this happened, passers-by would mock people falling off their bikes," he recalls.

I imagine that alone would have stopped some people from cycling.  But in the early 2000s, the island began to recover from the loss of Soviet subsidies and cycles, and people abandoned two wheels in favor of four.  Bicycles developed a "negative connotation...associated with the poverty that characterized this period," according to Naybis Diaz Labaut, the owner of VeloCuba, a repair and rental enterprise in Havana.  She has seen "significant movement in the world of bicycles in Cuba" during the past five years or so, which has allowed her to open two shops.

All of the bikes she rents, or that her guides use on tours, were purchased from foreigners.  Even with the increased interest in cycling, the bikes sold in Cuba are "Chinese models made of iron" and "of poor quality," she says.   She believes that cycling "has a big future in Havana" even though it has yet to achieve the popularity it's regained in the provinces.

Still, one of the biggest challenges to the growth of cycling in Cuba, she says, is motorists--and not only because many of them won't get out of their cars and bike on their bikes.  There is a "lack of motorist education," she explains:  A generation of people has grown up without cycling, while some older motorists have been away from cycling for a long time.

That sounds like a problem we still have in the US and it won't change tomorrow, as several post-World War I generations didn't ride bikes as adults, or at all.  At least the Cubans have lost only a decade or so rather than a generation.

What Entrepreneurs Can Learn From The Bicycle

What is the greatest threat the hat industry ever faced?

No, it wasn't the Reign of Terror.  

Since you are reading this blog, you may have already guessed that it was--the bicycle!

Believe it or not, in 1896, supposedly sane and rational businesspeople actually believed that the bicycle would bring an end to la fabrication des chapeaux. Apparently, cyclists were wearing cheaper caps and saving their more expensive headwear for special occasions--or doing without it altogether.  One irate hatter even proposed asking Congress to pass a law that would have required every cyclist to purchase at least two felt hats a year.

But the makers of cranial coverings weren't the only ones who feared for their livelihoods because of the newfangled two-wheelers.  Before the bicycle craze of the 1890s, men went for a shave and haircut on Saturday afternoons, in preparation for a night out.  "Now they go off on a bicycle and do not care whether they are shaved or not," lamented one barber.

(Imagine how he would react to today's young male denizens of Portland, Oregon and Williamsburg, Brooklyn!)

Shoemakers also complained they were losing business because people weren't walking.  Not surprisingly, cigar makers were in a panic:  Even in those days, before people knew about the health hazards of smoking, pedal pushers saw that cycling and stogies didn't go together very well.  Saloon owners said they were losing business because cyclists preferred other beverages to beer.  And, interestingly, booksellers complained that times were tough because people were riding instead of reading.

That last complaint seems really odd to me:  Cyclists, at least the ones I know, tend to read more than other people.  Perhaps things were different in 1896.

Moreover, I haven't seen that cycling keeps people from drinking beer.  Now, I can understand the panic of cigar makers:  I can't think of a single cyclist I've ever known who smoked them.  Then again, I've never known a lot of people who smoked cigars.  For the record, I've smoked two in my entire life, and don't plan on lighting another.

Jason Feifer, the Editor-in-Chief of Entrepreneur, talks about the "panic" I've described to make this point:  that change should be embraced rather than fought.  We may be experiencing another "golden age" of bicycling and, he explains, it presents all sorts of business opportunities, some in industries that have no apparent relation to cycling.  He draws parallels with other innovations that some companies should have embraced, but didn't--or did so when it was too late.  For example, he says, music companies should not have resisted streaming, any more than energy companies should have shied away from solar technology.

All you have to do is look at how many books about cycling and bike-themed beers are on the market to understand what he means!

P.S.:  A reproduction of the photo in this post hangs on my wall--next to my bicycles, of course!

When They Tried To Bar Major Taylor

This month--February--is Black History Month here in the US.

Mention "black cyclists" and one of the first names that comes to mind is "Major Taylor".

He was the first African-American athlete to win the world championship of any sport.  (Canadian bantamweight boxer George Dixon was the first black athlete to accomplish that feat.)  Although he was one of the most famous and admired athletes in the world, the "Worcester Whirlwind" was not insulated from racism.

The Worcester Whirlwind, circa 1900. From wikipedia.

The city from which Taylor's nickname was derived--Worcester, Massachusetts--was one of the centers of the Abolitionist movement.  Even so, not everyone there welcomed him with open arms.  When he bought a house in the well-to-do Columbus Park enclave, alarmed white neighbors tried to buy it back from him.

Even if you're the best in the world, you can't stop fools from being foolish.

Even so, life was better for him in Worcester--and in the rest of the Northeast--than it was elsewhere in the US.  While he won pretty much every race and award that could be won in his home region, he could not advance his career unless he won in other parts of the country. Two things conspired against him:  One, owners and promoters of races and tracks in the South banned him--and all other black cyclists--outright. Second, in 1894, just as Taylor's career was in ascendancy, the League of American Wheelmen--then the governing body of bicycle racing--voted to ban blacks.  Some have speculated that the ban was specifically aimed at Taylor, who, even at the age of 17, was beating his white challengers, some of whom were far more experienced than he was.

(The LAW is now known as the League of American Bicyclists.)

That ban, of course, closed other doors for him.  There were, however, a number of races--mostly in the Northeast--that allowed him to compete.  And, of course, he went to Canada:  In 1899, he won the World Championship for the one-mile sprint in Montreal.  

(Interesting aside:  In 1946, Jackie Robinson played for the Montreal Royals, which was the top minor-league team of the Brooklyn Dodgers. Fans in Montreal embraced him, as they did Taylor half a century earlier.)  

But even in the relative tolerance of his home region, Taylor encountered hostility.  He was often denied lodgings and food on account of his color, and white racers turned into pure-and-simple thugs when riding against him: One opponent hauled him off his bike and choked him into unconsciousness.

In the racial atmosphere of that time, the only way Taylor could advance his career was by racing in Europe.  He, in fact, had a number of offers to participate in races and join teams, especially in France.  He was grateful for the opportunities but would not accept them at first:   In Europe, many races were held on Sunday, as they are now.  Taylor had become a devout Baptist after his mother's death and would not race on the Sabbath.

Some of the offers he received were lucrative, to say the least.  When pleas and urgings from prominent African-Americans as well as cycling fans had no effect on him, black newspaper editors of the time published what we would now call "fake news"--saying that his religious scruples had been conquered by Mammon--or editorials speculating that such a thing would happen.

Of course, it didn't.  Finally, in 1901, a French team offered him a contract that specified he wouldn't have to race on Sunday.  He accepted, and before he even mounted a bicycle on the other side of the Atlantic, he was treated to a hero's welcome. 

An American in Paris.

Europeans were as impressed with his dignity and grace as they were with his athletic prowess.  He did much to help improve the level of European racing, not only by his presence, but also by mentoring young racers.  Here is one account of such tutoring, from his autobiography:

  I recall that on my first trip to Europe in 1901 I saw a French youth, whose name was Poulain, ride in an amateur event at Nantes, France. He was very awkward as he rode about the track, but something about him caught my eye, and I became interested in him at once. At the close of the race I made several suggestions to him, adjusting his pedals, and handle bars, and giving him some advice on how to train. I stressed clean living upon him, and told him in conclusion that if he trained carefully and lived a clean life, I would predict that some day he would beat all the amateurs of Europe and the professionals as well.

  When I returned to France in 1908 this same Poulain, who in the meantime had won the amateur and professional championships of France, defeated me in a special match race. Imagine my surprise at the conclusion of this event when my conqueror told me who he was. The laugh certainly was on me. I did manage to bring him into camp, however, after I reached by best form.

"The laugh was certainly on me." How could they not love someone with such an attitude?  Unfortunately, not everyone in his home country felt the same way.

What Now? What Next?

Like many of you, dear readers, I have dreaded this day for the past two months.  Longer than that, actually:  Unlike those of my friends and acquaintances whose world  view was best depicted by a famous New Yorker  cover`, I didn't believe Trump's victory "couldn't" or "will never" happen.

The world view of those said it "never could" or "never would" happen.

Some pundits are counseling us to "wait and see".  I wonder whether they actually believe that "it might not be so bad" or they are simply in that kind of denial into which people often descend after accidents, disasters, abuse or other kinds of life-changing truamae.  

It may well be true that the Trump presidency (assuming, of course, he makes it through his term) might be very different from what some of us might expect.  After all, he holds--or, at least, has expressed--all sorts of contradictory views, and has been known to change them "in a New York minute" or less.

For example, probably no President-elect since Reagan has expressed more disdain for environmental issues--and has been more of a cheerleader for fossil fuel exploitation--than The Orange-ator.  (Whatever else you want to say about him, Nixon was more of an environmentalist than any of his successors besides Jimmy Carter.    Yes, Obama called attention to climate change and got China to sign onto the Paris accords, but he also pursued policies that exacerbated the environmental effects of domestic energy development and, to a large degree, exported our dirty energy sources.) Given that most cyclists--or, at least, the ones I know--tend to be more environmentally conscious than the average American, one would expect them (us) to be horrified at the prospect of a The Donald in the White House.  

Moreover, he has expressed disdain for adult cyclists, especially after John Kerry crashed.  He once sniffed that he hasn't ridden a bicycle since he was a kid.  After all, real men drive Rolls Royces, right?  Actually, no:  They hire other people to drive them.

But here's where things get interesting.  You see, Trumplethinskin once sponsored a bicycle race.  Not any old bike race, mind you:  the largest one ever held in this country, at least since the days of the six-day races.  The Tour de Trump ran for two editions before he withdrew his sponsorship (citing financial difficulties) and Du Pont took over both the financial obligation and the right to name it after themselves.





Some cursory research (i.e., a glance through Google) confirmed what I'd suspected:  since the Tour deTrump/Tour Du Pont ran for the last time, in 1996, there hasn't been another stage race of quite the same stature in the USA. Raul Alcala, who won the second and fifth editions, placed as high as eighth in the Tour de France and seventh in the Vuelta a Espana.  The fourth edition of Trump/DuPont was won by a former Tour winner: Greg Lemond.  And he who is unmentionable (at least in the cycling world) won the final two editions of Trump/DuPont.  In its heyday, the race was even envisioned, by some, as part of a "Grand Slam" that would include the three major European tours and some race or races in Asia.  

It's interesting, to say the least, that Trump actually sponsored such an event, however briefly.  My research (again on, ahem, Google) indicates that no other President has ever been associated with a bicycle race, whether as a sponsor or participant--even though every President from Eisenhower onward, with the exceptions of Reagan and, ironically, Nixon, cycled during his adult life.  Even they, however, never made a point of expressing hostility toward cyclists the way Trump has.

So...What are we to make of the fact that the Inaugural Parade proceeded along a bicycle lane?  

The "Veldeev"

If you've been reading this blog for a while, you've probably noticed that I'm very much interested in history.  It was my minor as an undergraduate; it was my love of writing--and my desire to "become a writer"--that steered me into an English Literature major.  I don't regret that choice because--as you've probably noticed--I love literature, too.  

Sometimes I think another reason I didn't major in history and pursue further formal study in it was that I sensed, somehow, that I would have to learn it on my own.  I knew that even with the best of instructors, so much would be omitted or edited out.  Sometimes, I would learn, the instructors don't even know what was omitted or censored.

Now, of course, the same can be said for literature. The difference, though, is that literature or writing classes cannot, by definition, be all-inclusive.  There are simply too many writers, works, genres and other factors to consider. 

 Also, when we edit or omit a reading list for a literature course, it doesn't have the same consequences as it does with a history class. That is not to say there are no consequences:  As someone who earned her undergraduate degree at a time when "the canon" consisted entirely of DWMs--Dead White Males--I know, at least somewhat, what it's like to be left out of what's considered "culture" or "education".  

Still, my assigning Macbeth instead of Othello or Hamlet in an intro to literature class does not shortchange my students in the same way as, say, teaching students that Hawai'i became our 50th state the year before, ahem, Obama was born in it while failing to tell them something about the Islands' pre-American history.   Or mentioning the times we came to the aid of allies during times of war while failing to point out, say, the US occupation of Haiti (which I learned about from one of my students during my second year of teaching).

OK, so why am I talking about all of this on a bike blog?  Well, it relates to something in my cycling life.  

During my first European bike tour, I passed through Paris before returning to it two months later.  During that first sojourn, I stayed in a hostel just outside the city.  There, I heard someone mention something about "Veldeev". 

A six-day race at the "Veldeev".  By Henri Cartier-Bresson

At first I thought that person was using some sort of slang they don't teach in American French classes.  Indeed it was: the expression was short for "Velodrome d'Hiver".  (The "h" is silent, and the "i" is pronounced like a long "e" in English.)  So I asked that person where I might find it.

"La rue Nelaton, pres de la Tour Eiffel.  La metro Bir-Hakim."

On the rue Nelaton, near the Eiffel Tower.  (She wasn't lying about that!)  And, as people in Paris often do, she gave me the nearest subway station:  Bir-Hakim.  But of course, I didn't take the Metro.  I could see the Tower, about seven or eight kilometers away, from the hostel, so I just pedaled in the direction of it. And, when I got there, a gendarme gave me a clear response to my "Ou est la rue Nelaton?" It must have been clear: At that time, I don't know whether my French or navigational skills were worse, but I still got to the site.

One problem, though:  there was no Velodrome there.  The young woman I met in the hostel, who was from Belgium, probably thought I was on some sort of Holocaust pilgrimage. Perhaps I was, subconsciously.

At one time, "Veldeev" was one of the world's most important bicycle racing tracks.  It had a glass ceiling (How would I have felt about that if I'd had more of a feminist consciousness at the time?) , making it one of the first such facilities capable of hosting events year-round:  hence the name. ("Hiver" means "winter".)  At that time, there was just a non-descript plaque on an even more non-descript building commemorating a non-cycling event that took place there.



I am referring to "La Rafle du Velodrome d'Hiver", or "The Velodrome d'Hiver roundup".  It had been scheduled for 14 July 1942, but apparently someone realized that it would be terrible public relations to hold such an event on Bastille Day.  So, it was postponed by two days, but that re-scheduling did not blunt the horror of what happened there.

For two terrible days, thousands of Parisian Jews were taken from their homes and workplaces and brought--in French buses driven by French drivers and guarded by French police officers, in an attempt to keep up the fiction that these workers, and therefore the nation, was not under the control of the Nazis--to the race track.

It was bad enough that there wasn't enough room for the internees to lie down.  But, as the name indicates, the track, with its glass ceiling, was intended for winter racing.  The captives were held there on some of the hottest days of what was one of the hottest summers in Paris history.  And the glass had been painted dark blue to avoid attracting the attention of bomber navigators.

 As if that weren't bad enough, exits and other facilities (including bathrooms)that could have provided ventilation--in their captors' eyes, a means of escape-- were sealed off.  So, people were getting sick from heat exhaustion, combined with the lack of sanitary facilities and food:  Only food brought by the Quakers and other groups, as well as a few doctors and nurses from the Red Cross, were allowed in.

After their confinement in a facility where motion--in the form of racing--had been celebrated, 13,152 people were herded--in some cases, more dead than alive--onto buses to the Pithiviers internment camp, about 100 km southeast of Paris, then packed into trains, mainly to Auschwitz.  Only 400 survived.

Even that first time I saw the "Veldeev" plaque, I couldn't photograph it or the site.  On subsequent visits, as I came to know more about the event, it became even less possible for me to make an image of it, or the memorial that was built to it on the nearby Quai de Grenelle:  any photo I could have taken would have seemed banal in comparison to the suffering that took place.

As for the Vel d'Hiv itself: Events, cycling and otherwise (There had been everything from circuses to boxing matches to theatre performances inside the track's oval.) were less frequent after the war, and it fell into disrepair.  During the last six-day race (featuring Jacques Anquetil and other top riders) held there, in November 1958, electrical cables hung from loops.  And, before that race, the roof had leaked when rain fell.

The following year, fire destroyed part of the "Vel" and the rest of it was razed.  There has not been a velodrome in Paris proper since then.  

Horses Or Bikes, She Is A Real Freedom Rider

As you’ve no doubt heard by now, last month marked forty years since the release of Patti Smith’s album Horses. 

I was a senior in high school then.  It semed that my classmates fell into one of three categories:  the ones who loved it and didn’t want it to end, the ones who were looking forward to college or whatever else they were going to do after graduation, and those who just couldn’t wait to get out.

Those of us in the third category were, in one way or another, the class “geeks”.  Most of us were bookish; nearly all of us had some interest or talent that wasn’t fashionable in that high school where the unofficial motto seemed to be, “If you can’t f*ck it, smoke it or drive it and it ain’t Led Zep’, it ain’t worth it.”  More than a few of us read and/or wrote poetry or songs we would perform only for very close friends (who, naturally, were as introverted as we were); we loved poets like Patti who, we felt, told the truth—at least as we understood it at the time.

I had been writing stories, articles for the school newspaper and stuff I can’t categorize—most of which I lost or destroyed along the way from then to now.  Around that time, I started writing what some might call “free verse” poetry, or simply chopped-up sentences.  Whether or not it was “any good” (Let’s face it, how much of anything that we do at that age is?) is, I realize now, not the point, any more than whether or not I had the capability of becoming a world-class racer did or didn’t make the amount of cycling I was doing “worth it”.  Yes, I wrote and rode—as I do now—because I enjoyed those activities.  But more important, I could not envision life without them.

Actually, that’s not quite right.  I did those things, not only for pleasure, but also for survival.  And, in those days, the work of a poet like Patti Smith or Gregory Corso or Arthur Rimbaud was sustenance for “the journey”, whatever that might be.

I think what I really loved and admired about Patti Smith, though, was something I couldn’t articulate at the time, or for a long time afterward.  Now I’ll express it as best I can:  She did something interesting and unique, whatever its flaws (which I only vaguely understood at the time) and did it on her own terms.  At a time when I still did not have the terms or tools to articulate, let alone embody, the “differentness” I saw in myself—which others, especially the adults in my life, misunderstood as “rebelliousness”—Patti Smith gave us an image of how someone can become someone only he or she can become. 

When Horses came out, she was often described as “androgynous” because of the way she was dressed, and the way she carried herself, in the photo on the album’s cover.  The truth, I realized even then, was that she was actually showing that it was possible to be a woman in a way that didn’t fit into the boxes constructed by the governing institutions and individuals of our society.

She upset those authority figures in much the same way as the women who abandoned their corsets and hoopskirts for shorter skirts or “bloomers” so they could ride bicycles in the 1890’s. Most of those women weren’t consciously rebelling; they simply to wanted to live their lives as they saw fit.    

It might take a long time but, ultimately, independent spirits who realize their visions change the world and inspire us while those who try to suppress such spirits or the change they engender are forgotten or even vilified.  Most people, at least in the industrialized countries, think nothing of women wearing pants or skirts that don’t constrict their movement, and of working in what were once considered in “men’s” jobs.

Or of writing a line like, “Jesus died for somebody's sins, but not mine."

Knowing what I’ve just said, are you surprised to see this image of Patti Smith?: