What’s A Mother To Do?

 A driver strikes a 7-year-old boy riding a bicycle.

That is all-too-depressingly familiar.

Driver was distracted. Also too familiar. 

The boy is OK now.  I wish that were more familiar.

Driver admitted she was distracted. That is definitely unfamiliar.

She tries to “make it right” by giving the boy a new bicycle. That is new territory for the boy and his mother.

The mother notices the new bike isn’t as good as the one the driver wrecked. The boy, however, is happy because he likes the color of his new bicycle better than that of the old one.

While the mother is relieved that her son is OK, she doesn’t know how to respond to the driver’s gesture.

If you were the mother, what would you do?

JFK Today

 Sixty-one years ago today, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas.

I won’t get into the theories, conspiracy and otherwise, about “whodunnit.” What I will say, however, is that I  contest the notion that his nation “lost its innocence” because I believe that a nation, by definition, cannot be innocent.

That said, I am posting a picture of the great leader because, well, very few people have ever looked better on a bicycle.

After this post, I will return to writing about “pure” bike topics, including my own rides.

Transgender Day of Remembrance—Andrea Doria Dos Passos

 Today I am invoking my “Howard Cosell Rule” because it’s Transgender Day of Remembrance. 

On this date in 1998, Black transgender woman Rita Hester was murdered in the Boston suburb of Allston.  Her death received little attention at the time although—or because—it came just weeks after that of Matthew Shepard, a gay man attacked and left to die on a cold high desert night in Wyoming. 

A year after Ms. Hester’s death, the first Transgender Day of Remembrance was observed in Boston and San Francisco. Subsequent observances—in which I’ve participated—consist of participants reading the name of a transgender or gender-variant person who was murdered because of their gender identity or expression. 

Therefore, I will wrap up today’s post with the name of one such victim: Andrea Doria Dos Passos. 

The 37-year-old transgender woman had been dealing, like too many of us, with housing insecurity for some time.  On the night of 23 April, experiencing homelessness, she was sleeping near the entrance of Miami City Ballet when a man approached and violently beat her to death. 

The next morning, a Ballet employee came upon her body and called the police.  Because of security camera footage, the perpetrator was caught quickly: an unfortunately rare outcome in too many cases.