“Senior Citizens” Should “”Limit” Their Outdoor Activities

 We’ve been warned to limit our outdoor activities if we have chronic medical conditions or are “senior citizens.”

Since I am, ahem, in midlife and know that the definition of “limit” can be, shall we say, elastic, I did go for an early ride.  City Island and back: entirely agreeable—especially on Tosca, my Mercian fixed gear bike—and fits the word “limit,” at least for me.

The island looks like a bit like a New England fishing village. But the thing that reminds you it is, after all, part of New York City (and a tourist trap) are the restaurants and their patrons.  I could smell the fried clams which, somehow, I don’t think New England fishermen eat—and I know weren’t bivalves from local waters. I also noticed the youngish couples who, I assume, were “doing brunch” even if, by most people’s standards, it was breakfast-time.

But, of course, nobody goes to those restaurants for the seafood which is delivered frozen, in trucks, just like the fish and crustaceans one might order anywhere else in the city.  And those restaurants aren’t exactly bargains.  People go to those eateries for the same reason the island is one of my “limit” ride destinations:  the views.

So I will not judge anyone for “doing brunch” at overpriced mediocre restaurants where they could eat exactly the same stuff served on the mainland. I will not judge them, any more than I will judge anyone else riding a bicycle, no matter how decrepit or simply inferior it may be—precisely because I used to judge such riders (some of whom brought their bikes to the island on carriers attached to their cars). It was a lovely morning, and wildfire smoke had yet to shroud the sky.  Let them enjoy it as they will!

Code Orange

 This evening the sun will set at 20:26 (8:26 pm) where I am. 

This was the view from my window two hours earlier:

The cause? Wildfires in Canada, like the ones that blazed our midday skies three years ago.

But remember; Climate change is a Chinese hoax. Dear Leader says so.

(Sarcasm meter: Code Orange.)

What Is Bastille Day To A French Footballer?

 Today is Bastille Day.  The French don’t call it that, just as most Americans don’t refer to the 4th of July as Independence Day.  Instead, in France it’s referred to as “Le Quatorze Juillet” or simply “Le Quatorze”—or “La Fête Naionale.” 

Every year, observers speculate that, perhaps, this time a French cyclist will win the day’s stage of the Tour de France. Perhaps not surprisingly, that didn’t happen: Tadej Pogaćar, who has seemed invincible, took the victory and extended his overall lead.

This year, the French national football team played its semifinal World Cup game against Spain.  As with the Tour de France stage, many fans and observers thought the day would provide a boost of adrenaline that would propel the Gallic players to victory.  That was not to be: the Spanish prevailed 2-0.

In watching that game, I found myself thinking about Frederick Douglass speech, “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” While nobody would argue that the French players, most of whom are highly-paid professionals for some of the world’s best teams and leagues, I had to wonder whether at least some of them —who are products of colonialism—aren’t stirred by the day’s celebratory mood.  While France itself may have freed itself from the oppressive ancien regime, its colonial subjects had no more liberty than the people still in bondage in the US when Douglass took the podium.

I do not mean that the French players didn’t give their best effort. Rather, I imagine that it might be as complicated for them to play for a country that exploited their parents and grandparents as it was for Black American soldiers to fight for a country that enslaved their parents and grandparents and denied them the same rights as White soldiers who wore the same uniform.