Not Going Gentle Into The Good Night Of This Date

After a great weekend of cycling, I had a busy and somewhat tumultuous couple of days.  They weren't bad:  I just didn't have any time for anything besides work, some business I had to attend to (more about that later) and, of course, cycling to it.

Today I will once again invoke my Howard Cosell Rule and write a post that's not about bicycles or bicycling.  Well, I'll briefly mention some of my riding but it will hardly be the focus of this post.

Instead, I want to talk about this date--9 November--which, as it turns out, is one of the most momentous and tumultuous in history, particularly that of the 20th Century.  

I'll lead off with the event that touches, if indirectly, on my cycling.  Some of my most memorable rides took me through the countryside and among the temples of Cambodia.  Seventy years ago today, the home of the Khmers and one of the world's greatest human-made structures gained its independence from France, the country that colonized it along with neighboring Laos and Vietnam.

Now, if you ever wanted proof that correlation does not equal causation (or, more precisely, that coincidence does not equal correlation or causation), consider this:  On that very same day, in 1953, Dylan Thomas ("Do not go gentle into that good night...") died in St. Vincent's Hospital, in the heart of Greenwich Village.  He had turned 39 years old a couple of weeks earlier and, as with any artist who dies young, legends and rumors grew around him.  One I often heard--but for which I could find no corroboration--was that he "drank himself to death in the White Horse Tavern."  Though he was a heavy drinker, he didn't suffer from cirrhosis of the liver.  He did, however, suffer from respiratory ailments and, a week before he died, a heavy smog that would kill 200 people enveloped New York.  

This date also witnessed two of the most important events in 20th-Century Germany. They both involved breaking things down, but nearly everyone saw one of those events as triumphant while the other would become a harbinger of one of the human race's worst tragedies.  

Joy, at least for a time, came for many people in 1989 when, on this date, the Berlin Wall was opened.  So, for the first time since the city's (and country's) partition by the US, Britain and France on the western side and the Soviet Union in the east.  Soon after, people who lived on both sides, and tourists, hacked away at the Wall for souvenirs.  Contrary to another rumor you may have heard, this event didn't inspire Pink Floyd's "The Wall," which preceded it by a decade.

But in contrast to those who gleefully broke those bricks away, the folks who shattered glass along the streets of Berlin, Vienna and other German and Austrian cities--on this date, in 1938--were angry, vengeful and hateful, stoked by a demagogic autocrat. (Sound familiar?)  While Kristallnacht, the "night of shattered glass" may not have been the opening salvo of World War II (I believe Japan's invasion of Manchuria, seven years earlier, was, but what do I know?) it almost certainly was, if not the beginning of the Holocaust, then its signal bell.  The kristall came from windows of Jewish-owned and -operated shops, and that night, 91 Jews were murdered, about 30,000 were arrested and more than 200 synagogues were destroyed. 

Olivia Hooker 

 

I invoke my Howard Cosell Rule to discuss important historical events and people because I have come to understand, at least somewhat, how necessary it is to commemorate them.  There are very few remaining witnesses to Kristallnacht, just as there were only a handful of living people who experienced the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921 when I wrote an article about it.  That piece's publication on  Huffington Post brought me into contact with one of those survivors:  Olivia Hooker, who saw the bombings, shootings and destruction as a little girl.  She was 101 years old when that article appeared and we corresponded until her death two years later.  

Eve Kugler

 

I cannot pretend that I understand, let alone feel, what she or Eve Kugler, who was seven years old on that awful night when those windows were shattered “in the land of Mozart” have carried with them through the rest of their lives and, in the case of Olivia Hooker, whatever came after.  But Elie Wiesel has written that when we listen to witnesses, we become witnesses.  Perhaps that is the best I can do--and why I am invoking my Howard Cosell rule.

When They Arrived

 Once again, I will invoke my Howard Cosell rule to write about something that doesn't directly relate to bicycles or bicycling.

At least this time, I am invoking that rule to commemorate a joyous occasion.  

On this date in 1964, four young "lads from Liverpool" stepped off a Pan Am flight in a recently-renamed airport.  In a scene that couldn't be replicated today, millions of young people thronged the terminal and spilled onto the tarmac. (Post-9/11 security measures would not allow such a thing.) According to witnesses, those youngsters--mainly girls--squealed and cheered so loudly that one couldn't hear planes taking off.

Some argue that "fangirls" and, to a lesser extent, "fanboys" were born that day.  Whether or not that was true, it's hard to imagine such a raucous reception for any other group or performer.

I am talking, of course, about the Beatles.  The airport where they first set foot on American soil was formerly known as Idlewild but had recently been re-christened as John F. Kennedy International Airport.

The timing of John, Paul, George and Ringo could hardly have been more fortuitous.  Just two months and two weeks earlier, JFK was gunned down in Dallas. I was a very young child during that time and didn't understand the events, but I could feel the grief that filled the air after the President's death and the joy--a catharsis (a word I wouldn't learn until much later) that the "Fab Four" released.

Now, as a lifelong Beatles fan, I will say this:  Those early tunes were sappy love songs.  So were many hits from the pioneers of rock'n'roll--who by that time were nearing, or had recently passed, 30 years of age.  They wouldn't have looked or sounded right doing songs like them but Elvis, Chuck and others from the "doo-wop" generation hadn't yet found their new directions.  The "lads," on the other hand, were still young enough for such things.  And, I believe--with the benefit of hindsight--that people wanted those songs and, more important, the youthful, upbeat energy the Beatles exuded at that point.

Of course, their music would become very different.  But I think their energy was exactly what was needed to move rock'n'roll music forward so that it could absorb such diverse elements and influences as the sitar, Bach and Scottish folk ballads.  Oh, and they even would do a song with lyrics in French--a language none of them spoke.  (Jan Vaughan, a French teacher and the wife of an old friend of Paul's, wrote them.) So, it might be said that the Beatles made, or at least helped to make, rock'n'roll into an international musical genre.

Also, the Beatles helped to change fashions in hair and clothing--and, more importantly, to influence the ways we see gender and sexuality.  Even though they were undeniably straight cisgender men, they were criticized and mocked because their hair and clothing didn't comport with the expectations of men at that time.  

Now that I think of it, they may have had a role, however small, in sparking or stoking the '70's Bike Boom in North America.  The Beatles themselves, especially John, seemed to enjoy cycling.  That was not unusual for adult men--in England, their home country.  But not so in the US:  the bicycle was seen as a toy or, if an adolescent used it for transportation, he or she passed it on to a younger sibling or neighbor, or a parent discarded it, once the kid was old enough to drive.  And at that point in their lives, young people were expected to act and dress "like grown-ups":  coats and ties for men, skirts or dresses and high heels for women.

That the Beatles would, in time, appear on stage and for recording sessions in jeans and T-shirts or dashikis no doubt showed millions of other people, mostly young, they could do the same.  And, let's face it, even if your bike has full fenders and an all-enclosing chainguard, you'd rather ride in comfortable clothing that can be easily washed. Oh, and who wouldn't want to ride with "Here Comes The Sun" as an earworm?

I must end this post, however, by noting that I formulated the Howard Cosell Rule because of one Beatle in particular--or, more precisely, how he met his demise.  Cosell interrupted his play-by-play commentary of an NFL game to announce that John Lennon had been murdered on the night of 8 December 1980.  Cosell and Lennon were friends and, I am sure, influences on each other. 

John Lennon and Howard Cosell

Today I am invoking my Howard Cosell Rule because of an event that led to its creation.

On this date in 1980, Cosell was, along with Don Meredith and Frank Gifford (before he was married to Kathie Lee), calling a Monday Night Football game between the Miami Dolphins and New England Patriots.  It was near the end of the fourth quarter. Patriots’ kicker John Smith took to the field to kick the potential game-winning field goal.

“Remember, this is just a football game, no matter who wins or loses,” Cosell intoned. “An unspeakable tragedy, confirmed to us by ABC News.” With that, he announced the murder of John Lennon.

“Hard to go back to the game after that news flash,” he said with uncharacteristic understatement.

If You Like This Blog, Thank bell hooks

If you've been following this blog for a while, you may have noticed that every once in a while I invoke what I'll call herein the Howard Cosell Rule. I am so naming it for the sportscaster who interrupted his play-by-play and commentary of an NFL game to announce the murder of John Lennon.  About a dozen years earlier, he deviated from the format of his radio program to talk about the assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr.

He received a lot of hate mail--which included slurs against his Jewishness and questioning of his manhood--for reminding viewers that, indeed, some things are more important than what your favorite football or baseball team is doing on the field.  That, of course, is what some fans didn't want to hear:  When it wasn't impugning his heritage, actual or perceived sexual orientation or political leanings, the angry responses said, in essence, that he should stick to sports because that's what they tuned in to hear.

Of course, these days, you'd have to be comatose to think that politics, economics, history, gender identity and expression and sexual orientation can be separated from games, matches or tournaments. (Simone Biles and Colin Kaepernick, anyone?) And I am always conscious of the fact that I started this blog because I am a middle-aged (depending on your definition of it!) transgender woman who has cycling in one form or another for longer than she’s been living as the person she is.

That said, I am writing today about someone who, to my knowledge, didn't do much cycling. And I have not previously mentioned her on this blog.  But she has as much to do with the person I am, and why I have continued to ride, as anyone has.

bell hooks, from the bell hooks institute

Yesterday Gloria Jean Watkins--better known as bell hooks*--died at age 69 from renal failure.  As I understand, she'd been in failing health for some time.  Physically, that is. I can't get inside her mind, any more than anyone else can, but I feel confident in saying that until her last moment, it worked better than that of most people (including me) at their cognitive best.

So what does she have to do with me, or this blog? Well, first of all, any transgender person owes at least something to her.  Laverne Cox said as much.  hooks, a black feminist scholar who described her sexuality as "queer-pas-gay,"  sowed the seeds of what Kimberle Crenshaw would later call "intersectionality" in feminism and the studies of race, class and culture.  For those of you who didn't take a graduate seminar in gender studies (no shame there, really!), intersectionality explores, as its name implies, the connections between social categories such as race, gender and class--though hooks (and Crenshaw) were careful to point out that while sexism, racism, class bias and homo- and trans-phobia are related, they are not identical.  Thus, while hooks took pains to respect the differences between, say, a white cisgender woman from an upper middle class background trying to break the "glass ceiling" of an organization or profession and an Afro-Latina transgender trying to get medical treatment, she could also see the parallels between, and empathise with, their struggles.

Most important, she challenged her readers to empathise, and to embrace, the ways in which their identities, whatever they are, express themselves.  That is not to say she believed that "anything goes:" her critique of Beyonce says as much.  Rather, she wanted people to free themselves from the mostly-unspoken dictates (many of which she identified as patriarchical) about gender and race into which people are immersed from an early age.

So how did that lead to this blog?  Well, when I was starting my gender affirmation process, I struggled with the question of what, exactly, it would mean to live as a woman.  It changed, it seemed, almost from one day to the next.  In part, that had to do with the time in which I started my process:  In 2003, books like Jennifer Boylan's She's Not There had just come out.  In a recent interview, Boylan said that in re-reading it, she realizes that much of it had an apologetic tone.  She, who started her process about a decade before mine, was trying to conform to some of the very same notions I was--and which bell hooks didn't denounce as much as she said were outmoded and, in some cases, crippling.  

I think that most people who experience gender identity as I have, until recently, realized that they weren't the sex by which they were identified from birth before they understood what living by the gender by which they identify themselves would mean.  That meant, for some of us, things that we look back on with embarrassment: I realize now that, at times, I was performing an exaggerated version of femininity.  Young trans and queer people have the advantage, in part because of people like bell hooks, of realizing that they don't have to accept those notions of gender (I include the ones to which some trans men conform) that were formed by notions of the superiority of a particular gender, race, class or religious group.

For me, figuring out what kind of woman I would be included answering the question of whether I would continue cycling.  At the time I started my affirmation process, I didn't see many female cyclists. I take that back:  I didn't see many who rode as much, as long, as hard, as I was riding in those days.  So I wondered just how much (if any) cycling I could do and still be the woman I was envisioning at the time. 

Then, I realized that I had bought into a frankly hyper-masculine idea about cycling, modeled after the wannabe Eddy Mercxes, Bernard Hinaults and Russian sprinters I saw and sometimes rode with. Over time, my ideas about cycling--and womanhood--changed.  

These days, I am a woman who rides because I love being a woman and I love riding.  The forms each take have changed, and will change, in part because age inevitably changes our minds as well as our bodies.  It took time, but I think I've come to a place where I live and ride as I see fit, whether or not it fits into someone else's ideas about what a woman, a person in mid-life, or a cyclist should be.  For that, I have bell hooks, among others to thank.  She is as good a reason as any for me to invoke the Howard Cosell rule today. 

*--bell hooks always spelled her nom de plume with lower case letters. It's her grandmother's name, which she took in honor of her fighting spirit.  But bell hooks wouldn't capitalize the first letters of her name, she said, because she didn't want to draw attention to herself at the expense of her works.  I hope I don't seem cynical when I say someone as intelligent and perceptive as she was must have known that, for some people, it's exactly what drew attention to her.  I confess:  I am one of them.  I knew nothing about her when I first saw her name and started reading her works out of curiosity because of how she spelled her name.

What I Need After The Past Two Years

Here is what I would have posted yesterday, had I not invoked the Howard Cosell rule for someone who deserves it as much as anyone:  Desmond Tutu.

On the day his illustrious life ended--Boxing Day--I rode out to Point Lookout.  I woke, and started my ride, late:  It was close to noon before I mounted the saddle of Zebbie, my red vintage Mercian Vincitore that looks like a Christmas decoration. (I don't say that to throw shade on her; I love the way she looks and rides.)  One consequence is starting late, and stopping for a late lunch at Point Lookout, is that it was dark by the time I got to Forest Park, about 8 kilometers from my apartment.  That also meant, however, that I saw something that made me feel a little less bad about not traveling this year, or last.

Because the Rockaway Boardwalk rims the South Shore of Queens, you can see something you don't normally associate with the East Coast of the US:  a sunset on the ocean.  From the Rockaway Peninsula, the Atlantic Ocean stretches toward New Jersey.

The next time I feel as if I have no influence on anybody, I'll remember yesterday's ride. As I stopped to take photos, people strolling along the boardwalk stopped and turned their heads.   One couple with a small child actually thanked me:  "Otherwise, we never would have looked:  It's perfect!," the man exclaimed.

It was about as close to a perfect sunset as I've seen in this part of the world, and I've seen some stunners--in Santorini (of course!), the Pre Rup temple (Cambodia) , Sirince (in Turkey), .Le Bassin d'Arcachon (near Bordeaux), Lands End Lookout (San Francisco) and from the window of an Amtrak Coast Starlight train.  

All right, I'll confess:  I'm a sucker for sunsets--and bike rides.  Either one is a form of "redemption," if you will, for a day that could have been lost from having beginning  too late.  And they make a difficult year, a difficult time, more bearable--especially in a moment when I don't have to feel, or think about, anything but my legs pumping away, the wind flickering my hair and colors flowing by my eyes--and, in spite of--or is it because of?--the cold and wind, a glow filling me:  what Salvador Quasimodo meant when he wrote,

 M'illumno 

d'immenso.

He probably never met Audre Lorde, but I think she would appreciate that, and he would understand what she meant when she wrote, "Caring for myself is not self-indulgence.  It is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare."

Now, I don't claim to be the world-changer that she or Desmond Tutu were.  But on more than one occasion, I've been chided over my passions for cycling and cats.  I derive no end of pleasure from them, to be sure, but they also have kept me sane, more or less, as I navigated this world "undercover" and "out."

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.

He Didn’t Know He’d Made History

 Today I am invoking, once again, my Howard Cosell Rule:  This post won’t be about bicycles or bicycling.

Almost any someone breaks a barrier—whether it’s based on race, gender, social class or some other trait—that person is referred to as the “Jackie Robinson” of their field. In fact, I had that title bestowed on me when I was the first person to “change” gender in my workplace.

I took that both as a compliment and a warning: I think some were trying to alert me to what I might (and indeed did) face.  On the other hand, I felt honored to be compared to someone I so respect as a human being as well as an athlete.

That respect and admiration is not abstract or idolatory:  I actually met the man when I was very young and—as I could not have known—he was a few years away from the end of his too-brief life.  Years later, I met his widow Rachel, a beautiful and formidable woman.

The man I am about to mention also, when he was very young, met Jackie. At that time, Robinson was in the prime of his baseball career.  And the subject of the rest of this post would embark on his own athletic career, in a league where no one like him played before.

Sixty-six years ago yesterday—18 January 1958–Willie O’Ree’s skate blades glided across the ice in the Montréal Forum.  The hometown fans cheered him and the following day, the city’s sportswriters—lauded his fast, smooth skating.

That Montréal scribes could pay homage to the abilities of á forward who didn’t skate for the hometown Canadiens (Les Habitants) wasn’t unusual, Their praise, however, was particularly interesting given that O’Ree wore the sweater (they’re not called jerseys in hockey) of the Boston Bruins, whose rivalry with the Canadiens is as intense as the enmity between the Red Sox and Yankees.

Oh, and he just happened to be the first Black player in the history of the National Hockey League. That night, Willie was trying to prove himself and win a permanent roster spot in the sport’s top league.  “I did not realize I had made history,” he recalled.

Somehow it seems fitting that he is a descendent of slaves who escaped from the United States into Canada via the Underground Railroad. His family was one of two in Fredericton, the capital of the Canadian province of New Brunswick. Like many of his peers, he grew up as a fan of the Canadiens.

His NHL career was brief, but he played professional hockey—and won scoring titles—well into his 40s. I can’t help but to think that as supportive as his teammates and the league’s fans—in Boston, Montréal and Toronto, anyway—were, racism, conscious or not, on the part of management hindered his development. After all, he had enough natural ability for Montréal sportswriters and fans to notice. But he needed to stay in the NHL longer than he did—parts of two seasons—to refine his skills in the way only nightly competition with and against the best players in the world could have. That is what Jackie Robinson was able to do during his decade with the Dodgers.

The Massacre In Colorado Springs

Today I will invoke the Howard Cosell Rule.  That is to say, I am going to write about something that has little, if anything, to do with bicycles or bicycling. 

You've heard about it by now:  Some time before midnight on Saturday, a young man dressed in a military-style flak jacket and armed with a long rifle and a handgun--both of which he purchased-- entered Club Q, an LGBTQ night spot in Colorado Springs.  

By the time a couple of patrons subdued him, he'd killed five other patrons and wounded 17 others. At least one of the victims, Ashley Green Paugh, wasn't even a member of the LGBTQ community:  She was with a friend with whom she'd spent the day.  Now there is a girl without a mother and a man without a wife--in addition to the partners, familys and friends who no longer have Daniel Aston, Kelly Loving, Raymond Green Vance and Derrick Rump in their lives. 

The last I heard, authorities were "trying to determine whether" the slaughter was a "hate crime."  Even if the suspect, Anderson Lee Aldrich, didn't know that Sunday was Transgender Day of Remembrance, and some patrons were in Club Q to commemorate it, I don't know how any other motive can be ascribed to him.  After all, if he wanted to kill people just because, there were plenty of other venues he could have chosen, especially on a Saturday night.

As if it weren't enough of a terrible irony or coincidence that it happened on the eve of TDoR or that one of the victims is named "Loving," it turns out that Aldrich, who committed one of the most lawless acts possible, is the grandson of an outgoing California legislator.  Randy Voepel, who lost his re-election bid earlier this month, reacted to the January 6 insurrection with this:  "This is Lexington and Concord. First shots fired against tyranny."  He added, "Tyranny will follow in the aftermath of the Biden swear in (sic) on January 20."

Now, I know some will say that there isn't a direct link between grandfather and grandson when it comes to attitudes about using violence.  But it's hard not to think that Voepel is at least emblematic of some sort of value Aldrich imbibed. Oh, and in June 2021, Aldrich was arrested for making a bomb threat in his mother's home.  Perhaps neither his grandfather nor anyone else in his family taught him that doing such a thing was OK, but I can't help but to think that from somewhere or someone in his environment--whether in his family, community or elsewhere--he got the idea that it's OK to use force and threats thereof to get his way. After all, even the crankiest and most recalcitrant baby isn't born knowing how to do such things.

That he made the threat in his mother's house has been mentioned. So has the fact that, in spite of doing so, he evaded Colorado's "red flag" law, which is supposed to prevent people with criminal convictions from purchasing firearms.  But the media has only hinted at other issues that the slaughter highlights.

Photo by Scott Olson, for Getty Images

One of those issues is that a place like Colorado Springs needs a place like Club Q.  I have spent exactly one day in the city:  I was passing through on my way to someplace else.  The city always touts its proximity to Pike's Peak, which is visible from just about everywhere.  I must admit that made me long, for a moment, to live there, if for no other reason that I'd probably be a better cyclist--or, at least, a better climber--than I am.  

But I also knew that, had I stayed in Colorado Springs, I would be living a very different life. Actually, I might not be living at all:  Aside from being a cyclist, it would be very difficult to be the person I am.  Like many "blue" or "swing" states, Colorado has its red, as in redneck, areas where some have longings like the one a taxi driver expressed to me:  to be in Alaska, Montana, Wyoming or some other place where people live, as he said, "like real Americans."  

Colorado Springs is in that red zone.  But its conservativism is amplified by some of the institutions in and around the city.  The most prominent and visible is the United States Air Force Academy.  There are also several military bases nearby.  And the town is also home to Focus on the Family which, like other right-wing Christian organizations, uses its "focus" on the "family" as a smokescreen for a homo- and trans-phobic, misogynistic, anti-choice agenda.  Several people who were interviewed, including a few lifelong residents, confirm the impression that I have about the city.

As in any place else, kids grow up in the closet. For them, a place like Club Q is the only place where they can safely be themselves.  And there are adult LGBTQ people in places like Colorado Springs because of work or family ties--or simply because they like living in the mountains.  Where else would they meet people in similar circumstances but in a place like Club Q.

Anyway, I couldn't think of much else besides the tragedy in Colorado Springs.  The most terrifying thought of all, though, is that it probably won't be the last.

A Year After The Capitol Insurrection: Why It Matters

As I begin this post, Vice-President Kamala Harris is introducing President Joe Biden, who is about to talk about what happened a year ago today.

Now I am listening to the President recounting the events of that day. He's referred to the statue of Kleio, the muse of history with the book in which she records everything.  I've read enough books and documents to know that no matter how impartial or unbiased an account, no matter how unambiguous the language--verbal, visual, audio or otherwise--used to record it, no matter how free of irony or metaphor the record is, people will read into it whatever will confirm their worldview.  Still, I have to wonder how some people come to their conclusions.  To wit:  Folks who have looked at the same images, watched the same videos and read the same news articles claim, without a touch of sarcasm, that the insurrection (yes, the President called it that) was a "peaceful" demonstration and that the insurrectionists were trying to "take back our country."

Although this post doesn't directly relate to cycling, I don't think I'm invoking the Howard Cosell rule in talking about the sacking of the US Capitol.  The mobs that defecated and urinated on the floor and assaulted guards and police officers consisted of the same sorts of people who have been driving their cars and pickup trucks into bike lanes, groups of cyclists and the starting lines of cycling events.  They see us, whether because we are cyclists, or look, vote, love, work, worship (or not) differently from themselves, as threats to their vision of their country, their way of life and, most importantly, themselves.  

   

On Salman Rushdie And "Rolling Coal"

Once again, I am going to invoke the Howard Cosell rule. 

Two weeks ago, Salman Rushdie was attacked while giving a talk in Chautaqua, New York.  I actually wrote a reflection about it on another site, under a nom de plume I've been using.  I didn't mention it on this blog, until now, not because I couldn't relate it to anything else I've been writing here--if you've been following this blog, you know that I can relate almost anything to cycling and my life.  Rather, thinking about his attack was even more difficult than some of the other non-cycling events I've described.

For one thing, he is one of the world's best-known writers.  While my written words probably won't ever have the influence of his, I feel that the attack on him was an attack on me.  No one who is not doing harm to others deserves to have their freedom of expression--whether in the form of a creative work like a novel, the articulation of an idea or simply the way that person moves about in the world--inhibited, disrupted or ceased.  

But, perhaps more importantly, that attack reaffirmed for me that such attacks are not perpetrated by "others."  The young man who stabbed him was born and raised in the US nearly a decade after the Ayatollah Khomieni issued the fatwa calling for Rushdie's assassination.  In other words, although he was radicalized during a visit with his father in Lebanon four years ago, he is as much a domestic terrorist as those who stormed the Capitol on 6 January 2021, threatened to kill anyone who certify the election or impeach Donald Trump, plotted to kidnap and execute Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer--and who have murdered abortion providers.  

Oh, and I would put anyone who tries to negate the self-agency, let alone equality, of women and LGBTQIA people, in the same category.  Yes, I include the Supreme Court justices who voted to strike down Roe v Wade.  I am not a legal scholar, gender theorist or theologian, so please forgive me if I fail to understand the difference, in kind or in degree, of denying a novelist the right to use his language and creative powers, or a woman to do as she sees fit with her body, as they see fit.  

Call me paranoid or alarmist if you like, but I don't think it's a very long or particularly slippery slope from telling a woman or girl that she can't terminate a pregnancy to telling someone like me that I couldn't  access, not only medical procedures that have helped my body reflect my gender identity, but also the therapy, counseling and other support that have helped me not only to recover from the pain and trauma of living an inauthentic life, but also to use, and even treasure, the lessons and moments of joy I experienced along the way.

Or, for that matter, if a government can mandate--or radicalized mobs, whether they are based in Kansas or Kandahar, can intimidate--women and girls away from bodily autonomy, how far is it, really, from a ruler who doesn't allow women or girls to travel without male chaperones, or to ride a bicycle or drive a car at all? Does it really matter whether the ones who legislate or intimidate people from freely moving about in the way they choose, whether to get to work or school or for pleasure, have been elected to their offices, ascended to their thrones by birthright or take over the public space and discourse through aggressive displays of symbols like flags or by "rolling coal" with their SUVs and pickup trucks on steroids that take up the entire width of a roadway, including its shoulder?

Now, some of you think might be that I've stretched things a bit by comparing the attack on Salman Rushdie or the Supreme Court striking down Roe v Wade to the intimidation or harassment of cyclists.  But for me, at least, they are all personal and come from the same impulses: those of people who simply can't face a world that's changing.

Happy Ramadan, Passover, Good Friday—And Jackie Robinson Day

 Today I am invoking the Howard Cosell Rule. Today’s post, therefore, will not relate to my rides or bikes, and may not be connected to much else in the cycling world.  But what I’m about to mention is just too important to ignore. 

The athlete I’m about to mention has something in common with Simone Biles, Colin Kaepernick, Billie Jean King, Muhammad Ali and “Major Taylor.  Like them, he was a pioneer, not only in his sport, but in the struggle to be recognized and understood as full-fledged human beings.  In other words, they (have) had as much impact away from the field, court or track as they had on it.

On this date 75 years ago, a second baseman took his position at Brooklyn’s Ebbets Field.  At 28 years old, he was older than most rookies. But that wasn’t because he was a “late bloomer.” Rather, his debut in Major League Baseball was delayed by his World War II military service, where he experienced the very thing that kept him from playing for the Dodgers earlier than he did.

When he was drafted into the Army, he applied for Officers’ Candidate School, for which he was qualified.  His application was delayed for several months.  When he was finally accepted, he led soldiers who, like him, were racially segregated from other soldiers as they fought for the freedom of people in faraway countries.

What this man had in common with the other athletes I mentioned, with the exception of Billie Jean King, is that he was Black.  So, upon returning to the United States, he played a year for the Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro Leagues and another for the Montréal Royals, the Brooklyn Dodgers’ top minor-league team.

When Jackie Robinson took to the field for the Brooklyn Dodgers on 15 April 1947, he was the first known Black major-league player* since Moses Fleetwood Walker in 1884.  Robinson’s debut also came half a century after “Major” Taylor, the record-setting cyclist, became the first Black world champion in any sport. 

Consider this:  When Robinson played his first game as a Dodger, the United States armed forces had yet to integrate.  Yes, you read that right:  Black soldiers could still be sent to fight for freedoms they couldn’t enjoy themselves.  And, a year later, Strom Thurmond would run for President on a platform of “Segregation Forever!”

All right, this post does relate to cycling in at least one way:  In spite of his accomplishments on and off the field, Jackie Robinson, like Taylor before him, had to endure insults, indignities and even death threats. And, in a sort of parallel, Robinson had to go to other leagues, as Taylor had to go to other countries , for professional opportunities commensurate with their talents and work ethic.

So, if Jackie Robinson doesn’t deserve a mention on this or any other forum, I don’t know who does.

*—For all of the respect I have for Jackie Robinson, I am willing to entertain the notion that he wasn’t the first Black major league player since Walker.  It’s entirely possible that some Black player who “passed” as White—including, it’s been rumored, Babe Ruth—could have played in the major leagues.  

He Couldn’t Make It To The Game. But He Was There.

 Today I will, once again, invoke the “Howard Cosell rule.” Thus, today’s post will only tangentially, if at all, relate to cycling or bicycles.

In previous posts, I have mentioned athletes whom I respect as much as human beings as I admire them for their athletic talents and performance. That list is, and can never be, complete because of people like Willie Mays. 

While I have wonderful memories of his hits and plays, I really didn’t know much about his life or career before playing for the New York and San Francisco Giants and New York Mets. I knew he had played briefly in the Negro Leagues, as Jackie Robinson—one of my heroes—did. But I am ashamed to admit that he endured much of the same bigotry and threats of violence as Robinson did.  That isn’t surprising when you consider that Willie made his major league debut only four years after Jackie—and that both played their Negro League games in a city where Black and White players weren’t allowed on the same field. That city later became synonymous with some of the worst violence that was part of the resistance to the Civil Rights movement.

I am talking about Birmingham, Alabama. Willie Mays began his career there—and his life just outside the city. Last night, one of his former clubs—the Giants—faced the St. Louis Cardinals at Rickwood Field, where Mays played his first professional game.

That game was supposed to be a tribute to Mays, the Negro League team—the Birmingham Black Barons—for which he played and to the many Negro League players—like Henry Aaron—who became stars in the Major Leagues after they integrated.

Sadly, however, Willie Mays passed away two nights earlier, at 93 years old.  Still, the game was all about him.  And the twenty-four former players in attendance—most of them enshrined in the Hall of Fame, wouldn’t have had it any other way.

They included Reggie Jackson, whom many regard as the greatest baseball player to follow Mays. While he never put on the Black Barons’, or any other Negro League team’s, uniform, he faced many of the same taunts and threats Mays, Robinson and Aaron endured a decade earlier. Jackson began his professional career with the Kansas City (later Oakland) Athletics’ minor-league team in Birmingham not long after police chief “Bull” Connor dispersed Civil Rights protesters with a water cannon.  Even after Federal civil rights laws passed, Birmingham—and to be fair, many other places in the South, North, East and West—operated under various forms of de facto if not de jure segregation. So, Reggie was refused service in restaurants and wasn’t allowed to stay in hotels with the rest of his team: the same sorts of abuse Jackie, Willie and Henry endured a generation earlier.

But zfor all the history I have just given you, dear reader, I am sad about Willie Mays’ passing because he was one of the first true superstar athletes I saw live. Although it was late in his career—during his last few years with the Giants—I could see that he was special, as a baseball player and a person. Watching him, even when he stood still, you could feel the joy he felt.  And he could say, matter-of-factly, he was the best player and nobody, not even the other players I’ve mentioned or Mickey Mantle or Joe DiMaggio—whom Mays idolized while growing up—would challenge him. Now that I think of him, I see a combination of the best qualities of Muhammad Ali, Magic Johnson and perhaps “Major Taylor.”

Perhaps the greatest accolades came from two performers of a different kind. Frank Sinatra once him, “If I could play baseball like you, I would be the happiest man in the world.” And Tallulah Bankhead declared, “There have been only two geniuses in this world:  Willie Mays and Willie Shakespeare.”

As Reggie Jackson and others pointed out, he may not have made it to last night’s game.  But he was there. And he will be here for many of us.

About Last Night

Today I will once again invoke my "Howard Cosell rule." That means today's post won't involve bicycles or bicycling.

By now, you know what happened last night.  During the previous two Presidential elections, I admonished friends, co-workers and other people I knew not to be so confident that Donald Trump "didn't have a chance" to win.  Ironically enough, I was, in my own way, pointing out  exactly what the right-wing pundits and media accuse them of:  not seeing anything outside of their liberal/New York/academic "bubble."

The first time, in 2016, I was accused of being "alarmist," "too sensitive" or even "paranoid" for expressing my fear of a Trump victory.  Even in the 2020 contest, held during the worst of the COVID pandemic, I didn't think another Trump victory was beyond possibility:  It seemed that his mistakes emboldened him, and his supporters, precisely because he seemed not to learn from them. Those same supporters believed Trump had a second term "stolen" from him and the Capitol riot was a "peaceful protest."  

Some of my friends and co-workers who couldn't or wouldn't see the world (or, more precisely, the USA) beyond the Hudson simply didn't understand someone in a moribund small town or rural area who saw his (or, in rarer cases, her or their) place in this country threatened by immigrants or people of color. Or why they believed that they were losing their rights as women, racial minorities and LGBTQ people were gaining those same rights.  

I could, because I was once one of those white males who believed I was being told to "shut up and pay your taxes" so that others could "sponge off" the system and, through "affirmative action," was being denied jobs that went to people who were less qualified than I was.  And throughout my life I have remained in contact, partly through family ties, with people who believe people like me and others different from themselves are getting "special privileges" when they are simply afforded the same consideration for education, jobs and other things cisgender heterosexual Caucasian Christian men (and, to a lesser degree, women) could take for granted, even if they weren't wealthy.

My views have changed, in part because of affirming my gender identity (what some people still call "gender transition" or "gender change"). Donald Trump's hostility toward transgender people is obvious.  Now that he is older and less inhibited than he was during his previous term, I fear that he will have less, if any, compunction about  targeting us in ways that Ron de Santis and Vivek Ramaswamy couldn't envision--or, at least, couldn't execute because they don't have the governmental and other resources available to them that Trump will enjoy as President. He has talked about ending protections equality for us. And too many of his supporters simply hate us, whether for religious reasons or because of their views about "masculinity" and "femininity." Worst of all, as we saw in the Capitol riots, they feel emboldened by his rhetoric and personality to commit violence against us, and anyone else they see as a threat to their world-view.

The last clause in the previous sentence, unfortunately, illustrates the political and intellectual climate of this country.  I am old enough to remember when if you were of one party and debated someone from the other, you could at least have a fairly civilized discussion of economics, foreign policy, social issues or even the arts.  Now it is a fight over your right to simply exist.  And that is what I fear most about the upcoming Trump term:  For me, and others like me, it will be simply about staying alive, much less out of prison or a mental hospital (to which we could be committed involuntarily). 

I also fear that too many of my fellow Harris supporters will understand why she lost this election even less than they could have fathomed a Clinton defeat/Trump victory in 2016.  That is the biggest reason--not the "low information voters" or people who "vote against their interests"--why Trump won again last night and why his second term could be more ominous than his first.

The Leak

Warning:  I am invoking the Howard Cosell rule.

Today I'm too upset to talk about much of anything.

By now, you've heard about the leaked draft, written by Justice Samuel Alito, of the Supreme Court's opinion that would overturn Roe v. Wade.

Of course, that doesn't mean the law has been struck down--at least, not yet.  But, according to the draft,  Justice Clarence Thomas as well as all of Donald Trump's appointees--Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch--had already voted to overturn the 1973 ruling that the US Constitution's Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause provides a "right to privacy" that protects a pregnant woman's right to choose whether or not she wants to give birth.

Alito based his argument, in part, on the fact that abortion isn't mentioned anywhere in the Constitution.  Of course, any number of right-wing politicians and their supporters--who include those who are waiting, with bated breath, for Alito's opinion to become an actual ruling--have also tried to strike down the Affordable Care Act because the right to health care isn't guaranteed in the Constitution.  Now, I'm not a Constitutional scholar and my mind may not be suited for jurisprudence, but to me, such arguments sound a bit like saying that French pastry chefs shouldn't make a mille feuille with passion fruit, mango and coconut cream because such ingredients weren't available to Francois Pierre La Varenne when he wrote Le Parfait Confiturier during the reign of Louis XIV.  Or, perhaps, saying in essence that we shouldn't guarantee the right to something that isn't in the Constitution is like saying that money shouldn't be set aside for bike lanes and education because bicycles and cyclists aren't mentioned in a city's or state's traffic statutes.

I realize that some of you may feel differently about abortion rights than I do.  And, some of you may wonder why I, who never have been and will be pregnant, should care about abortion rights.  Well, for one thing, you might say that undergoing my gender affirmation made me into something of a feminist, if I wasn't already one.  But more important, if a government tells a woman or girl that she absolutely must, under penalty of law, carry a pregnancy to term, even if it resulted from rape, incest or other actions not of her choosing, what else can that same government tell us to do--or not do--with our bodies?  Would I have been able to get the therapy, take the hormones and undergo the surgical procedures that enabled my gender affirmation (and undid some of the damage from decades of living "in the closet?"  Will someone be forced to undergo treatments or procedures--think chemo for advanced cancer patients--against their wishes, even if refusing such procedures or treatments will harm no one else?  

Oh, and if a government can tell people what they can and can't do with their bodies, it will also more than likely have the power to rigidly enforce the traditional gender binary and to say what men and boys or women and girls can or can't do.  I can't help but to think that overturning Roe vs. Wade will also make it easier to overturn laws allowing same-sex marriage--and allow laws like the ones in Texas that criminally charge parents who seek gender-affirming treatment for their children.

Finally, I think of the time I worked with children, in camps, a hospital and in workshops I conducted as a writer-in-residence in New York City schools.  While I did whatever I could to nurture the kids in my charge for as long as they were with me, I couldn't help but to think that some of their parents simply shouldn't have been parents.  That is not to say, of course, that the children shouldn't have been born. I simply think that, whatever one believes about abortion, there are few worse tragedies than a child born unwanted, who will never be loved or cared for properly.  The worst part is that such kids know who they are and too many never recover from such knowledge.

I am scared shitless.  I am fucking scared shitless.  I don't know how else to say it.

Riding Without Running Away

 The other day, I enjoyed a nearly perfect ride to Connecticut and back.  An overnight rain broke the weekend’s heat wave and I pedaled, with a brisk wind against my face on my way up and at my back on the ride back, under a clear sky accented by light cirrus brushstrokes.

When I’m enjoying such a trip, such a day, I never realize how lucky I am and, however ephemeral that privilege may be, it’s still more than so many other people have —and how much more orderly yet joyful my world can be—even if only for a few hours—than what lies not far beyond.

Yesterday I learned, from my friend Lillian—who is recovering from a back injury and wants to ride with me again—that a mutual friend, Glenda, had passed away around four in the morning.  That wasn’t much of a surprise, as her lung cancer was overtaking her doctors ‘ ability to treat it and her body’s ability to resist.  

She also told me that Edwin, for whom we sometimes ran errands, did other things beyond his computer skills and simply provided company, passed on Thursday.  That, of course, solved the mystery of why we hadn’t heard from him though, of course, that was neither a relief nor a consolation.

Oh, and there was another mass shooting in a school. The cynic in me is not surprised:  In a country whose mantra is, “Children are the future,” we haven’t made it more difficult to get assault weapons or easier to get mental health care, educational services or stable housing and employment since, in an eerily similar incident almost a decade ago, 28 kids and two teachers were murdered in a Connecticut school. Or since, more than a decade before that, a dozen students and two teachers were slaughtered in a Colorado high school.  Or after any number of attacks during those years.

That I can say “any number” of such incidents is a sad commentary on the situation in this country.  So is the supermarket shooting in Buffalo a week and a half ago. Again, my cynicism kicks in:  That horror doesn’t surprise me because if nothing changed after white kids were gunned down, I’m anticipating even less after a tragedy in which the victims were Black and, mostly, elderly.

So why am I invoking the Howard Cosell rule and ranting about such things on my cycling blog?  Well, it seems almost frivolous to talk about anything else.  For another, I wanted to express my understanding of my good fortune, though I am trying to avoid a lapse into guilt. Finally, though, I trust that you, dear readers, and cyclists in general, have a good sense of justice.  

Why We Need Desmond Tutu

Two weeks ago, I invoked the Howard Cosell Rule to interrupt this blog with something not related to cycling, but too important to ignore.  I'm going to use it again.  

Desmond Tutu died yesterday.  I simply have to mention him because I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that he was the most important, and admirable, people to inhabit this planet during the past century. Martin Luther King Jr. has, rightly, a US holiday in his honor.  I think Tutu deserves that, not only in his home country of South Africa, but in the world.*

You see, he, like Nelson Mandela, was not only a leader in the struggle for equality in his own country, which alone would be a reason to name a world peace organization after him.  He not only fought, successfully, to end the country's apartheid system; he did something few countries do after the most traumatic and shameful parts of their history:  He, in essence, put apartheid, and the history of colonialism that led to it, under a magnifying glass.  He wasn't looking to punish or prosecute: something for which he was criticized. Rather, I believe he was looking to name the people and problems.  He seemed to understand that most of the world would forget, for example, that Adolf Eichmann was executed and that it's far more important to understand, not only what he did, but what motivated and enabled  him.

While the jury is out, if you will, about the results of those efforts, they are, I believe, more honest and realistic--and included people from a greater variety of experiences--than the halting and limited efforts the United States has made about its history of slavery and the unfair laws--and other forms of subservience and worse, not only for African Americans, but for other groups of people. I think the efforts of Tutu were also more intellectually honest than whatever examinations some European countries have made of their histories as colonizers and their roles in the Holocaust and other tragedies.  And the Truth and Reconciliation committee, I think, has done more to examine its country's power structures than many countries that are nominally democracies have done about their sometimes all-too-recent pasts of totalitarinism and repression.

If those things sound like intellectual exercises, I think that Tutu's efforts are the main reason why, with all of its problems (including corruption), South Africa has made progress toward becoming a democracy in the truest sense of the world as countries like the one of my birth, and where I've spent most of my life, are going in the opposite direction.  (To be fair, as much as I abhor Donald Trump, I will say that this country's slide toward authoritarianism, and even facism, didn't begin with him.)

If power corrupts and every government (and large institutional structure) has at least some degree of corruption, the only way to hold it in check, if only to some degree, is in every person having an equal stake, and voice.  One sign of corruption and authoritarianism (or a slide toward it) is a militarized police force that cites, arrests or brutalizes cyclists for spurious or non-existent charges or lets off drivers (and motor- bike and -scooter operators) scot-free when they endanger, maim or kill cyclists and pedestrians. 

*--So does Nelson Mandela.