In the middle of the journey of my life, I am--as always--a woman on a bike. Although I do not know where this road will lead, the way is not lost, for I have arrived here. And I am on my bicycle, again.
Well, now we know why studios employ stunt-doubles. You know, they're those folks who do flips, get into crashes and put themselves in all manner of actual or configured peril so as not to risk scarring the pretty (and highly bankable) faces. I mean, do you really think Hugh Jackman knows any more how to fight than I know how to fish for lobsters? Why do you think Richard Bradshaw doubled for him in X-Men: Days of Future Passed? Surely the fact that Bradshaw is Jackman's brother-in-law could not have been the only reason! For every Hugh Jackman, there is at least one other actor who should have a stunt double. I am thinking now of Joseph Gordon-Levitt. He played a bike messenger in Premium Rush. Although six years have passed since that movie's release, one might expect that his work in it would have prepared him for scenes in which he rides a bike for his latest flick, Power.
During the filming, which is going on as of this writing, he landed in the ER after flipping over his handlebars. He says, "I have bad luck shooting on bikes," a reference to another mishap during the filming of Premium Rush.
B Surely, there must be some retired mountain bike racer who could use a payday.
Yesterday was the "real" Veterans' Day--which is the anniversary of the Armistice. Since it fell on a Sunday, VD is being observed today. Observed by whom? I had to go to work. In one way, I can't complain: After all, I am off on holidays I don't celebrate. On the other hand, I am sure there are a number of veterans among the staff and faculty of my college, and the university of which it is a part. Not to mention that some of my students have been veterans, or were even active military personnel while they took my classes.
Anyway, my ride yesterday included a tribute. On a gorgeous but chilly autumn day, I decided to ride to Connecticut. I normally don't do the ride with much, if any, of a rationale, but I did have one, sort of, yesterday.
Of course, if I only wanted to go to a veterans' memorial, there are plenty of those in the city where I live. But at least I knew that if I rode to Greenwich, I could spend some time at its memorial, right in the middle of its common.
The trees, the light, the color all seemed perfect for my moment of silence and meditation. I never knew any of the people whose names are inscribed on the memorial, but I could offer them a remembrance, however small and brief. I guess we can't do much more for anyone, however he or she dies.
Oh, and I could be thankful--as I was--that I could ride home again. They couldn't.
The other day, I commemorated the 80th anniversary of Kristallnacht: the night when anti-Semitism descended from harassment to violence and, ultimately, to death. It was also the night of the first mass deportations of Jews to the Nazi death camps. Today is the centennial of the event that was supposed to prevent the war into which the world descended not long after Kristallnacht. (Some would argue that the war was already underway; I wouldn't disagree.) I am talking, of course, about the Armistice. As we all heard in school, "on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month" in 1918, the Armistice--which was supposed to end hostilities, not only between the Allies and the Central Powers, but throughout the world--was signed. Would it have worked if the United States had agreed to join a worldwide organization--one whose founders included the American President, no less--created for the purpose of fostering cooperation? We will never know. I could not, however, help but to note the irony of this photo: It's the 1940 Armistice Day parade in Yakima, Washington. At that very moment, Europe was at war again: During the fourteen months that preceded the scene in the photo, Germany had invaded Poland, Denmark, Norway, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, France, Yugoslavia and Greece. Less than thirteen months after that photo was taken, the US would also be drawn into that war. Nobody has ever celebrated an "Armistice" to end World War II, or any war since then. And, in the US, this day has been turned into "Veterans' Day" --a holiday I wholeheartedly endorse, as much as I abhor war-- which will be commemorated tomorrow. (About Veterans' Day: As much as I'm in favor of this holiday, I wish its emphasis was on the ones who gave their limbs, senses, bodies and even lives, rather than on the glorification of their "victories." I also would favor calling it "Remembrance Day," as it's known in Canada and the UK.)
Minnesota State College Southeast, in the city of Red Wing, has a guitar repair and building program. That program has a waiting list. So, why am I mentioning it in this blog? Well, folks at the college realized that the reason why so many students signed up for the program is something every educator knows: Students will be engaged, work hard and learn well when teachers encourage students to work on something that fits their passions. That is a scenario Travis Thul, the college's Dean of Trade and Technology, wanted to replicate in another program he's helping to create. He says the college was looking for something that has "unique, tangible emotional appeal" while, at the same time, "encompassing the core competencies of mass manufacturing." So what did he and the college come upon? Well, since you're reading this blog, you may have already guessed the answer: the bicycle. As he says, most people have grown up with a bicycle and recall the fun they had with it. Also, the city of Red Wing has a "bicycle-oriented culture," with trails that attract riders from the surrounding areas.
Furthermore, Minnesota and neighboring Wisconsin have companies that represent a disproportionate amount of the US bicycle business, so there are job opportunities for graduates of the college's bicycle design and fabrication program. The first classes--which include algebra and physics--will be held in the Fall of 2019, and the first graduates are expected to get their Associate of Applied Science degree in 2021 after completing 60 credits. While students will study traditional aspects of bicycle design, Thul says that he and other faculty members decided, "it's very important that core mathematics and physics are taken seriously" because "the force distribution on one bicycle frame is going to be different from the force distribution on another frame." Also, he hopes that this background will help and encourage students to take on another passion of his: designing and building adaptable bicycles for handicapped people. But the most important goal of the program, according to Thul, might be to help students develop transferable skills. "A drivetrain is a drivetrain. Gearing is gearing. Welding is welding," he explained. They are skills, he says, that can be "used at Red Wing Shoes, Fastenal, Valley Craft" and many other local--and worldwide--manufacturing companies.
The program certainly sounds interesting,and I can't blame Thul for thinking he has the right idea. After all, he recently received a call from the CEO of a company in Montreal, Quebec. That CEO wants to hire graduates of his program.
We often say, "There's good news and bad news..." Well, on this date in history, there is a bad event and a terrible one. Neither relates directly to cycling, so if you want to skip today's post, I understand. Anyway, I'll start with the bad news in history. It's an event I remember pretty well, especially given how young I was. If you are of a certain age, you might have lived through it, too. On this date in 1965, it was "lights out." Yes, that's the literal truth: The lights went out in the northeastern US and the Canadian province of Ontario. It was the result of failures in power generating station, beginning with one near Niagara Falls. My family and I were living in Brooklyn. We weren't in the dark for as long as some nearby areas: Around 11 pm, power gradually returned, after about six hours without. O the other hand, some parts of Manhattan and other boroughs and states didn't have "juice" until the following morning. In some senses, we were lucky: It was a classic autumn evening, crisp but not too cold. More important, perhaps, were the clear skies and full moon. People did what they could outdoors, but some homes (including ours) had at least some light coming through our windows. And, even all of these years later, I recall how calm and even helpful most people were. My father couldn't get home from work, as the subways stopped running, but he was able to call us from a pay phone (Remember those?) and assured us he was OK. There were also some funny stories, like the one about people who got stuck in Macy's furniture department and slept on the showroom beds. Such an atmosphere was in contrast to another blackout a dozen years later that affected mainly New York City. It was a hot summer night and that year, it seemed, the city was in chaos, what with Son of Sam was shooting and the Bronx was burning. Well, it seemed that the gates of Hell or some Freudian subconscious opened: More fires were set, and stores all over the city were looted. New Pontiacs were driven off a dealers' showroom on Jerome Avenue in the Bronx; the Brooklyn neighborhood of Bushwick suffered devastation from which it would not recover for another three decades. Lots of glass was broken that night. And on the night of 9 November 1938 as well. Many fires were set, too. On this date in 1938, what is often seen as the opening salvo of World War II occurred. At the very least, it changed the nature of hatred in a nation. Up to that time, Jews in Germany, Austria and other European countries were losing their rights--if they had them in the first place--in much the same ways African Americans lost rights during the Jim Crow era. (I am not the first to draw this parallel; some scholars have said as much.) For a brief shining period--about a decade or so--after the US Civil War, newly-freed slaves and their descendents enrolled in schools and universities, earned licenses to practice nearly every kind of trade or profession (including medicine and law) and were even elected to public office. Those rights were withdrawn, as they were for Jews, and worse things came. In the US, the Ku Klux Klan as well as other groups and individuals intimidated, harassed, beat and even killed black people who stepped out of "their place." The Jews of the Reich didn't even have to do that: On this date eight decades ago, bands of Nazis--as well some freelance thugs--destroyed synagogues and Jewish businesses all over Germany and Austria. The police were under orders to do nothing except prevent injury to Aryans and damage to Aryan-owned homes and businesses.
Although Jews were harassed, beaten and even killed--and their homes, businesses and synagogues vandalized--before this date, this event--known as Kristallnacht, the "night of broken glass"--marked the first mass, systematic terrorization of Jews. And it shifted the means of expressing hatred of Semitic people from the legal and social to outright physical violence. That night, more than 100 Jews were killed and 30,000 able-bodied men were arrested and sent to death camps in Dachau, Sachsenhausen and Buchenwald. (Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen had not yet opened.) Thus began the first mass deportations of Jews (and other "undesirables") to the camps: Until then, the arrests and deportations were less numerous and widespread. In the US, citizens were outraged--at least for a while. Newspaper editorials condemned the violence; no less than the New York Times suggested that the German government instigated the violence to line its coffers, both with the possessions seized--and fines levied on--Jews: "Under a pretense of hot-headed vengeance, the government makes a cold-blooded effort to increase its funds." Yes, the Jews were forced to pay for the violence they "instigated." Sadly, Nazis and their followers in the Reich weren't the only ones who believed that the Jews brought it on themselves: Father Charles Coughlin, and influential Catholic priest, said as much in his radio broadcasts, which reached tens of millions of Americans when the nation's population was about a third of what it is now. Worse, though, was the initial inaction of the US government and others with power and influence. At least some of it was a result of unconcious anti-Semitism, but I think a larger reason was that, for one thing, by that time, more Americans came from German ancestry than any other. And people whose parents and grandparents came from other nations simply couldn't--or weren't willing to--believe that such systematic brutality could happen in "the land of Mozart". Homes and synagogues burned as glass was broken and the lights went out. I guess my family and city were lucky twenty-seven years later: Our lights went out, but there was no broken glass. And nothing burned.
