I was taken down and injured by a nuclear family in Stanley Park (Vancouver) this week. Let me set the scene. There is a good reason why, in 2014, “Stanley Park was named ‘top park in the entire world’ by Tripadvisor, based on reviews submitted” (Wiki). It is a magnificent mix of six miles of accessible bike and walking trails, fabulous landscapes, and resources galore. At 20% bigger (1,000+ acres) than NYC’s Central Park. Although it is a peninsula, it also borders on a bunch of Vancouver’s neighborhoods. Rather than being designed by a landscape architect, it evolved organically in response to the natural geography and the peoples’ usage.
Together with Barry and David, I rent an ebike to explore. I had already done a test drive in Boston thanks to the bike shop Wheelworks, and fell totally in love with ebiking and with the thin, small, swift model they provided. However, the rental shops near Stanley Park offer “one-size-fits-all” (and we know whose size that is) step-through ebikes, with handlebars wider than twice my comfortable arm span. As the bike shop person on the phone said, “Our bikes are made for 6’ German men.” Luckily David was able to adjust my seat so that I could be reasonably comfy.
I speed ahead of the two men, who prefer a leisurely pace. It is tourist season so the trail is packed with bikers and ebikers of varied abilities and attitudes. As people pass each other, they say, “On your left” – a seemingly universal method of giving a heads up.
I am about half-way around the trail which follows the waters of Burrard Inlet and English Bay when I sense someone coming up on my right. It is a youngish woman passing me against the rules, and I move slightly to the left to give her room for this rude maneuver. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to me, her husband has slipped past me on the left, tangling my front wheel and taking me down with the bike on top of me. When I look up, I see that the man has an infant in a little seat on his ebike and all I can feel is grateful that the baby is ok. “You drifted to the left,” hubby says accusatorily. His wife says nothing. Neither of them had made any indication of passing.
Barry and David pull up. They right the ebike and then help me stand. Each of them has a story about being incorrectly passed by this same family before I was. The adrenaline keeps me going for the rest of the 6 miles, but my left knee is sliced and bleeding, I have the start of what will be a half dozen large, ugly bruises on both legs, and both knees are swollen. I am 75 and have opposed the institution of the nuclear family since the late 1960s. I have successfully avoided being part of any nuclear family since I was 17. I did not foresee, in my dotage, that I would be ambushed by one in such enchanting surroundings on such an agreeable trip.
I am dealing with the injuries using a combination of Epsom salt baths (thanks Barry), Arnica cream (thanks Vicki), frozen moist washcloths for icing (thanks former days in Tae Kwon Do), and a cane for walking. I will elaborate on the attractions of Stanley Park when I publish my Vancouver travelogue.
Ken Burns, his daughter Sarah Burns, and her husband David McMahon, were not the right people to make the lengthy documentary on Muhammed Ali for PBS. I felt the long series had a subtly hostile tone to Ali and a more explicit hostility to boxing. Despite having the resources to access piles of stunning archival footage and despite having a massive eight hours of airtime, the entire work was devoid of emotion. Muhammed Ali was a passionate, emotional figure, but this was not reflected in the deadpan commentary, not the least by the guy they presented as the biographer of Ali, who seemed barely conscious.
This is not to minimize the insights of the brilliant writer and Ali fan Walter Moseley, the inside view of Ali’s brother Rahman, and the expert blow-by-blow from former boxer (and now actor) Michael Bentt. In fact, if it weren’t for Bentt, the series would have been stumbling around the ring helplessly.
If you have been a fan of Ali, as I have been most of my life, then there isn’t much new in this chronological series – other than wonderful clips and images. I appreciated that Burns allowed the women in Ali’s life to talk about his obsessive cheating and need for conquest after conquest, while they provided a home, a haven, and a family. But I was irritated that Burns acted like he had single-handedly discovered that people get hurt boxing and that Ali could be mean during a fight. Burns brought no real insight into Ali’s relationship to Elijah Muhammed and the Nation of Islam. We see his involvement, we see his betrayal of Malcolm X (which he regretted his whole life), and we see that his connection with the group’s leader was a bit of a roller coaster. But Burns provided no depth, no clarity, no understanding of Ali’s experience of Islam. And then there was the way Burns twisted Ali’s unique charisma into some sort of manipulation, when in fact Muhammed Ali widely inspired love. I adored him myself.
The most profound deficit was a total lack of appreciation of boxing throughout the series. We were shown the worst moments of every fight, the blood, the broken noses, the pain. Thankfully, we were also shown some of the spectacular conditioning and training the pros went through. But the filmmakers seemed to have only the most rudimentary grasp of the degree to which Ali brought rhythm, motion, and dancing to the fight. No one ever moved in the ring the way he did. Before Ali, no one ever imagined the sweet beauty a fighter could bring to such a brutal sport. Before Ali, no other boxer floated like a butterfly.
I grew up following Ali, starting with his 1960 Olympic win when I was 13 and was just becoming aware of the civil rights movement. He was only 18 and won all four of his fights in Rome. Over the years, I kept my eye on him, as if we were growing up together. His later struggle against the war in VietNam meant everything to those of us fighting the cops in the streets to protest that vile war. His ability to connect oppressions – “I ain’t got no quarrel with them Viet Cong… No Viet Cong ever called me n****r.” – was an education for us, as was his example of civil resistance to the draft. And all the time he was the most fluid, graceful fighter we had ever seen.
My exposure to the fight game began early. My parents were big on sports, almost any sport that involved our hometown Pittsburgh. Once we got a black and white TV, we would eat dinner sitting around a card table watching Studio Wrestling on Saturday nights. It originated out of Pittsburgh, and we were as familiar with Killer Kowalski and his main antagonist local boy Bruno Sammartino as we were with our relatives. My dad knew Referee Izzy Moidel, a local ex-boxer. Each of the wrestlers had a schtick and a script – it was fake fighting. Obviously. But I got a taste for the give and take of the fight from those weekly broadcasts. (And went on to become a Tae Kwon Do master for my first career, but that’s another story.)
When Muhammed Ali turned up, he had his schtick too, but he was for real. Boxing was for real. Ali gave shape and meaning to one-on-one combat, not only by being brilliant in the ring, but also by being brilliant out of it. He harnessed his charisma and his pronouncements to his beliefs and became one of the most influential athletes in history.
The Burns group seemed to think that Ali was “interesting,” a celebrity, entertaining. But I didn’t feel the love. Of course, they pointed out his athletic and political contributions, but I was left wondering if they had any feel for the depth of his influence. They stayed, it felt, on an unexcited, slightly aloof level of exposition, more interested in the count than the fervor: one, two, three – Ali won the heavyweight championship three different times.
There’s been a lot of discussion about why Burns (white/male/straight) has the total indulgence of PBS, which for 40 years has broadcast some 200 hours of his work! Meanwhile, there are generations of filmmakers who can’t get their toe in the door, not the least directors of color and women. A long-term Boston PBS tv host, the racist, reactionary Emily Rooney (yes, the daughter of –nepotism is becoming a theme in this piece), retired from her show after her disgusting dismissal of the very idea that a filmmaker of color could reach the heights of Burns. Over 300 film and TV professionals wrote a complaint letter to PBS asking “How many other ‘independent’ filmmakers have a decades-long exclusive relationship with a publicly-funded entity? Your commitment to diversity at PBS is not borne out by the evidence.” The privileged position of the Burns group impacts everything about their work – and in the case of Muhammed Ali, makes them the wrong group of people for the job.
Want to get an intimate sense of Muhammed Ali? Do yourself a huge favor and watch Billy Crystal’s hilarious, moving 14-minute tribute at Ali’s funeral. I’ve seen it a dozen times and have never failed to tear up. Eight hours of Burns’ presentation and I never felt much other than annoyance.
I have been watching almost every Olympic sport, finding that by living in the bubble of 8 to 10 hours a day of winter competitions, I am having my first break in over a year from 8 to 10 hours of tRump. I don’t have the news on; I’m infrequently on Facebook; I’m immersed in bobsleds and ski jumping and luge and even the biathalon. I am certain that were I just a kid, I would want to become a snowboard cross racer or a big air trickster.
But the sport that truly touches my heart is figure skating, most especially ice dance. And I want to talk about a breakthrough that is not getting enough attention. The American Shibutani siblings won a Bronze Medal in a partnership that smashes through the traditional narrative.
Ice dance is all about passion, romance, and the elevation of heterosexuality. This is quite literally the case. When the brother and sister decided that they would commit to partnering each other, many people in the game tried to dissuade them, pointing out how incestuous it might appear. Said Alex after their win, “For all the people who think it’s a deficit to skate as siblings, we’ve made it our strength.”
The Shibutanis have challenged that absolute hetero-love narrative. And in winning Olympic medals, they have shown that passion comes in many forms and that passion for the dance, for the ice, for other kinds of love must be a legitimate story to tell at the highest levels. Alex noted their broader vision for the sport, beyond just the idea of romance. “That’s not fair to ice dance, and probably hurting ice dance’s feelings. Ice dance wants to be whatever it can be.”
I’ve been astonished at how little discussion this amazing achievement has prompted. People in the skating world do not seem to know what to do. The Shibutanis’ free program was magnificent; their connection is unparalleled; but few talked about them at all after the medals were won.
Now it is time to take further steps to enhance ice dance. We need some relief from the hetero-dominance and from the strict man/lead - woman/follow prescription. This applies to the new emphasis on tricks and jumps and tosses – where there could be far more role switching than we now see.
We also need to allow same sex couples to compete and we need to welcome role switches. Right now the International Skating Union (ISU) punishes skaters who participate in the Gay Games by ice dancing with a same-sex partner. (Check out the clip below from the Gay Games.) Worse still, the ISU constitution calls for "one Lady and one Man" in each pair. I was thrilled to see an open discussion in mainstream media and a petition calling for the end of the use of the ridiculous terms “lady” – while men are men. Here you have these courageous ski/snowboard women toughing it out in dangerous, astonishing contests that are called “Ladies” events. They’re dressed in these puffy hardy sports gear, not pearls and twin sweater sets. Enough already. More than enough.
Must we always have to fight inch by inch, over and over, about gender restrictions in each individual sport, in each individual sub-culture? It is all so counter-productive. As we saw in the Shibutanis' extraordinary Olympic performance, breaking the limitations and challenging the assumptions leads to a richer art.
Here is Maia and Alex Shibutani’s Bronze medal-winning dance (although it’s an unsatisfactory video).
And here are Birgit Aust and Bettina Keil skating at the 2010 Gay Games (Cologne). I think their dancing and their outfits are both lovely.
I live near a pond. During the summer weekends, the town’s recreational department rents out kayaks for $10 an hour and I’ve taken to putting on old gear, a hat, and sunglasses, and going for a spin. I’m new to kayaks. It takes me just under an hour to go around the perimeter of the pond. I get to see all the fancy houses lining the pond, some of them from the 1800s. You can’t see them from the roads – this is the only way. Although I have never aspired to own a house, I sure would like to rent someone’s upper floor and sit with my computer in front of those walls of windows or in those garden patios.
I’ve always done my sports in groups – from the martial arts to ballroom dancing to senior fitness. This is the only such activity that
I’m digging on my own. I’m not a big nature freak, but listen to all these fauna I passed in my perimeter glide today: swans, several kinds of ducks, herons who were camouflaged and suddenly rose up from the rushes to play tag as they skimmed the lake (my friend said they’re skittish), and three turtles that were just hanging out on some dead branches thrusting out from the water. One guy fishing from a canoe pulled out a splashing ginormous open-mouthed bass (or so he said),
probably about 18 inches long, just as I passed him. I was startled when I saw the big thing and he apologized for scaring me. He extracted the hook and dangled it by its head while he took dozens of photos of it. “Gonna eat that?” I asked? No, he would throw it back. The woman running the kayak rental later told me that several people have caught and thrown back that bass. What a crappy life.
Next week is the last for the rental service. The kayaks are mostly lent by the high school, which wants them back for the school year. Others are donated or lent privately. Maybe I’ll spend the rest of the year until next summer studying teaching videos and actually learning how to kayak really, rather than just splashing about. There must be a correct way to hold the paddle that doesn’t blister up the inside of my thumbs, for example. And should the paddle be vertical or horizontal in the water? Only today did I learn that there are adjustable feet pads on the sides – makes a huge difference. All tips are welcome.
August 5, 2013: A freaky accident nearly took me down
today. But first, some background: I spent 20 years as a martial arts
professional. I founded and was head instructor at one of the country’s first
women’s gym’s and then ran my two Tae Kwon Do institutes. Throughout my career
I studied many other styles in my attempt to become the best fighter I could
be. When not a single solitary boxing club would accept a woman, I studied
boxing with a former Golden Gloves champion who had been interned in the
US camps for Japanese-Americans during the war. He was still so quietly furious in the 70s that
I think he took me on privately as a kind of revenge for having been stripped
of his Golden Gloves titles back then.
I studied a bit of Aikido with a gentle man whose gym I rented
part-time; I studied Kyokoshinkai Kan full-contact with the founder of martial
arts in Israel; and I studied judo with a dear friend Martyn Miller, another
national champion. One of the things one learns in judo is to slap the ground
with your hand/arm to break a fall. I remember when Martyn had a motorbike
accident: he was hit, thrown up in the air, but saved himself by slapping the
ground as he hit.
Today, as a tourist in Chicago, I am walking with Barry
up the stairs of what used to be the imposing Chicago Public Library, but which
is now the Chicago Cultural Center. The steps are massive stone steps with a
large lip on each – protruding, but unseen. I catch my foot, losing my shoe
(trainers), but before I register what has happened, I hear the thunderous sound
of flesh slapping stone. I have fallen face-first, diagonally up the steps,
slapping the stone with both hands really hard, thereby muting the force with
which my knees collide with the edge of another step.
For several moments I don’t move. I’m 65. What have I
broken? What have I done to myself? I twist in order to sit down while Barry
hovers. I look at the bright red palms of my hands and suddenly realize that my
judo slap has saved me from possible broken bones and a smashed face. I’m
bruised, I’m freaked, most of all I am shocked, but I’m okay.
We sit there for some time while I recover my equilibrium
and then go inside. My original goal had been to pee, so I go do that while
Barry searches for some ice. We are on a schedule with press tickets to a boat
tour to view the architecture of Chicago from the river, so we have to go. An
hour later, seated on the boat, I realize that no one on that incredibly busy
corner, no one among the many going up and down those steps stopped to ask if I
was okay. No one offered to help.
I’m lucky to have had so much good training in my life
and astonished that despite the fact that I retired from the fight game in 1991
and have not done a judo fall for 22 years, my body flashed into automatic response
and my muscle memory – that sweet little protein – did the trick. The lessons
to be learned? One, stay upright. Two, as I’ve taught hundreds and hundreds of
women: keep your hands free. I wear a cross-body bag or sometimes a backpack,
but never a handbag. And finally, while you’re upright, go work out and learn
some shit.
Note from Sue: This was sent to me by a student in her 80s with the title "Exercise for Old People." But as I have been teaching elder fitness for a very long time and know plenty of older people who could whup the butts of their juniors, I changed the title to something more general.
Begin
by standing on a comfortable surface, where you have plenty of
room at each side.
With a 5-lb potato bag in each hand,
extend your arms straight out from your sides and hold them there
as long as you can. Try to reach a full minute, and then
relax..
Each day you'll find that you can hold this
position for just a bit longer. After a couple of weeks, move up
to 10-lb potato bags, followed eventually by 50-lb potato bags. Finally, try to lift a 100-lb potato bag in
each hand and hold your arms straight for more than a full minute.
(I'm at this level.)
After you feel confident at
that level.....put a potato in each bag.
I’m leaving my physical therapist’s office, which is like a kiosk in the middle of a massive, modern Planet Fitness gym. A hulking young muscular guy hits the door at the same time as me. He’s already got his hand on it and as he pushes it open, he says, “Go ahead, miss.” I like him right away. He did not use the dreaded “ma’am” and he seems to be opening the door because he was there first, not because of my age or gender.
He goes down the steps in front of me and I see from his body that he’s a serious weights guy. “I used to be into weights,” I say, as I descend right behind him.
“Yeah?”
“But I didn’t last. It was boring. I was into the martial arts – much more exciting.”
Why was I pouring out my personal history to this handsome Adonis in his 20s? Why not. “I’m into martial arts, too,” he says. We’re outside now in the 100 degree heat and walking towards our cars – which both turn out to be at the far corner of the lot.
“What style?”
He explains about his American master’s style, a combo of kenpo and aikido, apparently, with some “kenpokido” type of hybrid name that these American individualists feel they need to conjure. “I did Tae Kwon Do.” He nods. We chat about fighting from the floor – which I’ve always hated; take-downs are frequently used in aikido. He doesn’t like it particularly, either, but is glad to know the techniques.
I realize that this person is treating me like, well, like a person. Not someone 40 years older than him; not someone of a different gender; not someone squat and chubby and a bit butch. He’s just chatting – no agenda. He doesn’t find it odd that I lifted weights, that I was a professional martial artist – he just finds it mildly interesting.
We arrive at my car first. He reaches out his hand, says his name, I say mine and we shake on it. I leave with a feeling that I have just had what should be a perfectly normal, common exchange between strangers. Except that it sadly isn’t common. Which makes it magic. Which makes my day.
I am an Olympics addict. There’s something magic in watching the top athletes – no matter which sport – going for the zen of excellence. In past decades and other countries I published sports commentary.
Now what I need is an online or print publication that will pay me for my Olympics observations (watching on TV, not on location).
What’s my approach? I examine these events via a gendered, international lens, often with humor. Below are two blogs I wrote about the Olympics in China (I blogged about it a half dozen times). The way in which NBC covers the Olympics, with its national chauvinism, is one of my topics. I also like to look at how issues of age play out, at sports that American media ignore and at how the camera work obliterates any real understanding of the scene.
If you are an editor and want to hire me to provide my unique view, please let me know. If you are a journalist or reader with a sense of where my work on this would be welcome, please share the lead with me. Thanks.
I spent about 18 years as a professional martial artist, as I have mentioned before. Bruce Lee’s movies were a great inspiration – and I wasn’t surprised to find out that he was also a dance champion (jive, latin) when he was a college student. The elegance and speed of his martial arts work are breathtaking and you don’t need to be a fighter to dig such excellence. He was to the martial arts what Mohammed Ali was to boxing – someone who elevated gorgeous movement in their fighting art, setting dizzying standards. “Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee” was an Ali signature that easily applied to Lee.
After he died, the world of kung-fu movies never really recovered, although new franchises were developed (not the least that of the comic Jackie Chan). But many young people have tried to imitate Bruce Lee, just as wannabe singers have developed their chops by mimicking Michael Jackson’s Thriller performance.
Now Nokia has dressed an expert of the nunchucka (two sticks linked by a chain as in the first photo) in Bruce Lee’s most famous jumpsuit and used fuzzy black-and-white camera work to produce a supposedly vintage piece of film in which this “Bruce Lee” beats two ping-pong experts. Why?
Turns out that Nokia has released a limited edition phone with various bits and pieces of Bruce Lee added – his face and signature on the case, a Bruce Lee doll, a nunchuck key holder and some preloaded images of the great actor. Technically it’s no different from the version that costs about $600, but Nokia seems confident that this ad will convince you that the $1300 tag is justified. From the day in the 60s I first saw hippy beaded headbands being sold in a department store, I have hated commercial co-optation. Here’s the ad, to be followed by a treat:
Fans of Bruce Lee have done some great tribute clips. If you want to see the real Bruce Lee working with his nunchuckas, check out this 6:40 minute excerpt from one of his early movies that has been put to the music of Sergei Prokofiev's “Romeo and Juliet”. The backstory is that Bruce Lee’s character is fearlessly confronting an entire martial arts school in order to right a wrong. The nunchucks start at 2:40, but if you skip forward you’ll miss some of his incomparable focused concentration, his majestic choreography and the moment (gasp) when he strips off his top. Isn’t he something?!
Killer Kowalski has died. A Canadian born in 1926, the giant of a man (6’7”) got into wrestling, they say, to help work his way through college.
I remember Kowalski from my childhood in Pittsburgh, especially because of his rivalry with Bruno Sammartino, our big-time local wrestling champ. Sammartino was born in Italy (1936), but his professional life was centered in Pittsburgh’s “Studio Wrestling” show on Channel 11. Here’s a great site tracing the 60s history of this program.
My parents forced me to watch a lot of sports. In my mother’s house “our” identity as Pirates and Steelers fans was as important as our identity as Jews. Other than my adoration for Roberto Clemente, whose photo I still display in my home, and my fondness for sitting in the bleachers at Forbes Field with my dad, eating hotdogs, I wasn’t all that interested.
However, I didn’t mind when we ate dinner Saturday nights around the card table in the living room in order to watch “Studio Wrestling.” I seem to remember – but perhaps I made it up – that my dad was tight with Izzy Moidel, the main referee. Izzy added to the theatre of the events by looking the other way during illegal moves, like one wrestler breaking a chair over another’s head.
Each wrestler had his “schtick.” Usually this was based on a professional, ethnic or racial stereotype. Sammartino was an Italian hero. The Sheik, from Syria, always entered the ring with an interpreter and harem. There was Chief White Owl, Cowboy Bill Watts and the popular Haystack Calhoun (see photo). At 640 pounds, he played up his image as the gentle hillbilly by wearing overalls and a horseshoe around his neck while pretending to be from Arkansas (instead of Texas). Most of the wrestlers were loud-mouths and no one cared that it wasn’t “real” the way boxing was real – all of Pittsburgh took vociferous sides and 10,000 to 15,000 of us turned up in the Civic Center to cheer our favorites.
My grandmother, an immigrant who never learned to read or write any language until she was widowed and studied English, was a sweet, hardworking nearly-deaf woman. Put her in front of “Studio Wrestling” and she was transformed into a wild woman. I’m not sure if all of this was a lesson in sports or a lesson in theatre, but I’m sorry to hear of Killer Kowalski’s passing.
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