The most famous athlete in America today may be Caitlin Clark, who plays basketball for the University of Iowa.
Two days ago, she made the front page of The Washington Post. You’ll be able to read the article here.
When I graduated high school in 1967, my female classmates had no organized sports teams.
I don’t recall ever thinking there was anything wrong with that.
What we didn’t see then that seems so obvious now is incredible.
I was born in 1949.
That America was a different country than the one I live in today.
Jackie Robinson became America’s most famous athlete two years before my birth.
Last year, Aliyah Boston, the Naismith Women’s College Basketball Player of the Year, led South Carolina to the national championship.
Fifty years after the first African American was admitted to The University of South Carolina.
Clark’s Iowa and Boston’s South Carolina meet tonight in a semifinal, with the winner advancing to the national championship game.
You can read here an article that compares these two phenomenal American athletes.
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I grew up with the phrase America was the land of opportunity.
It was not a lie for me, a white, male, middle-class kid.
But it was for Caitlin Clarks and Aliyah Bostons of mine and previous generations.
For this story, I focused on one corner of American athletics.
The images of those included tell a story of how America has improved.
Truer to its ideals.
A story of progress.
Pick any facet of American society and conjure images of those on the inside.
Those images shout a similar story.
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But nothing good comes without a cost.
When new people show up, they make new demands.
The best statement about this phenomenon comes from Jennifer Richeson, a Yale psychologist.
My lab is in an old engineering building and there’s exactly one women’s bathroom. No one noticed. And then slowly, Yale began adding women to the department, and they noticed it. They complained. Now there was friction. What had gone unnoticed by those in power in one era was unacceptable to those gaining power in another. When new people show up, they notice things and begin making demands.
From Ezra Klein’s Why We’re Polarized
The United States Women’s National Soccer Team has just won a demand for equal pay. You’ll be able to read about it here.
Alex Morgan, a captain on the 2015 & 2019 Women’s World Cup championship teams, said this about the settlement.
What we set out to do was to have acknowledgment of discrimination from U.S. Soccer and we received that through back pay in the settlement. We set out to have fair and equal treatment in working conditions, and we got that…And we set out to have equal pay moving forward for us and the men’s team through U.S. Soccer, and we achieved that.
Andrew Das, U.S. Soccer and Women’s Players Agree to settle equal pay lawsuit, Washington Post, May 18, 2022
But it looks years.
And struggle.
America was easy to run when only white males were in charge.
No one with power gives it up easily.
New voices with power make everything so much more complicated.
But my brain, mouth, and stomach were frozen on The Chocolate Malt.
Whitey’s Malts obligated Capital Letters.
And a gold star.
Unlike Dairy Queen’s upside-down performance of its blizzards, Whitey’s malt masters needed no tomfoolery.
The Culver’s Concrete Mixer? Truth in advertising.
At every Whitey’s, the customer witnessed this behind-the-counter miracle.
After scooping the ice cream into the metal-topped paper container, the teenage artisan pumped once at the chocolate station; and caressed the vessel onto the agitator. No milk was added.
Strong hands maneuvered to the perfect spot before flipping the start button. There were five seconds of turbulence before the first pause. More ice cream was layered in. Further grinding was required until the torment ended. The receptacle was placed on the counter. You’ve already paid.
A stand-at-attention straw and spoon handle awaited.
I’ve been quaffing Whitey’s Malts for 50 years and have never understood the straw. Why is it there?
It’s Ed McMahon to Johnny Carson.
Mr. Green Jeans to Captain Kangaroo.
A sidekick, but not necessary.
The thought of a Whitey’s Chocolate Malt ignited my hippocampus.
Distant memories overwhelm thought.
Mom, dad, my brothers Peter and Pat. 1950s Sunday lunches at the Iowana Farms Dairy in Bettendorf, Iowa. Under the Memorial Bridge.
Where we ate the Silver Star Chocolate Malt.
But back to the then present.
We turned off Highway 61 into the familiar parking lot.
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It was February 2015.
I’m driving; Rebecca’s shotgun.
We’d been on the road for three hours.
Lunchtime.
The van passengers were five Luther College students.
The destination was Bloomington, Illinois, where the students would present papers at a Human Rights conference hosted by Illinois Wesleyan University.
I volunteered to chaperone because my hometown, Davenport, Iowa, was halfway between Decorah and Bloomington.
I had four Whitey’s to choose from as we motored through the Quad Cities, three in Davenport and one in Moline, Illinois.
I selected Davenport’s 53rd street location because, after ice cream, we could detour past my childhood home.
“We’re finally here,” I announced as I navigated the van toward nirvana. You can see our view from this photo.
Image from Google
The students came alive
Sans earbuds, books, and sleep.
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The barrage hit Rebecca and me full force.
I don’t believe it.
It’s 2015.
Whitey’s, seriously?
Oh my God
How could they name it Whitey’s?
Rebecca and I looked at each other, dumbfounded, for a moment.
I explained the Whitey’s name came from the original owner, who was nicknamed Whitey, because of his blond hair. When he sold the business in the 1950s, the new owners kept the well-known name,
I thought about telling my young friends about my dad’s favorite gas station, Whitey’s Standard Oil. Or my favorite childhood baseball pitcher, Whitey Ford.
But I’ve learned when to fold with college students.
They listened politely.
And eased into the Subway next door.
I could have told them of my high school homecoming date at the most famous 1960s Quad City restaurant.
And jotting ideas in a Moleskine, 5″ X 8.25″ ruled/lined, black 240-page notebook
Using a Pilot Precise V5 pen.
If you could read the Bose Radio clock, it would say 4:35 AM.
I’m usually up at 4 AM.
Rebecca follows a few hours later.
That’s her Scandinavian Stressless Recliner you see. She selected white.
My choice was grey.
Those silver Bose headphones on the ottoman are Rebecca’s.
Mine are black.
I’m a lifelong Democrat.
She’s independent.
I was raised Catholic.
Rebecca, Protestant.
From beginning to end, our days are filled with particularities.
Our own and those of others.
It is the peculiarity that makes each of us unique.
And gives us a particular perspective.
Also unique but limited.
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One of my favorite movies is Miracle. It is the story of America’s 1980 men’s Olympic Hockey Team that defeated the heavily favored Soviet Union Team. Every time I see this film, I cheer again for my side and this miracle victory.
I just watched Of Miracles and Men. This film tells the story of that Soviet Team and another kind of miracle.
Two teams, two films, two miracles, and two perspectives.
I know the story of The Crusades from European and Roman Catholic perspectives.
Two weeks ago, at London’s Tate Modern Museum, I saw an art display by Wael Shawky that enlightened me with an Arab Historian’s perspective on The Crusades.
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My world is big enough to include your point of view.
What a dull world it would be if all I could see was me.
Photo of Victor Tan Wee Tar’s Passing of Knowledge, from Wikimedia Commons
My week has been bursting with gifts.
My knowledge bowl is running over.
Tuesday
“It was magic realism, with an All-American twist.”
Enlightened Susan to 35 of us gallery-arraigned on a Zoom link.
Our book club was reading Leif Enger’s Peace Like a River.
Wednesday
“Draw the lines you see in this painting.”
Coached Bob at 20 of us sitting at desks in the darkened room.
The Life Long Learning class was American Scene Painting: From Ashcan School to Abstract Expressionism.
Thursday
“Neither Luther nor Bach was a good student. That’s why they became great teachers.”
Edified Jim for 15 of us sitting comfortably in cushioned chairs.
The Emeritus lecture was The Luther–Bach Nexus.
Early Friday morning
In a dream, I’m preparing to defend my Ph.D. dissertation.
It is my second Ph.D.
I ask myself, do I need a second Ph.D.?
A heap of papers lies before me.
On the first sheet, words were crossed out in red.
I flip to the second page and scratch out and replace words.
And wake-up.
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This week I learned
Magic realism includes a miracle element in an earthy story.
Painters don’t look at lines. They focus on the mass inside the lines.
Theologian Luther wanted to be a musician. Musician Bach yearned to be a theologian.
But choo choo ing down the track after these experiences came that second Ph.D. dream.
What was I teaching myself?
Dreams sometimes begin an internal conversation.
Until I went to graduate school at 27, I had never been a serious student.
When I became a teacher at 22, I thought it was only because I needed a 5th year of college to stay out of the Vietnam war draft. I used the extra year to get a teaching degree.
Then, I thought I was making it up as I went along.
Now, I think I was born to want to know.
It was a gift from my parents.
My mother’s parents–her mom graduated from high school and her father from the 8th grade–put their four children (Florence, June, Dorothy, and Albert) through college in the late 1930s and early 1940s.
My father was the only one of four siblings and parents to graduate from college.
I believe there is often a first cause, a simple answer to why.
My comfort, no, my need to extend my arms for knowledge, is my parents’ greatest gift to me.
And the weather during our mid-January 8-day stay. Sunny and cold, with no precipitation until our Delta ride lumbered to the runway.
Rebecca and I were two of the 30 million visitors London will welcome this year.
It is an open-arms kind of place.
Even for two seventy-year-olds.
Here are some idiosyncratic highlights, and one lowlight, that might help you plan a visit or recall memories.
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Itinerary
We studied Rick Steves’ London guidebook about a month before departure to sketch a tentative day-by-day plan. We used his excellent maps, including the Underground, and extensive descriptions of tourist sites. One strategy emerged from this preliminary work. We decided, with one exception, to use nights for plays, musicals, concerts, and films to free up more daytime for London sites.
I put our actual London schedule at the end.
Our London Digs
That’s Rebecca outside The Celtic Hotel, pronounced Seltic, not Keltic. My bad for seven days.
Photo by author
The Celtic is located in north central London, two blocks from the Russell Square Tube Station.
It’s within walking distance (1.5 miles) of major tourist attractions such as The British Museum, the British Library, the National Gallery, Trafalgar Square, and many theaters.
The breakfast was hearty, with porridge the highlight, which allowed us to skip lunch. The staff was friendly and accommodating. During a 2018 stay, Rebecca left a pair of shoes. We contacted the hotel, and the shoes were in the post soon after.
Getting from here to there
We walked about four miles a day. No rain or snow helped. As did the clear sky you see over Big Ben in the first photo.
On day two in the morning, we walked a mile to The National Gallery in Trafalgar Square. Then we hiked a few blocks to see the matinee play Best of Enemies. The Noel Coward Theatre was a stone’s throw from Chinatown for dinner. With new SIM cards in our phones, we navigated the 30-minute walk back to our hotel arriving at 10 pm. There were plenty of people along the way, the streets are well-lit, and we felt safe.
When we weren’t on foot, we used London’s Underground. After arriving at Heathrow Airport, we purchased Oyster cards ($100) and took the Tube to a station two blocks from our hotel. The Underground doesn’t service Gatwick Airport, but trains do. In 2018, we flew into Gatwick and took a train to St. Pancras Station, about a mile from The Celtic.
Photo by author
Most central London Underground stations included escalators and steps. About a third are step-free. Every car had designated seats for those who could not stand long.
Eight days on the Tube and one delay that we were warned about well in advance. We had a problem making our Oyster cards work at the turnstile on two occasions. Both times, a friendly public transportation worker fixed the issue.
The London Underground was not art, a play, or a museum. But it is a living testament to human creativity. Five million people bustle through it each day by following three rules. They mind the gap, keep right, and pay attention to the signs.
It’s my favorite part of London. And it does have a terrific museum, The London Transport Museum, that honors its history.
Three More Things I loved
Food
While Rebecca clicked away to produce this photo, I ate more than my share of St. Martin in the Field Café in the Crypt’s apple crumble with vanilla cream.
Photo by Rebecca Wiese
Greedy sod.
St. Martin’s is across from the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square. You enter the cafe through a glass door to the left of the church. It’s one of London’s hidden gems.
Rebecca kindly did not take photos of me eating Pappardelle alla Bolognese at Prima Sapori D’ Italia, Chicken Tikka Masala at Punjab, and Fish & Chips at Friend at Hand Pub.
The British Library
I have a soft spot in my heart for William Shakespeare. Father Kokjohn’s Shakespeare class in 1972, my 5th year of college, forced me to become a serious student.
The British Library has a funky little room with an unfunky title, The Sir John Ritblat Gallery. That’s where I took this photo. It is the first book (folio) of Shakespeare’s plays, published seven years after his death in 1623.
Doesn’t he look like someone we should still be looking at 600 years later?
Photo by author
The Tate Modern
Four years before I took that Shakespeare class, I earned a D in Art Appreciation.
Now, I’m doing penance.
And loving it.
We saw lots of art in London, including two visits to the Tate Modern, which occupies a former power station across the Thames from St. Paul’s.
One of my favorite paintings was René Magritte’s Man with a newspaper.
Photo by author
You can find many interpretations of this piece of art. What do I see?
Absence. The room continues without this man with a newspaper. The Celtic’s breakfast room exists without Rebecca and Paul sitting in their corner spot.
When my father died thirty years ago, I remember driving around the streets of my hometown thinking Davenport was now without my dad. It’s not quite the same. Look carefully at the curtained windows in Magritte’s painting. The perspective changes just a little. Genius.
One thing I hated
Harrods
Photo by author
Rebecca did, too.
Hate is too strong. And probably unfair.
One hundred thousand people visit every day. It presents itself well, as you can see.
It wasn’t just the $29,000 watch.
Or the private toilet stall locked and waiting for some Poobah.
Or the counter waiter in the Food Court who told us we could have these stools for 45 minutes.
Or the sullen wait staff who served lukewarm and weak hot chocolate.
Or the bland and perfectly formed scone
It was the feel of the place.
We couldn’t get out fast enough.
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We visited Harrods on our 5th day.
By then, London had worked its magic.
Opened its arms.
Expanded our horizons.
Harrods was anti-that London.
With arms closed.
Thank goodness we had more time.
To visit the Tate Modern. Twice.
The Anti-Harrods.
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This photo captures our sense of delight with our eight days and nights in London.
Photo by a kind stranger
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Our actual itinerary
Day 1: Arrived at 7 am Heathrow; British Library; British Museum
Day 2: Trafalgar Square; National Gallery; Play: Best of Enemies
Day 3: Courtauld Gallery; Victoria and Albert Museum; Musical: Hamilton
Day 4: Tower of London; Vivaldi Concert at St. Martin in the Field Church
Day 5: Harrods; Parliament; film in Leicester Square
Day 6: Rabbie’s Oxford & Cotswold day tour.
Day 7: Tate Modern; London Transport Museum; Musical: Mama Mia
Day 8: Wiener Holocaust Library; Tate Modern; Play: The Unfriend
Mrs. Thompson lived in a little house on Ridgewood Avenue.
Her backyard bordered the driveway my family shared with our next-door neighbor.
The cemented area between our garages doubled as a whiffle ball diamond in the summer and a basketball court in the winter.
Because there was only a low hedge of bushes between our play and Mrs. Thompson’s yard, we regularly trespassed to retrieve one ball or another.
Mrs. Thompson was a small, stooped woman.
Often outside working in her garden.
She always wore a sweater.
Even in the summer.
I don’t know if she was ever married. Or had children.
I do know she never complained about us darting into her yard.
Not like Mrs. Weinswag.
She lived up our street.
And was protected from our stray balls.
But not from an occasional wet newspaper.
That I delivered.
After a few complaints, my mother told her to put the wet paper in the oven. Like mom did after I trudged up the street to exchange our dry paper for crabby Weinswag’s wet one.
Every Thursday night, I collected money from my 44 Times-Democrat newspaper customers.
Mrs. Weinswag never let me inside her house.
Mrs. Thompson always did.
Her house was warm.
Hot to a kid.
But cozy.
Mrs. Thompson died soon after I stopped being a paperboy.
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I’ve been thinking about her lately, as I, at 73:
Replace my cotton sweaters with wool ones.
Nudge our house temperature to 75.
Investigate a warm destination for next January.
And purchase battery-warmed gloves.
About the gloves, I have Raynaud’s condition. You can read about it here. Below is a helpful diagram.
Photo of our Thursday breakfast group: left to right: Peter, Uwe, Ruth, Will, Dennis, Alan, Dale, the author, and Harland
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I was born in 1949; my mother, Dorothy Thomas, in 1921; her mother, Florence Mullane, in 1891.
Florence died at 94, Dody at 96; I’m 73.
None of us wanted to belong to the country of the old. Florence and Dody never changed their minds.
This story is why I just did.
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Look at that old lady.
Mom told this story many times. She and her mom would be walking in downtown Davenport, Iowa. Florence would spot an older person across the street. She would stop, point, and “Look at that old lady.”
Decades later, when mom was 88, we walked up East Street, the steep brick lane outside her house. Her left arm was linked to my right because he had a hip replaced three days earlier. Mom looked across the street and waved to Evelyn Barton walking down her driveway. Evelyn was also 88. Mom whispered, “Evelyn walks like an old lady.”
Mom conceded nothing to her age. No hearing aids, no walker, even after the hip operation, and no memory care unit until my brother had no choice.
I don’t think my mother or grandmother ever felt good about being old.
Ruby’s
Last Thursday, I had breakfast with a group of retired Luther College professors. That’s us in the photo.
On another Thursday morning 11 years ago, I was half listening to one of my mom’s stories. She was visiting, and we were out for breakfast at Ruby’s. I looked over and saw another cohort of Luther retirees eating and chatting. I recall thinking, that won’t be me when I retire.
The old are them and not me.
A country of the old
In 1926 60-year-old Irish poet William Butler Yeats wrote Sailing to Byzantium with this first line:
That is no country for old men.
“That” had been his country, full of
The young in one another’s arms.
The poet feels old, soon to be
An aged man…a tattered coat upon a stick.
Yeats died 13 years later, at 73.
Sixty years after Byzantium, 70-year-old American poet William Stafford wrote Waiting in Line,* with this opening:
You the very old, I have come to the edge of your country and looked across…
Later, the poem’s narrator says
I have glimpsed from within the gray-eyed look at those who push, and occasionally even I can achieve your beautiful bleak perspective on the loud, the inattentive, shoving boors jostling past you toward their doom.
Stafford, dead at 79, finished with
You others, we the very old have a country. A passport costs everything.
My mom and grandmother strode to the edge of the country of the old, looked across, and turned away. Passports locked in purses.
I’m on a different path.
Turning Toward
About a year ago, I realized I was shaving with my sleep t-shirt on. No tattered coat, but I had covered my aging body. I didn’t want to look. I was turning away. Turning away is rarely the answer.
Slowly, this past year, I decided, without really deciding, that I would turn toward the country of the old.
Yeats and Stafford suggest this country is superior to the country of the young.
Yeats old man sails to Byzantium, a place, as one critic suggested, “where wisdom, art, beauty, and experience are honored.”
Stafford’s narrator sees in the old a “beautiful bleak perspective.”
Instead of sailing to Byzantium last fall, we motored to Cooperstown, NY home to Baseball’s Hall of Fame.
For a year, I’ve been reading biographies of my favorite players: Ty Cobb, Jackie Robinson, Buck O’Neil, Mickey Mantle, and Sandy Koufax.**
Communing with these men at baseball’s shrine seemed fitting. Until yesterday, however, I had not understood what all this had to do with aging.
“He was complete”
A friend loaned me a book of essays by Roger Angell. Angell, who died at 99 last year, is considered the finest baseball chronicler. In the Preface to Once More Around the Park, he’s contemplating the retirement of relief pitcher Dan Quisenberry, with these words:
He had closed the book, and in that moment had become fresh and young again, and…wonderfully clear in my mind. He was complete.
Bingo
That’s why I’m absorbing baseball biographies. My perspective has changed. Today, I’m less interested in the records of my heroes than in who they became.
And in who I’ve become – the complete.
Only in the country of the old can I contemplate what complete means. Stafford’s last line:
A passport costs everything there is.
The mirror shows me the costs of aging.
But the gift is the possibility of making sense of my life.
*Stafford’s Waiting in Line is the 10th poem on this linked page.
**Biographies: Sandy Koufax by Jane Leavy; The Soul of Baseball: A road Trip Through Buck O’Neil’s America by Joe Posnanski; Ty Cobb: A Terrible Beauty by Charles Leerhsen; The Last Boy: Mickey Mantle and the End of America’s Childhood by Jane Leavy; True: The Four Seasons of Jackie Robinson by Kostya Kennedy.
