susanstinson

( Photo )

I found out about it on usaservice.org. I'm going to go fold clothes for the hospice shop and collect canned food for the survival shelter tomorrow from an event I found there, too. There's a lot to be seen about the Obama administration, but I appreciate that they found me a place to dance.

It was snowing this morning. Not too much, but it made for hard triking! They had barely plowed, so I had to ride right in the middle of Route 9, in the only place that wasn't thick with snow. The cars had to go my speed until I pulled over to the deeper stuff and let them by. I almost didn't go because of the snow. (And, you know, fear.)

When I got to the drive for the Fitzwilly's building (site of an encounter last summer with a rude man and his motorcycle) I had to get off and push the trike through the slush. A woman walking asked if I needed help, but I was waiting for her to go by. She was nice, then she went into the door I was headed for. Two other people, looking happy, went in, too. Okay!

It was on the fourth floor. (Another reason I almost didn't go.) I could hear the drumming. There were placards along the stairs with quotations from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. They were saying beautiful, profound things. I went slowly up the stairs and read the placards. This made me both less winded and less scared.

I took off my boots in the anteroom. I like an anteroom -- it's good to have another moment of transition. I peered into the room -- everyone was the floor while someone danced in the middle. Yikes! But they looked like old hippies, and other generations of hippies. Hippies and artists taught me how to dance in the first place. I like them, in general. I'm not exactly one of them, but I dance like them and I understand a lot of their ways. I liked the sound of the music.

Then, there was a little dressing area, where I took off my coat and my jeans, and saw the nice woman who had offered to help me with my trike. She said that she hadn't been there in a long time, and I said that I never had before. "Oh, you'll love it," she said. I go too many days when I don't have nice, simple, small conversations in person with someone else. This was very good, and I was also glad that there was no talking once a person went in to dance.

I put my can of baked beans into the basket. I put my five dollars in another basket. People were up and dancing now, and, why not?, I started to dance. There were handsome women drumming and singing in the front. There were grey-haired men in tie dye. Some people rolled over each other or lay down on mats and did acrobatic dancerly moves, alone or together. They were fun to watch. Lots of women my age or older, including a couple of fat women. A few kids running and laughing. Mostly white, but not everybody. I started dancing at the back near the nice lady from the driveway. People looked at each other lightly, not demanding, but with some sense of welcome. There was a window with a ledge that always had someone sitting in it.

The drumming was good for shaking, arriving that way. It felt so good to move. I was quickly too hot. I had on leggings and a body suit and a little brown dress that came in the amarama's magic box for my birthday, with straps on the sleeves that dangle and fly. I liked having a skirt I could swirl by the hem.

After a while, a grey-haired man who was tie-dyeish came up to dance with me. He did a shaking all over thing, like me, and hand motions, like me. It was funny and fun for a minute or two, and then the song was over, and I sat down on the floor, and that was enough of that.

I liked the live drumming and singing. After they left, I liked the highly altered version of We Will Rock You. I stomped and even jumped up and down, which might not be wise. There was a tall, blonde woman who struck me as an lgbt person, who was smiling very sweetly at me and pressed her hands together and bowed a little when I smiled back, stomping.

I didn't dance in the big line and circle with most people at the end. Wasn't quite ready for that, but did stand up and dance on the outside, and that song ended with a piece of a speech by Martin Luther King, not "I Have A Dream," but he was talking about a call to love.

Then we watched a video on the wall. The Dells doing the Star-Spangled Banner, with a background of intense images from African American history, including slave imagery and a lynching. I watched, and felt it, and followed the lines from the writing I've been doing over the past few years to these images and back.

Then, there were circles. We said our names, and drew a quality from a basket. I got "education. " Then we went around with announcements. Afterwards, most people left, but I stayed for a small circle in which people talked about their experience at the dance and anything else that was coming up for them. Nothing was perfect, but the whole thing had this quality I love of a bunch of people trying to keep something happening because they care about it and because they think it might be a good thing in the community. I folded up a couple of scarves and put away a few placards.

Right before I left, the tall blonde woman came up to me and whispered in my ear, "I loved to watch you dance. You're a dancer. " That was lovely. And it felt true -- I felt like a sweaty, hippie dancer, in my body, ready to trike home (the roads were plowed! an old hippie guy that I'd seen at the dance actually threw me a peace sign with his fingers from his car window as I pulled out on my trike!), and being the other things that I am, hot to tell the story to you.

Now it's 3 pm and I better eat lunch and do the next thing. But the dancing felt so good!

The trike shifts weirdly in the cold, and sometimes not at all. The tires spin on the first little hill when my street is icy. The lock sticks. Tonight, the small pump I carry in the basket was sliding out and poking into the spokes of the wheel. Also, something ominous is happening with the hub or the chain again. Moments of suddenly pedaling through nothingness, with no connection to the wheel. Moments of suddenly pedaling through thickness, as if the road was gravelly mush. This can be shocking to the thighs, which like steady work.

Also, I couldn't find one of my gloves today, and there was no waiting to see if it might turn up. Riding a trike when it's below freezing without gloves is reckless. It's getting dark so early, and I wish I had the better light that I had last year, the one with 5 leds. It stopped working this fall, probably from water damage. I replaced it with one that was much cheaper, but nowhere near as bright.

Those are my plaints, so early in the winter. But, I like feeling rugged. I like being able to get where I need to go. I like pushing the left grip back up the handle bar as it threatens to slip off. I like the motion, and the phyiscal work of it. I like its squat elegance, its red modesty. I love my aging trike, even in winter. As long as the snow isn't too thick to ride on, and the air isn't too cold to breathe.

Honestly compels me to add that I also quite enjoy sprightly rides in warm cars, too.

Slow flurries of leaves like chips of light drifting over the bike path.

Also, yesterday, a very small snake wriggling past my front tire. I didn't see it until I had stopped to take off my sweater. Today, a squirrel almost ran in front of me, but changed its mind and whipped around so fast that its tail bent in a plush U at the edge of the path.

Today I rode to the reservoir in Leeds. I haven't been there before, in all the years I've lived here. It is past the end of the bike path, past Look Park, and there is a big hill on the way, since this is the beginning of the rise into the hill towns above the Connecticut River Valley. I wasn't at all sure I could make it, but I put on my swimsuit, brought a jar full of ice water, a pear, and a bunch of my stuff in a bag, and tried. The hill on Florence Road had me gasping, and I finally got off and walked for a little while. I wasn't sure how much farther the reservoir was, and there was also a pretty big downhill that made me nervous for the ride home, but, once I got there, it was perfect. A little sandy beach, other people on bikes pulling up, families. I put down my towel and walked into the cold water. It's a river, marked off with rope and floats for swimming. Lots of kids, and lots of room. There were many little fishes in the water. A very tan and friendly woman told me the sandiest place to walk in, to avoid the rocks. The water was cold and lovely after all of that effort, and I was langorous. I floated on my back, and swam to a far corner, then back. There were foamy bits on the surface.

When I got out on the beach, a chubby little boy showed me his rubbery chain of flowers, which twirled and bounced, and told me the story of his only sunburn. I read bits of The Forest for the Trees: An Editor's Advice for Writers, by Betsy Lerner, the pieces at the back about what editors want from writers and what writers want from editors, and about the life of the book itself, once it's bought. It's not good for daydreaming about books, but it's a bracing reminder of some common points of view of people who work within the industry. I'd been enjoying reading my Dickens biography, which, itself, was a study in a dazzlingly successful career as a novelist and some of its costs. But I'd finished the biography, and the beach, with the water in front of me and the ride home still ahead, was a good place to think a little bit about the publishing industry, with plenty of gritty sand and the story of a sunburn so bad that a little boy had to take a shower instead of a bath to put it in perspective.

There was also a little girl walking very purposefully down the beach, saying to herself, "Something is wrong. Something is wrong." I looked up, but couldn't see what was the matter. Finally, in the water, she shouted, "Something is wrong, and IT'S TADPOLES!!!" She went running up the beach, and the next time I saw her, she had a jar full of green water, trying to catch some of the very present small fishes.

Also, I saw a garter snake before I set off, small and fast, there in the dirt near where I park my trike. Such a good late summer day.

I saved my legs for the one hill, but, mostly, it was coasting, all the way home.

On Wednesday evening, I was riding my trike on the bike path to go to the house of friends for dinner. Near the beginning of the path, a group of maybe twelve or so boys (junior high age? or high school?), came out of the wetlands on their bikes and gathered in a big clump across the path in front of me. They were some distance away, but, immediately, I heard the overexcited, loud voice of a kid looking my way and saying rude things about my body, intended, I think, both to be heard by me and so be hurtful, and also, for sure, to be noticed by his friends for wit and nerve in breaking the ordinary rules of how people treat each other.

He decided it would be funny to break away from his friends and ride his bike as hard as he could directly at me, looking me right in the eyes, and yelling, "Aw, shit," over and over. It was very theatrical, the joke being that I was so huge that he was in terrible danger that I would crush him. He actually was putting both of us in some danger, because that was some stupid bike riding. I just kept going, so if it was also a game of chicken, he lost. It played out without other commentary -- his friends didn't laugh or move, at least until, glaring and relieved, I finally rode by the big group, and a couple of them muttered something about heavy machinery.

Dinner was beautiful and abundant. So good to see my friends.

I haven't replaced my bike light yet (it's $60, and when I took it into the shop, they said to try cleaning the corrosion on the inside with steel wool, but the result was that I went from having uncertain light to none at all), but I'd brought a flashlight to strap to the handlebars with bungy cords for the darkness of the path, away from streetlights, on the ride home. First I had it strapped wrong, so all of the light went up into the trees, but it was pitch dark at the start of the path, and I rode off the edge into dirt right away because I couldn't see. So I adjusted the light. The part of the path that goes through Florence was easy, since there were lights from the town to help me see, but just before I got back to a darker section, a rider with no lights, who, in my quick glimpse of him looked like another boy, slipped onto the path in front of me from the street. He stayed just in front of me for the rest of the path, and I had to keep adjusting my flashlight to catch his reflectors so I wouldn't run into him.

It's almost poetry now: the shapes farther up the path, approaching or riding away, the kind of ugly thoughts they pulled out of me, and also the beauty. One of the things that sticks with me is how clearly I saw the first boy, the one who charged me, as I stared into his face. I saw his moment of calculation before he started yelling. I had on sunglasses, so he would have missed my eyes, but my face must have been so present for him, too. And then, on the way home, the flickering shape in front of me, comfort and obstacle both, maybe wanting to stay on the asphalt with my little capsule of light, maybe wanting the company, too.

( The chain came off three times. Every time, someone stopped. )

I was just working on a chapter in the library, and it was thorny and pleasurable in the strange way that this revision has become. Then, I wanted to go swimming, but just as I left, a few raindrops were hitting the pavement outside the library, so I put all my notes and manuscripts (handwritten, a lot of it, in old fashioned brown accordion files: bad news if wet) into a white trash bag, draped my swim towel over it (they won't let you in the pool for a half hour if it's thundered), and headed home on my trike in a downpour that left me absolutely soaked to the skin, shivering and barely able to see. My shoes were squishing on the pedals. Wet, wet, wet. I'm home, still wet, warm and drying, work dry, too, about to eat some pesto from basil my love brought me yesterday. It's getting very humid hot in here again, and I'm exhilarated from the writing and the ride.

It feels so lucky, and so good.

I'm really excited to get the revision of the novel off! I hopped on my trike and did a victory lap around Look Park.

On the way, I came up a steep entry ramp to the bike path fast and made a sharp turn. A woman walking by (I check for pedestrians! Not reckless!) sort of cheered and said, "Wow."
That's the ramp where I did my only wheelie. I have to go fast to get up it, and it's not iced in any more. It's spring!

When I was coming in the entrance to the park, a couple of nice people I know saw me from across the way, and the man started singing, "There she is, Susan on her trike," to the tune of "Miss America" in a booming voice across the park. I waved and yelled, "I finished a revision of the novel!"

I made happy phone calls to my parents and other dear ones while I was on the far side of the park. I don't think I've ever called anybody from the trike in motion before! I was breathless, and kept saying "whooo!"

Heading home (downhill all the way!), I crossed a road just as a little boy learning to ride his bike was coming up the path. He gave a little shriek when he saw me, and turned the bike into his Mom, who caught him and it both. "Don't worry!" I said. "We had to stop anyway," she said, laughing. (It's true, they were almost to the stop sign.) He didn't really seem scared -- we all thought it was funny.

Home before dark!

this

I hadn't gone far on my trike when I could tell that the pedals were turning with no effect on the wheels: a chain was off. This happened once before, but that time, I kept trying to ride until the chain was tangled in the gears, and then got help getting it back on. This time, I stopped right away. It was hard to get the chain to stretch back in place, but the key was turning the trike completely upside down -- not just on its side, so that I could turn the pedals and use the rotation of the gear to help feed the chain back where it belongs.

There was tons of gunky black oil on the chain, although I scrubbed with a nail brush, there's still some lingering under the edges of my nails and on my arm.

As some of you know, my trike got hit by a snow plow attached to a little tractor.

I just got a call! It's fixed! New wheel, new axle, and a couple of bearings replaced to help with the gear shifting problems I've been having.

Off I go to catch the bus to Florence and ride it home (or wherever I want) on the snow-pretty-much-cleared-or-frozen-streets. Hurrah!

Everything was glazed with ice today.

The first winter I had the trike, I was nervous about riding in the road, and tried to stick to the sidewalks. Since I had walked everywhere in all seasons before that, I was used to the fact that sidewalks are often poorly shovelled, slippery or not shovelled at all, but, on a trike, that could stop me cold. Riding in the road is so much better, even on a day like today.

But, getting on the bike path was a bit rough. I tried to go as fast as I could to get up the little hill at the entrance, but I found myself still on an incline with my wheels spinning with no traction on totally smooth ice. I tried to get off and walk it, but it was too slippery. The trike slid backwards, just a little, which was worrying, but then I kicked at the ground with my feet and got to a spot where a public works truck must have driven the path and crunched up the ice a little in its very swervy path. The path was flat by then, and, with lots of extra effort, I could keep moving. It's a steep and very icy short hill off, and then the road is unplowed for a ways, so I walked up most of that. The plow came by on the bike path right after me, putting down salt.

On the way home, I had trouble getting back on the path. The short, steep hill (it's like a ramp) was totally glazed with ice. I had to hold onto the posts that are there to keep people from driving onto the path, and skitter to the side where there were leaves in the ice that were frozen in rumply shapes that gave some traction. Once I got there, I was able to push the bike up the hill, and the path was completely clear down to the asphalt, from the salt and rain. The whole ride home was easy, so much of the ice had melted fast.

It cleared my head for writing. Plus, I got milk.

I was riding my trike yesterday when my shoelace got wound around one of the pedals. I stopped, then pedalled one more time around to get to the side of road, which wound the lace so tightly around the pedal that I didn't seem to be able to get off the trike, never mind unwind the lace. It was pulling my shoe so tight that it squeezed my foot painfully, too. I was pulling my foot and trying to break the laces or get out of the shoe, when, somehow, I managed to get off, and everything loosened. I got unwound, and tied quite a careful double bow on my shoe.

Even the simplest things suddenly become less simple.

Also, in triking news:

The last time I got on my trike, it was so cold that the gear shift on the handle bar had frozen in place, and I couldn't get it to go into anything but first.

Today, the gear shift had thawed, but the road from the bike path to the street that the Y is on wasn't plowed, so my wheels were just spinning in place. I had to get off and walk it up that little hill. There's ice that started out as slush under everything.

I went swimming for the first time in more than a week, which felt great, but then I rode home with wet hair, which froze into icicles. (Perhaps that was good for it -- it's having a randomly fetching moment right now, says me, despite having been unceremoniously plopped up and clipped to the top of my head.) There's a crack in part of the plastic around the gear shift that I should duct tape, I think, to try to keep moisture from getting in there.

I'm in such a better mood if I get out on the trike than if I don't. But I'm finding all of this cold and ice daunting.

I want one of those face masks with slits for the eyes, nose and mouth

If I don't trike, I have to walk.

So, it was up to twenty mph winds today, and got down to 18 degrees. I finally got some winter triking clothes figured out so that I could go to the grocery store. Long socks, leggings, jeans. T-shirt, sweater, sweat shirt, jacket. The ever important good gloves, and a hat that fits under my helmet. My cheeks and nose were still cold, and it was slow going against that wind (which blew my trike in a semi circle when I was off it to fill in a deposit slip at the drive-through machine at the bank, and blew the parsley out of my shopping bag when I left it on my steps to go lock up the trike), but it was exhilerating, too. Okay, here comes winter. I can do it.

I see the folks from Pedal People a lot. Often, we're some of the few winter bikers out, only they're pulling trailers full of trash cans as part of their hauling and delivery service. (I just saw on their website that they're starting a pre-order food coop, too.) On a cold day recently, someone who I recognize from the website as Ruthy pedalled up beside me on the bike path and started chatting about the advantages of trikes versus bikes with trailers. She said that it always makes her happy to see me out on my trike, and I feel the same about them. Plus, they put up a pay phone and a bench and a tire pump people can use outside their yard, and they have a lending library. It's all pretty sweet.

If you scroll down their photo page, they've got a good shot of the bike path in winter.

I found out from nunofthat, who just put up a great (locked) post about winter biking, that Chicago has a bike station, where people can bike to work, park their bikes securely, take showers, leave their stuff in lockers and go about their days. Love that.

A friend was visiting last week. This was gorgeous. We ate sweet squash in oatmeal most mornings, and did many wonderful things, including a tour of Jonathan Edwards sites I'd never been to before: an eighteenth century church; his birthplace and the graves of his parents in an excellent cemetery with many terrific carvings of angels, plus one of the country's oldest post offices, which was a store in his time; and the town where he preached his most famous sermon. We took the old highway along the river.

Whoohoo! I pried off the tire, slung it around my neck and plodded downtown for the bus to Florence. At the bus stop, I was treated to a monologue by a guy whose wife had thrown him out of the house last week because, the story went, she thought his nerve medicine was heroin. I declined his request to assist him with atm card limit troubles. (Him: It's just across the street! There's nothing wrong with that! I'll give you my code and everything. Me: Don't give me your code. I'm a stranger. And I'm not going across the street, I'm waiting for a bus...) Men on the bus were talking to me, too, and a guy at the food store, said, "I like your necklace." That was my bike tire. Wearing a bike tire seems to make a person look approachable.

$5.95 for a tube, purchase of yogurt and bread that I'd run out of since I've been without the trike, bus ride to the Academy of Music, trudge home with groceries, tire, Jonathan Edwards shopping bag and aching knees, just to remind me why I love that trike so much, tire on rim, innertube inflated to 40, with some help from my thoughtful landlord, and it's (fingers crossed) good to go. This is, I admit, kind of a thrill.

The trike has a flat. Rear left tire. It's leaking quickly and hissingly from the stem, so I think that this means that it can't be patched. I think I need to take off the tire and order a new one. I'd been thinking that I'd have to take the wheel off, but just realized that I probably don't. I have not done this before, and, in the meantime, it's suddenly much harder to get to places like the grocery store, the swimming pool and the bike shop.

I discovered that the tire was completely flat when I was at the laundromat with a full load of clothes in the basket.

I've been sending the novel out via email, and there seems to be a problem with Word displaying my past edits. The Normal template is defaulting to, with the reviewing pane toolbar visible, displaying the command "Final showing mark up" in a box on the left. Just to the right of this box is another box with a check-off list, and it defaults to Show comments, insertions and deletions, and formatting. If I click "Final," instead of "Final showing mark up" all the record of past edits disappears from the visible text, but when I email it or copy it to another file, it defauls to "Final showing mark-up," and the person receiving it sees the messy and distracting editing. Making the review pane toolbar invisible does not fix the problem, and while I can get to the window to edit the normal template, there doesn't seem to be an option for editing this.

I don't want to keep a record of this editing at all, but I can't seem to get rid of this. Any ideas?

I got to talk about Spider in a Tree this morning at a course on Sexuality and History in the Contemporary Novel at Amherst College, taught by Judy Frank, which was really fun.

The students -- who were smart, engaged and interesting -- read chapter nine of the novel, and due to the problem described above, some of them had it printed out with visible edits.

Via

firecat, a good q&a with researcher Linda Bacon about fat and health -- she's a key person in the Health At Every Size movement among health care providers and researchers.

Last night, it was dark on the bike path and the red rear light on my love's bike reflected on the fenders and lit up her calves. They were all I could see of her, beautiful and ghostly, pumping away.

Back home, it was lights and shouts from the rides at the fair and flashing blue from the police cars at the crosswalk until late. There was a huge cloud of smoke from an early round of the demolition derby.

It's been hot in my apartment, and so cold in the library where I've been working that I have to bring a sweater, but last night, E wanted to go out on the bikes as soon as she got here, so, even though there was lightening and it was getting dark, we rode out on the dirt roads in the fields behind the small airport. On some parts of the roads, the dirt was soft and deep, so that I had to push with all the muscles in my thighs just to keep moving. Corn and banks of black-eyed susans were high and green (and yellow and brown) on both sides, and the lightening kept up with white and orange bolts and whole sky flashes. It smelled of manure, so much like the barn in Texas. We passed the curved, black end of runway, with its orange windsock, and E kept turning farther into the fields, away from the highway, which we could hear in swells like surf, looking for a way to loop to Venturer's Field Road so we wouldn't have to double back. The Holyoke range, with its blue flanks of old, low hills where Jonathan Edwards picnicked with visiting ministers, got closer, as did dark, except that it was already there, so it wasn't really getting closer, but just more pervasive or intense. We never found the crossroad, and I couldn't do the soft dirt, so we turned and made it home before the storm.

I had a beautiful bike ride last night with my love last night. She's an athlete who I've never been able to begin to keep up with in most physical pursuits (and we've been together for something like twenty-five years). Last night, we rode across the river to Hadley and then back along the bike path under a high, rounded out moon, with the bits of recycled glass (yep, it causes flats...) in the asphalt of the path sparkling in the unsteady haloes of the bike lights. It was very dark on the path in spots, there were lightning bugs, and people camping on the edge of a cornfield with a fire. The humid heat had softened in the dark. We rode back across the river, and, after the emptiness of the bike path, the old railroad bridge was full of people out to watch the moonlight on the water. I rang my bell. It was so lovely.

Earlier in the month, one of the chains on my trike (it has two) came off and got jammed down between the gears. My fingers got covered with dark, thick grease trying to get it out, and then Nina, a former neighbor from Easthampton, stopped and had me lift one of the wheels to take the pressure off while she pulled out the chain and fit it over the sprockets again. Her fingers came up filthy, too, and she --kindly, having caused the pedals to turn the wheels once again -- told me to clean the chain. I had, not long before. But probably, I think now, with the wrong oil, and too much of it, and so attracted dirt.

Peggy Elam has a great analysis of the study and media coverage about having fat people in one's social network.

I've been meaning to write a long, eloquent post about this, and maybe I still will at some point, but the increasingly open stigma associated with fatness (and it was pretty darn open before now) makes efforts like the proposed Massachusetts law against discrimination based on size more even more urgent.

Rep. Byron Rushing and his staff are looking for people willing to talk about their experiences with discrimination based on size. The Boston Globe article they contacted me about earlier is finished, but he wrote me:

However, I do want to encourage people to "sign up" so we can refer them to future interviews. The more voices and experiences the better. I prefer Massachusetts residents ... But people from outside the state should not be discouraged because there will be national reporting and they might have a particular story that resonates for everyone.

So, please, no matter where you live, if you've got a story about discrimination based on size that you'd be willing to talk about as evidence of the need for a law against such discrimination, contact Fay Sliger in Rep. Rushing's office: Fay.Sliger@state.ma.us.

Here's a link to the proposed law: House bill 1844 An Act Making It Unlawful to Discriminate On the Basis of Height and Weight.

Feel free to help spread the word.

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Trike and doll at Sally's

Sunday Morning Dancing!

Winter Trike

Morning

Reservoir

Boys on the Bike Path

Trike Chain

Downpour

Victory Lap

Chain off

Fixed

Trike on Ice

Tied to the Trike

Early December

Winter Triking three ways, plus a visit

Pumped

Trouble in Paradise

Linda Bacon and lights

Gorgeous

Trike, night, chain, link, law

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May 2009

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