Three Things 6/8/2021

Len has been riding his bike to visit “his” ospreys again this year. Not his, but he knows where they are and this is his third year watching them.

His photo is from yesterday.

Ospreys exist on every continent except Antarctica although the only visit South America to fish, they don’t stay to breed or raise families. (They don’t speak Spanish?)  Unlike other birds of prey, ospreys’ toes are of equal length and their talons are rounded, rather than grooved. Osprey and owls are the only raptors whose outer toe is reversible, allowing them to grasp their prey with two toes in front and two behind. This is particularly helpful for grabbing slippery fish. Len would be a more successful fisherperson, too, if he could get hooks to come down on both sides of the poor fish at once.

Ospreys mate for life. Their diet is all fish (they are sometimes called fish hawks). Parents work together to mind their eggs AKA kids. They take turns flying off to catch fish for the family.  

Several years ago, Len and I were camping along the Wisconsin River. I woke early in the morning to the unnerving sound of great splashes as something hit the river. Freaked me right out. We got up to look. An osprey was fishing. To see that while the sun is rising and the spray of water arcs like shards of glass, that was something.

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Today I read Fashion Advice that suggests if one is going to wear a light summer dress one ought to wear bike shorts underneath.

Someone thinks this is a new idea?

Remember when ALL girls ALL wore dresses or skirts ALWAYS? Our parents were fine with this limitation, so we barely questioned it. Here’s one of our baby-boomer gifts to this nation right here. Question stuff, especially dress codes.

Girls generally wore pants or shorts under our dresses. Remember how one had to be careful after they went to the bathroom to make sure the back of their dress wasn’t tucked inside their pants. Part of our training to become women, I guess. Always be aware of all the ways you could mess up. Be cognizant of your front, your back, your sides (does your stomach stick out?) and also all the people around you and also the ones you can’t see who might need you to do something for them. And also concentrate on your studies and keep your room clean. And then they called us scatterbrained.

There were very few athletic clothes for girls; those non-stretchable one-piece gym “suits” in high school looked like X-rated Victorian swimming suits.

We also didn’t have Girls Athletics or Title IX. We had very few role models – and the ones that absolutely were out there – were kept secret from us. Did I know, sitting on the tile floor of my school cafeteria on May 1, 1961, to watch Alan Shepherd blast into space and then return safely – did I know Black women did the math that made that possible?

I am glad the world moved on. I am glad for the place I have had to watch, believe in, and support more rights and roles for women. I am glad we now have teams and role model athletes and protocols and laws to facilitate sports for girls and all the rest, including sports for trans-kids. Get a grip everybody. We need to move and some of us like to compete - so make a path.

But while many of us didn’t have a clear path forward - we did have something most modern kids don’t have. We had time, space, freedom, and each other. Adults expected we would play. Schools sent us outside in the morning, noon, and afternoon. Our parents sent us outside after school. And if we stayed inside, we had to read books or play board games, because there wasn’t endless kid-oriented TV. We were often on our own with no one minding us.

No one talked about sex. No one asked us what we were going to do when we grew up because everyone (including us) assumed we girls would be teachers, nurses, and moms. There were no mass shootings. Sometimes there were bullies but often there weren’t. Expectations were less. There was less pressure.

For those of us not at the mercy of toxic adults, our childhood was steeped in sexism, but it was also, in authentic ways, wide open to make our own path.

The shorts under our dresses and pants under our skirts were our first taste of moving out and up and fast.

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These pithy quotes from Twitter. “Critical race theory” means – history.  One can’t say history isn’t history because it offends one’s sense of privileged place in this world. 

I also like this. “No one is entitled to be ignorant.”

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