Celebrate Title IX!

Happy National Girls and Women in Sports Day!

An Ugly Story

This afternoon I was tuned into NPR's All Things Considered, a program I listen to perhaps once a month. Today they featured a story about a burgeoning sexual abuse scandal in New York's Hasidic community. The presenter, with a suitably grave voice, told us of a little boy who was violated in a mikvah, and a second boy abused by a rabbi at his Talmudical school. It was an horrific story, filled with the sorts of denials and cover-ups that we all got used to when this was happening in the Roman Catholic church. It is good that we still have members of the media who are willing to dig in and unearth these sorts of stories; brought into the bright light of scrutiny, perhaps healing can begin.

But that's not why I'm writing this.

I don't mean to trivialize the very real suffering of these little boys and their altar boy predecessors, or ignore the heinous crimes committed in the name of God by their abusers, but...isn't what makes this a national news story the simple fact of the victim's gender?

More than one in six American women have been the victims of attempted or completed rape. Of those, one in five were assaulted before they reached the age of twelve. That's roughly four percent of the female population of the US, something like six million girls. For every two dozen women you know, the odds are that four of them have been the victims of violent sexual assault, and for one of them it happened in her pre-teen years.

How many little girls have to be raped before it becomes a national scandal worthy of attention of All Things Considered?

Up on Big Mesa

Up on Big Mesa, you can see for miles and miles in all directions. You can see beautiful things, like cliffs blazing red in the evening sun. Ephemeral things, like the breeze stirring up a dust devil. Improbable things, like the great, delicate sandstone arches. Things that are too wonderful and too fragile to last. Like your love.

Up on Big Mesa, as the sunset fails, you can see the taillights of the cars headed north on 191. They are already miles away, and getting farther away every second. They are hastening to another place, vanishing into a dark emptiness. Like your love.

Up on Big Mesa, the nighttime skies are ablaze from horizon to horizon with starlight. The beautiful light comes from an incomprehensible distance, from stars that emitted it in the distant past. Some of the brilliance comes from stars that don't even exist anymore. Like your love.

Up on Big Mesa, things exist on a vast scale. The horizons are distant, the heavens are boundless, and no matter how loud you cry out, nobody will hear you. Up on Big Mesa, you are alone, insignificant, and unnecessary. Like my heart.

Procrastination Pro

My capacity for doing nothing seems boundless. I really should be working on a job application (a constant condition dating back several years now), but I can't seem to get started on that. I dislike drawing attention to myself, except in the most abstract ways--such as an anonoymous blog--and I have no gift at all for self-promotion. My general opinion of myself is that anyone who would consider either hiring or dating me is so lacking in judgment as to be unworthy of my company. (Insert Groucho Marx joke here.) I really do believe, in the abstract, that I'd be a wonderful candidate for this particular job, but I can't convince myself that I can convince anyone else of that fact.

I also need to write my supposed-to-be-daily blog post ("need to" in the sense of self-discipline), and I actually have a topic in mind, but when I think of starting that, I feel that it is self-indulgent and that I really should be working on that letter instead.

So I do neither, and instead play solitaire and watch an old Lubitsch movie. And write this.

A Run Runs Through It

My county is a well-watered one, with ample precipitation, many springs, and a network of streams in all directions. Our local economy is largely based on the rich farmland and beautiful forests, and for these we can thank our abundant runs, rills, and rivers--or at least we could, if anyone knew their names.

And those names are so lyrical, full of simpler days and a history forgotten. Sharp Run. Black Creek. Honey Run. What happened to give Military Run its name? Were Hardy and Doughty creeks named for settlers or for their personalities? Few people remember the names themselves, if they ever knew them, much less the stories behind the names. If schoolchildren were to be made aware of the names of the streams, it just might spark their interest in learning about the history of the land they call home. They might learn that pioneer families like the Shrimplin brothers (of Shrimplin Creek) peacefully coexisted for a time with the Lenape under the famous Chief Killbuck (of Killbuck Creek) and realize that tolerance has deep roots in our community.

I've also long felt that teaching the local population the names of their watercourses would be a good first step towards taking a protective sense of ownership in the watershed. Having a name humanizes something, and you feel more responsible for its well-being. The only difference between a pet goose and a Christmas goose is that the entree was never called "Samantha" by anyone at the table. Similarly, I believe that folks who might casually toss a bottle of antifreeze or a broken toilet into "the creek" might think twice before despoiling the fresh waters of Salt Creek. If they know that this stream is Sand Run, and that one is Upper Sand Run, it might dawn on them that all of the waters of the county are interrelated, and what happens in one rivulet also affects the waters downstream, as well as the people who live nearby.

Our streams tend to be slow runners with broad floodplains, which helps account for the very productive bottomland farming in the area. Bottomland farmers, although they benefit from floods past, tend to find floods present and future a bit of a nuisance. This has led to a recent spate of streak dredging, with the spoil used to build up the banks into mini-levees. Although local flooding will surely be reduced by this method (with the unintended consequence of impoverishing the farmland), this dredging will mean that the river can carry more water at a faster pace, with potentially catastrophic results downstream. After all, the streams need and use their floodplains, and the demand for them is not lessened when the supply is reduced. Folks around here tend to be very companionable, and generally will not knowlingly foist their problems onto their unsuspecting neighbors. They simply don't understand enough about river systems to know that that's what they're doing. Maybe if they knew the names of the streams, they'd connect them, like names on a family tree, and would begin to understand.

A good first step would be to place a sign everywhere a road crosses a named creek. Hardly a novel concept, but one that has been ignored for all but the Killbuck Creek, the county's main river. It might cost a few thousand dollars, which is a large request in times of economic strife. Maybe I can get it added to the current stimulus bill?

Going South

When the cat peed on his lap, it was like a slap to the face. He suddenly realized where he was, and why. He looked down and petted his terrified cat and quietly began to cry again.

Less than 24 hours earlier, he was a happy man, or at least a contented one. At that time he was relaxing on the City of New Orleans, heading home to see his wife for the first time in a month. The train was behind schedule, as usual, which meant he wouldn't be home until well after midnight. Knowing he'd have to be back on this train heading south on Sunday morning, every minute was precious to him. As the train crept through southern Mississippi, he planned his Saturday. He'd sleep late, then have his coffee by the backyard pond he'd dug before leaving for law school. He'd play with the cats awhile, and maybe take a walk in Overton Park. But above all, he'd get reacquainted with his wife. He'd remind himself of how her glasses tilted ever so slightly to one side, of the way she still drawled her 'A's while trying to hide her Alabama accent, even of the way her breath tasted in the morning. (It's odd, the things you find endearing after eleven years of marriage, he thought.) They'd go out to dinner at Automatic Slim's, their favorite restaurant. He even imagined that he might be able to talk her into some sort of sexual activity. It may be a short weekend, but it would be a lovely one.

He was half right, although it would become the longest short weekend of his life. It started when he came out of the train station and got into the idling car. He had hoped she'd be glad to see him, but instead she was angry about having to come downtown at 2:30 am to pick him up, as if it had been his fault that the train was late. In fact, she hadn't even bothered to dress beyond putting a coat over her nightgown, and wasn't even wearing her glasses. Well, that's why she didn't come in to meet the train, he thought. Then in the morning, when his offer to cook her breakfast was gruffly refused, he chalked it up to the lack of sleep. He decided to try to lighten the mood.

"Geez, anybody'd think you didn't love me," he said. It was something he'd said a thousand times before; she was not one to say "I love you," so this was his way of getting her to admit it.

"I wouldn't have married you if I didn't love you," was the reply he heard. She also had said this a thousand times before, only this morning that's not what she had said. What she actually had said was this: "I don't." Then she had begun to cry.

"What's the matter? Why are you crying?" he said, before it hit him. He looked at her blankly.

"I said I don't love you. I want a divorce."

Most of the rest of the day was lost in the fog that took over his brain, until the cat brought him back into the daylight world. He was being driven back to New Orleans, and she was doing the driving. She had refused to let him stay in the house and, lacking any other way for him to get back home ("back home," he now realized, was a phrase that meant exactly the opposite from the day before), they'd decided that she'd drive him there. Besides his weekend luggage, the only thing he'd taken with him was his cat, Charlie, a cat who had been with him since he was single, and who had (wisely, it now seemed) never warmed up to his wife. Her opinion of Charlie was not improved when his incontinence required her to pull over so her soon-to-be ex-husband could change his pants.

Back on the road, he switched on the car radio and tuned in the Alabama/Auburn football game. The silence was too painful; he needed a distraction. He could have tuned into the Michigan/Ohio St. game, since Michigan was his team, but her team was 'Bama and he knew she'd want to listen to the game. That's the kind of guy he was: understanding to a fault. Or maybe he was just accustomed to avoiding trouble. Maybe all those years of being understanding in order to avoid confrontation is what had led to that morning's denouement. Maybe...no. Stop. There'll be plenty of time for that later. Let's just get this day over first.

He made a couple of inocuous observations about the football game, both of which went unanswered, so he stopped. He noticed that again she wasn't wearing her glasses. "Did you get contacts?" he asked, mildly surprised that she'd never told him that was her plan. "Laser," came the terse reply. He suddenly realized that this had been in the works for quite some time. How long, he wondered?

When they arrived in New Orleans, he had to give her driving directions to his apartment. She didn't know the way. How long? Was this why she had been so enthusiastic about his idea to go to law school? At Thanksgiving dinner, nearly a year ago now, she had told everyone how proud she was of what he was doing, giving up a six-figure income to study law to help the indigent. He had been deeply moved by this surprising display, but now he thought it might have been a sham designed to ensure that he stick out the long tough one-L year. Maybe she didn't love him even then. Maybe she'd never really loved him, like he'd been saying in half-jest for a decade.

When they arrived at his Uptown flat, he asked if she'd like to come in and watch the second half before starting the five-hour return trip. He didn't really mean it; it's just the kind of thing he'd say without thinking. She just looked at him with a look of disbelief, with a little pity mixed in, and pulled away from the curb. Carrying the still-shaking Charlie, he went into his one bedroom patio apartment and pulled the door closed behind him.

And he was alone.

Privacy

I frequently post on a website devoted to small college basketball, and in a post last night made mention that a player in a game I attended unexpectedly did not play. Today I received two messages, nearly simultaneous and entirely independent of one another, informing me that the player missed the game because he had received a significant medical diagnosis, and that he was therefore likely to miss more playing time, perhaps the entire season.

These notes, from well-intentioned people, have raised a number of ethical issues that I have yet to resolve.

The fact that the player in question will be out of action is unquestionably the public's business. Sporting events, even those of the small-college variety, become little more than vigorous exercise periods without fan support, and that takes publicity. The fans have a right, and a need, to know certain basic information, and that includes who is and is not available to play now and in the foreseeable future.

But I can't think of any reason why I need to know the reason he's not playing. I can think of any number of reasons a player could miss six weeks of college action. He could have a knee injury, he could have failed a class, he could have lost favor with the coach for a variety of reasons, or he could be ill. Whether any of these are true, or if the truth lies elsewhere, is extraneous to the only information to which I have a right: that he's out indefinitely.

Personal medical information is routinely spread about athletes, and I've never been quite comfortable about it. I'm even less comfortable when it's information about a 22-year-old student, one who will leave athletics behind him and join the "real world" in a few months. In the "real world," there's an ocean of difference between a knee injury and a dread disease. Suppose he applies for a job, and the prospective employer is a sports fan who, in that capacity, has learned of our subject's illness. Might she be less likely to extend a job offer to someone whose future health may be uncertain? Congress thought so when they passed employment anti-discrimination laws that prevent employers from asking applicants about such matters. Those laws also prevent employers from sharing medical information about their employees, but those laws don't seem to apply to sports organizations, or to colleges for that matter.

Just to complicate matters, one of the reports I received came from the parent of a player who found out from the stricken athlete himself. Leaving aside the veracity concerns that arise in such games of "telephone," does the athlete forfeit whatever privacy rights he may have had by having told a colleague? Assuming that he was aware that in so doing he was probably letting the cat out of the bag, can I infer that he wants people to know? That he'd rather have people know he's sick than make uninformed guesses about his grades or standing with the coach? Even if that's the case, does that give me the right to shout the story through my megaphone? I think the answer is clear; clear enough that I won't even publish the specifics in this blog, which is read only by friends, relatives, and spambots.

But it's not without effort on my part. I like being the source, the authority in my little corner of the sports world. The fact that I heard this story from two sources simultaneously, neither of whom has any good reason to be in possession of the information, suggests to me that the rumor is spreading like wildfire, and no good reporter wants to be caught behind the fireline. The temptation to grab the microphone and interrupt this program with a special news bulletin is nearly overwhelming. I want to be sympathetic and understanding and wish him well, but to do so in the most public forum I have at my disposal is really just a form of self-aggrandizement; the fact that it's based on private, personal information I shouldn't have possession of and have no right to share just makes it that much worse--and at the same time more tempting.

So I'll allow the story to go no further than my inbox, and in this sleepy corner of the internet merely will express my hope that the young man is able to thoroughly overcome his difficulties.