Let's Row Together

Girls in hockey shirts cheer a women's FIRST; our past informs our present (on democracy), and Jackie Robinson and his support of girls and women's sports.

A miracle just happened.

On Thursday morning I emailed ALL of the chapters in my book, Locker Room Talk, back to my publisher after taking my LAST chance to make word changes. With my trip to Mexico on tap today, I didn’t think I’d have time to write my Substack. Well, I do, so here goes. And next week I won’t. Hopefully, I will be swimming with turtles.

The only time I left my computer during my 10 frantic days of editing was to attend the women’s hockey finals at Boston’s legendary Beanpot Tournament. Four teams played Tuesday night – Harvard, Boston University, Boston College, and the eventual victor, Northeastern – in this history-making game.

Why do I say “history-making”? It was the FIRST TIME the Beanpot Tournament women competed on the home ice of the Boston Bruins at TD Garden since they were allowed into the tournament in 1979. The men started playing the Beanpot in 1953. and until this year, only the men played on the Garden’s ice.

Photo Credit: TD/Garden/Brian Babineau

10,633 fans turned out for the two consolation and championship games, both of which went into overtime - one ending in a shootout, the other in 3-by-3 sudden death. Hard to match that for excitement but what I loved most was seeing the packs of girls at the games; hundreds of young hockey teammates wore their team shirts, cheered the college women on the ice, and danced in the aisles.

This is what my generation fought for, and what Title IX promised. And speaking of one generation of women lending their strong shoulders to the next – women a bit younger than I am, including my dear friend Mary Ciampa, founder of WomenX, came together to do everything they could (which is heck of a lot) to turn fans out for these games.

Oh yes, on hand to mark this moment was Boston Mayor Michelle Wu, who dropped the ceremonial puck, and Governor Maura Healey who handed the Beanpot trophy to the winning Huskies from Northeastern. Another FIRST with Boston’s mayor and our governor both women.

THANK YOU!

Our Scrabble board thanks to new paid subscribers

CLIMATE UPDATE

Two headlines – the first, The New York Times, then Bill McKibben’s Substack – which give us the LNG update we’d hoped to see.

WEEKLY WANDERINGS without women’s sports

This time I’m sharing a few odds and ends I’d stowed away just to share with YOU

From VOWS in The New York Times

Ms. Kretzmer’s profile connected them. To the query, “We’ll get along well if …” Ms. Kretzmer had written “ … you like baseball.”

His initial message — “Hi Maggie. I like baseball, too” —

Political Guidance (for our troubled times)

1. F. Scott Fitzgerald once wrote, “be able to see things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise.” (The Crack-Up, 1936 essay)

2. “The key thing to understand is that if you think speaking truth to power is hard, try speaking truth to money.” (From Frank Bruni’s Love of Sentences, quoting Daniel Denzer writing in The Chronicle of Higher Education.)

3. “We received a letter from the Writers’ War Board the other day asking for a statement on “The Meaning of Democracy.” It presumably is our duty to comply with such a request, and it is certainly our pleasure.” (E.B. White, July 3, 1943, New Yorker, for this anthology issue, “The 40s: The Story of a Decade.”)

E.B. White’s response: “Surely the Board knows what democracy is. It is the line that forms on the right. It is the don’t in don’t shove. It is the hole in the stuffed shirt through which the sawdust slowly trickles; it is the dent in the high hat. Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time. It is the feeling of privacy in the voting booths, the feeling of communion in the libraries, the feeling of vitality everywhere. Democracy is a letter to the editor. Democracy is the score at the beginning of the ninth. It is an idea which hasn’t been disproved yet, a song the words of which have not gone bad. It’s the mustard on the hot dog and the cream in the rationed coffee. Democracy is a request from a War Board, in the middle of a morning in the middle of a war, wanting to know what democracy is.”

4. The Associated Press, 90 years ago:

I LOVE “Boys in the Boat” EVEN IF THE OSCARS DON’T

Just see it!

CIRCLING BACK TO WOMEN’S SPORTS

AT THE JACKIE ROBINSON MUSEUM, TODAY:

Jackie Robinson championed women’s sports and women athletes. Only fitting then for this museum built to honor him would invite one generation of women share their fight for equality with the girls who will carry on with this still necessary struggle. Thanks go to my former SI colleague Steve Wulf, whose daughter, Elizabeth, is an assistant coach of U. Conn’s ice hockey team, for alerting me to this event.

In remembering the love so many Americans had for Jackie Robinson, especially Black Americans, I’m concluding with a painting at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. When I saw it, I stopped to stare at it for quite a while. Sam Doyle painted this on corrugated roofing tin as part of his project in which he used discarded local materials found on St. Helena Island (South Carolina) in which he drew inspiration from images in the newspaper.

So, again, I won’t send my Substack next Friday. Back to you the following week.