Let's Row Together

Spinning in circles or rowing home together. Emily Dickinson finds courage in hope. My updates on Locker Room Talk, and women's bodies on display.

I named my Substack “Let’s Row Together” because rowing centers me.

When I row I do my best to synch my motions with the other rowers in striving to reach a common goal. (I rarely row a single.)

It’s a refreshing feeling when so much else in our daily lives seems fractious and unmoored, as our deepening divisions, bitter incivility, and absence of trust in one another and our foundational institutions drive us away from our shared goal of strengthening our nation’s core principles.

Last night I rowed on the Charles River in an eight. When we did our river turns, I had a revelation.

“Port to back. Starboard to row,” our cox commanded us.

Four rowers backed their port oars in unison, while I skimmed my starboard oar on the water preparing it for a forward stroke.

With each side pulling against the other, we turned the boat, then crossed the river to turn it again, another 90 degrees, before eight of us sat ready to row. Together.

With all of us rowing as one again, we headed home.

I’ve done thousands of river turns in my years of rowing, but last night’s oppositional oar motion had me see in my mind’s eye our nation’s perpetual state of being. Rarely is there any let up in our fierce onslaught of ever-intensifying words in this boat I’ll call America, in which we no longer appear capable of gathering ourselves to row home. Instead, relentlessly pulling in opposition, our boat turns in circles, and if we keep ourselves spinning long enough, there might come a time when we will no longer be capable of finding our way home.

This longest crew shell, the Stämpfli Express, built in Switzerland, holds 24 rowers and a cox.

When I went looking for a photograph to illustrate my point, the Stämpfli Express leapt out. Why? First, its uniqueness as a crew shell, but I admit the colors of the rowers’ shirts drew me in — red and blue, yes, visualizing our politically divided America, and a smattering of white - well, there’s our flag (not planted upside down, as it was in one of our Supreme Court Justice’s yard), with a few darker shirts toward the bow.

So, here they are, 24 rowers - red and blue, rowing together – with 48 oars (nearly 50 states) rowing their hefty craft. Red in the stern; blue in bow. Rowing together.

I’m not naive. I realize that my river revelation is little more than a fantastical hope that somehow - short of a civil war – we’ll temper our brutish opposition that has us spinning in circles, promising us nothing but wider enmity. But on the river last night it felt good to imagine us rowing our boat called America toward the common goal of preserving our union. It could be our salvation.

On May 15, 1886, poet Emily Dickinson died in her Amherst, MA home. Sixty-five years later, when I arrived in Amherst I was three months old, and I stayed for my girlhood. Feeling hope in my heart, let’s hear from Emily Dickinson about how we gain courage in hope.

Hope Is The Thing With Feathers

Hope is the thing with feathers

That perches in the soul,

And sings the tune without the words,

And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;

And sore must be the storm

That could abash the little bird

That kept so many warm.

I’ve heard it in the chillest land,

And on the strangest sea;

Yet, never, in extremity,

It asked a crumb of me.##

HOPE, Dickinson tells us, is unbreakable.

Row on.

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Catching up with LOCKER ROOM TALK

I’ve developed a habit of writing my Substack without mentioning my forthcoming book, Locker Room Talk: A Woman’s Struggle to Get Inside. Seems we’re overdue for a catch-up of my book’s coming attractions, so here goes:

• It’s done. “Final” is in its pdf title, which leaves me with that frightened feeling I get when I realize that my words – which I’m certain I could improve – are locked in. A few months from now, in August 2024, my words will be in the world – to be read, I hope, and judged, I fear.

• If you want to preorder my book at a large discounted price AND free shipping, go to its Rutgers University Press webpage and use the code - RUSA30. You will reduce its price by 30% and receive it in July, I think.

• With a mid-August pub date, I’m doing what any author would do; I’m taking my book to places where people/friends go late in the summer. On August 17, I’ll do my first book talk at the Brooklin, Maine library in the hometown of E.B. White and the summer home of my longtime baseball friend Roger Angell, who wrote “Sharing the Beat,” in The New Yorker. Angell’s story remains the definitive one about the trials and tribulations of women sportswriters in the 1970s. Brooklin is also home to several dear friends with whom I’ll celebrate the beginning of my nationwide book tour. Then, in the walkup to Labor Day, I’ll do book talks at the West Tisbury Library on Martha’s Vineyard, the Hyannis Yacht Club (a dinner and book talk event) and Provincetown on Cape Cod, and, I hope, in Gloucester, with each book talk moderated by a friend.

• After doing a number of events in Massachusetts in September, I head out-of state for events in New York City, New Orleans, North Carolina, California (L.A. and S.F.), Portland, Oregon and Seattle, Florida and Washington, D.C. (being planned). Hope to see YOU along the way! I’m gradually getting these book talks on my website’s Events page. Please check there for updates.

• I will be speaking about my book at the Society for American Baseball Research in Minneapolis in August, and then at the Journalism and Women’s Symposium in New Orleans in September.

• On Thursday, September 5, Porter Square Books, my neighborhood bookstore, hosts my hometown launch of Locker Room Talk. I will be joined by Tara Sullivan, the only woman sports columnist at the Boston Globe, who wrote a splendid column in tribute to the pioneering career of my 1970s fellow sportswriter Robin Herman. Robin is one of the three women no longer with us to whom I dedicate my book – Jane Gross and Alison Gordon are the other two.

This week’s public displays of women’s bodies

Let’s start with New York City’s Times Square – once best known for as the city’s “adult” entertainment center a.k.a. the place to look at women’s bodies. This week a billboard ad for a product that improves women’s lactation was taken down due to its supposed impropriety.

The New York Times headline dripped with irony.

Then, Victoria’s Secret announced that it will resume its annual fashion show after a five-year hiatus, with “a nod to beloved iconography from the past but in a bold, redefined way,” according to its president. Whatever that means?

We’ll find out in the fall.

Speaking of lingerie, Kim Kardashian launched an advertising blitz for her top-selling Skims with WNBA players posing in them. Turns out Skims is the Official Underwear Partner of the WNBA. Who knew? I didn’t.

We are left to contemplate when women’s sports will not be “sold” based on players’ sexual allure.

In a busy week for women’s bodies on display, Sports Illustrated celebrated the 60th anniversary of its swimsuit issue with its editors applauding themselves for featuring different sized/aged women – Gayle King, for instance – among their typical models. Featured, too, is fitness trainer Brittany Mahomes, a.k.a. the wife of the Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick.

You tell me, but sure looks like the swimsuit issue I knew well in the 1970s when I was a Sports Illustrated reporter fighting Major League Baseball in federal court due to its gender discrimination. In their defense, baseball’s men kept saying how they feared that if they gave me the equal access I needed to do my job, I might see men’s bodies.

Really? The irony escaped them.

Let’s say goodbye with my thanks to those who opted for a paid subscription to Let’s Row Together. You’ve helped me make this weekly essay possible. Then, it’s on to another throwback to the 1970s - the typewriter. I wrote all of my Sports Illustrated stories on my sturdy Royal.

Now for a display of typewriters. How refreshing!

Typewriters on wall of the Press Hotel in Portland, Maine. Photo by Melissa Ludtke