Winning?

Trudging up the steps at Community Stadium last Friday night, I realized it’s been a while since I penned a column focused on sports. That’s the purview of the sports writers, correct? I’ll let them wrestle with who the Browns’ quarterback of the week should be, and whether Dwyane Wade should start or come off the bench for the Cavs. I’ll stick with the bigger picture instead.

One word comes to mind when I think about Ashland and Northeast Ohio sports over the past year: streak. Not as in the steaking actions of the young man who ran through the lecture hall during my freshman year in college, leaving nothing to the imagination. That term, “streaking,” originated with a reporter on a pay phone in the 70s: “They [533 participants in a nude run] are streaking past me right now. It’s an incredible sight.” Glad that fad’s popularity has waned since my college days.

No, my use of the word is more commonly combined with the word “winning,” or, in the case of the Browns, losing: a losing streak of seventeen in 2015-2016, and now seven consecutive losses to start the season. Winning can be overrated, but long-suffering Cleveland fans would be thrilled to have that streak broken.

In the world of professional sports, this summer brought a record-setting winning streak to the Cleveland Indians, as they won twenty-two consecutive MLB games in August and September. Unfortunately, they either peaked a month too early or they choked when facing the Yankees, and didn’t make it to the World Series this year. I’ll go with option one, repeating Cleveland’s tired mantra: “There’s always next year.”

Closer to home, the Ashland University women’s volleyball team has a home court winning streak of twenty-three matches of as last weekend. The Ashland University women’s basketball team has a winning streak of thirty-seven games, concluding last year by winning the national championship. And on the gridiron, both the Arrows and the Eagles are on a winning streak, each losing only their first game of the season.

It’s tough to cheer on a losing team, clearly evidenced by the empty seats at Browns’ Stadium. It’s likely that at least some of the missing fans agree with UCLA’s Henry Russell Sanders: “Winning isn’t everything; it’s the only thing.” But is it? Was baseball legend Leo Durocher right when he said: “I never did say that you can’t be a nice guy and win. I did say, if I was playing third base and my mother rounded third with the winning run, I’d trip her up”?

“Winning is fun, sure,” said the late University of Tennessee women’s basketball coach, Pat Summitt. She should know, having accumulated 1098 career wins, the most in NCAA basketball history. She won 84% of the games she coached. That’s winning. “But,” she continued, “winning is not the point. Wanting to win is the point. Not giving up is the point. Never letting up is the point. Never being satisfied with what you’ve done is the point.”

Olympian gymnast Simone Biles shares similar words: “A successful competition for me is always going out there and putting 100 percent into whatever I’m doing. It’s not always about winning. People, I think, mistake that it’s just winning. Sometimes it could be, but for me, it’s hitting the best sets I can, gaining confidence, and having fun.”

When life is couched in terms of competition, whether in sports, economics, or government, it’s hard to reject the foundational belief that life is all about winning. Yet is it? Or might sacrificing our own success for the success of others be an alternative model of living? Does showing up, working hard, and watching out for a brother or sister matter anymore?

Perhaps we can take a lesson about commitment and steadfastness from Browns’ offensive tackle Joe Thomas. His staggering streak of 10,363 snaps ended last Sunday with a season-ending triceps injury. A month before, he’d been the first NFL player to hit the milestone of 10,000 consecutive snaps in a pro football career. He didn’t miss a play, a game, since 2007. Sometimes, it is about how you play the game.

#MeToo

Remember the trends of the 1970s? Platform shoes. Bell bottoms. Tie dye. Jumpsuits. The 80s brought us Cabbage Patch dolls, slap bracelets, and mullet hairstyles, while the 90s introduced Beanie Babies, pogs, and Tickle Me Elmo to our world.

In this decade, we are just as likely to use the word “trend” as a verb, especially on social media. The #Harlem Shake phenomena trended in February 2013. The ice bucket challenge went viral the next year, trending on Facebook in July-August 2014, raising awareness and funds for ALS research. Remember #bringhomethegirls, the social media effort to draw attention to the young women kidnapped in Nigeria, more than three years ago? Sadly, 113 girls are still in captivity.

Now, in October 2017, a new trend is hitting social media. Here’s the post: "If all the women who have been sexually harassed or assaulted wrote ‘Me too’ as a status, we might give people a sense of the magnitude of the problem.”

Where did this come from? It’s been brewing for a long time. Remember Tamar, King David’s daughter, who lived as a desolate woman after her brother raped her? In recent history, women cringed at the release of the Access Hollywood tape in early October 2016, and the publication of an investigative report in the New York Times on October 5 detailing decades of sexual harassment allegations against Harvey Weinstein has been unnerving. Initially, I had no clue who Weinstein was, but extensive reporting suggests he targeted dozens of women, some household names.

Finally, awakened by these press reports, social media is providing “a galvanizing platform for women to discuss their experiences,” notes Anna Codrea-Rado. “Hashtag: #me too.” Amy Suskind explains: “What started out [last] Sunday as women speaking out with the hashtag Women Who Roar, organically shifted to women telling their truth with Me Too, and it was heartbreaking how many. It was also the most amazing and inspiring mix of strength and compassion I have ever seen.”

Listen to the voices: “Me, too.” “I was fourteen.” “I was nineteen.” “It was date rape.” “I was only in grade school when it happened.” “No one would have believed me.”

Author and poet Najwa Zebian struggled. “I was blamed for it. I was told not to talk about it. I was told that it wasn’t that bad. I was told to get over it.” Noelle Newby writes, “I remember your faces. Your hands. Your words. Your eyes. Your jokes. I remember your magical thinking that ‘we shared a moment’ and your attempts at damage control to ensure you weren’t discovered.”

One Ashland friend lamented: “All the #me too remarks are heavy. Some have made me cry. But I am comforted if that's the right word to know so many of us have a bond even though unspoken which we can gain strength from each other. Alone we can be scared but together we are strong.” Scared – and scarred – yet strong.

Another wrote, “I've decided I'm not content with the original posting. I'm heartbroken and not at all surprised to see how often this post is showing up in the feeds of my friends. The numbers around sexual violence are astounding. I'm sick of it being the norm. I'm done with the silence.”

Reading those five letters this week, I claimed the ancient words of the prophet Jeremiah: “What I see brings grief to my soul because of all the women in my city” (Lamentations 3:51).

Typing those five letters is both terrifying and liberating. Former Ashlander Rev. Adam Baker recognizes the two-edged sword: “The reality that ‘me too’ is empowering many survivors to share their stories for the first time. The reality that #me too is a massive, ongoing trigger for many other survivors. Sexual predation, harassment, and assault is never simply a one-time experience, my friends. Trauma is very, very real, and it haunts you . . .”

At the Women’s March, MILCK sang of what’s been ‘normal,’ expected. “Put on your face, know your place, shut up and smile . . .” Yet no longer. For women around the world are singing with MILCK, “I can’t keep quiet . . . for anyone, anymore.”

Me too.

It's All About that Jazz

 America has long been generous to the world. Jonas Salk introduced the vaccine for polio in 1955. Baseball, America’s pastime. And where would we be without Krispy Crème doughnuts? (Although here in Ashland, we do love our Hawkins/Millers pastries).

The United States of America has been charitable in the arts as well. We’ve given the world break-dancing, the cakewalk, the Charleston, and the Cupid Shuffle. Georgia O’Keefe, Andy Warhol, and Norman Rockwell have enriched the world of art. And music? Ah, what would the world be like without jazz? At many times during the last century, jazz has been rumored to be on life support, but Dave Brubeck recognizes its immortality. “Jazz isn’t dead yet. It’s the underpinning of everything in this country. Whether it’s a Broadway show, or fusion, or right on through classical music, if it’s coming out of the U.S., it’s not going to survive unless it’s got some jazz influence.” And what an influence it’s had.

With roots in New Orleans, combining the rhythm and feel of African music, the harmony of classical music, and an emphasis on improvisation, its impact on the wider culture began to take hold as radios and records became accessible to American across the country. Not only did the average Joe begin to listen, but jazz began to have cultural impact as well. Dancing the Charleston – that’s jazz, popularized by Arthur Gibbs and His Gang. When prohibition came along in 1920, the popular jazz bands, both white and colored, simply moved underground to the speakeasies, and then the music was rescued by its inclusion on Broadway, as well as in the “talkies,” with “The Jazz Singer” being the first feature film to be released with sound in October 1927.

If art is how we decorate space, then music surely is how we decorate time. Jazz helped us through the Great Depression, and accompanied us to the war to end all wars (WWII) through Glenn Miller and his orchestra, and the Andrews Sisters and their boogie woogie bugle boy of company B. By the 1960s, we entered the decade of the Cold War and Vietnam, along with hippies, bell bottoms, mini-skirts, and the Pill. Just as much as the culture seemed all over the place, so too did the music of the 1960s, but jazz still flowed through the veins of its musicians.

While the Civil Rights Movement is historically a part of the 60s, the work of integration had been taking place for a much longer time. Like the schools, lunch counters, buses, churches, and neighborhoods of the United States in the first part of the twentieth century, music and musicians were segregated by skin color, but in 1935, Bennie Goodman added Teddy Wilson, an African-American piano player, to his band, twelve years before Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in baseball. Stanley Crouch notes, “Jazz predicted the civil rights movement more than any other art in America.”

The influence of jazz on integration was recognized by Smokey Robinson as he spoke of the segregation of southern audiences in the early days of Motown. “Then they started to get the Motown music and we would go back and the audiences were integrated and the kids were dancing together and holding hands.”

The music-makers of our country tend to be responsive to what’s happening in the broader culture, but the culture itself is often pushed and prodded along by its musicians. Thousands of words can be written about this entwined history of jazz and culture, but as Ashland resident Neil Ebert knows, it’s a history better experienced than read. To give our local community a feel for jazz’s long history and far-reaching influence, Ebert is coordinating an evening of jazz through the past one hundred years. On Saturday, October 21^st, listeners will be transported to “the sunny side of the street” with the Kroc Center Big Band, a number of local vocalists, and hosts Matt and Melanie Miller. [Contact The Salvation Army Kroc Center for ticket information].

Branford Marsalis understands jazz as “the musical dialect that embodies the spirit of America.” Next Saturday, our handle on “speaking American” will be much improved by the time the music fades into the night.