Cell 2 Soul: The Humane Health Care Blog

Surf For Love!

The Tokyo Olympics organizing committee’s proposal to including surfing in the 2020 Summer Games gets William Finnegan anxious. His Op-Ed piece in the NY Times, “Surf for Love, Not For Gold” is a keeper.

Finnegan’s recent book Barbarian Days is a masterful piece of writing, a paean to the surfing life. “People surf for love. The pastime lends itself to obsession,” he testifies.

The Op-Ed piece and the book will appeal to surfers and arm-chair athletes as well. I have attached notes from Barbarian Days for those whose time does not allow them to read a > 450 page tome.  (Download Barbarian Days by William Finnegan.)

GEEV 'EM!

At Play on the Waves of the Lord

Rabbi Hanniel Levenson, 32, is the associate rabbi at the Jewish Center of the Hamptons. The center has long sought to integrate religion with vacation, offering Friday night Shabbat services on the beach. This summer, Rabbi Levenson went a few steps further.

When the rabbi learned that two brothers in his Hebrew class were avid surfers back home in Pacific Palisades, Calif., he approached them.

They worked out a deal. One afternoon a week, the students would diligently study Hebrew; one afternoon, they would ride waves. The surf sessions would be open to young and old, male and female — “anyone who wants to get out on the ocean and talk about God,” Rabbi Levenson said.

This is a delightful article.  It offers some hope.

 

 

Kahanamoku: Man and Legend

Historian Michael Beschloss has a fine piece about Duke Kahanamoku in the August 23, 2014 NY Times.  It captures the spirit of this Hawaiian icon who is universally beloved in the Aina until today.

Duke, left, with brothe, Sam

 

Death of a Skateboarding Legeng

Nicknamed the Chosen One by his peers, Jay Adams in the 1970s pioneered an outlaw image and new approaches to shateboarding that was at the time associated with roller skating. Taking his skateboard down steep hills and up the walls of an empty swimming pool — and, finally, over the walls’ edges — Adams helped usher in the aerial, or vert, style of skateboarding.

Adams died on a surfing trip to Mexico on August 15. 2014 at the age of 53.

The NY Times had two interesting articles about him in the August 18 issue.

Jan Adams, an Appraisal
Jay Adams Obituary

The documentary Dog Town and Z-Boys chronicles the life of Adams and his friends as they created the modern style of skateboarding.

The Big Kahuna: R.I.P.

Terry Tracy, model for "The Big Kahuna," was an easygoing, fun-loving surfer who inspired the "Gidget" movies and television series. He helped make surfing an international sport — in the process becaming the embodiment of the cool alternative lifestyle of sunglass-wearing beach bums.  Tracy, aka "Tubesteak," died on Wednesday, August 22, 2012 at his home in San Clemente, Calif. He was 77.

Read the Full NY Times Obit.

Return to O.M.O.*

"When I was 8, my parents divorced and my mother married a man whose career took us from Washington to Melbourne Beach, a town on the “Space Coast” of Central Florida, where I learned to surf..."  

Read:  "After the Agony of Youth, The Ecstasy of Surfing" by Thad Ziolkowski from the NY Times.  A paen to Hanalei.

*O.M.O.  equals "Our Mother Ocean"

To a Surfer Dying Young

Andy Irons World Champion Surfer (1978 - 2010)

To An Athlete Dying Young

AE Housman 

The time you won your town the race   
We chaired you through the market-place;   
Man and boy stood cheering by,   
And home we brought you shoulder-high.   
 
To-day, the road all runners come,         
Shoulder-high we bring you home,   
And set you at your threshold down,   
Townsman of a stiller town.   
 
Smart lad, to slip betimes away   
From fields where glory does not stay         
And early though the laurel grows   
It withers quicker than the rose.   
 
Eyes the shady night has shut   
Cannot see the record cut,   
And silence sounds no worse than cheers         
After earth has stopped the ears:   
 
Now you will not swell the rout   
Of lads that wore their honours out,   
Runners whom renown outran   
And the name died before the man.          
 
So set, before its echoes fade,   
The fleet foot on the sill of shade,   
And hold to the low lintel up   
The still-defended challenge-cup.   
 
And round that early-laurelled head        
Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead,   
And find unwithered on its curls   
The garland briefer than a girl’s.