“The Movement, the Block, The Action” of Summer 2012
While much of the East Coast broils, On the Issues Magazine is busy discovering what’s cool.
As promised in the last newsletter, pro-choice pioneer Bill Baird reported back from the National Right to Life Convention for our Hot Topics column in “Why They Hate Birth Control and Love Mitt Romney.”
Meanwhile, the London Olympic Games begin on July 25. Check out the newest from our Sports Cafe as you watch….
Basketball: “The boom. The dribble. The swish. The rush. The speed. The movement. The block. The action,” exulted high-schooler Rebecca Ratero, explaining “Why Basketball Matters to Me.”
Marathon: The 1984 Olympic Games were a world-changer for Meg Ryan Heery. “Benoit’s run mesmerized me. She just kept going. And going. No sprinting-down-the-track flash; just simple, tenacious, superheroism. Still…it didn’t click that I could run like this, too,” Heery writes in “Finding Legs and Body: Running the Marathon.” She adds that as a young woman, she had concerns beyond excellence: “I started running – at night, because I didn’t want the neighborhood boys to see me, even though many who had harassed me were grown and long gone.”
Football (soccer): The Games actually start with soccer, with competitions on the first day. In women’s soccer, Sports Illustrated highlights possible crucial matches between the U.S., France and Japan: While keeping score, check out Mauricio Espinoza’s poetic and practical A Soccer Dad Faces Parenting, Coaching and Dreams. “Jordan leaped to grab that ball as if nothing else in the world mattered, the way good goalkeepers do, oblivious to the sea of enemy legs that crowded the penalty box like hungry sharks with menacing cleats for teeth. My brave eight-year-old shark-slayer got to the ball first….”
That last is just a sample of the brain food in our full Spring issue, “Level the Playing Field.” As the London Games launch (schedule here), keep the bookmarks open and comment on the progress of the star athletes. Share links to the pieces that move you, and to the astounding artists who’ve contributed images that you won’t forget.
Those artists come to us via art editor Linda Stein, whose memory-piece honoring Billie Jean King we featured in our first summer newsletter. Her “wearable sculptures” (at left) could easily protect young women on the hockey or fencing teams.
Stein’s Art Perspective features “Unravelling” by Karen Shaw, who “uses images and materials from pop-culture to address the sexism prevalent in the sports arena,” Stein explains. ” Working in two and three dimensions, she invokes her “power” as an artist to feminize the macho wardrobe of the male athlete. The finished product is a mixture of masculine and feminine fashion that transcends typical gender boundaries.” Click over for the entire slide show, including Shaw’s puckish and compelling sculptures.
Next month, we promise to feature more of the stellar artists in this issue, including Elyse Taylor, Robin Hextrum, and Loren Ellis. We’ll also have more news about the Fall issue, now that a crew of stellar writers has agreed to give us their take on The Day After.
If you follow the Olympics, please let us know which of our Spring articles you found the best context for the Games, and which ones we might still need to write. Thanks as ever for your interest!