Can I Get A Witness?... DJ Mr. Jonathan hits it on the head when he plays "Some Kind of Wonderful" by Grand Funk Railroad. We all got some kind of wonderful today when over 200 riders raised over $236,500. Note the burly bikers (at 22 second mark) who roared into the parking lot on their Harleys then stood along the finish line to cheer for one of their buddies who rode a much quieter (and slower!) bike for his his boss who has ALS.
Friends and family cheered every returning rider...
His teammates rallied around him when he was diagnosed with ALS in 1999. Pete died from the disease. His spirit did not. Their dedication lives on every year through the Spirit Rides held around the country http://www.spiritride.org/index.cfm The Spirit Ride is now also in memory of another Ultimate Frisbee legend, Kathy Pufhal. The Spirit Rides raise serious money for the ALS Association MA Chapter and for Cancer Research.
The most successful ride yet, staged from The Longfellow Tennis and Health Club in Wayland ...raised over $230,000 with 270 riders on the 25, 50, and 75 mile routes in and around the Wayland, MA area. A radio operator spent the entire day monitoring communications between water stops and SAG wagons along each route. Every rider was accounted for!
Six men and women coping with ALS were present (more than at any previous ride), two of them with huge retinues of riders and supporters...
Welchie's Team (John Welch in green cap) was a rolling green wave of support on the road and on the ground. "Some of my riders didn't know how to adjust the valve so they could pump up their tires!" John said cheerfully. Good for showing them how, John!
Riders, teams and patients relax...
and wait to cheer team members as they finish the ride...
Hot and cold food, fruit, ice cream, snacks for all, donated by local businesses. Even a cold beer at the end of a long ride!
Executive Director of MA Chapter ALS Association Lyn Aronson and Channel 5 TV personality Cindy Fitzgibbin get ready for final announcements.
Apple employee Steve gave stirring and uplifting remarks as hundreds gathered after riders had finished. "Apple not only matches donations made by employees, but right now they are doing a double match – for example, Steve made a $1000 donation to his team, and Apple sent a matching gift of $2000. In addition, they donate money per hour for any employee who volunteers at an event, and with the amount of employees that were there volunteering and riding, they are getting $1500 donated to the ride!" said Ashley Corbin, the Special Events Manager.
Steve Mooney, alumnus of the 1982 World Champion Rude Boys Ultimate Frisbee Team, MA Chapter ALS Association Executive Director Lyn Aronson with Myke Farricker, co-owner of the Longfellow Tennis & Health Club. Members of the Rude Boys team show up every year to support the event, sort of a mini reunion, and donate thousands of dollars to the ride.
PT, Myke and photo bomber Ashley Corbin
This was one of the most seamlessly coordinated rides I've ever witnessed. Individual riders, teams of riders, and people who showed up to support the ride were met by volunteers who welcomed and checked in riders, answered questions, handed out T-shirts, served food and beverages. There was an air of certainty surrounding the event. As Patriots coach Bill Belichick would say, "Everyone did their job."
I organized my solo Plymouth Rock to Provincetown "Positive Spin for ALS" from 1995 - 2004 for ONE rider, myself. I spent months preparing for it every year. I cannot imagine the time and skill it takes to pull off something like the Ride To Defeat ALS. It took me ten years to raise $300,000. Today's riders raised almost that much in eight hours!
Organizing for over 200 riders is the tip of the iceberg. Planning meetings, recruiting reliable volunteers, assigning them to jobs, printing road signs, buying supplies for water stops, printing route maps or making Apps for riders to use on the road, asking vendors to supply food and drink, hiring a DJ, enlisting a TV personality to put the ride on the media map...I could go on. Event coordinator Ashley Corbin was the coolest cucumber at Longfellow all day long. Unflappable. As a former member the Board of Directors of the MA Chapter ALS Association, I fully realize the value, in terms of fund raising, positive infectious spirit, and creative thinking, Ashley brings to bear. She's a gem of an asset to the MA Chapter ALS Association.
Events like this are bittersweet. ALS has no cure. That's why we are here...with resolve in the face of daunting odds, to control what we can, fight grief with with action, and keep moving forward. Having the event work so sure-footedly is a blessing.
Speaking of photo bombers, there's Mr. Jonathan, the fabulous DJ who skillfully read the crowd and provided songs to fit every mood of the day, behind us. And the Elite Wheels Team T shirts, sponsored by the Zarb Corporation...to be explained in a later post.
Joan Baez "Fare Thee Well Tour" Boch Center - Wang Theatre September 15, 2018
I was in an alternate universe the moment she walked onto the stage.
Let’s start out with how is it possible that a voice that began electrifying people nearly 60 years ago is still a thing of beauty, fully capable of moving an audience to tears and laughter washed with diamonds and rust. She may be a relic but she sure can still rock the house.
Thirty seconds. That’s all it took for me to fall in love with the contralto of her new old voice, with its gravelly edge softening the angelic soprano of yore. She’s not shy about being 77 years old. Hell that’s the point, that’s why she’s here. With dark humor and personal anecdotes, with the songs she chooses and ease of talking to us as if we were at the kitchen table, she’s pointing a light down the tunnel of mortality. Hers. Ours. Mine.
To have that gift of a once in a lifetime voice is wonder enough. And the sound is enough to pitch you into another time zone. The woman is in the rare company of singers who defined a generation of activists.
The vibrato and tone of that voice is recognizable within seconds. She freely talks about sliding her voice down a range to a still supple contralto with that familiar trademark vibrato that makes me shudder with delight when I hear it.
Just as I’ve come to terms with Joan’s new normal, she reaches up to the stars and down into a small sweet spot still residing in her vocal chords to nail those soprano notes that put her in her own universe. I would have been able to hear 3500 jaws drop if not for the reflexive collective roar that came from our own throats.
Collusion is a huge buzz word these days and there’s Joanie up there colluding with age to downshift, without losing speed, to share that voice with us in the home stretch of her journey, burning every last drop of fuel left in the tank. A drop in octave doesn’t mean a drop in octane.
I love her for the way she makes me feel. A huge a la carte carousel serving joy, pain, indignation, sorrow, laughter, social justice, camaraderie with people on the margins, evoked with a voice of compassion, forgiveness all the way to in-your-face righteousness. For ninety minutes I am a tuning fork, resonating deeply with thoughts and feelings that flow like currents in the subsurface of the aquifer of my psyche.
Who melds wistful and hopeful better than this woman? Tonight in easy patter from the stage, she recounts loves, losses, causes, and her sense of social justice and the way she has bridged them all from the past to the present – universal and personal, poignant and powerful, with a palpable generosity of spirit.
Leaning forward, elbows on her knees and hands cupping her face, the woman next to me is in a world of her own with Joan. Her husband in the next seat is mouthing the words to every song.
Joan doesn’t call this a Fare-Thee-Well Tour for nothing. It feels like she’s picked songs to be sung at her own wake. And don’t think for one skinny minute that we aren’t thinking the same thing since so many of our heroes are dying. And don’t think for one skinny minute that we don’t know that we are closer to our own end lines, just as she is. My head is spinning. Halfway through the 90 minute set, I can feel the deep hum of that tuning fork vibrating in my seat in the mezzanine.
Love lost and found, hits and misses in life, sadness for what hasn’t worked out, Baez has concocted an alchemy of gratitude and acceptance for the vicissitudes of the life she’s lived.
This could easily descend into a morbid valedictory to life’s dissonant chords. That’s not what the troubadour has in mind. This is not a revival. Her songs haven’t disappeared down the drain of popular culture. From socially conscious to just plain beautiful ballads, the songs meant something when she first sang them. They have the power to elevate our spirits today.
She looks fabulous. Close cropped grey-streaked silver hair, tailored black jacket, form fitting jeans, comfortable black flats, she doesn’t look like any grandmother I’ve ever seen.
I’m channeling two concerts, one from the stage, another playing out in my psyche and heart.
A strange stew of triumph and elegy begin roiling around inside my guts and this woman is making them feel like the perfect elixir paving the way for me to consider my own fare-thee-well from this good earth. Honest to goodness this has the rich atmosphere of a wake when warm reminiscences are shared by friends of a lifetime with way more laughter than tears. I actually begin thinking about a playlist for my own wake.
Her voice has always been her gift and still is. In accommodation to age, she’s tuning it down to a lower range but it’s still THAT voice, one that gives me the chills as if I can feel her breath and her body temperature all the way back to my seat in the mezzanine
So here she is, the daring young woman on the flying trapeze, once invincible, now vulnerable.
Which is not to say irrelevant. “Goodbye Rosalita” that she will sing later is still utterly topical and touches on her lifelong themes of social justice, dignity of the marginalized (immigrants today, she will tell you flat out) delivered with the power of a sledgehammer wrapped in velvet.
A pastor opens meeting with a prayer asking the Almighty help us to find those in need and give us energy to do today’s work. The prayers are one part Jesus and three parts encouragement, statistics that show what a difference we're making, and at least one anecdote that brings it all home.
Pastor Jacob Aranza brightens our spirits (already pretty high in my opinion); he reports that last week we did 25 houses...as of this morning we’ve done 42!...calls us heroes, says it is likely that we are the only organization that is giving direct relief to so many people right now.
PT from Boston gets a shout out...Ken Myers, one of the prime movers of the Our Savior's Church recovery effort says, "I walked in here this morning and one of my favorite teams is the Boston Red Sox because I played semi-pro baseball up there. I introduced myself to a guy with a Boston Red Sox hat, he says I’m PT from Boston. I say I used to live in Wareham, MA, what are you doing down here? He says I came down here once, fell in love with the people and when I saw what happened I had to come down and help…You hear in church about the five gospels Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John… and you!"
"I guess you could call me St Paul now!” says I, a lovely moment which I savored.
Crew chief Rob Babineaux talks over today's work with Bryan Rhinehart
Our Savior's Church is organized...all we have to do is show up ready to work...everything we need to get the job of mucking out flooded homes. The equipment is here. We've got the spirit pitch in and make a bunch of people's lives brighter.
Rob reviews today's assignment with the crew. Really specific details are printed on our work sheets, name of owner, address, jobs to be done, equipment needed, likely obstacles to deal with, length of time estimated for the job.
This house is a bear to clean up. Looking at it from outside, you wouldn't know it had taken on several inches of water since it is quite elevated from the road and there are no streams or creeks or rivers nearby. The drainage ditches that run along Bald Eagle Drive and every house in Lafayette were overwhelmed with a surge of water that started in Denham Springs from the north and like an enormous tsunami rolled into neighboring parishes.
Stealth mold: at casual glance, house looks intact. Close inspection shows that standing water inside for a period of days meant that anything that had been soaked had to be removed.
Sheetrock and insulation, all of it; time for lunch.
Homeowner and mom; crew before we leave first house on Breton Road in Lafayette.
The garage was holding area for salvageable items: when a moisture meter detected water behind this kitchen cabinet it had to be removed, a task that took several hours.
same thing in the bathroom...
and a bedroom...
and parts of the garage...
determining the most efficient way to remove kitchen cabinets took most of the day
so the cabinets are now piled in the street
and the debris needs to be cleaned up
standard procedure: cut away sheetrock at the 4 foot seams and remove insulation if its an outer wall
Fast effective method to remove wet sheetrock...
There's satisfaction of getting the job done but still...it's such a huge stress on everyone in Lafayette and the parishes surrounding it.
Many say there were plans to mitigate such flooding. Cities and towns got the message now. One hopes that late is better than normal. Deep down, everyone wonders if this is the new normal.
Loads of people, especially out of town visitors like me, know about the courir du Mardi Gras of rural French Louisiana, sometimes referred to as the Cajun Mardi Gras. Few know about the African American Trail Rides that take place during Mardi Gras and weekends during the year.
This guy really gets it - the culture, the history, the pride in a tradition he calls “a sub culture” in southwest Louisiana.
His black and white photos, sharp and velvety at the same time, don’t just show or tell but have an ineffable sense of ‘feel’ to them. The artist’s choice to shoot and print in black and white achieves a delicate balance to show a tradition that is generations old and very contemporary at the same time.
A sense of quiet unassuming dignity is riding easily in those saddles. I feel the pleasure they enjoy from each other’s company, hear the laughter, and I’ll bet the music that might be playing from speakers in a rider’s saddlebag.
Finish looking at the gorgeous prints and I come away with a sense of family, community connections, bonds between fathers and sons, and yes, importantly, women, in the generations old tradition of trail riding. What is so impressive is how Ariaz’s sly documentarian's eye makes the ordinary so extraordinary. A few of these photos could stand alone as remarkable. As an aggregate, they knock you off your feet.
Every group has traditions that define it, keep it alive, show a quiet sense of pride and belonging. You could say this is a celebratory story about race and culture. What I feel after looking at these photos is a strange sense of kinship. I am an outsider looking in, but I am reminded of traditions in my own family that keep us together in the same way that the Louisiana Trail Riders connect in their rides.
The fact that a man not of that culture can see and be trusted and produce such exquisite photographs is a testament to his sense of mission, his deep respect for the people he’s documenting, and the friendly openness of the men who welcomed him along for the rides. Powerful stuff.
Ride To Defeat ALS: 24 Years Until a Cure
Sunday September 23, 2018
24th Annual Fund Raiser for ALS...from Positive Spin for ALS to Ride To Defeat ALS
The Longfellow Tennis and Health Club, 524 Boston Post Road, Wayland, MA 01778
11 AM
Ashley Corbin, Special Events Manager Extraordinaire for the ALS Association MA Chapter, does the count down for the 25 mile Pete's Ride. Pete Farricker was a member of the 1982 World Champion Rude Boys Frisbee Team. Pete's joyous sense of team, community, competition and fierce but overwhelmingly fair demeanor was the embodiment of Ultimate Frisbee's Spirit of the Game. https://www.usaultimate.org/about/ultimate/spirit_of_the_game.aspx and https://www.usaultimate.org/spiritawards/#farricker
His teammates rallied around him when he was diagnosed with ALS in 1999. Pete died from the disease. His spirit did not. Their dedication lives on every year through the Spirit Rides held around the country http://www.spiritride.org/index.cfm The Spirit Ride is now also in memory of another Ultimate Frisbee legend, Kathy Pufhal. The Spirit Rides raise serious money for the ALS Association MA Chapter and for Cancer Research.
The most successful ride yet, staged from The Longfellow Tennis and Health Club in Wayland ...raised over $230,000 with 270 riders on the 25, 50, and 75 mile routes in and around the Wayland, MA area. A radio operator spent the entire day monitoring communications between water stops and SAG wagons along each route. Every rider was accounted for!
Six men and women coping with ALS were present (more than at any previous ride), two of them with huge retinues of riders and supporters...
Welchie's Team (John Welch in green cap) was a rolling green wave of support on the road and on the ground. "Some of my riders didn't know how to adjust the valve so they could pump up their tires!" John said cheerfully. Good for showing them how, John!
Riders, teams and patients relax...
and wait to cheer team members as they finish the ride...
Hot and cold food, fruit, ice cream, snacks for all, donated by local businesses. Even a cold beer at the end of a long ride!
Executive Director of MA Chapter ALS Association Lyn Aronson and Channel 5 TV personality Cindy Fitzgibbin get ready for final announcements.
Apple employee Steve gave stirring and uplifting remarks as hundreds gathered after riders had finished. "Apple not only matches donations made by employees, but right now they are doing a double match – for example, Steve made a $1000 donation to his team, and Apple sent a matching gift of $2000. In addition, they donate money per hour for any employee who volunteers at an event, and with the amount of employees that were there volunteering and riding, they are getting $1500 donated to the ride!" said Ashley Corbin, the Special Events Manager.
Steve Mooney, alumnus of the 1982 World Champion Rude Boys Ultimate Frisbee Team, MA Chapter ALS Association Executive Director Lyn Aronson with Myke Farricker, co-owner of the Longfellow Tennis & Health Club. Members of the Rude Boys team show up every year to support the event, sort of a mini reunion, and donate thousands of dollars to the ride.
PT, Myke and photo bomber Ashley Corbin
This was one of the most seamlessly coordinated rides I've ever witnessed. Individual riders, teams of riders, and people who showed up to support the ride were met by volunteers who welcomed and checked in riders, answered questions, handed out T-shirts, served food and beverages. There was an air of certainty surrounding the event. As Patriots coach Bill Belichick would say, "Everyone did their job."
I organized my solo Plymouth Rock to Provincetown "Positive Spin for ALS" from 1995 - 2004 for ONE rider, myself. I spent months preparing for it every year. I cannot imagine the time and skill it takes to pull off something like the Ride To Defeat ALS. It took me ten years to raise $300,000. Today's riders raised almost that much in eight hours!
Organizing for over 200 riders is the tip of the iceberg. Planning meetings, recruiting reliable volunteers, assigning them to jobs, printing road signs, buying supplies for water stops, printing route maps or making Apps for riders to use on the road, asking vendors to supply food and drink, hiring a DJ, enlisting a TV personality to put the ride on the media map...I could go on. Event coordinator Ashley Corbin was the coolest cucumber at Longfellow all day long. Unflappable. As a former member the Board of Directors of the MA Chapter ALS Association, I fully realize the value, in terms of fund raising, positive infectious spirit, and creative thinking, Ashley brings to bear. She's a gem of an asset to the MA Chapter ALS Association.
Events like this are bittersweet. ALS has no cure. That's why we are here...with resolve in the face of daunting odds, to control what we can, fight grief with with action, and keep moving forward. Having the event work so sure-footedly is a blessing.
Speaking of photo bombers, there's Mr. Jonathan, the fabulous DJ who skillfully read the crowd and provided songs to fit every mood of the day, behind us. And the Elite Wheels Team T shirts, sponsored by the Zarb Corporation...to be explained in a later post.
Photos mostly by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.
VIDEOS http://ptatlarge.typepad.com/ptatlarge/2018/09/ride-to-defeat-als-24-years-until-a-cure-the-videos.html
September 26, 2018 in ALS, Positive Spin for ALS stories, Commentaries | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tags: Ashley Corbin, Longfellow Tennis and Health Club, MA Chapter ALS Association, Myke Farricker, Paul Tamburello, Ride To Defeat ALS