Art of the Listen - Bench Talk, True Derby

THE FUTURE FROM BEHIND

(photo credit: Hanna Dymytriieva | Dreamstime.com )

More bounce per ounce, I say.

Recently I met with a group of derby girls from Seattle, Washington. I asked them about the future of derby.

“It’s the junior skaters,” they said, all in agreement. “They can do all kinds of things we can’t.”

“They fall down and literally bounce right back up. “

“They take chances we didn’t take. They come up with moves we didn’t think about.”

“They are redefining the sport from behind us.”

Seems to me that pretty much sums up life, I thought to myself later.

While we are fretting and arguing and trying to plan the future, maybe we should be looking behind us. To the next generation of chance takers, dreamers and bounce-back-uppers.

They may just sneak up behind us with some answers.

In the meantime, SKATE ON!

DARLA

Art of the Listen - Bench Talk

TALK DERBY TO DARLA….

So, you know I’m really a character in a novel, right?

And the time has come for my author, Cynthia Darwin, to write a followup to “Darla the Roller Derby Queen” …..with YOUR stories.

The next publication, “Darla’s Derby Rules of Life” needs your first hand accounts of derby, its effects on your life (good and bad) and some insiders info.

So we’ll be going around trying to find derby stories…from skaters, officials, significant others and fans.

If you want to be part of DDRL, drop Darla a note on her website contact section, tweet or message me on Facebook from my website.

Or share this post with someone you know who has a derby tale to tell.

I’ll be back in touch personally with questions. Look forward to hearing from you and…

SKATE ON!

Darla

(like this cell phone holder? You can get it on Amazon.com)

Art of the Listen - Bench Talk

The Eyes have it…

So, this is a bench that should make you look. And make you smile…all the way to your eyes.

Doesn’t matter whether it’s very comfortable. Or whether you get that it’s made of skateboards (slightly used and bent, maybe).

Or that maybe you can’t make out all the words or understand the languages displayed on the bench.

It’s going to make you smile.

And let’s say someone else walks by and looks at this bench and smiles at you. Or laughs. Or shrugs.

You don’t have to understand that person’s language. Or why they smiled at you. Or even what they are thinking. The eyes have it.

Long before socially accepted manners said you shouldn’t stare at someone…or social media allowed you to converse without looking at the other person…we were talking with our eyes.

So try a little bench talk with your eyes today. It makes a world of a difference in the world.

That’s my bench advice for the day (she says, eyes smiling.)

SKATE ON!

Darla

True Derby

There’s science in them wheels….

Oh yes. Behind all the tats, fishnet stockings, crash-crazy names and slamming, there is science. And a lot of that science has to do with the counter-clockwise direction of the play.

Not a spectacle sport any more than racetrack driving, horse races or speed skating is just for fun, derby has physics with a capital P all over it.

But I am more of a writer than a physicist, so let me graciously share this derby girl’s details of the whip, the wall and the centrifugal force of the outside skater….

“Why Counter Clockwise?” by Mathundra Storm

Thanks for showing us the “right” way to look at derby.

SKATE ON!

(photo credit Zack Lynch)

Darla

Art of the Listen - Bench Talk, True Derby

WASN’T EASY BEING US…

Sharing a bench talk recently with a woman about my age, we of course had to go back and recount the old days…back when women were entering the workplace and the sports field without many of the regulations and considerations today.

She shook her head with a wry grin. “You know, it wasn’t easy being us back then.”

Reminds me a bit of something the women in roller derby back in the 60’s and 70’s might say to each other (and maybe they do!)

Ask anyone (except the folks who have been initiated into derby) and you’ll probably hear how he or she watched the spectacle on television as entertainment. Most often it is compared to televised female wrestling of the time.

Yet even back in those olden days women had to be incredible athletes, often competing head to head on the same tracks as the male skaters. Colleen English of Penn State penned a good article on the dilemma of women derby skaters of the 60’s and 70’s — “Women in the Roller Derby: Groundbreaking Athletes or Entertaining Celebrities”

In the article she quotes sportscasters of the day…
“Sportwriter Frank Deford, in Five Strides on the Banked Track, written in 1971, took a slightly nuanced view of women in roller derby.,.. Despite Deford’s somewhat progressive attitude toward the role of women in roller derby—he noted their perpetual inclusion—he still saw them as a potential distraction and as not part of the “real” game. Deford goes as far as to blame women for derby’s reputation as a spectacle, writing that “there is no doubt that it is the women who give the game its tawdry, sideshow image” and that fans may initially come to see the women skaters but “stay to enjoy the faster, harder, men’s play.” 

Today derby is considered first an incredibly tough woman’s sport, although the number of men’s and coed teams are growing as well as inclusion of transgender athletes. But the women are setting the rules now as well as the social standards. It’s worth your watch.

Maybe they will be able to say on a bench sometime in the future, “Wasn’t it great being us…”

SKATE ON!

Darla