A Coincidence of Spirituality

The experience recently of my oldest grandson and his mother brought to mind one I had by happenstance 47 years earlier when I was eight years older than he is now.

Due to the genes I inherited, I’m probably fortunate to have avoided depression, but September 1967 is the first time among a handful that I slipped briefly into that state.

Even as infrequent and relatively shallow as my experience has been, I can vouch for the argument made by Andrew Solomon that “the opposite” of depression “is not happiness but vitality.”

For anyone stuck with the impression this is only sadness, listen to Solomon or click here for a short video on the science of depression.

That first time, I was having a crisis of identity and spirit.  I felt strongly that I shouldn’t be in Lyon, France, but rather 8,000 miles further east fighting in Vietnam alongside side friends and family.

A both/and alternative didn’t seem possible with the state I was in.

When I finally found my way back home and tried that other path, it was betrayed by the seven inch scar down the right side of my left knee.

No matter how many times I tried to enlist in various branches of the military, or how successful the rehab had been in 1966 after a tear in my patellar tendon from playing football, the answer was always no-go.

I grew up a Mormon surrounded by a wide range of cultures in that Yellowstone-Teton nook of my native Idaho.

But I was not just Mormon.

I descended from sixteen lines of ancestors who, 120 years before my crisis of spirit, had endured incredible hardship and journeys of thousands of miles to congregate at various points on the western slopes of the Rocky Mountains.

I was born at the most northern outpost of this meridian of my DNA but carried the full length of its expectations on my shoulders.

Ironically, however, I found solace and rediscovered my spiritual center one bright late September day when a friend and I slipped into the very back pew of the darkened sanctuary of the Basilica de Fourvière and heard the Gregorian Chants of a midday service.

This link to the vocalizations of group formerly known as Anonymous 4, came closest to approximating what I heard that day high on Fourvière hill.

Another I listen to is the group Trio Mediaeval.  It is hard to say why these chants meant so much to an Idaho boy who had never set foot in a basilica before or since.

For nearly four decades, my church attendance has been walking through nature with music such as this playing in my headphones.

The official choir of that Lyon basilica is now Les Petits Chanteurs de Saint-Marc, a children’s choir that can be heard singing at this link and here singing the contemporary Pie Jesu, a segment in a requiem mass Andrew Lloyd Webber composed in memory of his father.

I experienced that level of depression three more times over the next twenty years, just enough to help me empathized with the 4.1% of Americans who suffer it deeply.

It was relatively mild each time but I understand those who describe it as a “slower way of being dead” or as Solomon writes, “a funeral in your brain.”

It wasn’t Les Petits Chanteurs de Saint-Marc I heard that day but more likely a more impromptu group such as the one heard at this link.

What is now called the Basilica’s children’s choir was formed two decades after we dropped into its sanctuary first as the focus of a two year practice choir at l‘Ecole Sainte Ursule, a part of Le Centre scolaire Saint Marc a Lyon .

It is three miles down the Saône River on the other side of Vieux Lyon  from where I lived that September in 1967 on rue du Bon Pasteur.

The Basilica is atop the steep Fourvière hill looming abover Vieux Lyon and you can see the panoramic views behind me in the image in this blog by viewing the video at this link.

It was hazy that day, but on other days I could see Mount Blanc, 140 miles to the east and the highest point in Europe.  It was one of the areas my dad skied at the end of WWII on leave from chasing down Nazis trying to escape through the Bavarian forests into Austria and Switzerland.

But the thing about depression even at the relatively minor degree I was experiencing it is that you don’t seem to care about anything anymore.

I didn’t mean to ramble on about that moment in time which lasted only a few weeks but seemed like a lifetime, but these essays are written, in part, as memoirs for my grandsons.

They have been attending the Madeleine Choir School, one of a kind in North America but patterned, in part, on choir schools like that one in Lyon.  It is a Catholic school that teaches a complete curriculum with the choir at its center.

It isn’t the first brush with Catholic schools for our gene pool.  My grandparents sent my mom 250 miles south from where they lived to a Catholic High School in Salt Lake in a failed effort to separate her from my dad in the months before he left for the war.

Every other year, the “big” choir at Madeleine takes a week long concert tour to Italy singing in numerous Basilicas after studying their architecture, history and the geography surrounding them.

This year my oldest grandson, chaperoned by his mom, was eligible to take this extraordinary trip.

The capstone was singing mass at St. Peters Basilica in the Vatican, within earshot of the Papal apartments, and then watching Pope Francis give the blessing above the square outside.

The tour began in Venice, 28 miles south of where my second cousin and dad’s best friend growing up was shot down over Susegana, Italy when the B-26 in which he was a tail gunner was hit by AA fire and exploded during a bombing run to take out bridges across the Piave River supplying the German Army.

Edward Bowman was buried there and his dog tags hung over a cross in an orchard by a farmer, until my dad found the grave and brought his remains home for burial on our ancestral ranch.

He was only twenty-two years old.

The tour by my grandson’s choir also included Florence, Assisi and many other locations.  Given my memory of how I felt stepping into that sanctuary above the Roman ruins of Lyon, I can image the feeling of spirituality that permeated their trip.

A star soccer player, my grandson was a “walk-on” of sorts for the choir but by the conclusion of the tour he figuratively made the varsity and lettered.

Scientists have isolated a gene that is shorter in people who experience depression.  I think the one that I must have was much less severe than it was in my father and his mother.

Just like the one that results in essential tremor, which has yet to be discovered, both were probably handed down to my offspring.  My prayer that they skip the boys may be in vain but, if so, they have already been offset by other inherited traits such as grit, determination, and drive.

It is important to remember that inheritance is not destiny. It is how we express our genes that makes the biggest difference.

I can read the worry in letters to me from my parents and sisters during that time of spiritual crisis forty seven years ago.  It wasn’t the first nor the last time they probably felt helpless while watching me experience pain.

But I’ve lived a life well worth living and for that I owe them.

Two Wheel Calculus

I happened onto an accident scene two weeks ago at the base of the ridgeline where I live in Durham, North Carolina.  Moments before I headed down to grab lunch, a car had turned right in front of a scooter, giving no time to react.

As I drove my Jeep slowly past the scene, a paramedic seemed to shake his head almost imperceptibly.   Later I learned that the rider, a cook and a young Durham native in his prime, did not survive.  The driver was charged for not yielding the right of way and misdemeanor death by vehicle.

I returned home and took my much heavier Harley-Davidson Cross Bones out for a spin to shake off the effects from seeing that fatal accident scene and to remind myself how defensively you must ride, anticipating that drivers don’t see you or may do the unexpected at anytime.

Raw statistics show fatalities on motorcycles are 30 times that of cars but that drops 48% by not speeding, another 42% by avoiding alcohol and 37% more if you have antilock brakes.   That puts it far below the average for cars, especially for riders in my age group and when you religiously practice defensive driving.

Also wearing a helmet, especially when it is full face, helps a great deal.  Any DOT-approved helmet helps.  Research shows that riders without a helmet are 40% more likely to suffer a fatal head injury in a crash, 60% of which are the fault of drivers not riders.

Texas gave into special interests who successfully argued for repeal of that state’s helmet law and by doing so validated the research with lives when that state saw a 31% increase in motorcycle fatalities.

Accidents happened in the blink of an eye and ones such as the one near my house may not be avoidable no matter what you do, even if you are in a car.  It is a reminder to live every minute as though it was your last.

As a young boy I learned to ride Honda 50s and 125s across range and farmland.  But I first learned to ride defensively 46-years-ago last week when I purchased a 1967 VeloSolex 3800 from Cycles Pithioud (ad in image below) in what is now yuppified Voltaire quarter of Lyon, France.

Solex was launched in 1946 and I bought No. 4,111,740.  Lyon is a city in east-central France that was founded by Romans in 43 BC.

The dealership in that location which now sells Hondas was about five minutes from the incredible Renaissance and Gothic-laden Vieux Lyon district across the bridges over the Saone and Rhone rivers where they straddle a narrow peninsula through the city where I lived a week or so.

The VeloSolex dealer was also 8 minutes down the Saone from another one of the places where I stayed for a few weeks overlooking the Place du Marechal Lyautey and midway down to where the two rivers merge.

My new Solex was essentially a bicycle powered by a 49 cc engine that you lowered onto the tire where a ceramic roller then powered the front tire through friction.

It was a very cool way to tool around town even given the hard-earned craziness of French drivers, who nonetheless always seemed aware of those of us on two wheels.

My favorite jaunts were over the rivers to the Cathedral of Saint-Jean-Baptiste in historic section or up the hill there to the Basilica of Notre-Dame de Fourvière, places where this Idaho-ranch-boy would regularly sneak in to listen quietly in the near darkness to incredible music.

The little Solex would also chug its way up just northwest of town onto the nearly 300,000-acre Les Dombes.  This is where ancient fish farmers and then later Trappist Monks sculpted 1,500 ponds and lakes out of wetlands.  The rain-filled ponds would also be regularly drained and the clay bottoms mined for bricks or sediment planted with crops and then allowed to refill.

Today Les Dombes is an incredible sanctuary for migratory birds.  It was also easy enough to truck north or south 20 miles through quaint villages to wine vineyards villages.

But the little Solex was certainly not sufficient to get me the two hours up into the gorges of the Alps such as those around Grenoble which hosted the Winter Olympics a few months after my time there and were dominated by the unorthodox Jean-Claude Killy.

A Harley such as I ride today, would have been perfect for the Alps.  In fact, federal Gendarmes, a unit originated at 15th century cavalry, patrolled French highways on huge motorcycles by 1967.

I was never able to master the French-bump method of skiing moguls that Killy popularized.  However, my bother-in-law Rick is a master.  Leaning over and carving around moguls, which is called sculling, was too ingrained in me by then.

By contrast, a “bump” skier like Rick stays just as low but not as far forward and much more relaxed.  Instead of sculling the mogul, “bump” skiers ski the tops, pulling up their knees to absorb it and then using their knees to pivot off.

It was very radical at the time.  Seventeen years after my visit to the Alps along the French border with Italy, as a community marketer for Anchorage, I was part of a small group that won that city the honor as America’s choice to host the 1992 Winter Games.

We lost out to Albertville, France in that same part of the Alps.  Anchorage tried again and lost the bid to host in 1994.  Now a similar committee there is exploring a bid for the 2026 Winter Games.

I prefer to ride a Harley sitting back and relaxed and shifting with my heel rather than crouched forward and toe-shifting as many riders do on other styles of motorcycles.  Young riders may see my style as old-fashioned or traditional.  But hell, what is riding a Harley all about if it is not tradition.

VeloSolex is still manufactured and sold on that same street in Lyon, a nine minute walk from where I bought the one in 1967.  But today they have sleek designs by Pininfarina, a famous Italian industrial design firm that has also collaborate with Alfa Romeo, Ferrari, Fiat and Maserati to create many classic sports car designs.

They even have a very cool fold-up version and an electric version.  Unfortunately, lawmakers have failed to pass legislation to make this type of vehicle safer in North Carolina leaving it possible for people as young as 16 to ride them without a license or insurance.

One dealer who opposed the bill was quoted as saying that he thinks “everybody should be responsible for their own actions…I really think they just can’t demand it all of a sudden and take everybody as a group and make them pay.”

I understand that conservatives worry about losing various liberties.  As a moderate Independent, so do I.  But it astonishes me that they seem to fail to grasp that requirements like carrying insurance etc. whether on a two-wheeler or for personal healthcare isn’t about losing freedom.

Requirements such as these are to prevent the costs of our actions and/or our accidents from being shifted onto other taxpayers and consumers.

The damage to vehicles and to lives is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to full-cost accounting for accidents.  There is also the cost to families, the cost of investigation, the cost of adjudication as well as the costs to other consumers left by the uninsured.

It seems like requirements like insurance are to preserve freedom, not take it away.  Just sayin’.

I’ll stick with my the Harley, but you won’t hear me whining about requirements to carry insurance, get a license and wear a helmet.  It is as much for others as it is for me.