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Posts Tagged ‘swim’

Chicago River Restored

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on December 14, 2025| 5 Comments »

Photo: Linda Barrett.
The Chicago River, once badly polluted, has been cleaned up. Above, 265 swimmers participated in a public swim this year.

When humans make up their minds to do something, miracles can happen. Remember the river that caught fire and led to the Clean Water Act? Today’s article points to a more recent river success.

The environmental radio show Living on Earth reports that “on September 21st, hundreds of people leapt into the Chicago River for the first public swimming event since 1927.” Here’s an interview between Friends of the Chicago River Executive Director Margaret Frisbie and Aynsley O’Neill of Living on Earth. (I edited out the verbal pauses.)

Aynsley O’Neill
“This public swimming event was a fundraiser, but its impact actually goes even further than that. What does it mean to you to have public swimming in the Chicago River for the first time in nearly 100 years?

Margaret Frisbie
” ‘I was a magical day that’s hard to describe, seeing hundreds of people in the water swimming so joyfully, really represented all the work that Friends of the Chicago River and so many organizations and agencies have done to improve the health of the river, not only for people, but for wildlife too. The morning of the swim, people just were beyond thrilled. People were watching from the bridges. They were watching from the Riverwalk. … For people who’ve lived here a long time, I think it’s a game-changer. Seeing people in the water makes you believe that it’s possible. …

“We had Olympic athletes. We had … Becca Mann, who’s an Olympic athlete who swims 10Ks in open water, which is really impressive and amazing. She got out and she was just beside herself, and she said, I cannot wait to come back to Chicago and do this again. …

O’Neill
“Give us a sense of the difference between maybe now and maybe 50 years ago in terms of sewage spills into the river.

Frisbie
“When friends of the Chicago River was founded in 1979, on average, there was sewage in the river every three days. Fast Forward 46 years, and basically there’s never sewage in the river ever. …

“The one thing that’s always fun for us to talk about at Friends of the Chicago River is how alive the river is and how different it is. .. We’re seeing our aquatic animal life going up, and that’s because of the work of Friends of the Chicago River, the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District, the forest preserves at Cook County and so many partners. In the 1970s, when friends was founded, there were less than 10 species of fish in the river system. Now there’s nearly 80, and we have beavers and muskrats and turtles, and we’re seeing the return of river otters, who are really an excellent sign of river health, because they depend on clean water to keep their coats clean and their bodies healthy, and then they’re also dependent upon mussels and fish and other aquatic and macro invertebrates to eat. …

O’Neill
“For those who are unfamiliar, how did we get here? …

Frisbie
“Over the last 50 years, Friends of the Chicago River has been chipping away at both the actual water quality through advocating for cleaning up the river system, but also by using the Clean Water Act and building support for a river that was swimmable. And so the water quality has changed since 1979 when we were founded, bit by bit, you know, using the rules of the Clean Water Act and partnering with government agencies like the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District that dug a huge tunnel and reservoir system that’s virtually eliminated sewage from the river system, and then also disinfecting sewage affluent that goes to the river, and just also creating public access so people can get down to and in the water.

O’Neill
“How much of this was from a government level versus a volunteer level? How did that work?

Frisbie
“[It] really it takes both. The Tunnel and Reservoir Plan is 110 miles of tunnel, three enormous reservoirs that can store 17 billion gallons of sewage and storm water and industrial waste. However, it’s not just about building it; it’s having support for that system and also making sure that the government agencies who are working on it are on task, and making sure that they’re getting the work done. … Advocates encouraged and pushed a long way. So while we partner with this agency, the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District, on many, many programs, we also were engaged with forcing a permit that included an enforceable deadline of 2029 so they have to be done and wrap up the project and not say, hey, we ran out of money, we just can’t finish it yet. …

O’Neill
“What would you consider the biggest challenge during this process of cleaning up the Chicago River?

Frisbie
“People got used to the river systems being a place where sewage and waste could go, as opposed to we’re on the shores of Lake Michigan, which everyone fights for. …

“The river comes to us. It flows through communities. It’s a community connector, and it provides access to nature for people who live in an urban area. We also know that with the impact of the climate crisis, heat is the number one killer, and it is incumbent upon all of us to take seriously the fact that people need public open space where they can go and they can get away from the heat. … We know that nature actually improves public health, and, you know, mental wellness. So it plays so many, many, many roles. And then also we have major biodiversity loss, and cities can play a role in protecting biodiversity. … We are getting massive amounts of migratory animals, birds, bats, insects, and they depend on natural areas, and so it’s really important for that too. …

O’Neill
“For many of us, we might hear about the Chicago River once a year, St. Patrick’s Day, when it gets dyed green. What do you think about this tradition? …

Frisbie
“At Friends of the Chicago River, we think that we have outgrown that tradition. It’s really a fun morning. It builds community. … But we think a river that’s alive with wildlife really needs to be treated like a natural resource.”

More at Living on Earth, here.

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Chincoteague

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , on September 23, 2025| 10 Comments »

Photo: Graeme Sloan for the Washington Post.
Wild ponies swim across the Assateague Channel in a 100-year-old tradition. Remember Misty of Chincoteague?

Today’s story reminds me of a book series I loved as a child, one that I have learned is too slow for today’s kids, who love slam-bang spy adventures.

Remember Misty of Chincoteague and the annual swim? Hau Chu at the Washington Post wrote about the 100th real-life swim.

“By sunrise at 6:03 a.m. on Wednesday, hundreds of people already had their legs smeared with mud and their brows filled with sweat as their eyes gazed across the Assateague Channel along Virginia’s Eastern Shore.

“They trudged through the marsh to stake out a spot of shoreline. Some woke up as early as 3 or 4 a.m. Others planned more than a year ago from their homes in Massachusetts, Texas and beyond to be in this exact spot.

“These people wrestled with all these things to see wild ponies [at] Pony Swim Lane.

“ ‘Let me tell y’all, you guys are hardcore,’ Chincoteague Mayor Denise Bowden said to the crowd, nearly two hours later, while standing on a pier overlooking the water. … ‘That mud will wash off, but your memories are gonna last forever.’

“The annual wild pony swim at Chincoteague brings thousands of visitors and locals to the town every summer. This year marked the 100th year of the event. Ponies are corralled by the volunteer fire company on neighboring Assateague Island and swim over at slack tide, when the current is still. Officials say they do this to manage the population of ponies that inhabit the land: The festivities culminate in an auction of some of the foals that provides money for the company and veterinary care. …

“Andrea Lucchesi of Southampton, Massachusetts, knew plenty about it. Like some others, she had long dreamed of attending because of her fondness for Misty of Chincoteague, a 1947 children’s novel by Marguerite Henry.

“The book, and subsequent 1961 film, were inspired by a real pony, who is memorialized with a statue along the town’s Main Street. Business signs, restaurant menu specials and residential decorations throughout Chincoteague incorporate the wild creatures. Visitors and locals alike are clad for days in apparel with pony imagery or the Saltwater Cowboys, the group of firefighters responsible for managing the ponies.

“Those cowboys brought the ponies to the edge of Assateague Island at about 8:06 a.m. …

“And off they went. Dozens of ponies’ heads stayed above water and inched closer to the shore within minutes. All made it over to a pen on Pony Swim Lane. …

“Some have criticized the swim over concerns about the horses’ welfare and the desire to tame wild animals. Scott Rhoads, 69, was standing along a fence of the pony pen after the swim. He went back and forth on how he felt about it.

“ ‘You just wonder, these ponies, what they’re thinking,’ Rhoads, a retired small-animal veterinarian, said before taking a second to pause. ‘I worry,’ he paused again, ‘how it affects them, but I’m sure they get over it quickly.’ …

“People like Ashley Le embraced the summer beach town atmosphere and the novelty and spectacle of the event. Le, 28, had been to Chincoteague a few times before but never during pony swim time, she said. She lives in the Logan Circle neighborhood of Northwest Washington but was born and raised in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.

“ ‘It’s a very American thing, but it’s not like a military American thing; it’s a small-town American thing,’ Le said. ‘I feel like a lot of unique American things you think of is like July 4 or like fireworks and that kind of stuff. But this isn’t it; this is so outside of that zone. … I think just being here makes me feel like taking a breath of fresh air away from everything that’s happening in America. And the ponies are just so cute.’

“By sunset at 8:12 p.m., hundreds of people were cleaned up at the Chincoteague Carnival Grounds on Main Street. …

“Bowden, 56, was sitting in a chair inside the information booth at the carnival entrance. She was born and raised in Chincoteague. She’s a Saltwater Cowboy, and her family’s participation in the event goes back to her grandfather. But Bowden was injured in an April roundup of the ponies. The wild horses started charging and fighting and threw her off her horse. The distal femur in her right leg was crushed, she said. Still, this was all worth it.

“ ‘If they had to drag me down there on a stretcher … if they had to helicopter me in, it didn’t matter,’ Bowden said. ‘I wouldn’t miss this for anything.’ ”

More at the Post, here. Have you ever been to that part of Virginia? I was there once but didn’t see the ponies. The main thing I recall is eating my first oyster fritters.

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Dive-In (Sic) Movie Theaters

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on March 11, 2025| 7 Comments »

Photo: Waterworld/City of Tea Tree Gully.
Chlorine cinema … Zootopia screens at the “dive-in” cinema at Waterworld Aquatic Centre in South Australia.

Back in the day, drive-in movies were a thing — watching a feature from your parked car, a box for the sound hooked inside, probably ordering food delivered to your window. There are not too many active drive-ins any more, but in Australia, “dive-ins” (you read that right) are a cherished tradition showing no signs of being mothballed.

Chris Baker writes at the Guardian, “Imagine you’re lying on an inflatable [raft], fingers and toes dangling in warm, rippling water. It’s almost dusk and the early evening calm is shattered by a piercing scream. Suddenly a great white shark appears, mouth agape with enormous, monstrous teeth. Nearby swimmers who were quietly chatting a moment ago are now flailing in terror.

“You’re at Aquamoves pool in Shepparton, central Victoria, watching Jaws while paddling in the pool at their dive-in movie night.

“Dive-ins are a time-honoured tradition in landlocked Australia, where residents can’t easily access what much of the nation takes for granted on a hot summer day: proximity to the coast or an air-conditioned cinema. …For a little more than the price of a regular swim, locals get to watch a movie on a screen next to the pool while they splash, bob or float. …

“Often, as in Shepparton, the film screened has some connection to the sea, water or swimming. Think Penguins of Madagascar, Finding Dory or Moana.

“My first experience of a dive-in was as an adult at Mount Druitt in western Sydney during the January school holidays. I had scheduled an evening catch-up with old friends in the area, and their kids had insisted we go to the local pool. As night fell, Lightyear, an origin myth of the Buzz Lightyear character from the Toy Story franchise, was projected on to a large screen. …

“The kids’ excitement, like mine, was apportioned between the pool and Lightyear, and we applauded wildly with pruny fingers as the credits rolled.

“Dive-ins harness many of the best things about Australian summers: balmy evenings, the relief of a refreshing dip, and the novelty (for children) of being able to stay up later than normal because it’s school holidays. …

“Many Australians who experienced dive-ins as kids carry nostalgic memories into adulthood. Thirty-something Angus Roth grew up in Canberra and was a regular at the Big Splash water park dive-ins in the early 90s. He continued the tradition by taking his two kids to wet screenings. He associates some of his favorite Pixar movies with ‘the smell of chlorine’ and says he ‘loved the free-range nature of the evenings where the usual rules of “sit down and be quiet” didn’t apply.’

“A hint of anarchy pervades the best dive-in experiences. The managers of Aquamoves pool in Shepparton recognized this and showed terrifying genius in programming Jaws to a floating audience in 2019. It was such a hit that swimmers plunged back into shark-infested cinematic waters a year later to see Blake Lively pursued by a great white in The Shallows.

“Bikash Randhawa, the chief operating officer at Village Roadshow Theme Parks, agrees the best dive-in evenings combine fun with a sense of occasion. At the Wet’n’Wild water park in Oxenford in Queensland’s Gold Coast, the park’s ‘giant wave pool transforms into a floating cinema featuring a 45 meter [~148 foot] squared screen.’ …

“Dive-ins are also a much-loved institution at Waterworld Aquatic Centre in Ridgehaven, South Australia. They host one screening in January and another in February, often with a theme. When Barbie screened, kids and grownups donned hot pink bathers and lurid accessories to channel their inner Barbie and Ken, while their ‘Splash for a cure’ dive-in for The Incredibles brought staff and patrons out in spandex and capes to raise funds for the Leukemia Foundation. …

“Dive-in sessions don’t always end when summer nights are over. The University of Newcastle’s Students Association holds a free winter dive-in July at the heated pool at its Callaghan campus as part of its midyear welcome back week. …

“Not to be outdone, Griffith University in Queensland presents its dive-in at the Mount Gravatt campus at the start of the academic year. A giant inflatable screen commands pride of place; popcorn, fairy floss and snow cones are on the house, and students are encouraged to come in costume. …. Psychology student Abbie Chen says “watching a Hunger Games movie in a floating inflatable doughnut was fun and pretty surreal, and the silliness of the evening brings people together”.

“For Jen Curtis, a farmer who lives in Victoria’s central highlands wine country, a movie at the local pool brings respite from the summer heat and is a welcome distraction from physical labor. But more importantly, she says: ‘It’s about connection, making our own fun, and looking after each other.’ ”

More at the Guardian, here. Np paywall. Fun pictures.

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Harlem’s Senior Swimmers

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on October 23, 2023| 2 Comments »

Photo: Harlem Honeys and Bears.
Formed in 1979, the Harlem Honeys and Bears Swim team teaches seniors ages 64 and over, how to survive in the water, as a therapy for chronic illness, and to promote health and wellness in general.  

Reading today’s story about water ballet in Harlem, I am remembering how much I enjoyed the synchronized swimming class I took a long time ago. I still find the move called skulling useful in the water.

Laure Andrillon reports at the Washington Post about a senior group in Harlem that uses the practice for both socialization and health.

“Monica Hale recently turned 69,” writes Andrillon, “but she says she still feels like a youngster every time she dives, swims upside-down or practices the ‘barrel,’ a sophisticated move she usually attempts with a trusted synchronized swimming partner.

“Hale, who is Black, became fascinated with synchronized swimming as a child while watching the champion swimmer and movie star Esther Williams, a White woman, perform in water musicals on television. ‘She would do these fabulous turns and come up at the surface like a flower,’ Hale recalls. ‘I remember thinking, I want to do this one day. But you never saw Black people doing this. You never saw Black people very much in the water at all.’

Today, Hale is the proud captain of the Harlem Honeys and Bears, a synchronized swimming team for seniors 55 and older, whose current members are between 62 and 101 and almost exclusively Black.

“Like Williams, the Honeys and Bears create and perform what used to be called ‘water ballet’ — synchronized choreographed routines accompanied by music — in addition to competing in traditional swim races. But instead of Hollywood, Harlem is their home, and part of their mission is teaching younger Black swimmers. …

“It is a survival skill still deeply lacking in the African American community. … At their biweekly practices, Hale spends most of her time in the shallow end of the pool, teaching basic skills to recruits, some of whom don’t know how to swim when they join the team. She holds their hands while they submerge their faces in the water and cradles them while they learn to float on their backs. …

“The Honeys and Bears also hold monthly meetings to share ideas about how to spread the message that swimming can be learned by anyone, at any age. They find purpose in trying to bridge the racial gap that makes Black people of their generation less likely to swim than White seniors.

“Team members say synchronized swimming takes care of the body and the mind, and being part of a close-knit team is a way to work out and socialize at the same time. Their impressions are borne out by research, which finds that swimming offers a full-body workout that’s easy on injured or arthritic joints — a common problem for older people. It also de-stresses and burns calories, and it’s good for the heart.

“The Honeys and Bears perform at local pools, in other boroughs of New York and even out of state. Since the early 2000s, they have also traveled as a team to race individually during the state and national Senior Games, always sporting matching red sweatsuits. Some use a cane or a walker to access the pool deck, and sometimes employ a lift to slip into the water. But once they float in what they nickname their ‘fountain of youth,’ they feel more capable than when on land.

“The Honeys and Bears started gathering at the ‘bathhouse,’ an old name for what is now called the Hansborough Recreation Center, in 1979. … It was their way, they say, of reclaiming the swimming pool, a place where many team members did not feel welcome or comfortable for most of their lives.

“Some migrated to Harlem from states where interracial swimming was not allowed until the Civil Rights Act outlawed segregation in public spaces in 1964. Others grew up in New York, where pools were not officially segregated, but ‘a de facto racially segregated use was in place,’ historian Jeff Wiltse writes in Contested Waters: A Social History of Swimming Pools in America.

“ ‘When I was a little girl, my brother and I would go to the pool on colored days,’ explains Rasheedah Ali, 87, a member of the team who lived in Cincinnati before moving to Harlem in 1967. …

” ‘Of course, we need to remember our past,’ she says. ‘But we should also tell the story of whom we became — a bunch of joyful Black elders who thrive in the water.’

“Born and raised in Harlem, Gerterlyn Dozier, 89, remembers swimming in the late 1930s at what was then called Colonial Park on 146th Street, instead of the Thomas Jefferson pool on 111th Street, just a few blocks from her building. ‘If you had dark skin, it was too dangerous for you to wander’ near the closer pool, she says, because of hostile White neighbors. …

” ‘[Today] we make it a party,’ says Dozier with a burst of youthful laughter. ‘Hopefully, our kids will feel like they belong in this space and this sport. And by the time the next generation comes, the statistics will have changed.’ ”

More at the Post, here, and at Columbia Community Service, here.

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Triathlon

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on August 1, 2015| 4 Comments »

This sweaty-looking athlete leaning into the turn at Cooneymous Road is John. He has just done the swimming part of New Shoreham’s triathlon in the ocean, and now he is into the first loop on the hilly biking course.  He will wind up with a run on Crescent Beach. Fingers crossed that the tide is out and the sand is hard.

Beautiful day for it. The peanut gallery has experienced our share rainy triathlons, and one that was cancelled because of thunder and lightening.

080115-John-triathlon-first-loop

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Denmark Launches a Sea Pool

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on July 16, 2014| 2 Comments »

Klaus’s dad — who, I am told, is a musician in his spare time — recently wrote about enjoying the post on conducting your own orchestra. He lives in Denmark. I told him I have also posted about Denmark a few times and hope to do so often.

So when SmallerCitiesUnite! tweeted this tidbit on Denmark today, I knew it had to be in the blog.

From The Local: “Swimming in the North Sea just got a bit easier, at least near the northwestern Jutland town of Thy. Denmark opened its first sea pool, also known as a lido, over the weekend in Nørre Vorupør on the coast of the North Sea.

“The 50 square metre open-air pool allows swimmers, divers and kayakers to be in the North Sea without worrying about large waves, dangerous undercurrents or rip tides. …

“ ‘It could lead to investments in summerhouses or rental opportunities,’ Lene Kjeldgaard, the mayor of Thisted council, told Danmarks Radio.

“See a gallery of photos from the pool’s first weekend here.”

More here.

 Photo: Sofus Comer

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Rhode Island Photos

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on September 2, 2013| 2 Comments »

More summer days and nights.

dels-of-rhode-island

clouds-over-old-harbor

rafting-at-the-tughole

lace-cap-hydrangea

new-harbor-great-salt-pond

man-with-grandson

surf-hotel

lawn-furniture

backs-of-buildings

ragged-sailor-chicory

state-steps

Rhode-Island-sunset

new-shoreham-sunset

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Mysterious Sound in the Woods

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , on June 9, 2011|

Last weekend my son, daughter-in-law, and grandson stayed in a cabin near Groton, New Hampshire, because John was going to be in a triathlon (swimming, biking, running) the next day. The cabin was in the woods near a lake. In the night, they heard a strange sound, and although she had never seen a moose, my daughter-in-law had a theory that it was a moose. When she got home, she did an Internet search, and sent me a little audio of the sound they heard in their cabin. Here it is.

If you e-mail me at suzannesmom@lunaandstella.com, I will use your comments in a post.

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