Trees, Steve Loved

Steve's Words:

The driver, the
trees, the sun and the seasons.

Yesterday I named three favorite winter trees at 86th and 5th Ave -
"reaching, curling and spreading".

I've gotten so I love trees. When I first got my glasses in about the fifth grade, I came out of the
optometrist's to realize that I could actually see the individual leaves. I had come to see trees as little kids draw
them - circles of green on trunks of brown.

It was before disease stripped the Midwest of its American elms, which really did make cool arched boulevards of our
modest main streets. Old towns now look like denuded suburbs.

Before that only many decades or the big winds near tornados
could kill off a few of them.

In my backyard there was a huge one which took several kids
to touch hands around.

When we learned to get to its lower limbs with a rope, we
began to build a tree house in a very high crotch. My dad took over and built a
big, solid one, much lower down. For beams he used the varnished hardwood
pieces of a big old pipe organ, which had just been replaced in the next door
church where he was pastor. He did not view little kid helpers as actually
helpful or safe, which I understand, but also regret.

Today, in New York City, I often reverse "you can’t see the forest
for the trees". Here they stand
more isolated, individual.

In winter we can see the fabulous differences of their limb
structure. Since they've been cared for and pruned over their decades of life,
I sometimes wonder if an old arborist could say, "Now that's pruned in the
Mendelssohn manner. And you can see O'Neal's work in that one."

The isolation and care of our trees in Central and Riverside Park and around the Natural History museum may
explain why we enjoy some of the few stands of these magnificent trees which
remain in North America.

We all enjoy the first leaves in the spring. The green that
will later seem uniform at first has great various beauty, just as the fall
dying leaves draw bus tours to Vermont,
but may be less noticed in the midst of our city.

Then of course there are the many stages of a tree's cycle
of renewal that each species present to us as the days grow longer, and then
shorter.

If we look up close, we can see the wonderful little
structures that nature has constructed over ages to give each tree the best
chance to live on.

Horse Chestnuts are my favorites. Lindens are good too.

As well as the changes over the warmer months, each day
trees present many different views to us. At high noon, the shade of their
leaves cools us, but obscures the tree's details.

But as the sun lowers, its light cuts between the leaves and
lets us glimpse the structure that we love so much in winter.

These are things I've learned to see over time as I grew
older. Who says there’s nothing to look
forward to. Just like the little piece
of white paint that looks like a gold ring on the finger of a Rembrandt
portrait.
---------------------------

Portrait by Kenneth Crowe


STEVE KINDRED’S ODYSSEY

Nowadays if you want to start a revolution, an audience of potential recruits and sympathizers is only a few clicks away on the internet via blogs, email, Facebook, chat rooms, YouTube, Twitter, and the list goes on. How much more difficult such an undertaking was 39 year years ago when a dozen dissident Teamsters gathered in Ken Paff’s living room in Cleveland, spending four hours plotting how to create a national grassroots organization of truck drivers and dock workers, who like them, were dissatisfied with their notoriously corrupt union. I have told this story before, but the courageous, self-sacrificing, and poetic saga of 31-year-old Steve Kindred’s odyssey is worth recounting again and again to illustrate his commitment to reforming the American labor movement, the Teamsters in particular. Chipping in, the dissidents came up with a $100 kitty, which doesn’t sound like much but in that earlier time $89 was enough pay for a ticket allowing 21 days of travel to wherever Greyhound buses went. Kindred, who had the gift of gab, climbed onto a Greyhound in Cleveland’s bus terminal on a dreary April morning in 1975 with only a few dollars in his pocket along with five pounds of Spanish peanuts, three pounds of raisins, and a list of Teamster activists culled from various sources. Can you imagine the ordeal he faced: having to sleep on buses and wash in public restrooms, lingering in bus terminals waiting for the targeted Teamster member to show up or the bus to the next city, hoping the person he was meeting would treat him to a meal. And, there was always the possibility of getting his head bashed in. Kindred had been beaten up by thugs at the 1972 Teamsters convention. The affable, loquacious Kindred, who had attended the University of Chicago before being expelled for his role as a student activist, had been a taxi driver and a truck driver, which earned him the right to his audience. Those he spoke to in the 22 cities he reached (including Dallas, Memphis, Little Rock, Oklahoma City, Kansas City, Chicago, St. Louis and Los Angeles) were to form the nucleus of Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU), created in 1976 to battle the business unionists and outright criminals running the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. Teamsters for a Democratic Union, which is the union’s reform party, has compiled an admirable record of accomplishments through the years including fighting off contract giveaways and being directly responsible for both getting the rank and file the right to vote for the union’s hierarchy and for the election of Ron Carey to the presidency of the IBT in 1992. As the years went by, Kindred moved to New York City where he worked as a truck driver continuing his calling as an advocate for workers. He was most recently involved in the Occupy Wall Street movement. Kindred, who had a life worth living, died from cancer this past Dec. 9. He will be honored at a memorial at 4:00 p.m. on Feb. 8, a Saturday, at the Murphy Center/ CUNY Labor Studies Dep’t, 25 West 43rd Street, between 5th and 6th Avenues, in New York. Perhaps, I’ll see you there.


This is by Kenneth Crowe, who wrote the 1993 bookCollision: How the Rank and File Took Back the Teamsters  about the TDU.



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Thanks for your input to the Steve Blog. Learning about him through one another's stories is something we can continue to enjoy, beyond his passing. May his vision, work and passions live on through our paths, and be invigorated by our stories, sharings, and dialogues.
Thanks, from niece Audrey Kindred