And three, youre too young anyway. So he continued for another 11 years.Although now retired, Fergusons presence still remains at Old Trafford, not just in legend but in the form of a bronze statue wit

Modesty is a lie. -- Maya Angelou ?She is a girly girl born with a beautiful pelvisLiving in New Orleans, two feet, two breasts,Eight children, curvaceous and cute, she turnsHeads everyday, social works to pay the bills,Whispers to God. Shes in her 40s when GodWhispers back, that bewildering, 3rd generation,Stage 2, pummeling, Black woman news. Its$5000 a month to stay alive. She loses Ta-tas,Job, car, house. The long scar on her chest runsHorizontal with the horizon. She sews her eyesDown its back. A hot air balloon lifts her throughChemotherapy, beyond despair, arriving in Biloxi.Somewhere along the road to 50 she overhearsThat the pelvis is what makes us human.Her mother hands over black on black sneakersWith an ancestral silver toe and hip silver swoosh.Her grandmother loans her a pair of loudLime green, South African, Balega socks.?Hit the road daughter. The girly girl knowsShe doesnt need breasts to walk, or breastsTo be a girly girl, with both hands she raisesHer blouse over her head. The sun paintsHer chest the same shade of girl that it didForty years before when she was just 8 and justAn unknown girl on a beach, topless, with breastsStill sleeping in the bones curl just below herClavicle. When a Black woman decides toWalk topless for 1034 miles things get aligned.Ears line up over shoulders. Shoulders overHips. Hips over knees. Her spine is soonShot out of a cannon just like the 1850 InsomniacHarriet, her nipples calibrating due north andFreedom instead of sleep. When a Black womanMakes up her mind to walk topless for 1034 miles,A film crew can change their mind but a daughtersWitnessing eyes are irreversible. MadelinesEight-year-old breasts are still in the deep sleepOf girlhood when they leave, just like Retro girlyGirl back on the beach. She sets sail from BiloxiOn April 30. Her ghost nipples spin as dualCompass. Five miles an hour, eight hours a day,For sixty days. Topless in the sun and the drivingRain. The Republics electronic Book of Faces hearsThe news and goes neon. 10,000,000 eyes dial in.The first of twelve police cars stop her. She smilesAnd holds a class in indecent exposure along the sideOf the road. There are no Toni Morrison benchesTo hold them so they stand. Resolution: Its notIllegal for her shirt to be off if her nipples are only Ghosts, following overhead but not really there.On the police car radio NPR is interviewingJohn Napier, paleontologist. The topic is walking.As the policemen finish up their Selfie with theTopless woman, who can still turn a head, theyDo not hear the paleontologist say, HumanWalking is unique. The body, step by step, teetersOn the edge of catastrophe. The mother-daughterTeam is back on the road. The girly girl has 100Ligaments in each of her feet. Her transverse archIs the major weight-bearing bridge in her body.Her Achilles is her most critical tendon, running fromHer calf muscle to the back of her heel, helping herPush off with her toes and propel her body towardSenators and marble halls and the back of MadelinesStroller. With each step she takes a new beauty shopIs under new Construction. This one will not beDesigned & Assembled by the Chairman of the BoardOf Ta-tas. She moves one foot in front of the other.Highway 29, Highway 1, The Jeff Davis highway,The Warren Abernathy road, the Blue Star highway,The monument to the signer of the Declaration ofIndependence in Georgia, the Indian mounds ofNorth Carolina. The topless girly girl keeps an eyeOut for the June Jordan Expressway. The Audre LordeHighway. The Gilda Radner overpass. The 7th of 12Police cars pulls up alongside Madelines stroller. InEach new jurisdiction the men and women in blueWant to have a word with her, want to survey theTopography of her chest, want answers shes patientlyAlready given seven times before, want to make sureThere is no indecent exposure taking place on theJeff Davis Highway north. Another class on the sameTopic is held. Over and again the girly girl explainsThat wanting to live is legal in every state.For 60 days the sneering breathtaking rocky roadExhaust of 18 wheelers coats her mouth. ThroughDust tar and fumes she passes Used Car Lots,Daydreaming of driving the rest of the way in aCanary yellow Mustang, convertible. There areStrip Malls, Mexican restaurants, neon motel signsAdvertising 20 dollar-a-Night Rooms, and 19Holy ghost praise houses leaning in with tambourine.The handmaidens of 40, 290 women take turnsRubbing her legs down every night. Mother andMadeline munch on 5 pounds of peaches, 4 poundsOf plums, they talk about school and family and howDifferent the rain feels when you cannot run from it.The mother-daughter train stops to read historicalMarkers from Biloxi to Washington DC. The womanWho has been known to turn a head wants MadelineTo know how the world was made and how it canBe made differently. She does not drink enough water.Its April, Its May, Its June. The pavement meltsBeneath their feet. The asphalt doesnt care that sheDoesnt have breasts, doesnt care that Madeline is8, the blisters, callus feet, the inside of her palms growStones, are bloody. She keeps pushing Madelines tinySleeping breasts on up the road. Its a tar beach voyage.And Madeline will not be next. The ghosts of 40,290Dead women whisper that they have voted to take theirTops off too. Solidarity forever. Mother and daughterEat Little Debbie pies and suck on firecracker popsiclesUntil their lips are red, white, and blue. StrangersFollowing them on the Republics electronic Book of FacesPull up alongside for Selfies. They deposit small tubsOf watermelon, a box of KFC, a foil bag of Chick-fil-A,Another woman drops off a homemade plate made fromHer own dinner pots. The gravel on the road hitchhikesA ride inside their shoes. The pommeling rain turns theJeff Davis highway into a sliding mud pit of summerQuicksand. The girly girls breastplate, complete withHorizon scar, has been staring back at the sun and theRain for 45 uncommon days. What does the world seeWhen a Black woman accustomed to being a womanAnd turning heads takes off her top and walks 1034Miles across America up a highway named for thePresident of the Confederacy? A woman teeteringOn the edge of catastrophe? A girly girl with herMissing ghost nipples now turned tuning forks turnedToward freedom? She is a woman they cannot arrestFor not having what they believe she should haveIn order to be called a woman? The burning summerRain sizzles on the hot asphalt. The sun bakes theirTwo backs into a portrait of two thirsty MarigoldsClimbing. A truck door swings open by mistake hittingThe girly girl as it passes. Pitch and roll girly girl. GetUp. A woman who has refused her own catastropheIs walking across America with her daughter. PoliceCar no. 12 arrives. Madeline is asleep. Why dontThey talk to each other on their blue-way radios?Cant someone dispatch the update? A Black womanWalking topless across America is not illegal. The girlyGirls pelvis evolved 1.9 million years ago.This noble Soldered saddle of bones is what makes us stand upright.Helps us change direction, spin, swivel, adjust, reach,Reconfigure, when we find we need to march on andNot crumble. The long column of our human bodyRequires the marvel of the pelvis to conduct whenAll else fails. The missing Ta-tas are not what matter.The pelvis matters. The dead women of the ChorusOf Breast Cancer matter. God finding the girly girlOn the beach and whispering Go Topless in her earMatters. Her mind is 1034 miles away on the marbleSteps of Congress waiting for the rest of her to arrive.Dear Senator ______, you dont know me but my pelvis is 1.9 million years old and 60, 290 women with pelvises just like mine received a new breast cancer diagnosis in 2015 and 40, 290 died of the disease. I would like a minute of your time. I did not fly here. My testimony was not subpoenaed. I am not the kind of woman to bare all but I have walked topless to show what I will not hide.When her breasts were cut away she decidedTo travel light. She packed nothing of excess.Only essentials. Firecracker popsicles. Peaches.Intact Pelvis. Sweet Oil of Madeline. Three changesOf clothing. A cell phone. A Stroller. And herDaily Dear God. Her prayers fueled by the powerOf electrolytes and the salt and pepper kindnessStrangers. In the blazing summer sun the sweetGeorgia peaches go down easy in the warmthOf mother and daughter mouths. You can stillBe alive without your breasts. Im still beautiful.The girly girl proclaims. Certainly, no less a woman.The woman who can still turn a head is showingThe world what a womans body looks like whenWar has been declared. The look of more thanCatastrophe. How the curve of the human spineWill absorb the sad shock of news it did not wantTo hear. The magic of Bipedal locomotion + strongKnees when we stand it up then hold out our armsAnd say Walk. The breast-less body in full sail,Moving the wheels of the determined mind. Theorchestra of the pelvis singing from the HymnalOf Courage, page 24. What it means to be womanAnd opening a new beauty shop without permit,License, or permission. The birthday sunrise of theGirly girl arrives. Its June 30th. She pushes MadelinesStroller past Quantico, the Pentagon, the 14th StreetBridge. The steps of the Capitol see her. MadelineStands up. Senator, thank you for seeing me.Popsicle? Peach? What say you about a cure?Nikky Finney has written four books of poetry, including Head Off & Split, for which she won the 2011 National Book Award. She wrote this original piece for the 2016 espnW Women + Sports Summit. Always wearing a business suit and hat, Connie Mack managed the Philadelphia Athletics for the baseball teams first 50 seasons -- and occasionally fell asleep in the dugout during his latter years -- before retiring at age 87 in 1950. Of course, he also was the teams partial or sole owner those 50 years, so Mack didnt have to worry about a boss calling him into the office and ordering him to pack his bags.That isnt the case for pretty much everyone else in the coaching profession, who can face dismissal after even one bad year. Why, only five of the 30 active NBA coaches have been with their current club for more than three years. As former Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson wrote in his autobiography about his 27 years with that club: The control I was able to exert over Manchester United was a privilege few managers will be lucky enough to know.Thats what makes Arsene Wengers tenure as Arsenals manager impressive. Oct. 1 will mark the 20th anniversary of when he officially took over for what has been by far the longest managerial tenure in club history. He is the only active Premier League manager who has been with his current club more than four seasons. That is noteworthy, even outside soccer.To have that kind of longevity, former baseball manager Tony La Russa said, he must not only have a tremendous knowledge of the game and how to manage, but he also does something well to relate with the players.Yet even as successful as Wenger has been -- three Premier League championships and six FA Cup titles -- this past spring there were fans jeering and holding banners with such wording as: Thanks for the memories but its time to say goodbye.It isnt easy keeping a coaching job. For most people. Jim Boeheim started as the Syracuse University mens basketball coach in 1976 and still holds that position 40 years later, longer than any other active coach or manager in a major American sport. What advice would he give to someone just starting out?Try to do a great job and win. Then you can last another year, Boeheim said with a laugh. Just keep winning and youll be all right. Nothing else will matter. If you win, youll be OK. If you dont win, youll be looking for another job.Maintaining a managerial position is difficult anywhere, but coaches tend to last longer at the college level. In addition to there being more teams, coaches can acquire much more control at schools than in the pros, and the universities are not bought and sold by multibillionaire owners who want to make instant changes.I think [control] is something coaches ask for when they take a job, former Florida State football coach Bobby Bowden said. You can imagine the control Nick Saban has at Alabama. He probably has the biggest staff in the country, and whatever he wants, he gets. If you have the biggest weight room, he will get one bigger. If you have the biggest dormitory, he will get one bigger.Bowden coached Florida State for 34 years before leaving at age 80 after the 2009 season. Thats a long time, but consider that Eddie Robinson was Grambling States football coach for 55 years.The professional level is different, with the great majority of coaches and managers in major sports having been with teams less than four years. Gregg Popovich, who has been coaching the NBAs San Antonio Spurs since 1996, is the longest-tenured active coach with one team in U.S. major professional sports. Los Angeles Angels manager Mike Scioscia and New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick, who both took over their teams in 2000, are the longest serving in Major League Baseball and the NFL, respectively. Claude Julien, about to enter his 10th season with the Boston Bruins, is the longest tenured in the NHL.The professional ranks are more difficult to last a long time in, Boeheim said. Its just a different dynamic to the whole thing. If you dont get some good players, youre not going to last very long. In college, you have the chance to recruit more players and maybe get better. Its harder and the longevity is more difficult in the NBA than it is in college.Another factor, Scioscia says, is that a successful college coach is not only the coach, hes his own general manager. Hes going to go out and recruit the players he wants. Hes going to run the program the way he wants to. As a baseball manager, you are definitely part of a team of not only coaches but a team connected with executives and front office guys that are the people who put the team together.As a baseball manager, Ive been very fortunate to have this opportunity, but that beecomes more fragile the length of time youre in one place because general managers change very often and there are a lot of things youre not just in control of.ddddddddddddJust staying with one team doesnt inherently make the job all that much easier.Weve probably had four or five, six turnovers -- or different looks -- with this team. Its not like you manage the same players for 16 years, Scioscia said. There are always new challenges about team building and figuring out how the parts work. A lot of managers have to do that when they go to different organizations. Ive just been doing it at one organization, but I think the challenges are the same.Generational changes are part of that dynamic.When I started coaching in the 1950s after World War II, Bowden said, youd tell a kid to do something and he would not bat an eye. He just did it. And if not, you threatened to get rid of them. Nowadays you have to sell them on it. Tell them that if you do it that way, it will help you in this way.As the athletes approach changes over generations, so must the coaches. Which is part of the reason why La Russa, now chief baseball officer for the Arizona Diamondbacks, always made certain to read up on and research leadership methods.Probably the key to longevity is you have to maintain a really fresh and Whats next? attitude, said La Russa, who had two managerial stops that lasted at least a decade, 10 years with the Oakland Athletics and 16 with the St. Louis Cardinals. You can have a couple good years and human nature is to get complacent. Its really vital to free your mind so that youre always looking at whats next. Its good. It makes you hungry to do more.Just to stay fresh is really important, especially with the people youre leading. If you stand up and just start yakking, they may tune you out because theyve heard you say it before.While coaches and managers get older, being around young athletes helps them retain some youth. Scioscia says that coaching players from different cultures also is very beneficial.I think its fun if you embrace the cultural differences of kids from Latin America or kids from California or North Carolina or South Korea, he said. Its been a learning experience for me. I think when you sift through all the cultural difference and changes not only in our club today but how things that have evolved in 16 years, the one thing that these players are connected with is their passion for the game. And thats what you need to tap into to motivate them.Bear Bryant coached the University of Alabama football team for 25 years and won six national championships. After his final game, a reporter asked Bryant what he planned to do in retirement. He replied, Probably croak in a week. He died of a heart attack a month later.Bowden has been enjoying retired life after his full 57 years in coaching.All of a sudden, there is a big weight lifted from your shoulders, he said. I didnt have to worry about players grades, worry about conduct, worry about a 2 oclock call from the police. All of a sudden a weight was lifted off my shoulders. And boy, was it different. Boy, what a relief. Now, I just have to worry about food that I still have to buy.Boeheim, who turns 72 in November, says he will retire in two years. Well see whether that is the case. And how many more years Wenger, who turns 67 in October, keeps going. After all, when Ferguson turned 60 in 2001, he planned to retire at the end of the season, his 16th at Man U. His family, however, told him to continue managing. One, your health is good, his wife told him. Two, Im not having you in the house. And three, youre too young anyway. So he continued for another 11 years.Although now retired, Fergusons presence still remains at Old Trafford, not just in legend but in the form of a bronze statue with arms folded in a commanding manner.Meanwhile, there are new coaches and managers just beginning their careers and hoping to be able to match those of Ferguson, Wenger, Boeheim, La Russa, Bowden and others.I tip my hat to anyone who has sat in that head-coaching position for that long, whether its baseball, football or whatever sport, Seattle Mariners first-year manager Scott Servais said of Wengers 20-year reign. Its not just the game action; its all of the other stuff. The fans dont see it, but experience really does help. I marvel at those people.I hope I get in that position.Well then, he better keep winning. ' ' '