At the beginning of a documentary on rowing (“The Drive”) available on YouTube, Peter Mallory makes much of the claim that almost alone among modern sports, rowing began as hard work, as slave labor and as the bluest of blue-collar occupations. Consider rowers impressed to propel Greek triremes, but mostly consider the watermen of the…

It has been brought to my attention that sculling just might have a certain effete, blue-blood, ivy-league, trust-fund pretentiousness attached to it. Maybe I should reconsider the color scheme. I bet I could repurpose a wrap to produce something like this: Of course, I’ll also have to mount a fishing rod on it. ETA: good…

Just to be clear, there is nothing unusual about a 66-year-old guy rowing. There are categories in competitive rowing for men and women my age and well beyond. (Boston’s Head of the Charles regatta offers six categories for rowers in single sculls over 60. “Grand-Veteran Singles II,” is for rowers 85 and over.) What’s slightly…

More accurately, movies that feature rowing or use it for their own cheap or artistic purposes. I haven’t seen many of these, so, more about some of them later. Some may actually be about rowing and some may just have drive-by scenes. But that’s OK. I honestly think my introduction to rowing, such as it…

There are books about rowing. Instruction books. Meditative books. Allegorical books. Memoirs of rowers. Books that mention rowing, and books that dwell on rowing. There are visual arts centered on rowing. Picture books. Galleries filled with paintings of rowers rowing (as Edgar Degas was to dancers, so Thomas Eakins was…). There are movies about rowing,…