I’m struck by the idea of relevance. A new e-mail publication, or paid content that lights up your inbox on a regular basis, called Inside Hook, is devoted to the idea that men in their 40s need the equivalent of a social director on a cruise ship (presumably because in your 40s, as opposed to your 20s, you are saddled with non-hip responsibilities, aka, a wife, children, a dog, an income-producing job . . .)
This is why, it seems to me, Barney Rosset (see picture at right, and previous post) never failed to amaze me. As far as I was concerned, Barney, who passed away on Feb. 21, was always doing the equivalent of sitting on a park bench and reading manuscripts while the likes of Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso looked on. Another martini? Why the hell not? When you are the outlaw/badass of Manhattan publishing, what the hell do you need with the Inside Hook? You are the Inside Hook . . .
We reinforce this way of thinking about cultural relevance everywhere you look. Which is to say that being elder (not an elder, that may suggest grudging respect) but gray-haired and elder is code in today’s Inside Hook culture for irrelevant and over. Take the Nielsen ratings, in which the only category that merits attention is 18-to-49. Over 49? Sign up for AARP membership and make sure your generic drug supply is in order. You’ve had your day, now get out of the way!
Sherry Turkle, author of “Alone Together: Why We Expect More From Technology and Less From Each Other http://bit.ly/wXlUbO,” says young people, who increasingly rely on technology to stay relevant, feel “resignation and impotence” in the face of the vast online history that trails behind them http://bit.ly/xwYMSv. Here’s my takeaway from Lidija Haas’ review in the Feb. 23, 2012 London Review of Books (see previous link): “Turkle argues that people risk impairing the quality of their thought and communication by so often resorting to media designed only for short, simplified messages,” and “Turkle worries that frequent contact through texting or [even] on Skype doesn’t leave the space for a real conversation.”
There are trade-offs. Ask Angelina Jolie, she of the bizarre leg jutting through the sex-vamp dress at the Oscars http://bit.ly/AC6bB9, if you can have your cake and eat it too. (Can we finally dispense with the rank obsession for Brangelina? Or maybe this says as much about the innate human fascination with public wrecks: how invariably the traffic is stalled up ahead not because of a sudden clot of cars and trucks on the highway but because there has been an accident and drivers have slowed and near-stopped to rubberneck.)
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This week (Tuesday, Feb. 28) was a thriller. Cold with the wind, an eye-waterer. Green-Wood Cemetery, Brooklyn. Quaker parrots, a pair, hang out sqawk-talking atop a one-story outbuilding at the Con Ed substation, 24th street between Fifth and Sixth avenues.
I’ve stiff at the outset but eventually, around 20th Street and Sixth, moving easily, perked up by My Private Lady Liberty views, at 24th Street between Fifth and Sixth and at the crest of 36th Street, moving toward Fort Hamilton Parkway, a fuller look at her in the New York Harbor, then 105-count street trees to Shannon’s Florist and Nursery and along to McDonald Avenue, the rise, this day 996 strides – good to be under 1,000, so my pace has lifted a little since a previous run – and down back for a Lady Liberty redux, before another climb at 16th Street, Det. Joseph Mayrose Park, and up and up to Windsor Terrace, Prospect Park West, paving stones and left at the Catholic church and the second lady look, Our Lady’s ball field, and high-stepping it now into the park, down to Lake Drive, where I nod to the tree where we sprinkled the ashes of Mary’s deceased father, Sol, his tree near the lake and farther on to a final climb to the mini-outlook above and across from the Picnic House and down toward the road that winds around the park and home: 9.4 miles, all told.
There are about 45 more days until the Boston Marathon. This time last year I was hobbled by a badly strained hammy. With three weeks to go, it tore and the race was lost. This year, I’m running like the above paragraph would suggest. And stretching and weight-training. I’ve been training with the view that I have a realistic chance of finishing at 3:30 or under – and, thus, qualifying for New York City Marathon 2012. Realistically this will be my last chance to qualify by time; for in 2013, the QT is a road-burning 3:14, a threshold that only 44 of Boston Marathon male racers in the 55-59 category managed last year, or 2.9 percent of BM finishers in that age group (compared to 11 percent of those who finished 3:30 or under.)
Next: Running for Your Life: March Madness
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