Running for Your Life: April Fools Day and Grampa

Every year it’s the same thing. April 1 rolls around and I think of my grandfather, my mother’s father. April Fools Day was his birthday. If he were alive today, he would be 126 years old.

There are people in your life who play a role as savior. I’m a firm believer in the adage that you make your own chances. Some people may have certain advantages in terms of wealth that leads to an access to a first-rate education, or more important, contact with those who are blessed with insight and compassion, those who help shape the people we become.

In each and every case, though, it’s the individual whose actions yield the exceptional. At the end of the day, we look at ourselves in the mirror and there is only one person who looks back.

Then there are people like my grandfather. William Samuel Neath lived with us for three years. In a small room off the front door of my Aunt Gloria’s house that we were renting in the early 1960s. He was old and feeble then and I was a mere boy, sensitive and quiet. He did little more than lounge in his LazyBoy and smoke a pipe. For breakfast he drank tea and ate an orange that he’d first roll with the flat of his hand to better encourage the juice to flow from what counted for bulk citrus in Owen Sound, Ontario, in 1962.

On April Fools Day, Grampa would have me trace the scar from a wound he received in the Great War. Bone fragments had lodged in his forearm, and when I’d do as I was told and press the hard lump, his arm sprung up in mock salute and we’d laugh and laugh.

That thought always makes me smile. He is gone all these years, but in the days leading up to April Fools, I always pause to think of him. On that single day I convince myself that he too is looking back at me in the mirror, I resemble him now as much as I remember him then.

Next: Running for Your Life: C’mon in to The Jazz Palace !!

Running for Your Life: If-The-Greats-Were-With-Us Thursday

On the event of the March 19 LRB http://www.lrb.co.uk/ review by Christopher Tayler of the third volume of Samuel Beckett’s letters (1957-65) http://bit.ly/1CRUN1M, I can only imagine that Beckett would repurpose this tweet (from a letter to his friend Barbara Bray) to try to restore order in the embattled conscience of someone close to him:

“Work your head off and sleep at any price and leave the rest to the stream, to carry now away and bring you your other happy days.”

Next: Running for Your Life: April?

Running for Your Life: In My Blood by Pascal Dupuis

http://bit.ly/1ABbLQB Mad April (and May and June), the Stanley Cup hockey playoffs, will be here in no time.

They always make a great story. How will the Kings climb, the Penguins swoon? The Maple Leafs? The Leafs wait till next year.

This spring, though, my favorite story when it comes to the game is the one above by Pascal Dupuis in Derek Jeter’s The Players’ Tribune. Take a moment and read this memoir piece above by a hockey player with a blood condition identical to the one that has me running every other day for the past thirty-plus years.

In a report out this week, http://bit.ly/1HyH3M0, Penguins manager Jim Rutherford said, “I do feel confident he’ll return to the team next year.”

If the Pens play with half the heart of the man on the sidelines, they’d win the Cup in a walk.

Next: Running for Your Life: If-The-Greats-Were-With-Us Thursday 

Running for Your Life: Throw back Throwback Thursday

It seems to me if you’re in the mood to post nostalgia on social media – and who isn’t? from time immemorial we humans have been accustomed to the idea of seeing our early life as glory years, when we were more handsome (more beautiful), had more energy (more fun) and were less unencumbered (money worries? us?) – then post those vintage snaps every day, not just on Throwback Thursday.

In fact, when you look at the pictures that people use to identify themselves on social media, the very notion of here and now – like what is happening, or what is on your mind – is being filtered by that vision of a better time, that Throwback Thursday, if you will. That photo on social media we show the world doesn’t look like the face we look at every morning in the mirror. It’s posed, caught in one perfect moment or another, often in such a way that when you actually see the flesh and blood person and not the Facebook “friend,” you won’t even recognize him (her) because, well, she (he) looks like someone else.

I propose to throw back Throwback Thursday. Why kid ourselves, the majority of us long for the past, not just on one day of the week. A time when spring rolled around and lo and behold the mind did turn to thoughts of love. Why don’t we just call it what it is: the Throwback Internet?

That is, unless you’re a millennial. Then social media is all you’ve known. And there’s no simple blogpost prescription that can help to interpret and navigate the psychic potholes of that mental landscape.

Next: Running for Your Life: In My Blood by Pascal Dupuis 

Running for Your Life: Paper Boy

In the late 1960s, I was a paper boy. I delivered the now-defunct Toronto Telegram on Saturdays to home subscribers in Owen Sound, Ontario, and loved to accompany my pal, Greg Dunham, on his daily route, delivering the Owen Sound Sun Times. Ten years later, I would work at the Sun Times as a cub reporter, and inevitably find myself in the newsboy and newsgirl room, where the papers – hot off the press – were stacked before they were picked up after school for home delivery.

I’ve been in the news business now through almost four decades, reporting and editing for weeklies and dailies, mostly. From the Prescott Journal weekly in Eastern Ontario to the Chelsea Clinton News weekly in West Side Manhattan to the Wall Street Journal to, currently, the New York Post.

At work, I write on a computer now – originally paper in a typewriter – but I don’t read the finished product on one. I’ve tried but it’s ink that runs in my veins so I read newspapers and hardback and paperback books. When it comes to something beyond one hundred words, I print it out. For me the type isn’t real unless I can run my fingers over the page. Especially when it comes to papers. I know too much about headlines and body text, about “widows” and “orphans.” I know when a headline will fit. There are no headlines on the Internet.

When I’m running in the park, I think at times the trees are shuddering when I pass. For those with a bent toward environmentalism, as a lifelong newsman I’ve been a party to the killing of hundreds of thousands of trees. Not something I’m proud of.

The millions of screen readers aren’t a threat to trees. But they are a threat to the beauty of long form writing. With the change in reading delivery systems – from real books to e-books, from newspapers to news websites – comes a restriction to an elimination of a certain kind of writing. The shorter attention span of screen readers spawns ever briefer fiction, ever sparer news items. Keep it busy, keep it moving.

Me, I long to return to a slow afternoon in the newspaper supply room, the papers piling up. Failing that, there’s nothing better than sitting down with a cup of coffee and reading the paper, if it’s a good one, every single article on every single page.

Next: Running for Your Life: Throwback Throwback Thursdays  

Running for Your Life: Running Outside Again!

It might not happen every day. It would be foolish to think so given the kind of winter we’ve had: Blizzards, snowstorms that defied forecasts, ice cover for weeks unlike anything I’ve seen in my 27 years in New York City. Except for the one colossally botched forecast of a non-blizzard that nonetheless shut down the subway and exposed the Keystone Kops media for what they are (“I’m standing in a snowbank here and you can see that my feet are entirely covered by snow!”), Gotham weather has been worse than expected every single day for two months.

That screwy pattern is continuing, but instead of snow and sleet, we’ve rain and clouds. The sun as likely to appear as your clown uncle you loved as a child who never failed to make you belly laugh – something you didn’t do very often – but he didn’t come around to see you hardly at all.

For me, it’s back to the birds. To attempt in this new season to channel those wee things as I finally get back to running on the trails in Prospect Park. Today (March 17) I saw my first cardinal in weeks! And a blue jay, looking resplendent as they do, none the worse for winter wear.

The trees are alive with their sounds. Yesterday (March 16) M and I saw two playful robins in the air, flying united, flutter-balling, which would sound naughty if they were mammals, but as birds it’s meant to describe the frenzy of mating, the best sign I can think of at the moment that after a seemingly endless winter spring has sprung.

 Next: Running for Your Life: Paper Boy

Running for Your Life: On Making Modern Love

It is has simply overwhelming the response to my wife Mary’s essay in the Sunday Styles Section of the New York Times. If you missed it, here it is: http://nyti.ms/1EqyZJL.

My great pal and New York Post writing and editing partner Mike Tully told me yesterday (March 15) that after reading this essay he felt compelled to preorder Mary’s new novel, The Jazz Palace http://bit.ly/1u2XLhD. He said he had every intention of ordering it on or near its official publication date. But that the beauty and craft of the Modern Love column was too enticing, so rather than let another minute go by, he stopped and preordered the book online.

Word to the wise: A preorder is an order. The only difference is, you will get the book sooner than the person who waits until the official date of April 7 to push that button.

To all those readers out there, don’t delay. Check out the book tab in the link above. And do like Mike. I swear you won’t be sorry.

Next: Running for Your Life: Finally, Running Outside Again !

Running for Your Life: Liberals Dead Tired of Hillary II

Welcome to the second in a series of arguments of just why Liberals Are, yes, Dead Tired of Hillary!

Three blogposts ago, you’ll find the first in the series. That argument gave the domestic political reasoning of why Liberals Are Dead Tired of Hillary.

For the foreign political reasoning, I give you the highlights of a crystal-clear damning of Saint Hillary (aka, Deleter of the Free World, Post cover, March 11) distilled from a review of two books, Hard Choices by Hillary Clinton, and HRC: State Secrets and the Rebirth of Hillary Clinton, by Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes, written by Jackson Lears in the Feb. 5 edition of the London Review of Books.

To wit:

• Despite [the differing styles of the Bush and Clinton candidacies], the intent is the same: rewarding friends and punishing enemies, the latter with such precision that one of her staffers fears Hillary will come to seem little different from “Nixon in a pantsuit.”

• Exceptionalists (as in, America must honor its unique responsibility for global leadership) like Clinton are unable to conceive of a multipolar world where some nations might prefer to go their own way.

• While she admits she “got it wrong” in voting for the invasion of Iraq, she shows no sign of having learned from her mistake … Clinton’s courtship of [General David Petraeus] reveals a deeper amnesia. Like most Washington policymakers, she has forgotten the failure of counterinsurgency in Vietnam.

• The exceptionalist outlook transcends party ideology; it is embraced by the Clintons, the Bushes and the entire Washington establishment. We badly need a public debate that challenges this consensus. But we are unlikely to have it, given the widespread assumption that Hillary Clinton is the only alternative to the all too real nightmare of Republican rule. (From a letter written in reply to a reader, March 19 edition)

Next: Running for Your Life: Finally, Outside Again !

Running for Your Life: Live at "The Jazz Palace"

Now’s the time. The worst of the winter is past and official spring is only spitting distance away. Winter had such a hold on us this year that we could be forgiven for losing sight of the fact that we were very nearly upon the season of the speakeasy: to toss our toques and scarves aside and don our spats and flapper dresses.

 ’Cause we’re about to be live at The Jazz Palace http://bit.ly/1AWKSSS.

The link tells you everything you need to know. First, that my wife Mary Morris is about to share with the rest of the world the novel, “The Jazz Palace.” Soon the characters I’ve lived with for years – think Don Draper of “Mad Men,” Walter White of “Breaking Bad” – will be fictive flesh.

I can’t wait to see what the rest of the world thinks of Benny Lehrman, the drama king of “The Jazz Palace.” But like “MM” and “BB,” you might be drawn more to others on the novel’s stage: Napoleon Hill. Or Pearl Chimbrova. Opal or Anna. Or Mister Marcopolis.

Click on the events button http://bit.ly/1AWKSSS. It will be filling with details in the days and months ahead. Your town or city isn’t on the list? Get in touch with your local bookstore. In a book club? Put it on the upcoming reading list. Maybe the author herself will come to discuss it.

Be ahead of the curve, because in no time at all the book will be everywhere. Everyone is invited to be there. To be live at “The Jazz Palace.”    

Next: Running for Your Life: Liberals Dead Tired of Hillary II

Running for Your Life: If-The-Greats-Were-With-Us Thursday

This is how Eugene O'Neill would respond in a tweet to a $1 million offer to write a screenplay for Harvey Weinstein:

No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No .No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No.

Next: Running for Your Life: Live at the Jazz Palace

Running for Your Life: Liberals Dead Tired of Hillary

So, go ahead call me anti-Hillary. There are arguments to be made for Hillary, but here is the essence of the two pro-Hillary arguments, given the odds-on eventuality of her winning the 2016 Democratic nomination:

A vote against Hillary is a vote for the Republicans (read Bill O’Reilly and his two running mates). Besides, it’s time for a woman to be president.

Does the single name Hillary – think Beyonce, Rihanna, Madonna – imply talent and gravitas? Or showmanship? Talent in Hillary’s case is a cynical attempt to distance herself from the legacy and policies of her husband. That’s just not okay, or so say the members of the emerging iPAC, Liberals Dead Tired of Hillary.  

We in the growing segment of Americans who are tired of Hillary would like to exercise our votes, not stay away from the polls because we can’t find it in our hearts, minds or souls to vote for a Clinton, or God forbid, a third Bush.

It is past the time for liberals to beat the drum in support of candidates who are not Hillary (i.e.) Bernie Sanders http://bit.ly/1B7I6Ob or, even, Jim Webb http://bit.ly/1Gl9GMb.

Maybe we need a shrewd Nixon-like leader for the next eight years. Not Nixon? Who do you think Hillary was learning from by not allowing her official Secretary of State emails to become an embarrassment to her presidency. Look at what the official tapes did for Nixon’s. Watergate, oh, and read the Blood Telegram http://nyti.ms/1Gl9Sei and tell me that Hillary wasn’t trickier than Dick to NOT take the risk of having her SOS emails unearthed.

Domestic politics under Hillary? Here’s a quote for you: When most of the population either does not know or does not care that the lowest socioeconomic classes live in something akin to a police state, we should be greatly concerned for the moral health of our society.”

Where did that come from? That bulwark of economic social justice: The Wall Street Journal, in a review of The Divide by Matt Taibbi http http://nyti.ms/1gwlOwv, a must-read treatise on the injustice in the age of the wealth gap in the United States.

And how did the Clintons (yes, a vote for Hillary is a vote for Bill) figure in this. It was the Clintons who re-demonized blacks in a nakedly cynical grab for the southern vote by promising to “end welfare as we know it.” What’s more, while pandering the stain of black economic dependency to prejudiced white voters, they were overseeing the deregulation of financial markets so that the rich would get richer. Reagan may have been responsible for the evil of trickle-down economics, but it was Clintonian policy that did the major damage, that accelerated the wealth gap to the point that eventually led to the protesters of  …..

While the Clintons ended welfare as we know it, they built welfare-fraud police into something reminiscent of the Soviet system. Taibbi writes:

“Welfare fraud was prosecuted [under the Clintons] like never before, and welfare fraud investigators multiplied like rats in every state in the country, forming unions and lobbying agencies.”

Taibbi goes on: “ [The Clintons’] political formula for seizing the presidency was simple. [The Clintons] made money tight in the ghettos and let it flow freely on Wall Street. [The Clintons] showered the projects with cops and bean counters and pulled the cops off the beat in the financial services sector. And in one place [the Clintons] created vast new mountain ranges of paperwork, while in another, paperwork simply vanished.”

It may be time for a woman. But Liberals Dead Tired of Hillary sure don’t think this is the one.

Next: Running for Your Life: What If The Greats Were With Us!

Running for Your Life: Embracing Slowness

It’s inevitable. As you age, you simply don’t move as fast as you did your prime. And that’s a good thing. Consider it your body’s way of keeping you active and avoiding injury.

I’ve written here before about the fuzzy term of listening to your body. Just exactly how do you do that?

In my case it has come about through a routine that hasn’t varied since the middle ’70s. In the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s I ran every other day at an eight-minute mile pace, and in the Zeroes every other day at 8:30 and in the past five years, closer to 8:45.

Slowness, of course, isn’t limited to road work. These days I try to give myself more time to get to work, or to prepare a meal, get to a movie or a play. And this winter slowness has been a natural response to all the ice and snow we’ve had.

In a car, we slow to the condition of the road, walking the dog in the park, we slow as we climb slick banks and negotiate black ice pavement. Why? Because falling isn’t an option. Our bodies are so much slower to heal with age.

Do you equate slowness with boredom? Protect the body through exercise and eating and drinking responsibly (cutting down on booze at night), and you’ll sleep more soundly, and most important, protect the mind. We are slower, but critically, we don’t, if our mind is sharpened by embracing the idea of slow motion, feel slower.

That’s the beauty of being a human. Mind over matter. We can literally convince ourselves that we are only as young as we feel. As  the old man runner (see image at right) of my blog so enthusiastically declares: Reverse Age That Body.

Next: Running for Your Life: Live at The Jazz Palace