Running for Your Life: If the Greats Were With Us Thursday

Just when you thought there wasn’t a cool head in Washington, along comes a pleasant surprise.

From former GOP presidential nominee John McCain, no less.

Oh, yes, thankfully, McCain is still with us. (And, if there is a higher power let her bestow real power on the likes of Republicans like John McCain in these next several months before the general election.)

No, this If the Greats Were With Us Thursday, is about The Good Soldier. McCain speaks for him in the person of one Delmer Berg. McCain wrote about Delmer Berg in a New York Times opinion essay, the best I’ve read in the Gray Lady in many a moon.

Here it is: Let the spirit of what moved McCain to write this piece lift prejudice and hate wherever it is found.

The Good Soldier by John McCain (NYT, March 25)

An interesting obituary appeared in The New York Times recently, though the death of its subject last month was largely unnoticed beyond his family and friends.

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Running for Your Life: Earbud Art

I have little use for earbud headphones while running, or walking. Or in the subway.

But I do have an idea.

How about earbud art?

Say tangles of white (and color painted) headphone cable and earbuds in the style of a Jackson Pollock.

Or, more daringly, an earbud tangle in the shape of the Creation of Adam, the Sistine Chapel fresco by Michelangelo.

Or, third, The Scream by Edvard Munch.

I would suggest our Earbud Art show end on The Scream.

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

Running for Your Life: The Knee Solution

Maybe I’m not the ideal commentator on this subject. I have never suffered a serious knee injury, say, an ACL tear or a hampering meniscus injury. But the day before Halloween last year I was forced off a fast-moving treadmill when I felt something “snap” in the muscle group on the outside of my left kneecap.

What followed was such debilitating pain that kept me away from running for months. While I never got a firm diagnosis for what happened to me, the closest I came was what my sports physical therapist said: I had a runaway IT Band (Iliotibial Band) that messed with nerve endings. (There was minimal swelling and no bruising.)

My Knee Solution? A combination of lunges, squats and leg lifts, that zero in on building thigh, knee and butt muscles. Most important, in doing the lunges and squats, stick with it. Do reps of 30 each. Taking special care that when you go down on the lunge the forward bent knee does NOT extend beyond the front foot.

These kinds of exercises helped to restore my running form, in that I keep my full weight more parallel to the ground so that I cushion the inevitable pounding of the foot strikes through my newly conditioned thighs, knees and butt.

The upshot is that I am back to thinking that I could retrain to run long for my life. Right now, I’m happy to do four miles, five miles, the occasional six.

If you have sore knees, or don’t want to have them, think about working out with these simple exercises. They are certainly working for me !

Next: Running for Your Life: Ear Bud Art

Running for Your Life: 21 Days Under the Sky

Be the first on your block to own the DVD to 21 Days Under the Sky ... http://apple.co/1Uxriwa

Anyone with even passing knowledge of this blog will know that I don't get too much in the habit of pushing products on people. (Well, books ... but in my constellation of ethos and values, books don't count as products. Leastways, not those devoted to ideas and art.)

This is different. 21 Days Under the Sky was written by my daughter, Kate O'Connor Morris. And, yeah, I'm over the moon with pride. But, man, she can write. When it comes to the words in this movie, it is all Kate.

Check out the trailer. https://vimeo.com/157336355 Turn up the volume. This is something you just can't miss!

Next: Running for Your Life: The Knee Problem

Running for Your Life: Essay Writing, Advanced

So you want to be an essayist. An essayist on serious matters. Or, uh, walk that back a bit … You actually love to read essays that are immaculately structured, humble (not clever!) in tone and tell you something about what you care about in a way that is surprising, intelligent and entertaining.

If this sounds like you. Or half of you. Take a few moments and read this essay (from the London Review of Books, March 3, alternate title, The Faceless Unnamed) by Frances Stonor Saunders. Thankfully, this thinker is not one of those in the If the Greats Were With Us Thursday department …

Where on Earth are you?

Frances Stonor Saunders

The one border we all cross, so often and with such well-rehearsed reflexes that we barely notice it, is the threshold of our own home. We open the front door, we close the front door: it’s the most basic geographical habit, and yet one lifetime is not enough to recount all our comings and goings across this boundary. What threshold rites do you perform before you leave home? Do you appease household deities, or leave a lamp burning in your tabernacle? Do you quickly pat down pockets or bag to check you have the necessary equipment for the journey? Or take a final check in the hall mirror, ‘to prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet’?

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Running for Your Life: Let It Come to You

Some time ago my daughter K was in a car in Los Angeles when she came upon a dog. It was hard to tell at the time just actually what kind of dog she found, the creature was in such a desperate, starved state. The car stopped, K got out to investigate, and the dog mustered the strength to get up, circle round her and get into the vacated car, where she promptly curled up and went fast asleep.

At about the same time, C, her current partner, was riding his bicycle on LA streets, when he saw a car swerve, slow down and then, at a crawling speed, deposit a tiny pet onto the asphalt. C came upon the dog, a Chihuahua, and before taking him to an animal clinic, took a shoelace off one of his boots and looped it around the little dog’s neck, in order to better keep a hold on him, as he peddled off to the vets.

So started the stories of Stella, the most gentle of blue pitbulls, and Shoelace, or Shoey. For years now these grateful, winning animals have been bringing joy into our family life.

A lot is said about the importance of ambition and hardheadedness when it comes to getting what you want. This, of course, is true. But as these stories suggest, don’t lose sight of how the possibilities in life, in enriched soulful experiences, can come from narrowing your focus on what you truly want. Perhaps, when we acknowledge we have done the work – both on ourselves and on what we consider the product of our endeavors – maybe we can stop chasing and allow things – from pets to lovers to finished manuscripts – to come to us.

  

Next: Running for Your Life: 21 Days Under the Sky 

Running for Your Life: If the Greats Were With Us Thursday

It’s St. Paddy’s day … 

MUSIC          

By Frank O’Hara (1926-1966)

        If I rest for a moment near The Equestrian

pausing for a liver sausage sandwich in the Mayflower Shoppe,

that angel seems to be leading the horse into Bergdorf’s

and I am naked as a table cloth, my nerves humming.

Close to the fear of war and the stars which have disappeared.

I have in my hands only 35¢, it’s so meaningless to eat!

and gusts of water spray over the basins of leaves

like the hammers of a glass pianoforte. If I seem to you

to have lavender lips under the leaves of the world,

      I must tighten my belt.

It’s like a locomotive on the march, the season

      of distress and clarity

and my door is open to the evenings of midwinter’s

lightly falling snow over the newspapers.

Clasp me in your handkerchief like a tear, trumpet

of early afternoon! in the foggy autumn.

As they’re putting, up the Christmas trees on Park Avenue

I shall see my daydreams walking by with dogs in blankets,

put to some use before all those coloured lights come on!

      But no more fountains and no more rain,

      and the stores stay open terribly late.

[1954]

Next: Running for Your Life: Let It Come to You 

Running for Your Life: After Super Tuesday 2.0

So Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan (that prize) “will not accept” the GOP nomination, according to the latest breaking news (March 16).

Meanwhile, Donald Trump reboots call for unity. For its part, the GOP has fingers securely plugged in ears. Wilfully disregarding reality. (There were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq; the president is not really nominating a judge for the Supreme Court.) Trump’s insurmountable delegate count lead isn’t a fact unless Republican Party elders say it’s so.

I can understand the tendency to say that we are living in interesting, if not dangerous, times. Unless, of course, we adopt this new American way of wilfully disregarding reality. What, me, worry?

What’s next? We haven’t come close to testing the limits of that …

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

Running for Your Life: What Are You Reading?

When it comes to Divides in books, here’s my takeaway:

Pick up “The Divide” by gonzo journo Matt Taibbi and pick up (and then put down) “The Great Divide” by esteemed economist Joseph E. Stiglitz.

So much can be gleaned from a book’s first taste. (I found that to be true of the runaway bestseller “H is for Hawk” by Helen Macdonald. She ends her opening sentence with the word “indeed.” No greatness can come of that.)

So, let’s play. The Divide’s opener:

Tuesday, July 9, 2013, a blisteringly hot day in New York City. I’m in a cramped, twelfth-story closet of a courtroom, squeezed onto a wooden bench full of heavily perspiring lawyers and onlookers, watching something truly rare in the annals of modern American criminal justice  – the prosecution of a bank.  

The Great Divide:

The book begins with the onset of the Great Recession, several years before the start of the Times’s Great Divide series. The first selection was published in Vanity Fair in December 2007, the very month the U.S. economy slipped into a downturn that would prove to be the worst since the Great Depression.

Urgent political times demand powerful writing (and reading) responses. The Divide answers the call. The Great Divide, not so much.

Next: Running for Your Life: After Super Tuesday 2.0

Running for Your Life: If the Greats Were With Us Thursday

It’s that time of year when minds of young (and old) men of a certain small-town Canadian demographic turn to: hockey.

Not long ago in this space, I wrote about the passing of hockey great Jean Beliveau, a true gentleman of the game.

For those of us who cheered not for the Montreal Canadiens, Beliveau’s team, but for two years with the Toronto Maple Leafs of that era, a man to watch was Andy Bathgate.

In the US, hockey can too often be characterized by its brutal moments. (Seen any lugs mowing down ice officials from behind lately?) But in my mind, it’s players like Andy Bathgate (1932-2016), who epitomized the type of guy who played hard, played right, and comported himself like a gentlemen. In fact, it was Bathgate who in December 1959 produced a controversial article for True magazine in which he warned that hockey’s “unchecked brutality is going to kill somebody.” In those days, it took guts to take on the league – and when a quality player like Bathgate spoke out, people listened.

I remember my mom clapping her hands with glee, calling him by his first name as if he were family. When he won the Cup for the Leafs in 1964, real tears were shed that day. Hockey as a game is great because of the contributions of hockey players like Andy Bathgate.

Next: Running for Your Life: What Are You Reading?  

  

Running for Your Life: 24-Hour News: A Demagogue’s Dream

Demagogue (n): a person who stirs up public feelings especially of discontent, ie that politician is just a demagogue who preys upon people’s fears and prejudices.

Question: What counts as news in America more than ratings. Anyone?

Answer: You’re right. Nothing.

Question: What would you guess is delivering on high ratings (higher profits) in the history of 24-hour cable news?

Answer: Candidate debates, 2016. In this the craziest presidential election year in every talking heads’ memory what to do but slate as many candidate debates on 24-hour news channels as you can. Oh, and don’t even think to tinker with the format, especially when ratings (profits), as we’ve found in the latest business quarter, soar when a demagogue “stirs up public feelings especially of discontent, ie that politician is just a demagogue who preys upon people’s fears and prejudices.”

As to the public right to know? A mandate to perform a public service by presenting and analyzing the news in a way that doesn’t merit comparisons to March Madness or the Super Bowl or the World Series, in which each of us gather round the set or table or neighborhoods bar (Go Donald! You tell ’em, Bern!) and cheer blindly for our favorite team (brand, politician), must be a foreign idea.

I’m thinking Canada, for one.

Which might speak to why the domicile-change requests to the Canadian consulate are spiking these days. Or am I not making the right assumptions here?

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

Running for Your Life: Running and the C-Word

This latest news comes from The Economist – Feb. 27 http://econ.st/1QdaTJQ. Aerobic exercise like running has long been seen as a cancer preventive, as well as way to forestall cancer’s return after treatment.

Now, this new study says it all comes down to adrenalin, or what the test tube folks call epinephrine.

So take a medicinal form of epinephrine and get the benefits of running for your life. Good idea, right? Well, yes. And the scientists in a study in the journal Cell Metabolism came up with a second chemical factor that gets stirred up when you kick up a sweat on a run: interleukin-6.

So let’s get these drugs into production: Epinephrine and interleukin-6 to attack cancer tumors. Don’t diminish the role of running in a life, though. Put it this way: If you run for your life, you can do so without spending an arm and a leg on new drugs (in the US, anyway; drugs like these wouldn’t come to market at anything less than $100 a pill – that is, unless Bernie Sanders were to win the presidency!)

Next: Running for Your Life: 24-Hour News: A Demagogue’s Dream   

Running for Your Life: If the Greats Were With Us Thursday

Okay, a pretty large majority of us agrees that Abraham Lincoln was a great president. And, yes, Donald Trump could be assumed to be the presumptive nominee of Lincoln’s Republican Party. Quelle horreur!

Well, yes, and no. Lincoln, the famous man of “peculiar ambition,” is definitely a founding father of the nation we know. But if this great were us (and not primarily memorialized upon monuments, on sacred native land, on our $5 bill) here’s what we may be talking about in the fuller context of Honest Abe.

“[Lincoln] advanced the country toward unlimited government … He was willing to use foreigners and minority groups against his own people. He was willing to have a selective ‘democratic’ conscience when it came to subjects like deportations.”

                                                  – Sam Dixon, Journal of Historical Review, Fall 1986

Then there is this from historian Richard J. Carwardine in “Lincoln: Profiles in Power”

“Lincoln himself composed a few articles specifically for the newspapers and gave careful thought to where his public letters should first appear before they were copied Union-wide. He controlled the press’s access to his private meetings, allocated lucrative government printing contracts to selected Republican papers, and rewarded loyal editors and correspondents with well-paid jobs at home and abroad. Unsurprisingly, loyal correspondents made up the presidential trainload to Gettysburg in November 1863, their place on the platform assured; hundreds of local papers subsequently printed and celebrated Lincoln’s speech, in repudiation of Democratic ridicule of a ”silly, flat and dish-watery utterance’. Probably most important of all, Lincoln, though not dependably accessible to reporters, made sure his door was open when it needed to be.”

None of this is to excuse the hard reporting that should go into the suitability of Donald Trump’s bid for higher office. My two cents? There just might be something to learn in just what are some of the common traits (granted, hopefully a narrow sliver of a Venn diagram) of the current Republican presidential front-runner and Lincoln himself, a man who reasonable people have convinced us to use as a cudgel against Trump – rather than doing the harder work of knocking him down on matters of policy, most damagingly, his penchant for inciting hatred and violence, ie, a proposed ban on all Muslims from visiting America and the advocated killing of terrorists’ families.

Next: Running for Your Life: Running and the C-Word

   

Running for Your Life: Trouble With Slow

In a post about a month ago I let it be known that as a running pair Thurber and I were back. After one successful outing with my redbone coonhound running partner, I was bound and determined to get out there in the park at least once a week. Back to, yes, Running for Your Life !

That was then. Just over a week later, on a five-minute lope around the park with a considerably more rambunctious hound (ie, jerking on the leash, suddenly dead-stopping on the road in front of me and generally messing with my head), I felt a twinge in my left hip. Two days later the pain really set in. Yep, after months of physical therapy to correct a gimpy knee, I was on the shelf again. Unable to run.

Until today (March 2)! While I didn’t see a doctor, I’ve enough running experience to know what is what. I suffered a mild hamstring pull, and while my mobility now is hardly one hundred percent, I can run. That is, I can jog. Slow but sure. And today I went out for 45 minutes and felt no pain at all.

The trouble with slow is I want to go fast. I’m fit enough to go fast. But, when it comes to running for my life, I have to get it in my head that I can’t keep up with a spry coonhound on a five-mile run (maybe, a controlled run, say about 10-15 minutes. Frankly, though, even that’s probably not a good idea ...)

Do I want to run well into my sixties, my seventies? Then I’d better get a grip on the trouble with slow. To jog instead of run all out. To pay much better attention to any nagging pain, to not push it when the muscles are crying: “Slow down. Stop already!”

May Thurber enjoy his morning runs in the park with his pals – other dogs, that is. We might get back out soon. If he could read this blog, I know he would understand.

Next: Running for Your Life: If the Greats With Us Thursday