Running for Your Life: Eight-Year Fix

Come next week I’ll be at this running blog for eight years.

It began as an idea. That someone who started running every other day during the aftermath of a serious health ailment may just inspire a single person to do the same. What was it that former prime minister of Canada, Wilfrid Laurier, “tweeted” in an earlier blog post of mine:

“When the hour for final rest shall strike, and when my eyes shall close forever, I shall consider my life has not been wasted if I shall have contributed to heal one patriotic wound in the heart even of a single one of my fellow countrymen and to have thus promoted, even to the smallest extent, the cause of concord and harmony between the citizens of the Dominion.”

We Canadians can be like that. Stubborn when it comes to something we believe in. Look at Canadians at war, the vast number of Canadian women in real positions of political, social, judicial and religious authority.

If it’s birthright, so be it.

Meanwhile, here we go with an eight-year fix, and a pledge to keep this up for the next eight years. That would be 2026, for those counting, and damn, I’ll be seventy years old …         

A pledge is an honest statement of intention. S—t can happen, for sure. But when it comes to a certain kind of Canadian, you’d be wise to bet against what seems like more of a sure thing, like the current US president finding the courage to act in a moral, selfless and full of grace way.

Next: Running for Your Life: Never Find Yourself

Running for Your Life: Holiday Reading

It may not be for everybody, but here are some titles (old and new) that are rocking my world:

• “Brief History of Time” by Stephen Hawking is simply amazing. What strikes me is not the level of difficulty because frankly it’s not that dense (and this from a person whose brain-freeze can be ice cream-binge-y when it comes to reading about physics and mathematics) but the number of times a sentence will earn his exclamation mark!

• “Innumeracy” by John Allen Paulos. Okay, so now I’m obsessed with the fact that I’ve been on the Earth for only 22,722 days and that there is just so much more to do!

• And then there is the fella who is responsible for this spate of exciting science-based reading: “Realty Is Not What It Seems” by Carlo Rovelli. I may not be picking up everything Rovelli is putting down …. But this quantum gravity business?! I can see how it’s got minds old and young stirring bodies out of bed in the morning, chasing this holy grail of science.

Next: Running for Your Life: Eight-Year Fix

Running for Your Life: A Leader “Tweets”

 In the interest of restoring the notion of how national leaders should conduct themselves when addressing the public in a short message, I offer an example from Sir Wilfrid Laurier, (1896-1911), written nine years before he became Canada’s seventh prime minister:

“When the hour for final rest shall strike, and when my eyes shall close forever, I shall consider my life has not been wasted if I shall have contributed to heal one patriotic wound in the heart even of a single one of my fellow countrymen and to have thus promoted, even to the smallest extent, the cause of concord and harmony between the citizens of the Dominion.”

                                     

                                                  – 1887, Somerset, Quebec  

Next: Running for Your Life: Holiday Reading

Running for Your Life: Soft Coup

There is such a vast different between the silky sound of this phrase – imagine the ear of a lover, the words dew-dropping: Soft, the lightest, faintest of kind and then the harsh “C,” hold on to the heartstring-pulling oooo, note like opera – and its evil. What happens when power is the mailed fist wrapped in what used to be bone and muscle constraints – legislative, judicial, religion, mass media – but is rent to gauze.

That is what is alleged. What will follow is backlash. No need to begin with hard coup, the tanks in the street, the suspension of liberties in the name of law and order, to remove the declared illegitimate leader whoever she may be. Instead the state, aided and abetted by legislative, judicial and most powerful media voice in the land, join the whispered horror that would arise as a direct result of the certain response to the large public uprisings that would follow snuffing of the alleged soft coup attempt, the Holy Week massacre: the firing of special counsel Bob Mueller.

Soft coup. Enter religion: pray it’s not so.

Next: Running for Your Life: Holiday Reading

Running for Your Life: Renaissance Reverbs *

* News note: Michelangelo trashed early work that he thought wasn’t up to snuff.

En route to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, home to a big Michelangelo drawing show (Dec. 1).

How do you put your stamp on humanity if not to be a destroyer of worlds, in Michelangelo’s case that of his early work that would be, if it were to fall into the hands of his enemies, used against him?

What measures you take to be marked as a god (goddess) on Earth, removed from the quotidian. Ah, to not be a slave to that … To be a writer, a painter, an editor, a husband, a father, a friend, an uncle, a reader, a runner, a singer, an enthusiast of science in equal parts.

Renaissance? Or living the life in as full a manner as you're capable?

Next: Running for Your Life: Holiday Reading

Running for Your Life: What’s Nest?

One day on a recent run I came upon a small, perfectly formed bird’s nest. Like the leaves I catch when the situation presents, I carried my nest treasure carefully in my hand during the balance of my run. I later sprayed it with a light coat of varnish in order to keep its intricate shape and beauty. I collect barkskins, nests, etc., for what is becoming a visual arts project I call “Dawn Times.”

That has altered my running pathways some. On a second strangely mild day (Dec. 5) I was drawn to the sound of a blue jay, who was making an incredible racket on a Prospect Park hillside. I followed my “noise,” and came to the base of a thirty-foot tree, freshly bare of leaves. Near the top in a crux of thin branches was what must have been the cause of the commotion, and the impetus for this poem:

December, Be Damned

The sound of the blue jay

spring-rasp

in December

from above and

below the way

she defies

pinpointing

throws me,

looking up

to yet another small but perfectly

formed nest in

a barren tree

jog jog jog

toward it and

she SHOUTS

so yeah

stay the fuck away

December, be damned.

Next: Running for Your Life: Renaissance Reverbs

Running for Your Life: The Republican Social Theories *

I can’t recommend more highly this exuberantly written book on physics by Carlo Rovelli called “Reality Is Not What It Seems http://bit.ly/2ADDcy0.”

In it, Rovelli, the scientist-storyteller, follows on after Albert Einstein to explain the great man’s contributions to human understanding.

While running today (Dec. 7), I had a thought: US Republicans – ie, Trump, McConnell and Ryan – are architects of their own social theories in a manner of which parallels Einstein’s work.

As Rovelli explains, Einstein’s genius was in how he shaped his thinking from those minds who had come before: namely, Democritus, Newton, and Faraday-Maxwell.

Suffice to say, Einstein, in 1905, took the discrete definitions of space, time and particles of Newton to join spacetime, fields (Faraday-Maxwell) and particles. Then, ten years later, he would boil that down to just fields and particles.

Elegant, eh?

Einstein’s contributions are magnificence in simplicity. Answers to the very existence of the world were right there before our noses, and Einstein had the vision to see them.

Similarly, before the first Republican theory of Trump/McConnell/Ryan, the social contract was divided into three main spheres: government, business and workers (unions). In those relatively ancient times, the theory held that outcomes were calculated by interchanges between these three distinct powers.

Ah, but it is the Republican Einsteinian elegance to boil that troika down to one seamless force: business.

Oh, and as Einstein instructs us, the universe is always in motion. Behold the freshly minted Republican social theory courtesy of Alabama GOP senatorial hopeful, Roy Moore: that business ally with Christian orthodoxy in all matters of the social contract.

* With apologies to Einstein’s family and the wonder of his genius

Next: Running for Your Life: Renaissance Reverbs

Running for Your Life: Curling? In Brooklyn?

Last Wednesday (Nov. 29), during an early morning walk in Prospect Park with T, our hound dog, I came upon a small group of dog walkers who were familiar to me. (And T too, for that matter. When I say the word “Friend,” he’ll stare at me, then scour the vicinity, spot the folks and canines I’m referring to, and high tail it over to them. (It could have as much to do with the Liv-a-Snaps that more often than not “friends” will deposit into his mouth but that’s splitting hairs.)

It’s a cold morning and one of the walkers is wearing a Roots wool cap that I don’t see around Brooklyn very often, and prominently displayed on her jacket a button that says GO CURLING.

On closer inspection I could see the Roots cap had some serious curling decals on them; the 2002 Olympics Women’s Curling cap, when the Games were in Salt Lake City.

Curling? In Brooklyn?

She said, yes, at LeFrak.

My, where is that? I replied.

At the skating rink, not far from here.

(I didn’t know the nearby skating rink was called LeFrak.)

Really? Curling?

Yes, every Wednesday night and Sunday night.

I thanked her profusely, and began to think that when I retire from The Post (I currently work late on Wednesdays and Sundays), I’ll be able to curl. Just like I did throughout my childhood and young adulthood in Owen Sound and Brockville, in Ontario.

(That is, if I’m still in Brooklyn when I retire; these days that’s not necessarily a given. Back in Ontario, senior curling leagues are as common as free medical clinics … )

Next: Running for Your Life: Renaissance Reverbs

Running for Your Life: Discovering Jon McGregor

Jon McGregor is an author new to me. 

In the 2017 Betty Boop flasher New Yorker (Great cover!) you’ll find a piece about McGregor by James Wood.

So much of what Wood said (and quoted) from McGregor’s latest novel, RESERVOIR 13, sent shivers through me.

Like hearing the surprise rattle-clang of a cow bell, or the rush of soft soles through a long pile of dry leaves, the ribbed red oak leaf between my thumb and forefinger …

I bought RESERVOIR 13 at my local book shop and it was the last copy on the shelf. The man who collected my money, whose taste I respect, said he was reading it himself. “Very good” was his welcome critique.

On the cover’s back leaf I saw that McGregor (I like to use his name because the protagonist of my as-yet-unpublished pseudonymic  novel is called McGregor) edits something called The Letters Page.

I went online to look for it – and loved what I found. (Try it here http://bit.ly/2j41E48 )

It’s been awhile since I’ve felt the urge to send out new work to journals, but this one edited by McGregor put me in the mind to come up with a letter and send it along to him. If nothing else, I’d be thrilled to think that a writer as talented McGregor would be sitting down and reading my work.

With that, I think I’ll go for funny. In writing letters to friends and family I find they (the letters, not the recipients) are at their (same, the letters) best when I think of my reader being tickled enough to laugh.

Yup, I’ll be sending a letter to McGregor soon. Definitely something to look forward to!

Next: Running for Your Life: Curling? In Brooklyn?

Running for Your Life: Caught One!

It happened around 12:40 p.m. (Nov. 29).

I was hoping to get out for a long run, say, an hour. But time got away from me. You see, I’m paper-chasing the documents, photos and legal signer I need in order to renew my Canadian passport, something I’ve been meaning to do for months.

(Well, since a year ago November, when a certain someone was elected president of the United States.) I renew my passport, and, well, that gives our family escape “claws.”

Busy work like that always takes longer than you think it will – AND I took it upon myself to try to improve our home music situation, which is a jury-rigged array of playing devices that root in a “system” I bought in the mid-1980s while I was employed as the assistant night news editor of the Windsor Star.

I had a sudden hankering to hear tunes from Sean McConnell’s “Sean McConnell,” especially “Queen of St. Mary’s” and “Beautiful Rose.”

All of which reduced that long run to a half-hour scamper up and into the park: 12:30 p.m. to 1 p.m.

It takes me 10 minutes running to a park access route near what is known as the Litchfield Villa. Up I went on the path, leaves falling in front of me on this mild day of intermittent breezes. Hands out as I run along, off-road trailing in the way I like to do it, and then, just as I veered south, a darting leaf appeared to my right, just above my head, and with a swipe I managed to snatch it by its “lower body.”

It didn’t hit the ground before I grabbed it – my first caught leaf while running in I don’t know how long.

It was a red oak leaf. From the same type of tree as the magnificent one that for 25 years was a glory to behold in our backyard before advanced disease forced us to cut it down earlier this year.

Next: Running for Your Life: Discovering Jon McGregor 

Running for Your Life: Eyes on the Sky

This fall in my neighborhood in brownstone Brooklyn when you direct your gaze upward there seems to be more to see than usual at this time of year.

I don’t advise this practice on unfamiliar urban streets, or when the pedestrian traffic excites around school buildings and along the main thoroughfares.

But on a path toward Prospect Park, a mid-morning route I know so well (every sidewalk abrasion and gnarly tree pit) that I take with M and T (our coonhound-bloodhound mix), I like to look up as I walk along.

Skeletal branches of ginkgo trees, which lose their leaves like a grass skirt down slim hips, reveal bird nests touched by morning light.

Sky so blue it makes your heart ache.

In the park itself, the stands of London plane trees, scatters of dry leaves holding on like arthritic fists, are naked beauties that restore the glory of what being white can be.

And, soon, the golden larch is on fire. The one I like (at the eastern entrance to the Lullwater Bridge near the Boathouse) is near aglow.

Get there, if you can, or the equivalent place of calm in your neighborhood, and cast your eyes to the sky.

Next: Running for Your Life: Discovering Jon McGregor 

Running for Your Life: Drawn to Greatness

Set aside THE POST headline title for the new Morgan Library (Manhattan) show of a drawings trove that will literally knock your socks off.

M and I went there the day before Thanksgiving, and I had many moments alone before small masterpiece after small masterpiece.

A taste from Victor Hugo’s “Fantastic Castle at Twilight”:

“[He] spilled ink onto the page; by tilting the sheet, dipping his pen in the wet ink, and leaving white reserve of paper to form a stark contrast to the ink-soaked patches, he invented . . . ”

Happy (US) Thanksgiving !

Next: Running for Your Life: Eyes on the Sky 

Running for Your Life: Where Canada Meets Portugal

Last month we went to Portugal, and in the small seaside town of Nazare (famous for its world-class surf), we found a charming family-run restaurant where we ended up having most of our meals.

One evening in the restaurant we struck up a conversation with an adult foursome who we soon learned were Portuguese-Canadian from Toronto.

“How about those Leafs this year?” I said. “I mean, really, how exciting are they to watch?”

“Very!” one woman beamed. “Are you from Canada?”

“Yes, Owen Sound, north of you.”

“Of course. Small world.”

“We are big fans of the Leafs, especially now,” she went on.

“How is that?”

“Because their son,” she pointed to the second couple in the foursome, “won the Air Canada Center’s Maple Leaf fashion design completion.”

Then, Mom, takes up the conversation.

“It was such a shock for us when he made the short list.” [The winner would dress Leaf fans for the 2017-18 season when their capsule collections are produced and sold exclusively at The Toronto Maple Leafs Store.]

“Well, I can imagine.”

“And then out of the blue, I received a phone call from the prize committee. They told me my son, Richard Campos, had won the men’s division.”

“That’s the last I remember because I was so happy I fainted.”

“You fainted?!”

“Just lucky I didn’t crack my skull when I hit the kitchen floor,” she said with a wide grin. “Just fainted for sheer joy.”

We have this good friend in Brooklyn, B, who M and I have become closer to in the past few years, and it wasn’t until recently we discovered that he is of Portuguese origins – by way of Toronto.

Ha, in Canada, one finds yourself in the shadow of the United States; in Portugal, in the shadow of Spain.

Humble, small countries and friendly unassuming people who are natural givers and skilled listeners.

When it comes to Portuguese-Canadians they seem to have a double-dose of those properties.

Next: Running for Your Life: Eyes on the Sky 

Running for Your Life: Words to Live By II

Be kind, be kinder, be kindest.

Detect that friends, workmates are taking advantage of your kindness, misinterpreting it as weakness, and double down on the kindness.

Convince yourself that if those friends and workmates persist in this misinterpretation, break relations or reduce contact with them, if feasible, if not, just carry on, you know, being kind, . . .

Next: Running for Your Life: Where Canada Met Portugal  

Running for Your Life: Radio to Finocchio

At Christmas time our family looks for one elegant gift, something to mark the year that’s past in a special way.

Most recently, there was the case of a fancy radio that I bought in Windsor, Ontario, during the mid-1980s. For years since I came to the US in late 1988, the radio was either in a box or sitting unused on a shelf in my basement workplace.

M’s radio from college finally gave out in the early 2000s, and for years we went without one.

Then, one day, I looked on a dusty shelf and considered my radio. I had thought, for some reason, that it was either broken, or just ill-suited for our home.

Then, during one recent Christmas season, I brought it up and found it worked like a charm, offering public radio news and classical music, in a way that M’s old college radio had done. It’s a glorious gift – especially during the holidays. M has said more than once that my old radio has changed her life.

This Christmas, it’s finocchio. Finocchio, as poured during special occasions with our dear friends in Puglia, is a chilled cordial made with fennel – and other homey ingredients – all true to the family recipe of our southern Italian friends.

M has made two batches, and we plan to give away little bottles of finocchio to friends and family during the holidays, with the idea that people will listen to music or news before their “radios” and toast all that is right with love and life.

Next: Running for Your Life: Where Canada Met Portugal  

Running for Your Life: By Your Leaf

This tree thing is getting to be something of an obsession.

It started, I suppose, or you could make the case, when I began catching leaves in the park.

Well, one leaf at a time.

There are rules as careful readers of this blog will know. (How many readers there may be I can only guess. Given the exciting spare-time choices people now have [Yes! virtual porn and 4G video games], I would think the total number of those readers could fit comfortably in a New York City subway car.)

Leaf-catching rules are as follows:

During a run inside Prospect Park, Brooklyn, I make a valiant effort to catch a falling leaf from a tree.

It must:

Not hit the ground,

Nor be trapped against my body. But caught like that childhood fly ball with your bare hand.

It’s been awhile since I’ve caught a leaf in the park. I’d say four or five years. Some of that has to do with a slowdown in training. Last marathon: 2014; last half-marathon: 2017. I’ve just been running in the park less frequently than I was when I started this blog almost eight years ago.

But I’ve no less of a passion for the pursuit. And by extension, for the trees themselves.

In Karl Ove Knausgaard’s “Autumn,” he writes about the first Daguerrotypes, in which the primitive quality made it impossible for human figures, no matter how still they attempted to be, to appear beyond some fuzzy, nondescript entities, while trees, especially those at a distance, are elegant and immaculate by comparison.

And, as I wrote in this space, some weeks ago:

Love trees, like dogs; human beings need a lot of work.

Next: Running for Your Life: Radio to Finocchio

Running for Your Life: Doubt as Starter

Am riding the N Train, going local, on a Sunday (Nov. 12) and making notes.

When I arrived at the station on the R Train, the more convenient D Train was on the express track, doors open. We R passengers made a bee line for the doors, which closed before anyone could get in. Then the D pulled out, which is why I’m on my second choice: the slow-moving N.

How hard is it to look and see, to accept, without judgment? For without that state of mind, doesn’t creativity founder?  

What is doubt in art but the starter, what you build from the ground up, you know, like in sourdough bread-making.

In art, your particular brand of doubt creates something fresh and new, removed from the unoriginal, the creative equivalent to the subway ad campaign for an entrepreneur service that in one ad chastises those who take a simple career path, noting disdainfully that it’s called a path because someone else has blazed it, meaning by that very nature the path is unoriginal and therefore not worthy of the best among us.

Precept: Original and new is good; unoriginal and old is bad.

A second ad by the entrepreneur gurus says: “Nobody ever said: ‘Just think about it.”

Except, of course, philosopher kings and queens … After all, thinking is the one thing that, at least theoretically, we humans do better than other animals. We apparently think; it is other animals that “do,” who, in fact, are the masters of doing.

Next: Running for Your Life: By Your Leaf  

Running for Your Life: Cassandra, Curmudgeon Conundrum

Often I appear to find myself on the opposite side of the cultural divide: especially when it comes to the apparent intrusion, by my lights, of personal technology.

Thus the latest Run4YrLife idea: the Cassandra, curmudgeon conundrum.

Rather than pigeon-hole myself as a grousing grinch when it comes to cellphone addiction (Oops, there I go again …) I’m making an effort here to be more sensitive to the positive aspects of personal technology as it affects our lives.

Consider the education of our children.

Thursday (Nov. 9), while running in Prospect Park, I saw a small class of grade-school children, using a nifty green-fringed tablet to take photos – and do research while milling about on a bridge over a watercourse. I imagine them using software to identify trees and shrubs, minerals, even ducks and geese.

Perfectly benign, right?

Meanwhile, Silicon Valley poobahs like Mark Zuckerberg see a gap to fill. I’d like to think that had to do with adding employees, improving the educated “stock” in math and sciences. After all, private tech companies are seeking to take a more active role in educating our children. Wow. Imagine the poobahs thinking as the most righteous do, ie, What is more life-fulfilling than to do the selfless work of educating our children and improving their quality of life – and not insignificantly – potentially unifying our fractious society through a politics-free push to create good jobs for all people?

In other words, doing what public schools used to be equipped and funded to do. What underpaid teachers continue to be renowned for.

Could it be remotely possible that we could be seduced to think that the idea of tablets being toted around the park, children staring into them, seeing the world mediated by a screen is not connected to the goals of the likes of Mark Zuckerberg.

Alas, I fear (CURMUDGEON ALERT!) this is not about educating our kids.

It’s what John Reed says in the movie “Reds” when asked about the origin of another BIG IDEA, World War I.

“Profits,” he says.

 Next: Running for Your Life: By Your Leaf  

Running for Your Life: Gowanus Sharp Shooters !

Time was not so long ago that Brooklyn’s Gowanus neighborhood was young Al Capone’s stomping ground.

Now the fedoras are, well, worn ironically.

The man who would be Scarface apparently hung out at a pool hall on Garfield Place, between Fourth and Fifth avenues.

Now, 100 years later, Gowanus will soon be home to those who see sharp shooting not as a gang activity but FUN !!

Because on Degraw Street, between Third and Fourth avenues, coming soon (in December!) is:

KICK AXE THROWING!

As in a bar that doesn’t specialize in something like Capone-esque darts, but the throwing to targets of genuine wood-chopping, artery-spurting axes. Seriously, what could go wrong?

Ah, Brooklyn … It was so nice knowing you.

Next: Running for Your Life: Any Leaves Yet?

Running for Your Life: The Marathon

There is nothing ordinary about it.

The New York City Marathon

Think of it as the world’s largest

Outdoor church,

Or synagogue,

Or mosque,

Or sacred native space.

I’ve been to a few marathons in my time, including the granddaddy of them all:

In Boston

But in New York, on the first Sunday in November, the most unifying of nontribal events occurs,

A road race, of all things.

On Sunday (Nov. 5) I went to “worship” on Fourth Avenue at 11 a.m. to 11:30 a.m.

That part of Fourth Avenue in Brooklyn marks the 7-mile watering station of the race.

The look on so many faces at that early point in the marathon: ecstatic, joyful, proud.

And those of us watching, urging on the runners, were no less a part of the sacrament.

For one blissful half-hour, during the weekend marking the first anniversary of the Election Day

Victory of Donald Trump, I drank in the wonder that human beings can be capable of.

These runners before me didn’t come to win prizes, most, on their list of priorities, would rank the goal of getting a Personal Best time way down near the bottom.

Or so it seemed to me.

Who can forget their first New York City Marathon? Either as runner or spectator?

Comes a place, deep inside, where real, positive change is possible.

Next: Running for Your Life:  Gowanus Sharp Shooters !

Running for Your Life: Poem in Porto

A place far from what we

know

what are the sounds, the CREE-URR!

of the seagulls

beneath the clamor of voices,

laughter, scrape of chairs

rustle of brittle leaves of

the potted olive trees

the blood stirs

the heart lifts

the farther north we go

the closer the touch

until under the clothes

the hair tingles on

flesh from breastbone

to groin

not the full sink,

the descent from the cliffs,

the seagull CREE-URR!

or the wafts of ocean mist

Behold a taste. Salt on my parted lips.

Next: Running for Your Life:  Gowanus Sharp Shooters !

Running for Your Life: Words to Live By

Love trees, like dogs; human beings need a lot of work.

Next: Running for Your Life: Poem in Porto 

Running for Your Life: ‘Gateway’ Drug

Every once in a while a book comes along and you just gotta crow.

That’s the case with this one: “Gateway to the Moon” by Mary Morris, an amazingly gifted writer who happens to also be my wife. Disclosure noted, please read on.

First the blog post, and then the book. (Please note the publication date: April 2018.)

If only America could see its way to favoring books instead of deadly opioids as mood-altering drugs.

Mary has done it before, of course. Written books that readers love, the most recent being “The Jazz Palace” (winner in 2016 of the august Anisfield-Wolf award for diversity [aka, the black Pulitzer]).

“Gateway,” may I be so bold, rides even higher on the mood-altering scale. “Gateway” never flinches in its focus of a coming to America, our nation’s very foundation, that imagines Columbus’ journey to the New World in a way that seriously will blow your mind.

So, mark the date in your calendar: April 2018. The “Gateway” drug arrives. And, please, watch this space for more news in the weeks and months ahead on this astounding literary event.

Next: Running for Your Life: Poem in Porto 

Running for Your Life: Copy Editing, Anyone?

So you want to get into journalism? Howse about the reputed biggest name in news magazines, TIME? (Full disclosure: I’ve proudly served on the rewrite desk and as a copy editor at newspapers through five decades … kinda scary when I put it that way, but …)

Not as scary as this, though. The SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT column in the Oct. 30 issue of TIME magazine. (Just inside the THE GODDESS MYTH cover, in about 5-point type … Barely legible and when you get a load of it, you’ll understand why the “editors” wanted to try to keep this under wraps.)

Here goes:

SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT

“In the View* (Oct. 16), we mischaracterized the climate on Mars as being similar to the desert near Dubai. Mars is colder than Earth. In an Oct. 23 interview with Dustin Hoffman, we misstated that his character in The Graduate seduced an older woman. In fact, she seduced him. In the same issue, in ‘Next Generation Leaders,’ Sebastian Kurz was described as a favorite to be elected President of Austria. His party’s Oct. 15 victory is set to make him Chancellor. In ‘Google Searches for Its Voice,’ we mischaracterized James Giangola’s previous work experience. And in ‘Ivana Trump Has Her Say,’ a photo caption misidentified her as Marla Maples.”

* Blog keeper's note: the standing TIME column is actually called The View.

Next: Running for Your Life: “Gateway” Drug 

Running for Your Life: Read, Read, Read

It pays to read. Especially these days.

Try one of my favorite reporter-writers: Matt Taibbi, now in Rolling Stone:

http://rol.st/2gsEEuc

that America gets the karma it deserves.

Brutal but essential.

Read, read, read.

Then Jill Lepore in The New Yorker, Oct. 9:

http://bit.ly/2gavAxg

the lead Talk of the Town cuts to the chase on what it means to be an unreconstituted liberal.

“[Free speech] is a long and strenuous argument, as maddening as the past and as painful as the truth.”

Read, read, read.

In the same New Yorker, Jon Lee Anderson boogies like no one else on the “border wall” with Mexico.

“[NAFTA’s] created 53 million very poor people for whom the only solution is to emigrate to the United States and send remittances home.”

Read, read, read.

http://bit.ly/2kErfUk

The White House treats Puerto Rico’s US citizens in an offhand way? It’s no accident the American president (emperor?) lives in a capital “W” white house.

How “white” has the nation been since its founding?

Consider the story after story after story in the epic tales of the Indian Wars with the over-sentimental title, “The Earth Is Weeping,” by Peter Cozzens (see recent blog post here). Many treaties were signed only to be broken, with the dog whistle command of government (during these years of unrivaled growth in land and economic wealth for white citizens) being:

“The only good Indian is a dead Indian.”

Read, read, read.

Next: Running for Your Life: “Gateway” Drug

Running for Your Life: After the Half

It took me 2:05:36 to finish, if you’re counting, and to tell you the truth, I wasn’t really, and if there is any secret to a long life (40-plus years!) of running, I put it down to that. For most of those years, I haven’t kept track.

Sure, in 2010, I shocked myself with running a marathon – twice as long as what I did on Saturday (Oct. 7) – in 3:33:08, and started to think different. About my time, that is.

I started to train harder and improve, with hopes of doing better. Why not? Beat yesterday, as the kids say! It seemed back then that a faster personal record wasn’t out of the question. That a 3:33 marathon time was good enough to qualify for Boston, which I ran in 2012, despite a near-running threatening hamstring pull in 2011.

Ah, but three injuries later – return of The Neuroma, knee collapse and faceplant – and finally I’m back to where I was when I started running in the mid-1970s. Listening and looking and going inward.

In Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, on Saturday, a waterside route out and under the head-spinning Verrazano Bridge, I watched a stray cormorant skimming the rippling current, followed the fairy dance of a wayward solo Monarch, tilted as if at windmills, running toward the trees on the horizon, and after, the fishermen casting their lines into the ocean waters, pausing to glance as we pass, puzzle-pusses, etched by the collective insanity of four hundred lightly clad souls huffing and puffing, beet-red in the punishing heat and humidity, so much like Hurricane Sandy weather that I can’t help but think it is on these men’s minds such a horror it would have been here almost five years ago to the day when that superstorm struck.

This then is the clean and well-lighted aftermath of the half. The ego eased with my second wind. When the run is pure, “time” and the pressure of time, of “beating yesterday,” simply vanishes like the morning mist above the Verrazano.

Next: Running for Your Life: Read, Read, Read

Running for Your Life: Shap! We Hardly Knew How Much We Need You!

What is it about Denis Shapovalov?

That, at 18, (he won’t be 19 until April, by the way) he is excelling at arguably the most amazing mass-market solo sport imaginable: Men’s Single Tennis.

That he does it while wearing his goofy teenage identity; What me? A star? Nah, let’s go get some grilled cheese and craft root beer, or maybe a cream soda, and talk about anything but that.

On anyone else that backward sweat cap, with the gappy extension band square in the forehead middle, would look ridiculous and W-A-A-A-Y pretentious. On Shap, it looks just right.

That he’s a Canadian. Can’t you see him asking these bears to leave his property …. http://bit.ly/2yKWOhp ?

That he’s now a regular court catch on the Tennis Channel. If he’s playing, I place the set on mute and watch. And, yeah, all these thoughts that I’ve just put down come into my head as I smile with the vanishing of my worries, if only for as long as he is playing the sport that demands power, touch and intelligence in equal measure … at 18 years old !!

Next: Running for Your Life: After the Half !

Running for Your Life: Chairman Zuck

A lot has been written and speculated about what Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is doing, re: his presidential-like tour, pledging to visit each and every one of the fifty states, and in so doing hang out with regular Americans.

Wow, no way in hell a Kardashian (excepting political hopeful Caitlyn Jenner, perhaps) would do that!

Zuck will in 2020 be old enough to be eligible to serve as American president. (Although, trust me, the current president wouldn’t be above conducting a birther campaign to accuse Z of using a fake ID. CARD HIM! Trump loyalists will be barking.)

No, don’t believe the bunk that Z is priming the populist pump for a 2020 presidential run. When you’re the planet’s Big Brother what in hell do you want with the world’s most undoable job: being the US president?

Next: Running for Your Life: Shap! We Hardly Knew How Much We Need You!

Running for Your Life: Last Week of the Symbolists !

What do you believe if not universal truths as a ritual to divine enlightenment?

Life, it could be argued, isn’t black and white. But during one brief period in a Paris salon just before the turn of the last century, some very talented artists seemed to be doing their darndest to find a painterly pathway to nirvana.

All of which can be seen in one tidy exhibition at Manhattan’s Guggenheim Museum. (Or a single ring of the snail; you go Frank Lloyd Wright!)

What you want to look at is just beyond the entranceway. The “hologram” of angelically dead Orpheus by Belgian artist Jean Delville, with face upon a ripple river, stars reflect, traces on the canvas suggesting ancient wood, giving life to his death.

If this is one of the ways to go, who can quibble?

Then Henri Martin, before this blending of the skills of the Impressionists (Pointillism) to reveal otherworldly beauty and “spirituality” vanished, paints his shimmering “Young Saint.” Like, he had just done so and left the room.

What else? “I Lock My Door Upon Myself” by Fernand Khnopff, a sensibility that shudders in our culture yet, the personification if not the “pornification” of women figures, celebrating beauty not intellect, throwback to the pre-Raphaelites, whose title was derived from the poem, “Who Shall Deliver Me?”, by Christina Rossetti, sister of the pre-Raph painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

Then we got a girl with a sheep … and one that strikes me as being done in the spirit of a top editorial meeting at the New York Times in the days after the botch job reporting of the presidential election. “The Disappointed Souls” by Ferdinand Holdler. Influenced as he was by Thanatos, the personification of death in Greek mythology.

Hurry, you’ve only a week to go and see the Symbolists ! before the show closes. You’ll thank me (or maybe not …) J

Next: Running for Your Life: Fall Into Place

Running for Your Life: Punditocracy Picture

It is getting to the point that I can’t read certain columnists, the hand-wringers of the left (you know who you are) topping the list.

But imagine my surprise when the folks who I traditionally don’t agree with, those wrestling with their conservative souls under this most preposterous of presidents, air the most surprising and freshly baked views.

I wrote in this space recently about the “Tribal” column in New York magazine by Andrew Sullivan. Because this is what I do for my time’s-of-the-essence mobile phone-using friends, I’ll do another link to it here. (Deserves a re-reading, anyway.) http://nym.ag/2jJPMXU

Then, last Friday (Sept. 22), I came upon a piece of similar, responsible quality by conservative columnist David Brooks of the New York Times. http://nyti.ms/2y7cpvH

Brooks writes about Sam Francis, a political thinker who the pundit resurrects in an attempt to explain how exactly we came to this excruciating moment in US political history. In short, Francis saw the potential for a demagogue who could articulate what the vast majority of white America wanted, which began with a sound rejection of both parties of the ruling class.

Brooks closes with this:

“Trump is nominally pro-business. The next populism will probably take his ethnic nationalism and add an anti-corporate, anti-tech layer. Google, Facebook, Amazon and Apple stand for everything Francis hated — economically, culturally, demographically and nationalistically.

As the tech behemoths intrude more deeply into daily life and our very minds, they will become a defining issue in American politics. It wouldn’t surprise me if a new demagogue emerged, one that is even more pure Francis.”

Next: Running for Your Life: Last Week of Symbolists !

Running for Your Life: Men and Women of the Jury

There is a guy in my jury pool (Sept. 12) with his nose deep in a book, spine splayed for all (50 people?) to see its title:

THE SUBTLE ART OF

NOT GIVING A F—K

The guy read his book for a while, yawned, placed it on the table in front of him and put his head down to rest. Before too long he looked like he was sound asleep.

Obviously, he needed to study some more. Sleeping in the jury pool didn’t seem all that subtle when it came to appearances of whether he was giving a f--k.

It was a good idea to bring something to read to while away the hours. Not too much for us to read in this room. Only four words in this crème caramel-colored courtroom:

IN GOD WE TRUST (Sans serif – more along the line of Hell-vetica, if you ask me.)

At the end of the working day, having failed to be accepted for the one jury I was ordered to attend, because I answered in the affirmative when asked if I would be attending Jewish new year services this month, the chief clerk of the court excused me from jury duty.

The guy reading “Subtle Art”? Well, he was free to go too.

Next: Running for Your Life: Perils of the Punditocracy

Running for Your Life: Two Books to Read Next

“Red Son of God” meets “The Earth Is Weeping.”

What strikes me about these books of history (the former by Louis S. Warren and the latter by Peter Cozzens) is how little real progress has been made in understanding the plight of others.

Fake news? Just exactly what were the facts on the ground during the years covered in these titles (1860s-1890s)? Who spoke for the conquered, the Native American tribes, in the case of these accounts, those facing western expansion in the Plains states and Near West, and those ill-fated adherents of the Ghost Dance ("Red Son of God") that for a period in 1890 was as popular as Instagram is in 2017 with millennials? (Albeit the Ghost Dance, seen as a mystical portal of millenarian prophecies, seems better suited to use the term “millennials” to describe its believers.)

Accounts such as these, written a century and a half after the events themselves, deliver a home truth … It can take that long to set the record straight when it comes to public affairs.

If you don’t have the facts, you don’t even have “news” to fake.

Did “The Earth Is Weeping,” about the Indian Wars of 19^th century America, get big press when it was published last fall? Well, the author did go on tour: to Atlanta, Chicago, Kansas City, St. Louis and Washington, DC. Not to the entertainment centers of New York and LA.

The Indian Wars have never made the headlines to match the importance of their role in the settling of America, which, startlingly, offers a mirror to just how tribal American political life is today.

Hopefully the facts as described in Cozzens’ book aren’t a surprise to Native Americans, especially when it comes to these descriptions of one esteemed leader, Crazy Horse:

“He dressed plainly, lived in poverty, and gave his best horses and the fruits of the hunt to the poor.”

“He shunned councils and peace talks – or anything that smacked of politics, scheming or intrigue.”

Crazy? Our politics could use a little Crazy Horse right about now.

Next: Running for Your Life: Men and Women of the Jury

Running for Your Life: Tribal Bible

When it comes to cutting through the mind-numbing noise, the daily drip-drip-drip of bluster and bombast that accounts for commentary about public and civic events in America today, essayist Andrew Sullivan is a breath of fresh air.

And so it is this month, with his deft observations and reasoned arguments surrounding the question of just how tribal we can be.

My contribution? Given that not one but three of my long-ago mailed first class letters have gone missing, a pal wrote to say I should consider Going Postal over the US Post Office.

To which, I replied: Wanna find something Dems, GOP, alt-right, alt-left, Black Lives Matter-ers can get behind? Going Postal on the US Post Office.

My friend responds, “Our country, united at last!”

Levity aside, this is serious stuff that Andrew Sullivan is writing.

To reduce myself to the simplicity of what the kids say … Read. This. Now. http://nym.ag/2jJPMXU

Next: Running for Your Life: Two Books to Read Next

Running for Your Life: Hills Are Alive

Don’t underestimate the importance of hills.

When it comes to a runner nerd post, this might take the cake. If it’s not for you, stop now. (You’ve been warned …)

So many of these running-specific posts come down to the question of, How Do You Motivate Yourself to Keep Going? Not how do you keep your body fit enough to do so, but your mind.

One answer: Hills Are Alive.

Park Slope, Brooklyn, where I’ve lived for 27 years, is named “slope” for a reason. From my address below Sixth Avenue, the road is pitched upward to get to Prospect Park, which is not exactly flat land itslef. In fact, there are two hills on the 3.3-mile Outer Drive run. And plenty of hilly expanses mid-park.

Running outside I head for those hills. So much so that even in a quick 30-minute run, I’m probably spending 7-10 minutes going uphill. 

My mind, in fact, demands that I choose the most uphill challenge. (In the 3½ block run to the park, I chose to go up the most vertical in my vicinity, Fifth Street.) In that half-hour run, I don’t lope around, but rather test myself in the rocky hills mid-park.

When I return home I’m psyched with how much better I feel than when I left. Only 30 minutes? But a lifetime of them, keeping the hills alive within me, has made quite a difference in how I manage my day, my months, my years ...

Next: Running for Your Life: Two Books to Read Next

Running for Your Life: Latest Word About Shoes

Forty-plus years of running every other day has taught me a thing or two about how to keep going.

I’ve written here about how it pays to listen to your body. In my running life, it’s been a steady stream of nagging concerns: hamstrings, knees, heels, shin splints, feet, feet, feet, toenails.

So I’m here to tell you that your shoes are Job One. In my case, Brooks Defyance. And orthotics, which were prescribed to me once upon a time when my neuroma was particularly acute.

Job Two is a running foot doctor of a podiatrist. Somebody who will head out the door to watch your gait to see just how you are striking the ground, favoring one side of your foot over the other. Then make adjustments according to that careful monitoring.

Usually blog posts like this will advocate a particular shoe. Yeah, I’ve found a friend in the Brooks Defyance, as have a majority of marathon runners, according to reports I’ve seen. More important is paying attention to pain – So much so that in my case, to guard against the nagging concerns listed above I don’t go out the door for my routine runs until I’m wearing patella bands around my knees, compression socks up my calves and orthotics in my Brooks.

As to shoes, take the time to go to a runner’s shoe store and seek out the advice of the pros there. (In my neighborhood, I trust the folks at JackRabbit.) Then buy, run and assess the damage later. As in 

40-plus years later, if you sweat the details.

Next: Running for Your Life: Hills Are Alive

Running for Your Life: A Life in Letters

I’ve got a few.

Letters, that is.

More so than journalism I’ve done, or my two books (and three unpublished ones), I will reread my letters from time to time.

Love letters, some of them. Blasts from old pals. A thunderbolt or two from a family member.

There is something about letters, both old and new, that’ll stir my juices. Like a dog who suddenly comes upon a long-lost pack pal, his tail a-wagging to beat the band.

As to my current letter-writing life, so far, so good. Rather than write in my diary today (Sept. 7), I could be writing a letter – I owe one to a relatively new friend in New Haven, Conn. But I don’t feel it as an obligation. I actually can’t wait until I have enough free time to reread his letter (with delicate pen drawings, in his case) in order to best shape my reply.

This blogpost isn’t going to mark the distinction between a life in letters versus a life in pocket computers (What most people call “phones”).

Draw your own conclusions. Enough said is how I put it in my latest novel. (More about that later, I hope …) I realize my sermonettes here aren’t likely to be changing any hearts and minds. To each his own, I say.

I just gotta crow. This life in letters I’m leading gives me so much pleasure – and it relates to two of the blog’s three themes: running, reading and writing. As in the letters I’ve been writing to my dear 85-year-old mom. I only wish I had have started writing them more regularly years ago.

But, as they say, there is no time like the present.

Especially when it comes to a life in letters.

Next: Running for Your Life: Latest Word About Shoes