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

Running for Your Life: Reading Taibbi

A word for sane social-justice reporting, within the din of Trump outrages.

(Yes, he sold himself as president, but hell, this country was built on the backs of savvy showmen, P.T. Barnum to Ronald Reagan. This current guy is just a less palatable version of the Great American Showman.)

Matt Taibbi, he of “The Divide,” is out next month with a new book.

“I Can’t Breathe,” it’s called, a thorough, unvarnished analysis of the street-killing of one Eric Garner.

Time moves so fast in America. I daresay, in Canada, if such an event that occurred in July 2014 on Staten Island were to happen north of the border, justice would not only be done but be seen to be done. It’s true that New York City did arrive at a multimillion-dollar settlement for the Garner family, but no one has ever been held accountable for what happened to Eric Garner on the street at the hands of “arresting” police officers.

Truth is that so many videos have crowded out Garner’s – the one shot by Ramsey Orta, a key protagonist in Taibbi’s book – since that fateful day. Which is why Taibbi – the junkyard dog of social justice reporters – is so valuable. He tells it like it is.

Can we go back, and that means to the 1960s, in which Taibbi notes, citing the LBJ commission on the fiery urban street protests of those days?  We of the garrison state? Taibbi writes of a time when national commissioners wrote things like this:

“This is our basic conclusion: Our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white—separate and unequal.

Reaction to [the street] disorders has quickened the movement and deepened the division. Discrimination and segregation have long permeated much of American life; they now threaten the future of every American.

This deepening racial division is not inevitable. The movement apart can be reversed. Choice is still possible. Our principal task is to define that choice and to press for a national resolution.”

Wow! Imagine an American democracy in which democratic ideals are not something to spout platitudes over but to shape concrete policies to make for real change that would benefit the public good.

Alas, a fantasy.

Next: Running for Your Life: A Life in Letters