You live in a bubble your whole adult life only to find yourself in a seemingly impermeable bubble within that bubble for ten long months since the Iowa caucuses in January, a bubble that was suddenly pierced November 6th when even Fox News called the election against you, and Mitt, you decided to stay in your bubble, the original one, for what must have been close to an hour, trapped in a narrative that I swear to God that only you and Karl Rove still believed in, otherwise you would have conceded, Mitt, humbly accepted your fate before you did.
Which, alas, is still the case: that you’re not able to come to grips with what happened to you on Election Day 2012. Mitt is milling around, not yet mulling his options. To be Mitt Romney these dark days in November is to be like a lone survivor in a landscape laid waste by a nuclear explosion, where nothing that is left standing bears any resemblance to your expectations.
This Mitt is not John McCain, he is not John Kerry, he is not Bob Dole. Or Walter Mondale. We won’t be seeing Mitt Romney because he’s not leaving that original bubble of his, the one reserved for the uber-wealthy. Mitt won’t be taking a seat across from me on the subway (not that McCain or Kerry or Dole or Mondale will either . . .) or be reading a Kindle at a bus stop, waiting for the cross-town.
The truth is, given my life being what it is, a relatively ordinary one, I can’t for the life of me imagine what it’s like for Mitt Romney. I wonder, in a year, will I even remember his name. At this moment it is the one thing he has going for him. How can you forget a name like Mitt?
Running for Your Life: The Perils of Coastal Living
Running for Your Life: Running to Work
When I came to New York City in late 1988 from North Bay, Ontario, I expected, in fact sought out, excitement. A lifelong Canadian, I'd never lived for any length of time in a place the size of Toronto, much less New York.
So, yeah, I went to shows, restaurants, ran in Central Park, and openly gaped at the skyscrapers in Midtown. Eventually I would find work in one of them. Since 1997 I've been pretty much steadily employed with New York-based newspapers.
What I hadn't bargained for was excitement of a different sort. It doesn't mean that I haven't found a way to adjust to the fact that NYC is a terrorist target (I was coming out of a subway entrance in the World Trade Center neighborhood during the second air terrorist attack, and consider myself a survivor of the events of that day, and most recently I served in the emergency press crew during Superstorm Sandy, working to make sure that news from the near-epicenter of the storm made it out to readers).
On Halloween, faced with no public transportation to my Midtown skyscaper workplace in the storm's aftermath I duct-taped a string bag with a change of clothes to my back, and, in my jogging gear, ran the 9-plus miles to work and arrived as close to my everyday arrival time as ever. When I walked to the building security desk I made the peculiar request of borrowing a pair of scissors so that I could cut open my duct tape bag enclosure because I'd made it so snug that I'd not been able to slip it over my head.
The woman rent-a-cop asked me how far I'd walked, and her colleague (with the scissors) immediately corrected her, saying, no, that I'd actually ran the distance, which I'd explained was likely about nine miles from my Brooklyn neighborhood.
She stared at me as if a chimpanzee, not a human being, was standing before her.
That night I ran home to Brooklyn, and it was my scariest Halloween since I was a kid. My office tower is at Sixth Avenue and West 47th Street, and I was in good form, running south on Eighth Avenue. Then at 27th Street, the lights were out. It was cloudy, so the night sky offered little help. For a few blocks I ran behind a man who was wearing a penlight on a head band and carrying a little flashlight. He eventually veered off on a sidestreet and I was alone in the dark. I slowed down to a light jog, but didn't stop. For blocks I could barely make out the uneven pavement and curb cuts. At 14th Street, a gaggle of rubberneckers were looking at the ripped-back facade of an apartment building. Some people above and below Canal Street had gathered before harsh light powered by rattling generators. Mostly, it was pitch black and bizarrely empty of people.
Finally, and gratefully, I jogged to the Brooklyn Bridge pedestrian crosswalk. It was about 9 p.m. and black as coal as I made my way up the wooden walkway that connects Manhattan to Brooklyn. You can't imagine what it felt like to see the bright, twinkling lights of my home borough. When I saw them, I picked up my pace and made my way home as fast as my feet would carry me.
Next: Running for Your Life: How Does It Feel to Be Mitt Romney?
So, yeah, I went to shows, restaurants, ran in Central Park, and openly gaped at the skyscrapers in Midtown. Eventually I would find work in one of them. Since 1997 I've been pretty much steadily employed with New York-based newspapers.
What I hadn't bargained for was excitement of a different sort. It doesn't mean that I haven't found a way to adjust to the fact that NYC is a terrorist target (I was coming out of a subway entrance in the World Trade Center neighborhood during the second air terrorist attack, and consider myself a survivor of the events of that day, and most recently I served in the emergency press crew during Superstorm Sandy, working to make sure that news from the near-epicenter of the storm made it out to readers).
On Halloween, faced with no public transportation to my Midtown skyscaper workplace in the storm's aftermath I duct-taped a string bag with a change of clothes to my back, and, in my jogging gear, ran the 9-plus miles to work and arrived as close to my everyday arrival time as ever. When I walked to the building security desk I made the peculiar request of borrowing a pair of scissors so that I could cut open my duct tape bag enclosure because I'd made it so snug that I'd not been able to slip it over my head.
The woman rent-a-cop asked me how far I'd walked, and her colleague (with the scissors) immediately corrected her, saying, no, that I'd actually ran the distance, which I'd explained was likely about nine miles from my Brooklyn neighborhood.
She stared at me as if a chimpanzee, not a human being, was standing before her.
That night I ran home to Brooklyn, and it was my scariest Halloween since I was a kid. My office tower is at Sixth Avenue and West 47th Street, and I was in good form, running south on Eighth Avenue. Then at 27th Street, the lights were out. It was cloudy, so the night sky offered little help. For a few blocks I ran behind a man who was wearing a penlight on a head band and carrying a little flashlight. He eventually veered off on a sidestreet and I was alone in the dark. I slowed down to a light jog, but didn't stop. For blocks I could barely make out the uneven pavement and curb cuts. At 14th Street, a gaggle of rubberneckers were looking at the ripped-back facade of an apartment building. Some people above and below Canal Street had gathered before harsh light powered by rattling generators. Mostly, it was pitch black and bizarrely empty of people.
Finally, and gratefully, I jogged to the Brooklyn Bridge pedestrian crosswalk. It was about 9 p.m. and black as coal as I made my way up the wooden walkway that connects Manhattan to Brooklyn. You can't imagine what it felt like to see the bright, twinkling lights of my home borough. When I saw them, I picked up my pace and made my way home as fast as my feet would carry me.
Next: Running for Your Life: How Does It Feel to Be Mitt Romney?
Running for Your Life: Is It Nov. 6 Yet?
I've been living in the US now through six presidential election campaigns -- all of them as a resident of one of the most big "D" democratic states (blue) in the nation, New York. (In terms of voting years, it's 14 in Canada versus 25 in the USA.)
I have memories of six prime ministers: Diefenbaker, Pearson, Trudeau, Clark, Turner and Mulroney. In Canada -- and granted I'm a political animal, always have been, and in my younger years even more so -- it seems to me that during the campaigns for prime minister that I recall, my support as a voter meant something: both to me and the political party that I identified with.
Here, in the US, with its peculiar Electoral College voting system in which the leaders are chosen, the narrative does not revolve around the individual voter. In fact, if you don't live in a swing state, one that does not normally go either Republican or Democrat (oh, if only there were a NEW DEMOCRAT!), or you've got it in your mind to get the vote out by traveling to a swing state and talking to the voters who matter to the final outcome, then there is no individual stake to be found in the mechanics of what should be the imperative of, the very essense of, the individual's social contract with the democratic state: that the vote the candidate solicits actually matters. That your vote is as important as any other vote, that each and every one of us has an equal bearing on the election outcome, and thus on the performance of the public servants who earn the right to represent us.
All of which makes for an argument for getting disenchanted with this process. Especially when the other night during the last of the presidential debates O did not hammer away at R for his "47%" persuasion, and why oh why didn't O man up and suffer being falsely tarred as a Class Warrior by calling the trillions of dollars of savings that will come at year-end when he allows the worst of the Bush tax cuts to expire a TAX CUT DIVIDEND that will be redirected to programs to benefit ordinary Americans AS WELL AS superwealthy ones who R has made himself beholden to?
Yeah, I've always been a political animal. But when it comes to this one, I can't wait for it to be Nov. 7 already.
Next: Running for Your Life: What's Up with Five Finger Shoes?
I have memories of six prime ministers: Diefenbaker, Pearson, Trudeau, Clark, Turner and Mulroney. In Canada -- and granted I'm a political animal, always have been, and in my younger years even more so -- it seems to me that during the campaigns for prime minister that I recall, my support as a voter meant something: both to me and the political party that I identified with.
Here, in the US, with its peculiar Electoral College voting system in which the leaders are chosen, the narrative does not revolve around the individual voter. In fact, if you don't live in a swing state, one that does not normally go either Republican or Democrat (oh, if only there were a NEW DEMOCRAT!), or you've got it in your mind to get the vote out by traveling to a swing state and talking to the voters who matter to the final outcome, then there is no individual stake to be found in the mechanics of what should be the imperative of, the very essense of, the individual's social contract with the democratic state: that the vote the candidate solicits actually matters. That your vote is as important as any other vote, that each and every one of us has an equal bearing on the election outcome, and thus on the performance of the public servants who earn the right to represent us.
All of which makes for an argument for getting disenchanted with this process. Especially when the other night during the last of the presidential debates O did not hammer away at R for his "47%" persuasion, and why oh why didn't O man up and suffer being falsely tarred as a Class Warrior by calling the trillions of dollars of savings that will come at year-end when he allows the worst of the Bush tax cuts to expire a TAX CUT DIVIDEND that will be redirected to programs to benefit ordinary Americans AS WELL AS superwealthy ones who R has made himself beholden to?
Yeah, I've always been a political animal. But when it comes to this one, I can't wait for it to be Nov. 7 already.
Next: Running for Your Life: What's Up with Five Finger Shoes?
Running for Your Life: Think Fly Not Flu
The other day at the gym a drug chain employee had set up a table where she was giving out free flu shots, along with a brochure citing the ostensible advantages of being a regular shopper at a chain store based somewhere not far from the gym, a place in Romney’s America that cares for shareholders first, paper-thin profit margins, debt-laden profit ownership, virtual slave labor that across RA has driven out mom and pops, and earned the sobriquet, “That We Built It!”
But even if it were a mom and pop – or my OWN Mom and Pop – I wouldn’t have gotten that flu shot. The last time I received a flu shot was the last time I suffered from the flu.
From time to time I do feel a little “punk,” as my mom says. Those first deep chills in the air will get under my skin, but instead of reaching for a pill – or calling my doctor for a flu shot – I put on my exercise duds and go out for a long, hard run.
Maybe I sweat the punkness out, I dunno. But on the road, as I push myself up hills and through interval training drills, up and down stone steps above The Lake in Prospect Park, Brooklyn, that webby weakness goes away.
On the road during a runner's high I identify more with the birds than the people. Birds on the wing don’t get flu shots. Or dogs, either, for that matter. Thurber, for example, our beautiful boy at right, knock on wood, hasn’t been sick more than once since he joined our family in June 2010. And, yeah, he’s had his shots. But never a flu shot.
When I look down on Thurber, as he’s lying in a tightly curled ball on his blue easy chair, and ask him if he’d like to go out for a run, he’s ready. Off we go; thinking fly, not flu.
Next: Running for Your Life: Is it Nov. 6 yet?
Running for Your Life: Playing the Race Card
So, what’s next? It’s been more than six months since my last race and I’m starting to feel a little antsy. It’s funny that before I ran the Brooklyn Half Marathon in 2009, I hadn’t given road racing very much thought. In fact, I was just content to lope along, to get out running every other day as I’ve done since the mid-1970s, a few months after I very nearly died from a malicious circulatory breakdown that I firmly believe has been held in check largely because of my running exercise routine, which my wife, M, monitors, not that she needs to because I’m a slave to it but that doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate her attention.
Hard to pinpoint what changed, but I put some it down to hubris. In the early years of my running, when I was in my twenties and early thirties, my pace was so hampered by a leg that even today swells because of my circulatory issues that I didn’t even dream of competing well in my age group. It was a matter of pride, I guess, because before I got sick I'd considered myself an athlete of sorts, so I didn’t much like the idea of racing with a bum leg that pretty much guaranteed that I'd finish in the last third of even the most recreationally oriented race.
Now, though, in my late fifties, those thirty-plus years of running – and now months of cross-training since my hamstring injury of March 2011 – have helped to boost me into a different race status. Even in the Boston Marathon 2012, I finished well within the top third of my age group (307th of 1,080 finishers, or 28 percent), which has pricked that hubristic layer that I mentioned above.
What’s happened is this: Closer to sixty years old than thirty, I’m trying to measure what is the best I can be. It’s a twist, but I’ve convinced myself that at age 57, or 58, or even 60, I’ll have finished a half-marathon or a marathon with a new PR (Personal Record). At what point I’ll have to accept that I’m getting slower not faster I can’t begin to know.
Which brings me to the race card. I’m shooting for the Brooklyn Half in May 2013 and then the Catalina, Calif., vertical half in late September (with daughter Kate!), then a year later I’ve every intention of running the Steamtown 2014. If I manage to qualify for Boston, then look for me at the Boston Marathon 2016. I’ll be in a new age category, 60-64. That’s my goal, God willing. Oh yeah, and a promise to keep this blog up and running too. For at least three and a half more years!
Next: Running for Your Life: Think Fly Not Flu
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