Running for Your Life: Hockey Hockey Hockey Hockey

It’s that time of year. What my pal Coach Tully and I call the best time of year, the last two weeks of April, the first round of the Stanley Cup playoffs !

My team, the Penguins, limped in, and any reasonable observer would say their odds of getting past the first round and the powerfully built Rangers, the best team in the league, are pretty much nil. Indeed, these guys should harvest my Penguins in a sweep, like park rangers on a church group without a permit.

But wait a minute. The Penguins have a Sutter. Brandon Sutter. The only starting Sutter among the 16 teams in the tournament.

For the uninitiated, the Sutter family is hockey gold. His father Brent won the Cup twice with the New York Islanders. (The family from Viking, Alberta, counts six Cups as players, two as head coach [Darryl of the LA Kings]). And Brandon played hockey gold in the final game of the year, scoring both goals for the Penguins in a 2-0 victory over the Buffalo Sabres.

The odds are long. But we got Sutter gold. (Even Uncle Darryl’s Kings are in the show.) Let the games begin !

Running for Your Life: Running Season?  

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

This post is a shout-out to my cousin, Joanne, during the birthday month of William Samuel Neath (1889-1973). In so many ways, our grandfather is still with us.

Joanne wrote to me recently to say, that on his death bed forty-two years ago, Grampa told her, a then-college student: “Two things they can never take from you is your education and land …” She says she carries his philosophy with her to this day.

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Running for Your Life: Freethink this

The lead Talk in the New Yorker this week by George Packer http://nyr.kr/1DCf4u8 has me wondering about what is original in a land that is chilled into groupthink and away from freethinking … Isn’t that why so much of what we read, or see on stage and screen doesn’t vary much from what we have seen before? These horribly murdered young men are martyrs to a faith in taking risks. This is true no less in art than in politics. Consider this: stand for something. There is a deep message for all of us in the hashtag #iamavijit.

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Running for Your Life: All That Jazz Palace

Not today, but tomorrow. The Jazz Palace will be officially for sale -- in stores and online. Have you missed my previous post on The Jazz Palace? If so, here it is:

"Do yourself a favor and click on this link http://bit.ly/1u2XLhD. It will take you to another world. Have you ever seen such a beautiful object? And that’s just the beginning. The Jazz Palace by Mary Morris is not only the novel of the spring, but the event of the spring.

The Jazz Palace tells the story of Benny Lehrman, Napoleon Hill, the Gem Sisters. I’ve lived with these characters for years and to quote a friend, the one-of-a-kind drummer Jamey Haddad, they are hip cats, man. They lived the life in Prohibition America. This is a story of tragedy, race, friendship and love. Benny and Napoleon, they howl at the moon. Pearl and her mother, Anna, keep it real. Oh, and music. This spring, we need hot music.

So make The Jazz Palace Web site http://bit.ly/1u2XLhD you’re [spring] destination. Make it a favorite, share and retweet these few words of mine. Come to the events when they come to your ZIP, or a ZIP near you. Oh, yeah, and get the book. You won't be sorry.

Because it’s The Jazz Palace. You don’t want to miss it. Because it can’t miss."

There's more to come on this topic. Coming your way in the days ahead. Stay tuned. Or to be truer to the time, Don't touch that dial !

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

Could there be better lines to underscore just how far we have come since Herman Melville came up with the final lines to "Bartleby the Scrivener," a novel published almost one hundred and sixty-two years ago?

Ah Bartleby! Ah humanity!

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