Running for Your Life: American Redstart

Our little backyard with giant oak tree, weeping cherry, gorgeous hydrangeas, rangy acubas and killer forsythia draws birdsong in the morning, cardinals and mockingbirds and the childhood-memory stir of rackety blue jays, who scatter the others like a playground bully.

We’ve never had an American Redstart. In fact, M and I hadn’t even heard the phrase until we talked to a birder in Prospect Park.

It’s one of the reasons I love living in Brooklyn. During the spring migration season, exotic-looking birds and their Two Foot scholars become part of the scenery in our nearby park.

One day we saw a bird with a flash of brilliant orange. Initially we both thought oriole, which we have spotted on the rare occasion. But it wasn’t orange-breasted, more an underwing and wing, tail feather orange. Brighter. Say, mixed with carrot.

That’ll be an American Redstart, a birder said.

Rings like a story title, doesn’t it? Or the hint of a poem.

Next: Running for Your Life: Waking to the Wedding March  

Running for Your Life: The Three Rs, Revisited

Pay a little attention, and the signs will come, pointing to the reasons why I started this business – Running, Reading and ’Riting – in the first place.

For me, it often happens on a run.

In my neighborhood of Park Slope Brooklyn, the scenery is special: a wide variety of trees, sweet-sounding songbirds and books. Residents are always leaving books out on the street, especially in fine spring weather. And, yes, I’ve picked up some of my favorite reads – most recently “Eye of the Storm” by Patrick White – by just paying attention to the titles as I run by.

Today (May 23), while running up Fifth Street toward Prospect Park, I was drawn to a cover that looked familiar. The Virago Book of Women Travellers in paperback, published in England. The same one that my wife Mary Morris and I published more than two decades ago. It appeared to be in good shape.

A few minutes later, on a path just inside the park and in the shade of a copse of 100 foot-plus trees, I noticed a pencil. It lacked an eraser top and the lead was dull but it was near full size. I picked it up and ran the 3.5 miles around the park holding it in my writing fingers. I usually finish my run down Third Street, a grand thoroughfare of magnificent trees, but this time I detoured to Fifth, where I stopped and picked up the paperback, before continuing on my run.

The pencil and the paperback are now at home. I am inspired by the idea of what I will be putting down with that new pencil of mine.

Next: Running for Your Life: American Redstart

     

Running for Your Life: Do You Read Newspapers?

Talk about a bygone question.

I have to admit to a bias here. Aside from a few years (1983-84, 1988-1992, a part of 2008), I’ve always worked for newspapers. Writing and editing.

Quarrel with this if you will, but I find career newspaper people to be the most open-minded people I know. (Notice I write career, not careerist). This is a roundabout way of introducing my topic for this edition of If the Greats Were With Us Thursday: Alexander Hamilton.

You see, Alexander Hamilton read newspapers. (I know, he is also the subject of a must-see Broadway show, but this  blogpost isn’t about that.) He also founded the newspaper that I’m currently associated with: the New York Post.

If this great were with us we would have a firmer grasp of just what we have in the presumptive Democratic president nominee, Hillary Rodham Clinton. Or HRC, as those who’ve been besieged with requests from donations are more accustomed to seeing her branded.

HRC … Hmmm, that deserves more attention. (Remember, the open mind of above. Can’t help it.) Doesn’t that bear a resemblance to HMS? A logo (which equally stresses Rodham and Clinton, not a bad idea given the baggage associated with her personal choices regarding the Clinton name) that seemed just right for a coronation. Now, though, with Bernie Sanders making a mess of things, that’s off. Her Royal Chamelon is on. First campaigning as a small l liberal centrist, then a progressive, with latest news that her camp says she will swing back to the center to defeat Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee. Whatever it takes, HRC.

All of which is to say (the roundabout continues) that if Alexander Hamilton, also a royalist who wouldn’t sniff at a coronation, were to be alive today we might see a little more clearly into the motivations of this particular candidate. I know, I know, this isn’t time to be splitting hairs. Damn the open mind, just vote straight Democratic! Stop Trump at all costs.

Believe it or not, some folks have had “real” personal encounters in HRC’s presence. Which goes back to my original point. If you’ve got the time, read this piece from, yes, a newspaper! of sorts, the London Review of Books, by the insouciant (and HRC supporting!) Terry Castle.

http://bit.ly/1VbHu5A

Next: Running for Your Life: American Redstart

     

Running for Your Life: Sub-Two Gurus

I kinda don’t know what to think about the Sub2 Project.  Part Two of a story by Jere Longman in the New York Times is below:

 http://nyti.ms/1qriYAo

Science isn’t a passion of mine, but a growing interest. I’m fascinated by the discovery this year of the sound of gravitational waves. Space time. Ripples in the fabric of space.

But when it comes to what it means to be human, my old school brain takes over. Not wild about human gene research, clones, the advent of robots assuming more and more human roles.

What galls me is the idea of strapping measurement gear to a young African boy to benefit those looking to advance the human body to the point that it is a running machine that can do the amazing: Tear-ass around a 26.2-mile marathon course in under two hours. You know, the time it takes middle-aged weekend warrior to run a half-marathon.

I understand that in pushing the human body through more advanced training techniques there likely will be lessons to be learned so that my own training can be improved, which will show up in my results. To run longer, faster, stronger.

That being said, what I suppose bothers me most is the reduction of running as a pure science. That rather than nurture the spirit and mind on a long run, the Sub2 Project leaders see the human body as a means to an end. The machine that gets overhauled so that it runs perhaps faster than it was meant to run. So fast that you don’t notice the cardinal on the branch or even the sun as it sets on the horizon.

Come to think of it, I might just run for my life from the Sub2 Project.

Next: Running for Your Life: Do You Read Newspapers?

Running for Your Life: Shoe Talk

When it comes to running, it took me awhile to be a gear head.

Nevertheless,

• Am Fitbit-less

• No mobile phone with earbuds

• Thirty years of running every other day, in a ratty T, slump shorts, grotty ballcap – wearing shoes until they literally fell apart.

In recent months I’ve learned my lesson on that last point. I can’t say there is any athletic or health benefit to looking slightly more spiffy in T, shorts and cap. But in the past few years I swear by some gear that has kept me running for my life, now in my fifth decade. That’s compression socks (to keep shin splints at bay), patella bands below my knees (to help cushion joint shock) and Brooks Defyance running shoes.

I tried for longer than I should have the neutral strike shoe, Asics Gel Kinsei. The shoe seemed fine at first, but was easily the least durable runner I’ve ever worn, and am firmly convinced that my stubbornness in using them for my usual eight months to a year contributed to all the injuries I suffered last year (primarily Achilles tendonitis, severe knee injury). Now, though, I’m back in Defyance, and the injury threat has fallen into the background.

So here’s the word of caution. If you’ve found a shoe that works for you, stick with it. Oh, and don’t use that sixty year-old body like a thirtysomething. Even if your shoes aren’t showing too much wear, change them at four hundred miles or every eight months, whichever comes first. You won’t be sorry.

Next: Running for Your Life: Sub-Two Gurus