Running for Your Life: This Is Your Brain on Parasites

When it comes to the “body” journalism there is a lot to choose from. Diet books, exercise books, lifestyle books. At root, we’re either looking for validation of the choices we are making, or guided by fixes we feel we need to make: lose weight, build muscle, improve our sleep, revive energy.

Then there is This is Your Brain on Parasites by journalist Kathleen McAuliffe. As Publishers Weekly aptly notes, McAuliffe presents her research “less as fact than in a spirit of exploration.”

Understandably this book will piss off the serious science readers, but for a layman like me there is so much to chew on.  Here’s a sampling of my title page note-taking: Roundworms! Chance Favors the Prepared Mind; Guinea tapeworm body marauders; Malaria contraction wonders; Wasp vs. spider/cockroach; Caffeine and bees, before that ants/fungus! Sex = biological uniqueness; Bears and pelt cleaning; dirt eaters; Disgustology!

What's your appetite? Diet, sleeping, sex? Probiotics!

Do yourself a favor and look this title up. Among “body” book readers, you’ll be the talk of the beach.

Next: Running for Your Life: Puglia Poetry

Running for Your Life: Waking to the Wedding March

M and I were in a countryside villa lodge late last month – a hop, step and a jump from Fumicino airport, where we had arrived from JFK that morning. To take off some of the edge of our travel weariness from the overnight flight, we retired for a nap that was shortened by the playing of the wedding march. We both stepped to the balcony and from the sunny field beyond the garden wall came the sweet, unamplified sounds of the wedding march.

When M called to book our one night in Tenuta Torre Gaia http://bit.ly/28S78es the room registrar informed us that on the day of our arrival there would be an early evening wedding of two local young people. Did that present a problem? she asked M. Hardly …

So began our latest trip to Europe. This time to places where Italian was spoken first – if not exclusively. I’ve only now after almost a month (which explains my absence from adding to my blog; when I travel I make a point of going and staying offline – and cellphone free) started to stir from my Alice in Wonderland-like Italian mood that enveloped me that evening at Tenuta Torre Gaia and simply wouldn’t let go.

Next: Running for Your Life: Puglia Paradise

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