Running for Your Life: If the Greats Were With Us Thursday

Seriously, I had planned to write an “If the Greats” blogpost about Frederick Douglass, in recognition of Black History Month.

In part because I recently read Colum McCann’s TransAtlantic http://nyti.ms/2loGWP6, a literary achievement that if tour de force weren’t overused to the point of meaninglessness, I would hasten to call a tour de force. Truly a great book of imagined historical fiction, whose central figure, the fictional Frederick Douglass, I haven’t been able to get out of my head since I read the novel last year.

McCann’s choice of Douglass, whose travels to Ireland are little-known in this country, to imagine in his novel is genius. Who better to seal the deal, that color of skin is zero barrier to achievement, grace and honor in the annals of the human spirit?

Then, this, from the President of the United States, in his recent Black History shout-out:

Douglass is “an example of somebody who has done an amazing job and is being recognized more and more, I notice.”

Too bad, isn’t it, that Frederick Douglass weren’t around to run for president? If only this great were with us (no, don’t spill the beans to the president, who’s under the impression that the famous abolitionist is still alive. There’s no point in riling him about this).

Next: Run for Your Life: New Leader of the Free World

Running for Your Life: Race Ahead

You can’t teach an old dog. Here’s the proof:

I’m thisclose to training again for the big one – a marathon. 

First choice: The New York City Marathon in November. I have registered and will know if I’m in on March 7. (You have to win a lottery position; at least that’s the only way I see myself as getting a race slot.)

Second choice: Marine Corp in Washington, DC, in October. Its lottery occurs on March 22.

Third choice: Toronto, same day as Marine Corp.

One of these will happen. Or at least that’s my goal. I had thought, at one time, my last marathon would be in Nova Scotia, now three years ago. Since that time I’ve suffered two injury setbacks – knee before Brooklyn Marathon in 2015, and faceplant, before Bay Ridge Half Marathon, last year.

I have every intention of continuing to run for my life. But I have missed doing the big race. So, this old dog is excited to soon be back in training mode. Oh, yeah, I might be a lot wiser to be sticking with the shorter stuff. At times, though, this blog is less about wisdom than childlike passion.

Next: Run for Your Life: New Leader of the Free World

Running for Your Life: Reverse Aging Surprise

Yes, I’ve have that second cup of coffee! Or maybe a third.

I admit that given the direction of our current regime the idea of a longer life may seem counterfactual. But, in the event that we do manage to dodge Doomsday during the next four years (Yes, we are now 2-½ minutes to the end, according to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: Note to skeptics, not fact news) I’d like to propose that you race out to your favorite coffee bar (no, not Starbucks. Puh-leese.)

Because the good brains at Stanford have come up with this study that shows coffee actually has reverse aging properties. Don’t just take my word for it. Read the report:

http://stan.md/2kMNliR

Oh, and dark chocolate and black tea lovers? Join the reverse aging club! It’s all in there.

Next: Run for Your Life: Race Ahead

Running for Your Life: If the Greats Were With Us Thursday

One hundred years ago my hometown hero died mysteriously in Algonquin Park, Ontario.

His name: Tom Thomson.

In less time than a one-term American president, Tom Thomson painted his way into the Canadian canon of fine art. And, then, suddenly in July 1917, he drowned in Canoe Lake.

No, he is not van Gogh, Picasso or Whistler. Even in Canada, he is not known simply as “Thomson.” Like so many Canadian treasures, he is not a household name beyond his native land.

And yet. He lived and painted the land in three-plus years before his death like no one before him or since. He risked much on long fishing trips, bringing with him a low-tech artist’s box to hold oil sketches that took as long as two months to dry. An expert canoeist and skilled outdoorsman, I imagine him alone in the dark woods, smoking Hudson Bay tobacco from his ever-present pipe, reading “The Compleat Angler” by moonlight.  It is a quiet search for serenity that shuts out the noise of ideas, the march to war during those years. He painted like a man possessed. But not like the ambitious, manic genius of a van Gogh. Rather of a simple, just man captivated by nature’s grace.

He painted, I like to believe, until his work was done. And then he was gone.

A great like this, if he were alive today, would teach us pretty much all we would need to know.

Next: Running for Your Life: Race Ahead

Running for Your Life: Wanted: New Ideas

It's First Tuesday (Jan. 24) for President Trump -- and the news wires and social media are thrumming with stories about, well, just how the new president is set on doing everything the campaigning candidate said he was going to do.

For the most part, you've got to be impressed so far with the response of the media, which didn't exactly win friends with the way in which it influenced people during the US Election 2016. As in, never in modern US history have so many mainstream news names endorsed a single person for president: and no, it wasn't Donald Trump.

So, when it comes to the dissenters, we need fresh voices. (I'm looking at you Bill Maher, whose MAKE AMERICA SANE AGAIN slogan is as fresh as bin lettuce.)

Like the current Village Voice. Two must-read pieces appeared in the most recent Voice, one by Joy Connolly that likens the prospects for the current presidency to the last days of the Roman republic http://bit.ly/2jWjeIp and the second by the novelist and intellectual Aleksandar Hemon http://bit.ly/2jZCDc3.

The theme? Wanted: New Ideas. It's going to be a helluva ride, and we need new ideas and fresh approaches to dissent to keep it real.

Next: Running for Your Life: Race Ahead