Running for Your Life: Caught One!

It happened around 12:40 p.m. (Nov. 29).

I was hoping to get out for a long run, say, an hour. But time got away from me. You see, I’m paper-chasing the documents, photos and legal signer I need in order to renew my Canadian passport, something I’ve been meaning to do for months.

(Well, since a year ago November, when a certain someone was elected president of the United States.) I renew my passport, and, well, that gives our family escape “claws.”

Busy work like that always takes longer than you think it will – AND I took it upon myself to try to improve our home music situation, which is a jury-rigged array of playing devices that root in a “system” I bought in the mid-1980s while I was employed as the assistant night news editor of the Windsor Star.

I had a sudden hankering to hear tunes from Sean McConnell’s “Sean McConnell,” especially “Queen of St. Mary’s” and “Beautiful Rose.”

All of which reduced that long run to a half-hour scamper up and into the park: 12:30 p.m. to 1 p.m.

It takes me 10 minutes running to a park access route near what is known as the Litchfield Villa. Up I went on the path, leaves falling in front of me on this mild day of intermittent breezes. Hands out as I run along, off-road trailing in the way I like to do it, and then, just as I veered south, a darting leaf appeared to my right, just above my head, and with a swipe I managed to snatch it by its “lower body.”

It didn’t hit the ground before I grabbed it – my first caught leaf while running in I don’t know how long.

It was a red oak leaf. From the same type of tree as the magnificent one that for 25 years was a glory to behold in our backyard before advanced disease forced us to cut it down earlier this year.

Next: Running for Your Life: Discovering Jon McGregor 

Running for Your Life: Eyes on the Sky

This fall in my neighborhood in brownstone Brooklyn when you direct your gaze upward there seems to be more to see than usual at this time of year.

I don’t advise this practice on unfamiliar urban streets, or when the pedestrian traffic excites around school buildings and along the main thoroughfares.

But on a path toward Prospect Park, a mid-morning route I know so well (every sidewalk abrasion and gnarly tree pit) that I take with M and T (our coonhound-bloodhound mix), I like to look up as I walk along.

Skeletal branches of ginkgo trees, which lose their leaves like a grass skirt down slim hips, reveal bird nests touched by morning light.

Sky so blue it makes your heart ache.

In the park itself, the stands of London plane trees, scatters of dry leaves holding on like arthritic fists, are naked beauties that restore the glory of what being white can be.

And, soon, the golden larch is on fire. The one I like (at the eastern entrance to the Lullwater Bridge near the Boathouse) is near aglow.

Get there, if you can, or the equivalent place of calm in your neighborhood, and cast your eyes to the sky.

Next: Running for Your Life: Discovering Jon McGregor 

Running for Your Life: Drawn to Greatness

Set aside THE POST headline title for the new Morgan Library (Manhattan) show of a drawings trove that will literally knock your socks off.

M and I went there the day before Thanksgiving, and I had many moments alone before small masterpiece after small masterpiece.

A taste from Victor Hugo’s “Fantastic Castle at Twilight”:

“[He] spilled ink onto the page; by tilting the sheet, dipping his pen in the wet ink, and leaving white reserve of paper to form a stark contrast to the ink-soaked patches, he invented . . . ”

Happy (US) Thanksgiving !

Next: Running for Your Life: Eyes on the Sky 

Running for Your Life: Where Canada Meets Portugal

Last month we went to Portugal, and in the small seaside town of Nazare (famous for its world-class surf), we found a charming family-run restaurant where we ended up having most of our meals.

One evening in the restaurant we struck up a conversation with an adult foursome who we soon learned were Portuguese-Canadian from Toronto.

“How about those Leafs this year?” I said. “I mean, really, how exciting are they to watch?”

“Very!” one woman beamed. “Are you from Canada?”

“Yes, Owen Sound, north of you.”

“Of course. Small world.”

“We are big fans of the Leafs, especially now,” she went on.

“How is that?”

“Because their son,” she pointed to the second couple in the foursome, “won the Air Canada Center’s Maple Leaf fashion design completion.”

Then, Mom, takes up the conversation.

“It was such a shock for us when he made the short list.” [The winner would dress Leaf fans for the 2017-18 season when their capsule collections are produced and sold exclusively at The Toronto Maple Leafs Store.]

“Well, I can imagine.”

“And then out of the blue, I received a phone call from the prize committee. They told me my son, Richard Campos, had won the men’s division.”

“That’s the last I remember because I was so happy I fainted.”

“You fainted?!”

“Just lucky I didn’t crack my skull when I hit the kitchen floor,” she said with a wide grin. “Just fainted for sheer joy.”

We have this good friend in Brooklyn, B, who M and I have become closer to in the past few years, and it wasn’t until recently we discovered that he is of Portuguese origins – by way of Toronto.

Ha, in Canada, one finds yourself in the shadow of the United States; in Portugal, in the shadow of Spain.

Humble, small countries and friendly unassuming people who are natural givers and skilled listeners.

When it comes to Portuguese-Canadians they seem to have a double-dose of those properties.

Next: Running for Your Life: Eyes on the Sky 

Running for Your Life: Words to Live By II

Be kind, be kinder, be kindest.

Detect that friends, workmates are taking advantage of your kindness, misinterpreting it as weakness, and double down on the kindness.

Convince yourself that if those friends and workmates persist in this misinterpretation, break relations or reduce contact with them, if feasible, if not, just carry on, you know, being kind, . . .

Next: Running for Your Life: Where Canada Met Portugal