Running for Your Life: Curling? In Brooklyn?

Last Wednesday (Nov. 29), during an early morning walk in Prospect Park with T, our hound dog, I came upon a small group of dog walkers who were familiar to me. (And T too, for that matter. When I say the word “Friend,” he’ll stare at me, then scour the vicinity, spot the folks and canines I’m referring to, and high tail it over to them. (It could have as much to do with the Liv-a-Snaps that more often than not “friends” will deposit into his mouth but that’s splitting hairs.)

It’s a cold morning and one of the walkers is wearing a Roots wool cap that I don’t see around Brooklyn very often, and prominently displayed on her jacket a button that says GO CURLING.

On closer inspection I could see the Roots cap had some serious curling decals on them; the 2002 Olympics Women’s Curling cap, when the Games were in Salt Lake City.

Curling? In Brooklyn?

She said, yes, at LeFrak.

My, where is that? I replied.

At the skating rink, not far from here.

(I didn’t know the nearby skating rink was called LeFrak.)

Really? Curling?

Yes, every Wednesday night and Sunday night.

I thanked her profusely, and began to think that when I retire from The Post (I currently work late on Wednesdays and Sundays), I’ll be able to curl. Just like I did throughout my childhood and young adulthood in Owen Sound and Brockville, in Ontario.

(That is, if I’m still in Brooklyn when I retire; these days that’s not necessarily a given. Back in Ontario, senior curling leagues are as common as free medical clinics … )

Next: Running for Your Life: Renaissance Reverbs

Running for Your Life: Discovering Jon McGregor

Jon McGregor is an author new to me. 

In the 2017 Betty Boop flasher New Yorker (Great cover!) you’ll find a piece about McGregor by James Wood.

So much of what Wood said (and quoted) from McGregor’s latest novel, RESERVOIR 13, sent shivers through me.

Like hearing the surprise rattle-clang of a cow bell, or the rush of soft soles through a long pile of dry leaves, the ribbed red oak leaf between my thumb and forefinger …

I bought RESERVOIR 13 at my local book shop and it was the last copy on the shelf. The man who collected my money, whose taste I respect, said he was reading it himself. “Very good” was his welcome critique.

On the cover’s back leaf I saw that McGregor (I like to use his name because the protagonist of my as-yet-unpublished pseudonymic  novel is called McGregor) edits something called The Letters Page.

I went online to look for it – and loved what I found. (Try it here http://bit.ly/2j41E48 )

It’s been awhile since I’ve felt the urge to send out new work to journals, but this one edited by McGregor put me in the mind to come up with a letter and send it along to him. If nothing else, I’d be thrilled to think that a writer as talented McGregor would be sitting down and reading my work.

With that, I think I’ll go for funny. In writing letters to friends and family I find they (the letters, not the recipients) are at their (same, the letters) best when I think of my reader being tickled enough to laugh.

Yup, I’ll be sending a letter to McGregor soon. Definitely something to look forward to!

Next: Running for Your Life: Curling? In Brooklyn?

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