Running for Your Life: Winter Survival Tips

Write, in order of ecstatic joy, five perfect moments away from routine work.

Write, in order of ecstatic joy, five perfect moments from your most recent weekend.

Write a travel wish list, that is if you blew your tax refund last year on a trip that you can’t afford this year.

Do something radical fun: say, axe-throwing bar time, shuffleboard, or, hell, spend hours exploring the Morbid Anatomy Museum in Gowanus, Brooklyn.

And stop bragging about all of this. Just do it.

Next: Running for Your Life: Father Dude Writes Rings Around Climate Change

Running for Your Life: A Sixteen Miler

A sixteen miler.

It’s been awhile, nigh onto five years ago when I was training – with daughter K! – for the Nova Scotia Marathon, that I ran this long.

And, lo and behold, the run (on Feb. 13) went very well. One stop to attend to a microscopic splinter in my right foot that had escaped my notice. It is a day after a sleet storm that is at first mild and then turns blustery and cold, even a whisk or two of flurries.

I’m out for two hours and twenty-five minutes, just five minutes short of my goal. Even at a slower than usual 10 minute mile pace (2 hrs, 25 mins = 145 minutes, or 14.5 miles), but I’m thinking the pace is swifter than that, so let’s call it sixteen miles. At 63 … and for that time, and even now, an hour or so later, nagging aches in my arm and pinky of my right hand have vanished. My eyes are clear, and my mood lifted. At times like this, in the midst of a protracted runner’s high, I feel like a kid. Even more so than what has become my reputation.

I go slow, and don’t allow myself to push my chest forward in a sprinter style. Let the force of each foot strike be as evenly distributed up the body as the laws of physics allow. Twinge in the knee? Slow down some more, settle in the gait. Balance. Keep it in balance.

Which is my goal: balance in writing, reading and now running long distance again. Not hard but long, and so far, reaping the benefits.

Next: Running for Your Life: Winter Survival Tips  

Running for Your Life: A Brief History …

When it comes to novel titles, all of them could be prefaced by these three words:

A Brief History of Ulysses

A Brief History of Coming Through Slaughter

A Brief History of Infinite Jest

Marlon James will be known as the writer who inspires this approach to fulfilling the full potential of the novel.

His “A Brief History of Seven Killings” is anything but brief.

Rather in several hundred pages (of small type), James explores the subject – seven killings – in a written “history” that will dazzle you.

This, of course, is in contrast to the “history” that most of us know, boiled down to dates and kings’ and revolutionaries’ mini-bios, with our school-based understanding of our place in the world rooted in this shallow knowledge of clichés and accepted truths, and in the American context, larded with a patriotic jingoism that is designed to short-shift points of view that don’t square with the imperial truths while skewering the as-dictated evil doers.

But “history” is not that. It is a never-ending story that should, by definition, include points of view of not just the conquerors but the conquered.

Neither side deserves a special place, a throne to preside upon the narrative of its choice.

“A Brief History” nods to these reality, gives us an understanding of a time and place that is full and complete of people AND events.

Next: Running for Your Life: A Sixteen Miler?

Running for Your Life: Russell Baker

Just try to be write a humor column in a daily newspaper – and do so in a way that when you die, the reminiscences and eulogies and words of praise flow like ice melt from the +2C increase in average global temperature ….

Russell Baker, of course, would never write such a ham-fisted comparison. Baker, who died last month, is much too classy for that.

I have this vintage New York Times Magazine from April 28, 1985. To date the issue and those glory years of newspapers, the cover story was by the novelist Mario Vargas Llosa, writing about the socialist revolution in Nicaragua. (The 112-page publication is LOADED with display ads … )

And on Page 26, Russell Baker wrote his Sunday Observer column, this one called “Computer Passion” (with charming unself-conscious Bakeresque illustration by Patrick McDonnell).

Presciently, in that oh-so-simpler time, Baker is riffing on how absurd the idea is that you could fall in love with personal technology.

Consider his lede:

“Many tycoons of the computer industry have written begging me to tell them how to recover from the sales slump threatening disaster for the personal-computer business, and I do so gladly, for it is painful to see a tycoon in despair.”

Then the kicker:

“Sex is the solution, gentlemen. Paint those things Passion Orange and get them into the boudoir.”

Man, I miss Russell Baker’s wry wit and humility … Call him a throwback, but frankly, I’d gladly throw back every one of today’s poor excuses for daily humor columnists for just one Russell Baker.

Next: Running for Your Life: A Brief History …

Running for Your Life: Kundera Conundrum

Back in late 1980s, the glory days of newspapers, I wrote these two quotes attributed to the novelist Milan Kundera in a journal during one of my early visits to New York City, where I’ve lived for the past thirty-plus years. The material is drawn from an article in the March 6, 1988, edition of the New York Times Book Review.

“Cursed be the writer who first allowed a journalist to reproduce his remarks freely! He started the process that can only lead to the disappearance of the writer, he who is responsible for every one of his words.”

And this from the introduction to Kundera’s play, “Jacques and His Master”: “Death to all who dare rewrite what has been written! Impale them and roast them over a slow fire! Castrate them and cut off their ears!”

Quaint stuff, eh? Milan, now 89 years old, would be ill-advised to be taking out his scorn on the puny power exercised by today’s journalists. The very idea that “words” are so sacrosanct that they are deserving of such fiery defense against simple reporters is laughable. When it comes to the disappearance of the writer, Larry Page and Mark Zuckerberg have long scrubbed the writer from any lasting importance in the culture ….

Next: Running for Your Life: A Brief History …