Running for Your Life: Routine 66

• ·        Run every other day (in all kinds of weather, with possible exceptions: electrical tempests, tornados, blizzards, hailstorms).
• ·        Do 60 REAL push-ups every night; even when you have zero energy for it.
• ·        Stretch! There is (are) at least one (OK, two) stretches that will yield the kind of outcome that will stave off injury. Do these exercises twice a day (no excuses).
• ·        Tai chi core movements: I do three sets, ten minutes per set. Set aside the time: three times a week at minimum
• ·        Meditate: Put down you g-d phone and let your body drop into full relaxation mode. Best results: When long-term memory shapes to such a degree that you actually feel that you’ve reverse-aged decades.

Next: Running for Your Life: Home Truths

Cool Underside, a poem

There is a rhythm

To my days that

Leaves room to stop

See the fat caterpillar

On the cool underside

Of the large tire rim,

The car parked on First

Street, Mary with me

And she doesn’t walk

On, rather she gathers

The caterpillar into the palm of her hand

And deposits the yellow fuzzy beauty

Into a green, leafy garden bush that is

A welcome shelter out of the harsh sun.

Next: Running for Your Life: Routine 66

Running for Your Life: ‘REPORTER’

Here’s the best takeaway from one of the best memoirs of the reporting life I’ve ever read:

From Sy Hersh’s simply named, “REPORTER,” in characterizing the circa-2013 state of the US media”

“Twenty-four-hour cable news was devouring the news-reporting business, TV panelist by TV panelist.”

Next: Running for Your Life: Routine 66

Running for Your Life: Hot Weather Mullings

What comes to mind during a long run (in July). Hot but not too humid.

See the Revel moped and consider this straight talk, shoutout.

Download and ride, all you need is a valid driver’s license.

Am struck by the idea when it comes to roadway rules and regulations, the paramountcy of capitalism, the advance of these ‘sharing” transportation businesses overrides the concerns of public safety.

Certainly that is the mark of the self-driving thrust.

Imagine a day when people take to their pedal bikes or mopeds and find themselves in danger of being in a collision with a “robot” car. What guilt, or compunction, does the robot “feel” for running into and killing a human aboard one of these unregulated contraptions ...

Could these developments will yield more rather than fewer traffic deaths? Isn’t it possible that the unemployed or underemployed person, chronically depressed and high on prescription drugs, will be aboard one of these downloadable, unregulated vehicles and when presented with the opportunity swing their rig in front of a fast-moving robot-controlled car, choosing this way – not a bridge leap or a gun or a pill overdose – to end it all, knowing full well that they won’t be leaving their vale of tears with any guilt feelings they may have had for the poor innocent soul driving on our highways today.

It would be a clear conscience way to go; remember the old wood burned shingle hanging in a family cottage back in the day: “Goodbye Cruel World” of a man standing inside a toilet throne, with his hand on the pull chain …

Next: Running for Your Life: Routine 66

Running for Your Life: Summer Screen Screams

Here’s a short film idea:

• ·      Cast a small comedian as a Harp Marx lookalike who is dressed in exaggerated runner’s wear.

He is attempting to run along a designated jogging path in an urban park that is chock full of people staring blithely, obliviously, into their smartphones/gadgets and he continually “blats” his rubber-bulb horn to clear a path in their startled midst so that he can run a relatively straight line through them.

• ·        Consider the problem of doing a remake of “Candid Camera.”

Alas, it wouldn’t fly because such footage of behavior that embarrasses or calls out social and personal gaffes is no longer of interest, cannot be seen to be entertainment, not in a culture in which the majority of people have moved beyond being shamed for conducting themselves in a way that would shock their mothers.

Next: Running for Your Life: Routine 66