Fuhgeddabout the New Deal. Politics and governance are so corrupt (see Predator Nation by writer and filmmaker Charles Ferguson [‘Inside Job’] http://amzn.to/ykXoXg) and beyond change short of nuclear winter, that the idea of a New Deal will make a substantial difference in the lives of ordinary people is nothing but a Grim (cq) fairy tale.
Instead, try a New Meal. I’ve written about food here a lot, but recently (May 26) I came upon something new to me: phytonutrients, natural chemicals found in a variety of plant foods. It turns out, according to a Sunday NY Times article, http://nyti.ms/13SKDLT) that they have been shown to help in the fight against the Boomer scourges: cancer, cardio-vascular disease and dementia.
Join me in building a New Meal, one that includes such foods as arugula, dandelion leaves, yellow corn, violet potatoes, wild blueberries . . .
Spurn mild and go for the wild. That seems to be the secret. Which, when you think of it, goes along with a new New Deal. As in, going off the grid. Getting away from politics and governance, where corruption is but a dark-hued storyline on stress in a land where the ultimate enemy is time, which if you allow yourself to believe in the New Meal can be caught off-guard and befriended.
Next: Running for Your Life: Spanish Mood
Running for Your Life: Go Your Own Way
It’s getting harder to do. The truth is, I’m glad I was born when I was. At a time when a TV was not yet in every home, when I played outside as a child, skated when winter was winter on a rink my dad made for us. When the very idea of Facebook, say, would’ve seemed like a nightmare, which if you give it any kind of thought, it is.
“Go Your Own Way,” the Fleetwood Mac anthem from 1976 http://bit.ly/aJhxQE isn’t a path social media would like us to take. The line drawn from TV to Facebook status is so straight and without imagination that it paralyzes me to think about it too long.
Media is the organizing principle, not class as Marx had it. The dilemma: How to know yourself when media channels and distorts the way it does.
What does this mean in terms of exercise? Just about everything. Run, walk, swim, jog, cycle. Or non-exercise: read, think, laugh, talk, listen. Bring yourself to the moment. Leave mocking and mediation to the clones. As K, aka Gramma makes clear: get real. Bring it back to where it matters.
Next: Running for Your Life: New Meal
“Go Your Own Way,” the Fleetwood Mac anthem from 1976 http://bit.ly/aJhxQE isn’t a path social media would like us to take. The line drawn from TV to Facebook status is so straight and without imagination that it paralyzes me to think about it too long.
Media is the organizing principle, not class as Marx had it. The dilemma: How to know yourself when media channels and distorts the way it does.
What does this mean in terms of exercise? Just about everything. Run, walk, swim, jog, cycle. Or non-exercise: read, think, laugh, talk, listen. Bring yourself to the moment. Leave mocking and mediation to the clones. As K, aka Gramma makes clear: get real. Bring it back to where it matters.
Next: Running for Your Life: New Meal
Running for Your Life: Sunday Blessing in the Rain
He didn’t get up and visit like he normally does. Usually, it’s like clockwork, 8:30 in the morning and he pokes his nose into our bedroom. I know because oftentimes I am waking up just as he arrives. It’s not any noise that he makes. Think the ticking of a clock; he arrives and I wake up.
But today (May 19) he doesn’t come to our door. It’s 9:30, 10, 10:15 before I go downstairs, and see him, still sacked out on his parlor bed. Maybe it’s the day, I think, dreary and pissing rain. He hasn’t spat-howled to the thump of the Sunday Times on the front door. Soon, though, he is up, has his breakfast and is ready for his walk.
At three, he’s a different dog than he was at two. Subdued, less likely to lunge at kids on scooters or men wearing stacked headgear. Which is a good and bad thing. Perhaps, I think if I let myself, he’s lost a spirit-step or two, and that’s what I’m thinking when – both of us soaked – a fellow stops us, gloomy Gusses we are, and beams a smile, saying, “Izzat a redbone?”
I say, yes, and the man with the trussed-up headgear approaches Thurber – and that can be bad – but not this fella. T’s tail flies into whirlybird and he immediately takes to the man’s extended hand.
“I had a redbone,” he says.
“They’re not ideal for the city,” he says, admonishing.
“I know,” I say.
“You have to run them.”
“I do,” I say proudly, as the three of us walk toward the dog run. The rain has picked up. I’m glad I have an umbrella, but the man and the dog don’t seem to be phased by the sudden drenching.
“I can see that,” he says. “He looks great.”
“Thank you,” I say, smiling for the first time all day. He walks ahead of us, but then stops and looks back, grinning ear to ear.
“My dog lived to be sixteen, but he ran and swam to the very end. I live in Red Hook by the water, and he ran the beach and just loved to swim. Out on his own into the harbor.”
“Thurber loves to swim. He really takes to it.”
“They do.”
“You’ve made my day, thanks.”
We exchange waves and he goes on.
The dog run is empty when Thurber rushes to a blue object, a squeaky toy that someone has left behind. For a long time we play fetch with the toy in the pouring rain – just like he did when he was a pup.
Next: Running for Your Life: Going Your Own Way
But today (May 19) he doesn’t come to our door. It’s 9:30, 10, 10:15 before I go downstairs, and see him, still sacked out on his parlor bed. Maybe it’s the day, I think, dreary and pissing rain. He hasn’t spat-howled to the thump of the Sunday Times on the front door. Soon, though, he is up, has his breakfast and is ready for his walk.
At three, he’s a different dog than he was at two. Subdued, less likely to lunge at kids on scooters or men wearing stacked headgear. Which is a good and bad thing. Perhaps, I think if I let myself, he’s lost a spirit-step or two, and that’s what I’m thinking when – both of us soaked – a fellow stops us, gloomy Gusses we are, and beams a smile, saying, “Izzat a redbone?”
I say, yes, and the man with the trussed-up headgear approaches Thurber – and that can be bad – but not this fella. T’s tail flies into whirlybird and he immediately takes to the man’s extended hand.
“I had a redbone,” he says.
“They’re not ideal for the city,” he says, admonishing.
“I know,” I say.
“You have to run them.”
“I do,” I say proudly, as the three of us walk toward the dog run. The rain has picked up. I’m glad I have an umbrella, but the man and the dog don’t seem to be phased by the sudden drenching.
“I can see that,” he says. “He looks great.”
“Thank you,” I say, smiling for the first time all day. He walks ahead of us, but then stops and looks back, grinning ear to ear.
“My dog lived to be sixteen, but he ran and swam to the very end. I live in Red Hook by the water, and he ran the beach and just loved to swim. Out on his own into the harbor.”
“Thurber loves to swim. He really takes to it.”
“They do.”
“You’ve made my day, thanks.”
We exchange waves and he goes on.
The dog run is empty when Thurber rushes to a blue object, a squeaky toy that someone has left behind. For a long time we play fetch with the toy in the pouring rain – just like he did when he was a pup.
Next: Running for Your Life: Going Your Own Way
Running for Your Life: Food for Thought
Way back in November 2011 I wrote the blogpost below. As summer approaches and unhealthy food choices multiply with the mosquitoes (sorry, that's my dad peeping out there -- one of his favorite lines during, say, a century-intense whiteout blizzard: "I like it, son. No mosquitoes, no flies") I thought it was worth a replate, as they say in the newspaper business:
Most of my running life I’ve been bad. Or at least inattentive. If nothing else over the past near two years since I’ve taken up the idea that I’m a marathoner, I’ve come to see that what I’d long felt was a reward for being a runner was that I didn’t have to watch what I ate. You name it: hamburgers, pizza, second helpings of birthday cake, Girl Guide (in Canada, Girl Scouts in America) cookies by the handful, trans fat-loaded potato chips, Cokes, french fries. I’m one of those runners who has trouble keeping pounds on, let alone gaining weight. So for thirty-plus years that’s what I did.
Most of my running life I’ve been bad. Or at least inattentive. If nothing else over the past near two years since I’ve taken up the idea that I’m a marathoner, I’ve come to see that what I’d long felt was a reward for being a runner was that I didn’t have to watch what I ate. You name it: hamburgers, pizza, second helpings of birthday cake, Girl Guide (in Canada, Girl Scouts in America) cookies by the handful, trans fat-loaded potato chips, Cokes, french fries. I’m one of those runners who has trouble keeping pounds on, let alone gaining weight. So for thirty-plus years that’s what I did.
Running for Your Life: New Plans!
New plans ! New plans ! New plans !
K is here for Mom Day-M B’day doubleheader and this week (May 12-18) she asked if I would like to train for and then run the Midnight Sun Marathon in Baffin Island, the Arctic Circle, say, in July 2014. You kidding me? Of course, I said, I’m all in, the idea of going to my place of childhood dreams (the far north … http://amzn.to/NmujdH) with my daughter K for a week in July left me giddy with delight.
Then, I came upon this bit of news on the Web:
“Event no longer held due to the closing of the mine.”
Which brought us to our second thought (after its $4,000-plus per-person replacement, the Northwest Passage Marathon, was rejected as too damn expensive), the Utah Valley Marathon next June !
So instead of aiming for Boston 2014, it looks like I will delay my Steamtown qualification (God willing) to Boston 2015, with the view that there will be only one race (with K!) in ’14 (a favorite number, Davey Keon’s number and M’s birthdate) and that will be in the Valley (cascading waterfalls, Provo River and Utah Lake, it says on the website)!
Next: Food For Thought
K is here for Mom Day-M B’day doubleheader and this week (May 12-18) she asked if I would like to train for and then run the Midnight Sun Marathon in Baffin Island, the Arctic Circle, say, in July 2014. You kidding me? Of course, I said, I’m all in, the idea of going to my place of childhood dreams (the far north … http://amzn.to/NmujdH) with my daughter K for a week in July left me giddy with delight.
Then, I came upon this bit of news on the Web:
“Event no longer held due to the closing of the mine.”
Which brought us to our second thought (after its $4,000-plus per-person replacement, the Northwest Passage Marathon, was rejected as too damn expensive), the Utah Valley Marathon next June !
So instead of aiming for Boston 2014, it looks like I will delay my Steamtown qualification (God willing) to Boston 2015, with the view that there will be only one race (with K!) in ’14 (a favorite number, Davey Keon’s number and M’s birthdate) and that will be in the Valley (cascading waterfalls, Provo River and Utah Lake, it says on the website)!
Next: Food For Thought
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