Running for Your Life: If the Greats Were With Us Thursday

Just when you thought there wasn’t a cool head in Washington, along comes a pleasant surprise.

From former GOP presidential nominee John McCain, no less.

Oh, yes, thankfully, McCain is still with us. (And, if there is a higher power let her bestow real power on the likes of Republicans like John McCain in these next several months before the general election.)

No, this If the Greats Were With Us Thursday, is about The Good Soldier. McCain speaks for him in the person of one Delmer Berg. McCain wrote about Delmer Berg in a New York Times opinion essay, the best I’ve read in the Gray Lady in many a moon.

Here it is: Let the spirit of what moved McCain to write this piece lift prejudice and hate wherever it is found.

The Good Soldier by John McCain (NYT, March 25)

An interesting obituary appeared in The New York Times recently, though the death of its subject last month was largely unnoticed beyond his family and friends.

Running for Your Life: Earbud Art

I have little use for earbud headphones while running, or walking. Or in the subway.

But I do have an idea.

How about earbud art?

Say tangles of white (and color painted) headphone cable and earbuds in the style of a Jackson Pollock.

Or, more daringly, an earbud tangle in the shape of the Creation of Adam, the Sistine Chapel fresco by Michelangelo.

Or, third, The Scream by Edvard Munch.

I would suggest our Earbud Art show end on The Scream.

Next: Running for Your Life: If the Greats Were With Us Thursday

Running for Your Life: The Knee Solution

Maybe I’m not the ideal commentator on this subject. I have never suffered a serious knee injury, say, an ACL tear or a hampering meniscus injury. But the day before Halloween last year I was forced off a fast-moving treadmill when I felt something “snap” in the muscle group on the outside of my left kneecap.

What followed was such debilitating pain that kept me away from running for months. While I never got a firm diagnosis for what happened to me, the closest I came was what my sports physical therapist said: I had a runaway IT Band (Iliotibial Band) that messed with nerve endings. (There was minimal swelling and no bruising.)

My Knee Solution? A combination of lunges, squats and leg lifts, that zero in on building thigh, knee and butt muscles. Most important, in doing the lunges and squats, stick with it. Do reps of 30 each. Taking special care that when you go down on the lunge the forward bent knee does NOT extend beyond the front foot.

These kinds of exercises helped to restore my running form, in that I keep my full weight more parallel to the ground so that I cushion the inevitable pounding of the foot strikes through my newly conditioned thighs, knees and butt.

The upshot is that I am back to thinking that I could retrain to run long for my life. Right now, I’m happy to do four miles, five miles, the occasional six.

If you have sore knees, or don’t want to have them, think about working out with these simple exercises. They are certainly working for me !

Next: Running for Your Life: Ear Bud Art

Running for Your Life: 21 Days Under the Sky

Be the first on your block to own the DVD to 21 Days Under the Sky ... http://apple.co/1Uxriwa

Anyone with even passing knowledge of this blog will know that I don't get too much in the habit of pushing products on people. (Well, books ... but in my constellation of ethos and values, books don't count as products. Leastways, not those devoted to ideas and art.)

This is different. 21 Days Under the Sky was written by my daughter, Kate O'Connor Morris. And, yeah, I'm over the moon with pride. But, man, she can write. When it comes to the words in this movie, it is all Kate.

Check out the trailer. https://vimeo.com/157336355 Turn up the volume. This is something you just can't miss!

Next: Running for Your Life: The Knee Problem

Running for Your Life: Essay Writing, Advanced

So you want to be an essayist. An essayist on serious matters. Or, uh, walk that back a bit … You actually love to read essays that are immaculately structured, humble (not clever!) in tone and tell you something about what you care about in a way that is surprising, intelligent and entertaining.

If this sounds like you. Or half of you. Take a few moments and read this essay (from the London Review of Books, March 3, alternate title, The Faceless Unnamed) by Frances Stonor Saunders. Thankfully, this thinker is not one of those in the If the Greats Were With Us Thursday department …

Where on Earth are you?

Frances Stonor Saunders

The one border we all cross, so often and with such well-rehearsed reflexes that we barely notice it, is the threshold of our own home. We open the front door, we close the front door: it’s the most basic geographical habit, and yet one lifetime is not enough to recount all our comings and goings across this boundary. What threshold rites do you perform before you leave home? Do you appease household deities, or leave a lamp burning in your tabernacle? Do you quickly pat down pockets or bag to check you have the necessary equipment for the journey? Or take a final check in the hall mirror, ‘to prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet’?