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

Maigret in the USA ! Maigret in the USA !

Alas, Georges Simenon – the intuitive author of the Jules Maigret detective novel series – is no longer with us, but, man, his books! They are some legacy.

Most especially – when it comes to trying to come to grips with just what has happened (and is happening) in US politics. Especially in places that don’t begin with “New” or “Los.”

I’m talking about the slim, 174-page novel, “Maigret at the Coroner’s.”

Do yourself a favor and pick it up. Our hero visits a coroner’s inquest in desert Arizona, and Wow!, do his observations about American justice and fair play deliver. As in the dark side of 1949 America sure has lessons for those of us trying to get some insights into 2017 America.

Consider:

Our hero is dubbed “Julius” by the folks he encounters … The idea of a man called Jules? Unheard of.

Then, this on page 77:

“There was a Bible on the night stand. In hundreds of thousands of hotel rooms, an identical Bible with a black cover sat waiting for the traveler.

In short (in America): the bar or the Bible.”

As to the bar:

“There were no terraces where people could have an aperitif, watch passersby in the setting sun and breathe the scent of chestnut trees.

They drank, but to do so had to shut themselves up inside bars sealed off from the eyes of others, as if satisfying some shameful need.”

And that’s not even to mention the pervasive misogyny in the story, a coroner’s inquest into the tragic death of a young women who was in the company of five airmen in the desert.

Next: Running for Your Life: One Hour Equals Seven Hours

Running for Your Life: Spring Tickets to Nowhere

Here we go. Spring !

Well, actually summer.

I can’t believe that just a week ago I bundled myself into a long winter coat to attend an evening wedding in Jersey City.

Today (April 11) is hot in New York City. Summer. And the puck has yet to drop on the Stanley Cup playoffs.

Talk about climate change.

This is not the first time that we New Yorkers have gone flush into summer from winter.

Okay, okay, I’m exaggerating. In the United States, we’ve got climate change deniers in the White House, so a denial-impulse has to be acknowledged.

On the face of it, doesn’t it make sense to say that in the parts of the US Northeast, famous for their four distinct seasons (mud season being the fifth in some), in which we lose a season, say, in this case, spring, that it amounts to a change?

Me, I’m all Annie Proulx (Barkskins) when it comes to climate change. I’ve just turned the final page on this magnificent novel, as Sapatisia Sel, descendant of Rene Sel, the protagonist whose second impression of New France (Canada) was: “a dark, vast forest, inimical wilderness,” demonstrates “the female urge to repair the damage humans have done to nature.”

What’s in fashion this spring? Climate change protests, that’s what.

Next: Running for Your Life: Maigret in the USA

Running for Your Life: Hockey Hockey Hockey Hockey

The Mercurys did it the last time in 1927: won the Memorial Cup for an Owen Sound team.

Now, 90 years later, the Attack is on.

The Owen Sound Attack, that is.

This year marks a special moment as a hockey-loving Owen Sounder. The Attack, the junior club that has distinguished itself in competition in recent years is seen as being a genuine contender for the Memorial Cup, the trophy signifying supremacy in Canadian junior hockey.

The Attack is down 2-1 against the Soo Greyhounds, a team known for graduating a gangly kid from Brantford, Ontario, to the WHA, and then the NHL, back in the spring of 1978. (Yeah, Wayne Gretzky). But its next game is on Tuesday night in Owen Sound.

I’m counting on the Attack coming back strong on Tuesday, a day before the Stanley Cup playoffs open.

Most years at this time my focus is on my favorite team, the Pittsburgh Penguins. And the Canadian clubs: this year a good crop: Montreal, Ottawa, Calgary, Edmonton and TORONTO !!

But, for now, that’ll have to take a back seat to the Attack. 

I mean when the Rangers won the Stanley Cup in 1994, they ended a 54-year drought. When it comes to major junior clubs, it has been ninety years for Owen Sound. 

Time to put another team in orbit. Go, Attack, Go !!

Next: Running for Your Life: Spring Tickets

Running for Your Life: Beware the “Confidence” Man

I’ve been in this country long enough to comfortably make this observation below. 

I hope for a lot of people searching for answers about the current US leadership, concerns in their school and workplace, it will explain a lot:

Confidence on display in men who know less than nothing is a variant of American power.

Next: Running for Your Life: Hockey hockey hockey hockey

Running for Your Life: A Word About Knees

Having been down this road before, I’m a little shy in putting this out there.

After all, I’ve not run in a marathon or a half marathon since July 2014. In those near-three years, my training has been interrupted by injury. The worst being a running-stopping knee crusher around Halloween 2015, just two weeks before the Brooklyn Marathon. Then the following “fall”, on the Thursday before the Bay Ridge Half Marathon, I literally smushed a faceplant, suffering minor concussion symptoms and a bloodied lip and face cuts.

Sweet, it hasn’t been.

Now, though, as I ready myself to start training for The County Marathon in Eastern Ontario in October, I want to say a word about knees.

Time will tell, and it could be these 40-plus years of running on these knees have taken their toll. That my next injury is just around the corner. Better, if I were smart enough to admit it to myself, that I should be happy to just jog three-, four-, five-, and at the outside, six-milers and be done with that.

Thing is the knees. They’ve never felt stronger. That is since the knee crusher in 2015, I’ve been strict in doing these exercises: lunges, squats and leg raises. We’re talking compression socks and patella bands to manage the shock of the street-pounding. This greater core strength actually has me sitting back in my stride a bit more, allowing my more muscled self (knees, quads and butt) to better absorb the shock and literally take the pressure off the knee.

It can be done. Meaning, you can train for a big one, and get stronger, rather than weaker as you put on the miles. Given my experience with sickness and health, the body is amazing. The older you get, you just have to treat it with a bit more respect.

That’s the theory. Time to put it in practice.

Next: Running for Your Life: Beware the “Confidence” Man