Running for Your Life: A Life in Letters

I’ve got a few.

Letters, that is.

More so than journalism I’ve done, or my two books (and three unpublished ones), I will reread my letters from time to time.

Love letters, some of them. Blasts from old pals. A thunderbolt or two from a family member.

There is something about letters, both old and new, that’ll stir my juices. Like a dog who suddenly comes upon a long-lost pack pal, his tail a-wagging to beat the band.

As to my current letter-writing life, so far, so good. Rather than write in my diary today (Sept. 7), I could be writing a letter – I owe one to a relatively new friend in New Haven, Conn. But I don’t feel it as an obligation. I actually can’t wait until I have enough free time to reread his letter (with delicate pen drawings, in his case) in order to best shape my reply.

This blogpost isn’t going to mark the distinction between a life in letters versus a life in pocket computers (What most people call “phones”).

Draw your own conclusions. Enough said is how I put it in my latest novel. (More about that later, I hope …) I realize my sermonettes here aren’t likely to be changing any hearts and minds. To each his own, I say.

I just gotta crow. This life in letters I’m leading gives me so much pleasure – and it relates to two of the blog’s three themes: running, reading and writing. As in the letters I’ve been writing to my dear 85-year-old mom. I only wish I had have started writing them more regularly years ago.

But, as they say, there is no time like the present.

Especially when it comes to a life in letters.

Next: Running for Your Life: Latest Word About Shoes

Running for Your Life: Reading Taibbi

A word for sane social-justice reporting, within the din of Trump outrages.

(Yes, he sold himself as president, but hell, this country was built on the backs of savvy showmen, P.T. Barnum to Ronald Reagan. This current guy is just a less palatable version of the Great American Showman.)

Matt Taibbi, he of “The Divide,” is out next month with a new book.

“I Can’t Breathe,” it’s called, a thorough, unvarnished analysis of the street-killing of one Eric Garner.

Time moves so fast in America. I daresay, in Canada, if such an event that occurred in July 2014 on Staten Island were to happen north of the border, justice would not only be done but be seen to be done. It’s true that New York City did arrive at a multimillion-dollar settlement for the Garner family, but no one has ever been held accountable for what happened to Eric Garner on the street at the hands of “arresting” police officers.

Truth is that so many videos have crowded out Garner’s – the one shot by Ramsey Orta, a key protagonist in Taibbi’s book – since that fateful day. Which is why Taibbi – the junkyard dog of social justice reporters – is so valuable. He tells it like it is.

Can we go back, and that means to the 1960s, in which Taibbi notes, citing the LBJ commission on the fiery urban street protests of those days?  We of the garrison state? Taibbi writes of a time when national commissioners wrote things like this:

“This is our basic conclusion: Our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white—separate and unequal.

Reaction to [the street] disorders has quickened the movement and deepened the division. Discrimination and segregation have long permeated much of American life; they now threaten the future of every American.

This deepening racial division is not inevitable. The movement apart can be reversed. Choice is still possible. Our principal task is to define that choice and to press for a national resolution.”

Wow! Imagine an American democracy in which democratic ideals are not something to spout platitudes over but to shape concrete policies to make for real change that would benefit the public good.

Alas, a fantasy.

Next: Running for Your Life: A Life in Letters  

Running for Your Life: Off the T’mill

I’m off the treadmill.

At least until my next race on Sat., Oct. 7, a half-marathon along The Narrows, the body of water that separates Staten Island from Long Island (Brooklyn) in Bay Ridge.

Why? Because the October event will be my first race in three years and three months. For most of that time I put in hundreds of miles on the treadmill, until about May this year. Meanwhile, injuries mounted: a blown knee, neuroma, Achilles tendon, face-plant.

With the important exception of the latter injury, all can be blamed, if not entirely at least partially, on the treadmill.

I’m remembering advice I received once from a personal trainer. The treadmill may seem the perfect training tool – to track speed, time, find the right pace. Doing interval training if your time is short – an eight-minute mile pace for twenty minutes, say, to get the best aerobic bang for your buck.

But, my PT pal warns, there is little heel-strike variation on a treadmill. It may seem the same as outdoor running, but it isn’t. Footfalls in a five-mile outdoor run are as wide-ranging as a Baskin-Robbins flavor chart. On the treadmill, you’ve got vanilla.

And that, believe it or not, can amount to a hellish pounding of the body. Especially, if you get into the habit of running on the machines more often than not.

Which is what I found myself doing as I looked to amp up miles for two consecutive races that I was forced to cancel due to injuries: the Brooklyn Marathon of 2015 and the Bay Ridge Half of 2016.

No more – treadmills or canceled races. So far, the non-treadmill-trained body is holding up … Time will tell if this resolution obtains the results I’m hoping for.

Next: Running for Your Life: Reading Taibbi 

Running for Your Life: Eclipse Clips

I was thisclose to publishing a personal essay on the recent US solar eclipse … as far as an intro and an ending, to wit:

When my wife, M, looked up from the chart in a newspaper showing a dark band across the length of the country, I knew.

We would be making tracks to the place that promised one of the longest periods of darkness in the middle of an American summer day. That would be 2 minutes and 39 seconds of pitch black in Columbia, Missouri.

“Our anniversary is Sunday,” I reminded her. We’d have to leave for the heartland on our 28^th anniversary of marriage.

“That’s perfect then, isn’t it? ’Cause you know what the writer Annie Dillard says?"

“No, what?”

“That comparing a partial eclipse to a total eclipse is akin to kissing a man versus marrying him.”

Every boomer knows the line by heart, the phrase from that famous song by Carly Simon:

“Then you flew your Lear jet up to Nova Scotia/to see the total eclipse of the sun.”

“So,” I said to M, “you did think that song was about you?”

+ + +

Imagine the scene across the country, millions upon millions standing shoulder to shoulder, staring skyward.

Which brings to mind what our rabbi told us on our wedding day twenty-eight years ago.

He quoted Antoine de Saint Exupery that “Life has taught us that love does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking outward together in the same direction.”

Next: Running for Your Life: Why I’m Not ‘Treading’ These Days

Running for Your Life: Personal Items, a Study of Opposites

American Airlines onboard announcement, today (Aug. 22), Chicago to New York City:

“Please be sure to check the seat pocket in front of you for any personal items, such as a tablet or a mobile phone … ”

Wall script in the final gallery room of the Paul Gaugin “Artist as Alchemist” show (Aug. 21) at the Art Institute of Chicago, detailing the personal items left in his house upon his death in 1903:

“Sculpting tools, wood chisels, handsaws, planes, a drill and vises, tube paints and related paint products, rolled canvases, frames, three easels, a bundle of drawing paper, a sewing machine and a camera.”

Next: Running for Your Life: Why I’m Not ‘Treading’ These Days