Running for Your Life: Tribal Bible

When it comes to cutting through the mind-numbing noise, the daily drip-drip-drip of bluster and bombast that accounts for commentary about public and civic events in America today, essayist Andrew Sullivan is a breath of fresh air.

And so it is this month, with his deft observations and reasoned arguments surrounding the question of just how tribal we can be.

My contribution? Given that not one but three of my long-ago mailed first class letters have gone missing, a pal wrote to say I should consider Going Postal over the US Post Office.

To which, I replied: Wanna find something Dems, GOP, alt-right, alt-left, Black Lives Matter-ers can get behind? Going Postal on the US Post Office.

My friend responds, “Our country, united at last!”

Levity aside, this is serious stuff that Andrew Sullivan is writing.

To reduce myself to the simplicity of what the kids say … Read. This. Now. http://nym.ag/2jJPMXU

Next: Running for Your Life: Two Books to Read Next

Running for Your Life: Hills Are Alive

Don’t underestimate the importance of hills.

When it comes to a runner nerd post, this might take the cake. If it’s not for you, stop now. (You’ve been warned …)

So many of these running-specific posts come down to the question of, How Do You Motivate Yourself to Keep Going? Not how do you keep your body fit enough to do so, but your mind.

One answer: Hills Are Alive.

Park Slope, Brooklyn, where I’ve lived for 27 years, is named “slope” for a reason. From my address below Sixth Avenue, the road is pitched upward to get to Prospect Park, which is not exactly flat land itslef. In fact, there are two hills on the 3.3-mile Outer Drive run. And plenty of hilly expanses mid-park.

Running outside I head for those hills. So much so that even in a quick 30-minute run, I’m probably spending 7-10 minutes going uphill. 

My mind, in fact, demands that I choose the most uphill challenge. (In the 3½ block run to the park, I chose to go up the most vertical in my vicinity, Fifth Street.) In that half-hour run, I don’t lope around, but rather test myself in the rocky hills mid-park.

When I return home I’m psyched with how much better I feel than when I left. Only 30 minutes? But a lifetime of them, keeping the hills alive within me, has made quite a difference in how I manage my day, my months, my years ...

Next: Running for Your Life: Two Books to Read Next

Running for Your Life: Latest Word About Shoes

Forty-plus years of running every other day has taught me a thing or two about how to keep going.

I’ve written here about how it pays to listen to your body. In my running life, it’s been a steady stream of nagging concerns: hamstrings, knees, heels, shin splints, feet, feet, feet, toenails.

So I’m here to tell you that your shoes are Job One. In my case, Brooks Defyance. And orthotics, which were prescribed to me once upon a time when my neuroma was particularly acute.

Job Two is a running foot doctor of a podiatrist. Somebody who will head out the door to watch your gait to see just how you are striking the ground, favoring one side of your foot over the other. Then make adjustments according to that careful monitoring.

Usually blog posts like this will advocate a particular shoe. Yeah, I’ve found a friend in the Brooks Defyance, as have a majority of marathon runners, according to reports I’ve seen. More important is paying attention to pain – So much so that in my case, to guard against the nagging concerns listed above I don’t go out the door for my routine runs until I’m wearing patella bands around my knees, compression socks up my calves and orthotics in my Brooks.

As to shoes, take the time to go to a runner’s shoe store and seek out the advice of the pros there. (In my neighborhood, I trust the folks at JackRabbit.) Then buy, run and assess the damage later. As in 

40-plus years later, if you sweat the details.

Next: Running for Your Life: Hills Are Alive

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