Running for Your Life: “Considers”

When it comes to animals – giant crabs, the common swift, the hedgehog, to name a few – “Consider” the writings of Katherine Rundell, who pens the “Consider the (fill in the blank)” column on an intermittent basis in the London Review of Books.

A fan of David Foster Wallace’s “Consider the Lobster” essay, I find we don’t train our attentions enough on what animals can teach us. (More on this topic soon; am finishing a superlative book called “Our Wild Calling” by nature writer Richard Louv).

I say, Consider the Black Bear, my totem mammal.

The reason is twofold -- during hibernation, what scientists call carnivore lethargy (although as my pal K points out, bears are omnivores, but whatever), the black bear …

After three months, their bladders are empty -- they recycle water through their kidney systems. And the quality of their blood is so pure that there has never been a recorded blood clot (I’ve had some doozies in my time) in a black bear during carnivore lethargy.

Next: Running for Your Life: Our Wild Calling

Running for Your Life: “OK, Boomer” Mood

Imagine yourself 40 years, even 50 years, younger than you are today.

In an economy with media commentary that divides the nation into two bitter, closed fields of ideological combatants.

Where the rules of the game are easy to learn and follow: conservatives are corrupt and immoral to liberals; liberals are corrupt and immoral to conservatives.

Meanwhile, the economy, retirement savings and stock portfolios are held hostage to Silicon Valley enterprises, the worst (and most “growth” upside among them) devoted to a business models within which our privacy and democracy are relinquished for the material good of, primarily, Boomers, who have most at stake to lose, from their 401 (k)s and their stock portfolios.

Where, Boomer, is the political voice that takes our side? That sees the denigration of our privacy, our voters’ right to live in a true democracy?

Without taking on this dilemma, our all news all the time is nothing but noise, a clammering soundtrack to the rise of our stocks and retirement portfolios.

“OK, Boomer,” you got that?

Next: Running for Your Life: “Considers” by Katherine Rundell

Running for Your Life: Urban Forestry is Not An Oxymoron

Author Jill Jonnes takes a dry title, “Urban Forests: A Natural History of Trees and People in the American Cityscape,” and makes a terrific read.

She has done something pretty special for me. I am lucky to live in a place where street trees are treated with respect by owners, neighbors and passersby alike. No longer will I think of them as just more “furniture” on the street, decorative during leaf season, or in the case of the Callery pear, gorgeous in their white-ish blooms.

Now, after reading “Urban Forests,” I find myself looking up to the canopy above me. Streets in Park Slope, Brooklyn, can be seen as forests first, the homes just part of the scenery. Of course, this is even truer of Prospect Park, where some trees are hundreds of years old. They are the true old-timers; the rest of us, just passing through.

Next: Running for Your Life: “Considers” by Katherine Rundell

Running for Your Life: “American Dirt” Thrown

It takes a lot for a dust-up surrounding a literary novel to make headlines beyond the publishing trade journals.

But here it is. The publisher, Flatiron Books, has cancelled the rest of the book tour for Jeanine Cummins, the author of “American Dirt” due to “specific threats to booksellers and the author.”

Bob Miller, the publisher, says the company was “surprised by the anger that has emerged from members of the Latinx and publishing communities.”

All this for a book that no less of a figure than celebrated Latina author Sandra Cisneros crowed, “This book is not simply the great American novel; it’s the great novel of las Americas. It’s the great world novel! This is the international story of our times.”

It turns out the Cummins herself has stepped in some pretty deep dirt herself, aka a “brownness” wish, and a claim to Latina heredity that sounds squeamishly Elizabeth Warren-esque, in a lame attempt to appease the surprising threat that emerged.

Which brings me to an observation from Hannah Giorgis of The Atlantic, who, by my lights, did the best to boil down the takeaway, saying:

“Cummins’ responses have nonetheless underscored the pernicious and widespread belief that won “American Dirt” fanfare in the first place: that empathy exists for the benefit of the spectator, not the afflicted.”

That said, it seems to me that every writer should use this cogent takeaway as a test, especially when she is writing about disadvantaged communities that she doesn’t have firsthand knowledge about.

Next: Running for Your Life: Urban Forestry is Not An Oxymoron

Running for Your Life: The Power Broker Vol. II

It’s a joke really, there is no Vol. II.

“The Power Broker” by Robert Caro could use one, though.

Few books in my life have impressed me in the way of this one. The life of New York State power broker Robert Moses laid bare.

It’s dense. At 1,162 pages in paperback, I’ve been reading it since the summer.

I’m an avid, even passionate reader, and I didn’t skim any of these pages. Indeed, the richness of the prose, the depth of the reporting, the insight. Fallen out of love with journalism, with journalists? Read “The Power Broker.”

And here’s the best part. As much as you learn about Robert Moses, there is so much more to say. Thus the idea of a second volume.

There are more files to dig through that promise a whole other level of meaning surrounding how and why – and more important, for whose benefit – decisions were arrived at during the decades that Robert Moses shaped the urban environment in New York State, from Niagara to Massena to the Bronx and Staten Island.

Publishers will tell you, of course, that committing to a book the size of The Power Broker (Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace, anyone?) is a fool’s errand.

Well, this fool want’s more of it. With material this rich, the mining should go on, and with it, hopefully a restoration of what it means to be a journalist. How noble the calling can be.

Next: Running for Your Life: Urban Forestry is Not An Oxymoron

Running for Your Life: Longing for “Democracy”

Everything seems consumed by the nondemocratic imperative of national security.

Case in point: The failure of the “free” press to be allowed to get to the bottom of how “official” was the Saudi sanction of the “events” of 9/11.

It’s why the impeachment theater will never crack the “national security” hold on evidence that would prove the crimes and misdemeanors case against the president.

Nixon just resigned, if Trump doesn’t do so (there’s a rich one!), they will never get to the heart of the darkness. Like the 9/11 scenario, the info is just too incendiary; there are no models for how this would end so better keep a lid on the inculpatory evidence.  

To think the true source of this blackness will ever by exposed is a child’s dream. If so, like Peter Pan, I never going to grow up.

Next: Running for Your Life: The Power Broker Vol. II

Running for Your Life: Resolutions?

I might not be right about this, but New Year's resolutions seem passe.

Maybe it has something to do with the fact that "news" has become so soft that every day is "Resolution" Day.

As in, "list" journalism never tires in turning you on to the next cool thing, the best way to look, the cruelest way to put down your rivals.

Meaning every day is Resolution Day -- we are driven by media channels to make the right choice, have the right opinions, make the right friends.

As a lifelong journalist -- I have worked in newspapers for parts of six decades now, from the 70s to the 20s -- I remember when it seemed that most people weren't always tracking the fads, that folks saw the wisdom in developing opinions based on experience and knowledge, whether that came through friends, a healthy appetite for real news, or close family ties.

So, yeah, make a resolution: to lose weight, to exercise more, read more seriously. It isn't a bad thing; in fact a New Year's Resolution can truly be a game-changer. But it is doing so as part of a passe tradition.

Next: Running for Your Life: Read, Read, Read

Running for Your Life: Moderation Nation

It has been a thrilling holiday period, so far.

This may sound contradictory, but this holiday has been heavy on moderation.

Little bit of this, some of that, dollop of wonder, childlike tastes of food, friends and family.

One gift in the household: a bear ornament for a log cabin tree of countable branches.

Heat from a wood stove and tiny Hanukkah flames.

Dim sum lunch on Christmas Day; creamy Bolognese from Thanksgiving turkey stock on Christmas Night.

On the shores of Great Latkes, savory bean dish.

The piece de resistance, an Eggplant Parmesan, courtesy of our loving Italian “mom”’s family recipe, the cumulative efforts of four loving souls.

Wine, Chinese takeout with vegetarian choices.

Because but for the turkey on Thanksgiving, that fed the Bolognese plan a month later, some slices of smoked turkey (again), we are moderating the meat.

Okay, say the words … animal consciousness. Three days after Christmas, we visited a family farm and saw a spunky pig in a barn. Seventeen lambs blatting for milk, for what seemed like attention but was more nine parts hunger, one part fear. All eighteen in line for holiday slaughter.

Call me a citizen in training in Moderation Nation.

Next: Running for Your Life: Resolutions?

Running for Your Life: “Irrationality” Heard From

Question of the day from the London Review of Books, from critic William Davies, reviewing a philosophy book, “Irrationality,” by Justin Smith,”

“How much, if any, of a pre-internet culture can survive in an age where every intellectual exchange can swiftly be derailed by a joke, a personal attack, a cry of victimhood or a strategic misunderstanding of the other’s argument?”

My pal, KN, responds:

“I think it’s because we collectively have lost the ability to sustain any thought too complex to be conveyed in 128 characters. Which leaves what? Jokes, personal attacks, cries of victimhood and strategic misunderstandings. They all fit the space! Public critique is dying because we can no longer sustain a train of thought, or attend with patience anyone trying to form one. Listening to another’s argument demands humility, and we are in a regular humility drought right now.”

And my response to KN:

“What Davies/Smith argue is that the platform giants – Facebook, Google, Amazon – rob us of humility, by rewarding everything but – Davies ends the piece by saying Smith is like the sober, patient person who attends a wild, drunken party who is loath to give up his effort of speaking truth to hype and boorishness.”

Next: Running for Your Life: Moderation Nation

Running for Your Life: Fake News, the Early Days

It all started with the NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command).

Fake news, that is.

Back in distant times, there were few news stories that adults enjoyed sharing with their Santa-believing kids than the news coming out of NORAD leading up to Christmas.

Check this out, an official NORAD press release last month:

Peterson Air Force Base, Colo. —
"As the North American Aerospace Defense Command conducts its primary mission
of defending the homeland, it stands ready to continue its tradition of tracking Santa’s
journey around the globe on Dec. 24."

Ah, in simpler times, adults would accept the Santa tracker information with a nod and a wink. After that news cycle, they'd return to their newspapers, radio and broadcast

Fake news being a nonpartisan non-reality in those days.

Fake news now? Fuhgeddaboudit.

Next: Running for Your Life: Moderation Nation

Running for Your Life: Ducks, Newburyport!

Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellmann is not going to be for everybody -- and one can't help but think it doesn't hurt to be a member of a global literary royalty (her father Richard is author of the revered biographies of both James Joyce and Oscar Wilde), but whoa! I can't wait to read it.

Jon Day's review in the London Review of Books, Dec. 5, sold me with this line:

"Ellmann endows her narrator with a language entirely appropriate to her personality: polite and self-consciously self-doubting."

More than most anything else that's what I want from a book these days ... to remove myself for however long it takes into the mind of a narrator who is seen as "polite and self-consciously self-doubting." 

Next: Running for Your Life: Christmas Pineapple

Running for Your Life: Bear Truth

When it comes to a wonderful piece of bear nonfiction by David Trotter (London Review of Books, Nov. 7), which refers to North American grizzlies, aka “Moby-Dick with Claws,” it's understandable the blood gets stirred to write a letter in response.

And so, a letter appears in the Dec. 5 LRB, courtesy of Jane Campbell of Oxford.

Ms. Campbell adds to the conversation started by Trotter's essay. She writes of a passage in “The Biography of a Grizzly,” by Ernest Thompson Seton, that recounts the aftermath felt by a bear cub survivor, injured in his hind leg, from a hunter’s bullet after the man had shot and killed his mother and three siblings:

“As cold night came down, he (Wahb by name) missed (his mother) more and more again, and he whimpered as he limped along, a miserable, lonely, little motherless bear … not lost in the mountains, for he had no home to seek, but so sick and lonely, and with such pain in his foot, and in his stomach a craving for a drink that would never more be his. That night he found a hollow log, and crawling in, he tried to dream that his mother’s great furry arms were around him, and he snuffled himself to sleep.”

Ms. Campbell’s letter continues:

… Wahb survives to be the biggest, fiercest grizzly in the region but never has a mate or exacts revenge on hunters. He dies of old age.

Next: Running for Your Life: How’s About “Ducks, Newburyport”?

Running for Your Life: Ginkgo Dreams

Jill Jonnes’ “Urban Forests” throws some uncommon love on the ginkgo biloba.

We’ve been blessed with more than a few ginkgos in our Brooklyn neighborhood of Park Slope.

It has a wonderful history, with a punk yellow color of Sex Pistols splendor.

Here’s the “nut” graf:

“An abundance of fossils record that the ginkgo tree was among the fauna and flora of North America that were glaciated out and effectively driven into extinction on the continent by the Ice Age. (Talk about a native tree!) … Scientists now know that the ginkgo biloba tree or its ancestors have existed on earth for 250 million years, longer than any other tree now living.”

They aren’t everywhere, the ginkgos … But next time you see one, bow down. Not only have they outlived everything else on earth, individual trees have been know to live for centuries … (Two famous 18^th century ginkgos – one in Utrech, the other in Kew Gardens, are still alive today.)

Next: Running for Your Life: How’s About “Ducks, Newburyport”?

Running for Your Life: Dawn Times

Two years ago I had an idea.

I had spent months that year -- the centennial of the passing of the Canadian artist Tom Thomson -- researching and writing a book of letters. Thomson grew up in my hometown, Owen Sound, Ontario, and his life and times -- especially his final days because his demise remains shrouded in mystery to this day -- have always fascinated me.

On American Thanksgiving, 2017, I finished a woodland painting of my own -- in part inspired by my Owen Sounder forebear. A image of the painting can be found attached to my Twitter page.

The 2017 Dawn Times panel lies in the back of this image; in the foreground, is Dawn Times II.

A third panel is due, yes, in 2021... Perhaps just in time for the Tom Thomson book? Let's just see!

Next: Running for Your Life: Ginkgo Dreams   

Running for Your Life: On Loving the Cold

OK, not exactly loving it.

Or is it?

What did Kierkegaard say about love?

“When one has once fully entered the realm of love, the world — no matter how imperfect — becomes rich and beautiful, it consists solely of opportunities for love.”

That’s what he said.

So, it is about love, isn’t it?

No matter how cold it is, I’ve stepped out the door for a run every other of my adult life.

The truth is, severe cold gets to me in ways it never did, say, 30 or 40 years ago. But I head out the door (the realm of love?) and start to run, regardless of the temperature, the rain, snow.

Running for your love … Corny but, effective.

Next: Running for Your Life: Dawn Times

Running for Your Life: Art?

Critic Colin Burrow in a recent London Review of Books (No. 21, “The Magic Bloomschtick”) writes this and I couldn't agree more:

First, let’s start with poetry from Emily Dickinson:

The Poets light out Lamps –

Themselves – go out –

The Wicks them stimulate

If vital Light

Inhere as do the suns –

Each Age a Lens

Disseminating their

Circumference –

“(Dickinson) is doing what the best poets do, trying to think behind the words they’ve been given, whether those words come from a newspaper, from an essay, from a hubbub on the street, from a story told in church, or on their grandmother’s knee, from a whisper in the ear from the muse, or from another poem.”

Next: Running for Your Life: On Loving the Cold

Running for Your Life: Anonymous Heard From

If you read one book this election year, let it be “A  Warning” by Anonymous.

Okay, you say. I can’t read another word about politics, most especially about the circus surrounding the current president. It just depresses me.

Suppress those thoughts, and read this book.

But if Anonymous were truly courageous, he or she (he and she?) would not hide in anonymity and own the charges leveled in this stunning account of the perilous state of our nation.

Hachette, the publisher of “A Warning,” obviously thought differently. Its trust in the integrity of the message, the truth of what’s in these pages, won out.

There are things about this book that the left doesn’t like. (It is the work of a conservative true believer, not a unreconstituted liberal.) And obviously there are things that the right doesn’t like about it.

But how about us individual, open-minded readers? I submit that “A Warning” is the single-most important book to read for those who seriously want to know what it’s like today in the inner sanctum of the Oval Office.

And “A Warning” must be considered, given the stakes: As Anonymous writes, we are currently finishing Season Three of the US presidency. Read this book and just try to imagine what it will be like during the Final Season of late 2023. That, I find, unimaginable.

Next: Running for Your Life: On Loving the Cold

Running for Your Life: “They Go Low, We Go High”

Here’s a thought that came to me when I was running on Tuesday (Nov. 26).

Famously, Michelle Obama said of the Democrats enemies:

“When they go low, we go high.”

It’s hard to stress just how misguided that marching order has been given the modern media world.

Will the Times EVER go low. Or CNN or MSNBC?

Will they ever consider the lesson of LaCorte News, the brainchild of former Fox News dude Ken LaCorte.

An article in the New York Timers last weekend (Nov. 24) characterizes the news site as one that has proven to be successful in delivering extremist “news” to both the left and the right for a profit after failing to find any business traction with more legitimate news sites.

Do progressives ever go low? I wonder. Progressive find succor in the philosophes: Cicero, Aristotle – those who labored on theories regarding the betterment of man.

Consider this from Aristotle:

“He who exceeds in confidence when it comes to frightening things is reckless, and the reckless person is held to be both a boaster and a pretender to courage.”

Our current brand of leadership ‘conservatives” jones for philosophes of entirely different stripes. Say, Thomas Hobbes, for example: Hey, human nature makes for a life that nasty, brutish and short. So in the time you have on earth, you wanna get yours, Jack.

Also Machiavelli, who is given to suggest – although he didn’t actually write these words – the end justifies the means. (He actually said, “One judges by the results …”)

Guess what, Michelle, the go-lows have the edge. I can’t begin to think that most thoughtful folks will be satisfied with another moral victory in a presidential election, this time in November 2020.

Next: Running for Your Life: Anonymous Heard From

Running for Your Life: Why Run (the late November version)

Before my run today (Nov. 26), I wasn’t feeling it. It’s been a busy run-up to Thanksgiving, lots of errands, personal matters, of course, work.

But I run every other day, and this one, was a beauty. Shorts-wearing weather, and sure enough, off I go. It’s what I do.

Pretty much every run for – I don’t know how long – I go past a kite that has been trapped in a tree in Prospect Park, Brooklyn. (Remember, if you are one of those folks of a certain age, Charlie Brown’s kite in a tree? That’s what I’m talking about.)

It’s been at least a couple of seasons, but the colors of the kite have not dimmed appreciably. In fact it is just beautiful, and in pristine shape, and I start to think about the simple wonder of leaflessness. For months at a time I can’t see the kite because it is obscured by the leaves in this healthy oak tree.

Further on, I thrill with the look, the glistening quality of the larch at the bridge overlook of the park’s boathouse: the golden aura of this monument pine.

Next: Running for Your Life: “They Go Low, We Go High” -- Discuss

Running for Your Life: “The Testaments” and You

Here’s a “Testaments” truth for you …

In reference to the novel by that title by Margaret Atwood, a sequel to “The Handmaid’s Tale: Documents written by principals in a coup or even in a “legitimate” democracy aren’t enough to merit the undoing of a corrupt, even society-destroying command.

This observation was made by “The Testaments” reviewer at the London Review of Books, Deborah Friedell:

“If 'The Testaments' were truly a novel for our times, after Aunt Lydia and her allies had succeeded in getting the documents out, after having risked, as they do in Atwood’s book, discovery and death in almost every chapter, journalists would write about them; and nothing would happen. ”

Next: Running for Your Life: A Word on “A Warning”