On 9/11/11, a Sunday, M and I, en route to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, are stopped by a German-speaking couple who ask for the closest subway. Eastern Parkway, we tell them, straight ahead. We are going in that direction, too, but somewhat slower, in deep conversation. They thank us and hurry along the sidewalk.
September 11 is always a bit hard for me, but this one, ten years after, despite the onslaught of media remembrances, has snuck up on me. The garden is our preferred public sanctuary, where we like to walk and talk about our feelings, and on 9/11/11, with no sign to indicate why, it is open free for non-members. One of the first groups we see in the garden are the Germans who stop and give us a wide smile. Hmm, it looks like they are going to spending time in the garden instead of the subway. We see them a couple of times later, each time exchanging smiles, until it is time for me to go to work where I edit stories, manage graphics and write headlines for a living.
Running for Your Life: Thinking Marathon and, Yes, 9-11
One week from Boston registration. Through the summer more than intact. Since this time last year, my longest training run: one hour, thirty minutes. And today (Wed., Sept. 7) I neared that, 1:25, and plenty of gas left in the tank. Months since I’ve felt even a twinge in the torn upper right hamstring, my dreaded forefoot pain has flared up only once this summer, and I’ve done nothing to medicate it, just stayed true to a regimen, using weight machines at the gym, focusing on calves, hamstrings, butt and hip muscles, a lateral/shoulder workout, elliptical, nightly pushups (one set, sixty per), the latter of which helps in balance of thrust. Feel that my strides are softer, so that aches and pains after a run are minimal. I must and will get in the habit of stretching after long runs, which really help to relieve muscle strain and ward off injury.
Running for Your Life: Back to the Fire
Love the run (Sept. 2) to the phallic spear, west Fire Island, a herd of deer graze on the lawn oval, from my starting place from Dunewood, probably three miles, am thinking that I can run much farther, amazed at the lack of Irene damage, some salt water, diseased-looking trees, toppled over, some dead, undergrowth, except it seems for a tiny oasis, mosquitoes at night but not now in the breeze, nip in the air, which also helps.
Elsewhere, the breeding grounds for the Minnesota state bird expand under near-compromised homes on stilts. Remember nowhere can a basement flood here. The depth of the land itself no great shakes, literally a spit of sand in the ocean, laugh riot of a reality TV show, Survivor: Fire Island. Look for it.
Elsewhere, the breeding grounds for the Minnesota state bird expand under near-compromised homes on stilts. Remember nowhere can a basement flood here. The depth of the land itself no great shakes, literally a spit of sand in the ocean, laugh riot of a reality TV show, Survivor: Fire Island. Look for it.
Running for Your Life: Discovering Derek Parfit
It’s been a long, long time since I got so much out of a single New Yorker http://nyr.kr/otYONF. (Talking magazines, not my daughter, she of the powerful intellect http://nyp.st/ielb6l and perfect-pitch loyalty, that’s her. In case you’re wondering my wife M lives in New York but is as Midwestern as Fitzgerald; and yeah, nods to Paul Simms and “God’s Blog” http://nyr.kr/oAzqQX)
Back-to-back wonders, the undressed-down, let-his-story-tell-the-story style of Larissa Macfarquhar’s “How to Be Good” profile of the heretofore unknown to me philosopher Derek Parfit, and the crystalline father and son story, “Town of Cats,” by Haruki Murakami. Seems the work of a single mind. Our heroes, Parfit and Tengo, find joy and passion in both science and literature. This from “TOC”: especially in “TOC”: science on the one hand and literature on the other:
Back-to-back wonders, the undressed-down, let-his-story-tell-the-story style of Larissa Macfarquhar’s “How to Be Good” profile of the heretofore unknown to me philosopher Derek Parfit, and the crystalline father and son story, “Town of Cats,” by Haruki Murakami. Seems the work of a single mind. Our heroes, Parfit and Tengo, find joy and passion in both science and literature. This from “TOC”: especially in “TOC”: science on the one hand and literature on the other:
Running for Your Life: Raining Cats & Dogs
What is it about a dog? What New Yorker writer Adam Gopnik found http://nyr.kr/n2ITT7, that dogs are man’s best friend in large part because life on the farm is better than life in the woods.
Think pioneer days – Kansas, Missouri, Manitoba – scads more wolves than dogs. What was to stop them (the dogs) from running off and joining a pack of wolves? What Farley Mowat, the beloved Canadian writer and conservationist, author of “Never Cry Wolf” http://amzn.to/ofrush (it may not be “true,” exactly, the wolf experts say, but what the hey, it’s a great yarn) brings alive.
Catch a glimpse into the eyes of the stubborn breeds, top of the list, Redbone Coonhounds, that’s right, Thurb, and see into a wolf’s soul. Send a shiver down your spine.
Think pioneer days – Kansas, Missouri, Manitoba – scads more wolves than dogs. What was to stop them (the dogs) from running off and joining a pack of wolves? What Farley Mowat, the beloved Canadian writer and conservationist, author of “Never Cry Wolf” http://amzn.to/ofrush (it may not be “true,” exactly, the wolf experts say, but what the hey, it’s a great yarn) brings alive.
Catch a glimpse into the eyes of the stubborn breeds, top of the list, Redbone Coonhounds, that’s right, Thurb, and see into a wolf’s soul. Send a shiver down your spine.
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