At the Very Lengthy Meeting...and Ultrarunninng

Yes, indeed, I'm going to throw some more poetry at you.  As I always say, whenever many of us see poetry we can't hit that DELETE key fast enough.

But, read this one, just read it, and see if it resonates with you:

At the Very Lengthy Meeting

by Kevin McCaffrey

At the very lengthy meeting
I actually felt my soul leave my body
and rush toward the ceiling—
and fly around the walls and flare
toward daylight, toward the windows—
to throw silently its impetuous emptiness
against the glass in vain.
It could not go anywhere, the clear moth.

Then it lay on the rug, not exhausted
but bored and so inert that it almost—
though nothing—
took on a hue, stained with all the breaths
and words and thoughts that filled the room:
the yellow-green color of old teeth.

Credit to The Writer's Almanac for 14 May, here.  My coping technique for deadly meetings was to plan my backcountry runs--routes, water sources, timing, etc.  I'd be able  to lay it all out in incredible detail while seemingly taking notes on the meeting.

Also, The Writer's Almanac tells us that on this date in 1804, the Lewis and Clark expedition took off from St. Louis, heading west into that vast, unknown wilderness.  Talk about courage--those guys were incredibly brave and adventurous.

"Inaction of Shoes"...and Ultrarunning

[updated 13 Feb to add an ASICS link]

Now, if that Subject line abo
ve does not reel you in, you obviously have no curiosity whatsoever.  What can this be, the "Inaction of Shoes"?

From The Writer's Almanac for 3 Feb 2014. I know, it's poetry and as I always say here, most people can't hit that DELETE key fast enough. But just read it. It's short.

"Inaction of Shoes" --Ron Padgett

There are many things to be done today
and it's a lovely day to do them in

Each thing a joy to do
and a joy to have done

I can tell because of the calm I feel
when I think about doing them

I can almost hear them say to me
Thank you for doing us

And when evening comes
I'll remove my shoes and place them on the floor

And think how good they look
sitting?... standing?... there

Not doing anything

Our shoes...just sitting?...standing?...there/Not doing anything.  What an image, coming after--to use an Ultrarunning example--a backcountry run of many miles during which thousands of steps are taken, all important, yet all likely taken for granted, along with the shoes that made it all possible.

As long-distance runners, shoes are our lifeblood (I'm setting aside, of course, that segment of the running community that opts for minimized footwear or even barefootedness while running).

I've blogged about this before but seems appropriate to repeat it here.  I have only a couple pairs of dress shoes, and 5 pairs of running shoes:

1. Gnarly trails, rocky, rooty, etc: I have an older pair of Montrail Vitesse that I keep just for this type of running. Perfect example around here is the Appalachian Trail or most of the trails from the Massanutten 100 in VA.

2. Easier trails to dirt roads: I use a pair of Vasque (forget the model). I run in these for the JFK 50 miler in MD.

3. Dirt roads and jeep trails: ASICS 2140 trail, which can also be used just fine on pavement--a great Umstead 100 (NC) shoe.

4. Pavement: Whatever’s on sale, although I have never had a pair of ASICS that I didn’t like.

 

5. "Ice" shoes, where I've screwed in hex-head screws for traction.  I normally only use these every couple years or so, although this winter has been the exception.  I posted about such shoes in "Modify Your Shoes for Ice".

 

 

 

[image credit Gary]

 

 

More Mary Oliver...and Ultrarunning

As I have said here more than once, I realize that when many of you see poetry, you cannot hit that DELETE key fast enough.

But...if you ever got up at daybreak for a run, you know this feeling (credit to The Writer's Almanac). 

So just give this one a try--please?


Why I Wake Early

by Mary Oliver

 

Hello, sun in my face.
Hello, you who make the morning
and spread it over the fields
and into the faces of the tulips
and the nodding morning glories,
and into the windows of, even, the
miserable and crotchety—

best preacher that ever was,
dear star, that just happens
to be where you are in the universe
to keep us from ever-darkness,
to ease us with warm touching,
to hold us in the great hands of light—
good morning, good morning, good morning.

Watch, now, how I start the day
in happiness, in kindness.

 

Primeval Hope, Vibrance, Optimism...and Ultrarunning

It's been awhile since I posted about something I saw on The Writer's Almanac.

This is a website that provides a free daily email about "things literary," but it's more, so much more.  It's nominally written by Garrison Keillor--at least it is he who reads the corresponding daily spot on National Public Radio that I sometimes catch. 

Today's feature, here, is a short poem from C. K. Williams, entitled Droplets.  It's often when people see poetry they can't hit that DELETE key fast enough.  But...if you like rain (and what Ultrarunner worth her or his salt doesn't?) you should click on over to read it, here.  It's short.

But today's focus isn't a Williams poem, it was a quote that he offered about his grandchildren that arrested me so:

I have three grandsons. Who, of course, are above average — way above average, needless to say. And when I'm with them I feel a sort of primeval hope, their vibrance, their optimism, the way they're so firmly in the world without thinking about it. When I'm not with them and I think about the world, I am not in a very hopeful mood. I'm in a very fearful mood.

Later today when I see Mister Tristan--the 5-year-old human being--I plan on loving the daylights out of him.  He won't know why, but I will.

There's the immortality that all of us somehow seek.

The link to Ultrarunning?  This sport is a long sojourn across many miles, sometimes vast distances, much like the journey of raising a child or grandchild.  The journey has highs and lows, times of triumph and times of disaster, physical depths and spiritual heights, all wrapped up in one neat little package.  Like the running philosopher Dr. George Sheehan used to say, sport--particularly running--is a metaphor for life.  All the elements are there.

The Weather and Backcountry Gear

I find myself paying an inordinate amount of attention to the weather forecast before I go for a run.  I suppose there's nothing intrinsically wrong with using the technologies that are available to us, to make our lives easier/safer/better etc,

But I wonder how people used to get by...but I know the answer.  They prepared for various contingencies, for the worst conditions that they reasonably could expect to encounter.  And then rode it out.

So when I head into the backcountry, I always, always, check the detailed weather forecast.  You'd be nuts not to.  I carry a bit of extra food, just in case, and have often been very grateful I had it along.  Ditto for water. 

The one item of gear that I always carry in the backcountry--but have never yet used--is a space blanket (a giveaway from some marathon finish line many years back), a candle, and some waterproof matches.  The matches are to light the candle, which may be the only way to get a fire started if conditions are wet.  The fire and the space blanket, of course, are for the contingency of being unable to get out under one's own power, before dark (or getting dangerously chilled).

Anyway, back to the weather and a relevant quotation from The Writer's Almanac, always a good read, from 1 March 2013:

Snow is falling west of here. The mountains have more than a
foot of it. I see the early morning sky dark as night. I won't lis-
ten to the weather report. I'll let the question of snow hang.
Answers only dull the senses. Even answers that are right often
make what they explain uninteresting. In nature the answers
are always changing. Rain to snow, for instance. Nature can
let the mysterious things alone—wet leaves plastered to tree
trunks, the intricate design of fish guts. The way we don't fall
off the earth at night when we look up at the North Star. The
way we know this may not always be so. The way our dizziness
makes us grab the long grass, hanging by our fingertips on the
edge of infinity.

 

"Report from the West" by Tom Hennen, from Darkness Sticks to Everything. © Copper Canyon Press, 2013.

The Contrast of Ultrarunning with Everyday Life

First a quote (info on the author appears at the bottom):

The book was about a fictional small town in Minnesota called Gopher Prairie, a place inhabited by "a savorless people, gulping tasteless food, and sitting afterward, coatless and thoughtless, in rocking-chairs prickly with inane decorations, listening to mechanical music, saying mechanical things about the excellence of Ford automobiles, and viewing themselves as the greatest race in the world."

When I am running in the backcountry, I am the antithesis of the kind of "living" described above.  Also Leopold captured the notion neatly in A Sand County Almanac:

Recreation is valuable in proportion to the degree to which it differs from and contrasts with workaday life.
 

Yep, being a good animal in the backcountry, pushing one's mind and body to giddy limits, certainly does contrast just a tad with everyday life.  I guess it's much like an addiction, albeit a positive one.

The identity of our author? 
Yesterday, 7 Feb 2013, was the birthday of Sinclair Lewis, born in Sauk Centre, Minnesota in 1885, and author of Main Street, from which the quote above comes.  He was the first American to win the Nobel Prize in literature.

Credit to The Writer's Almanac, always a good read, for the tip on Lewis.  Now I gotta read Main Street, I suppose.

 

Cheerleading...and Ultrarunning

Hey, this is only 2 weeks late, but it seems that 2 Nov is the anniversary of several noteworthy events of a geeky nature (i.e., right up my alley).  From the Writer's Almanac:

On this date in 1920, the first modern commercially licensed radio station--KDKA in Pittsburgh--began broadcasting.

It's also the anniversary of the maiden--and only--flight of the Spruce Goose, made on this date in 1947. It's technically known as the H-4 Hercules, and it was made of birch, not spruce. Dreamed up by shipping magnate Henry Kaiser, and designed by Howard Hughes, it remains the largest airplane ever built, by far: It's five stories tall, it boasts a wingspan of 320 feet, its cargo area is large enough to hold two railroad boxcars, and it has eight engines with 17-foot propellers. It was made of wood because metal was at a premium during the war.

And last but not least: 

It's the birthday of cheerleading, which made its debut at the University of Minnesota on this date in 1898. Pep clubs had been around for a couple of decades, especially at Princeton, where their all-male pep club led the crowd in unified chanting to motivate the football team.

Cheerleading was a male-only sport until 1923, when the first female cheerleaders took the field. This phenomenon didn't really take off until the 1940s, when the male student body was depleted by World War II. The '20s also saw the advent of acrobatics, human pyramids, and dance moves to accompany the fight songs and chants.

Now that's what is lacking in Ultrarunning--cheerleading!  Forget about the pathetic efforts of family, crew, and race volunteers to cheer is on.  What we REALLY need is some "unified chanting to motivate" the runners. 

Squads of cheerleaders could position themselves deep in the forest, far from any access point, to maximize the impact of their motivational chants.  Depending on the terrain, "acrobatics, human pyramids, and dance moves" should also be employed to whip up the tired runners.

 

Joseph Medicine Crow

As I've written many times now, The Writer's Almanac is a treasure trove.  You can go to the web site, or better yet, sign up for a free daily email of things loosely categorized as "literary."

Here's an excerpt from today's entry, which bumped what I was going to post:

Today is the 98th birthday of Joseph Medicine Crow-High Bird, best known as Joseph Medicine Crow, who was born in 1913 into the Apsaalooke people -- the children of the large-beaked bird -- near Lodge Grass on the Crow reservation in southern Montana. Joseph Crow is the oldest living man of the Crow tribe and the last traditional Crow chief. As a writer, he has produced seminal works on Native American history and reservation life. But it is for Medicine Crow's writings on the victory of the Cheyenne and Lakota warriors led by Crazy Horse and Chief Gall over the U.S. Cavalry and George Armstrong Custer that he is best known.

Joseph was the first member of his tribe to attend college and was in the middle of graduate studies in anthropology when World War II began and he joined the Army as an infantry scout. He'd learned from his grandfather that a warrior must have the strength and intelligence to carry out four traditional military acts, a process called "counting-coup," in order to qualify as a chief, and Medicine Crow completed all four during the war. One highly prestigious act was to make physical contact with an enemy and escape unharmed, and on one occasion, he fought and grappled with a German soldier whose life he then spared when the man screamed out for his mother. On another, Medicine Crow led a war party to steal 50 Nazi SS horses from a German camp, singing a Crow song of honor as they rode away.

After the war, Medicine Crow returned to Montana where he was appointed his tribe's historian and anthropologist. He began writing academic works, collections of Crow stories and the Crow creation cycle, nonfiction books for children, and his memoirs, to mention just a few. Medicine Crow's step-grandfather had been a scout for George Armstrong Custer and an eyewitness to Custer's Last Stand along the Little Big Horn River, and as a boy Joseph had heard many stories of the battle; today, Medicine Crow is the last living person to have received direct oral testimony from a participant of Little Bighorn, which he has written about in Keep the Last Bullet for Yourself (The True Story of Custer's Last Stand) and other works.

Medicine Crow has been awarded the American Bronze Star as well as the French Legion of Honor. A White House press release naming Medicine Crow as a recipient of the 2009 Presidential Medal of Freedom praised him for his "contributions to the preservation of the culture and history of the First Americans," saying that those achievements are only matched by "his importance as a role model to young Native Americans across the country."

I gotta check as to Kindle availability for this book.  So much to read and so little time....

 

Jane...and Ultrarunning

I could almost write the following para in my sleep:

As usual, the Writer's Almanac doesn't disappoint.  This is a free daily email with a literary bent (did I mention that it's FREE?).  I'm going out on a limb here, but the fact that you are reading Mister Tristan (the blog, not the 3-year old human being) tells me that there is indeed a literary bone in your body.

From 9 Oct, a post about the fate that awaits many of us, even though we are young and healthy and Ultrarunners, for Christ's sake!  And I know--in a sentence that I also could write in my sleep--that when many of you see poetry you can't hit that DELETE key fast enough.

But read it anyway, OK?

Jane, the old woman across the street,
is lugging big black trash bags to the curb.
It's snowing hard, and the bags are turning white,
gradually disappearing in the storm.

Jane is getting ready to put her house on the market
and move into a home of some sort. A facility.
She's just too old to keep the place going anymore,
and as we chat about this on the sidewalk
I'm thinking, I'm so glad this isn't going to happen to me.

It seems like a terrible fate, to drag out your trash bags
and then head for a facility somewhere.
And all the worse to be old in a facility. But then,
that's the whole reason you go there in the first place.

But the great thing about being me, I'm thinking,
as I continue my morning walk around the block,
is that I'm not going to a facility of any sort.

That's for other people. I intend to go on
pretty much as I always have, enjoying life,
taking my morning walk, then coffee
and the newspaper, music and a good book.
Europe vaguely in the summers.
Then another year just like this one, on and on,
ad infinitum.

Why change this? I have no intention of doing so.
What Jane is doing—growing old,
taking out her ominous black trash bags
to vanish terribly in the snow, getting ready
for someone to drive her to the facility—

that may be her idea of the future (which I totally respect),
but it certainly isn't mine.

"Jane" by George Bilgere.

Oh, and the connection to Ultrarunning.  None of us, repeat, NONE OF US, gets out of here alive.  All we can do is to forestall obsolescence somewhat, and there nothing better than Ultrarunning to help with that.

But notice how I used the word "forestall."  Not cancel, not eliminate.  I'm still gonna die, as will you. 

The question is, will what you did in your life fill you with memories and satisfaction when it's time for assisted living or nursing home care, as in Jane's example above?

Ultrarunning lets me answer, "YES."

 

What Happened to Him When He Was a Boy?

As usual, the Writer's Almanac does not disappoint.  I love when each day's installment shows up in my inbox.  This offering from Sunday 2 Oct was a good one.
The notion of killing living organisms for sport--for sport--appalls and horrifies me.  I will never understand it.  Never.

Game, by Maxine Kumin

Before he died

Archduke Franz Ferdinand,
gunned down in Sarajevo
to jump-start World War I,
bragged he had shot three
thousand stags and a miscellany
of foxes, geese, wolves, and boars
driven toward him by beaters,
stout men he ordered to flush
creatures from their cover
into his sights, a tradition
the British aristocracy
carried on, further aped
by rich Americans
from Teddy R. to Ernest H.,
something Supreme
Court Justice Antonin
Scalia, pudgy son of Sicilian
immigrants, indulged in
when, years later, he had
scores of farm-raised birds
beaten from their cages and scared
up for him to shoot down
which brought him an inner joy.
What happened
to him when he was a boy?

[From Where I Live: New and Selected Poems, (c) W.W. Norton & Company, 2010.]

 I am so grateful for my life, for the opportunity to live, and I assume that other living things feel the same. Insofar as possible I try to refrain from unnecessarily taking the life of even so small a thing a spider. I often capture them in the house and release them outside (although I have no compunction against swatting flies and mosquitoes, plus I eat meat, so, yes, I am a hypocrite).

What did happen to these folks when they were children?

 

Dancing...and Ultrarunning

Maybe an analogy to Ultrarunning...a compulsion to do something apparently silly, at best?  My money's on mass hysteria.  The reading I've done on it convinces me that it can be a very underestimated and powerful phenomenon.

From the Writer's Almanac (24 June 2011):

An outbreak of dancing plague, also known as St. Vitus' Dance or epidemic chorea, began on this day in 1374 in Aachen, Germany. From Aachen it spread across central Europe and as far away as England and Madagascar. Dancing mania affected groups of people -- as many as thousands at a time -- and caused them to dance uncontrollably for days, weeks, and even months until they collapsed from exhaustion. Some danced themselves to death, suffering heart attacks or broken hips and ribs. Most outbreaks happened between the 14th and 17th centuries, though there are reports of dancing mania as far back as the 7th century. The 1374 outbreak was well-documented by several credible witnesses who reported that dancers sang, screamed, saw visions, behaved like animals, and experienced aversions to the color red and to pointy-toed shoes.

At the time, people believed the plague was the result of a curse from St. Vitus or St. John the Baptist, and so they prayed to the saints and made pilgrimages to their shrines. Exorcism was another treatment option, as was isolation, and many communities hired musicians to accompany the dancers in the hope that it would help them overcome their compulsion; it usually just resulted in more people joining the dancing. Scientists today are still at a loss to explain it, putting it down to economic hardship, ergot poisoning, cults, or mass hysteria.

Oh, and I totally agree on the part about having an aversion to pointy-toed shoes.  They tend to catch rocks and roots, you know.

 

REPOST: How Dogs Run

While I am down after arm surgery and can't type, I am recycling some posts from a year ago.

This from 8 June 2010:

 

(photo credit here)

I really love The Writer's Almanac, delivered free daily to my inbox.

This from June 5th. I know, I know, it's poetry, and most of you can’t hit the DELETE button fast enough. But just read it, OK? It has a lot to say to us about a model for simplicity in our ultrarunning.

Read it.

 

Dharma
Billy Collins

The way the dog trots out the front door
every morning
without a hat or an umbrella,
without any money
or the keys to her doghouse
never fails to fill the saucer of my heart
with milky admiration.

Who provides a finer example
of a life without encumbrance—
Thoreau in his curtainless hut
with a single plate, a single spoon?
Gandhi with his staff and his holy diapers?

Off she goes into the material world
with nothing but her brown coat
and her modest blue collar,
following only her wet nose,
the twin portals of her steady breathing,
followed only by the plume of her tail.

If only she did not shove the cat aside
every morning
and eat all his food
what a model of self-containment she
would be,
what a paragon of earthly detachment.
If only she were not so eager
for a rub behind the ears,
so acrobatic in her welcomes,
if only I were not her god.

 

 

End of Days...and Ultrarunning

As always, the Writer's Almanac does not disappoint.

Have you ever had to euthanize a cat? (I can't say "put to sleep" although I want to). Then read the following. I know, I know, it's a poem and most of you can't hit the DELETE key fast enough. But read on, Ultrarunner, I'll meet you down at the end.

End of Days by Marge Piercy


Almost always with cats, the end
comes creeping over the two of you--
she stops eating, his back legs
no longer support him, she leans
to your hand and purrs but cannot
rise--sometimes a whimper of pain
although they are stoic. They see
death clearly though hooded eyes.


Then there is the long weepy
trip to the vet, the carrier no
longer necessary, the last time
in your lap. The injection is quick.


Simply they stop breathing
in your arms. You bring them
home to bury in the flower garden,
planting a bush over a deep grave.


That is how I would like to cease,
held in a lover's arms and quickly
fading to black like an old-fashioned
movie embrace. I hate the white
silent scream of hospitals, the whine
of pain like air-conditioning's hum.


I want to click the off switch.


And if I can no longer choose
I want someone who loves me
there, not a doctor with forty patients
and his morality to keep me sort
of, kind of alive or sort of undead.


Why are we more rational and kinder
to our pets than to ourselves or our
parents? Death is not the worst
thing; denying it can be.


"End of Days" by Marge Piercy, from The Hunger Moon: New and Selected Poems, 1980 - 2010. (c) Alfred A. Knopf, 2011. Reprinted with permission.

The connection to Ultrarunning? Most of us won't admit it--I know I don't like to--but our ultra careers are finite. There was a beginning and there WILL be an end. For the lucky few, I suppose, they will be running up until the day they die, and never have to face a life without Ultrarunning.

But for most of us, old age will take its toll, slowing us down and chipping away at our limbs and our organs and our minds, until at last running becomes impossible. After decades, probably, the sudden stillness will be abrupt and final. One day, you are an Ultrarunner, and the next day you are not.

Frankly, I am afraid to cope with that eventuality. I started running in 1979 when I was 27 years old, when a job change afforded me the opportunity. I have been a runner for the 32 years since, with brief timeouts for surgery etc (although I have never had a serious running injury that put me on the disabled list for more than a week).

But wait, read the poem again. If the decline is gradual, I will see the end of Ultrarunning and come to accept it as just being time. I will look back and be eternally grateful for the quietly rich pageant that has been my ultra career, and bask in the memories until my real light finally goes out for good.

Being Worn Out...and Ultrarunning

From the always good Writer's Almanac, this one from month ago.  I'm feeling a bit worn out by various externalities that are inexorably nibbling away at me and my mental energy.  I'm feeling that there always is something I should be doing. 

Nothing life-threatening going on, just a momentary lull here in the mid-winter.  I'm ready for a good dose of spring.

F. Scott Fitzgerald was worn down to a much greater extent, desperately so, and I am not equating his resignation with my much milder flatness.  But he sure could articulate that feeling of just being done in much better than I can:

After huge critical and commercial success in his 20s, Fitzgerald found himself in his mid-30s deep in debt and feeling depleted. He said: "A writer like me must have an utter confidence, an utter faith in his star. It's an almost mystical feeling, a feeling of nothing-can-happen-to me, nothing-can-touch-me. … I once had it. But through a series of blows, many of them my own fault, something happened to that sense of immunity and I lost my grip." He said, "One blow after another and finally something snapped."

--SNIP--

He wrote: "I began to realize that for two years my life had been a drawing on resources that I did not possess, that I had been mortgaging myself physically and spiritually up to the hilt." He'd "cracked like an old plate." He said: "Of course all life is a process of breaking down, but the blows that do the dramatic side of the work—the big sudden blows that come, or seem to come, from outside— the ones you remember and blame things on and, in moments of weakness, tell your friends about, don't show their effect all at once.

There is another sort of blow that comes from within—that you don't feel until it's too late to do anything about it, until you realize with finality that in some regard you will never be as good a man again. The first sort of breakage seems to happen quick—the second kind happens almost without your knowing it but is realized suddenly indeed."

Now, this gonna sound hokey.  But when life is grinding you down, you go for a run.  Not just any run, but the run, the one that's special to you, the trail or course that always puts a smile on your face, the one that always pleases, the one you reserve for special times.

Yesterday a buddy and I ran on the C + O Canal in MD, of JFK 50 miler fame.  This is one of my rejuvination spots.

We started at daybreak and were alone on the trail.  No critters such as wild turkeys or deer--the snow remnants were too crunchy and noisy--but we spotted a raft of waterfowl at various spots in the Potomac River, and a couple of Great Blue Herons.

They seemed happy doing their bird things.  And suddenly I found a smile on my face too.

 

Time to Re-Read Treasure Island..and Ultrarunning

Image credit Wikipedia.

I continue to love me some Writer’s Almanac, a daily email I get that dealing with highlights of this day in history, always with a delightful literary bent.

I saved this one from the archives from 13 November 2007, and I’m featuring it here on the anniversary of the author's birth. It’s relevant because Treasure Island was one of my favorite books as a kid, and I just read it again at the beach this summer. Guess what?--loved it again!  Moreover, I found the biographical info about the author, Robert Louis Stevenson, to be SO compelling. What a love story!

It's the birthday of Robert Louis Stevenson, born in Edinburgh, Scotland (1850), who was a sickly, moderately successful essayist and travel writer, living in France, when one evening he walked to a friend's house, looked in through the window, and fell instantly in love with a woman sitting there at the table. To make a grand entrance, he opened the window, leapt inside, and took a bow. The woman was Fanny Osbourne and she was both American and unhappily married. She had come to Europe to get away from her husband, but after spending months getting to know Stevenson, she decided to go back to California.

Stevenson got a telegram from her a few weeks after she'd returned to the United States, and he decided on the spot to drop everything and go persuade her to divorce her husband and marry him. His health, as always, was terrible, and the trip to the United States almost killed him. He collapsed on Fanny Osbourne's doorstep, but she nursed him back to health. She did divorce her husband, and they got married in San Francisco and spent their honeymoon in a cabin near an abandoned silver mine.

They moved back to Scotland with her son from her previous marriage, and one rainy afternoon the following summer Stevenson painted a map of an imaginary island to entertain his new stepson. The map gave him and idea for a story and in a single month he had written his first great novel, Treasure Island (1883), about the young Jim Hawkins, who finds a treasure map and goes on a journey to find the treasure. He meets pirates, survives a mutiny, and gets to know a one-legged cook named Long John Silver. The book has been in print for 124 years now.

Go to the link to read the rest. 

Robert Louis Stevenson, said, "Our business in life is not to succeed, but to continue to fail in good spirits."

Sorta like Ultrarunning, when the run or the race is not going so well....it still is fun (mostly!).

 

Children's Literature...and Ultrarunning

Late posting today, sorry, was away for a long weekend.  More on that probably tomorrow.

Being married to an elementary school teacher, and having 3 grandchildren, I love me some children's literature.  R.L. Stine is an icon.  From the Writer's Almanac, 8 Oct 2010:

It's the birthday of young adult novelist R.L. [Robert Lawrence] Stine, born in Bexley, Ohio (1943). He quit his job as a social studies teacher to become a freelance writer, and at first he specialized in humorous books for kids. But his career really took off when he started writing scary stories for young adults. By the early 1990s, Stine's books were selling about a million copies per month. To keep up with demand, he had to write 20 pages a day, finishing a book every two weeks. His Fear Street series was the first modern book series for children that sold equally well to both boys and girls.

Some critics have said that his books aren't good for children, but R.L. Stine said, 'I believe that kids as well as adults are entitled to books of no socially redeeming value.'

That whole notion of doing things "of no socially redeeming value" ought to resonate with us folks who spend hours running in the woods.  Thinks about that again--we spend hours (days, sometimes) just a-runnin' in the woods.  And it's normal to us.

This idea sorta goes back to a David Blaikie quote that most Ultrarunners have seen and know, if you do any Ultra-related reading. Even if you are inclined to skip over this quote, having seen it many times before, you should read it again right now, carefully:

"Perhaps the genius of ultrarunning is its supreme lack of utility. It makes no sense in a world of space ships and supercomputers to run vast distances on foot. There is no money in it and no fame, frequently not even the approval of peers. But as poets, apostles and philosophers have insisted from the dawn of time, there is more to life than logic and common sense. The ultra runners know this instinctively. And they know something else that is lost on the sedentary. They understand, perhaps better than anyone, that the doors to the spirit will swing open with physical effort. In running such long and taxing distances they answer a call from the deepest realms of their being -- a call that asks who they are ..."

I'm an ultrarunner, that's who and what I am.

 

Mobs Blow...and Ultrarunning

Another gem from the Writer's Almanac (19 July 2010). This may be stretching the analogy a bit, but as my good buddy Don once said, "Mobs blow."

It was on this day in 1692 that Rebecca Nurse, Susannah Martin, Elizabeth Howe, Sarah Good, and Sarah Wildes were hanged for witchcraft in Salem, Massachusetts. Their accusers were mostly young girls who fell sick with strange fits and hallucinations, and then testified that they had seen these women flying through the air or asking them to sign the Devil's book.

Today, many scholars see the witchcraft trials as a product of tensions in and around Salem. There was a strong divide between the town of Salem, a prosperous port town, and the village of Salem, which was a poorer farming town.

....

In general, people who were accused of witchcraft fell into two categories. Some were easy targets -- they were old, social misfits, or generally unpopular. Others were upstanding citizens but their accusers had something to gain, either property or status, from the downfall of the people they accused.

Kinda reminds me of this from a previous post:

I promised, via my title, to connect the fact that mobs blow with Ultrarunning, so here goes.  I've not read of anyone doing any investigations involving administering psychological tests to Ultrarunners.  But if this were done I'd suspect that we, by and large, would turn out to be more independent and free-thinking than the population at large.  Thus we'd be less susceptible to the kind of group-think and mindlessness that characterizes mobs. 

I suggest that Ultrarunners would be more inclined to buck the trend, not go along with a (momentarily) popular but wrong cause, and be willing to call bullsh*t faster.  Valuing independence, we'd not be afraid to call attention to the turd in the punchbowl even if it'd be unpopular to do so.  So sacrificing rational thought--as in done when one commits to joining a mob--is not the typical behavior that one would expect in the perfect model of an Ultrarunner that I have constructed here.

More From the Writer's Almanac

From the 24 June 2010 Writer's Almanac. I get a free email from these folks daily, and it seldom fails to please. This day's entry had 3 gems worth passing on:

It's the 71st birthday of poet Stephen Dunn, born in Forest Hills, New York (1939). He is the first male in his family to live to his 60s. He wrote: 'Because in my family the heart goes first / and hardly anybody makes it out of his fifties, / I think I'll stay up late with a few bandits / of my choice and resist good advice.'

And this one, about Ambrose Bierce:

It's the birthday of the writer and satirist Ambrose Bierce, born near Horse Cave Creek, Ohio (1842), In his Devil's Dictionary (1906), he wrote: 'WEATHER, n. The climate of the hour. A permanent topic of conversation among persons whom it does not interest, but who have inherited the tendency to chatter about it from naked arboreal ancestors whom it keenly concerned.'

And finally, an excerpt from a poem called "Figs," (Erika Jong, (c) Penguin Group, 2009) just because I happen to like figs:

I believe it was
not an apple but a fig
Lucifer gave Eve,
knowing she would find
a fellow feeling
in this female fruit


One bite into
a ripe fig
is worth worlds
and worlds and worlds
beyond the green
of Eden.

Galileo Had It Right

Image credit here.

Galileo had it right 500 years ago--literal interpretations of the Bible are risky.  Moreover, possibly or probably not what God would have wanted.  From The Writer's Almanac for April 12, 2010:

It was on this day [12 April] in 1633 that Galileo Galilei stood trial before the Roman Inquisition, to defend the publication of his book Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems (1632).

Galileo did become interested in the theory of the universe expressed by Copernicus, and then he discovered something that he thought would prove the theory beyond question: the telescope. A Dutch eyeglass maker is credited with inventing it in 1608, and as soon as he heard about it, Galileo set one up himself, and became the first person to use it to observe the sky. He deduced that the moon was illuminated by a reflection of the sun on the Earth, he saw that Jupiter was orbited by moons, and he studied Venus and realized that the only explanation for its changing phases was that it orbited the sun. He thought that, finally, no one could disagree that the planets orbited the sun, so he started talking openly about his ideas. He wrote and lectured for the educated public, figuring that they were a more receptive audience than scholars.

But of course people did disagree: The Church claimed it was at odds with the Bible, particularly a verse in the Book of Joshua that describes God stopping the sun in the sky, and one in Psalms that says Earth was put on its foundations and would not move. Galileo responded publicly by explaining that the truth of the Bible was not always literal, that it used metaphorical imagery.

Bolding that follows is mine:

He wrote: "I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with senses, reason and intellect has intended us to forego their use and by some other means to give us knowledge which we can attain by them. He would not require us to deny sense and reason in physical matters which are set before our eyes and minds by direct experience or necessary demonstrations."

Eventually, he was allowed to return home under house arrest, where he became blind a few years later, and died in 1642. In 1718, the Church lifted its ban on Galileo's work, with the exception of the Dialogues, which was banned until 1822.

 I think Galileo and I would have hit it off.