How Long the USA's Been at War

I forget where I got this, and the URL listed in the image returns a 404 error, otherwise I'd give credit.

This is a sobering chart:

 

 

More on theTheme of "Invisible Runs"

On the heels of yesterday's post I felt I should 'splain my family dynamics a bit more, whne it comes to Ultrarunning.

My wife is a wonderful, loving, understanding  person, and is a former long distance runner, so she knows the drill.  But the plain fact is simply that she and the rest of my family are very jealous of my time. Let's face it, if I go out for a 25 miler on the Appalachian Trail near my home, you're talking a 6-hour run, plus drive time.  Boom--there goes half a day.  Vaporized.  And in 1998, when I ran the Massanutten 100, on Mother's Day weekend...that quest burned up a massive chunk of banked goodwill.

My solution has always been to run at "invisible" times--i.e., running at work whenever possible (my employeer espoused fitness time off) in lieu of going out for a longer/slower 1-hour run in the evening; beginning my long weekend runs well before dawn so as to be back by 8:00 AM; saving up my monthly "really long" run for when I was out of town on a business trip; etc. 

So I get creative to keep the peace.  We all, myself included, have our blind spots.  Some will say I should throw down the gauntlet at home, stake out my turf, dammit, and claim my rightful guilt-free leisure time.

But that's not my style or my personal choice. 

Swords Into Plowshares

IF this really happened--the beating of swords into plowshares--we'd be leaving a better world for our children.

(Photo credit and narrative here)

The United Nations garden contains several sculptures and statues that have been donated by different countries. This one is called "Let Us Beat Swords into Plowshares" and was a gift from the then Soviet Union presented in 1959. Made by Evgeniy Vuchetich, the bronze statue represents the figure of a man holding a hammer in one hand and, in the other, a sword which he is making into a plowshare, symbolizing man's desire to put an end to war and convert the means of destruction into creative tools for the benefit of all mankind.

The original concept comes from the Christian Bible Old Testament, King James translation, Isaiah 2:4:

And he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.