Let's just cut to the chase and say that I walked a lot in April and ran much, much more, doing both on all the days of the month and running the Florida Track Club's Headwaters 5K race on the 9th here in northern Gainesville. With walking I'm not intentionally doing anything other than accumulate mileage on my Fitbit...most of it comes from my workplace, which is a nice-sized warehouse that demands a lot of steps over the course of a shift. The running I have to purposefully set out to accomplish, mostly during the morning, but seem to be increasing my distances and endurance quite well...no adverse effects that I can detect. Unfortunately, the seasonal change here where I live in northern Florida spells out an immediate future of hot weather for several months...inhospitable for outdoor distance training and no distance races (10K or longer) in sight until October. So, in all likelihood I will probably taper my running a little and intentionally walk more. Also, since Gainesville's free 5K Depot Parkrun takes place every Saturday morning, I'll try to get in at least one race in May. There is supposedly the Mayday Glow Run 5K scheduled in Jonesville (just west of Gainesville) on Saturday, the 7th, but I plan to be out of town then and, besides, this race's organizers don't seem to be too interested in providing needed information about its scheduled time and registration. Oh well, maybe they'll figure it all out in time, good luck with that...
Saturday, April 30, 2022
Friday, April 29, 2022
Quote of the Week...from Frank Zappa
Thursday, April 28, 2022
About Marginalization
The other day I wrote a long blog article about feeling marginalized...and refrained from posting it. After reading it a couple of times, I had felt it had a kind of whiny sound to it...as if I were bemoaning being a kind of victim. Well, I guess that factors into it all a little, but truth be told I don't particularly enjoy being the center of attention with the spotlight trained on me...better to be a little off to the side of the picture...while still being in it. And if that inclination of mine communicates to others that marginalization is their best option in dealing with me then I suppose I bear some responsibility in that. But in situations where no one knows me, or over long periods of time in the same place, there should be a least some kind of acknowledgement of my existence if not participation. Let me give a couple of personal examples regarding photographs. If you've read this blog over its existence, you'll know that I'm into distance running...going back to 2007 when I resurrected this activity after a hiatus of 31 years. I've engaged in many races over that period, my finishing times unspectacular-but-fulfilling experiences. Since we now live in the Internet age, almost all of the races I've run in have had websites with posted results...and some of them show pictures taken during the race of the different runners. In all the years I've engaged in these races, I have seen myself in only two pictures, both as an unrecognizable figure among many others, one with me partially hidden and the other showing my back from a distance. Yet over and over again, while running different races, I see folks who I know are volunteers or officials standing there snapping photo after photo of runners passing by, including of me...yet my picture is consistently rejected when it comes to posting it with the others online. Now go back much further in time, to the six-year period when I attended my junior/senior high school. Each year they came out with a yearbook, featuring the perfunctory individual studio shots for each class year, arranged in alphabetical order. But sprinkled throughout each yearbook's pages are also assorted cameo shots of different students. You'd think that the law of averages alone would dictate that I'd be in at least a handful of them, considering the many photos displayed over a six-year span. But of course, you probably already guessed it...no photos of me anywhere, even though like with the running races I would see yearbook staff from time to time taking pictures that I knew I'd be in. It all seems a bit whiny of me, doesn't it? Oh well, we all have areas in our lives to complain about and in the grand scheme of things, griping about being marginalized around others is probably a relatively minor issue, especially considering that I'm an introvert to begin with. On the other hand, I'm often pressed upon to engage in community relationships with others, but when in those situations, discover that they don't particularly want to engage in community relationships with me...
Before writing this article, I checked the Internet to see if others were like me in feeling unduly marginalized, only to discover that the term "marginalized" had been coopted by the PC/Woke crowd to designate people belonging to demographic groups from which I am excluded...great, even the marginalized marginalize me!
Wednesday, April 27, 2022
Weekly Short Stories: 1983 Science Fiction, Part 8
Tuesday, April 26, 2022
Need Patience at Start of New Projects (or Resumption of Old Ones)
Monday, April 25, 2022
Discussion of Standards on Podcast
Standards was the topic on today's Mindset Mentor podcast, hosted by Rob Dial...I thought it was one of his better shows. Instead of listing X-amount of pointers to better living in some specific area, he gave more of an impromptu monologue on how the quality of people's lives depend on the standards they set for themselves...and how they live up to them. As I see it, on a collective level there are legal standards we need to meet in order not to get in trouble. At work there are workplace standards, as is the case at school or for any other social institution. Families collectively have standards, the crossing of which by different members not wanting to follow them probably causes the most inner turmoil. But Dial was referring here to one's own personal standards for living, and they break down to numerous specific behaviors regularly performed (or not) over the course of time...and all which involve personal choice. Do I prepare little things for the next day the night before, what time to I get up in the morning, do I always leave the house in a state of tidiness, do I exercise, read, write, engage with others, account for my money, etcetera. Standards, habit, and goals intertwine, as setting a standard is a goal in itself to be fulfilled by the inculcation of a new habit, using baby steps to accomplish this. This all fits in nicely with James Clear's notion of "atomic habits", based on his book with the same title. The key here in improving one's standards and getting to adhere to them is to be as specific as possible while changing habits a little at a time...over time. Good episode. By the way, there are probably a number of ways you can pick up Rob Dial's podcast...on my Android I get it through Tune-In Radio while on my television I use Roku to listen to it on the My Tuner channel. Each episode, put out on Mondays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays, only lasts about twenty minutes and the host has a friendly, conversational and practical presentation style...
Sunday, April 24, 2022
Went to Alachua County Friends of the Library Sale Today
Saturday, April 23, 2022
Too Many Key Injuries in Pro Sports
I have been watching the National Basketball Association playoffs off and on so far during their first round and find the games usually competitive and interesting. There is one problem, though, that starkly stands out: the tendency for there to be too many injuries, especially of star players. I can't keep up with it anymore, and there's no telling how a series will go when a favored team, successful largely on the backs of its greatest talents and achievers, falls victim to their injuries during a series with an obviously inferior team. This has been going on for years, but now it seems that we have the most fragile athletes ever. The sport of basketball and others...not just football but also even tennis and golf...are played on such an extremely high level in our era with very little margin for error: everything has to be done all-out...every possession, down, point or swing...depending on the sport...must be tackled with the athlete expending all the energy they can produce and straining their bodies to the limit and beyond to avoid being beaten by the opposition. Name me a series or tournament in which its complexion hasn't been drastically altered due to several key injuries...no, getting hurt is now the rule rather than the exception. Although the games themselves may still be close and exciting to watch, the ultimate champion...due to the many injuries we're seeing...is often a team or athlete that essentially prevailed by default. The result, I think, is a general cheapening of the sports and their championships...
Friday, April 22, 2022
Quote of the Week...from Pearl S. Buck
Thursday, April 21, 2022
Old July, 1965 Newspaper Articles Revealing about Vietnam War
The other day I got on my Newspapers.com site to see...through the Fort Lauderdale News, which was my home Broward County's main newspaper back in the 1960s when I was growing up there...whether any mention was made of the new Nova elementary school that was to open in August of 1965. I switched from Boulevard Heights to Nova that year when I entered the fourth grade...my sister Anita was already going to Nova Junior High, situated right across the field from the new elementary school in Davie on the site of a converted airfield (along with Broward Junior College). I began by putting on my screen the front page of the paper's July 1, 1965 Main Edition, on which most of the stories were about the escalating Vietnam War with the U.S. increasing its presence in that troubled southeastern Asia country with armed soldiers on the ground increasing from around three thousand in March of '65 to two hundred thousand by year's end. On July 1 the paper was reporting Viet Cong attacks against the American base in Da Nang, opposition in Congress to President Johnson's war policies, and there was a piece describing how the Viet Cong operate in guerilla warfare. In the Senate, Senator Wayne Morse, of the President's own Democratic Party but one of the two voting against his Gulf of Tonkin Resolution the previous August that authorized troop buildup in Vietnam, urged Johnson to end the war and instead go to the United Nations and build up collaborative relationships with other countries to bring about peace. On the Republican side in the House, their leader, future president Gerald Ford, proposed that the President remove the ground troops and restrict the fighting there to heavy aerial bombardment in strategic locations...needless to say Lyndon Johnson passed on both of these, precipitating one of the most traumatic, divisive periods in our nation's history. Malcolm W. Browne's article about Viet Cong guerilla warfare was haunting in its prescience as he describes one such warrior, stationed within an echo chamber in a hole in the ground, enabling him to detect distant helicopter sounds before any others: "The man, wriggling through a short tunnel to the surface, can yell an alarm. Instantly, shadowy men lounging or cooking at the bases of the tall trees are on their feet and moving fast. The heavy equipment from last night's battle has been stowed for future use in deep, camouflaged holes. The bodies have been buried. The men move rapidly, scattering in many directions in twos and threes. This is their base area, and they know every feature of the dense jungle in the area...the hidden trails, the camouflaged bunkers and tunnels, the gun emplacements, the mines and booby traps." You can easily see the wisdom from hindsight in reading this article and others and think of what might have been if information in plain sight, as well as alternative options, were taken more seriously by those with the power and authority to properly understand and use them...think of all the lives that could have been spared. But hindsight it is, and in 1965 the American public was strongly behind Lyndon Johnson's Vietnam escalation policy...I wonder what information today, also in plain view as was the material in July of 1965, is warning us about where we're going...but of course nowadays we have to sift through all the false crap floating around. As for my then-new little Nova school, I'm continuing to search for any reference to it...
Wednesday, April 20, 2022
Weekly Short Stories: 1983 Science Fiction, Part 7
Tuesday, April 19, 2022
Enjoyed Watching Boston Marathon Yesterday on USA Channel
Yesterday morning America's premier annual long-distance race, the Boston Marathon, resuming its April running after 2020's event was cancelled due to Covid-19 and last year's was moved to October. It started with wheelchair competition, and a little past 9:30 the professional men and women's races began following by a rolling start of the general field, beginning at 10...the spacing was done to keep the faster contestants from being bottled up by the slower. The 26.2-mile course goes roughly west to (slightly north of) east, beginning in the town of Hopkinton and going through Boston, ending at the Public Library near Boston Harbor. The race isn't open...there are qualifying thresholds to cross, depending on one's age and gender, and it's a fair assumption to make that I'm far from making the "cut"...I'm 65 and I would have needed to top a time of 4 hours 5 minutes. Since my best marathon time (during a training run) was only 4 hours 23 minutes back in 2011 when I was 54 and I haven't even covered that distance since that year, I doubt I will be running in it anytime soon (even if I were 100 I would need to better 4:50:00 to qualify). So although I haven't completely discounted running in a marathon again, Boston is purely for viewing. Even so, I haven't followed championship running since 1976 when the U.S.A. had stars like Frank Shorter, Marty Liquori and Steve Prefontaine...the first two being hometown heroes where I live. No, instead I like to watch the different runners and how they stride and carry themselves through the race, but also I enjoy the background geography with the streetside spectators cheering on the runners and the buildings and topography along the way. Of course, as is the case with other sports like tennis and golf, what the runners are doing doesn't seem all that hard when watching them on the television screen, but in reality I'd have to push just to keep up with them on a bicycle. I was able to see the winners finishing in each running race...the Ethiopian and Kenyan entrants dominated both the men and women's professional field with both races close to the end. Naturally, of course, the TV coverage pretty much ignored the thousands of participants behind them. The top runners for the men and women were Evans Chebet (2:06:51) and Peres Jepchirchir (2:21:01), both of Kenya. Top rollers were Daniel Romanchuk from the USA (1:26:58) and Manuela Schär from Switzerland (1:41:08)...
Monday, April 18, 2022
Rob Dial's Podcast Discusses the Law of Attraction
Sunday, April 17, 2022
Temperatures Rising, Affecting Distance Running Here in Gainesville
I'm currently adjusting the focus with my distance running, seeing how the temperatures are turning upward in mid-April and destined to go into the 90s during the subsequent months of spring and summer. Races in Alachua County where I reside, aside from the weekly Saturday morning Depot Parkrun 5Ks, have dwindled to a precious few...and none seem to go beyond that distance. I had been wondering whether the May Day Glow Run was going to resume this year, after the lengthy Covid hiatus. It's a 5K race held in Jonesville, a little west of Gainesville, in the Arbor Greens subdivision off Newberry Road. The gimmick with it is that it is held at sundown, and plastic glowsticks are distributed to the runners to carry around them while racing. At last look, it's scheduled for May 7th but with registration closed (!!!). Seeing that proceeds from the race go to a local Gainesville private school, you might think they'd get things straight on the website to get the funds flowing and enthusiasm encouraged...then again, I might either be out of town or at work anyway on that day. In any event, I intend to run at least one Depot Parkrun event per month and hold the long distances to slow training runs (with intermittent walking breaks if called for) until the fall, when both cooler weather and longer races return. Florida Track Club, of which I am a member, is holding track meets from time to time during these hotter months...unfortunately, they are all scheduled at times during which I am at work. They're planning on a 10K event in October and a half-marathon in November...looking forward to both of them. In the meantime, I'll pretty much be running around home...
Saturday, April 16, 2022
Old Twilight Zone Episode Presents False Choices
Friday, April 15, 2022
Quote of the Week...from Dick Clark
Thursday, April 14, 2022
Constellation of the Month: Leo (the Lion)
Wednesday, April 13, 2022
Weekly Short Stories: 1983 Science Fiction, Part 6
Tuesday, April 12, 2022
Major League Baseball Finally Starts...Should I Be Happy?
After needless delay and posturing, Major League Baseball ended its owner/player contract negotiation standoff and finally began its regular season last week. As is usually the custom during this brief initial period, some of the team-based baseball channels at the end of my TV dial are showing the games free as an inducement to subscribe. Since I get off from work nights at 10, coming home gives me the only options of either watching western U.S.A. games or replays of one of our two Florida teams. I happened to tune in one night to a San Diego-Arizona game that the Diamondbacks were hosting. Through six innings I discovered that not only were the Padres blanking Arizona 2-0, but were in the middle of a no-hitter....how exciting! I watched the seventh inning and sure enough, the San Diego starter put down the opposing batters easily...I couldn't wait to see what happened in the next inning. But to my surprise the Padres manager had yanked his starter and replaced him with a reliever, one with some pretty mediocre stats at that. And he promptly delivered a base hit, ending the prospects of even a combination no-hitter. To my further surprise I discovered that the same manager had pulled his starter the previous game after six no-hit innings and replaced him with the same reliever, who had also quickly spoiled the no-hitter by giving up a hit. I mention no names here because, maybe, that's the way the owners want it...capable but anonymous players they know can win them games, but without milestones and special accomplishments that might garner them more money during contract negotiation time. And money seems to be what it's all about with Major League Baseball. It costs an arm and a leg to attend these games in person and a pretty penny to watch them on TV, unless you're a Rays or Marlins fan. And I have trouble, in this Internet area of widespread media access, even getting radio play-by-play. The San Diego manager's rationale for pulling his two starting no-hit pitchers was that they didn't get enough spring training practice and he wanted to conserve their arms...I don't buy it. These are special moments in a pitcher's career that they may never again recapture...the wear and tear they go through is over the course of a 162-game regular season in which they may get more than 30 starts...some many more. No, I believe this was an underhanded attempt to suppress these players' resumes. But the manager's actions were also a slap in the collective faces of the fans, who need these special moments to keep their interest in the game strong. I totally get why complete games are so rare nowadays...but no-hitters? Are you kidding me? So I ask myself: am I really happy that Major League Baseball is finally underway?
Monday, April 11, 2022
Power...and Limits...of Personal Affirmation, According to Podcaster
On his Mindset Mentor podcast recently, personal development coach Rob Dial discusses the idea of affirmations, that is, talking to oneself in positive terms and expecting this to become a major factor in their successful undertakings. He starts out by bringing up that many of us go through our days saying to ourselves that we "have to" do this and "have to" do that, when the alternative (and better) saying is we "get to"...this allows us to explore ways to learn, grow, and benefit from what we had originally conceived of as a negative obligation. Also, like Yoda in Stars Wars, we don't "try"...we either do or don't, there is no trying. Think of the energy behind your words, he adds, along with the notion that how we fill out the powerful statement "I am ___" can go a long away to determining our direction and destiny. Finally, Rob Dial emphasizes that statements of affirmation, while encouraging and positive, should adhere to reality. The statement needs to be true, be in the present tense ("I am ___ing") and have an empowering aspect to it. So I, a distance runner, wouldn't say "I'm so fast that I won the Olympic marathon in 2000" but rather something like "I am a distance runner, I am running several miles a day, and my progress is making me a runner who can handle the longer distances with more ease and speed". You can apply this to anything...I thought Dial's ideas were pretty good, but of late, with him and James Clear's Atomic Habits book, my head is starting to really get crowded with self-improvement maxims. I probably just need to stick with a few and "run" with them...
Sunday, April 10, 2022
Just Finished Reading Never by Ken Follett
Last year Ken Follett published his latest novel, Never, which quickly rose to the top of the best-seller list. Stephen King, whom I follow on Twitter, highly recommended it and stated that it reminded him of what's going on in the world today, especially regarding the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The characters...including the world leaders such as the American and Chinese presidents and others...are fictional but the countries and situations are painfully real, much of it taken straight from news of recent years. The story's focus is triangular: (1) in Chad in northern Sub-Saharan Africa, the CIA has agents there to find the ringleader of a notorious international group of extremist Islamist terrorists, (2) a young top Chinese intelligence official in Beijing must maneuver between the hard-liners in his government and the wayward North Korean dictator to further his country's interests, and (3) the U.S. president, Pauline Green, must react in a measured but careful way to the escalating events falling like dominoes after a North Korean rebel military group seizes control of the country's eastern part, including its nuclear missile facilities. The story is chilling: you can have rational people running different countries, folks who more than anything want to avoid nuclear war and the untold carnage and suffering which it would release onto the world. Yet within each country, both democratic and autocratic, there are people and forces pressuring those leaders into conflict. I know, at this time in early April of 2022, that no atomic bombs have been used in war since 1945. Much of this I believe is due to the deterrence factor with the two main sides, the USSR/Russia and the United States, very much aware that either of them can destroy the other many times over. But now with nuclear proliferation and regimes like North Korea and Pakistan in possession of nuclear warfare capability, the danger of one of them triggering a nuclear conflict has escalated. And once something begins on a limited scale, can the escalation process be turned off...and who will take the first step in that direction without surrendering to their enemy? A tough book to read with an even tougher ending...
Saturday, April 9, 2022
Ran the Headwaters 5K This Morning in Gainesville
Gainesville has a relatively new municipal park, Headwaters, located on NW 45th Avenue between US 441 and Norton Elementary School...its name refers to the renowned Hogtown Creek that runs through the northwestern part of town. Florida Track Club hosts an annual event there, the Headwaters 5K (3.1 miles), taking place in April. I ran it last year, the first public race I entered since the Covid-19 epidemic broke out the previous year...and it was also the last one I ran before my thoracic surgeon, after ten years of annual testing, finally advised me to go ahead with open heart surgery involving both heart valve replacement and aortic aneurism repair. That happened on 7/15/21, and today's race marks the sixth one I've run since recovery. The conditions were perfect for running...well, I would have preferred a lower humidity...but the temperature was around 50 at 8 am. There were plenty of folks there to brave the slightly hilly race through a very shady and pretty section of northern Gainesville...and the Florida Track Club people and volunteers were, as usual, the best with their friendliness and encouraging attitude. We started on NW 45th Avenue near US 441 and went straight west, past Norton Elementary, to NW 24th Boulevard. Then we turned north on it and went to NW 53rd Avenue, turning right again onto the cool, wide bike/pedestrian trail that runs all the way down to 39th Avenue...but we turned left at 45th and ran back to the park, where the finish line stood. I deliberately worked from early in the race to establish a faster level of pace, and it worked! My finishing time was 29:28, more than three minutes faster than that of last year's Headwaters run...and the first time in years I've broken 30 minutes in a 5K. They were serving breakfast there following the race, but I wanted to get back home, wash up, and snooze a bit. Click HERE for the race results. I like the proximity of this race to my home and, already being an FTC member, it was free...I'd like to make it an annual tradition...
Friday, April 8, 2022
Quote of the Week...from Yogi Berra
Thursday, April 7, 2022
Just Finished Reading Atomic Habits by James Clear
Atomic Habits is a 2018 motivational self-help guide written by James Clear. The use of the word "atomic" in the title reflects two points the author is trying to make here: habits that are very small and potentially very powerful. Clear discusses how he came about his philosophy of habits when, one day during high school baseball practice, he was hit in the head by a bat, nearly losing his life after slipping into a coma and then gradually making a full, painstakingly gradual recovery. He claims that people mistakenly pursue goals when they should be instituting and stressing systems, with forming the identity that they want being paramount in importance. Also, by changing a multitude of small habits over time, revolutionary change is possible. There are four elements to habit formation: cue, craving, response and reward...they can apply to both desirable and undesirable habits. The trick when trying to form good habits is to make the cue obvious, the craving attractive, the response easy and the result satisfying. Conversely, when facing bad habits, the strategy is to make the cue invisible, the craving unattractive, the response difficult, and the result unsatisfying...the author gives examples to illustrate how to approach both good and bad habits this way. And how does one start a new habit? According to Clear, it's crucial just to get something going...if you're starting to run then put on your running shoes today...tomorrow you can continue the process, maybe jogging for a minute or two. It's not so much how much you do at the beginning...of course eventually you'll be doing much more...but to get the notion of regularly responding to the positive cues and performing something to make the habit real. Then once you're "in" it, it is much easier to extend the habit in the direction you are seeking. Atomic Habits continues chapter by chapter with helpful suggestions about habits...it can get a little cumbersome, all the information here, but James Clear does make it more manageable by outlining the main points at the close of each chapter. I liked this book, one reason being that it confirmed some of what I had already been doing in my life...for example, I already employ his notion of "habit-stacking" by combining a new habit with one I already have. I think this book can be useful to anyone...Clear's main intention is to help you become the person you want to be...
Wednesday, April 6, 2022
Weekly Short Stories: 1983 Science Fiction, Part 5
Tuesday, April 5, 2022
Congratulations to Gamecocks and Jayhawks for College Hoops Titles
Although at work for much of the championship tournament Final Four basketball action this past weekend, I was able to watch some of it...in the NCAA women's tournament South Carolina clearly dominated, suffocating Connecticut in the final game by thoroughly dominating the paint (with Player of the Year Aliyah Boston playing a major role) and getting one offensive rebound after another while crushing the Huskies on defense. On the men's side yesterday, Kansas came from a 16-point first half deficit in which their opponent, North Carolina...at one point scoring 16 straight points...had built up an impressive halftime lead. But the Tarheels came out in the second half shooting cold, and the Jayhawks lit up the floor with a succession of clutch three-pointers to first bring them back into the game and then take a small lead that they held at the very end. Before the tournament I had picked North Carolina, Miami and Kansas as my favorites...they were undefeated against other opponents...but Miami succumbed to Kansas and, of course, so did North Carolina. On the women's side I was rooting for Stanford, the defending champion, but they went cold as well against Connecticut in the semifinal round. Now it's time to regroup and get ready for next year....and then start it all over again. Before the women's final game on Sunday evening there was a short segment about Aliyah Boston, who is from St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands...Melissa and I stopped over there briefly during our cruise in February 2020 (just before all hell broke out with the pandemic) and we liked it a lot...especially the beach and winding mountain roads. But you'd better watch out for the hordes of crazy, ravenous chickens running loose...
Monday, April 4, 2022
Motivational Coach Rob Dial Broadly Discusses Addiction on His Podcast
Sunday, April 3, 2022
About Will Smith's Incredible Hulk Moment at the Oscars
The Incredible Hulk was a popular TV series in the late seventies and early eighties. Based on the Marvel comics character, Bill Bixby starred as mild-mannered Dr. David Bannister, a scientist who accidently exposes himself to such an excess of gamma ray radiation that, in times of extreme stress and anxiety, causes his body to transform into a raging monster, the Hulk (played by Lou Ferrigno). Not exactly Jekyll and Hyde...Robert Louis Stevenson's character actually changed into a completely different personality...the Hulk retains Bannister's moral compass and compassion. It's just out of control, stuck in a fight-or-flight mode...much like that we experience in our own lives when we're under tense and difficult circumstances, became angry or fearful, and our sympathetic nervous system temporarily gains supremacy over our thoughts and behavior. And although this period may only last for a few minutes, we're often left with the consequences of irrational and antisocial public behavior. This is what I believe happened to Will Smith at the Academy Award ceremony the other night when he rushed the stage and slapped (and immediately thereafter cursed at) comedian Chris Rock for making one of his trademark insulting offhand jokes, this one aimed at Smith's wife Jada for her shaven head (she suffers from alopecia). He was already center-stage and under the spotlight, a favorite to win Best Actor for his dramatic performance in the movie King Richard and most likely already was feeling a bit stressed out. Soon after the incident Smith was very contrite and apologetic for his impulsive action, but will continue to suffer its fallout. Just who is Will Smith...the soft-spoken and congenial gentleman so many have come to appreciate or the creepy violent dude revealed in that unfortunate moment before the world? Both, I imagine, just as each of us have this duality...I just think most of us, although probably unpleasant to be around in those moments of extreme anxiety and anger, don't resort to physically violent behavior. Instead, dramatic and sometimes profane language, extreme passive-negative behavior, or a total shutdown from interaction can be common reactions to those experiencing personal Hulk transformations. I do find the media reactions to it all interesting. After realizing the other night that the Oscars were going to show because of the Red Carpet pre-ceremony show, with outfit after gawdy, tasteless outfit touted as high fashion, I made it a deliberate point to avoid the awards...finding out about the Smith/Rock altercation later. The reactions were divided between those praising Smith for defending his wife's honor and those condemning his violence. And then the media ghouls went to work, digging up items in both Smith's and Rock's pasts and citing things they had said before. Different celebrities went to work giving their own feedback, and then the ghouls researched them, digging up even more negative news to promulgate over social and mass media. What a media circus, and a macabre one at that!
Saturday, April 2, 2022
Are City-Wide Running Races Fading Into the Past?
In his autobiographical book Ultramarathon Man, distance runner Dean Karnazes relates how his first marathon run went. He was in high school and there was a charity drive in which donors would sign up to pay...if my memory serves me correctly...a dollar for each quarter-mile track lap the participating student ran. Most reasonable people saw themselves pitching in up to 5 or 10 bucks. But Karnazes saw fit to run his first full 26.2 mile marathon that day, circling the track 105 times...and then presenting his flabbergasted fellow students with the bill! It must have been an awfully repetitive run for him...yet that's pretty much how track and field events are conducted. It certainly is vastly different from the marathon and half-marathon races the past few decades, which often run through the heart of cities and spotlight their own attractions for the racers and those accompanying them. Typically, streets are marked off and policemen stand at crossings to halt traffic, letting the runners pass through without having to stop...this must cost a pretty penny for the organizers. I think it also would tend to annoy a lot of folks who just want to go about their normal business without this kind of disruption and delay. Over my running "career" since 2010...in which I've confined my races to northern and central Florida... I've completed 13 half-marathons and one marathon. Of these, 6 half-marathons took place in the heart of Gainesville for the Five Points of Life event held in February, 2 races on the south side of Ocala, and 1 in the Tavares-Mount Dora area of Lake County...the others were deliberately conducted in predominantly rural settings. Even the Ocala races took place mostly on country roads, although the traffic was high enough there to require a bit of police presence and management. A few years ago the Ocala Marathon/Half-Marathon ceased to be, and in 2020 Gainesville's Five Points organizers switched the race site away from central Gainesville to southwest of town. After Covid pre-empted the 2021 races, they resumed...back to the heart of town with a modified course that still had runners going through downtown Gainesville, the University of Florida campus (including the football stadium) and the famous hills of NW 16th Avenue. But the marathon event was eliminated, leaving the half-marathon as the only long-distance event here in February. Gainesville has another annual half-marathon they hold annually, the Tom Walker Memorial, which uses the rails-to-trails Hawthorne Trail in a there-and-back race emanating from Boulware Springs Park in the southeastern part of town...no police or city infrastructure needed here. And that's the trend I see coming: races far from streets and set in rural areas and parks. Furthermore, I see another trend in which half-marathons, marathons, and even ultra-races (longer than 26.2 miles) are being conducted in parks where runners go through multiple loops to achieve the distance they're seeking. Next Sunday, the 10th, there will be such a race on the Hawthorne end of the Hawthorne Trail...half-marathoners will do a 6-plus mile there-and back on the trail twice, while those running the marathon will do it four times. But then again, the overhead cost for staging this race is bound to be much, much lower than had they done it through city streets. On June 18, Ocala has their own similar race planned at their southeastern Baseline Greenway Park...the course loop is a little longer than a mile and half-marathon runners will do it 12 times (no marathon race planned here). Since 2019 (with a 14-month gap because of Covid), Gainesville has had its own weekly race, the Depot Parkrun 5K, with takes place entirely on park grounds and involves 4 laps to achieve the distance...but it's free and not very long. The Hawthorne and Ocala races I just mentioned cost a bit of money...the question is whether runners will decide to forgo the adventure of the course in favor of getting a posted result. As for me, I'm undecided. I look on the Internet running calendars and still see races occurring in other cities across the country...maybe this drawing back from urban events is only a local phenomenon, who knows...
Friday, April 1, 2022
Quote of the Week...from Abraham Maslow
Education can become a self-fulfilling activity, liberating in and of itself. ---Abraham Maslow