Long Train Running: A Chicago Marathon Story | Chapter 4 — Why We Run
Jim Von Handorf ran marathons for the same reasons he climbed mountains: to escape and to conquer.
A career fireman in Nashua, New Hampshire, Jim was an outdoorsman to the fullest. He climbed mountains, bouldered, swam, bicycled and ran. His daughter, Amy explains that her dad could never really sit still. That he had a constant need to just go, go, go. He grew up in a small, Boston apartment with a lot of people. The bustling tightness of the city drove him to get out. It was always in his nature to escape. He was into Thoreau and Kerouac. He needed space. So he headed into the wild. His mountaineering expeditions he made with his buddies took him to peaks all over the country where he would test his mettle against the elements and his own limits.
He even showed esophageal cancer that he was not one to go down easy.
Notes from the Post-it Wall | Week of June 23, 2019
Phrases like “not to mention” and “ who needs no introduction” written or said leading into an introduction are completely false statements and make no sense in any context they’re used. They should be removed from our language patterns completely. It goes without saying that these phrases and others should not be used ever again.
The Sinking of Uncle Joe
And, Hey! Uncle Joe worked with Barack Obama!
He’s got black friends. He’s not a racist. Just ask him.
And he’s not a close-talker or a personal space-invader.
Just ask him.
He’ll put his hands on your shoulders and whisper:
“Hey, now… I’m your Uncle Joe. Remember Obama?”
Then, sadly, and unexpectedly, before you can answer or squirm away
He’ll say mostly to himself with disappointment, “Yeah… me, too.”
What We Learned from the First Democratic Presidential Debate
Initial media reports are naming Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.) as the debate’s winner. More and more, Warren gains favorable ground in my eyes. I like her thoughtful, thorough plans. Yeah, they’re boring and require us to follow the bouncing ball as she walks us through them, but they’re tangible plans, even if she doesn’t repeat them in Spanish.
The biggest difference on the stage last night was not between any of the candidates but the color between Castro’s top and bottom teeth.
The Minutes of Our Last Meeting | Be Bester
Make Children Great Again!
Independence Day: The Dance of the Vicious
There are things for us to celebrate but perhaps we should put the party off for a few years while we get our shit together, clean up our own house, and strive to be the country we believed we could be rather than the nation we have become.
Him, Too
Almost everyone has a Me, Too story. This one isn’t mine.
I Believe… [You Are Not Your Credit Score]
...that if you judge your own success by your credit score, I’d like to point out there is a Kool-Aid stain on your shirt.
The Conflicting Case to Do Away with Facebook
It was a Black Mirror episode that triggered me.
Specifically, Smithereens, and more directly a monologue/rant by Andrew Scott about everyone looking down at their smartphones constantly. It hit me like a two-by-four in the gut: I am that guy. I’m on my phone far more than I should be and I’m almost paralyzed in my distractions.
I Like to Watch | The Perfection
I believe that, when creating fiction-based mass entertainment that also addresses major sociopolitical issues, filmmakers need to pull back a step and tell a great story first with the over-the-top social commentary present but in the background.
Long Train Running: A Chicago Marathon Story | Chapter 3 — Weather or Not
The changes in weather and running routes made for a cornucopia of uncertain and enjoyable scenery. Each run was an adventure and it challenged me to stay loose and attentive and fleet on my feet and to mind my body so as not to overheat or underhydrate or freeze off my skinny fingers.
Notes from the Post-it Wall | Week of June 16, 2019
I would take the innocence and ignorance of youth over the guilt and wisdom of old age.
Practicing Yoga in Your Mind
The Minutes of Our Last Meeting | How to Win a Presidential Election
You want women, boy, do we have women! Va-Va-Vavoom! Grab ‘em by the policy!
I Am Constantly Relearning How to Love my Body
Sometimes I take selfies and I post them on the internet. I wonder if people will think I’m vain, but then I think that liking my appearance enough to be vain is itself a kind of victory.
Running the Marathon Rather Than the Sprint
The problem with being a sprinter is the misconception that a marathon is just a series of sprints making up twenty-six-point-two miles. It doesn’t work that way. Sprinting uses up all the energy for short term gains and is unsustainable for twenty-six miles in any genuine fashion. A marathon requires planning, patience, and a sense of perseverance that eludes the sprinter.
I Believe… [Gambling is Basically Buying Hope]
...that nothing is more desolate than an empty casino; nothing is more exciting than a full one. A whole room full of people buying bits of hope is a gas.
An Open Letter to a Late Stage Incel
I hear you, sitting in your room, typing furiously away about how lonely you are and how angry it makes you that, for some unexplained reason, women don’t find you companionable.
I mean, instead of looking hard at yourself and your behavior, your borderline social retardation, your obsessive compulsive mania, it’s just easier to find someone else to blame.
An Essay about James Joyce’s Leopold Bloom for Bloomsday
In honor of Bloomsday on June 16, I’ve dug out the paper I wrote in high school about Leopold Bloom, the main character in James Joyce’s Ulysses.
Long Train Running: A Chicago Marathon Story | Chapter 2 — The Cost of This
Bomb shelters, makeshift bunkers mean certain death. To survive, we must keep moving. Word of clean air has spread like gossip. It’s always just over that ridge or two clicks beyond that hill. And so we run. Speed, strength, and endurance are our only hope for survival. This is our marathon.
Jake and Caroline’s first date was at The Whistler. They talked about Ronnie, how much they loved The Diplomat, and debated the better ride-share service, Uber or Lyft. She was Uber, he was Lyft. They got wasted on Sazeracs and had sex at her apartment. It was incredible for both of them. Caroline stopped taking sex advice from Ronnie.