1. So Much To Do, So Little Time - Book the plane tickets, close the bank account, write the final report, and don’t forget to poop in a cup and deliver it to the Peace Corps doctor. Oh man… it’s gonna be a long week.
2. Good Riddance - If you make a slide show and put the Green Day song Good Riddance (Time of Your Life) as the background music, I can promise you that people will cry. It doesn’t even matter what pictures you use, for my generation, who have literally sat through hundreds of these slide shows, I’m convinced that that song invokes a Pavlovian response.
3. Nine Things – You know sometimes it’s really hard to come up with ten things. Sometimes I only want to write about nine. Sometimes I just throw in a dumb filler and hope nobody realizes it.
4. Wedding Season OVER – After ten weddings in 2011, last night I officially retired from the Prey Sundek Village wedding scene. After the year I’ve put up, I’ll be shocked if I’m not a first ballot hall of famer.
5. Marathon Training - The difference between the mile and the marathon is the difference between burning your fingers with a match and being slowly roasted over hot coals – Hal Higdon
Week 1: Four runs, seventeen miles, one sore hip. On to week two…
6. What I’m Reading This Week - The Routes of Man, Travels in the Paved World by Ted Conover
A cool book by a very talented Amherst grad. I like when travel writing revolves around a theme and isn’t just random wanderings.
7. The Swine Flu Hoax – Remember the swine flu panic? Ever wonder who caused everyone to freak out? Ever wonder if anyone profited off of it? Well it turns out the answer to both of those questions is the same– the drug companies. Read this article by Helen Epstein and prepare to be sick: Flu Warning: Beware the Drug Companies.
8. $20 Billion Loophole – People who work for hedge funds are allowed to classify income that they’ve gained from investing other people’s money as capital gains rather than normal income. These capital gains are then taxed at an ultra-low rate of 15 percent, rather than the normal rate that such income would be taxed at — 35 percent. Economist Robert Reich estimates that closing the hedge fund loophole could raise as much as $20 billion a year in revenue. (Think Progress)
Sounds like an easy way to help lower the debt. I wonder why you don’t hear any politicians talking about it?
9. The Ensign Affair - You really gotta hand it to John Ensign. I mean there have been a lot cheating politicians in the last few years, but this guy takes dysfunction to a whole new level. (Twelve Juicy Bits from the Ensign Affair)
10. Winning at Everything – And finally, for your viewing pleasure, a few pictures from one of my favorite blogs: Winning at Everything….
Gotta love it. Have a great week.
“The news that the Millrose Games are leaving Madison Square garden after 97 years to relocate uptown to the 168th Street armory reminds us of how indifferent we are to track and field. And yet, in a coincidence of timing, we remember, too, that we were not always this way. Friday’s announcement came almost exactly 40 years after an event that placed the sport, however briefly, front and center in the consciousness of the American public.
On May 16, 1971, Marty Liquori and Jim Ryun went head to head at franklin Field in Philadelphia in what was billed as the Dream Mile…” ( from “Forty Years After a Dream Mile, A Harsh Reality for Track,” NY Times 5/16)
Keep running.
Some Milehigh running news…
Nicholas Mockeridge, 29, ran the fastest ever Colfax Marathon in 2 hours, 34 minutes, 27 seconds. Mockeridge recently graduated from an accelerated nursing program at Metro state so has been pulling 12- hour shifts at the Denver Veterans affairs hospital and is the father of a 13-day old son.
And on another Denver front, the tailblazing University of Denver’s men’s lacrosse team rallied to win its first NCAA Tournament game Sunday, beating Villanova 13-10 (they are being coached this year by Bill Tierney, former Princeton guy). Yay Pioneers!
Unfortunately, no good news to report from the lowly Rockies. They’ve been awful.
xo
Paul Krugman in:
“America Held Hostage” (NYT 5/16)
Six months ago President Obama faced a hostage situation. Republicans threatened to block an extension of middle-class tax cuts unless Mr. Obama gave in and extended tax cuts for the rich too. And the president essentially folded, giving the G.O.P. everything it wanted.
Now, predictably, the hostage takers are back: blackmail worked well last December, so why not try it again? This time House Republicans say they will refuse to raise the debt ceiling–a step that could inflict major economic damage–unless Mr. Obama agrees to large spending cuts, even if they rule out any tax increase whatsoever. And the question becomes what, if anything, will get the president to say no.
Pavlovian indeed. Even for my generation. We cry just hearing the title of that Green Day song and thinking about the slide show. Maybe you can post it?
Got a pile of TED CONOVER by my bedside. I did tell you that aside from being an Amherst grad, he’s a Colorado boy, didn’t I? He went to Manual High School (where I’m tutoring). Dad is reading “Routes of Man” now and thoroughly enjoying it and I’m ready to start “Rolling Nowhere” which is about riding the rails with America’s hoboes and started out as his Amherst thesis. Will keep it away from KBE so as not to give him any ideas, though he did read parts of “Routes of Man” in his creative non-fiction class this semester.
Here’s what Conover says about what his professors had to say:
“My college professors, too, had been excited by hoboes, but in the wrong way. “Why, you could lose your legs,” my advisor pointed out, adding that sadism by railroad detectives, bulls, was not unheard of, that many tramps were criminals, and that the activity was, after all, illegal. All considered, my college thought the project was not the kind of research an anthropology undergraduate “ought properly to be engaged in. Still, I thought I could learn much more on the rails than back in the library–and maybe, too, I would discover things no one in college knew anything about.”
After the hoboes, I’ll read “New Jack” (where he goes undercover at Sing Sing) and “Whiteout” (where he poses as a cabbie in Aspen). Fun, good stuff. And a wonderful writer. (Court met him in NY recently at a launch for a new Amherst lit mag. Small world).
Have fun at the conference, Cooper.
xo
Miscellaneous from the #1 family athlete:
* Lot’s of talk about Maria Shriver and Arnold Schwarzenegger separation. He is going back to the next terminator movie now that he is not govenor, she is leaving him. No surprise.
* Wanjiru Dead – 2008 Beijing marathon gold medalist, and one of the great marathoners.. some speculation whether he fell from a balcony or it was suicide and he jumped.. apparently he was caught with another woman by his wife.
* Koman runs a 27:35 in Central park yesterday (Healthy Kidney 10K).
Wow.. given the terrain – fastest loop ever run around the park.
* Yankees and Rox are playing awful.. gone from 1st to 2nd in their divisions. Yanks just got swept by the Sox in Yankee standium.. Posada batting .160 as the DH.. had a hissy-fit when he was moved to 9th in the line-up on Saturday, and took himself out of the game. Jeter awful.. time to change the old guard. They are dragging us down.
* Apparently going to a second wild card team next year’s baseball season??
* NFL lockout still going on, The Donald still talking about running… NBC sweating no football, no Apprentice.. I predict both are on TV in the fall.
* Good Players Championship.. went to a playoff where David Toms missed what looked like a routine 3 footer for a three putt to lose to KJ Choi in the first extra hole (17th island green). Felt bad for the guy trying to win his first tournament in 5 years.
* And of course there is Newt in the race, and Huckabee out of the race, and the first debates coming up soon.
* And of course there is the IMF chief accused of trying to rape a maid in a NYC hotel room. ugh..
* And sadly, the levees have been opened and 4,600 square miles are going to be under 25 feet of water, to save New Orleans. Incredible disaster looming there it seems..
See all the fun you are missing.
So I was wondering.. you have your final conference, no more weddings, you close your bank account, write your final report (this week).. SO what are you doing for the last two months??? Why don’t they do that in early July, not early May?
Sending love – keep training… 17 miles in a week… that is half of one David Castellani training run…
I love those “dumb fillers” and all the rest. It has been such a joy to share this experience with you. You have kept us more informed about our own country than our own media does. Thank you for your blog.