world lung foundation running team 2nd group run in central park

this morning the world lung foundation running team did its 2nd training run in central park, our road to the new york city half marathon next month. the number of runners that joined us on this group run doubled, to eight, from our first group run 3 weeks ago. the weather was perfect (although it rained last night and the clouds lingered until just before we got our group under way at 8:30). half of the group finished the 6 mile loop of central park in just under one hour, the other half took just over an hour. we capped off the morning with some post-run socializing at a nearby coffee shop.













here are some pictures from our third group training run.

waveny park summer xc series 2 person relay: race report

thursday was my first waveny summer xc series couples relay without katie as a partner. the race was postponed from its regular tuesday night date because of a nasty weather forecast. on the rescheduled date katie was in brooklyn, for a visit to her grandmother. so my new partner for the relay turned out to be emmy! her original partner, francoise, couldn't make the new date (along with our friend john). but, in a surprise, kate was there to run her first waveny relay!

the course is one mile loop that runs along soccer and baseball fields, tennis courts, and returns to the start/finish via a short out and back in front of the waiting (and cheering) teammates. it's a fun course. each runner does a mile and trades off to his partner, who runs the next mile and, in turn, trades back to her partner until 6 loops (miles) are completed. in the past, when katie and i ran it together, there was little chance of coming in first in our combined age group.

with emmy as a partner, there was a good chance we could win our age group - if we ran fast! emmy had complained of a sore foot before the race (and i wasn't really in race-ready state of mind myself). since she would run first, i would take my lead from her first mile. if decided to run fast (under 7), i'd race it. she blew through the first mile, sore foot and all, in 6:37 - so it was race mode!

here are our splits (run to my mental soundtrack of the talking heads, "life during wartime" lyrics: "this ain't not party, this ain't no disco - this ain't fooling around...."):

6:37
6:33 13:10
6:35 19:45
6:35 26:20
6:38 32:58
6:30 39:28

6:35 combined pace

we won our age group - and the very nifty race tee shirts in the above picture! but the best part of the night was easily the post-race sam adams rob brought (and sushi emmy had).

here are my race photos.

2009 norwalk summer series 7 miler: race photos and results

the third race in the norwalk summer series, the 7 miler, is in the books. i ran a 49:33, but couldn't stick around for the post-race festivities. we have to drive katie up to field hockey camp today.

here is my race report.

here are the race results.

here are some race photos (more to come):

waveny park summer xc series 2 person relay: photos and results

last night was the rescheduled two-person at waveny park. since my original partner, katie, was at her grandmother's house, emmy graciously stepped up and ran with me. and with a combined 39:28 (unofficial) for the 6 miles, we won our age group!

here is my short race report.

here are the relay results.

here are some race photos:

roy and rob


kate


emmy


bob


ronnie, and marty (finishing)


kate, finishing


kate, done


roy and jim


roy, luis, and kate


roy, rob, and emmy, rehydrating :D


jim, announcing awards


george and kate


ronnie and me


emmy, me, and our "prizes"

grateful dead played its last concert at soldier field, chicago, 14 years ago today

on july 9, 1995, the grateful dead played what would become its last concert, at soldier field, in chicago. one month later, jerry garcia would be dead. over the years, the surviving band members occassionally reunited as "the other ones" and "the dead." after a three year hiatus, they just completed a tour last spring.

in between those reunion tours, we still have plenty of "dead" music with phil and friends, bobby and ratdog, and mickey and bill playing as the rhythm devils! and, last year, it was announce that a jerry garcia biopic (based his early years from the biography "dark star") is in development.

fans have made a big deal about jerry singing "so many roads" that final night. but what stands out for me is the three(!) phil lesh tunes played that night. "box of rain" finds itself in plenty of setlists - and is a phil standard. but to see them play "childhood's end" and "unbroken chain" as well, all on the same night, is amazing!

here is the setlist from soldier field:

first set:

touch of grey
little red rooster
lazy river road
when i paint my masterpiece
childhood's end
cumberland blues
promised land

second set:

shakedown street
samson & delilah
so many roads
samba in the rain
corrina >
drums & space >
unbroken chain
sugar magnolia

encores:

black muddy river
box of rain

listen to the entire show at live music archive.

jonah raskin's "american scream: allen ginsberg's howl and the making of the beat generation"

jonah raskin's "american scream: allen ginsberg's howl and the making of the beat generation," is one of those good books that's undone by its ridiculously long title. chopping off "and the making of the beat generation" would have balanced the slim volume's physicality with the more precise description of the book, a primer on the genesis of "howl." as a big fan of allen ginsberg, there is, thankfully, very little (despite the subtitle's proclamation) on "the making of the beat generation" - and plenty on ginsberg's masterpiece.

what raskin does, and does well, is mine the ginsberg archives and constructs a detailed history of the threads and impulses that ultimately seat ginberg in front of his typewriter, where he lets loose and pours out the first part of "howl." in the process, raskin put to rest the popular misconception that ginsberg's masterpiece was one long sudden outburst of prosody that magically flowed onto the blank page.

"american scream" is similar to paul mahler's "jack kerouac's american journey: the real life odyssy of "on the road" (a book that also suffers from a too long subtitle), which documents the kerouac road trips that become the material for his novel. in "the original scroll" version of on the road," kerouac fans can read the unadulterated text and in "howl: original draft facsimile, transcript, and variant versions, fully annotated by author...." (breaking all records for the longest subtitle in history) can see the evolution of the poem. fans of ginsberg already know how much work he put into the drafting - and his continually redrafting for years afterwards - of his epic poem.

one of the best parts of the book is raskin's description of kerouac and ginsberg in the tiny san francisco cottage as allen worked on revising and editing the poem. kerouac repeatedly insists on no revisions to original text and ginsberg, total self-confident, shrugged off the endless entreaties and made the changes he thought necessary. while ginsberg had labored mightily to incorporate kerouac's "first though, best thought" mantra in his outlook - ginsberg emerged with his own voice, his own mastery of technique, and created his masterpiece.

while the interactions with kerouac are interesting, the real gems are the historical artifacts that raskin unearthed from the archives - not the least of which were high school and college essays that ginsberg wrote. i was less impressed with the brief comments raskin got from ginsberg's psychiatrist. allen himself repeated credited dr. hicks as the one person who gave him explicit "permission," said it was okay - in so many words - to be openly gay!

the last chapter briefly covered the obscenity trial - that did as much (if not more than) allen's copious efforts at self-promotion to launch the poem into the nation's attention. that trial itself was significant as one more battle in a long line of literary censorship cases from the decade that spanned the mid-50's to mid-60's. the howl prosecution case, in the larger context of the first amendment, was amply covered in, "howl on trial: the battle for free expression."

if you're a fan of allen ginsberg (or the beats in general), "american scream" is well-worth reading. check it out.

ron lamothe's "the call of the wild"- the other chris mccandless documentary

"the call of the wild," title of the familiar jack london novel, is also the title of independent filmmaker ron lamothe's documentary on the tragic life of chris mccandless. yes, the same chris mccandless immortalized in the jon krakauer book "into the wild" and senn penn's docudrama of the same name. i caught lamothe's documentary last night on pbs - and it was fascinating for a couple of reason (not the least of which is it's relative obscurity in the shadow of penn's film).

after watching the "sean penn + jon krakauer" iconclast program last month, my interest in mccandless was reawakened - to the point of putting the book back on my reading list. last year i watched "into the wild" with mixed emotions - my feelings about him and his actions had changed in the dozen years since i had first read the book (thanks in no small part the intervention of fatherhood). amazingly, my now ambivalent feelings toward mccandless were perfectly mirrored in the lamothe documentary.

lamothe, who was a contemporary of mccandless, had the "idea" of his documentary gestate for a dozen years (with his own life story directly impacting his view of the material across the years). interesting, he shot the documentary at the same time penn filmed the hollywood version. the "interaction" between the vastly different filmmakers was captured, in part, during "the call of the wild" - and the hollywood crowd came off, predictably, as obnoxious and bullying - to the extent of barring folks for even talking to lamonthe at times!

regardless, lamothe's documentary is as much about ron lamothe as it is about chris mccandless. and lamonthe's persistence paid serious dividends in the facts he uncovered along the way. some of which were - or should have been - known by penn and krakauer yet never publicized. the most startling fact it the cut and dry determination that mccandless starved to death (not poisoned by mistakenly eating the wrong berries).

lamothe unearthed a couple of other fascinating details: apparently chris mccandless had identification cards and $300 stored in his knapsack (not that either the cards or money would have gotten him out of the wilderness), which weren't found by the police when the his body was discovered; and, that mccandless may have been involved in some minor vandalism of two nearby cabins (possible in a desperate search for food?).

none of the additional facts significantly changes the storyline (or mythology, for some). but the film is well-worth watching as a visual meditation on someone who trys to process the meaning of the chris mccandless story as it impacted his own life. while i wouldn't skip the book (essential reading), or sean penn film (riveting), "the call of the wild" is well-worth the trouble to track down as a supplement to the "conventional wisdom."