Month: July 2019

2 days late and 2 dollars short..

Dang it ..sore throat but the doctor says that it does NOT look infected..could have been acid reflux or drainage (possibly both). Time to let it calm down.
Workouts: going ok: yesterday weights: pull ups (5 sets of 10, 1 of 5), bench; 10 x 135, 3 x 185, incline: 10 x 135, decline 10 x 165, military: 7 x 50 standing, 15 x 50 seated, supported, 10 x 40 standing, rows: one arm 3 sets of 10 x 50, goblet squats: 6 x 30, 6 x 50, 6 x 50, 6 x 60, leg presses: 10 x 230, plank, side plank, head stand, knee stretches

today: yoga, then 8.83 miles very slowly (1:48) not much of an effort; a pleasant day to be out there; wound around the Gateway, goose loop, Mausoleum hill, prospect hill, no goose loop on the way back, no Gateway.

Sore throat; no infection (came on maybe Saturday?) Reflux or drainage.

Why I keep reminding myself…

Well, I had a friend complete the grueling 314 mile Vol State Ultramarathon (they had 10 days to do it). And when such a thing happens, I go back to think: “ok, maybe I can…”

Well, today I walked my 7 mile route from Tower Park to Forest Park Nature Center (the spur to the Nature Center, outer loop: Valley, Lower Deer Run, Deer Run, Wakerobin, Bee Tree, Possum Path, Valley, Wilderness) and back. It took 2:21 to do with the lower loop taking 1:10 (spur segments: 27:20, 26:48) and this was, oh, about 20 minutes longer than it once took. Why I keep bringing that up? Well, when I did my only sub 24 hundred (walking), my training paces were a LOT faster (13:30 or so..which are now 15:30.) and my 5K races were mid 23..not mid 27.

Those days are not coming back. But …well, I remember doing that..so it is hard for me to say “forget the past..focus on doing the best you can NOW.
And this year..and probably for years to come, 6:00-6:15 for the marathon (walking) might be just fine.

Crying “wolf”….

The person in question is a member of the Georgia State legislature.

Upshot: she was in a grocery store and evidently used the express line (10 items or less) when she had more than 10 items. Another customer confronted her..called her a lazy b**ch.

Ok, and this is what this lead to:

He responds on TV

They argue, this time in front of cameras

She scolds the..uh…”threatening guy”

And then admits that maybe he did NOT exactly say “go back..”

I can’t roll my eyes enough for this one. What should have been just a run-of-the-mill “rudeness” (no innocent parties here) incident that gets laughed off becomes “viral” because she had to cry on video…and this is a politician???

Oh good grief.

HOT again

Yes, 79 F, 84 percent at the start, 91 F, 59 percent at the end. Whew. I did have a nice finish 58:39 for 4 miles, or 14:40 mpm, though my total time 4:23 lead to a pace of 16:08; needless to say my slow start held me back, though I was glad I was able to pick it up when it got the hottest. Ok, my final 4, ok, 5 miles WERE downhill and that helped. Final 5: 1:13:53.

More and more…

And I am thinking harder about my upcoming talk; I think that I have the math down. Next comes the slides.

Workout notes: weights only: pull ups, (5 sets of 10), bench press: 10 x 135, 3 x 185, incline: 10 x 135, decline: 10 x 165, military: 2 sets of 15 x 50 seated, supported, 10 x 40 standing, rows: 3 sets of 10 x 50 single arm, usual pt, plank, goblet squats: 6 x 30, 50, 50, leg press: 10 x 230, knee stretches. Weight: 190 (up?)

topics of the day here is a genuinely good article from National Review about racism: crying wolf vs. the real deal.

No bottom in sight…

Hey, take any issue with any politician you want. But AMERICANS can disagree with each other.
And yes, I GET contempt. I often feel contempt. I won’t write about the contempt that I sometimes, ok, way too often, feel. I won’t write about the objects of my contempt and I sure as hell won’t vote for a politician that openly expresses the contempt that I sometimes feel.

Some things are better kept to ourselves, and perhaps discussed with emotionally mature friends, therapists, religious clergy and the like.

Workout notes: no yoga; “red triangle of death” as I started to drive to yoga and so I just ran a modified 5 mile course (construction going on in Bradley Park, but Cornstalk hill and Dog Park hill are still open; and one can run on the sidewalk from upper to lower Bradley Park which makes the climb shorter but much steeper.

Trump, womp womp and Daniel Webster vs. the Devil

First: my workout was a 5 mile walk (W. Peoria) in the heat of late morning; the stride felt fine.
Then weights: rotator cuff, pull ups (5 sets of 10: good), military: 2 sets of 15 x 50 seated, supported, 10 x 40 standing, rows: 3 sets of 10 x 50 single arm. Incline: 10 x 135 (tough), 7 x 160 decline, goblet squats: sets of 6 with 40, 50, 50, planks, knee stretches.

I honestly think my glutes are firming up.

Topics

Yeah, the Trump tweets ticked me off…you don’t tell US citizens to go elsewhere. I didn’t tell anti-Obama people that when they belly ached and complained.
If there is one thing that burns me about conservatives is that they are very sanctimonious and feel that THEY have some inherit right to say what is American and what isn’t ..as if they were umpires. They are NOT, and Leonard Pitts says it very well:

“You, like them, take for granted that America is your house, a white house where you make the rules, you set the standards and the rest of us live only by your sufferance. Thatā€™s the assumption embedded in your tweets: that you have the right to tell the rest of us to ā€” apologies to the Beatles ā€” ā€œget back to you where you once belonged.ā€”

Yes, conservatives, it is your country, AND mine, and yes, theirs too.

But there is really no “shaming them”..no amount of outrage that will work.

“How DARE you…” is met with…”womp womp.”

And this reminded me of this old short story about The Devil and Daniel Webster (read the whole thing; it is short)

The plot: a farmer had some terrible luck and made an oath that he’d sell his soul to the Devil…and well, the Devil came up and took him up on it. Things got better…then the Devil came to collect. The farmer, Jabez Stone, panicked and sought out Daniel Webster’s help. So they set up a trial with..well, Webster demanded a jury of Americans, current or past, and that he got:

If Jabez Stone had been sick with terror before, he was blind with terror now. For there was Walter Butler, the loyalist, who spread fire and horror through the Mohawk Valley in the times of the Revolution; and there was Simon Girty, the renegade, who saw white men burned at the stake and whooped with the Indians to see them burn. His eyes were green, like a catamount’s, and the stains on his hunting shirt did not come from the blood of the deer. King Philip was there, wild and proud as he had been in life, with the great gash in his head that gave him his death wound, and cruel Governor Dale, who broke men on the wheel. There was Morton of Merry Mount, who so vexed the Plymouth Colony, with his flushed, loose, handsome face and his hate of the godly. There was Teach, the bloody pirate, with his black beard curling on his breast. The Reverend John Smeet, with his strangler’s hands and his Geneva gown, walked as daintily as he had to the gallows. The red print of the rope was still around his neck, but he carried a perfumed handkerchief in one hand. One and all, they came into the room with the fires of hell still upon them, and the stranger named their names and their deeds as they came, till the tale of twelve was told. Yet the stranger had told the truthā€”they had all played a part in America.

And these jurors fed off of fury, outrage and hate. They more they saw, the more demon-like the got..the hotter their eyes glowed.

It got to Dan’l in the end, and he began to heat, like iron in the forge. When he got up to speak he was going to flay that stranger with every trick known to the law, and the judge and jury too. He didn’t care if it was contempt of court or what would happen to him for it. He didn’t care any more what happened to Jabez Stone. He just got madder and madder, thinking of what he’d say. And yet, curiously enough, the more he thought about it, the less he was able to arrange his speech in his mind. Till, finally, it was time for him to get up on his feet, and he did so, all ready to bust out with lightnings and denunciations. But before he started he looked over the judge and jury for a moment, such being his custom. And he noticed the glitter in their eyes was twice as strong as before, and they all leaned forward. Like hounds just before they get the fox, they looked, and the blue mist of evil in the room thickened as he watched them. Then he saw what he’d been about to do, and he wiped his forehead, as a man might who’s just escaped falling into a pit in the dark.

For it was him they’d come for, not only Jabez Stone. He read it in the glitter of their eyes and in the way the stranger hid his mouth with one hand. And if he fought them with their own weapons, he’d fall into their power; he knew that, though he couldn’t have told you how. It was his own anger and horror that burned in their eyes; and he’d have to wipe that out or the case was lost. He stood there for a moment, his black eyes burning like anthracite. And then he began to speak.

So, he had to find a different way to talk to them..to make them..more …human. And so..he did:

He started off in a low voice, though you could hear every word. They say he could call on the harps of the blessed when he chose. And this was just as simple and easy as a man could talk. But he didn’t start out by condemning or reviling. He was talking about the things that make a country a country, and a man a man.

And he began with the simple things that everybody’s known and feltā€”the freshness of a fine morning when you’re young, and the taste of food when you’re hungry, and the new day that’s every day when you’re a child. He took them up and he turned them in his hands. They were good things for any man. But without freedom, they sickened. And when he talked of those enslaved, and the sorrows of slavery, his voice got like a big bell. He talked of the early days of America and the men who had made those days. It wasn’t a spread-eagle speech, but he made you see it.
He admitted all the wrong that had ever been done. But he showed how, out of the wrong and the right, the suffering and the starvations, something new had come.
And everybody had played a part in it, even the traitors.

And yes, he ended up winning the case, but paying a price. But that is the point: outrage will NOT move the Trump supporters, but perhaps the right approach might flip a FEW of them, in the key states..just enough to win the Electoral College. Blowing out Trump in California, New York and Illinois won’t really help.

Trump’s “go back” remarks

This was emotional for me. I posted part of my response on Facebook, reproduced below.

But I have a bit more to say (mostly emotional)

My dad was in the Air Force and he did several tours in Japan (and yes, he fought in Vietnam, twice)

We lived on Air Force bases/housing complexes. We had sports teams, and from time to time, we’d play Japanese teams.

If you looked at the Japanese teams, there was a uniformity to them. The Americans: well…black, white, brown, yellow, and mixtures thereof..different types of facial features, different types of hair, and different skin tones. THAT is us! And yes, we did look forward to “returning home”..that is, to the US. Most of us did get homesick..albeit for different regions of the country.

I’ll leave the rest to a President that I did not care for: Ronald Reagan:

“America represents something universal in the human spirit. I received a letter not long ago from a man who said, ‘You can go to Japan to live, but you cannot become Japanese. You can go to France to live and not become a Frenchman. You can go to live in Germany or Turkey, and you won’t become a German or a Turk.’ But then he added, ‘Anybody from any corner of the world can come to America to live and become an American.’?”

A person becomes an American by adopting America’s principles, especially those principles summarized in the “self-evident truths” of the Declaration of Independence, such as “life, liberty, and the pursuit of ?happiness.” Carl Friedrich wrote that “To be an American is an ideal, while to be a Frenchman is a fact.”

(yes, he was attacking liberals, but this paragraph is right on point..though I’d add that becoming an American does NOT mean accepting right wing ideology.)

I posted the following on Facebook:

I am not here to defend “the four” (though I actually like Omar and have given her a small amount of money). That isn’t the point.

Yes, POTUS and anyone else has the right to criticize their beliefs, their proposed policies and their visions. Disagreeing with them is fine.

But Trump implied that they had some “country” to “go back to.” No. They are Americans. Yes, 3 were born in the US and one was naturalized. But Americans they remain and Americans have the right to argue that WE…their country, my country and your country, ought to be doing something differently. And you have every right to counter them.

But…

1. IMHO, liberals have “cried wolf” when it comes to claiming that something is “racist” (or misogynistic, or sexist, or anti-Semetic or Islamaphoic, etc.), too many times.

So cries of “racism” from liberals about these remarks are probably going to fall of deaf ears..kind of like the hum of the air conditioner.

This is why I really love it when conservatives speak up.
No one is going to listen to me, even though I make an effort to pick my battles.

2. And for my fellow dark skin brothers and sisters who have problems with liberals…my goodness I hear you.

All too often liberals discount our abilities…in indirect ways. Example: I am going to a math conference and one of the speakers claims that, well, math is too “white male” and needs to be changed so that others can have success. I wonder if she, say, flies on airplanes that have been designed by “woke” engineering and physics, or takes medicines that have been designed by “woke” science.

I still remember a minority program where they talk about “first generation” minority students feeling as if they don’t belong academically in college and wondered about our experiences.

I quipped: “it was hard for me to inferior since *I* was the one helping others with *their* calculus homework. That was NOT the answer they were looking for.

When they try to press us…they have a hard time accepting :I put my head down, studied and did the work” as an answer.

Seriously, at times, conservatives are much better at encouragement: “hey, do you want it? Then WORK…you are better than you think!”

Nevertheless, no matter how well you do professionally, there are large segments of the country…mostly Trump voters, who will NEVER accept you. To them, you will always be, at most, a welcome guest…”one of the good ones.” They aren’t worth your time.

Counting my blessings…

My last “half way sort-of” decent year of running and walking was 2009; I was to get knee surgery in 2010 (“bucket handle tear” in my meniscus…pain was waking me up at night when I slept) and, aside from a few sub 25 minute 5K runs in 2013 and 2014, my running has been a major league train wreck and my walking..not that much better. And I’ve REALLY gone downhill since 2016 (wonder if I can blame Trump?)

Today: yoga, then 5 mile run on the treadmill: 5.2-5.7 5 minute “froggy” (increase speed by .1 mph every 5 minutes), then 12:30 at 6.7 (just under 9 minute miles), and varied speed to get to 5 miles in 51:42 ( 19:10 for the final 2 miles; 29:50 for the final 3), then I walked outside for about 3 (untimed..tried to keep it steady)

Then again, with these knees of mine (photo taken yesterday)…well, I am lucky that I can even walk. I had surgery in 1978, 1979, 1984, 1984 and 2010. The doctor told me that I was “likely to die of old age” before I’d need a knee replacement and, yes, the pain is mostly gone though sitting this way is very uncomfortable for me..ok, impossible.

I can do it with either 3/4 of a 8 lb medicine ball under me, or a yoga block on its narrow side (two blocks stacked flat is very easy).

On the plus side, leg development is there; the goblet squats and hill running is working.

Seeking liberal outrage: Republican tactic

In a relatively minor incident: a fringe candidate for the GOP nomination in the gubernatorial race in Mississippi told a female reporter that she did not get to “shadow” him unless she brought a male companion along.

Of course, this gave him publicity, including publicity from somewhat well known people.

Presto: people now know him. It is probably better to let nobodies be nobodies.

And no, nothing can help Sen. Gillibrand’s campaign.

But on a much more serious note:

That is just plain racist and xenophobic. Who gets told “go back to where you came from?” Not white members of Congress.

Note: Rep. Omar is naturalized; the other 3 were born in the US.

And yes, Trump spoke what many (not all) Republicans believe, though it wasn’t always that way.

This what we are up against. And yes, “they” vote.

I think this former Republican has it right:

Yep. No, no one cares if liberals are outraged…we are ALWAYS outraged. And no, swinging left and counting on that getting voters to show up won’t help; it is better to flip a few of those who do vote who are sick of the indecency. ….and do it in the key states.