General

When I was in middle school, I started running track. I was not a very athletic young boy and the major growth spurt that usually spurns a person of my age into athletics had simply not happened. But track appealed to me because I liked to run. I ran a lot – all of the time – almost from when I got up to when i went to bed.

That’s a far cry from my current physical state, but that’s a different issue for a different time.

In middle school, I ran the middle and long distances – the 800 meter, the 1600 meter, and the 110 meter hurdles. I ran away from field events, they required strength, and I didn’t have it.

But it was an article in Runner’s World during the summer before my Freshman year of High School that changed my thoughts about running. It was there that I read the story of Steve Prefontaine.

Prefontaine, usually just called “Pre”, was one of the most gifted and spirited runners of his time. As I’m offline as I write this, I can’t begin to write about his accomplishments. But he was a man who ran fast, won races, and had chosen to live his life out loud. He suffered through controversy, heartbreak, and other challenges before being tragically killed in a car accident at a young age.

Yesterday, I was in downtown Boston with a co-worker and stopped into Niketown to show him the marathon exhibits that they had and take a look around the store.

On the ground floor, at the end of the marathon exhibit, was this quote from Steve Prefontaine:

To give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the gift

I’m a pretty intense individual about alot of things – but I could be more intense at work – more intense on getting things done at home – but importantly, alot more intense with taking care of myself. Prefontaine’s quote on the wall, combined with a scare earlier this week with my health, made me think.

So I walked over to the running section and bought running shoes and workout clothing.

Long live Pre.

Jeff Jarvis visits the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC:

The Holocaust Museum is phenomenal: beautifully expressed, eloquently informative, devastatingly human. I have read about the museum from its opening and have seen pictures of the exhibits. But there is nothing like the experience of walking through and coming to the room that extends up and down beyond focus with pictures of the people of the shtetl Eishishok: It makes every life real, it makes every loss painful. And when I came to the room with shoes, nothing but empty shoes, I broke down.

I’ve been there – it was the last thing I visited in Washington, DC before moving from Ellicott City, Maryland to Medina, Ohio in the mid 1990’s. It was then, as it is now, a hauntingly emotional experience that reminds us all of lives lost and the existence of evil in the world.

Someone asked me about this the other day, so yesterday I kept track:

• Work related emails: 91
• Work related phone calls: 23 (inbound), 16 (outbound)
• Miles driven: 97
• Commuting Time: 2 hours, 31 minutes
• People I spoke with in person: 42
• Earliest Phone Call: 6:38am
• Latest Phone Call: 8:41pm

Makes for some interesting thoughts, eh?

Dooce, whom I only know from reading her weblog, writes today about her bouts with depression.

And I know what she’s going through.

For nearly a year – my senior year of high school and through the next fall – I suffered from major depression. It was quite possibly the worst time in my life. The things she wrote about in today’s Dooce are things I’ve lived. All of it.

Well, except the part about being pregnant – I don’t have children.

One thing I learned about that encounter with what another blogger calls The Black Dog is that I don’t ever want to feel like that again.

I have thought of Dooce often today and hope that she’s able to come through this time in her life just as she’s pulled through others.

Carmela got laid!

As Waldron prepares to play for the Class A championship today, people in the community of 800 are expressing their support by wearing T-shirts and painting their faces or, in the case of Penny Hensley, her barn.

From the Indianapolis Star