Hanson-Larsen Park Trail System

Run Time: 33:56 (weather-abbreviated)

Thought I could squeeze in this run before the thunder and lightning arrived, but not quite. Too bad. This is a great trail run venue. All of the mountain bike tracks had me a little nervous, but my new friend Brody told me all he ever sees up on the hill is runners. I was having a great time until I heard the first thunder clap.

Speaking of loud noises, July 4th. Ah, yes, nothing more patriotic than blowing half of your paycheck on ways to annoy your neighbor. There have been times, when I was young, that I partook. I have enjoyed many Fourth of July Fireworks Celebrations. But now I would rather just have another quiet night with the fireflies flickering around the yard.

I think it’s not so much the noise and the smoke that bothers me as it is the people creating the noise and the smoke. Shooting off neighborhood fireworks and lighting firecrackers in the street sends a message, something along the lines of, “I don’t care what you like or don’t like. I’m entitled to be an asshole.” Yes, you are, and unfortunately, that is the American Dream for many of our national citizens, as we can see by the state of the union.

Maybe we can use the occasion of the nation’s birthday to dig into the causes of the national epidemic of assholiness. I think we won’t have to dig far beneath the surface. Let’s take a look at the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

The part of that statement I challenge is the “endowed by their Creator” part. I’ve written in this blog before about the contradiction between Reason and Religious Belief. How does one reconcile holding a core belief, one upon which their other beliefs are sometimes based, with the reality of insufficient evidence. Faith is not evidence. Faith is a hope, a wish. It might be a strong one, it might even turn out to be warranted, but it is not scientific, logical, or derived from Reason.

It’s dangerous, I propose, to let people think that a higher power endowed them with any rights. It leads them to think they are favored, entitled. Even if there is a higher power who created us, and even if she endowed us with unalienable rights, let’s keep that on the down-low, okay? If we want to talk about what binds us together as a country, or a tribe, let’s say we endow each other with unalienable rights. I give you the right to be an asshole, and you give it right back to me. Even that concession still means that we are placing ourselves above non-humans, plant life, the planet, and the universe. What’s so special about us? If anything endowed us with anything, it was a lightning strike into a pool of enzymes, followed by billions of years of evolution.

Can we just skip ahead in this story to the part where monotheism is just a myth? I have known many religious people, and I know that religious belief is often a good thing and helps people, but can we just give it a little less power? Let’s make it something like a favorite sports team. Let’s not make it the basis of the founding of a country. You know they just put that part in to get the buy-in of the masses.

When that first thunder clap announced the presence of not God, but weather, I headed down the draw. The raindrops started soon after, and by the time I got to the apartment complex parking lot below, it was coming down hard. I ran to the stairs and sat down at the first landing and waited it out. The rental car was a half-mile or so away. The weather app said rain for the next hour. You can get real wet in a half-mile.

Then my new friend Brody showed up. He parked in the lot, came up the stairs and asked me if I got caught out in the storm. We talked for a minute, and then he continued on up the stairs. Then he stopped and offered to give me a ride to my rental car. In the car, he told me he just got promoted to a Sales position, and he was trying to learn how to be more outgoing and talk to people he didn’t know. I told him he was going to do just fine.

Central Cass High School

Run Time: 66:31 + 2:30 kick

No locked gates at Central Cass. I’ve run on this track before. It’s wide open for community use. There were two softball games going on over at the ballfields — young players, all wearing pink uniform shirts with differentiating shorts. The snack shack appeared to be doing a brisk business. Two high school girls were on the track field, practicing their hammer throws.

Two nights earlier, in Winnipeg, I opted for the fitness center over running outside. It was rainy and sketchy outside. I have yet to find a hotel in a neighborhood in Winnipeg that isn’t sketchy. Winnipeg must be the First-Nation word for watch your back. Even driving through and around Winnipeg, I haven’t felt comfortable anywhere outside of the industrial districts, mostly because people there are generally working, rather than trying to score meth.

I was mildly amazed that the hotel had a fitness center. Then I went to the fitness center. One elliptical machine, one treadmill that was broken, a set of dumbbells with a bench. No water cooler even.

There is no way you can call an elliptical exercise. It’s just sliding your feet backward and forward, and moving your arms correspondingly in a way that makes attaining a rhythm impossible. I chose the interval setting, and when the incline went up to 10, it still just felt like I was pretending to exercise. It’s definitely not resistance training. It’s assistance training.

I did start sweating after 30 minutes, but I couldn’t get my heart rate above 100. You never lift your feet off the surface. Keeping the upper and lower body moving is a plus, so I could see an old person might benefit, except that the mount and dismount are awkward and would surely end in life-threatening injury. It was touch and go for me, and I am moderately agile.

To compensate for the lack of exertion, I decided to lift a few weights after my ellipiticism. Sometimes I do this when I run on a treadmill in a hotel fitness center — some bench presses, some shoulder presses, some squats after my run. Arnold says that strength training makes you live longer, and I don’t go to health clubs, so the fitness center is a good, free option.

I chose a set of 25 lb. dumbbells and did a set of bench presses, then a set of shoulder presses. Normally, I put one down and hold just one for the squats — not sure why. Easier to balance with one weight held by both hands in the middle, and even a body weight squat is enough for me to feel it. This time I kept both and did the squats with the weights up at my shoulders. And my thighs said what the HELL was that?

Then I did two sets of each with 30 lbs. weights — fewer reps. And again, my thighs were distressed, this time with indignation. So the elliptical is clearly not resistance training, and running is clearly not strength training. If, when you ran, you did a full single-leg squat with each step, perhaps that might build more strength. But just running does not build strength.

I felt it all the way through my run in Williston the next day, and through this run the day after that. I felt pain in my leg muscles, which, I have to say, feels a hell of a lot better than back or hip or neck pain. It feels like the pain after a hard-fought victory, not the pain of being misaligned or sitting too much. Maybe I can make the weights part of the ritual, even after an outside run.

Williston High School

Run Time: 66:30 + 2:30 kick

A long day of driving. Started in Winnipeg, planned to drive 288 miles to Minot, then 122 miles to Williston. Then a prospect I was scheduled to meet three days later in Fargo emailed to ask if we could meet in Grand Forks instead. So I diverted 146 miles to Grand Forks, then 211 miles to Minot, then 122 miles to Williston. So 410 miles turned into 478 miles, which put me at the hotel after 6:30.

So I didn’t feel like running. I was drowsy and hungry. But it was beautiful out, and I had not run the two previous days, and there was a high school nearby, so I changed into my running attire and drove the rental car to the high school, where I found the track… restricted. The gates were padlocked, and there were actually signs that said stay off the field, because it was for high school athletics only.

Well, fuck you, Williston School District. Here is this beautiful, relatively new running track, sitting unused for the whole summer, with a new housing development right next door, local citizens walking the sidewalks around the school. I would run the sidewalks, more in protest than anything else. I would run around the perimeter of the school, with my rental car with Texas plates parked right in the middle of the big, open, empty parking lot, which was probably meant for students, staff, and parents only.

This is one of the obstacles I come across that burns my ass. Why chain off a public school track? If anything, runners jogging on the track deter vandalism and loitering and unwelcome activity. When school is not in session, school grounds can be community space, where citizens who pay for the schools can exercise and commune and feel welcome and trusted.

So I’m coming around the east side of the building, and I look over at the track, and what’s this? A breach at Gate 7! Some coach left the gate unlocked, probably the football coach. No signs at this gate. I’m in!

I’m just wondering, what is the reason for closing off the track? I have seen a few that are in big cities, in sketchy areas, where you could justify keeping everyone out. I would argue that even those tracks would benefit by allowing runners and walkers. This track is in a small town, with nothing but open prairie on one side, and new housing on the other.

I was waiting for the local sheriff to show up, siren wailing, guns drawn, to escort me off the track, possibly to the hoosegow. One of the walkers would report me, no doubt, for trespassing and scoffing the law. I was ready for a showdown, but no such luck. I ran unbothered and criminally fast, because I was so pumped at finding entry through Gate 7.

A small gesture of protest, ignoring the signs of oppression posted at the main gate. In actuality, probably nobody cares about me, or anyone else, running on the track. It’s probably one person, one ridiculously rules-oriented school board member or school administrator or overinvolved parent, who made a pointless stand because they could. Someone who is unhappy, so they want everyone else to be unhappy. Unfortunately, sometimes one person can do a whole lot of damage.

Hopefully that person will move along, or go away, or be removed from power. We don’t need to be exclusionary. Do you know anyone like that? Anyone who thinks we need to put gates or walls around the field to keep out the outsiders? Maybe the citizens of Williston will rise up and remove that person from power. One can dream.

Be the thistle that grows up through the crack in the astroturf. Be the runner who finds the unlocked gate. Resist tyranny. Unseat the despot.

Songbird Creek Trail and other nearby trails

Run Time: 66:25 + 2:30 kick

My hotel in Billings was a relic. The Montana Trailhead Inn: 7 stories high, next to an old Convention Center. It has an open commons area with a piano, couches, and tables that you look down on from all floors — all rooms open onto a balcony. A trellised fountain rises 4 four stories on one wall — dry and apparently retired. The elevators are windowed to that you can watch as you rise or descend. I saw approximately 5 other guests in the time I was there.

The neighborhood is primarily industrial. I thought I could see some trails near the river on the map, so I headed that direction. It was a good choice. The entry trail ran past a large community garden, which was well-tended and full of vegetables and flowers. A few locals were working in their chosen plots.

Songbird Creek isn’t much, but it marks the end of private property and the beginning of green space, so it is useful. I ran west first. The area around the creek is marshy and forested. In one spot, I caught a whiff of death. Something had died down in the trees, probably something big, if I could smell it that strongly up on the trail.

Everything that lives, dies, right? Including each of us. Increasingly, as I move through each day, especially work days, I wonder about the value of what I am doing in each moment in relation to my own date with mortality. I’m definitely over halfway there. Meandering thoughts about what will happen when that time comes are starting to come out of the woods and accost me on the trail more often. I’m getting a whiff of death, and it’s disturbing.

I would love 20 more good years. 25 would be even better, but I’m not banking on it. At this point, it seems like a little blip of time. And yet, can any of us spend each remaining moment of our life in meaningful activity? And what is meaningful? How does the most meaningful experience translate to the afterlife if there is none?

Consciousness is the most blessed gift each of us will ever receive. How cruel that it will be taken away someday. I can feel extreme FOMO about the idea of not being here to witness my children and grandchildren grow after I’m gone, but it’s genuine existential dread to know that I just won’t be anymore. It’s not just the worst possible fear. It’s on a whole other level. I’m not sure it can be adequately expressed through language.

I don’t want life to end. I don’t want consciousness to end. I am not sure what is going to happen to my consciousness, but even if it extends beyond the end of my physical life, I don’t want to go an afterlife. I don’t want my soul to be blended into the collective soul. I want to keep right on loving my loved ones and working my crappy job and feeling the aches of aging and laughing at something funny and reading stories that entrance me and listening to the music I love. I want to go on running four times a week and writing my own stories and learning to play songs on the guitar and kissing my wife and rewatching TV shows that move me. I want to go on scooping cat poop and pulling weeds and doing home repair that I have no idea how to do but now I can just Google it.

I suspect that this world is the only world I’ll ever know, and this world is enough for me. But 80 years is not enough. Who knows? Maybe 800 years would be enough. I get it — our lives wouldn’t be so precious if they went on forever. It’s precisely because they are so short that we resist the end. Think of those lucky goddamned elves in the Lord of the Rings, who live in their 30s and 40s for 3000 years. Now THAT is fantasy.

I can’t bear to think of it, so like many, I try not to. I just pretend it’s not going to happen. And who’s to say that’s not the wisest way to approach it? What else can we do? I can live with intention and still do that. If I think about it too much, intention goes out the window.

Maybe something miraculous will happen. Maybe I’ll just move on to the next simulation, with all of the same loved ones surrounding me. Maybe I’ll relive this life over and over. If my consciousness ends, it ultimately won’t matter for me. That thought I do not find comforting. Maybe all of this is one dream within a larger consciousness. That doesn’t comfort me either.

I can’t speak for anyone else, but death is scary. I just listened to an interview with a Buddhist professor who has received a diagnosis of terminal cancer. His strategy is to lean into it, to look forward to it, to be curious. I find that so brave. Is that the way to approach it? Not, “I’m ready for it,” or “I don’t want to go,” but more like, “This is going to be interesting.”

Can you tell me what’s going to happen, Norm? Can you send me a sign? As I finished my run, in my last 10-minute running segment, my playlist was in the D’s, and the last song for the run was “Death Is Not the End,” by Bob Dylan. How’s that for irony?

Chinook Middle School

Run Time: 66:19 + 2:30 kick

This is my second, possibly third time running on this middle school track. It is an open, unfenced, well-kept shared space. On this day, I shared it with a youth baseball team practice on the field above the track, some middle-school football players practicing on the interior of the track, and some adult cricket players practicing at one end of the track.

The cricket players showed up after I had run a couple laps. I’m not sure why they set up on the track. There was a restroom facility that provided a backstop for them, which I can understand, but there was a second baseball field a short distance away with a backstop. It seems like that would have been a better choice, especially since the cricket ball travels so much faster on the track surface. There was a lot of chasing of the ball going on, followed by a lot of heavy breathing.

It was apparent, as I came around that end of the track while they were setting up, that I was going to impede on their practice every few minutes. The track took me behind the pitcher, or whatever he is called in cricket, then around him, and then between him and the batter. At first I just cut it short and ran inside the pitcher, but I was still going to have to run close to the batter, who would have to wait for me to clear the field of cricket play, which I think is wider than a baseball diamond.

As I said, this is a shared space. I don’t need to run all the way around the track in one direction the whole time. I just started running a horseshoe route. When I got close to the cricketeers, I stopped and turned around and ran the other way. Then when I got close to them coming from the other way, I did the same thing. The running was the same for me as running ovals. I’m not an orbiting planet — I can reverse course and still get where I want to go.

I was more concerned about getting hit by a foul ball from the baseball field. A few landed on the embankment just above the track. A walker came onto the track and started following my horseshoe pattern. It was all copacetic. I’ve run on tracks with parents sitting in the grandstands while their kids practiced football or soccer on the field. I’ve run on tracks when track teams have been practicing in some of the lanes. Be like water, some wise person once said.

Water can break an obstacle, but it doesn’t have to. It can go over, around, under, or through. It can wear down rock. It can lift and carry. It can leak through cracks. Water, like life, finds a way.

And it makes a fine boiled egg.

Spokane River Centennial State Park Trail

Run Time: 66:18 + 2:30 kick

Liberty Lake is a suburb of Spokane, on the east side. It is related to freedom, obviously. At least for the white settlers who cleared out the Native Americans like trees in an old-growth forest. My hotel was not far from the lake, but the river was closer, and I could see the trail on the map a quarter-mile away.

My intent is to take a journalistic approach to describing the routes I run. I want my vast readership to receive an objective description of the route, so that they can make their own assessments. I don’t want to recommend, or discourage. If I have been doing that, I no longer intend to do that. You can judge from my description and the photos if it looks like you might want to run there yourself the next time you are in that location.

It’s a strange thing, really, to recommend a restaurant or tourist attraction you have visited while traveling to a friend or family member or stranger you meet on a plane who is planning to visit the same city or region in the near future. Let’s say you really had a great experience somewhere, or had a great meal. You really do not know if another person would enjoy that experience or that meal the same way you did. Enjoyment is almost completely subjective.

Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that your tastes align with the person to whom you are giving a recommendation. The next potential pitfall is your personal ability to assess quality. What if your experience with restaurants and fine wine is limited? What if you have biases that alter your judgment negatively? Yes, you might have liked the lobster roll you got at the diner down by the bay, but if it was the first lobster roll you’ve ever eaten, how accurate is your assessment of its quality?

Let’s say that you’re an expert, or that you have extensive experience with the subject at hand. Even then, if you are only visiting or touristing, what percentage of restaurants or museums or plays or historical exhibits have you experienced in that city or region? Even if you have lived someone for many years, you likely have only eaten at a small percentage of restaurants. That’s one of the fun things about moving to a new city — exploring and discovering, looking for a that little-known culinary gem, or the used record store that is an underground gold mine.

When we have a good experience in a restaurant or at a public attraction, we often want to share it with others. I think it might be best to embrace the subjectivity and simply say, “I liked it because….” or “I didn’t like it because….” or what we both liked and didn’t like about it. That way we’re not saying that the other person will like it, or that they should go there, or that they “have to” go there. We are simply describing what we enjoyed about it. If we are accurately describing the experience, we are helping that person assess it for their own potential enjoyment. We are not asking them to take our word for it. There is nothing wrong with asking someone to take your word for it. It just should be something we can reasonably know we are right about. If I have visited two restaurants in a city of 500 restaurants, I can’t reasonably know that anybody should go to either of those restaurants over any other restaurant.

I don’t know much about influencers. I don’t follow any social media influencers. I subscribe to some e-newsletters, but other than ads that run in and around the content, I don’t think the content itself is tainted by the influencer business model. I could be wrong. We are all, to some extent, influencers. It’s kind of like the aphorism, “Everyone is in sales. Some people just don’t realize it.” We all spend at least some time and effort trying to convince, persuade, influence, and “sell” our message. In a way, I’m doing it right now.

I don’t even remember what prompted this subject for the blog. I was probably listening to a podcast, and someone on the podcast was waxing poetic about some place they visited, or some activity they engaged in, or some food they ate. It gave me the vibe of exaggeration. And I can understand it. You’re on a podcast, being interviewed by some famous person, and you’re telling a story that you want to share with the world, so it was the greatest dessert you ever ate, or the most beautiful thing you ever saw.

When we do this, it generally comes from a desire to help others, so it’s difficult to find fault with it. Well, not for me, but probably for others. I am skeptical. That’s not bad. It means I am going to reserve judgment for when I experience whatever it is that’s being sold to me as something I “have” to do. And I might never do it, because life is short, and I have other things that I want to do that I found out about organically, and I want to discover where the good running trail is on my own.

Also, I am wary about the inverse — negative reviews. I do look at hotel ratings when I’m booking hotels for a work trip. I use it as a secondary factor. A 3-star hotel with the same price as a 2-star hotel is a better option. Sometimes I will look at ratings for fast-food places that I map on Apple Maps. If 3 people give the place a death sentence, it might be worthwhile to try some place 0.4 miles further away. This is all pragmatic.

But negative movie and show reviews, or music reviews, from the general rabble make we want to check it out. When my older brother told me that he walked out of the first Lord of the Rings because it was the “worst movie I ever saw,” I had to question not only his taste in movies, but also his sanity, the purity of his tap water, and the potential presence of a brain tumor. Then I remembered that one of his favorite movies was “For the Love of Benji,” and I realized that rationality was not in play.

The view along this trail was scenic. The surface was asphalt, which I don’t like. The aroma from the pine trees reminded me of hunting deer in Eastern Oregon, which I really liked. Almost no one I passed on the trail made eye contact with me. None waved (I waved at a few, then gave up). I am more of a smiler/nodder. Two people (out of about twenty) smiled and nodded back.

Lewis & Clark Middle School

Run Time: 65:59 + 2:30 kick

I passed this middle school about half-mile from the hotel, and I could see the empty track, so that took the research out of it, which is sometimes half the work for me. It was a beautiful day, and as usual, I was starving, but I ignored my hunger, got my running shoes on, and headed out the side exit.

In this relatively upscale, clean suburban community, I was surprised to find a cinder track. I come across these occasionally, but usually in places like Esterhazy, Saskatchewan. Who cares, though? I’m fine with cinder. Keeps the riff-raff away.

Beings this was a middle school, and beings that my middle school had a cinder track, this took me back. I couldn’t help but reminisce about practicing baseball in and around that old track. We didn’t have a full baseball field at the middle school — just a backstop and a diamond. The track ran diagonal across right field, and it was set down a foot or so lower than the main field, so if you were chasing down a liner that was slicing foul, you’d suddenly step into air where your body thought the ground would be, and you might end up with cinder in your hair, ear, and facial skin tissue.

We played our games at the High School across town, or at the Junior High a little closer, which had two baseball fields somehow. But we practiced in that scrub grass and on that undrug diamond with no pitcher’s mound. Guess what? We won most of our games. When I see the manicured youth sports facilities that are now common all across this country, I feel so grateful for the youth sports world I grew up in, in which the only spectators were a few cute girls, and when you inherited old jerseys and equipment and turned them in at the end of the year. In ten years of playing organized youth baseball, I never had my own bat or helmet, and I was never expected to have either.

In 1978, Hillsboro, Oregon, had two junior high schools for seventh and eighth grade, a middle school for ninth and tenth, and a high school for eleventh and twelfth. The next year, they converted the Junior high schools to seventh, eighth, and ninth grades, and they made the middle school one of the Junior high schools. The high school then had tenth, eleventh, and twelfth grades. It was overcrowded, however, so the Seniors went from 7 am to Noon, the Juniors from 9 am to 3 pm, and the Sophomores from Noon to 6 pm. No full lunches — just a 20 minute snack break. Two years after that, a new high school opened, and I was in the first graduating class of 1982.

That old middle school with the cinder track, however, was my favorite. It had character. It was originally a high school that opened in 1911 or something like that. It was two stories, with high ceilings in the classrooms. The cafeteria was in the basement. The auditorium had ornate trimmings and solid, comfortable seats — it felt like a classic theater. Under the annex, which was built just after World War II, there was a bomb/fallout shelter. By the time I got there, it had been converted to a shooting range. A SHOOTING RANGE. Every year, the ninth graders had a four-week hunter’s safety course, followed by five weeks of shooting at targets with single shot .22 rifles. One guy shot an electric box that was in his line of vision and knocked out all the lights in the shelter. Fun times.

I had taken hunter’s safety and started shooting a bolt-action .243 when I was 11, so I was ready for all of this. For one of my presentations in Speech class, I explained how to gut and field-dress a deer. For another, I brought my rifle to school to show everyone how it worked. I BROUGHT MY RIFLE TO SCHOOL. I brought it on the bus, checked it in at the front office, left class to get it when it was my turn to give my speech, brought it back to the front office when I was done, and took it with me on the bus ride home. When I was walking down the empty hallway with my rifle between the front office and the classroom, a teacher came around the corner toward me and crouched down, clowning around, like he was afraid I would shoot him. He popped back up, and we both laughed. It’s not funny, I know. It was then. It was inconceivable that anyone would ever bring a weapon to a school to shoot someone.

I guess I miss more than that old school and cinder track.

Charly Weston Bike Trail/Charles City High School

Run Time: 65:54 + 2:30 kick

More serendipity. I saw the bike trail on my way through town to the hotel, and then it crossed the main drive only a quarter-mile or so away from the hotel. It crossed a bridge, wound through a patch of forest, and then came up right alongside the high school track. I had not been sure I had enough trail to cover half of the out-and-back run, but instead I diverted onto the track and got in more than half of the run there.

Also wonderful weather. As I ran down the trail listening to my playlist, I hit an almost euphoric state, which was augmented by the songs that came up. I listen to the songs on my playlist in alphabetical order, and recently I hit the end of the list and started back up with the A’s. One song that played during that run was a minor 1970s hit called “Ariel,” by Dean Friedman.

I started putting together my playlist around 2017 by looking at the America’s Top 40 listings from 1970-1980. I looked up the lists online and added songs one at a time. If I didn’t know or remember the song, I’d listen and then add it if I liked it. If I knew I liked it, I’d just add it. I didn’t remember “Ariel,” so I listened to it, and I kind of remembered it, but it was so far in my past and such a minor hit that it felt both familiar and fresh.

It’s a catchy song, but the genius of the song is in the lyrics. Here is one example: Standing by the waterfall in Paramus Park / She was working for the friends of the BAI / She was collecting quarters in a paper cup / She was looking for change and so was I. Here’s another: I took a shower and put on my best blue jeans / I picked her up in my new VW van / She wore a peasant blouse with nothing underneath / I said “Hi,” she said “Yeah I guess I am.” It really works with the melody too, the way the lines run together without a pause. Another passage: We had a little time, we were real hungry / We went to Dairy Queen for something to eat / She had some onion rings, she had a pickle / She forgot to tell me that she didn’t eat meat. Look, I know it’s not Shakespeare, but listen to the song. You will smile, if not laugh out loud.

Now that I have started writing songs myself, I can appreciate the difficulty of finding a lyric that works with the melody and the structure of the song, conveys a meaning that you intend, and isn’t too wordy or too sparse. It’s a completely different type of writing than prose. The rules are way different. The rhymes are hard to find sometimes. I’ve only written eight songs with lyrics at this point, and with most of them, I’ve changed the lyrics many times, right up to the point that I recorded it.

A few songs later, Janis Ian’s “At Seventeen” played through the headphones. A way different feel than “Ariel.” Case in point: Remember those who win the game / Lose the love they sought to gain / In debentures of quality / And dubious integrity / Their small town eyes will gape at you / In dull surprise when payment due / Exceeds accounts received / At seventeen. Amazing. I love when long, multi-syllable words match the beat of the song and just fit so well. This is good writing. And how profound is the use of the phrase when payment due / exceeds accounts received? I mean, come on.

Al Stewart’s “Year of the Cat” contains some of my favorite lyrics. On a morning from a Bogart movie / In a country where they turn back time / You go strolling through the crowd like Peter Lorre / Contemplating a crime. He reaches for a higher voice note and emphasizes the first syllable of PETer in a way that makes you feel like you’re cresting a wave. Right after that: She comes out of the sun in a silk dress/ Running like a watercolor in the rain. Run in running is actually the last syllable of the previous measure, so that it rhymes with sun, which accentuates the flow of the song. Running like a watercolor in the rain. Again, come on. That’s beautiful.

You don’t have to be erudite to convey profound meaning in a song. A great example is the Rolling Stones “Gimme Shelter.” It’s a very heavy message, with the first two verses referencing storm and fire, each followed by a chorus of War, children, it’s just a shot away, then a break of Rape, murder, it’s just a shot away repeated three times, and then another verse about floods, followed by the War, children, it’s just a shot away chorus, and then finishes with a reversal of the chorus: I tell you love, sister, it’s just a kiss away. Inspired writing.

I could write about how rock musicians like Mick Jagger and Keith Richard wrote such beautiful songs in the midst of drug addiction, chronic self-destruction, and a nearly complete absence of self-management, but that’s a whole other blog post. Also, instrumental music can be transcendent, meditative, and elevating. For me, a well-crafted lyric is a work of art, which it is, of course. Music is art, and thank goodness we have it.

I could never begin to remember all of the song lyrics that have made all the difference for me. When they come back around on the playlist, I am awash with gratitude, appreciation, and awe.

Jordan Creek Parkway Trail

Run Time: 65:53 + 2:30 kick

What a beautiful, warm spring day, so beautiful that I changed my mind when I got to the hotel and opted for a run instead of a nap. Two long drives, from Sioux Falls to Omaha, then from Omaha to Des Moines, and then it turns out that West Des Moines is clean and upscale and rather green, so it inspired me to ignore fatigue and hunger. Well done, WDM! I only chose that end of town for a hotel because it kept the drive from being longer. It appears to be actually livable.

The “trail” was actually a sidewalk, but it was wide and marked with signage, and in places it diverted away from the street, and there was some grass alongside that you could run on for much of the way. A lot of friendly people walking, running, and biking. A lot of young people. Some non-white people, which was encouraging. This is Iowa, after all.

I think I wrote last time about how I started re-reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance as my bathroom reader. I was struck by a passage about divisions between people, written by Pirsig lo these many years ago, and how it resonates today. He uses the example of a Catholic and a Protestant differing on their opinion of birth control. My first thought was, “How quaint.” An argument between a Catholic and a Protestant about using a condom or taking birth control pills. I was raised Catholic. I remember that being a controversial social issue in the 1970s, but now it seems like such a quaint, cute little social disagreement, in comparison to the Hell that is our culture now.

Pirsig’s reference is only a one-paragraph aside, but it contains some insightful analysis: “When you’re talking birth control, what blocks it and freezes it out is that it’s not a matter of more or fewer babies being argued. That’s just on the surface. What’s underneath is a conflict of faith, of faith in empirical social planning versus faith in the authority of God as revealed by the teachings of the Catholic Church. You can prove the practicality of planned parenthood till you get tired of listening to yourself and it’s going to get you nowhere because your antagonist isn’t buying the assumption that anything socially practical is good per se. Goodness for him has other sources which he values as much as or more than social practicality.”

Your antagonist isn’t buying the assumption that anything practical is socially good per se. Wow. I’m not sure I had ever understood the religious perspective in quite that way until I re-read it a fourth or fifth time. I have long thought, as an agnostic or atheist, that we could not assume that most of humanity agrees that principles such as logic, reason, and evidence are of primary importance when most of humanity embraces belief as its foundational principle. Those two general philosophies are not compatible. Belief is not scientific. Belief does not require evidence. Belief is no logical.

Let’s think about not buying the assumption that anything socially practical is good per se. That certainly gives a religious person license to oppose something that makes sense. And let’s think about how proving practicality is going to get your nowhere with that person. That certainly explains why you can’t convince them of anything that runs contrary to what they interpret their religious teaching to be telling them. You have to de-convert them to atheism or agnosticism before you can ever hope to change their mind about something like birth control, or abortion, or vaccines, or the equality of individuals.

Maybe it’s not that dire. I am sure there are people of faith who understand and support social practicality. It’s a generalization to say otherwise, and I think generalizations are usually not helpful. I just wish the people of faith who understand and support social practicality would rise up and smite the other people of faith with some jawbones of asses.

How did humanity develop the concept of belief in a higher power? That, if anything, might be the closest thing to evidence of the actual existence of a higher power, because it makes no sense (it is NOT evidence, nonetheless). I am just imagining that, in the first several millennia of human existence, the non-believers were too busy trying to figure out how to stay alive, prosper, and propogate to take seriously and to slap around the yahoos who were praying to the stars. I can imagine them thinking, “That guy’s never gonna make it,” and they underestimated the community-building value of mass delusion. And by the time they saw what was happening, it was too late. And they probably still didn’t care, because they were too busy figuring shit out.

That’s how I feel now. It’s too late. It was too late a long time ago. Even if we got the believers down to less than 50% of the general population, the non-believers are too individualistic to take control. They’d let the believers gerrymander society into allowing them to keep control.

But… maybe we should start putting together a plan to dismantle and dissolve religious belief. What’s the formula? Anything is possible, right?

I’ll put it on my phone calendar. I’ve got 20 more years at least to work on it. Send me your thoughts (no prayers).

Sioux Falls Bike Trail

Run Time: 65:52 + 2:30 kick

This was not my first run down the old Sioux Falls Bike Trail. I was here last year and stayed at the same Holiday Inn Express and made the same walk across the same strip mall to the same river bank. This time I ran east, rather than west, and I stayed in the open air and out of the trees. A glorious day for running.

I put a book on hold at the Kent County Library, and I asked for it to be moved to the branch closest to our home, and it was in transit for more than a week. I finally visited the branch to return a different book, and I explained my curiosity to the library employee, and she requested a second hold on the book, and then the next day it was available. Kind of like shooting air through a fuel line to clear it out.

So I got the book shortly before this work trip, and I am enjoying it (My name is Asher Lev, by Chaim Potok). Before that, I was reading a novel on a digital device, which is fine, but laptops and phones don’t work that well as bathroom readers. So, on my way to the bathroom one day, I grabbed my old well-worn copy of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance off the bookshelf and read some of that over a multi-day span.

It’s been years since I’ve read it. I read it multiple times in my twenties, and loved it. Starting it now gave me an endorphin boost. It wasn’t as perfect as I remembered, but I am loving the thoughtfulness of it. By that I mean it required so much thought to write, and a fair amount to read. Yet it’s written in a plain, direct style that welcomes the reader to the inquiry.

Early in the story, the narrator announces his intention to engage in a Chautauqua with the group he is motorcycling with across the U.S.: his young son, and a friend and his wife. The kind of Chautauqua the narrator is thinking of is an exchange of ideas that elevates the nature of discourse — talking about something meaningful, rather than simply engaging in small talk. An ongoing exchange that is paused and recommenced, ostensibly until something of value is achieved. He has something in mind that he wants to communicate — I’m too early in the novel to remember what it is, and I haven’t gotten to that part yet. That his Chautauqua group includes his young son is notable — he’s treating his son as an intellectual equal.

For the narrator in the novel, a Chautauqua is a philosophical discussion, which people have all the time — they just don’t necessarily label it such. Philosophy underpins almost all human behavior. A philosophical void or vacuum inevitably means trouble. It was refreshing to read about narrator’s desire to provoke philosophical discourse with intention. But… it was fiction, after all.

In my experience, there is a serious philosophical void/vacuum in the business world. When I was a lowly tow-truck driver, drinking burnt coffee in a construction trailer under the I-405 bridge in downtown Portland, I would have philosophical discussions with my co-workers, such as whether or not humans should have the right to own property. At that time, I took the “no” stance. I’m a little more practical about it now, but if I engaged in a Chautauqua tomorrow on that subject, I’d have a hard time making the opposite case.

Like I said, it’s just my experience. Maybe at your place of work, there are deep, philosophical debates. Maybe it’s because I moved into management at some point, and I had to sacrifice most of my philosophical beliefs to get my 3% merit increase. If we wanted to get into a serious philosophical discussion, we could talk about the ethical abyss of capitalism.

Maybe capitalism was inevitable. I don’t know — seems like we could’ve come up with something better if we had had a Chautauqua.