Infospigot: The Chronicles

Boston Again

A friend of mine from high school, Mike Koerber, took up distance running decades ago. He was always a pretty serious athlete, and we spent many, many days playing hockey (he had a pond in front of his house), softball, basketball and football. Last time I saw him was ... 1977, I'm guessing. But last fall, I looked his name up in the Chicago Marathon results and saw that, yes, in the midst of a race beset by unseasonably hot temperatures (about 90, in mid-October; it was weather Mrs. O'Leary's cow would have loved) and some logistical problems (not enough water on the course), there was Michael Koerber, finishing in something like ... 3:12, if I remember correctly. I traced his past performanced and found at least one time under 3 hours. I'd guess that that puts him in the 80th to 90th percentile among runners his age (which is also my age, since we were born four days apart). So, Mike not only runs marathons, he's pretty accomplished.

So, I look him up on the Boston Marathon site, and he's out there today, too. Here are the early splits for both Pete and Mike (click for larger). Go, you two!

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In Boston, Meanwhile ...

I'm sitting here gathering my wits for the day (not that there are all that many to gather). In Boston, meanwhile, my friend Pete has just crossed the starting line in that marathon they have there. He's an amazing athlete, really: In the last six months, he's done a series of long races getting ready for this day, including a 50-miler. Yeah. Fifty miles. Running (it took something like 9 hours and 50 minutes). In the next couple of months, he's doing a tough half-Ironman triathlon (Wildflower, here in California, next month) and a full Ironmon (Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, in June). And today, he's there in Boston, running again. Here's the first split from the online tracker:

Go, Pete!

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Rewrite: An Editing Tale

It's like this: a trusted reader went over that bike piece and pointed out a few things about it. I was reluctant to acknowledge the reader's points, but eventually saw their merit. The new version of the piece has a lot in common with the first, but has jettisoned a lot of what I'll call random rhapsodizing. I liked the rhapsodizing. I just found it didn't work the way I thought it did. The rewrite: It's after the jump.

Technorati Tags: berkeley, california, chicago, cycling

Today in History, and Why I Ride

[Reposted, slightly altered, after being killed]

Fifty-five years ago, Mom and Dad were married (I wasn't far behind). Today, Dad had surgery on his second broken hip in six months (the good news is that he's doing well and that he doesn't have another hip to break). Tonight, Mars is in conjunction with the moon. Looking out from our front porch with 10-power binoculars, Mars is just to the left of the moon as it declines in the west, and the moon's craters are beautifully visible.

But the principal news of this evening: I wrote a little piece on cycling for a friend's newsletter. Without further ado, here''s the text:

Until Next Time

One year, growing up in the recently paved over prairies and peat bogs south of Chicago, I got a birthday bicycle. Someone may have thought I was too old for training wheels; maybe I was that someone. I learned to ride that bike, a red J.C. Higgins with fenders and big tires, through pure dumb gravity-assisted trial and error. I fell down a lot. After a couple of weeks of coaching and cajoling from my dad and mom and other adults on the block, I had wobbled around and toppled over so many times that both sides of the leather-like seat had been worn down to metal.

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21

It's Thom's 21st birthday. Boy, did that come fast. I was under the impression we just brought him home from the hospital. (Of course, my time sense is getting severely telescoped these days. Seems like I can still see the dust rising from the '69 Cubs team falling on its face.)

Anyway, he's up in Eugene, where birthday weather will be overcast but maybe not rainy. TB, have a great one, and I'll wait till you're back down here to toast the day.

Leap Day

A family legend that I believe is true: Our grandfather, Edward Daniel Hogan, was born on Leap Day. Our grandmother, Anne O'Malley, was born in 1898, and hearing that I always figured Ed must have been born in 1896 or 1892. But having seen his grave, finally, and having found him in the census, I see the real date was 1888.

In 1930, he was listed as a bank auditor, probably at the First National Bank of Chicago; our stern grandmother is listed unsoberly as "Annie," and her occupation is clear from the presence of three children in the downstairs flat at 8332 South May Street: our mom, who was just four months old the day the census enumerator visited, and her brothers Bill -- three years old -- and John, who was two. Upstairs were Ed's parents, Timothy J. (listed as "freight clerk-railroad"); Annie, his wife, who was actually named Anniestacia; and Ed's sisters, Catherine and Betty. Catherine was 30 and her occupation is listed as "stenographer-abbatoir"; I've always heard she worked for Armour--you know, the meat company--but this is the first I've heard that stenographers worked in abbatoirs. Betty is listed as an office clerk at a bank, and I don't know which one.

It's always a little thrilling and a little strange to encounter family characters in a setting like this. Some of them we've only heard about. We never knew Mom's dad and granddad or her brother John -- they died long before we came along. But I do have memories of his mother, Annie, who still lived in that upstairs flat when we were very young. And much clearer memories of the rest of them.

Ed, though--today is the twenty-ninth passing of his actual birth date. I think. If he were in any position to appreciate it, I'd tell him happy birthday.

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January 9

Just one small birthday wish to cast out into the universe: January 9 was our Uncle Bill Hogan's birthday. I can and have summoned up lots of labels for him, Catholic priest and communist being two of them. He was also a committed Chicagoan, a lover of ideas, a reader, a selfless devotee of the human cause. And most of all, as I've said many times before, an optimist, a real believer in the possibility of making the world a joyful -- not just less miserable -- place for everyone. He would have been 81 today, I think. Happy birthday, Uncle Bill.

Morning After

Before we get to the subject at hand, let me try out my innovative new (yes, both new and innovative) holiday greeting on you: Merry HannuKlausZaa. Call in or write with your comments.

Above: The morning-after paper bags. A few of them got a second night of life in front of our house and a couple others on the block. Most of them are going to recyclingland.

Beautiful day here. Sunny and 60, then cloudy and cool. That's cool by local standards. North America to our north and east is another story. Wales, too. To wit, in the words of a story I've read often at this time of year:

"The silent one-clouded heavens drifted on to the sea. ... We returned home through the poor streets where only a few children fumbled with bare red fingers in the wheel-rutted snow and cat-called after us, their voices fading away, as we trudged uphill, into the cries of the dock birds and the hooting of ships out in the whirling bay."

"Fumbled with bare red fingers in the wheel-rutted snow." That evokes a hundred dark winter afternoons. My hands hurt just reading it.

After the day here, night. One more walk with the dog before turning in. And so too in Wales, where that story ends:

"... And then I went to bed. Looking through my bedroom window, out into the moonlight and the unending smoke-colored snow, I could see the lights in the windows of all the other houses on our hill and hear the music rising from them up the long, steady falling night. I turned the gas down, I got into bed. I said some words to the close and holy darkness, and then I slept."

Very little music here tonight. A few carol verses from a couple across the street, a couple tunes on my iPod -- that's what Santa brought me -- and that's it. But the darkness is close and holy even without the blessing of song. 'Night, all.

Technorati Tags: berkeley, berkeley luminaria, luminaria, xmas

Tree, Lights, Bells

We're late with the tree this year. Kate and I went out and bought it yesterday from a place on University Avenue run by a San Francisco outfit that tries to help our burgeoning population of ex-convicts stay straight. We didn't decorate until tonight, though -- late tonight.

(And now, it's tomorrow already. Christmas Eve. On Saturday evening, I turned on an acoustic music show on one of the local FM stations, KALW, and there was a song about bells playing. Kate, hearing the word "tintinnabulation" recognized right away that the lyrics were from Edgar Allen Poe's "The Bells." I thought, but didn't say, that the singer sounded like Phil Ochs. We were both right. The poem and the song start with a lightness not often associated with Poe:

"Hear the sledges with the bells, Silver bells! What a world of merriment their melody foretells! How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle, In the icy air of night! While the stars, that oversprinkle All the heavens, seem to twinkle With a crystalline delight; Keeping time, time, time, In a sort of Runic rhyme, To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells From the bells, bells, bells, bells, Bells, bells, bells— From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells."

The poem gets darker as it goes along. The song is on iTunes. I want to say "amazingly, it's on iTunes, but I guess it's not so amazing anymore.)

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Thanksgiving Notebook

Today: Barbecued bird. Here is today's indispensable advice (with accompanying video).

The blog: It has been going four years today. Which is shocking, considering that it hasn't yet swayed the course of the planets, the Earth's magnetic field, or empire. I'll keep trying. And thanks for reading.

Today II: For a lot us us, today will always be that day. And to mark the occasion, The New York Times publishes yet another (but brief) consideration of what happened.

Today III: And what else? The kids will be here -- I never thought I'd hear myself say that. I'll talk to the rest of the family, wherever they are today. And that's enough to be thankful for right there.

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