Credit Where Credit's Due

More to the point, Bad Culture totally rocks.

I've listed Bad Culture in my links under "Friends" because "DB," who posts there sometimes, is a friend. I don't think I actually know "BC," the main poster to Bad Culture, although I might. I think we both went to the same university and that we may have even been there at the same time. I'm so terrible with names and faces that it's entirely possible we sat across from each other at lunch for five semesters — and I'd still have to be introduced to him again.

But that's all beside the point. Even if we've never so much as exchanged e-mails, I consider "BC" to be a friend, a true online kindred spirit. He writes, insightfully and well, about issues dear to my heart: environment, human justice — and race, which is especially valuable to me.

Commenting recently on Howard Dean's apology for the Confederate Flag remark, BC wrote how he'd have liked for Dean to have responded to Sharpton during the debate:

Al, you're right. That's a stupid way for me to talk about the issue. I'm a moron and I apologize. I mean, I know it and you know it: I'm just another dumb white liberal who's still struggling to understand racism in America. On some level, I may never 'get' it as well as I should. But I'm trying, and I thank you for helping me, 'cause I need it.

And that, as BC might say, is Good Culture. Very Good Culture indeed.

Posted by Me at 21:42 link

More About How Frickin' Happy I Am

If you don't have anything nice to say... then come sit by me.
-Alice Roosevelt Longworth

I know it's not much fun to read about contentedness; I know it would be a lot more fun if I were ranting and raving about something.

Sorry.

Blame it on the weather, or that I've gotten back into a healthy routine. Blame in on the fact that my favorite friend from NYC will be dropping in for a visit soon.

Whatever.

School's winding down, which also helps. I've made embarrassingly good grades this semester. I'm not that smart, but apparently, if you do all the work and study a little for the tests, the instructors have no choice but to give you good grades. Who knew?

One more semester and I'll finally have a college degree. Then I'll probably find plenty to bitch and moan about. Remember Morrissey's words on the subject? I was looking for a job, and then I found a job / And heaven knows, I'm miserable now.

But for now, I'm so happy I'm starting to make myself sick.

I exercised again today. At the Y-M-C-A. I did about 40 minutes on the elliptical fitness (EFX) machine, about 20 minutes walking on a treadmill, and about 10 minutes upstairs on the track, "running." The sneer quotes are because mostly what I did up there was "walking."

I've decided finally to take seriously the fitness advice of triathlon legend Mark Allen, who recommends training at a very low intensity level — 180 minus your age, plus or minus 5 beats per minute (depending on your current level of fitness). That's your maximum heart rate for aerobic exercise, until you reach a fitness plateau (i.e. until you're not getting faster anymore). This can be expected only after several months of low-intensity work. In the meanwhile, you're training your body to burn fat, rather than carbohydrates, for exercise (even skinny folks have a lot more fat than carbs stored in their bodies).

This is not the way most gym rats work out.

What most people do at the gym is to go hard every time they exercise, burning through their routines on carbo power. In the short term, this allows them to look sharp in comparison to all the other gym rats, but in the long run, it won't make them happy human beings. Usually, after a few months they start to loathe exercise, and soon after that they stop going to the gym.

It's hard to go easy, though. Tonight, I walked three laps (12 laps = 1 mile), then I ran. For fifteen seconds. That's how long it took to boost my heart rate past my target (146). I walked until my HR dropped back to 135, then I ran again. For ten seconds. That was my "run." Walk a tenth of a mile. Run ten seconds. Repeat. Well, it's a start.

Having gotten fit a number of times, I know that this is actually the fun part of the process. For the next few months, I'm likely to make steady improvements. I'll see myself grow stronger, thinner, faster. I'll feel the increased energy and the elevated mood. Working out will often be the highlight of my day.

Then, I'll reach a plateau and I'll be tempted to quit. I'll start to take my new fitness level for granted. I'll suddenly find it's a lot less fun to work out.

After I work past the plateau, I'll enjoy another period of growth, followed by another plateau. And so on. For me, the hardest part is always when I plateau after reaching my long-term fitness targets. The last time this happened was during the 2001/2002 holiday season. Deck the halls with lots of chocolate.... I indulged in sweets, and found really good excuses not to work out. By the following holiday season, I looked more like Santa Claus than Mark Allen.

Part of the problem was that I'd fallen into "the numbers trap." I'm a compulsive record-keeper, and I'm weirdly competitive. I compete not against others, but against myself, in a constant quest for improvement. This can be good, but the nature of fitness means it's not always a good idea to push for short-term gains. In the long run, it doesn't matter whether this week's mile is a few seconds faster or slower than last week's, but it becomes hard to remember that. The tendency is to stretch the limits of HR target zones, or to rationalize that my body really wanted this to be a high-intensity session even if it wasn't supposed to be.

And then every session becomes a sort of race. A good session is one that's faster than the last one, but strangely, the feeling after a good session isn't much better than the feeling after a bad one. Soon, I find exercise isn't that much fun anymore, and then I stop doing it so much, and then I wish I hadn't given all my fat clothes to charity. And suddenly I am not happy.

Knowledge is power, right? I've never completely followed Mark Allen's low-intensity recommendation for a long period, but this time I'm going to do it. Hey, it worked for Allen and it worked for Lance Armstrong, too. I know I'll never become as fit as those guys, but I can become a very fit version of me, which is a proven route to happiness.

Don't worry, though: I'm sure I'll get over this bliss thing soon enough.

In the meanwhile, check out Margaret Cho's blog; she has a lot of not-very-nice things to say, and she says them all really, really well!

Posted by Me at 22:56 link

Another Beautiful Day

Of course, I'm talking about my personal life. Plenty of things could stand to be improved in the big world.

But here, today was another in a continuing series of beautiful days. The best part was a 9.5 mile bike ride around town this evening after dark. I tried out the 5.0 mile loop I scoped out yesterday, and found it to be excellent. Then, as I came to the end of my lap around the loop, I suddenly visualized a shorter loop, which I proceeded to try out. The "inside loop," turns out to be just over 3 miles, but the real beauty of this one is that it's as close to flat as such a ride could be in Statesville.

In case you live around here, and would like to try these routes:

• The "outer loop" starts on Front at Mulberry. Ride west on Front to Race Street, turn right; ride Race Street all the way down to Hartness, turn right; follow Hartness to its end at Brookdale, turn right; follow Brookdale to the light at Stockton, turn left; follow Stockton up to the 5-way intersection; cross carefully onto East End, then follow East End to Front (first right after the light at Broad); then ride Front back up to Mulberry.

• To ride the "inner loop", take a right on Mulberry, then follow it to the light at West End (NC Hwy 90), where the loop begins. Turn right on West End, follow it all the way to its end at Davie Ave, bear left onto Davie; ride Davie down to East End, take a right; ride East End down to Broad, take a right [I STRONGLY RECOMMEND USING THE SIDEWALK ON BROAD BETWEEN EAST END AND OAKWOOD]; follow Broad all the way up to its end at Mulberry, turn right to finish the loop at West End.

I tried out my new wheel and found it to be much lighter; it significantly improves my speed. I have my friend's wheel ready to go back on her bike. I'll do that tomorrow, as well as installing the new shifters. I'd expected the wheel/tire stuff to take about 30 minutes; instead it took me 2 hours! I'm becoming a semi-competent bike mechanic, but I don't enjoy it much.

I'd much rather ride, especially when it's just cool enough for no sweat in long sleeves, and the whole town positively reeks of white oak leaves! If there's a better smell in the world than white oak leaves in autumn, I haven't smelled it yet....

Oakwood Street, which, as you can see, is aptly-named

Posted by Me at 22:57 link

I'm Not Even Going To Try

Arrest warrant issued for Michael Jackson. D.C. Sniper defendant John Muhammad found guilty. Gay marriage ruled legal in Massachusetts. Bush bashed in Britain (has a nice ring, doesn't it?).

The sun set today in Barrow, Alaska. It'll rise again there on January 23, 2004. Good night, folks! This is a great time of year not to be in Alaska. The only people I know in Alaska live in Haines, where it's currently 12° F. Snow is forecast for Haines six of the next seven days. At least they have sunlight from 8:00 am to 3:30 pm.

Could be worse.

In Fairbanks, for instance, where it's 1° F (above; you know it's cold when you have to specify) with snow. Snow in the forecast seven of the next seven days. Daylight from 9:30 to 3:30. I don't know anyone there, but I do know a couple here who used to live there. Believe it or not, they miss it.

I love snow, and I even like cold weather to some extent, but I can't help but love being able to cycle around town in mid-November in shorts and a short-sleeved shirt. I know it can't last, but today was nice (in case you're curious, we had daylight from 7:00 am until 5:15 pm). A cold front came through earlier, and it's going to be cooler tomorrow — I'll probably have to wear long pants!

Aside: what kind of schmuck makes a fire in the fireplace when it's 60° F ? Someone in my neighborhood has been doing that regularly for a couple of weeks now. Why does that piss me off so much?

Tomorrow I'll start putting my friend's bike back together. The wheel arrived today. I got the shifters Monday, so now I should be all set.

I may postpone that project to do some actual riding instead. This evening I had to drive, so I took the opportunity to scout out another possible downtown loop ride that looked good on the map. It looks good from the driver's seat, too. Five miles exactly, which is kind of cool. Of course there are hills, but riding clockwise there are several fun downhills, with only one murderous uphill (and several long, gradual uphills). Maybe I'll try that tomorrow.

I'd prefer a trail ride. I wish there were a way to check Winston-Salem trail conditions without having to drive the 40 miles over there. Until I get better fenders ("mudguards" to international readers), I'm not interested in mucking around much more. Listening, Santa?

Posted by Me at 22:50 link

Music In My Head

• G.P. Telemann — Overture in C "Water Music," (New London Consort, Philip Pickett, conductor)
• Claude Debussy — La Mer (The Sea) (New Philharmonia Orchestra; Pierre Boulez, conductor)
• Soul Coughing — "Super Bon Bon" (Propellerheads remix)

I say "more or less" because my ISP is having problems again and I'm experiencing all the joy and magic that is dial-up. Honestly, I'd be happy with a reliable 56k connection; that transfer rate (about 52k in practice) is fine for words and images. The problem is the frequent disconnection. Having to reconnect one's train of thought every five minutes feels like a form of torture. Yes, I know some other people have actual problems. Yes, I'm a spoiled brat. I will now go and have a nice hot cup of STFU.

But it is irritating because the constant disconnect/wait/connect/wait—where-was-I?—oh, yeah! cycle makes everything take much longer. In short, it's way past my bedtime. Wah.

My view of time is maybe a little different from the norm. If I get up on Monday, it's Monday in my mind until I get up the next morning. This probably comes from my previous job, when we filled out our time cards that way. We used 24-hour time anyway (in which 6 pm is 18:00), and if we went past midnight we just kept adding (2 am became 26:00, still considered part of Monday). This made for easier arithmetic. Once I got used to this way of thinking about time, I decided I liked it better than the "regular" way. Now, I go back and forth; sometimes I use the regular system, other times the previous-job way. Sometimes, I find it hard to choose.

So I don't know whether to say I had food poisoning late Monday or early Tuesday just after midnight. Either way, of course it sucked. Mild food poisoning, mercifully. Just a brief spell of intense dizziness and nausea, with the usual solution. Then, mercifully I was able to sleep. I still felt pretty rotten this morning, but I did everything that needed doing today, and did it well enough, if not brilliantly or with vigor.

I even remembered to finish registering for classes!

I felt fine by evening, fine enough to return to the gym for strength training. O.K., it was Nautilus, not free weights, but I did something, after 6 freakin' weeks of doing nothing. Yes, I'm a little sore now, and I expect to be seriously sore tomorrow. But I rock!

And I want to know who picked the music this afternoon on the Winston-Salem classical station WFDD. In sillier moments, I refer to the station as "Fiddle Dee Dee," due to their propensity to play lots and lots of 19^th century, violin-heavy works, of which I've heard two or three lifetimes' worth already, thanks. But today, they were on a roll. One great piece after another. Helped turn a crappy day into a pretty good one. What more can one ask of a radio station? So, WFDD music programmer (whoever you are), thank you! You rock, too!

Posted by Me at 22:37 link

Advice From People Much Wiser Than I Am

Happiness cannot come from hatred or anger. Nobody can say, "Today I am happy because this morning I was very angry." On the contrary, people feel uneasy and sad and say, "Today I am not happy because I lost my temper this morning." Through kindness, whether at our own level or at the national and international level, through mutual understanding and through mutual respect, we will get peace, we will get happiness, and we will get genuine satisfaction.

-His Holiness the Dalai Lama
From The Pocket Dalai Lama, edited by Mary Craig, 2002. Shambhala Publications, Boston, www.shambhala.com.

---

Don't forget to bring the good experiences of meditation into your daily activities. Instead of acting and reacting impulsively and following your thoughts and feelings here and there, watch your mind carefully, be aware, and try to deal skillfully with problems as they arise. If you can do this each day, your meditation will have been successful.

-Kathleen McDonald, "How to Meditate"
Copyright Wisdom Publications 2001. Reprinted from Daily Wisdom: 365 Buddhist Inspirations, edited by Josh Bartok, Wisdom Publications, 199 Elm St., Somerville MA 02144 U.S.A, www.wisdompubs.org.

Bud? Wiser?

There's a joke in there somewhere, I just know it. Oh, well, whatever. Consider the advice. See you tomorrow!

Posted by Me at 23:40 link

Down To The Crossroads

Anyway, the ride was good. Rain was likely today, so I chose not to head back to Winston-Salem. Maybe Tuesday. It was actually misting a bit when I started out, and I almost didn't go — but then I remembered that my skin is waterproof. Works every time (you may not want to hike with me).

I couldn't resist starting with a short, sharp downhill, followed by a long, gradual uphill, then flat for a bit, quick down, fairly long, steep UP, then down, up, down, flat, long gradual down, flat, down, up-that-always-looks-hard (but isn't), which brought me to the middle of town. Front and Center. There I stopped briefly to admire Ben Long's fresco "Images at the Crossroads."

Ben Long's "Images at the Crossroads"

Yes, we're related, but somewhat distantly (second cousin or thereabouts, with a remove or two in there). If you're up on your stereotypes, you know we're all related down here, anyway. My father got his middle name from Ben's grandfather's first name. Whatever, Ben Long is a fantastic artist and I've never met him. He got the hell out of Statesville before I was born and never looked back.

I've heard some really good rumors about the fresco, though. Rumor has it that when Statesville decided to build a Civic Center, Ben Long contacted the mayor, and offered to paint a fresco for a very low price (around $100,000). That still sounded like a huge amount of money to the City's elected decision-makers, and they refused to approve the money. Then, a while later it occurred to them that it would be nice to have some art in our fancy new Civic Center, and who better to do it than Ben Long, a Native Son and world-renowned fresco artist? Long agreed to do it, but at over three times the original price, and with complete artistic control.

Also, and this is not rumor but my opinion, Long used the piece to slam Statesville in a big way. Looking at it, I see chaos, incompetence, petty squabbling, a complete lack of unity... And I still have no idea what to make of Hecate, the goddess of the Crossroads, whose inclusion in the fresco caused a short-lived local firestorm of controversy. Baptists. I used to have a cat named Hecate, though, or we used to have each other. Whatever, the cat was from Kansas, originally, so it's probably just an odd coincidence that she finished her earthly tenure here, in our Crossroads for the Future.

I don't know much about mythology, but I don't think the Crossroads is a very happy place. I definitely recognize my little town in that fresco, but I don't pretend to understand all of what I see there. It's an amazing work. If you're ever here, be sure to spend a long time staring at it. I'll be more than happy to go and stare at it with you.

The rest of my ride tonight was good. I went down the big Front Street Hill to Salisbury Road, then back up to the Square via the long gradual Broad Street uphill, then rode my "classic" 2.25 mile Davie Ave./East End Ave./Broad Street loop twice. I wanted to do it a third time, but it was full dark, and by this time I'd already ridden more than my target distance and burned more than my target number of calories.

While I waited for my favorite Chinese take-out place to make my my favorite recovery meal (Bean Curd Szechuan Style, white rice), I strolled along West Broad Street. Kind of quiet, as usual. A few cars, exactly two other pedestrians and one scofflaw skateboarder in 15 minutes. Here's what it looked like:

USA, NC, Statesville, West Broad Street, Looking East

Music In My Head

• Soggy Bottom Boys — "Man of Constant Sorrow"
• Queen — "Another One Bites The Dust"
• The Clash — "Rock The Casbah"
• Delinquent Habits — "Break 'em off"
• Creedence Clearwater Revival — "Fortunate Son"