Back to Training: Back to Saturdays

 Improvements Come Slow and Steady: Running for Fitness

I’ve started another cycle of training for a marathon in the fall. I’ll probably sign up for the Route 66 marathon in Tulsa. At least that way I won’t have to travel like I did in April. I’m of two minds on running. With a marathon in the near future, I force myself to commit more to running during the week. I’ve gotten used to the rigors of training. Without the schedule I could commit more to weights and regular gym cardio. Running takes over at a certain point. Once we start to hit the 14 and 16 mile distances on Saturday, it begins to feel different. Your body learns how to suffer more efficiently. 

Running Takes Over

But if I stop doing marathons I could still run, but with an easier schedule during the week. I used to do that every Sunday, before I went back to the running group. It’s tempting because I’d like to spend more time lifting weights again. I still do a little weight training during the week but it’s mostly in service to running. Legs are a must. That takes at least one whole day. The next day it’s a halfhearted work-load for biceps and chest. Mostly I’m too tired to lift anything heavy. I’d have to start eating a lot of protein at breakfast and putting on pounds again. You can’t lift without energy, especially once you pass 40 years old, and I don’t eat as much when I run.

 I was never a true body builder anyway, but I did put a lot of effort into work outs. I wasn’t particularly healthy though. My eating habits were awful and I weighed at least 20 pounds more than I should have. Not that I’ve had a dramatic turnaround but I’m generally in better health. I guess I don’t want to go back.

The Distance Puzzle

I’d like to figure out this enigma that is the marathon. The last one was terrible. I was sick and exhausted way too early in the race and I’m not quite sure why. That’s not different from a Saturday morning run in the spring. On any given day, it might seem like you’re carrying sandbags, or the heat is unbearable after just a few miles and water isn’t cooling you down. I had to pack it in one morning, last year, after a short 3 mile run. My breathing was labored and I couldn’t find my rhythm. You can’t predict when the suck will happen but it typically does at least once per session.

A lot of what’s pushing me is how disastrous the last marathon turned out. I hit the wall at 13 miles and had to jog/walk the rest of the way. I won’t say it’s humiliating but it also doesn’t sit right with me. It might be smarter to just train with the group and skip the events. That would be cheaper at least. Part of me likes telling people that I run marathons. It’s really the mildly impressed look that does it for me. It’s vanity really. I need approval from friends and strangers. Whatever the time, whatever the pace, in the end it’s all about respect.

I’m exaggerating a little.

Consistency Over Wins

 Mostly I like improving and climbing things that used to be obstacles. When I first started jogging I couldn’t go much beyond 6 miles. I was always in decent shape and even ran short distances for exercise. The Army makes runners out of helpless kids, even the chunky ones who swore they’d never be able to run the length of a football field. A woman in my Tulsa group told me she couldn’t run a mile when she first started. This was after she turned 40. She broke down into tears after her first 5K. The sheer pride she felt in completing a race set her on a trajectory towards life-long running. Now she runs a handful of marathons every year. I can’t keep up with her.

 We all start at different levels. I usually take the slow and steady climb to better, while others quickly improve and surpass me. But I stick with it when so many have stopped. I’m slow and careful but I always get there. The goal this year is to be stronger than the last time and improve the time. I’m reluctant to set time goals until I have a few more events under my belt.

 

Creativity Needs Guidelines: The Formulas of Life

 

The Predictive Formulas We Love: TV, Art, Books

If predictability is boring why do the same formulas keep working? 

I’m thinking mostly here about books and TV shows, but other areas of entertainment fit too. I’m a sucker for the tough loner who ambles into town and violently takes out the corrupt sheriff. It’s a common hero archetype that pops up in everything from Cowboy movies to novels. It’s the predictability of the genre we like, even if every story is a little different. Jack Reacher has a different personality than Mitch Rapp. Clint Eastwood is cool where John Wayne is imposing. Creativity exists in the personas, the stories and the fictional worlds. 

The Sit Com Formula

TV is the same. In Seinfeld, Jerry will allow some quirk to keep him from dating a beautiful woman. George will lose a relationship or some benefit because he’s lazy or selfish. Elaine will become irritated with her boyfriend but forget about it when she needs him for a favor. Kramer will have a connection to something or someone that doesn’t pan out. We need some level of predictability. Change must be infrequent. It’s novelty and it only works when we understand the attributes of a persona really well.

I can’t say every sit com works like this, but they do follow a recognizable formula. This might seem lazy but it’s necessary to establish a baseline for the show. In this way we understand the characters and their motivation. Creativity depends on a baseline too. An artist needs some rules in place to begin or they won’t be able to focus. If I tell you to paint a picture of the old west in the Frederick Remington style your mind can start the sorting process. If I say paint in the Remington style and include at least one horse, you can further sort. Even better, I tell you to paint a cowboy taming a bronco while young ranch hands watch. It turns out the more detail the better. 

The Painting Formula

If I told you to paint anything, you’d spend time trying to think of where to begin. But in a painting class, you need rules and an idea for what you’re aiming at. Frederick Remington’s classic prairies and big sky scenes give the artist a framework. The teacher can’t critique a good version from a bad one without some idea of what an original looks like. Students will have slightly different takes on it no doubt. This is the sweet spot for creativity. When the rules are understood, the artists transfer their ideas onto canvas. The variety of similar, but different, paintings is where personal styles comes from. 

Unique styles set painters apart. Remington’s works are characterized by movement, cowboys riding fast across vast spaces, Indians chasing buffalo. David Yorke paints portraits, mostly, of cowboys, Indians and old West characters. You can see detail and emotion in his subject’s expressions. Remington is interested in types, Yorke in people. Both are Western style and easily recognizable. But even in that genre there is a difference.

The Transgressive Formula

But what of a painter who, in following the instruction to create a Remington, paints a creepy clown handing balloons to 4 year old's at a birthday party? He claims it’s his version of a Remington, but follows none of the rules of the western style. He didn’t include a cowboy, a bronco or ranch hands enjoying the show. The colors are stark and bright instead of hazy and soft. There is no relation to the cowboy life or open country. There is no hint of manliness or the wild, untamed West. But he insists it’s his version and you’ll have to accept it. It’s what he feels is right, and if you don’t see it that way you’ll be denying his truth. Besides, who are you to tell him (an accomplished painter) what a Remington is supposed to look like? 

Without definition there is no meaning. We’re losing creativity in large parts of life, because we’re afraid to define. When you define, you discriminate. By saying yes to one version you’ve said no to others. But without rules and boundaries we couldn’t learn to differentiate. A Remington painting has certain characteristics and not others, but there is room within the boundaries to reinvent. 

Reinvention means putting a twist on an existing medium. Whether painting, music or TV, reinvention means acknowledging the rules but adding something else to it. This is different than expecting everyone to accept your new version. It’s different than changing rules because of who you are. You don’t get to call a creepy clown with balloons a Remington style painting because you went to a better art school. Or, because you used to be a clown and know how misunderstood they are. 

In this era of openness we’ve lost the ability to tell people that their ‘truth’ is objectively wrong. Rules exist in all aspects of life, so we all know where to begin. In order to create beauty, we need a familiar construct. 

Conclusion

In any medium, creativity flows from a common point and spills out in every direction like a river delta. But we live in an age when people are afraid to define the most basic things. Matt Walsh’s “What is a Woman?” documentary showed this sad truth. We’re losing out on creativity as a society. It’s been arrested. The creepy clown painters are running the show and calling their work beautiful. But their effort isn’t about beauty or creativity. They don’t believe in it. They want to be heard, recognized, considered. They want control, to call the shots. Don’t’ give it to them. Truth wins out in the end. Beauty is eternal. Creativity is man’s effort to be fruitful and multiply. It’s a predictable story we can all enjoy. 

“Then God saw all He had made, and indeed it was very good” (Genesis 1:31)

The Fourth Turning: A Review

 

The Fourth Turning: "Relax, It's All Happened Before"

I finally read The Fourth Turning: What the Cycles of History Tell Us About America’s Next Rendezvous with Destiny. It's one of those books that I keep hearing about but had never cracked open until recently. Written by William Strauss and Neil Howe, it examines history from a seasonal perspective. In other words, trends present today can be observed across history in the generational breakdowns. Most Westerners tend to think of history as a long march toward enlightenment and away from ignorance. This is the progressive, I might say evolutionary, view of life on earth. We’re all striving for better along a timeline and teetering toward utopia. Even if your Humanities class didn’t specify utopia, it heavily implied it.

Cyclical History

Strauss and Howe take the cyclical view and expound on it through a phase called the “saeculum”. A saeculum is roughly the length of a human life, 80 to 100 years. Each saeculum is made up of 4 “Turnings” or distinct seasons that alter the course of life in culture, economy, spirituality and civics. Turnings represent moods of the generations that live through them. For instance, the GI generation came of age during World War II and the Depression. They fought in the war and returned to build families. Most were midlife adults during the First Turning (1946-1964) known as a high period in American life. Their civic mindedness and collective resourcefulness in the previous Fourth Turning (1929-1946) crisis, ushered in the high (abundance) phase for the next generation.

 The authors give a comprehensive overview of the Western World’s generations going back to the Middle Ages. But it’s tough to get any real traction with such a large topic. The first few chapters outline European history and repeat events that changed the course of history. It’s essentially an overview of big events in history, neatly aligned with the authors’ notion of the saeculum. America is heavily featured because their expertise is with its history and specifically the generations.

Generational History

I’ve never put much thought into generational attitudes or experiences as being seen in the culture the generation created. Probably because they overlap so much, I imagine it’s an impossible task. But Strauss and Howe don’t make wild claims. They stick to the generalizations about the ages, Boomers are concerned with making a big splash and changing the world. Gen Xers are cynical and self reliant. Nothing is wrong with generalizing, but it’s also where the book is weak. If it can be said to be weak. Writing in generational terms requires zooming out so much that making anything more than observational points is nearly impossible.

But it’s very convincing on the big history stuff. There is a chicken and egg quandary at the heart of it. Does a nation’s history create generational characteristics, or do generational characteristics create a nation’s history? I think both Strauss and Howe would answer “Yes”. Since a saeculum is roughly the length of a human life, anyone who lives a long time (80-100 years) will live through some part of each cycle. You might experience a high in childhood, an awakening in early adulthood, an unraveling in middle age and a crisis in elderhood. This is exactly the pattern the Boomers have gone through. They’ve both been influenced by the culture of their parents and influenced culture for their children and grandchildren.

Predictable History

 We’re in a crisis phase right now. The last one was from 1929 to 1946. In that phase, the stock market crashed leading to a Great Depression and World War II. Spain had a civil war. Europe saw the rise of Hitler and Mussolini. Japan invaded China, which also had a civil war. Then the emperor’s fleet attacked Pearl Harbor.

How many times have you felt like the world was going to rip apart at the seams? The hatred and vile behavior that’s out in the open today is stunning. Ask yourself if you felt that way 20 years ago. How about 30 years ago? Most of us sense that America is in a precarious state that we couldn’t have imagined as kids. Corruption and decadence in institutions is at all time high and people don’t trust business, government or church anymore. This is a textbook description of a crisis (Forth Turning) phase in the saeculum. American attitudes are consistently pessimistic on the future. Were attitudes like this in the twenties?

Here is the most interesting part of the book, it was written in the late nineties during an unraveling phase (Third Turning). Our crisis period is predicted to end sometime in the next couple of years. If they knew about 911 would Strauss and Howe have started the Forth Turning in 2001 instead of 2005? Would president Trump have been elected during any other phase? Likely not since the crisis phase is when old structures are upturned and replaced. The last Fourth Turning phase was 1929 to 1945. Both the Great Depression and World War II exemplify the kind of ‘removal of an old order’ Fourth Turnings are known for. The Civil War was during another, equally calamitous time.  

Conclusion

War doesn’t have to define a crisis phase, but anyone who can’t see that Americans (and the rest of the world) are in a tenuous position isn’t paying attention. I found the zoom out imaging on historical affairs a breath of fresh air. In cyclical visions of time, the individual should see parallels between the past and the present. If you subscribe to the idea seasonal history like the authors, it means a high is on the way. That’s certainly good news. Like a forest fire burning up the lose tinder on the ground, the Fourth Turning clears out the dead husks and allows new growth to take root. It’s destructive and painful, but necessary for the next season.

In at least a few places in the book they thought to include the famous time passage from Ecclesiastes 3:1 “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven.” It neatly encapsulates their thesis. And it’s from the most relevant book in history, so you know it’s important.

Checking in the Cleanup

 

Storm and Stress: Tulsa's Cleanup Renewal

The cleanup around here is still a long way from being done.

Who needs grass?

The piles of debris still litter the front half of everyone’s yard. I have broken limbs in two spots, it was easier to drag the back half to the street side, and the front half to the avenue side. I’m not trying to make extra work for the guys who are responsible for hauling it all away. But it didn’t seem to make a difference at the time. Literally every house on my block has something from the storm that happened over 3 weeks ago. I expected the cleanup to be slow but I didn’t anticipate it taking this long. That was naïve. Driving around the city should have clued me in on the devastation, and subsequent delay in hauling away the detritus.

I had all the fallen brush piled up in the front the morning after the storm. The last bit was hung up in my neighbor’s tree. Both of our trees lost limbs on the same side after a massive crack in her, much larger tree. My pear, caught much of her (Chestnut I guess?) and held it up like a hammock supporting a family of sumo wrestlers. Pear trees are notoriously weak and mine poor, abused lightweight is starting to groan under the strain.

My neighbor must have paid someone to cut the branches and drop them in the yard. That’s considerable cheaper than having them haul off the limbs and take down the dead trunk occupying the yard. But now we both have a lot more cleanup on our hands. I’ll save mine for Saturday. I just didn’t feel like it tonight. I’m tired.

Who needs cable?

To top it off, I still don’t have cable. I subscribe for the internet. I don’t have a TV package anymore. I learned years ago how wasteful it was for me. Rarely did I sit down and watch a show, or even record one. Those DVRs provided for by the cable company became ruinously expensive. And for what? You can catch most shows, if that’s your thing, on Hulu in the same season. I watched the whole first season of Animal Control (Hulu) this year. Last year I caught the Ryan Reynold’s soccer team show (name escapes me now). Ryan and Rob McElhenney purchased a bottom of the rung soccer team from Wales and loaded it up with talent. It’s a great idea for a business, not to mention a show. But catching prime time television shows while they air… that’s so 90’s.

The cable tech was supposed to be here today. I set it up for 1:00 to 3:00. But knowing that I couldn’t leave work for a full 2 to 3 hours I made a point to tell him to call first. That doesn’t seem unreasonable to me. You know when you’ll be in the area, say 10 or 20 minutes away, give a courtesy call. It didn’t matter that I put in on the ticket. It didn’t matter that I’m only 15 minutes away and can leave work at get back home quickly. He didn’t call. I called Cox to find out why my carefully laid plans produced fuck all. They were apologetic but told me the tech showed up and called. “Bullshit” I told them (I didn’t say bullshit). He never called me. He might have shown up when I wasn’t here but the time he reported was all wrong. His notes say 2:55. I got back home from work to check at 2:50. So he’s a liar all the way around.

Who needs peace of mind?

I had to settle myself down before calling. I didn’t want to unload on some poor phone jockey, who is just regurgitating information off a screen. It helps that they were nice. I don’t know why it does, but it does. Complete sympathy without pretense or excuse making is such a soothing sound when you’re pissed off. I’ll remember it the next time a customer calls the store in an anxious mood. My attitude from the start of this devastation has been, understanding and patience with the electric company and the cable company and the guys cleaning up. Sometimes is stacks up though and you explode for a minute. The truth is I can live without the internet for a little while. I’m watching network TV on an antenna and it’s not that bad. I miss Netflix of course but I’ve been over at my mom’s a few times to get online and upload an article or two.

I’m lucky to have a place to go. Hopefully in another two weeks the debris crew will have made a pass through my neighborhood. For now, I’ll just learn to be content. The power is on. I have food and drink. My car works perfectly. There was no damage to my home in a storm that ruined so many of them. I’m grateful for it all. I guess I’ll just watch the local news and Rosanne reruns until the internet comes back online. I can handle that.

 

Mathew 8: Demons, Pigs, A Steep Cliff

 

The Counterintuitive Nature of the Gospel: Mathew 8, Casting Out Demons

Why did Jesus tell the demons they could enter the pigs? That’s always made me think. The demons, speaking through the two men, recognized the Son of God coming toward them and pleaded with Him. I get that demons need a host, but why does he grant the request and kill the pigs? Nothing about the life of Jesus is an accident. With another person I might think they acted rashly, but with Jesus there is always another reason. Jews are forbidden from eating pigs because pigs don’t chew their cud (Deuteronomy 14:10). Swine aren’t a source for food so they’re probably kept to clean up food scraps and till up soil. 

A lot of this probably comes down to culture. I find that often with the scripture. An incomplete picture of an event is due to differences in culture. So many of the parables are inversions of time tested stories the Hebrews would have been familiar with. The famous prodigal son parable was an inversion of a moral fable told by rabbis to keep kids in line. In their version, the father comes to meet his prodigal son along the road and harangues him about poor choices. I think he even slaps him. I might be getting parts of it wrong, but the point is that the son is rejected for his reckless lifestyle and familial disrespect. The version we know from the gospels shows the father full of grace. We associate with either the prodigal or the older brother.

Both are representations of human behavior. In either case, the central problem is pride. The prodigal’s pride is in thinking this carnal life is fulfilling. He lives hard and comes crawling back, a regretful and humbled man. The older brother’s pride is in himself and his deeds. He believes he is better because he never left the house and dishonored his father. In the end though it’s the younger brother that’s in a better place. His lack of pretense saved his soul. The father always welcomes us back with open arms. For most of us, older or younger, we fail to recognize that our position has nothing to do with our efforts. It’s truly by grace that we find salvation.

Is there a similar comparison here to the demon and pig story? It’s not a parable but I do wonder if there is some glaring omission in my mind. I’m only writing like this because I don’t currently have internet access. I would normally just google a bit and find it out. But I like this too. It’s almost a throwback to a time when we didn’t have instant access. It’s an unadulterated snapshot of what’s going on in my mind at the moment. I’ll look it up eventually but for now, my ignorance stands.

There is a similar account from Luke where one man is demon possessed instead of two. The man’s name is Legion. At least that’s what the demons inside him replied when Jesus asked his name. They also begged not to be sent into the abyss. But this story is very familiar to the one in Matthew. About the only difference is that there’s one possessed man described in Luke, and two possessed men described in Matthew. Otherwise, it’s in the same region of Israel and the death of the pigs is described the same way. Is this a different story? In both cases the people from the area asked Jesus to leave because of their fear.

That strikes me as odd. They were OK with demon the demon possessed naked man running around breaking chains and threatening people, but deliverance from said torture is just too much? I wonder if this is one of those things where they were somehow benefiting from the freak show near the tombs. Like the men making money (in Ephesus I think) from the fortune telling girl who Paul delivered. Could this have been part of their commerce or attraction for the city?

Possibly they feared the religious elders (Pharisees, Sadducees) who harassed Jesus at every turn. I imagine them sending spies to the region to inquire about the dead pigs. Maybe it’s just the simplest explanation of all, that they were afraid of this power they’d never encountered before. In a matter of minutes, the Messiah freed a long time oppressed man and killed a swath of pigs. That discomfort with the unknown can make people queasy. It’s almost like the Western’s I watched as a kid. A stranger comes into town and runs out the local goons. In the process he upsets the establishment and ignores etiquette. Come to think of it, that’s a fantastic summary of the life of Christ. He’s not a gunslinger but a righteous judge on a ‘mission from God’. For all the counterintuitive logic in the gospel, if the goodness of his ministry wasn’t self-evident it proves that a lot of people are truly lost.  

That’s what’s on my mind today.

 

Big Mess Big Cleanup: Tulsa's June Storm 2023

Digging Out of a Storm with Friends and Family

Tulsa just experienced a serious summer storm about two weeks ago. By “serious” I mean 90 mile per hour wind gusts reeking havoc in much of the city. The angry wind took out telephone poles, trees and wooden fences across the metro. Close areas like Broken Arrow were also hit, but the damage was less severe. I finally got my power back almost a full week later. Lineman from all over the country were called on to assist with the rebuild. A quick survey of the wreckage told me it would take a while to get back to normal.

The worst storms always happen without warning, at least that’s my experience. The weather showed a storm moving into the area but I don’t remember thinking it would be a seek shelter kind of night. My preference is always to have storms while I’m sleeping. Saturday night delivered. The window in my bedroom fell out on to my feet (it didn’t break) when a strong gust pushed it open. I has cleaned it recently and I guess I didn’t close it properly. My quickly awakened mind was a little confused as to what the hard substance was on top of my feet. Groggily I got out of bed and closed it back in place, locking it properly this time.

The carnage around me was unmistakable as I looked out the window at the broken limbs strewn around the yard. My neighbor’s massive tree had split near the top. The branches were hanging down into my yard. The fan quit spinning, alerting me to the lack of power in the house. I walked to the living room to get a better glimpse at my front yard. It was worse than in the back, limbs, leaves and random trash from neighbors who’d had their fences blown over formed a coalition of the broken in my yard. The good news was that my Santé Fe was unharmed. Thank God for that. Heavy limbs surrounded my driveway on both sides but my car was untouched.

I couldn’t see the roof but nothing was sticking through and I hadn’t heard a loud crack. In addition, my garage in the rear of the house was also untouched. I knew it would be a big cleanup the next day but relief filled my head at the lack of serious damage. I went back to sleep expecting to get to work Sunday morning. It happened to be Father’s Day but golf would have to wait for a more suitable climate. Fortunately, my dad offered to come in help me cleanup and bring Joyce (my stepmom). My mom texted me to find out about the damage and also, offered to help. She took me to Lowes and I got a $200 chainsaw. Even Lowes was running on a generator. Dimmed lights and frantic customers in the store signaled a catastrophic city wide event.

It was tough to find out how extensive the storm was across the city. Obviously my part of town was a disaster. We couldn’t access the main roads nearby. Either the lights were out because of the power or fallen trees had made large swathes inaccessible. This would be the case for midtown Tulsa until at least Thursday the following week. Some have generators but gas because a premium item because a lot of stations didn’t have power. The ones that did, ran out quicker. It wasn’t just because of generators but the number of cars lining up for available fuel. The additional number of utility trucks in the area put an additional strain on gas as well.

Nearly all of my neighbors had limbs down. Sunday morning turned into a mandatory clean up day. If you drove down the street at 10:00 a.m. you would see homeowners’ hauling tree branches to the curb. You would hear revving chainsaws ripping into fresh limbs. You might smell the sawdust piling up in neat rows in the wet grass. All my neighbors got the memo and promptly headed for the street. The church up the road even sent its Sunday morning parishioners down the road to give us a hand. That was truly a wonderful gesture, and seriously needed. My elderly neighbors needed it the most. They had a tree hit the corner of their house. I helped them for a few minutes while my parents were working in my yard. I left my chainsaw with one of the church members to use on the tree trunk. He got through most of it before the chain slipped off.

Disasters like this bring out the best in people. There is something about seeing a neighbor in need that makes you want to act. We all coalesce around a common goal, for a time, and finish the task at hand. For me, I had family members willing to come leave their homes and spend a few hours getting sweaty and risking accident. That might not seem like much, but a lot of people don’t even have that. It’s true that theft increases when homes are unoccupied, it increases the amount of lawlessness in general. But the help I see from strangers overwhelms the criminal element. I’m a blessed man.

Now back to work.