The wife, dog, and I went on a nice hike east of Seattle Saturday morn. Afterwards, fired off pictures to the daughters, both of whom are ensconced in the upper Midwest. The images created a firestorm of ohhhs and ahhhs. When they admitted to being jealous, I replied, “Move to Seattle.”
Then I thought what about a media campaign designed to accentuate the PNW’s natural beauty. Here is next weekend’s salvo.
Mount Rainier, iPhone 6+, RSB Photography
You enjoy iconoclasts, craft beer, and independent businesses—Dick Cantwell’s Beer is Immortal (Allecia Vermillion).
You think we’ve ruined kindergarten. The Joyful, Illiterate Kindergartners of Finland (Tim Walker).
You wonder what makes dogs happy. Hint: The answer is in their tails. The secret lives of dogs: Emotional sensor helps owners understand their pup’s feelings (Michael Walsh).
Ruth Graham tells the story of “How a Megachurch Melts Down” in The Atlantic. Graham begins by outlining the rise and fall of the evangelical church:
“Two years ago, Mars Hill Church was the third-fastest growing large church in the country. Its original location in Seattle had spawned 14 other branches in five states, and 13,000 people attended weekly services at which founding pastor Mark Driscoll’s sermons were projected on large screens. Thousands more connected with the church online, and Driscoll and his wife Grace wrote a guidebook titled Real Marriage that hit #1 on the New York Times best-seller list in January 2012.”
“In hindsight, that year was the pinnacle for Mars Hill. Now it’s all over. Driscoll resigned a few weeks ago after a leave of absence that begin in August. And last Friday afternoon, Mars Hill Church announced online that it will dissolve by January 1.”
Then Graham explains that Driscoll’s and the church’s troubles began in late 2013 when a Christian radio host accused Driscoll of plagiarizing a theologian in a recent book. Graham adds:
“A few months later, the conservative Christian magazine World broke the story that Real Marriage had only landed on the best-seller list because Mars Hill paid a consulting firm $210,000 to boost it there. In July, bloggers dug up a series of crude and relentlessly misogynist comments Driscoll made under a pseudonym on a church discussion board. Writing as William Wallace II, he lambasted America as a “pussified nation,” and posted a bizarre glossary that mocked “male lesbians” (men who think like women), “femans” (women who think like men), “momma’s boys,” “Larry Limps,” and “rock-free” men who attend churches headed by female pastors. His defenders pointed out the comments were 14 years old, but they occurred years into his tenure as a professional pastor.”
Graham poses the obvious question. What went wrong?
“. . . Driscoll was a vocal proponent of the idea that the contemporary American church lacks manliness; as he put it in 2006, “real men” spurn the church because it celebrates a “Richard Simmons, hippie, queer Christ.” His message appealed to many people for many years. But recently, Driscoll’s own peers and followers began to turn against him, too. Their disfavor ultimately made it impossible for Driscoll to survive. What went wrong—or, from the perspective of Marsh Hill’s numerous noisy critics, what went right?”
The less obvious, more interesting question is why did a “relentlessly misogynist” leader’s message appeal to many people for many years?
Because people, whether inside or outside the church, resist change and prefer simple answers to pressing questions of the day, especially when they are offered up by charismatic demagogues. For example, instead of trying to understand, let alone welcome into the church people whose gender identities and sexual orientations are different than their own, they find comfort in Driscoll-like name calling and his proposed return to unquestioned patriarchy.
If I were a pastor, and I often engage in that flight of fancy, I’d repeatedly tell my congregation that we have to cultivate and then demonstrate empathy for everyone who has felt marginalized by Driscoll-like church leaders. And the only way to do that is to embrace all the subtleties, nuances, and ambiguities inherent in people’s different gender identities and sexual orientations.
But I don’t think I’m very charismatic, so I don’t know how many people would attend my church.
On Monday afternoon Ichiro switched lockerrooms and traded his Mariners uni for pinstripes. Wins for losses. Unless you’re a Pacific Northwesterner or serious baseball fan, you probably don’t know that veteran Mariners don’t fade away, they just sign with the Damn Yankees.
I’ll never forget one of Ichiro’s first Mariner games when he threw a guy out at third from deep right. The “laser beam”. The best throw I’ve ever seen (at 3:52).
Despite having played 11.5 years in Seattle and being a future Hall of Famer, most Mariner fans have an “it’s about time, don’t let the door hit you on the way out” attitude towards the trade. When Griffey was traded to the Reds in 2000, M fans were crestfallen. Why the dramatic difference?
Here’s the alleged rap against Ichiro:
• he’s selfish as evidenced by his singleminded pursuit of a record number of hits at the expense of working counts, getting walked, and creating even more havoc on the bases
• he’s selfish as evidenced by his keeping to himself and providing zero clubhouse leadership despite being the team’s best player throughout most of his M career
• he was a diva—as his salary skyrocketed and his skills declined in recent years, coaches couldn’t move him in the batting order, rest him, or (until Monday) trade him because over the years, the team’s Japanese owners, his agent, and him yielded more power than the team’s shorter-tenure GM and coach
• he was duplicitous, speaking English in private while using a Japanese interpreter in public
To muddy the water even more, reporters that covered the team in the 90’s describe Griffey as difficult, surly, impersonal. Maybe the dramatic difference is the result of one, or a mix, of three possibilities.
Theory One. Griffey’s passionate style of play, his prodigious homeruns and willingness to run full speed into the centerfield wall to make a catch, more than compensated for his own interpersonal limitations. Also add into the mix the way he came up, starring immediately, with his dad in the lineup. The Kid.
Theory Two. Griffey was beloved in part because at least half the time his M’s won. The M’s lost for eleven of Ichiro’s twelve years. His popularity suffered as a result of management that wasn’t willing to spend enough to build a team that could compete. Just as Griffey benefited from positive winning vibes, Ichiro paid the price of mounting fan frustration.
Theory Three. Admittedly, far less flattering. Instead of seeing Ichiro as one, especially introverted person, many M fans didn’t understand or appreciate the cultural differences he had to deal with daily, and ultimately ended up resenting his foreignness. Given the stark contrast, I can’t help but wonder if the Grif-Ichi public sentiment chasm is at least partially explained by xenophobia.
Any of these resonate? Have another theory?
Before
After
The GalPal and I enjoyed a fun-filled 25th anniversary last Wednesday. We celebrated by bicycling the Burke-Gilman trail in Seattle, kayaked on Lake Union, took in the King Tut Exhibit, ate at the China Outpost as directed by the Principal, and swam in Lake Washington. More fun than a couple should be allowed to have in one day. Congratulations to my best friend for putting up with me for a quarter cent.
Speaking of marriage, sobering sociology compliments of the New York Times.
Primary point—Across Middle America, single motherhood has moved from an anomaly to a norm with head-turning speed.
Key excerpts:
The economic storms of recent years have raised concerns about growing inequality and questions about a core national faith, that even Americans of humble backgrounds have a good chance of getting ahead. Most of the discussion has focused on labor market forces like falling blue-collar wages and lavish Wall Street pay.
But striking changes in family structure have also broadened income gaps and posed new barriers to upward mobility. College-educated Americans . . . are increasingly likely to marry one another, compounding their growing advantages in pay. Less-educated women . . . are growing less likely to marry at all, raising children on pinched paychecks that come in ones, not twos.
Estimates vary widely, but scholars have said that changes in marriage patterns — as opposed to changes in individual earnings — may account for as much as 40 percent of the growth in certain measures of inequality. Long a nation of economic extremes, the United States is also becoming a society of family haves and family have-nots, with marriage and its rewards evermore confined to the fortunate classes.
“It is the privileged Americans who are marrying, and marrying helps them stay privileged,” said Andrew Cherlin, a sociologist at Johns Hopkins University.
About 41 percent of births in the United States occur outside marriage, up sharply from 17 percent three decades ago. But equally sharp are the educational divides . . . . Less than 10 percent of the births to college-educated women occur outside marriage, while for women with high school degrees or less the figure is nearly 60 percent.
Long concentrated among minorities, motherhood outside marriage now varies by class about as much as it does by race. It is growing fastest in the lower reaches of the white middle class — among women . . . who have some postsecondary schooling but no four-year degree.
While many children of single mothers flourish (two of the last three presidents had mothers who were single during part of their childhood), a large body of research shows that they are more likely than similar children with married parents to experience childhood poverty, act up in class, become teenage parents and drop out of school.
Sara McLanahan, a Princeton sociologist, warns that family structure increasingly consigns children to “diverging destinies.”
Whether and whom to marry are the most monumental of decisions, yet most people make them when they’re young and aren’t entirely sure about what they want to do for a living, or how to manage personal finances, or solve conflicts peacefully, or parent.
And through a steady stream of romantic comedies, Hollywood promotes the idea that love and marriage are equal parts physical and emotional. In nearly complete contrast, the New York Times journalists imply love and marriage is a practical partnership, one where two incomes and two parents are needed to successfully manage a household and reliably raise children with promising life prospects.
The stats are depressing and another reason I suppose to go to college. Of course though, finishing college and then marrying is no guarantee that anyone will make it twenty five years. That takes perseverance, commitment, bicycles, and kayaks.
The Burke-Gilman trail
I passed. In the same way I probably passed that economics class at UCLA that I changed to “pass/no pass” after bombing the first test. In a “C+” kind of way.
Last weekend was the annual Byrnes family downtown Seattle pre-Xmas overnight. Sixteen, Nineteen, their mother, and yours truly, playing the token male.
Historically this trip has been the Thanksgiving/Seattle Marathon weekend, but this year we had to wait for Nineteen to return home from college. Normally I use tapering as an excuse to spend the night frozen on the hotel bed watching football and basketball while the three of them do American Eagle, Forever 21, and [insert the name of a female shopping goddess here] only knows what other stores.
This year, with no race to run Sunday morning, I couldn’t use my normal tapering “get out of shopping” card. So I talked myself into going along in the interest of “family time”. I’d rather get a root canal without anesthesia or be the guy in the Tour de France that got flipped over the barbed wire by the reckless driver than watch two young women shop, even my favorite two young women. I decided to approach it as an endurance test, a gender test, a mental toughness test, a selflessness test.
Store one, Forever 21. I asked where Forever 51 was which elicited smiles. Men, the most important thing to know about Forever 21 is it’s inexpensive. If you want to get back at a lady friend that did you wrong, pick her up something there. The ten minutes of watching blonde one and two round up clothes to try on was tougher than expected, but then they disappeared into the changing room and time came to a complete stop. European finance ministers would solve the Euro crisis for good if they committed an equivalent amount of time.
I had prepared for a warm 10k, but was instead running a marathon in Tampa Florida in the middle of a summer afternoon. Totally out of my league. The wife with the bad wheel found a chair to spend the rest of her 51st year in. Losing my mind, I decided to entertain her by dancing to the incessant techno Christmas music. The more she smiled and laughed, the bolder I got, the bolder I got the more she smiled and laughed. In the end, it was probably twice as bad as you’re imagining.
Finally, I sent the wife in after them wondering if they had been abducted. She reported that they’d be ready in “five minutes” which turned into what felt like five hours. Finally, ready to go, but wait, turns out there’s this strange tradition of putting at least one article of clothing on hold. Kind of like throwing a coin in a fountain. This is so you don’t actually have to decide. Turns out you never go back for it, it’s just a game that everyone, shopper and store employee both enjoy playing.
On the way out, the following mind numbing “straw that broke my back” dialogue took place: One xx, “What’s with ponchos, seems like they’re making a comeback?” Another xx, “Oh no, they’re all the way back.” Still another, “Correction, they’re trying to make it back.”
Please make it stop hurting.
Once on 6th Avenue I breathed in the cold fresh air and slowly recovered. Like anyone who had to fight a young Mike Tyson, I knew I was whupped. One round was all I lasted.
As I collapsed on the bed in the gloriously silent unoccupied room I couldn’t help but think how this family tradition would differ if we had two sons. This is all I know for sure. We wouldn’t speak of ponchos, we’d race go-carts, we’d wrestle, and we’d fall asleep watching Hoosiers.
3:21:32. Overcast, wet pavement, high 30’s. Second fastest marathon. Three minutes slower than my fastest and three minutes faster than my third and fourth fastest. Not bad for an oldster.
The question I set out to answer was how many 7:30 miles can I run in a row? I had logged lots of training miles at between 7:35-7:45 and I figured with tapering, perfect weather, smart nutrition and hydration, that was a good number that would also conveniently result in a personal record.
But just before the race I had a talk with my self. “Forget the watch Self. Respect the distance, stay within yourself, and take what the running gods give you on this particular day.”
Since I had my undivided attention, I continued the self coaching. “Let’s break the race into five parts, miles 1-8, 9-16, 17-24, 25, and 26. First eight are a freakin’ warmup. If you as so much hear yourself breathing, back off. Free miles. Enjoy Lake Washington. Settle into a grove. Remember it’s a long day. Use the first hour to shorten the race with as little exertion as possible. Hit mile eight as fresh as a (just changed) baby’s behind.
Executed this to perfection. Hit mile 8 in 59:30. I was cruising comfortably, and for a bonus, I was ripping off one 7:27-7:28 after another. The out and back on the floating bridge allowed me to size up how far behind Jesse Stevick (neighbor and Oly High cross country/track coach) and Jon Riak (former lost boy from Sudan, St. Martin’s alum and apparently all around great guy) were from the leader. He had seriously gapped them. Turned out his lead at mile seven was at least as much as at the finish. The East African looking winner won it with an especially fast opening 10k. Ballsy.
I struggle with multitasking. I wanted to take my two-mile splits, but I was also drinking every two, taking gel every four, and a salt tab every eight. The running, drinking, gel taking was as much as I could handle so I just let the watch run for the first hour.
Then I cleared it and started the 18 miler. “This is such a nice grove, no reason to get excited or play the hero and push the pace, just maintain it for another hour and you’ll be in very good shape. Yeah, let’s shrink this bad boy down to a more humane distance.” This is a really nice section along Lake Wash and around Seward Park. Long story short, ran miles 8-16 in 59:45. Eight more 7:28’s, 29’s. I passed lots of people during this hour. Still felt nearly as fresh as a (just changed) baby’s behind. Great consistency, everything in control, not frantically sighting the mile posts, not even checking the watch too often, not trying to get ahead of myself. The overarching goal was to shrink it down to a 10.2 miler. A Saturday run around Capital Lake with the posse.
Mile 16. Clear the watch, restart. Self, “You know hour three is going to be considerably harder than one and two combined.” I executed part three of the plan really well too for 30-35 minutes or through mile 20.5. Then things kick up pretty seriously, including a ¾ of a mile steep segment that would prove tough on a 10k training run. By mile 21, I had a definitive answer to my question of the day. I could run 20.5 miles @ 7:30/mile pace.
Weather was perfect, didn’t overeat the evening before or morning of, salt tabs kept the cramping at bay, drank a ton of Gatorade, and ran smart, so what went wrong? Simple. I ran too few long runs (two 20 milers) and didn’t have a high enough three month mileage total to run through to the finish. Had I gotten one more massage and switched out my shoes earlier, things might have turned out differently. At mile 21 I began to fight it big time, and the quads were trashed, which made the steep downhills from 25 to 26 especially slow and painful, but it was a classic case of having to go farther than I was physically trained to go.
During the last five miles Fifteen’s question from the car trip up rang in my ears, “Hey Dad, why the marathon this year?” Over the last five miles I wasn’t fighting the “whimp ass” voice DG refers to as much as a surly contingent of whimp ass voices. It didn’t help that I was running through the half marathon walkers. “Just keep running, doesn’t matter how slowly. No walking, no way. Salvage a great day.” I was as proud of my last much slower five miles as the first 21.
Thanks Denny for the kindness and generosity. Thanks especially to the GalPal and Fifteen for great race support especially immediately afterwards. Dano for being the best training fodder a guy could ask for. Thanks DG for the foot tips and inspiration. Katie, Lance, Courter, the Principal, moms, and other family and friends for cheering me on from a distance. I felt it. And my brother for the 3:31 prediction or whatever it was.
Felt even worse than I looked
Social science quotient.
Probably not as high as it could or should be because we’re shaped by Ron and Don.
The “Ron and Don Show” is a popular Seattle-area radio program on 97.3 FM that I occasionally tune into during NPR fundraising campaigns and sports talk commercial breaks.
Their success isn’t accidental, it rests on great names, radio voices, personalities, energy, chemistry, and pacing, all topped off with a laser-like programming focus on whichever individual is deemed most interesting each particular day: the barefoot bandit from Whidbey Island, the Bellevue City Council person who got mauled by a black bear, the police officer charged with deadly force, the college student that committed suicide.
Ron and Don hammer away at each individual’s story for hours on end and we eat it up because we always have been and always will be suckers for detailed stories well told. Even better when the stories are somewhat sordid and make us feel better about our lives.
But we’re out of touch with the effect of the Ron and Don-like media shining its spotlight so continuously and narrowly on individuals.
The cumulative effect is we’re utterly unable to think sociologically about pervasive patterns and themes among groups. Put differently, we can’t take stories of individuals and extrapolate about what they do and don’t represent in terms of larger social scientific trends.
We’re intellectual weaklings.
Here’s two non-Ron and Don stories from last week that I offer as a social science quotient quiz. Determine your “SSQ” by using a scale of 1 to 10. Assign yourself a “1” if these findings completely surprise you, a “10” if you were already familiar with the studies and the findings, and “2’s” through “9’s” for points in between.
Story one is available here. An excerpt:
Harvard and Duke Biz school professors Michael Norton and Dan Ariely asked over 5,000 Americans about US wealth distribution and how it should look if things could be changed.
“Respondents vastly underestimated the actual level of wealth inequality in the United States, believing that the wealthiest quintile (20 percent) held about 59 percent of the wealth when the actual number is closer to 84 percent.” Studies show current US wealth inequality is near record highs, with the top one percent of Americans estimated to hold around 50 percent of the nation’s wealth.
Story two—available at Slate.com.
The U.S. imprisons more people in absolute numbers and per capita than any other country on earth. With 5 percent of the world population, the U.S. hosts upward of 20 percent of its prisoners. The country’s incarceration rate has roughly quintupled since the early 1970s. In 1980, one in 10 black high-school dropouts were incarcerated. By 2008, that number was 37 percent.
For extra credit, submit your score via the comment section.
If our scores are low, as I presume they will be, it’s not Ron’s and Don’s fault. They don’t have a dog in the “individual versus collective thinking” fight I’m outlining. All they care about is that more listeners tune into them than NPR and sports talk. And their winning formula elevates the individual at the expense of social scientific understanding because we tune in and don’t demand any more from them.
Missed my fitness-related posts? My sister says nobody cares, but she thought the Cubs were winning a pennant this year. My sister aside, I’m proceeding as if everyone cares. :)
This is the first summer in a decade I didn’t race in a single triathlon. I was supposed to race (on two wheels) up Mount Baker a few weeks ago, but passed after receiving an early race morning email about extreme conditions and a course change. And I was thinking about doing the Hood River Gran Fondo (100 mile bike race) today, but pulled the plug on the cycling season earlier in the month so bagged that too. I should quit calling myself a triathlete. Is it ethical to continue wearing my Timex Ironman watch?
A running friend extraordinaire annually comps me admission to the Seattle Half or Full marathon the Sunday after Thanksgiving. His website advertises it and so they give him a bunch of pre-paid entries. Most years I run the half, which I really enjoy, but this year I signed up for the full since I haven’t gone long for two years. Everyone should do a marathon every other year, don’t you think?
Enter Dan, Dan, the long distance Man. Dan lives down the street and we train together. He’s of Midwestern stock and a stud, but he gets a little loopy when talking about supplements. We ran the Portland Marathon together two years ago. I was having GI issues at mile 21 and told him I was heading into a PortaPit. “Want me to wait?” “No, go ahead, I don’t want to slow you down.” Sixty to ninety seconds later, with my new and improved plumbing, I started chasing after him. SO frustrating, I could see him, but couldn’t close the gap since he was chasing a woman in a yellow bikini. He finished exactly one PortaPit stop ahead of me and I continue to give him grief for refusing to wait for me.
I don’t think Dan wants to race Seattle with me, but he does want to keep me company on my Saturday long runs. We ran 16 miles Saturday. He didn’t know I was marathon training. I explained I had just decided and that the Seattle race peeps allow you to switch from one race to the other up until race morning.
I’m getting a late start, so I’m kicking up my mileage faster than you’re supposed to. The general rule is no more than a 10% increase in mileage per week. I’ve increased it 20% the last two.
Dano, or the Supplement, or the Malamute, is convinced I’m going to injure myself. He thinks I should be running no more than four days a week, five at the most. I’m running six. Two years ago in Portland I ran well for 20 miles and then faded over the last 10k. Just looked at my late summer/early fall 08′ training log and my mileage was surprisingly modest, 35-45/week. This time I’m going all in with increased mileage with the goal of maintaining my pace through the last 10k. One problem. Miles 20-23 in Seattle are damn hilly. So not only am I increasing my mileage too quickly, I’m getting after it, doing one track and one hill workout weekly too. I almost felt a micro-tear in my calf as I typed that.
I told Dano that if he’s right and gets to say “I told you so” I’ll take 10 days off and run the half. No big deal. Saturday’s run started and ended at the “Y” because I had a massage scheduled for right afterwards. Sunday was a true Sabbath. Today, nine weeks from blast off, I feel (almost) as good as new.
In my next life, I hope to be married to a masseuse.
Tapered for Sunday’s half marathon.
One swim, 3,000m.
First zero for cycling since I can remember in a long, long time.
Ran M, W, Th, 6.7, 6.4, 4.8. A few faster than normal miles thrown in.
Seattle Half Marathon. Perfect conditions, overcast (duh), high 40’s, breezy. New personal record by nine whole seconds. 1:31:14. Very honest effort. Unfortunately, forgot the Garmin. I remember the following splits. 1, 6:52; 2, 6:54; 4, 27:29; 8, 55:34; 10, 1:09:34 (new p.r. too). Went out faster than normal and hung on decently. Despite the hills, I think I ran every mile between 6:52 and probably about 7:05. Not bad considering I probably can’t break 6:15-6:20 for one mile. Lost the 1:30 pace setter on the down hills. I’ve asked Lance to teach me how to run downhill but he just yammers something about “proprietary knowledge” and “competitive advantage”.
GalPal said she can’t get over some of the people who finish in front of me. “What 300 pound women?!” “No, not quite, but not people who I would guess are faster than you.”
Positive morning completely overshadowed by incredibly tragic shooting of the Lakewood Police Officers. I drive by that coffee shop several times a week.
Start and Finish
Recovery Nectar
Pressing Pause 