February 2012
2 posts
So simple, it's genius. →
We want to turn light into energy—why not mimic the best light-to-energy machines in existence? Clever kid.
January 2012
1 post
Just relax--nothing to get excited about.
Is what the man at the table behind mine just said, laughing. I need to keep that in mind—as the pace of work and travel picks up, the stress just builds and builds, and I find myself forgetting to breathe.
I want to post some stories from Africa, and thoughts on the myriad ways my friends are handling turning thirty, and how much I’m starting to enjoy snuggling my baby niece. Soon....
December 2011
1 post
Round and round and round we go
Here I am in San Diego, home for the holidays for a week between pleasure travel and work travel. I’ll tell some stories from Africa soon, but for the moment am struck with the thought that as I age, 1) my social world keeps expanding geographically, 2) my career becomes more engaging, and 3) time seems to move faster. Is that universal? And what, if anything, am I meant to do about it?
October 2011
4 posts
1 tag
I AM being a grownup, thank you. →
whatcha whatcha whatcha want whatcha want
I want a lot of things. Mostly intangibles. I want to feel free, I want to see the world, I want to be a good camper and leave the place a little better than I found it. I want to develop my ability to listen well, and to empathize while maintaining my sense of perspective.
I realized recently that I began my life as a singlemindedly goal-oriented person, but have been living for the past few...
September 2011
4 posts
“From this day forward, gay & lesbian Soldiers may serve in our Army with the dignity & respect they deserve,” Sec Army McHugh #dadtrepeal
6 tags
August 2011
9 posts
Shows canceling in Philly due to Irene—time to find a friendly pub and batten down the hatches…
150
Apparently the average human mind is capable of maintaining no more than one hundred and fifty relationships. Here’s how mine does it:
The patches on my luggage remind me of my father, B from high school, and B from NU. The final boarding call for Aspen is TVB, B and CM. The kid with the skateboard in the airport is C from SA. The Wire on my laptop is my sister-in-law and brother, and...
Brand new Localmind. http://t.co/m2FRswz
1 tag
Hi LA, bye LA!
RT @bhaugh: Oh, and hey: public beta of Localmind for Android. Marketplace: https://market.android.com/details?id=com.localmind
Pink shoes
I just bought a pair of pink shoes to wear for college touring—they are suede and awesome and remind me of the hightop Reeboks I rocked when I was 6. (Which was probably also the last time in my life I ever willingly wore pink) So let’s assess: The students I’ll be teaching now are a full decade younger than I am. That means they probably never watched Friends and they think...
June 2011
2 posts
“‘Catharsis’: Greek for ‘purging’ or...”
– The Songlines, Bruce Chatwin
It’s what I want. http://instagr.am/p/GRO2p/
May 2011
5 posts
To avoid complications, she never kept the same...
Moving. Again. The packing up of the scant possessions I’ve accrued in my brief time in this sublet hardly feels like moving; I just took two boxes to the post office, and that plus my wheelie bag covers it. I’ve been glad to get to know LA a little—there’s so much left to do and so many people I still want to see—but it’s been fun feeling settled enough to slip...
ouch.
Boston 2 Big Sur. 2 marathons, 2 coasts, 13 days apart. Seemed like a great idea in the fall, coming off the high of my first ultra, feeling pretty invincible—I signed up without hesitation. Got some nice down time in the late fall, and started up my training mid-winter. I made solid progress and was on track to set a new PR (personal record) at Boston. The plan was to run Boston fast, then...
But What About Asian Dudes? →
Join TheMASSIVE’s ensemble of creators and movers for artistic analysis of the hubris, humility, and humor of being different in “post-racial” America. When you’re young, talented, and different, it’s a thin line between standing out and sticking out. We do not own this song. No Copyright Infringement intended.
April 2011
6 posts
“Being an actor is the loneliest thing in the world. You are all alone with your...”
– James Dean
I’m on an island in the middle of the Atlantic.
Why?
Why run? People ask all the time. Endurance sports are polarizing. Even amongst the athletic, there are plenty of people (many of whom look a hell of a lot more fit than I) who laugh at the thought of spending any significant time pounding trail or pavement. An ad for a Marine-style obstacle course competition describes itself as ‘not another soul-sucking endurance run’—as if...
I'm going to steal this.
Tim Shriver, CEO of the Special Olympics, just blew my mind. Here’s what he said, on the Colbert Report, March 30, 2011:
I don’t want to be a cop, I want to be a teacher. You are allowed to be humiliating, degrading, and hurtful. I’m allowed to petition you to at least recognize what you say and be aware of the option you have to stop.
This is possibly the best framed defense...
March 2011
5 posts
“Art is not the application of a canon of beauty but what the instinct and the...”
– Pablo Picasso
“Like most guys, I had bought into the stereotype that all feminists were white,...”
– Byron Hurt’s article, Why I am a Black Male Feminist
Tragic tragus.
This is a story in which I mutilate my ear. Last fall, I decided to get my right tragus pierced to commemorate my 50 mile race. (For those of you too lazy to google it, that’s the little bump of cartilage in front of your ear—the part that holds your earbuds in place.) Not that there’s any particular connection between running for half a day and sticking a pin through part of...
A string of nice days.
I find it charming that we Americans have the custom of wishing one another a “nice day.” It’s so engrained, in fact, that I doubt you can remember all the times someone has wished you that in the past week alone. There are variations: take it easy, have a good one, (my favorite) don’t work too hard. It’s so commonplace that I only recently had the thought that some...
February 2011
4 posts
Who needs movers? http://instagr.am/p/BX2pc/
Shores’ sunset http://instagr.am/p/BVocO/
http://instagr.am/p/BUsx7/
January 2011
4 posts
Third Place in Trivia http://instagr.am/p/BMmaH/
On taking chances
B: Prudence is still quite important. I need to learn to keep one foot on the ground.
Me: I prefer to think we all need to perfect our landings. Leaping off of things is only dangerous if you don't know how to land.
Two spaces after a period: Why you should never,... →
I’m guilty. I admit it, and swear to change my rotten ways. What misguided typing teacher taught me this habit? Had the shift from typewriters to computers in my public school been that recent? Think of all the time and paper I’ve wasted! It’s tempting to edit out the extra spaces in all my past posts, but talk about a waste of time. I’m going running.
Six words.
This New Year’s Eve, my date and I played a game in which we each had to describe our year in ever lessening increments of time. It’s fun to see what you do and don’t recall, and how quickly some things, things that may have been agonizing or beautiful or all-consuming while they were happening, get the axe in retrospect. I’m glad to say that the game confirmed that my...
December 2010
3 posts
Sometimes you have to walk.
Earlier this week I went on the first run I’ve taken in over a month. Travel and illness got in the way for a while, so I was itching to get out there, and it was wonderful. Well, mostly—my hips actually felt like the Tin Man’s, but that didn’t damage the overall effect. I got to thinking as I started out, hm, I wonder if my body is up to this? Maybe I’ll have to...
“The nomads value their freedom of movement so much that they believe houses are...”
– Narrator, Running the Sahara
