( the running thing )

I was going to post about my response to ibarw (International Blog Against Racism Week; visit the comm for links and discussion), and kept putting it off, because I get the sense that people's feelings are still rather raw, and goodness knows we don't need another round of "those Italians/Hungarians/Russians/Protestants/whatevers beat up my grandparents ( Read more... )

( body image stuff here )

Every spring, at around this time of year, my grammar school sponsored a trip for the eighth (or was it seventh?) grade students--we went to Quebec City, to stay with French families. It was supposed to be a language immersion thing, but of course the kids we were staying with were just as happy to speak English, so it wasn't really. At one point ( Read more... )

I love Yom Kippur in the way I imagine some runners must love marathons--not just for the sense of satisfaction in completing something difficult, but also the extended moments of joy in the doing of it. Process and result. You wouldn't want to do it every weekend, but you still want to do it ( Read more... )

There's an article in this week's New Yorker on personality assessment, and it reminded me of some of the thought's I'd had while watching the "50 things" meme going around. One of the sets of five facts, if I recall correctly, were to be "about your core personality." Frankly, I'm beginning to wonder if I even have one of those ( Read more... )

...it was New York, the dream-site
the lost city the city of dreadful light...
from Adrienne Rich, An Atlas of the Difficult World VIII had dinner up around 125th street and took a patchwork journey home, by taxi, down Broadway to 96th and then through the Park, down 5th past all the museums, to Park Avenue and through that Grand Central Station ( Read more... )