navigationRoger Robinson: Still Hungry at 80
Read: When Running Made History
Good guy. Great read.
Erik Larson: The Splendid and the Vile : a saga of Churchill, family, and defiance during the blitz
Leo Damrosch: The Club : Johnson, Boswell, and the friends who shaped an age
Brian Doyle: One long river of song : notes on wonder
Alan Furst: A hero of France : a novel
Susan Orlean: The Orchid Thief
Susan Orlean: The Library Book
Paul Theroux: On the Plain of Snakes : a Mexican journey
Angela Duckworth: Grit : the power of passion and perseverance
Leo Damrosch: Jonathan Swift : his life and his world
Hans Rosling: Factfulness : ten reasons we’re wrong about the world–and why things are better than you think
Craig Leener, a great friend in Southern California, is interviewed on NPR.
His books are available on Amazon, $9.99 for the paper, $4.99 on Kindle. I read the first book three times.
Quick story. Vince McGrath, a fellow runner, and I organized the first Beast race, a 4.86 mile, 2000 foot climb to the peak of a prominent mountain in Santa Clarita, CA. At the top, on a (rare) clear day, you could see Catalina.
Leener, a local sportswriter, not a runner, and two other journalists hiked the Beast and publicized the event. Thereafter, on the second Saturday in December, the event attracted a lot of runners. We charged a fee and provided a cool Beast shirt. Every cent collected went to the local Food Pantry, over $5,000. We could do that because Leener leaned on his entrepreneurial brother to contribute the shirts. I still wear my last one on runs alongside the Willamette River.
Running links from the New York Times. Lots about the Coronavirus.
Better reading in Leo Damrosch’s The Club: Johnson, Boswell and the Friends Who Shaped an Age. …We’ve all been members of a club, a regular post run coffee group, lunch, or dinner regulars. Johnson’s club might be the greatest ever. By invitation only, all members must agree. Samuel Johnson group met for dinner, drinks, and talk every Friday night at the same place. It included James Boswell, Edmund Burke, Josiah Reynolds, David Garrick, Edward Gibbon, and Adam Smith. …Yes, just heterosexual old white guys. Presumably misogynist, racist, homophobic, etc.