Category: People & Human Interest

Interesting article in The New York Times about Héctor Roca, the man who trained Hilary Swank to box, and some women boxers from his gym.

While the old (awful) carpet was here things were relatively fine. The new carpet is barely in and what happens? The living room ceiling spouts a leak. Drip. Drip. Drip.

Fortunately I caught it rather quickly and put plastic and a container under it. Quite attractive. Not!

Doggone New Mexico homes and their flat roofs.

“[A cardiologist] found that a group of people with an average age of 70 who had started exercising in midlife – as Whitlock did at age 41 – and kept it up had ‘hearts indistinguishable from healthy 30-year-olds.'”

At 73, Marathoner Runs as if He’s Stopped the Clock

From The New York Times, At 73, Marathoner Runs as if He’s Stopped the Clock:

Ed Whitlock, a 73-year-old Canadian marathoner who may be the world’s best athlete for his age, rotates his running shoes like the tires of a car. “I have 10 pairs that I alternate,” he said. “That way they don’t wear out.”

Neither does Whitlock, who lives in Milton, Ontario, a Toronto suburb. He trains up to three hours a day, about 23 miles, close to the marathon distance of 26 miles 385 yards, and more than 100 miles a week.

Most Olympic marathoners do less. But Whitlock has been heralded like an Olympic champion since running the Toronto Waterfront Marathon last September in 2 hours 54 minutes 49 seconds.

He was 26th among 1,690 finishers and shattered his own world record for a runner 70 or older by more than four minutes. The previous year, in the same race, Whitlock ran 2:59:10, becoming the first person 70 or older to break three hours in a marathon.

“Ed is pushing the limits, like Roger Bannister breaking the four-minute mile,” said Bill Rodgers, 57, who won the Boston and the New York City marathons four times each. “I think he should slow down and have some respect for us youngsters.”

Let’s see. You may remember that I was, I believe, mislead about the installation date for my carpet (described here). Instead of January 28th as I was told, the installation is February 9th and 10th. Interestingly, that’s two days, not one as I was originally told. Whatever, they’re doing a great job.

But guess what? The decorator didn’t order enough carpet. (And believe me, these guys have cut it very, very efficiently.) Some more will be ordered. The good news, I guess I saved some money. The bad news, some areas will remain uncarpeted (just padding) until the carpet is delivered (from Georgia). The worse news, will the extra carpet look exactly the same as the rest?

The carpet is about half installed and the installers have left for the day. A good crew — nice guys, proficient, conscientious. Just like you want. They’ll finish tomorrow.

The carpet itself looks terrific — and now everything else looks like it needs attention. (Sigh!)

From Real E Fun. Go read it.

“I have a college degree and there’s no way I’d last half a shift working at the Waffle House.”

Sports writer Ken Burger in The Post and Courier of Charleston, South Carolina.

This brief essay is well worth a click.

Thanks to Dwight Perry at The Seattle Times.

From The New York Times an article on how the wealthy are spending $250,000 for a condo at Sun Valley, Idaho, just so they can park next to the ski lift (and not take the shuttle).

NewMexiKen feels a cold coming on — it is after all the week of Christmas. I’m doing all I can think of — even have the humidifier and the de-humidifier both going full blast.

NewMexiKen had an MRI this morning to see if all of my spinal disks are herniated or just most of them. (Indeed, one of the reasons for my break in blogging last month was to see if less time at the computer would make the lower back and, more recently, leg pain go away. Stopping for more than a week didn’t help. Jacuzzis do though.)

Anyway, an MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) takes place while you are inserted in a narrow tube. I have enough claustrophobia that this otherwise straightforward procedure freaks me out. I had to been taken out of one a couple of years ago, but decided I would tough it out today. And I did, really without too much anxiety.

Claustrophobia is generally defined as a fear of enclosed places. Actually though it’s a fear of not having an escape route. For anyone who experiences it, the overriding characteristic of claustrophobia is the feeling that you need to be able to get out quickly — and, of course, you can’t.

Phobias are interesting in the way that those who don’t have them fail to grasp what it’s like for those who do. In an effort to be helpful one of the attendants asked if I would like a cloth over my eyes. Well, no, thank you for asking though. Covering my eyes could only make it worse.

Heather reminds us all that life is precious:

If you are depressed, please know that you are not alone. Please get help. If you know someone who is depressed, please understand that they are in pain, and please help them get help. Most importantly, listen to music a little louder, dance a little crazier, sing out loud in the shower, honk your horn for no reason, give your dog an extra treat, call your mother and tell her you love her, hug your friends even if they aren’t the touchy-feely type, eat french fries once even though your diet tells you not to, walk around your house naked, and hold tight to your motherfucking family.

Read the whole item.

with Beth.

There is really only one reason I don’t own a gun…. I don’t want one in the house.

Why?

I would use it.

Regular readers of NewMexiKen may remember me mentioning a few weeks ago that the dentist had said I was a “good patient.”

Today I’m waiting in the dental chair, feeling confident because of my “good patient” reputation, and I hear the dentist in the adjoining room telling someone they are a “great patient.”

My ego tumbled.

And then — and then — with industrial-strength dental tools and several fingers in my mouth to decide where he can best torture me this time — he tells me (in a conversation we had been having about sports) that he couldn’t do that particular sport because he’s too accident prone.

An accident-prone dentist and a good— but not great — patient. A recipe for disaster.

Earlier today NewMexiKen wrote about George Marshall’s commute. Commuting in the nation’s capital, as NewMexiKen did for more than 14 years, is difficult at best, frightening at worst.

While riding in a car pool many years ago, our driver became extremely agitated when cut off. As some do, he accelerated to cut back in front of the car he believed had wronged him. Not good. The car that had cut us off was a security chase vehicle attempting to stay in proximity to FBI Director William Webster’s car. Fortunately, before guns were drawn, the agents protecting the director realized our driver was just an aggravated commuter and not a real threat. But for a moment…

From Wired News: Furthermore:

Thanks to advances in medical science, the virile, balding type may soon go the way of the dodo bird. Stem-cell research has resulted in the successful regrowing of hair on mice, leading to the real possibility that a cure for baldness is right around the corner. As science marches on, the world will be populated by tall, fit people with perfect teeth and a full head of hair. There won’t be a single interesting person left on the planet.

Hear, hear.

From CNN.

Money quote: “He had been retired for half a century.”

Caitlin Flanagan has written a provocative and significant article in The Atlantic Monthly concerning women and mothers and children and nannies and working and not working: How Serfdom Saved the Women’s Movement. What Flanagan seems to realize, more than most, is that there are no ideal answers. Near the end of her lengthy essay she writes:

What few will admit—because it is painful, because it reveals the unpleasant truth that life presents a series of choices, each of which precludes a host of other attractive possibilities—is that when a mother works, something is lost. Children crave their mothers. They always have and they always will. And women fortunate enough to live in a society where they have access to that greatest of levelers, education, will always have the burning dream of doing something more exciting and important than tidying Lego blocks and running loads of laundry. If you want to make an upper-middle-class woman squeal in indignation, tell her she can’t have something. If she works she can’t have as deep and connected a relationship with her child as she would if she stayed home and raised him. She can’t have the glamour and respect conferred on career women if she chooses instead to spend her days at “Mommy and Me” classes. She can’t have both things. I have read numerous accounts of the anguish women have felt leaving small babies with caregivers so that they could go to work, and I don’t discount those stories for a moment. That the separation of a woman from her child produces agony for both is one of the most enduring and impressive features of the human experience, and it probably accounts for why we’ve made it as far as we have. I’ve read just as many accounts of the despair that descends on some women when their world is abruptly narrowed to the tedium and exhaustion of the nursery; neither do I discount these stories: I’ve felt that self-same despair.

Desipite her cheerless — yet all-too-obvious — conclusion, Flanagan writes with humor and style. Further, the article appears to be a solid survey of the literature on the subject.

Mark Jenkins has a fine essay in Outside on Aron Ralston—the hiker who ultimately had to amputate his own hand to survive—and on what survival requires.

It’s not being dead that scares us. The most frightening thing is being a witness to our own death. Watching it come, knowing we are trapped, alone, with no one to call for help. Perhaps most of all, though, fearing we may have a choice but may lack the courage to fight, or the resolve to tell death to go screw itself—whatever the cost.

[Repeat NewMexiKen item from August.]

From The New York Times an article on the sizing of America.

Among the findings: older men have trimmer thighs than younger men. Black women are larger than other women, but they are also most likely to have the classic hourglass figure. Sixty-four percent of women are pear-shaped, and 30 percent are “straight,” meaning they had little perceptible waist.

Nineteen percent of men are “portly,” and another 19 percent have “lower front waists,” meaning, the researchers said, they had to look under a belly to find the waist. Men over 45 are most likely to have potbellies, women over 36, bigger hips (though black women older than 55 have smaller hips than those 46 to 55).

An interesting article; check out how clothing sizes are changing.

From Morning Briefing in the Los Angeles Times

Dale Webster will go surfing one more time in Bodega Bay in Northern California today. He will not go surfing Monday, ending a 28 1/2-year streak.

Webster, 55, began surfing on Sept. 3, 1975. After surfing every day for a year, he figured he’d see how long he could go. He set a goal of 28 1/2 years — targeting Feb. 29, 2004 — because he believed that was a lunar year. He maintained that goal even after learning three years ago that a lunar year is 18 1/2 years.

The surfing documentary “Step Into Liquid,” which came out last year and will be available on DVD in April, features Webster’s incredible feat.

So why did he do it?

“By the time it ends, I hope to find out,” he told The Times’ Bill Plaschke last summer.