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Today I ran for more than an hour at a good pace. I should have gotten a better pace estimate since the trail I was on has mile markers, but it just didn’t even cross my mind.
I rarely run with a watch these days, and I deliberately try to avoid thinking about pace. I don’t write about running much because I don’t think about it much, though I’ve been doing it pretty consistently for a while now.
Running more than an hour is not a very impressive accomplishment to share, because for people who really run it’s just normal and for people who don’t run it’s enough to sound crazy. But it’s a meaningful thing for me because the last time I ran more than an hour was spring 2006, one of the last times I ran with the track team. (I may have run more than an hour once last winter, but that’s because it was a very slow pace on ice and snow.) It was the tail end of spring break, a Sunday morning run out on rural Palouse roads. I miss those runs, though at the time they were never fun because we pushed each other too hard and the gravel made my shins hurt. That run was something of a last hurrah. I knew I couldn’t handle it, but I ran the eight miles hard anyway because I correctly suspected I wouldn’t get another chance to see the end of that road. It’s relief to think how long ago that feels.
Today I attended a FOIA symposium at the American University law school. It was all day in a room with reporters, government employees and people from other organizations that do work with open records. Our luncheon speaker was videotaped for C-SPAN. One time a panel speaker was talking about all the problems with our current whistleblower laws and he said, “It’s a trap!” All day I felt like I should be Brian.
Much of the symposium involved talking about changes the Obama administration has announced for open records laws, and the recommendations FOIA experts would like to see. They all dream of a “post-FOIA” world where the internet allows government to automatically disclose all documents and FOIA requests are seen as a last resort.
But there were some pretty interesting ideas and observations, obviously, so go ahead and be nerdy enough to keep reading.
Yesterday there was some snow and everyone in the area started panicking: “Winter storm! Storm advisory! It will be worse tomorrow!” By the evening everyone was so convinced it was terrible and tomorrow would be worse that most schools up and canceled. They didn’t even wait to see how bad the morning would actually be.
A Jacob said, it’s an appropriate day to read Steinbeck. It was also a day when the headlines seemed to come straight from a Bob Dylan ballad.
- There’s seven people dead on a South Dakota farm,
- Somewhere in the distance there’s seven new people born.
I like living in lots of places so I can be a local when it suits me and an objective observer when the locals are being annoying. As I’ve mentioned before, D.C. people like to complain about how they’re not a state and don’t have representatives. Taxation without representation! They’re kind of like the precocious gifted child who cries about not getting as much attention as the other kids. I get it, but it’s annoying.
So they made a big deal about getting their own quarter in the 50 states series. It came out today with Duke Ellington on the back. They wanted it to have the slogan “No taxation without representation,” but the U.S. Mint told them there’s an anti-whining policy.
At work today we thought it was kind of a strange choice. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with Duke Ellington, he’s just not someone I really associate with D.C. And it’s not like they don’t have a bunch of other important people and iconic monuments around here …
Oh. Right. The cool parts of D.C. are on every other coin ever, all the time. Stop worrying about being a state and just be glad you’re the capital.
One of the other interns I sort of work with (she’s over on the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press side of the office) works at a cupcake shop. This photo does not include the red velvet cupcake that was already in my stomach. I like going to work again, and not only for the surprise snacks. I was going to bore you with links to stories about press rights and access laws, but I’ll save that for another day.
I was thinking about the poem read on inauguration day, and decided to actually read it. It turns out I like it very much.
Praise song for struggle, praise song for the day.
Praise song for every hand-lettered sign,
the figuring-it-out at kitchen tables.
Maybe that’s what makes a poem good, that subversive quality that hooks the words and rhythms in your mind days after you first heard and ignored them. I was definitely the part of the crowd on the mall that hightailed it for the nearest escape route the moment everyone stopped cheering for Obama. You kind of had to; I had neither the obstinacy nor the mass to stand my ground against a swell of cold and tired people. So I heard the poem in pieces and waves and thought it was called “Praise Song for the Dead” instead of “Praise Song for the Day.” I thought that was a little excessive, to not only be a poem in the first place but to also be a depressing one. I’m glad I gave it a second chance.
It was fun but not especially momentous to rejoin the 9 to 6 club of people with jobs. W-2 form, yay. My handbook from the SPLC does have an explicit blogging policy, though basically it just says you shouldn’t be an idiot. It is, after all, coming from a group strongly in favor of First Amendment rights.
Room to walk, what a relief! I left the city the way I came in, down south past the tidal basin and the Jefferson Memorial to the 14th Street Bridge, then south along the Potomac on the Mt. Vernon Trail. It was probably about three or four miles.
This is the oath, weird stumble included, and my view of the crowd’s star-spangled reaction.
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