To quote A Flock of Seatbelts

...or a Flock of Seagulls or whatever that band was called, today, I Ran.

It was the Mayor's Cup 5K in Tuscaloosa today. I had been training for nine weeks for this, and was running for our student FPA group's Relay for Life fundraiser for the American Cancer Society. My training went well until last week. That's when I figured out that the Couch-to-5K program assumes that you are running 10 minute miles. My little blazers top out at something just under 14 minutes, so I was training for a 30 minute run when I should have been preparing myself for a 40 minute effort. Oh, well. For some reason I just lost it last week after my Thursday 28 minute run. This week was a very lackluster effort, but I rationalized by calling it "tapering".

OK, so today's run. We got there early. So early, in fact, that there was time to go back to the house after we had picked up our registration packets to get my forgotten watch. Not-so-good omen #1. Then, just a few minutes before the race, during the pre-stretch warm-up phase, I managed to trip on a perfectly smooth sidewalk and take the skin off of a 5 square inch patch of skin on my right knee. Not-so-good omen #2. Bad words were said, grumpiness took root, but I was prepared to go through with it.

Race time. The nice husband gave me a kiss and we went off at our separate paces. I was going to try to run for 5 minute intervals and walk for one or two minutes in between those. It went well for a while. I managed the first mile in 13:15 or so. The second mile was a little rougher, but I got around the quad and back to the second mile mark right around 26:40. Then, it started to rain. At first, it wasn't so bad. I was running for five and walking for two. Then the rain picked up. Then it picked up some more. Then, I thought I heard God calling for Noah. I was now running for three and walking for two. Thankfully, most of the route was asphalt, so there were few concerns about slipping on the pavement, but by this time, I was not terribly concerned about further woundage; I just wanted to see my husband again.

So I kept plodding along. A woman in an orange t-shirt and I had been trading the lead as we each alternated between walking and running since the quad, so, as evidently running folk do, we entered into a silent understanding that we would finish this damn thing, and about the same time.

The route turned from University Boulevard onto Queen City for a two-block detour to make up the proper distance for a 5K. There were cops instructing people to not turn onto the route, but to proceed directly to the finish line, as downtown Tuscaloosa was under a severe thunderstorm watch at the time. Damn that. I'm finishing, and I'm getting my time so that when I run the next one of these effing things, I'll have a time to beat.

So it started raining even harder. In the most light-hearted moment of the race, one of the guys in our pack quoted Bushwood Country Club's immortal groundskeeper Carl Spackler, saying "The really heavy stuff won't be here for about an hour," which made me want to laugh, but I couldn't.

And eventually, I finished. Joe was there with some sports drinkie for me, and he had found a nice fireman with a packet of neosporin-ish stuff and some gauze for my poor knee. We hung out in the parking garage for part of the post-race party and then called it a morning and headed home. A quick stop at Rite-Aid for some first aid supplies and then back to the apartment and I was just about ready for bed. It was 9:35 am.

So, my race time? I'm not sure. I think it was more than 42 minutes, but less than 43. I had told Joe that my goal was to finish in less than 45 minutes, but secretly I was hoping for something much better. I'll admit that finishing that first minute in 13:15 got my hopes up a bit, but once the critters starting lining up two-by-two, I realigned them.

Joe did quite well and set a personal best for himself. He finished right about the time I got to the 2 mile mark, or, in other words, shortly before the skies opened up. And, as if that weren't enough, he got me home and on the way to dry, and then went to the treadmill to run the remaining 8 miles on his training schedule. He's pretty amazing, that nice husband of mine. Then he went to work for a few hours this afternoon, because he could get a little overtime. We like overtime.

I mentioned earlier that I had dedicated this 5K to Relay for Life. The student group I sponsor, the Capstone Financial Planning Association, has been working on this all semester. Due to the weather, the event was moved from the soccer fields to the Rec Center, which meant that several events had to be curtailed as well. Still, they did a fantastic job. We finished 3rd in all student groups in fundraising and had a good turnout of eight students and 2 boy/girlfriends to represent us. We had a tailgate tent, debuted our awesome banner and had cookies and brownies for sale. I was there at the start to see if they needed anything, which they did not. Joe and I went out for dinner to our favorite Mexican joint (yes, I had a margarita) and then stopped by to see the kids on our way home. They were pleased to find out that I really do have a husband, and once again proved that they are very self-sufficient and know how to manage an event.

So we got home about and learned that our cable is still out. So we've been sitting side by side on the couch and listening to the bluegrass show on the local public radio station and surfing and chatting and all of the silly things that we do with our evenings that make us so darned happy.

Not a bad day. I'm looking forward to sleeping and to church and Sunday School tomorrow. We were only away for one weekend, but it feels like it has been a month. I miss Canterbury and look forward to going to our spiritual home in the morning.

I Love ALABAMA

I think I’ve finally totally fallen for this place. If I can’t make it here, it is my own damned fault. The physical sensation hit when I came around the bend on Campus Drive towards the Publix on The Strip and saw Bryant-Denny Stadium out of my peripheral vision.

It’s been kind of an overwhelming week for the College of Human Environmental Sciences, of which I am a tiny cog of a large and extremely well-functioning machine. Two big things happened in our department: a faculty member lost a parent, which is not all that unusual and tragic in a group of our size and a population our age, but it was a very sad thing. The other thing was an unspeakable revelation about one of our students, one who is a particular favorite of mine.

It is the second thing that has really touched me. Not to diminish the first one at all; losing a parent is never easy, no matter what your age. We have pulled together, the faculty and our graduate students, to support our colleague and minimize the impact on others. It is the second incident that has profoundly touched me. The student in question is sharp and fun and enthusiastic. The thing that happened to him/her is something that many young people have had to deal with; I can think of times in my life when I narrowly escaped a similar crisis. However, in this instance, the scale of the event rather transcends the reality. But enough about that.

The sense of family enveloping this situation has overwhelmed me. It is like a huge defensive net has descended upon the involved parties and solidified to protect our student, our very real asset. Evidently, our academic family has exceeded expectations in ways that the student’s biological family has not met them. It started with the student combination of a need to protect himself/herself, and to protect the other students at the University and in the College. What an incredible showing of maturity. Then, resources were rallied, committed and executed to achieve all of the stated goals. It has been an amazing and impressive thing to see. The level of personal commitment and personal contact has been inspiring.

There will never be a place that I love so well as Kansas State University. However, I cannot imagine that the circumstances of this week would have been handled nearly as well in Manhattan as they were in Tuscaloosa. Judgments would have been made, resources would have been sequestered; the shared needs of the student and the college/school/university would not have been treated as such. There would have been denial of responsibility and assignment of blame rather than a consolidation of resources and an acceptance of a forward-thinking reality.

It begins with leadership. It is supplemented by tradition, but it is leadership that sets the tone for management and for the allocation of tangible and intangible resources. I thank God every day that He placed Joe and me within this community. I love the University of Alabama and the College of Human Environmental Sciences and Milla Boschung. I am so blessed in so many ways by my husband and the community we have found at Canterbury Chapel. I’ve got a big-assed cloud hanging over my head, but we are so close…..

I think there was a line in “Animal House” that went something like this: “THANK YOU, GOD!!”

That is pretty much how I feel right now.

Requiescat in pace, Aunt Jean

We're back from a three day whirlwind tour to Cassville, Missouri to pay final respects to my Aunt Jean, a truly remarkable woman. She was my dad's baby sister, the youngest of ten children born on a rock farm in the beautiful Ozarks just outside of Shell Knob, MO. She graduated from the University of Missouri and taught home economics for a few years before returning to Barry County where she married Uncle Emory and they gave the world cousins Russ and Stan.

Not only was she an educator (both in public schools and the First Baptist Church), but also a successful business woman who owned a printing company and published a newspaper. Her husband served six terms as a Senator in the Missouri state legislature, and Aunt Jean was still winning the legislative spouses' annual golf tournament well into her sixties. She survived cancer (55+years) and the loss of an adult child. She was an excellent seamstress and craftswoman, and the consummate homemaker. As my cousin-in-law Cindy observed, she lived her life by the Bible and the Home Economics handbook.

When I teach Maslow's hierarchy of needs to students, I use my Aunt Jean as the exemplar of a self-actualized human. In 1984, she and Uncle Emory were invited to attend President Reagan's second inauguration and all of the attendant festivities. In what I feel was the ultimate complement to this recognition of her husband's career and her support and partnership, my Aunt Jean made her own dress. And she looked spectacular. It was a Vogue pattern, I can't recall the designer, but I'm sure it was one of those tres difficile ones, and she made a special trip to Kansas City to scout Cy Rudnick's and Kaplan's for the perfect fabric and notions. I love telling that about her.

Aunt Jean was very ill for the last years of her life, but she was able to stay at home. Poor Uncle Emory, I know he will miss her terribly, but he seemed to be relieved that her suffering was done. My new resolution - an Easter resolution, is that done? - is to write him a letter once a month. He likes history and politics, I should be able to find some thought or observation to share with him.

Fiery Crosses

I found out on last week that this really nice lady in my Sunday School class once had a cross burned in her front yard.

My husband and I are very happy with the church that we have found in the city we moved to in August; a progressively minded Episcopal congregation that is just the right size for us and has terrific music. Most of all, this parish is blessed with an outstanding priest who is “about our age”, as they say, and inspires us. One of the things we enjoy most is the Sunday School class that takes place between the two weekly services every Sunday morning. There are usually between eight and twelve people there, as well as Father Marc. We have been going through the Catechism, but occasionally detour onto other subjects. Okay, so there is some sort of detour every Sunday; that is simply the nature of the group and the structure of the task at hand. Last Sunday, we talked a little bit about history.

Our church is part of the campus of the University of Alabama, in Tuscaloosa. We are located across the street (and share a parking lot on Sundays) with Foster Auditorium, the site of George Wallace’s famous Stand in the Schoolhouse Door, where he tried, unsuccessfully, to stop two black students from enrolling at the University.

During our time at Canterbury Chapel, people had mentioned that the church was very supportive of the Civil Rights Movement, and served as a staging area for protests on campus. On last Sunday morning, we learned that two crosses had been burned by the Ku Klux Klan on the front yard of our church. It served as a reminder that the violence and the fear inherent in such an act is a very real thing; something that neither of us can fully imagine nor appreciate. People around the table used phrases like “walking on eggshells” to describe their fears and feelings at the time.

But I was most shocked to learn that one of our “church ladies”, a sweet, grey-haired, grandmotherly type, a Daughter of the King and the foundress of the Flower Guild, had a cross burned in her front yard by the Klan as well. Why? She was a teacher. I’m not sure what or whom she taught or why that made her the Klan’s target, but I was overcome by a sense of awe and amazement.

Her name is Elizabeth. She was a teacher, and that’s why the Klan burned a cross in her front yard. Oy.

W3D3 of C25K is in the can

Yesterday I managed to successfully complete the third week of Cool Runnings’ Couch-to-5K training program. The goal of the program is to take a total couch potato (moi) and turn her into an active healthy person who can run a distance of 3.1 miles, or run for approximately 30 minutes. I’m getting support through a Facebook group and also by listening to podcasts that some guy put together to help get through the program.

My husband is a runner; I’ve tried to become a runner before but have always failed. Either work got in the way, or I got sick or managed to injure myself. This time, things are going well. I have been running on Mondays and Wednesdays after work and on Saturday mornings. This week could be a little different because it is Spring Break and I am also apparently fighting off a bit of a cold. So we’ll see how it goes. Right now, though, everything is fine.

The podcasts were made by a guy named Robert in Northern California who decided to do the C25K program shortly after his 43^rd birthday. He’s done a nice job of putting together this podcast that times out the various warm-up, jog, walk, and cool down interludes by each of the nine weeks it takes to make a runner (or jogger, or in my case, schlogger) out of a spud. I’m not crazy about the music, as it is kind of mindless techo-stuff that is mostly just rhythm track. I keep listening to the introduction for each piece and wondering when the song is going to start, but then the music changes enough to let me know that if there was a song, I missed it. So it’s not music that I would like to listen to on my own, but is it good for running? Yep, so it’s good enough for me.

Week Four starts tomorrow. I’ll be running three and five minute intervals with walking breaks in between them. Depending on the weather and time of day, I’ll either run along the Northport River Path (probably not its official name) or the Tuscaloosa River Path (which is just across the same river but down the road a piece) or on the indoor track at the Rec Center. My strategy is to not measure my running in terms of performance until my first race; I’m afraid that if I know what my pace is that I will get focused on that. I need to leave myself alone and just work the plan. I will be a runner one day!

Honourable Mentions

As much fun as it was to put together a list of great Canadian musicians, it hurts to have left so many off the list. The McGarrigle Sisters would have been at the top of any list of great Canadians for any occasion, but I posted a blog tribute to them last month in honor of Kate’s passing. Here are a few artists who make me wish the Olympics had gone on a little longer:

k.d. lang

Bachman-Turner Overdrive

Rush (for the husband)

Dan Hill

Jann Arden

Measha Breuggergosman

Robert Goulet

Rufus Wainwright

Michael Buble

Alanis Morrisette

Nelly Furtado

Bryan Adams

Paul Anka

The Band

Electric Light Orchestra

Loverboy

Buffy Sainte-Marie

Dan Akroyd – for his work with the Blues Brothers

Jane Siberry

Bryan Adams

Crash Test Dummies

Gordon Lightfoot

Bruce Cockburn

Leonard Cohen

Avril Lavigne

Daniel Lanois – producer

Oh, and if you are wondering where Celine Dion and Shania Twain are, don’t.

Anne Murray

Our final Olympic tribute to the great musicians of Canada honours the great Nova Scotian, Anne Murray. What is there to say? Her magical, velvety alto transcends age and genre. Not to mention that she seems like a really nice person, too. And a sports fan, and what’s not to like about that? She sang the national anthems at the first American League game played in Canada in 1977 when the Toronto Blue Jays played the Chicago White Sox at Exhibition Stadium. She has had ownership in hockey teams and is known as an 11-handicap golfer. She’s even had a postage stamp issued in her honour. How cool is that?

Perhaps the most uniquely Anne Murray song is “Could I Have This Dance” from “Urban Cowboy” and a personal favorite of President and Mrs. Obama. Few songs can highlight the depth and smoothness of her range. She is also well known for “Snowbird” and her cover of The Monkees’ “Daydream Believer”. However, one of my favorites is her cover of Kenny Loggins’ “Danny’s Song”, which is imbedded here. Oh, and there’s a Canadian connection: Loggins’ recording partner Jimmy Messina was also a member of Buffalo Springfield with previous honouree Neil Young. She has also recorded with Martina McBride, whose husband played Little League baseball with my older brother in Wichita, Kansas. It’s like of like playing Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, but with Canada.

Not only was Anne Murray the last person to sing Maple Leaf Forever at the closing of the Maple Leaf Garden in Toronto, she was one of eight Canadians chosen to carry the Olympic flag during the opening ceremonies of the Vancouver Olympics. Again, how cool can you be? She’s the kind of person I would like to be when I grow up.

And a special bonus track, thanks to the beloved husband. It's Ms. Murray singing The Maple Leaf Forever during the final Maple Leafs game at Maple Leaf Gardens. Sadly, there is no accompanying video, but she does sound fabulous.