Seek The Substantial

Running Things

I ran a 50k with my brother in early October. This was not a race with bibs and a start and a stop, this was just he and I going for a run. We did the Snoqualmie Valley Trail, which was an old rail trail. We started at Rattlesnake Lake, where his wife dropped us off and then we dropped the car off at Carnation, where we knew we would have to do a bit of an out and back as to Carnation was only 21 or so miles. I finished 31.11 miles in 5:53:59. My goal has been to finish a 50k in under 6 hours and was happy to say that I can check that off of my list. We did stop our watches in order to filter water along the way, thankfully my brother brought a filter because we ran out of water sometime along the way. We were able to find a creek that ran close enough to the trail to fill up. It was definitely an adventure.

I also had the chance to go to Tucson for work and there was a 9-hole golf course around the Conquistador resort and that was pretty much perfect to run around. It was hilly and difficult and fun. I love running in new places.

With the year not quite finished I have run 1,653 miles and I think that I’ll break 1,700. Last year I ran 1,431 miles so I sort of kicked the shit out of 2024 and that was not my intent, but I did it anyway.

Books

I cleared a few books since we last checked in, but that was back in June. Here we go with the number of stars:

1. Anxious People by Fredrik Backman ****
2. Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel ****
3. Orbital by Samantha Harvey **
4. The Magician King by Lev Grossman ***
5. North Woods by Daniel Mason ****
6. The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store by James McBride ****
7. The Dog Stars by Peter Heller ****

I’m currently working on Enemy of All Mankind by Steven Johnson and hope to finish it by the end of the year. That will give me 16 books for the year. That’s not a lot, but I have other things keeping me busy as well. I should also mention that I started Shantharam by Gregory David Roberts and about 50 pages in I was not enjoying myself. Remember to give yourself permission to not finish a book if you aren’t loving it.

My books of the year would be Beautyland, Anxious People, and The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store with Beautyland being the best thing I read. North Woods would be right there in spot #4.

A/V

Fits and I saw Fantastic Four, Thunderbolts and Superman in the theater. We loved them. They are what movies are supposed to be.

In terms of shows, as of right now, the only shows that I watch, maybe once a week, is Slow Horses and Shrinking. They are both good shows, Slow Horses is probably the better of the two, but I’m not always in the mood for something heavy. I believe I’ve finished seasons 4 and 5.

Life

Me. I don’t know that life is that much different. I have absolutely continued to blog the shit out of Staking The Plains and it is still something that I love to do. Texas Tech is in the College Football Playoff and I can say that this is not something that I ever thought would happen in my lifetime. It’s a bit of a dream in a way.

Miranda. Miranda was offered and accepted the principal position at the elementary school where she was the assistant principal. The current principal is taking an admin position so she was offered the principal position. She’s amazing in so many ways and she never ceases to amaze what she’s able to do.

Fitsum. Sophomore year started for Fits and he had a singular goal of marching in the marching band this year. Hell or high water. Well, he was struggling and the band director contacted Miranda and I and he was about to lose his marching spot. That day I told him about my conversation with the band director and he was devastated, gut punched. I promised him that I would not let him fail and that we would do whatever it took to make sure he made it. That day we went up to the grid and marched while I held the phone to play music. Every free opportunity, we went and marched and we went from noticing his mistakes to noticing that he was absolutely kicking ass, his movements were sharp and he was on cue and he was great. Of all things, Kaufman ended up going to state in San Antonio and this was one of those moments where as a dad you make these promises not knowing if you’ll be able to keep them, but this was a success all the way around. Add in cross-country and honors classes and I think he will be glad to take a break.

Youssouf. The school year started great for Yo and maybe the 2nd or 3rd game of the year, he tore his hip labrum on a run where he was carrying a couple of kids and his femur came out of the joint. He had surgery to repair it within a week of his injury and we are about 3 months into a 6 or 7 month rehab process. This has been a tough lesson for him and the surgery has been something that he wasn’t ready for. The good news is that it has forced him to slow down a bit and he’s attacking the rehab with the intensity that I sort of expected with him. In a bit of different news, Yo was named one of the top 25 players in the Dallas area for the 2030 class. This comes with a few caveats in that some of the kids on that list are not actually 14 years old, a few of them are older and there are some players that are ahead of Yo who are simply not as good as him. I can say that objectively.

Vacation Talk

Hamilton, Ohio. Yo had the Under Armour National Tournament at Spooky Nook in Hamilton, Ohio. Hamilton was named after Alexander Hamilton, starting as Fort Hamilton in 1791 and is located on the Great Miami River. Hamilton appears to one of those typical Rustbelt sort of towns, but it is actually really vibrant from what I can tell. There’s definitely an area or two that’s a bit down, but this was a manufacturing town, you can just tell, and there are so many old factories near the river, it’s just fun to see that sort of town when you aren’t really accustomed to seeing that sort of thing. There’s terrific statue of Hamilton with his cape flowing in the wind. It’s right in the middle of town. The statue is called “The American Cape” by Kristen Visbal in 2004.

Contact Case Travel. I have experimented with some travel things, namely, that I have a ton of contact lens cases. Every time you buy new solution, you get a new case. So I’ve been hoarding them for some reason and I’ve put them to use. I basically need a few things when I travel: face lotion (with spf); shaving cream; pomade; and hand lotion (really for my elbows, which get really rough). I’ve filled to the brim each of those things with a particular case and other than running out of shaving cream, it lasted Friday through Friday. This is an excellent solution for minimizing travel.

Vacationing in Michigan. The question is if you should and the answer is yes. You should. Previously mentioned, Yo had a tournament in Hamilton. We wanted a place to go on vacation because this week was basically the only week we were going to be available to go do something. We were in the Midwest and settled on vacationing in South Haven, Michigan. Trying to describe it? It’s on Lake Michigan and if you didn’t know, you’re on a beach in the ocean. South Haven is a bit between Durango with shops and walkable places to eat and Gatlinburg in Tennessee. People can own homes basically up to the shore on Lake Michigan (you can walk on the wet sand anywhere even if the beach is private) so I would say that South Beach is very family friendly. We found a beach to the north that was fine. We drove a bit south to Pilgrim Haven Natural Area and that’s a really nice secluded beach. You need water shoes, but it’s out of the way and nice and you can find some shade.

We also traveled to Saugatuck, which is a town that’s a bit more high-end. The town is basically a shopping area and Oval Beach (costs $15/day) is near by and this was the best beach by far on our trip and we went there two days.

This has been a good trip. The beaches are nice. The food is good. The water is cool and refreshing. I definitely recommend vacationing in Michigan for the summer.

A couple of other things. Cincinnati is nice. It’s a good city. Whatever you think about Ohio or Cincinnati (I did not have an opinion prior to this), but it’s a good city. Now things may change significantly in the winter, but summer Cincy is good. We were in the Liberty Heights area, but it’s good. We also spent the night in South Bend, Indiana, and wanted the boys to go visit the Notre Dame campus. It was great. that’s an amazing campus, the buildings hit different than anywhere else I’ve ever been. It’s majestic. The church on campus is great and the golden dome is real, as is Touchdown Jesus. Fits and I ran the campus the next morning and that was also fantastic. I also didn’t realize how close South Bend is to the Michigan border, like 5 minutes driving.

Having a Good Summer. This a fun video and I don’t know who this guy is, but I like him. There are two things that I’d like to add: 1) listen to summer music; and 2) grill your food. Summer music is totally subjective, but you know what summer music is and you should listen to summer music. And grill your food. Even though it is hot and it can be a bit of a beating because you might be grilling at the end of the day, you should grill food in the summer.

Running Things

I’m saving running things until a bit later in the quarter.

Books

The Magicians by Lev Grossman. Both books received 3 stars from me. This was okay, sort of a grown up Harry Potter in a way. I bought the entire series and I came off of some books where I absolutely loved the characters, where these characters were flawed. I’m still going to read the other two books in the series.

Sixteen Ways To Defend A Walled City by K.J. Parker. This is a book for guys who don’t want to read fiction. This is a good story . . . until the end of the book. I didn’t love the ending and I’d love to know why he chose the path that he did.

A/V

Andor. This was one of the highlights of my summer. This is the best show I’ve ever watched. So much thought went into this show, every detail had to be made or built or considered. Fantastic. A++.

Life

Me. Vacation was great. I needed it. Explained above. The boys then went on vacation with their grandfather for a week and so it’s been Miranda and I for a week and that’s actually been lovely in a totally different. It’s been nice just focusing being a dad with the boys on vacation and when they left, just focusing on Miranda.

Miranda. Without sounding terrible, Miranda needed a vacation. She let go.

Fitsum. It was a joy to run with Fits every day during our vacation. I enjoyed every step and mile.

Youssouf. He played in the Under Armour National Tournament and he belongs. He was the best player on the court so many times and he belongs on just about any team.

Black Holes

Just go with me here for a bit. The Tungaska event was a large explosion on June 30, 1908, in Siberia, Russia. This explosion allegedly felled 80 million trees and took out 830 square miles of forest. You have to remember that this was 1908 and so this was before there were any atomic bombs or anything like that and generally, the thought is attributed to a “meteor air burst” or the explosion of an asteroid. The problem is that there’s no impact crater and that whatever happened, happened in the sky, however, there’s no evidence of any sort of asteroid. It’s the largest impact event in human history (human history, not history of planet Earth).

So I’m bopping along and doing my own thing and come across this Radiolab episode about the event and there’s this thought that this wasn’t a meteor or anything of the sort, but a micro black hole. the entire idea of a black hole being on the planet and this actually happening seems unbelievable, but the theory is that a black hole hit Earth and this black hole is the size of a hydrogen atom and perhaps come from the big bang that started the universe and creates primordial black holes that have been around since that big bang but those primordial black holes have have shrunk over time. It is the size of an atom, but can have the mass of an asteroid. That sounds unbelievable, something being so dense as that.

Books

Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar: One more quote because it seems particularly relevant:

“When asked about the difficulties of sculpture, Michelangelo said, “It is easy. You just chip away all the stone that isn’t David.” It’s simple to cut things out of a life. You break up with a shitty partner, quit eating bread, delete the Twitter app. You cut it out, and the shape of what’s actually killing you clarifies a little. The whole Abrahamic world invests itself in this promise: Don’t lie, don’t cheat, don’t fuck or steal or kill, and you’ll be a good person. Eight of the ten commandments are about what thou shalt not. But you can live a whole life not doing any of that stuff and still avoid doing any good. That’s the whole crisis. The rot at the root of everything. The belief that goodness is built on a constructed absence, not-doing. That belief corrupts everything, has everyone with any power sitting on their hands. A rich man goes a whole day without killing a single homeless person and so goes to sleep content in his goodness. In another world, he’s buying crates of socks and Clif bars and tents, distributing them in city centers. But for him, abstinence reigns.”

The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley: Another winner. Really fun and inventive and the message is outstanding. Basically it is a bit sci-fy, but also historical novel that is combined in the best ways. Best line:

“Forgiveness and hope are miracles.”

Beautyland by Marie-Helene Bertino: Another absolute banger, that’s two books in a row written by a woman and subconsciously I have trended towards men, but made an effort and was greatly rewarded. I didn’t know what to think about Beautyland when it started, but it delivered. An alien is sent to Earth to report back to her planet. Adina is different and the way that she thought reminded me so much of my own child, Fitsum. He is so incredibly unique. We should cherish those individuals who are truly thinking outside the box.

“People with money list what they did without. Poor people list what they had.”

“Grief is a bad mirror. It shows you manipulated images of yourself, your will, and the future. It cannot show you how the small work you do will add up to yourself. Inch by inch.”

Running Things

Treadmill. My treadmill, after maybe a decade of owning it, has finally broken. Actually, I think it still works, but it doesn’t sound good. I will get it worked on or buy a new treadmill. I get a ton of use out of it and running on it is very easy.

Outside. With a broken treadmill, I have run outside and it has been good. The thing that I’ve always liked about the treadmill is that it forces you to run faster than you maybe comfortable and if you are trying to improve, then

A/V

Arcane, Seasons 1 and 2: Fits and I finally finished this and season 1 was great, a thrill ride the entire way, but season 2 got off-track for me. It is a beautiful story, but there was so much going on season 2 and I just wasn’t sure what to think about everything happening.

Slow Horses, Season 2 and 3: If you watch one show, this is it. I think I have described it before, but it is about of reject MI6 agents in British intelligence and it’s just fantastically done. Gary Oldman is fantastic, but the entire cast knows their roles and they are great at all of them.

Fountain of Youth: This is the new Guy Ritchie flick and it’s a fun ride. Watched it with the boys last night and it’s not must-see, but it is a good movie.

Life

Me: Miranda and I celebrated 20 years of marriage. I love her with all of my heart. Work is work and my office is moving to Richardson which is an hour+ commute for me and I am not looking forward to it, but I don’t work for myself.

Fitsum: He’s finished the 9th grade and could not be more proud of him. He took AP Human Geography, made all A’s except for 1 B. He’s already starting Spanish II for summer school, has band things, plus his cross-country training a few days a week. He’s a machine.

Youssouf: Finished the 7th grade and much like Fitsum, made all A’s and 1 B. Add in the athletic stuff and it was a terrific year for Yo. Currently we are in the midst of basketball, traveling to Kansas City and Bryan thus far with a trip to Cincinnati at the end of June. He’s a dominant player and changes the game. He’s dunking in warm-ups but not in a game just yet.

It has been too long.

Books:

I’m reading so much and it is lovely.

James by Percival Everett: this is the best book I’ve read in a decade and it’s not close. It follows the Jim, the slave from Huckleberry Finn, and tells the story from his perspective. It is amazing.

Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar: this is the second best book I’ve read in a decade. It has given me so much and it’s a book that I just never expected to like at all, but here we are. It is the story of an Iranian man, Cyrus, whose mother died in an airplane mistakenly shot down by the US military and a father who brought him to the United States, worked in a chicken farm in Indiana, and died from exhaustion. Cyrus struggles with his place in life. This book gave me the idea of “sonder”: The profound feeling of realizing that everyone, including strangers passing in the street, has a life as complex as one’s own, which they are constantly living despite one’s personal lack of awareness of it. This applies to everyone you have ever met and people that you have not met. It applies to people in Iran or anyone anywhere and you realize that everyone has lives as complicated as yours.

Martyr also gave me the story of Allegri’s Miserere, which was a composition that was composed in 1638 by Allegri, but the composition was to never leave the chapel. Mozart heard the piece in 1770 at the Vatican for Easter and wrote the entire piece from memory.

Other books I have finished since I finished James in October:

The Man Who Died Twice – Richard Osman
The Bullet That Missed – Richard Osman
The Bright Sword – Lev Grossman
The Last Devil to Die – Richard Osman

The Osman books are part of the Thursday Murder Club series and they are good fun reads. The Grossman book is a King Arthur legend after Arthur is has passed and the balance between the old way and the new way. I am currently read The ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley.

A/V:

Slow Horses – season 2 (working on season 3)
Shogun
Shrinking – season 1 (working on season2)
Invincible – seasons 1, 2 & 3
Arcane – season 1 (working on season 2)

All of these things were 100% worth my time. Fits and I have watched Invincible and Arcane together and it’s been a fun experience.

Life:

Fitsum: Is close to finishing his freshman year of high school and he’s got his learner’s permit as of March. He’s taking honors classes plus an AP class, in band and also doing long distance and cross country.

Youssouf: Close to finishing his 7th grade year. He’s set the junior high record for the 200m and triple jump (includes both 7th and 8th grade). He’s also taking honors classes and will be inducted into the National Junior Honor Society.

Me: I’m still running and I’m running harder and I think I’m getting better, slowly but surely. Work is work and my life at this time revolves around my kids. Miranda is working so hard and I have always been in love with her.

1. The Mariana Trench is the world’s deepest trench and we think that it is 10,984 meters deep and the deepest point of the trench is 1.2 miles further from sea level that then peak of Mount Everest. the location is near Guam, south of Japan and north of Papua New Guinea to give you some idea, and is actually a U.S. Monument for some reason. And to maybe put some of these figures in perspective, 10,984 meters is 36,036 feet. Mount Everest is 29,032 feet, so an additional 1.32 miles to get to the bottom of the trench if you were to be at the top of Everest.

2. In 1917 the executive branch created the Committee on Public Information which utilized 75,000 volunteers to give 4-minute talks between movie reels, called the Four Minute Men. Eventually, this program utilized the Sedition Act of 1917, rounding up people that would criticize the government or were anti-war and made it illegal to “willfully utter, print, write, or publish any disloyal profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the form of government . . . the Constitution . . . the military or naval forces . . . the flag . . . or the uniform of the Army or Navy of the United States.”. I had no idea this sort of thing ever existed. Seems relatively unconstitutional, but I took Con Law 20 years ago and it’s been a hot minute.

3. Gary Cantrell is the guy behind the Barkley’s Marathon and his alter-ego is Lazarus Lake. The Barkley is a a 20+ mile loop that must be completed 5 times and must be completed in 60 hours. Runners have to pull certain pages from books found on the course (only odd numbers and the pages change each loop), includes 54,200 feet of vertical gain.

4. As Columbus Day or Indigenius People’s Day’s is here, we find out tht Christopher Columbus was actually Spanish and Jewish, rather than the Italian that we had been taught for so long, and possibly converted to Catholicism to avoid persecution.

5. The header photo is from Saturday night at the Boys and Girls Club of Collin County gala. It was terrific and it was a work event, but it is always amazing to see Miranda look so beautiful. It was a rare night out for the two of us as we are constantly running around doing things with the boys. I realize that I am incredibly lucky.

1. I don’t think I’ve talked about Fallout, but man, this has been a fantastic ride. I told Fitsum that we’d watch it together and this was either a terrible parental mistake or one where I introduced him to one of the more inventive and disturbing shows that I can recall. It’s on Amazon Prime and like I said, it is gory, weird, touching, and a severed head plays a huge part of the story. Everyone needs the severed head. There will be a season 2 and I can’t wait.

2. As we all maybe try to stay off of social media more and more (I know I am trying to do this and having kids helps keep me occupied), I thought this piece by Oliver Burkman was terrific and it’s about how the newscycle is not your life. I think that’s a difficult thing for people to accept, you think that if this happens, this will affect my life in a way that is unmeasurable and the reality is that it will likely not (it certainly could and I don’t want to deny that). But the key is to not live in “that” world as much as you live in “this” world.

The trouble is that human beings can’t really function, let alone thrive, when their primary psychological identification is with things like “the news cycle” or “history” or “the course of world events.” This is the realm in which, pretty much by definition, you exert zero individual control over what happens. So you’re denied the basic sense of “self-efficacy” – of successfully getting things done – on which wellbeing depends. (As mentioned, social media gives the feeling of doing something, but almost never delivers, because you almost never have a real effect.)

To stay sane, you need at least one foot planted firmly in your world: the world of your job and neighborhood, that letter you need to mail, the pasta you’re cooking for dinner, the novel you’re reading with your book group, and that guy on your street who never cleans up after his dog – the world where you can have an effect, even if I’ve admittedly yet to have one with the dog guy.

If you are a normal person and you are posting anything remotely political in the hopes that your one tweet/post will be the straw that breaks the camel’s back to convince someone of a certain idealogy, then I have bad news for you. If you are using social media to uplift and encourage people and make it a happy place, then I think you get what the original purpose was.

3. I don’t know if you’ll be able to read this Wright Thompson piece in the Atlantic about the first map of his family’s home, found in Spain. Maps have so much history, yet sometimes can’t tell the full story of a place.

I’d come researching my new book, The Barn, a history of the 36 square miles of dirt around the place where Emmett Till was tortured and killed in 1955. The barn, which I first wrote about for this magazine, sits in the southwestern quarter of Section 2, Township 22 North, Range 4 West, measured from the Choctaw Meridian. The township has been home to the civil-rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer; to the family of the Confederate general and early Ku Klux Klan leader Nathan Bedford Forrest; to farmland owned by James R. Binford, an original legal architect of Jim Crow. It’s borne witness to the creation of the blues at Dockery Plantation; to the erasure of a Native American community; and, of course, to the death of Till. With so much violent history in such proximity, this project almost inevitably became a mapping. That led me on a hunt for the very first map of this land, which was likely drawn in 1544 by a Spanish cartographer named Alonso de Santa Cruz. (There had been earlier maps of the North American shoreline, but none of the interior until this one.)

4. Things that happened to me on Saturday. I was able to get my 10-mile run in before taking Fitsum to his last cross-country practice, the district meet is on Monday. I dropped him off at 7:45 and headed to the grocery store. Checking out from the grocery store, the guy behind me said “Looks like the grandchildren are coming over this weekend.” I had to tell him that I’m not a grandfather, but a father to a 12-year old and 14-year old. I suppose I could have grandchildren and I can’t imagine that. We also went to Fitsum’s band competition in Mansfield and some guy gave us two unused wristbands so we saved $30 today and feel good about that.

5. The header picture is from our drive to the school yesterday morning. Amazing sunrise.

I am trying to get back on track with this thing. I don’t know what I will, but let’s try.

1. I am very guilty of pouring and not drinking with some things in my life. Gotta start drinking.

2. I keep writing about how great Dirt is and if you don’t write all of these places down to go visit, I don’t know that I’ll do anything, but you should. You get to know the places and it makes me want to eat.

Okay, it’s Aspen, Carbondale, Paonia, Hooper, and Denver.

3. I finished The Gentleman on Netflix and it was terrific. Guy Ritchie at his best and the acting was superb. Not only that, but the costumes, yes, I noticed how they dressed, and it was so British and fantastic. Go watch The Gentleman, season 2 is on it’s way.

4. The boys take their lunches every day and I’m the dad that started writing them messages on their lunch sacks each day. I have no idea if they even notice, but I do it regardless. I have my go-to sayings and they are usually intended to just be encouraging. Nothing special; however, every Friday I always write, “Be Kind. Always.”

5. I ran a 50k with my brother (it was great) and it was more difficult than it needed to be. I think I’ve already mentioned previously that I hurt my back, lost so much strength and muscle in my left leg that my leg would buckle because of the weakness. I am quite proud that I was able to figure out how to run 30 miles, going from not being able to walk upright to being able to walk across a finish line. That’s a very long story short, but I would like to emphasize and implore you to do hard and difficult things.

Last weekend I had the opportunity to visit my brother in Seattle (Kent actually) and he has a 4-year and a 2-year old, he’s basically the same age when I had Fitsum and Youssouf (althought Youssouf had not come home yet when he was 2), he’s 40 now and I would have been 40 then when Fits was 4.

Because they are small, they make messes and their house is kid-messy because they play and pretend and there’s always something out. Whether it be, toys on the floor, or books all around and on couches and blanket forts were in a permanent install mode rather than temporary. The older that your kids get the more that those messes disappear and without a doubt, those messes made me nostalgic for the boys to be younger once again. I wish I had known now that I’d miss the Legos being constantly out and there being a constant state of some sort of build. Those days are gone and the only Legos that are out are confined to a small table in the office that Fitsum has had for such a long time.

And the awareness of that, the toy messes that are now all cleaned up and will likely no longer be there make me wish for those things again. It was David Foster Wallace who had said that the most important type of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort. The awareness part is what hit me when I saw the toy flowers, and learning about a new show and figures that I had never heard of because life moves faster than you want it to. And this comes full circle because as my brother’s best man, I quoted David Foster Wallace after his wedding.

“The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day.”

So that means putting down your phone and understanding that the messes will not always be there. They will disappear, but you should be aware of those things because they are fleeting and sensing those things and understanding that they will not always be there because your kids’ messes will involve tough situations and a girlfriend or a boyfriend and broken hearts. Those are still messes and they will still need cleaning up, but even those things will fade away too.

“The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day.
That is real freedom.
That is being taught how to think.
The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the “rat race” — the constant, gnawing sense of having had and lost some infinite thing.”

As parents, enjoy those messes no matter what they are because your kids need you for all of them.

Fitsum had his first dance where he asked a girl to go with him and we picked her up, and met her parents, and did all of those things, so we are on the wrong side of childhood and it makes me certainly wistful for those messes now more than ever. Luckily, when he came home from the dance he spent the next 3 hours building mini-figs so maybe we are in that gray area between adulthood and childhood and I’m not sure that I’m ready to let go.