Weekend warrior - Originally posted to BMGS 1.0 on November 1, 2009

It’s opening night for the Celtics tonight.

I think this could be the best season the Celtics have had since the early 90s, when we said goodbye over several years and for several reasons to Larry Joe Bird, Chief, DJ, McHale, Reggie Lewis and Lenny Bias. There is talk of a new Big Three, which of course will be nothing but heresy unless and until the new guys hang a flag.

Back in the 80s, when Larry was the king of this city and I had a third of a front-row season ticket at the old Garden through several amazing seasons, I also had a moment of totally unintended athletic competition with Larry Joe Bird.

I was in my 30s, mind you, and had been doing a little running. Enough to compete as a weekend warrior in an occasional 10K or 5-miler and to finish somewhere in the middle of the pack. Long before Big Man Getting Smaller, I was one of those guys of whom it was sometimes said, “Moves well for a big man.” I probably went around 220 or 225 at the time.

One weekend in March, a bit before St. Paddy’s day, the Celtics organization was the primary sponsor of a road race they called the “Shamrock Classic,” making a circuit around the North End and the Waterfront. I found out that the race would include something fair uncommon in those days, in addition to the various age groups, a “Clydesdale” division for guys over 210.

The race started and finished in front of the Garden. I wasn’t fast, but I was fast enough that I figured there was a good chance that the Clydesdale trophy might have my name on it, even though there was a huge field, pumped up by Celtics marketing.

I started toward the back of the pack and and picked guys off as I went along. I can’t remember now how long the race was, or what my time was, but I did fairly well, and when I finished I got a cold beer and waited for the results print-outs to get posted on a brick wall across the street from the Garden. I thought I had a decent shot.

Finally they posted the sheet with the Clydesdale winner on it. I had just about convinced myself that another fat guy could not have beaten me.

I squinted in the sunlight to read the name of the Clydesdale winner, and I was right. Another fat guy had not beaten me.

The Clydesdale winner was a 6’9”, 239-pound guy from French Lick, Indiana, who was about 10 years younger than me. He kicked my ass.

He wore number 33, as he always did. This is also the number of pounds the Big Man Getting Smaller has lost in the past 9 weeks.

Happy Celtics Opening Day, Larry. Here’s a song for you.


I feel lucky that I somehow grew up to be somebody who appreciates sports. A fan. And I feel doubly lucky to be living in Boston throughout so much of the past 50 years. Not everyone sees any significance in what guys like Bird, Russ, Pedro, Bobby Orr, Big Papi, Yaz, Cooz, DJ, Brady, Flutie, the Splinter, Rodgers, Joanie, and El Tiante did when they strapped them on. I do. And nobody ever did more credit to any team's uniform than Larry Bird did when he stepped on the parquet as a Celtic.

Thursday's Soundtrack

This is kind of a self-improvement song. The video is Jewel's cover, yodeling and all, but here is a link to the Indigo Girls' original. Words and music by IG Emily Saliers.

Actually I think the yodeling is by Woody's granddaughter (and Arlo's daughter) Sarah Lee Guthrie. The song is "Closer to Fine." I remember the first time I played it for my daughter Kippy when she was about 11. She didn't give it a high rating. She said it sounded like a sound they'd sing around the campfire at Farm & Wilderness. No doubt.

Catastrophic - Originally posted to BMGS 1.0, October 24, 2007

Catastrophic
Originally posted to BMGS 1.0 on Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Fire. A few months ago, when I read Cormac McCarthy's The Road, I didn't get it about the fire. His fire-ravaged post-apocalyptic earth was perhaps the result of nuclear disaster, yet now, at the same time, I am beginning to get it about fire. The fire could keep coming. It isn't hellfire, but it isn't an accident either. Water here, fire there. Out there, it is the driest it has been in over a century. The planet will have the last word.

I just spoke to my daughter Kip on the phone. She's a transplanted Boston girl making her way in LA, but the last few days she has been at her grandmother's in La Jolla, surrounded by smoke. It's hard to get my head around what this experience must be like there, with ash falling like a bad joke from the sky everywhere, smoke rising up in frightening billows, and lovely La Jolla overfilled with people scared to death of where they have come from and not knowing when or if their lives will still be there when they go back.

It is every bit as frightening and catastrophic as 9.11, but it remains to be seen if it will inspire a fightback. There are causes, but they do not submit easily to campaigns of hate, being so close at hand. There are things that could be done, but they would take discipline and rigor and real concern about people and the planet. They do not involve invading any other countries. They may require a look in the mirror.

I shouldn't get started. This is no time for ranting, is it? I'm not sure. I am proud of my daughter for helping out at Qualcomm, and I hope that she doesn't inhale too much smoke.

*************************************************************************

Unencumbered

Wednesday's Soundtrack

That was me at 17, in 1967, making a move in a race on a Saturday afternoon in October. It's good, even now, to be able to summon that kid's heart and toughness for an important struggle, or, sometimes, just to get through the day. He was always ready. He could always do what had to be done. Whatever it took, day or night. Good chance he passed that guy just ahead of him in the teeshirt.

I figure that I will be living in whatever I make of my body for another 30 years. I know I'll never have that one back, too many nicks and dings. But I can get back a lot closer to that, and why wouldn't it be worth the effort?

Stood there boldly
Sweatin in the sun
Felt like a million
Felt like number one
The height of summer
I'd never felt that strong
Like a rock

I was eighteen
Didn't have a care
Working for peanuts
Not a dime to spare
But I was lean and
Solid everywhere
Like a rock

My hands were steady
My eyes were clear and bright
My walk had purpose
My steps were quick and light
And I held firmly
To what I felt was right
Like a rock

Like a rock, I was strong as I could be
Like a rock, nothin ever got to me
Like a rock, I was something to see
Like a rock

And I stood arrow straight
Unencumbered by the weight
Of all these hustlers and their schemes
I stood proud, I stood tall
High above it all
I still believed in my dreams

Twenty years now
Where'd they go?
Twenty years
I dont know
Sit and I wonder sometimes
Where theyve gone

And sometimes late at night
When I'm bathed in the firelight
The moon comes callin a ghostly white
And I recall
Recall

Like a rock. standin arrow straight
Like a rock, chargin from the gate
Like a rock, carryin the weight
Like a rock

Like a rock, the sun upon my skin
Like a rock, hard against the wind
Like a rock, I see myself again
Like a rock

Words and music by Bob Seger

Special bonus track, apropos of nada

Talkin Bout My Generation

20 laps in the pool this morning, and I'm feeling a little less unfamiliar in the water each day. I swam every day as a kid -- who didn't? -- and got all the certifications and junior lifesaving badges, etc. But it's been, I dunno, probably 40 years since I did any significant amount of real swimming. I always preferred running, basketball, soccer, baseball and softball, and just about anything else I could do. But all those other things took their toll, and I am lucky to have swimming now, because it is working for me and it isn't beating me up the way any of those other things.

The other thing that's fun about these morning swims is that, in addition to perhaps doing a bit to hold off my personal aging process, I'm also getting a pretty good glimpse of where I am headed, age-wise. There are usually about a dozen people in the pool when I step in around 7:15 or so, and I am often the youngest among us. The men and women are friendly and solicitous, we exchange greetings, and some offer some words of encouragement -- "Good to see you back here today" or things of that nature -- since they may recognize I am, er, just getting my feet wet at this. I can see that for many of them the daily visit to the pool is a social event as well as an exercise regimen, which is as it should be.

I may be younger than they are, but I feel at home with them. The music that is piped into the pool area during the morning adult swim period is heavy on standards from the 1940s and 50s. "Is that Al Martino?" someone asked today about a finger-snapper lodged between songs by Sinatra and Tom Jones. No problem. We're all comfortable. Toward the end of my pool time most days the demographic changes as 30- and 40-something moms come in after dropped their kids off at school. That's fine, and it's not like it's uncomfortable, but I will say that I feel closer to the group that is older than the one that is younger. I'm just hoping I live long enough to enjoy my 60s and 70s as much as they are enjoying theirs. And to give myself to keep making my health as much of a priority as they are making theirs.

* * *

I had a very nice dinner and visit with my daughter Kippy tonight.

She just hit town from New York last night after finishing her work on the Public Theater production of Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, and she is starting work on an exciting new project to create a new play for the Ensemble Studio Theater through a grant from the Sloan Foundation.

I picked her up around 6:30 and we went to an old favorite where we've been dining together since she was about 8 years old, the Acapulco Restaurant in Jamaica Plain. It was comfortable and a bit nostalgic, and I ordered what I've been ordering there for over 20 years, Pollo al cilantro. Delicious, as always. And just for tonight, i did not count calories. Or chips.

Pheromones Redux: Adrienne Campbell-Holt

"Pheromones" is an occasional feature of this blog, in which I will share and share alike from among the reader creations and suggestions that flow back toward me. Feel free to send yours in to me either as comments on the blog or by sending me an email at hppress@gmail.com. In the next few days I will re-post a few past entries that may interest you:

Pheromones - December 8, 2007 - Adrienne Campbell-Holt

Turns out Stephen King's son is a novelist named Joe Hill. I dreamed I saw him. It's kind of funny, though, the things that any of us do to give our children a boost, or to give them distance, or to try not to seem to be giving them a boost.

I am so proud of my daughter Adrienne Campbell-Holt, mentioned here occasionally as Kippy. She is an actor, a writer, a director, a dancer, an artist, a blogger, a runner, a choreographer, a comedienne, a teacher, an arts administrator, a lefty, and a Sox fan. She is bo-coastal, not that there's anything wrong with that. She is at home in LA, Brooklyn, and Dorchester. As you can see above, she is a photographer too. But above all else, as she says on her blog, "you will never meet anyone else like me. I love, and also dance, harder than most people."

There are many other remarkable photographs on her blog, Adventures with Blue Car. And many powerful words well worth reading.

It is clear from her blog that we must see Into the Wild. And so I will.

(Update: Happily, I got to see Into the Wild with Adrienne, which doubled my enjoyment of a terrific movie. More recently, just this past weekend, I got to see the latest blossoming forth of Adrienne's amazing creativity -- she is assistant director of Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson at the Public -- and to celebrate her birthday with a lovely outdoor brunch at 5 Front Street under Walt's bridge).