Here’s a great quote from Kristine Holmgren in an interview I read to day at MinnPost.com:

If you never go outside your peer group, you’re only going to see the world the way your peers see it.

The impact that my peers’ opinions have on my opinions is fairly obvious. If I have a conversation with someone, or several someones within my peer group wherein we share opinions and I discover that I’m in the minority, I’ll have a tendency to moderate my opinions toward theirs. It may not be 100% agreement, but a few percentage points toward theirs at least. As time passes, this happens over and over and over, not unlike the impact that water has on a seemly indestructible stone stuck in the bed of a river.

Here’s the full interview.

Good news! Albert Lea was chosen by AARP / Blue Zones City Makeover to be the next “Blue Zone” community. There are several reasons why Albert Lea was chosen. Among them, our size, the average health of our population and the fact that we have ample numbers of folks who are considered to be in the “Blue Zone” age bracket.

Jen I and just ordered the book, which is a New York Times Bestseller: “Blue Zones: Lessons for Living Longer from the People Who’ve Lived the Longest.” From what I’ve read about the book, it stresses stuff like eating right and building community. It makes perfect sense that the community surrounding a person would have tremendous impact on their health and well-being.

As I skim through the “Blue Zone” website, I see pages of fantastic articles which all get to the core of what makes people happy and healthy. The author of the book, Dan Buettner, is a Minnesotan with a very important vision about how to improve the quality of life, not just for older folks, but for people of all ages, and I’m confident that this “Blue Zone” effort in our community will be extremely well-received.

Here’s the article in the Albert Lea Tribune about Blue Zone folks choosing Albert Lea.

Welcome Buettner, Blue Zone and AARP!

I’ve started another blog. I’ll be keeping “and no one heard a word,” but will also write a blog at the Albert Lea Tribune. It’s called Saint Thomas Avenue.

As for workouts, here’s what I did last week:

After my race on Monday, I took Tuesday off. Then, on Wednesday, I ran about 60 minutes easy. On Thursday, I ran 30 minutes easy with some striders. Friday, I ran one of my more favorite workouts which was 6×800 meters at threshold pace, which for me when like this: 3:21, 3:24, 3:22, 3:20, 3:23, and 3:20. It was not a particularly hard work out, but it wasn’t easy either. I took about a minute rest between each 800. The work-out included a 10 minute warm-up and a 10-minute cool-down.

I took Saturday off. On Sunday night I ran 20 minutes at threshold pace through the county fairgrounds. Actually, it was probably less than threshold pace, but fun to run through the fairgrounds. On Monday I played 18 holes of golf with no cart, so that was some good walking. No run that day. I didn’t run today. Tomorrow, we’ll see, but I’m thinking another 60 minute run would be appropriate. I have a sore hamstring so I’m not hesitating to let off on the mileage a little. I’m aiming for a hard work-out on Thursday of this week, something easy on Friday and possibly something hard on Saturday, but it will be hard to get in since I’ll be in Rochester all day for the state DFL convention. My guess is that I’ll have to do something hard on Sunday instead. I’m gearing up for a race in Janesville on the 14th.

On the whole, I’m not doing a ton of mileage. Maybe after Janesville I’ll take fewer days off and see if I can get some solid training in before another race in St. Peter on the 4th of July.

I’m sure Reuters will love me for pointing this out. But they mistakenly called Obama, Osama in an article published minutes ago. This is probably the hundredth time that a publication has done this. I thought this one was particularly funny, though. It reads, “The New York senator dismissed Osama’s criticism over the economy, saying his plans fell short on extending health care to the all Americans, on dealing with the mortgage crisis and expanding the sue of renewable energy.”

I’m in another show this winter: “She Loves Me.” It’s a Broadway Musical set in the 1930’s. So far at the Albert Lea Community Theater I’ve only done shows with three word titles. The show before this one, of course, was “Don’t Hug Me.” “She Loves Me” is actually quite different than “Don’t Hug Me.” For one, “Don’t Hug Me” is a contemporary reflection on life in a tavern in Northern Minnesota. “She Loves Me,” on the other hand, takes place in a parfumerie.

My character, Georg, the male lead, is the head clerk at Maracek’s parfumerie. He has a wonderful relationship with his pen pal, who he affectionately calls “Dear Friend.” And he has a terrible relationship with a woman recently hired by Maracek: Amalia. They’ve been arguing with each other since the day she sold Maracek’s first “genuine leather musical cigarette box.”

As the story progresses, however, Georg learns that Amalia, who he thought he couldn’t stand, is actually “Dear Friend.” At first he’s in denial, but by the end of the show Georg and Amalia finally get over their arguments, sing to each other, and prance off the stage together. An abbreviated synopsis…to say the least. There are really piles of wonderful subplots, characters and scenes throughout the show.

Being an untrained vocalist, the hardest part of this show for me is the singing. I actually had to get a couple voice lessons just to get more comfortable reaching notes outside my range. I do a touch of falsetto when I have to reach those notes. There were other regular chest-voice notes that I’d never thought I’d get that I can reach just fine now…thanks to my lessons and a ton of practice. It’s hard to turn a contemporary folk singer/songwriter into a Broadway-type singer. I figure I still have a ways to go. (big smile)

The show is a blast. We’ve got a fantastic director, cast and crew. I’m a little blown away, however, at how much different this show is from “Don’t Hug Me.” Both shows together have taught me a ton about singing and acting. All at once I’ve gained confidence and reached new heights of…humility. I’ve a great respect for professional, well-trained singers. They can do amazing things with their voices.

If you’re in Southern Minnesota this February 7, 8 or 9, come see us perform at 7:30pm at the Albert Lea Community Theater!! You’ll love it!

Last weekend Jen and I ran a road race in Marshall, MN (see photo); it’s a 10k run that we did last year as well. My latest preoccupation has been running road races…seeing if I can either get first or second in my age division in these smaller races that are at least an hour from Minneapolis-St. Paul. As a general rule, the further you get from the big city, the less stiff the competition is.

This morning my dad and I ran an 8K race in Janesville, MN. I lucked out and managed to get 1st in my 30-39 age division there. (My dad got 2nd in his age division. Nice job, Dad!) Though I’m not running as fast as I did in college, my pace seems to be good enough to place. In the Marshall race, I got second in my age division…and so did Jen. Earlier in the spring I won the Fountain Lake Five here in Albert Lea, but only because the folks who beat me last year weren’t there this year.

Anyway, all that said. As far as running goes, about the only things I’ve got going for me are my skinniness and my determination. When I started running in jr. high I was slowest on the team…and when I moved up to high school my freshman year, my coach would sometimes make me run with the girls because I was still mighty slow…for a guy. Over time, however, after dying nearly every day of cross country practice, I started to get better. Eventually I went on to run as a mediocre runner at Luther College; 25th man on a team of about 50. Only in the last couple years have I started to get back into racing. It’s so much fun.

I’ve been consistently running at about 6:36 pace per mile for 8k’s and 10k’s…without having done a huge amount of training. I’d like to see if I can get closer to 6:20 pace, however. My fastest mile pace for the 10k in college was about 5:40…so I’m a little ways off from that, but we did a TON of training in college…so I can’t expect to reach that pace given my current regimen.

My relationship with Shawn Colvin’s music began when I hitchhiked across the country from Minnesota to Seattle in 1997. I had a small rucksack for my clothes and a few books. One memory in particular lives vividly in my mind. As a South Dakota sun began to set, I spotted a small grove off trees just off the highway, adjacent to a trickling creek.

As I sat down in the tall, haphazardly grown grass, mosquitoes attacked me as though my vagabond presence proved a significant offense on their normally undisturbed rogue habitat. Luckily, I had the blue tarp that my parents had given me for my birthday weeks before. I pulled it over my head, trading the cool summer breeze for the stagnant heat of my own body. (I wished to sweat beneath a plastic tarp rather than listen to mosquitoes as they drew enough blood from me to supply a Red Cross truck load of transfusions.)

Fumbling through my rucksack, reaching for my yellow Sony Walkman, I put the ear bud headphones in my ears. I pressed the button marked with a triangle turned on its side: play. Several songs into the mix tape I’d listened to more than a hundred times already I heard the beginning of Shawn Colvin’s “Steady On.” Of all the songs on this tape “Steady On” spoke to me most, and more so than ever on this evening in particular.

Here are the lyrics:

Steady On
S. Colvin – J. Leventhal

China gets broken
And it will never be the same
Boats on the ocean
Find their way back again
I am weaving
Like a drunkard
Like a balloon up in the air
I am needing a puncture and someone
To point me somewhere
I’m gonna keep my head on straight
I just hope it’s not too late
Open up the gate I go straight on, steady on

I was feeling imploded
A wooden smile, a wooden heart
The things exploded
Like rockets in the dark
Now I’m pulling out splinters
And I’m off to hibernate somewhere
For the nuclear winter
Of another love affair

Cause he seemed like a miracle
I ate it up like cereal
But it was something like shrapnel

It’s like ten miles of a two-lane
On a South Dakota wheat plain
In the middle of a hard rain
A slow boat or a fast train
I am gonna keep my head on straight
I’m gonna keep my head on straight

Steady On!

Strange, this blog post began as a review of Colvin’s new album “These Four Walls.” I started to write and memories flooded back. Shucks…and it would’ve been so easy to transition from “Steady On” to “These Four Walls.” Maybe if you listen to the album yourself, you’ll see what I mean.

The Episcopal Diocese of Minnesota held its convention this past weekend in Duluth. I decided it would be fun to tag along with the delegates from my church.

The Right Rev. Steven Charleston served as guest speaker for the convention. The Episcopal Church in the U.S. has undergone difficulties in recent months, partly as a result of their recent appointing a gay bishop. Charleston didn’t waste any time getting to meat of his message.

According to Charleston — President and Dean of Episcopal Divinity School, Cambridge, Massachusetts and former Bishop of Alaska — decision-makers and parishioners must “go together.” He explained that there is room to disagree, and that this disagreeing is a significant part of what makes Episcopalians unique. Not marching like automatons or robots, who all say and believe exactly the same thing, is essential to the life of the Episcopal Church, he argued.

Between stretches of his speech, he laughed and told the crowd how he no longer took himself as seriously as he once did. His black pony tail turned behind him as he walked back and forth.

Charleston joked about how people think they’d have a much purer understanding of Jesus’ teaching if they were alive and walking on the earth with him. In reality, explained Charleston, Jesus’ disciples were just as clueless as any of us.

Just imagine, said Charleston, what it would’ve been like for the disciples who waited anxiously to do what Jesus commanded and all told them is that they ought to love one another.

Perhaps one of the most memorable segments in Charleston’s speech was when he talked about how conservatives will be stuck in Heaven with Hillary Clinton and liberals will be stuck in Heaven with Rush Limbaugh.

Like any great speaker, it is not as much what he said, but how he said it; and how he connected with his audience. By the end of his speech, convention goers were on their feet repeating after him, “Hallelujah!” …many with their hands in the air. These are Episcopalians, mind you.

And I was left feeling like I was ready for a change from thinking like a Lutheran, to thinking like an Episcopalian. Any church that does not equate being faithful with being a robot or an automaton, is my kind of church. Indoctrination is antithetical to faith. And if we do not have the courage to respond to both the authenticity of our convictions and the authenticity of our doubts, our relationship with God is cut short.

So many church-goers fear authenticity because they fear eternal condemnation. But this is not a life lived by faith. Rather, it is a life lived by fear. Only God’s love can free us from condemnation of ourselves, and the perpetual, stagnant condemnation of others.

Walt Whitman’s poem, “All is Truth,” poses some interesting questions which I think are worth discussing. I’ll quote the second stanza because, for me, it is a bit more astonishing than the first:

Meditating among liars, and retreating sternly into myself, I see
that there are really no liars or lies after all,
And that nothing fails its perfect return—And that what are called
lies are perfect returns,
And that each thing exactly represents itself, and what has preceded
it,
And that the truth includes all, and is compact, just as much as
space is compact,
And that there is no flaw or vacuum in the amount of the truth—but
that all is truth without exception;
And henceforth I will go celebrate anything I see or am,
And sing and laugh, and deny nothing.

Read the lines in bold closely. (The whole poem is quite profound, but I’m choosing to focus my effort on those two lines because a readable blog entry can only be so long.) Is Whitman going postmodern on us, suggesting that lies are actually something called “perfect returns”? What are “perfect returns”?

Walt Whitman, are you making excuses for liars? Are you saying that even if someone has lied, they haven’t really…because their words and their actions are merely “perfect returns”? Well, if I may, I think what Whitman is suggesting is that lies are the result of circumstances, situations, consequences, and all the dark shadows in between what is known and unknown about human behavior. No lie is simply a lie unto itself, told from an unaffected island of malevolence.

Though I’m not an emperical determinist, believing that there’s a formula for human behavior and if we simply crack the code we can find out exactly how someone is going to behave, I do think each and every human life and word is of consequence…and are themselves consequences or “perfect returns.” The danger with a notion like this is that some might suggest “perfect returns” are knowable. They aren’t, but the point is not in knowing how everything in life is going to turn out. Rather, the point is that we know life is what it is, not by random chance, but because everything that comes into being is contingent upon that which has come before it; every word, thought, and deed.

Where and I going with this? Forgiveness. Forgiveness isn’t about forgetting the pain that someone has caused us, or about erasing an insult or injury from our minds to ‘let bygones be bygones.’ Instead, forgiveness is the realization that no one is exempt from “perfect returns.” Does this excuse from being held accountable for behaving poorly or for using words we shouldn’t? No, it doesn’t because our lives are married to conseqence, and there will always be good fruits from good actions and bad fruits from bad actions. But it does show us that if we can step back and see “perfect returns,” we find grace, not only for ourselves but for those we encounter in life’s journey.

If we cannot see the “perfect returns” in others, we’ll never be able to see them in ourselves. Which is why, I believe, Jesus says, “Judge not, that ye not be judged.” Whitman concludes, “And henceforth I will go celebrate anything I see or am, / And sing and laugh, and deny nothing.” Here’s a poem I wrote, which is based on Walt Whitman’s “All is Truth.”

Perhaps the most popular way to begin a blog is to say, “Well, it’s been a while since I’ve posted…” So I won’t say that, but at least you’ll know that’s what I’m thinking.

Though I haven’t done much actual writing, it’s been fun posting songs. I usually post them right after I write them. I record them so I don’t forget them and then put them on my blog for kicks. After a while, I start to develop a laundry list of things I want to change about them. I probably shouldn’t rough drafts of songs on my blog, but I can’t resist. There’s something about half-written songs that I find rather interesting. Maybe they’re harder to listen to, but they capture my imagination more than polished, well-recorded tunes do.

Lately, my biggest inspiration for songwriting has been www.pandora.com. What a fantastic place to hear lots of really cool music!! You have the ability to create the best radio stations in the world… simply by giving a thumbs up for songs you like and a thumbs down for songs you don’t. Usually, I’m do busy to do a lot of song rating, but every once in a while I run across a particular style of song that I really must hear again.

You can start off a radio station by giving Pandora a list of bands you like. I find I can get away with simply submitting one band I like, and Pandora delivers a barrage of, like, totally rad music. Lately, I’ve been listening to a radio station formed by telling Pandora I like Modest Mouse. Can’t beat it.

Some days, though, I’m in the mood for mostly instrumental music. No prob; I have a Pandora radio station that plays just that. Anyway, you get the idea.