It may sound weird to you, but there’s not a run that I go on that does not lead to me putting something down in my runner diary notes.
Maybe that started back in the Stone Age (OK, 1976) when I first started running. In those days you didn’t run wearing headphones. I mean, it may seem odd but the Sony Walkman, that once popular walkaround listening device, wasn’t on store shelves until 1979. So, I didn’t have in choice.
That began my practice of making a point of memorizing and writing down at least three separate facts, or things or writing prompts on each and every run. It is something I still do today, almost fifty years later.
For example, the other day I made a point of noting name honorees made for street corners in the Brooklyn ’hoods that I run in:
Bronson Binger (Hoyt and Dean streets)
Leslie Lewis (Wyckoff and Bond streets)
And what is certainly the most perfect name I’ve seen yet to mark the grandiosely weird moment we are living through now in American politics:
Liar Liar (The name of a new restaurant moving into the space formerly occupied by Freeks Mill at Nevins and Sackett streets)
Often the words will linger, in the journal. Not growing into anything bigger. But sometimes, that’s not the case. Sometimes, by looking into the fabulously sounding name of Bronson Binger, for example, I’ll find out that Bronson Binger was a fifth generation New Yorker, architect, preservationist who worked to keep the skyline from resembling, well, the way the new Gowanus Canal neighborhood, not far from this corner.
That’s cool, right? And every day is different (and headphone-less)!
Thanks for reading, folks!
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