Thought For The Day

The best way to predict the future is to create it.
- Unknown -

One Way Or Another

Last night was our debut as ushers at the Melody Tent in Hyannis, and it went well. We got to see Blondie, with lead singer Debbie Harry. She's in her 50's, but she can still rock. It's not often that you get to see a band that is a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, so it was pretty neat. My next show is next Saturday with Lyle Lovett.

Thought For The Day

Going to work for a large company is like getting on a train. Are you going sixty miles an hour, or is the train going sixty miles an hour and you're just sitting still?
- J. Paul Getty -

Poem For The Day

The man who wins is the average man,
Not built on any particular plan;
Not blessed with any particular luck,
Just steady and earnest and full of pluck.
The man who wins is the man who works,
Who neither labor nor trouble shirks;
Who uses his hands, his head, his eyes.
The man who wins is the man who tries.
- Conrad Hilton -

More George Sheehan

Cross-Country--Winning at Van Cortlandt Park

When I was in school, I ran from the day classes began in September until they closed the doors in June. Now I run from the beginning of the year until its end. The Road Runners Club schedule on the kitchen bulletin board has over 140 races extending from January to December.

So distance running is a sport for everyday of my life. There is no need to pack my gear until running starts again. It begins every day. And every time of year is a time for running. I love all of that ever-recurring cycle of the year.

But, like the lover who loves the girl he's near and clings to the kiss he's close to and fancies the face he faces, the season I love best is the one that's here. Soon I will see winter as Paradise, then spring as another Eden, and later summer as the Promised Land. But for now, autumn is my season in heaven.

The October air does that. Crisp, clear, invigorating. Carrying every sound. Demanding attention. And the weather perfect for running. The runner is as sensitive to the weather as a Stradivarius. And it is autumn that makes me go best. I am living the life my youth had promised me. Living at the top of my powers. No wonder that Yeats, who saw spring as youth and summer as adolescence, saw autumn as manhood.

And autumn is heaven because there are races to do that best, to run at that peak, to manifest that manhood. And make no mistake, it is in action that we are in heaven.

Heaven is not quiet, said Yeats. There the lover still loves, but with greater passion; the rider still rides, but the horse goes like the wind; and the battle goes on. The runner still races.

And for now, in this forever that is autumn, cross-country is the best of all races. That is where I began. In Autumn with cross-country. It was my first taste of running and it is good to taste it again.

Cross-country is free running at its best. Just me and the land. Me and that crisp air. Me and the leaves underfoot. Me and the silent hills. That's cross-country. Just me and the breathing and the leaves crunching underfoot on these silent hills. Everything around me is dead or dying and I feel reborn. I am at my best.

And it is a best, a rebirth that I experience alone. Nature is the only spectator. On other seasons, in other races, there are people to cheer and encourage or just to watch. Curious onlookers. But not in cross-country. Within minutes, I am alone with my fellow runners. Minutes later and I am separated even from them. Yards ahead or yards behind, they are out of my line of thought, beyond the horizon of my mind.

I am alone on the back hills of Van Cortlandt. And the course that tested me as a teenager is testing me again. And again I suffer on hills that made me suffer when I was eighteen. Again I fly down the hills I flew down in bygone years. And again I come out of those hills facing an all-out fight to the finish with any runner close to me.

And that was the way it was at Van Cortlandt last week. Nine miles, three times over those back hills. The first three-mile loop oddly the most painful. Then the second loop not quite as bad. And finally the third time actually running at the hills and conquering them. So that when I came out on the flat, the man I had to beat was only thirty yards ahead.

Only in another autumn, in another season in heaven, will I relive that finish. An impossible quarter-mile sprint and then holding on to the man I had just beaten so I wouldn't fall down. Hearing his heart pounding against my ear and my own beating in unison. Knowing only that and a world suddenly filled with friends saying nice things to an aging man who felt ageless in autumn.

Quote Of The Year

"There is no way the Celtics can come back from this far down - in L.A.."

- NBA Analyst Mark Jackson, at half-time of game 4 with the Celtics behind 58-40 -

Thought For The Day

Self reliance is the only road to true freedom, and being one's own person is it's ultimate reward.
- Patricia Simpson -

Tiger Woods

Just when you think you've seen it all from Tiger Woods, he gets even better. Has there ever been a more clutch performance in sports than Tiger on Saturday when he made one impossible shot after another, Sunday when he was one shot behind with two holes to play, and Monday's playoff? Every time he needed a big shot, he made it.

The golfer/commentator, Andy North, called it, not only the greatest U.S. Open ever, but the greatest golf tournament ever. As long as golf is played, people will talk about this tournament, with all the twist and turns, the emotional roller coaster, and the amazing shots.

And let's not forget about Rocco Mediate. Everyone deals with pressure in different ways, and Rocco does it by joking with the fans and talking non-stop. But if his putter hadn't failed him several times on short putts, he would have been the champion. Those three foot monsters got him in the end.

Thought For The Day

Find a job you like and you add five days to every week.
- H. Jackson Brown -