Good List Week 14
New York Historical
For my artist date this week, I decided to go to a museum. I first went to the library to pick up a museum pass; from their available selection, I chose the New York Historical. I had never been, and it was a good excuse to get into the city, plus I knew that the museum has the epic Course of Empire series by Thomas Cole.
I had an uneventful time getting into the city, even with the heat wave. I met my sister for coffee. Then I ventured off to the museum, located just beside the Natural History Museum. I figured that the Historical would be small, judging from the outside, but it felt large once inside: three floors of exhibits, plus a mini movie theater with repeating documentaries on the hour. I noticed they host free tours, and I was just a little early so I explored on my own for a bit, chancing upon the new democracy exhibit which includes Course of Empire.
Okay maybe I am a little obsessed with this series. I also do admit to having prints of Voyage of Life hanging on my walls. What can I say, I love epics, and anything that gets to the cyclical nature of existence. Face to face with the series at last, I was impressed by the scale. It's one feature that computer screens can't replicate: the big-ness of the paintings, the relative scales between them (Consummation being larger than the other four). The level of detail is just incredible, with small stories told in the grander scheme: in the Arcadian, a solitary mathematician draws in the dirt, while a shepherd tends his sheep.
I got onto the tour, which even with more than an hour skipped over multiple exhibits, focusing on some of the key items, mostly of primary historical and local interest: Washington's inauguration chair, Washington's army cot, Thomas Nast's snake vase. I was impressed to hear of the latter that Thomas Nast was offered a half million dollar bribe by Boss Tweed to quit making cartoons of him; Nast turned the money down and saw Tweed locked up in jail. That kind of moral virtue towards corruption in politics and business is sorely lacking today. By chance I just read Sarah Wynn Williams' Careless People, and I am reminded of her own courage in sharing about Facebook's evil-doings at significant financial risk to herself (borne out in the punishments since doled out!).
My inner teen is excited by stories of justice and courage like these. It's long been an inner drive of mine to call out injustice, and it has been a frequent source of conflict for myself at work, albeit the retaliation on a significantly smaller scale than Nast or Williams experienced. I'm also reminded of the line from The Republic: justice is determined by those with the power to enforce it. Stories of courageous truth tellers remind me that the powerful are not invulnerable.
5k
On July 4th, I woke up at 5am to run a 5k race! It's not my first 5k, I ran one in college a decade ago. But I have not run since. I injured my foot some years back and stayed away from high-impact cardio. Recently, I've been feeling much better physically, and with a year of yoga under my belt, I felt ready to take on a new physical challenge. I trained on a modified couch-to-5k schedule, slowly ramping up mileage over the course of five weeks. I ran in rain, cold, heat, and wind; some days were quiet and peaceful, other days the wood chippers blared in my ears as if I was running from some mechanical nightmare.
All in all I kept at it with my training schedule, and with the generous time allotted I ran 3 practice 5ks before the race. Talking with a friend, I set myself the final goal of finishing, healthy. My secondary goal was a 45 minute finish; my training times were in the 46-48 minute range so this felt do-able.
Day of the race, my girlfriend asked me how I was feeling, and I was surprised to find myself saying that I felt totally indifferent. How could that be?! I had spent a month training 3x per week. I realized this was a fear response; avoidance. Growing up, I was expected to be perfect. This started with school grades: report cards were practically judgments from God, as anything less than straight A's meant intense shaming and guilting ("Mr A Minus" was my father's nickname for me after one imperfect report card). Beyond school, I ran track for a semester in high school, where I was mostly motivated by chasing girls and copying my older brother. My father showed up for one track meet before telling me, "Why would I come to watch you lose?" and never showing up again (including the regional track meet where, in the middle of the race, my shoes came off and I finished in just my socks - my coach was quite proud that I didn't give up).
Needless to say, I had my share of baggage around running, so shutting down before the race was a defense mechanism to avoid past pains. I comforted my inner teenager who felt so hurt, and I embraced the race as best I could, knowing that like most teens, he'll come around eventually. That's how I found myself Saturday morning, eating my hardboiled eggs and heading to the race. The weather reports were iffy ahead of time; that morning it was a nice and dry 80 degrees at 8am. I was joined on the race by a friend, and we paced each other the entire time. I felt great running, the energy from the other runners and supporters was infectious. It showed in my performance: I averaged 12 minute miles and finished in 37 minutes flat! I was shocked, I beat my wildest expectations.
My automatically-moving-goalposts ramped up that evening, and I found myself looking up 10k races and training schedules. After some calm, I decided to do some exploratory training towards a 10k, with the goal of running a Halloween race (there's a race in Sleepy Hollow - how spooky!). If I like the training, and find it fits well into my structure, then I'll keep at it. If not, I'm thrilled that I set and achieved this personal goal.
Side note: the Good List Visualizer has been updated to include these new entries.