Save the Fishtown Library!

Tonight, Helen and I attend­ed the ral­ly to save the Fish­town Library. It was great to see such turnout to save our com­mu­ni­ty library. I’m hope­ful that we’ll be able to find a way to save these pre­cious resources in the face of May­or Nut­ter’s dra­con­ian cuts. There sim­ply has to be a bet­ter alter­na­tive than shut­ting down pub­lic pools and libraries and putting res­i­dents at risk by cut­ting fire depart­ment resources.

There’s no ques­tion that we as Amer­i­cans are fac­ing tough times, but I’m dis­ap­point­ed that our lead­ers aren’t will­ing to fight the good fight, rather than fold like paper tigers. Whether it’s the Oba­ma tran­si­tion team try­ing to low­er expec­ta­tions, or it’s May­or Nut­ter sac­ri­fic­ing the things that made his can­di­da­cy attrac­tive to so many Philadel­phi­ans, it’s hard not to be dis­ap­point­ed. We expect more. We expect bet­ter. We’re not get­ting either.

There’s a great piece by Paul Krug­man in today’s New York Times about the fail­ure of F.D.R.‘s New Deal. It only failed because F.D.R. was­n’t aggres­sive enough! If our cur­rent crop of politi­cians are to get us through this cri­sis, they’ll need to be aggres­sive in order to pre­serve our great insti­tu­tions and to build new ones. But they won’t do it with­out con­stant pres­sure from the peo­ple who vot­ed them into office in the first place.

Now it’s our turn to hold them account­able. You did­n’t think that sim­ply elect­ing a bunch of Democ­rats to office would result in Utopia, did you? It’s time to hold their feet to the fire and make them live up to their promises!

Want to get involved? Vis­it the Friends of the Free Library site for more information.

Left 4 Dead Opening Cinematic

It’s been a slow year for new video games for me. I bought Grand Theft Auto 4 at mid­night, then bare­ly played it. I bought Mad­den 2009 and love it, but I’m rarely in the right frame of mind to be active­ly chal­lenged by it.

Now there are some deci­sions to make. I’m look­ing for­ward to Gears of War 2, but am unsure about titles like Dead Space and Left 4 Dead. Both seem to be up my alley; I like third-per­son shoot­ers just fine, espe­cial­ly with the hor­ror twist to keep it inter­est­ing. My main gripe is that it’s not as obvi­ous as last year’s crop of out­stand­ing games that are fun to pick up and play whenever.

What games are you look­ing for­ward to as the hol­i­days near? Chris, if you’re read­ing this, help me out!

Facebook Blows My Mind

A few weeks ago I start­ed writ­ing a post about how Web 2.0 fails folks like me. I’m glad I did­n’t pub­lish it. Why’d I draft it in the first place? Well, for peo­ple like me who were get­ting out of high school and into col­lege in the mid-nineties, just before the Inter­net went wild, it’s tough to see the val­ue in a lot of social media.

It’s tak­en three gen­er­a­tions of major social net­work­ing sites to even scratch the sur­face with my for­mer class­mates, but Face­book seems to have accom­plished some­thing nei­ther Friend­ster nor MySpace could: I’m in touch with folks I haven’t been in touch with for over a decade. Does it make me feel old? A lit­tle, but I can han­dle that when a social net­work does some­thing more than deliv­er­ing tai­lor-made ads.

In the past few weeks, I’ve recon­nect­ed with swathes of peo­ple from my past. I say “swathes” because once you’ve con­nect­ed with one friend, you’re bound to find five to 10 more. Last week I opened a mem­o­ry worm­hole that put me in touch with peo­ple from my exchange year in Den­mark. It’s been amaz­ing sharies sto­ries and pho­tos and also to catch up with peo­ple. Now I’m mak­ing plans to head back to vis­it with Helen next April. That should be a ton of fun.

So while it would’ve been nice to have kept in touch with every­one via email and IM, I’ve found new per­spec­tive. Maybe we’re the last gen­er­a­tion to grow up “dis­con­nect­ed.” For me, it was a chance to dis­tance myself, lit­er­al­ly and fig­u­ra­tive­ly, from my home­town. It was a time to gain some per­spec­tive. Now it’s time to recon­nect, catch up, and rem­i­nisce, and that’s not so bad.

Marathon Training Update: Hot Split Edition

This was a ter­ri­ble week for work­outs. It all start­ed with last Sat­ur­day’s late night Phillies win over Tam­pa and got tougher from there. I man­aged Sun­day’s run okay, but then the dread­ed Mon­day night rain­out that end­ed with me drunk and sleep­ing on the couch. (Helen was trav­el­ing, and I don’t take care of myself very well while she’s away.) I spent Tues­day recov­er­ing as best I could. I woke up a ran a speedy ten on Wednes­day with every inten­tion of run­ning five on Thurs­day, but it was­n’t meant to be. Every­thing was thrown out the win­dow after the Phillies clinched the World Series Wednes­day night.

That’s okay. Shout­ing like a mani­ac at the cor­ner of Broad and Shunk was well worth it.

I was suf­fi­cient­ly rest­ed Sat­ur­day morn­ing to pick up with a 10 mile pace run. That start­ed out great and went down­hill, owed to a few fac­tors, includ­ing sleep depri­va­tion and the fact that I only ate a hoagie and a few Reese’s cups on Friday.

Yes­ter­day I was able to get in a sol­id 20 mile run in 2:36 and change. I dropped about five min­utes off my last 20 mile time. I was aim­ing for an 8 minute mile aver­age, but felt good enough on the run back to bring that down to 7:49. My last mile came in at 6:42 sec­onds. Not too shab­by after run­ning 19, right?

I think I’m at a good place in my train­ing and expect to see my times drop now that Rob and I have com­plet­ed the bulk of the mileage. We have just one week of short train­ing runs before the taper begins. I have a feel­ing that once our bod­ies get time to recov­er, we’ll drop up to 15 sec­onds per mile.

I think I’m on tar­get to run a Boston qual­i­fi­er in my first marathon, an improb­a­ble goal I set for myself back in June. I’m in a state of ner­vous dis­be­lief. I think I’m just going to make friends with whomev­er is run­ning pace for a 3:10 marathon and stick to his or her hip.

I can’t believe the marathon is only a few weeks away. I would’ve nev­er imag­ined feel­ing this good and con­fi­dent when I start­ed twen­ty some odd weeks ago.