Running sans ipod. . .

is exactly what I did last week when I ran the Valpo half marathon. For those of you keeping score at home (and I suspect that total is exactly zero) I ran that 13.1 miles in 1:41:09. Or something approximating that. It was about a 7:43, 7:44 average pace. But the point is--it was the first race I ran without music. Since they've technically been banned from sanctioned events (most people wear them anyway) I've been experimenting with doing long runs without them.



To my suprise, I've found I've enjoyed it. During the race I actually got to have a few conversations with fellow runners. And you feel--if you'll forgive the slightly new agey feel to this--more connected to your own body as you run. I still enjoy the ipod, especially doing intervals--everyone wants to feel badass when they are doing speedwork--but the long runs take on this kinetic energy of their own when you run sans music. And running sans ipod didn't seem to hurt my time. That half last Saturday was a PR.



Book of the Week: A People's History of American Empire by Howard Zinn.



It's a graphic history version. The book goes through the U.S.'s efforts--despite its own stated rhetoric--to control and manipulate colonial interests. It is, as you might imagine, depressing. Anyone for a comic book version of Wounded Knee? A real barrel of laughs it isn't.



But a slightly more important problem: it lacks context and nuance. Take the Wounded Knee massacre for instance. That was an awful chapter in American history. But because of the way it is presented in this book it isn't clear what motivated that massacre, what followed it, and the way it impacted the continuing history of Native Americans and their continuing interactions with the American government. We just roll on to the next atrocity, and the next time that America hypocritically intervened in another people's history, ostensibly to help them, but really to allocate resources for ourselves. This 'greatest hits' approach to American Empire's most awful moments superficially points out that the U.S. often hasn't lived up to its democratic ideals, but fails to diagnose, with any real nuance, the underlying problems, whatever they may be.



Am I expecting too much from a graphic book? I don't think so. I've read some really perceptive graphic memoirs as of late that presented nuance and sophistication in their approach to complex psychological problems. Why can't I expect trenchant political and historical analysis from a graphic history? I'm sure the book's author and the people who produced the book will argue that quite a few people simply need to be reminded that this history exists. And they are, sadly, probably too correct.



But that's what I read last week. I hope whoever reads this is doing well.