Running True Episode 14

Running True Episode 13

Running True Episode 12

Running True Episode 11

Facing my Facebook Addiction...



 Major Tom Video here!

And, of course, the original German version.

This is what I ran in today. Which was a good reflection of how my mind looked, as well.

Here is that Spokesman-Review Article from earlier this month. 

Running True Episode 10...

RUNNING TRUE - Episode Niner!

I think I went a little off the rails here... Here's a link to Spokane's Vagina Monologues 2018.

Running True Episode 8

DO NOT TAKE A SHOT EVERY TIME I SAY "UHM." If you do, you might empty your liquor cabinet.

Running True Confessions Two. Running makes you a stronger person...

This seems like a no-brainer. Running builds your endurance, creates stronger muscles and gives you discipline and resolve. Duh.

I have used running to strengthen myself for many transitions in my life: Starting college, Before USAF OTS, Starting a graduate degree, A new job in advertising and in The Fire Academy when I was hired by the Spokane Fire Department at age 39. I upped my mileage or became more intense in my running for all of these transitions. But, I kind of forgot about it when I started my transition from male to female. My bad.

Last week, I ran 11.5 miles in a slushy snowstorm. Yesterday I ran 13 miles. It was a bitch. But, if I keep this up, my endurance will increase and my muscles will becomes stronger. Whatever happens to me at work and in my private life will certainly also benefit from the effects of increasing my discipline and resolve.

But here’s the thing, in order to get truly stronger, I have to become weaker. There’s no way around it.  After the 13 mile run, my legs were spent, my wind was gone, my brain fried by the time I finished this slog. If you had hit me with a snowball on my last hundred yards, I would have went down, and I might still be laying there.

So, it’s a bit of a paradox and it reminds me of the adage of my old employer - Strategic Air Command - “Peace is our profession,” and the philosophy of "Peace through strength." I would revamp this a little to now say “Peace through Strength through Weakness.” And to get to the heart of why I say this, I would like to share something a little personal with you.

I have been going to counseling for the transgender stuff for almost two years now. I really like my shrink. Her methodology reminds me of what I was taught in my pastoral counseling classes. Don’t lead the patient. Let them discover what they might discover on their own. Be a reflective listener. All this she does and she does it well. She never pushed me one way or the other in any of the decisions I have made. And I think that this has let me own what I already knew - that I am a transgender female.

One day, I really wanted a little more direction from her. I had been telling her how someone who is very close to me said something hurtful to me and my reply was “OK.” I also told her how people at work will often say “I want to ask you something, but I don’t want to offend you.” My reply is always “F@#K you. Go ahead and try to offend me. You can’t.” Toward the end of the session I asked her if there was anything that I should be thinking about until our next visit. She said that she found it interesting that I didn’t have any feelings about the mean thing that was said to me and that I actually seemed to invite offense from my brother and sister firefighters, just in order to ignore it. She asked why that was. My response was “Because I want to win. I will never let anyone ever control my emotions. I would never give them the satisfaction.”

I related how in firefighter culture there is a low disregard for someone who has buttons to push. And if you do have a button to push, it will get pushed continually. I gave her an example of when someone had tried to egg me on by saying something atrocious and very offensive years ago. My response to them was to not get angry but take it to the most extreme level of offensiveness. I grossed them out with my words and they had wished that they had never started anything. In other words, I won. It wasn’t lost on me that, in my younger days, I was a B-52 bombardier and was quite adept at dropping nukes. My counselor thought about this and concluded our session with an “I would spend some time thinking about this.”

I did. And in response, I began a conscious and methodical process of letting down some shields, of breaching a few walls. I have allowed myself (at times) the ability to feel hurt. In doing so, I look back to childhood to see that I have always embraced stoicism. My mom is and was pretty stoic, pretty cool. It was my dad who was the emotional one and usually not in a good way. I had always vowed not to be like that. And it served me well. It made me strong. Or so I thought.

My new fledgling ability to feel hurt, to feel slighted, to feel embarrassed, to feel sad, etc. has not been easy for those closest to me. I am no longer a cement sounding-board, or well-disciplined whipping girl. If something seems like it should hurt me, I let it in (except for at work ‘cuz that ain’t gonna happen). I now try to feel the impact and to be honest about how that feels. This is as hard for me as it is for the one to whom I now say, “That was mean. You hurt my feelings.” Even typing this right now was hard, and makes me feel vulnerable to attack.

Running to become weak to become strong to know peace has made me think a lot about this. Is there more strength that will come to me if I honestly deal with how I feel about something, by first allowing myself to feel something? Running long distances says that there is. I guess in order to be emotionally strong, you have to do the work, and part of doing the work is feeling every step of every uphill mile when someone puts them in front of you.  That’s my theory anyway. We will see.

Running makes you truthful and strong.

Running True Episode 7

Running True - Episode Six

Running True Episode 5

Running True Confessions - Running makes you truthful...

OK, If you are transitioning, any kind of transitioning, I am going to try to sell you on running - right here and right now (and later too)!

#1.  RUNNING MAKES ME  FEEL THE TRUTH AND SHOW THE TRUTH!

OK, I am going to go deeper eventually, but let’s start out at the gut level. Running makes you feel the effect of your dietary decisions. If you eat that piece of pizza right before you go out for your daily run, you will KNOW that you ate that piece of pizza, possibly in a very personal way. There are foods that make me feel better when I run. When I run, my body gives me truthful feedback when I make good or bad dietary decisions.

When you make a habit of running, you get to see improvement. You see yourself getting faster and being able to run longer distances. For some lucky runners, you will even see it in the mirror or on the scale.

In any kind of transition, from starting a new job to starting hormone replacement therapy, there is a need for honest self-evaluation. You are changing, and others’ perceptions of you will change too. You need to have clear eyes and an almost clinical situational awareness. By being honest with yourself, you can make course corrections, if necessary. A habit of running can put you in an honest frame of mind to carry this truthfulness into your personal life. Where are you going? How are you getting there? Is this the right direction? Why are my shoes always untying?

This kind of self-reflection can be difficult. I read a recent survey which showed that a majority of Americans would rather be comfortable than know the truth. Certainly, those two desires are not always mutually exclusive, but if one has to pick, it looks like the big winner is comfort. Not surprisingly, but sadly, Republicans outpolled Democrats in this regard. FoxNews exists for a reason.

When Trump was elected, my plans to come out as transgender took on a new meaning. His past record showed that he would be a president who  perpetually told blatant, easily-refuted lies. These lies, however lame or nonsensical, still made his base comfortable. I was going to, in my own small way, show them what truth looked like by coming out.

A person who is entrenched in ideology can now change the channel instead of having to do the work of changing his mind. In this comfort, he will be sheltered from facts that might make him reconsider his worldview. I often think that if there was a FoxNews Channel for infants, it would make its money by touting the dangers of walking, and how crawling is God’s plan. In other words, keep babies satisfied with where they are so they keep watching.

While running, I am OK with the discomfort of the truth I find myself in the middle of. In fact, sometimes it’s beautiful and profound. Running has trained me to feel and appreciate the beauty of truth even when it is painful.

I now get to bring the discomfort of truth to others in a respectful, loving fashion. When I sit down next to someone in a restaurant, they get to see me as just another human. That guy driving the Hummer might just whiz by me but, a little further down the road, he might realize what he just saw. He will also see that some trans people are not lazy, are part of the community and look as bad in lycra as anyone else. Citizens in my community can see me at work, putting out a fire, starting an IV or a doing something else good for them or their family. I am lucky that I get to be an active agent of the love we citizens of Spokane have for each other.

There is no changing the channel on these experiences. Hopefully, people who are addicted to the comfort of untruths, including lies about LGBT people, will get to see that I am a good person, a hard-working person and a conscientious person, and I am a trans person. Whatever you have been programmed to believe about people different from you, you will have no choice but to stack that programming up against a real, likable (on a good day) trans person like me. This is not a new tactic to change the hearts of people. African-American people, people of different faiths, Hispanic folks and Lesbian and Gay people, and many others, have been doing this for years. They did this by simply being visible and living their lives. This was, and still is, a mundane daily act of courage. Yet, many in our nation have paid dearly for daring to do it.

Being truthful about things that are hard to admit may have huge political implications. If the collective modus operandi of Donald Trump and present Republican politicians was considered a vampire, and if the only way you could kill this vampire was with a metaphoric stake through the heart, that stake would simply be the truth. And my telling of my once-shameful, once-embarrassing truth, was one little hammer swing upon that stake. I invite you all to do the same. For some of you, it will be admitting that you were wrong to vote for President Trump and other Republicans, and that the news source that keeps you comfortable led you astray. Truth, like running, is often uncomfortable. But once you take that first step, the next will be easier and easier.

It’s why fascist regimes do not like subversives.  Subversive displays - art, literature, music, poetry, etc. affect people with the truth on a level that goes beyond our understanding. Often it is life-altering - for the artist and the observer. There is so much risk involved for both; it creates a bond.

In the world in which we now live, running is a subversive truthful act. It will change you and others in unfathomable ways.

TO BE CONTINUED!

Running True - Episode Two - December 9th, 2017

When I was a kid, I was a very slow runner. I mean slooooow. Slower than all the boys and most of the girls. I was told by friends and a teacher or two that I ran "funny." And sometimes my walk also got the same critique.

So, I paid attention to how boys were supposed to look when they ran or when they walked. And I did a good job for about 50 years. I paid attention to how I was supposed to be in everything and worked hard to get it down.

Which makes me think. When I was a kid, I loved Rich Little and other impressionists. In fact, the first record album I ever bought was Rich Little's Politics and Popcorn. I became pretty good at all the impersonation standards of the time - Nixon, Cagney, Bogart, John Wayne, Lily Tomlin's Ernestine, Mae West, WC Fields, etc. I even wrote to the TV show - The Copy Cats - when I was ten. I wanted them to know that I would be a really good addition to their program. I received - NO REPLY!

So, it continued in my happy life. I remember reading something about Peter Sellers where people who knew him said that once you took away all the humor, the impressions, the acting, there was nothing there. They said that when he played the simpleton Chance the Gardener in Being There, that this was the closest any of us would ever get to see what Sellers was really like.

Now, I think there was certainly more to me when you scraped away all the fun stuff. But, as a kid, I knew better than to let anyone know what that was. To do so in the 1960s and 70s would have been a disaster. And as an adult, I continued my impressions, my learned behavior of what I should be as a man. And I was pretty good.

Am I saying that now is my Chance the Gardener time to shine? Not exactly. But I will say, inside of me there was still that little girl. She was hiding out, running like somebody else so people wouldn't know she was there. I am going to let her run free, and true.


EPISODE HILIGHTS:

A quick look at what kind of runner I was as a kid and a little look at Sarah and my first 50K.

I have gained ten pounds from when I started HRT. Where did it go?

SPOILER ALERT!

My ass.

How am I going to get from zero miles per week to 55 miles per week preparing for the Spokane River Run 50K in April?  Hey, I just did 18 miles this week.

I HAVE A PLAN!!!

And I have a new watch! Why? Because I destroyed the last one trying to fix it. This is an activity in which I am well-versed. It may be a good metaphor for how I've lived my life too.  That's heavy.

AND CHARTS!!! GRAPHS!!!! All mirror imaged, I guess.

And I say that Sarah and  I ran an ultra to celebrate our 50th anniversary. Well, actually it was our 50th birthdays.

I mention that the video is a mirror image. But, it isn't...

People this is live. It is a happening.

All this in under 11 minutes!?!?! HOW CAN THIS BE?

Running True, Episode 1, 11-29-17

Running has been an important part of my life for over 40 years. I have never been a "great" runner but I have been a faithful and persistent one. Running has helped me sort through a lot of things in my head. One thing that always kept coming up was my transgender stuff from my childhood and how to manage it as an adult.



In fact, it was because of an ultra marathon and a request made of me during that time that I came out to the rest of my family, my friends and everyone else.



One of the downsides (maybe the only downside) of hormone replacement therapy was that after about six months of it, running sucked. It seemed pointless. I know many of you not on HRT feel the same way about running anyway!



I want to rediscover running again this time in a body that has about 1/50th of the testosterone it did have and about twenty times the estrogen, a body that looks and feels a lot different, better, but different.



Also, my mind has changed some too. And I think that's where the real challenge in long distance running comes from.



I have a 31 mile race planned for four months from now. I need to get from zero miles per week up to about 80.



It's going to be a new kind of running for me. I will be running with a new body and mind and with the truth out of who I am.

A very odd and very lost duck.

Sarah came in from a run this weekend and said there was a duck in Cannon Hill Pond, a kind of duck she hadn't seen before. I would guess that this bird is about half again as large as the resident mallards. We took a lot of pictures and video. Mercifully, here are only a few:

As you can see from the videos, it was really into grooming. The dark feathers were more of an iridescent  green. I would guess that it is a Muscovy duck. It is native to Central America and South America, although there are feral populations of these ducks which establish themselves around the globe. There are folks who breed them.  This may be one that got away.

Some websites mention that these can be an invasive species. 

I remember how I really enjoyed the wild turkeys five years ago, before their numbers swelled and turkey diarrhea  made the sidewalks slippery. Hope that doesn't happen with these ducks. Maybe they will interbreed with the turkeys. One can only hope.

Chinese Lantern Festival 3D pictures! Explore the ViewMaster of your mind.

You know the drill. Click the picture. Make it big. Cross your eyes until a third picture is formed in the middle. Stare at it. It's 3D!

Really enjoyed this down at Riverfront Park. It was packed last night. More information here. 

Spokane Running!

In case you missed it, The Road Runners Club of America acknowledged Spokane as the Outstanding Runner Friendly Community of the Year. 

That Spokane is at the top of the charts for running is probably known more by running fans who live outside of Spokane than those of us who live here. I mentioned four years ago that, at Nike Nationals in Portland, the sports announcer noted how Spokane continually qualifies more runners for Nationals than any other city - from anywhere. He called Spokane the "Rift Valley of Running." In a cross-country running magazine, an article suggested that if you have a high school girl who wants to do well in x-country, she should go to high school in upstate New York. If you have a boy, he should go to high school in Spokane, Washington. Pretty amazing.

In some other parts of the country, one never has to worry about ice when out for a run. Here in Spokane, it's a worry for most of us for a good portion of the year. So much so, that many stay indoors to use treadmills once winter hits. Yuck. I have to admit, that when Ike (my son who runs for WWU) is home for Christmas break, he never worries about the ice much. He just keeps running as normal. And he never falls down!

I hate treadmills and I really like being outside. I run year-round, as does Sarah.  Running is, for me, more of a mental health thing than a physical health thing - especially in the winter and spring.

Today, was a very slippery day with freezing fog coating everything. But, as usual, I stayed upright and slipped very little due to my Due North carbide spikey galoshes. I've had these things for at least five years (if I wasn't so lazy, I would do a search of my blog to verify that). I bought replacement carbide tips, thinking they would wear out or become detached at some point. They never have. They beat YakTrax on the ice by a long shot. In the snow, they do well too.

I run with these things probably three months out of the year. I can't  recommend them enough. They are a lot cheaper than a treadmill and a lot more fun.

Cars skid past stop signs into traffic, as you deftly maneuver around the smoldering wreckage. Small children and squirrels look at you with amazement in their unblinking eyes. An ambulance seems to be shadowing you. You can hear the collective "DUMBASS!" grumbled by creeping motorists, as you seem to be making better time than them. Without a doubt, you are having a better time than them.

SPOKANE IS #1!

3D Downtown Christmas

Some 3D pictures from last night. The Davenport Trees of Opulent Elegant Christmastude and the new holiday light show in Riverfront Park.

I have heard from some that they are unable to do the cross-eyed 3D thing. I was unable to do the "magic-eye" puzzles from the 90s. I feel your pain. Unless you have some 3D glasses on hand, this is probably the only way I can get these pictures to you online.  However, if you do have 3D glasses, I will put some pictures up in a format of your choosing.

The gist of the cross-eyed method is to stare at the two pictures and cross your eyes so a third is formed in the middle of the two. Then relax a little and just look at the middle one. 3D! Here is a link to a more expansive lesson on how to do this.

Click on the pictures of your choice to make bigger:

Nice little play!

If you are looking for something different to do, check out Stage Left's production of  The Thread Men. I have been wanting to go to this theater for quite a while, and finally Sarah and I got the chance last night. The Thread Men is a one-act play that has a neat plot and some fine acting. It costs $10 to see. I liked this production and the theater itself - a lot.

I have really been getting back into live theater lately. We saw The Glass Menagerie at The Modern Theater (formerly known as Interplayers) last week. I find it very engrossing to be that close to the actors and am always very moved by their courage and their work.

The Thread Men will be Stage Left's entry for Washington State Kaleidoscope Theatre Festival.

If you want to see the transformation from a small storefront to a very cool theater, click here. 

Stage Left, in their mission statement, lets us know that the reason they are doing what they are doing is to make theater a transformative experience for all. I think this is a very noble goal and Spokane needs them to keep hammering away. Please support them and go see a play!

Terrain in 3D

Click on the picture to make it big. Cross your eyes to make a third image in between the two preexisting images. Enjoy the 3Dness.