School, Summer, and Suzanne Vega
First, welcome back to Corrie, who has been blogging again! Yay, Corrie! Lucky you with the tomatoes--that tomato pizza and chard pizza looks delicious!The course has finally ended, and since it was such an intensive course, I'm ready for a little bit of a break. It seems like I've been running around like a mad woman since returning from Indy, so these last couple of days since the course ended on Monday have been relatively more laid back. The only problem is that it has been horribly hot here, and the fact that we live on the fifth floor of an apartment building without any air conditioning hasn't helped much. So between gulping down iced beverages and digging into watermelon, I'm just trying my best to keep cool.
Which has made me really wary of going running--outside in this heat? Are you crazy? But I'm still trying to get my miles in, and while I'm able to get my every-day 3 milers in, yesterday I did my first long distance run since coming back to Italy. It wasn't a record breaker (and it wasn't even THAT long), but I was just happy to be in the mood to run. I went down to my usual running spot, which is this long avenue lined with Cypress trees that leads into an abbey somewhat near our house, purposefully waiting until about 7:30 pm to go, so that most of the day's heat would have started to die down. And it may not have been exactly "cool," but once I got my start, running under the shade felt good after a long day of being hot under the sun.
One thing I hadn't considered was that I would get to the see the sun set during my run, something that still surprises me when it waits until almost 9 pm to happen. So there I was, doing my long run, and every once in a while catching glimpses through the Cypress trees of the golden hued countryside surrounding me, and the welcome sight of the sun finally giving up her day's battle, and slipping off to rest, leaving a whole sky filled with pink and orange glow as she left. It was quite a way to make an exit. So, I guess that settles it--seven o'clock long runs are my new routine.
One more thing that I wanted to mention, having it spotted it today in the New York Times: this article about songstress Suzanne Vega, and what the term 2-hit-wonder could mean for such an accomplished musician. She specifically talks about the work she put into her first Top 40 hit Luka, back in the days when talking about child abuse in music was not only uncommon, but also very unlikely to be placed in an upbeat, major key. It's quite an interesting article, and it's always neat to get a musician's perspective on their own music and how it came about--especially someone as prolific as Vega.
-Jackie
4 Comments:
Glad you are running. Keep it going.
got one in again today, but it was too early to see the sunset unfortunately :). - Jackie
are you still up for one of the big races in chicago? let me know!
paul: i was thinking about the one in september, because i think the one in august will just be too hot. what do you think? i still have to see what our plans are, though. - jackie
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