I am finishing off another calendar year of little change with change planned for next year. The biggest change is leaving my current job at Susquehanna University after the spring semester. It is not interesting or challenging enough to stick around despite the generous pay and enough time off, and it is all the annoying you could want in an easy job. I am planning to go back to New Zealand to work at the same place I worked before for 6-12 months starting next fall. My last two trips there were affected by injuries and I hope to make the most of my fitness this time around.

TRAVEL: It was a good year. In January I went to Bermuda for nearly a week and had a great time with the Wakelys (golf, running, Sharkinator). In March I was in Punta Gorda, FL for spring break with Aunt Judy while a blizzard hit Pennsylvania (golf, running, eating, not shoveling). In June, I went to Norway for the first time, from Oslo to Svalbard, in the Arctic, then on an arctic cruise in search of polar bears (running, hiking, sight-seeing, kayaking, snorkeling, polar plunging, and wilderness medicine). I drove right from Newark airport to Keuka Lake for our family week in early July (running, kayaking, games). I worked a week in July and then was off to the Canadian Rockies again with Greg and Kathy Wright for a great adventure holiday. I cannot recommend the area around Golden. BC enough, especially the Icefields Parkway to Jasper (running, hiking, Via Ferratta, mountain coaster, majestic scenery). I also made several trips to our cottage solo. I will start 2018 breaking in a new passport in Spain.

Boycotts: What do I do when something annoys me, or is clearly not the right thing to do? BOYCOTT!!! The current list is long: Red and processed meats; chicken; Football (NFL, College, high school, and especially the ridiculously dangerous junior/midget/pee wee); Div. 1 Mens College Basketball (the dirtiest sport other than boxing); Papa John's; Michael Jackson; Jim Carrey; O'Hare Airport; Drug Reps.

BOOKS: I read much more than last year since I didn't have boards to study for (I did great on those, by the way), so here is the list. RAW means I read it all at work...1493, Charles Mann: a most enjoyable and informative history (full of one profound insight after another) of the Americas after Columbus' arrival; Wolf Hall AND Bring Up the Bodies, Hilary Mantel: masterpieces of historical fiction, made me a fan of Thomas Cromwell; Trump's Brain: An FBI Profile of Donald Trump, Dr. Decker: slip of a book that elaborates on the thinking of narcissists; Unbelievable, Katy Tur: a TV journalist recounts her life on the road with Trump. Good, light reading except for the despair it causes; Thanks, Obama, David Litt: a speech writer's look at the Obama White House, especially the funny parts. An American Sickness, Elisabeth Rosenthal: a compelling and infuriating history of how health care got to be a huge, unsustainably expensive business in the USA; What Happened, Hillary Rodham Clinton: Hard to put down account of the fateful campaign that conveys clearly what our country missed in choosing the wrong candidate. Climate of Hope, Michael Bloomberg and Carl Pope: how cities and regions can make a positive difference for the climate and our futures. Really good.; Hillbilly Elegy, J.D. Vance: mediocre memoir about growing up poor in Kentucky and Ohio with dysfunctional parents; On Tyranny, Timothy Snyder: must read short book by an expert on 20th Century European and Russian history; Eileen, Ottessa Moshfegh: Quirky novel about an unusual but likeable young woman set in New England; Lincoln in the Bardo, George Saunders: a strange and marvelous novel of unqualified genius. A masterpiece; The Rules Do Not Apply, Ariel Levy: beautifully written memoir by one of my favorite New Yorker writers; Race, Incarceration, and American Values, Glenn Loury and others: (RAW)The facts on the injustice and failure of mass incarceration, an American disgrace.; The Sense of an Ending, Julian Barnes: not your usual novel by a great writer.; The Dead Hand, David E. Hoffman: one of the best written and researched histories of our time, it recounts the cold war weapons of mass destruction programs and all the poor judgment, lying and waste on all sides that went into them. We are all lucky to be alive, and we NEED serious and knowledgeable people in charge.; Zama, Antonio Di Benedetto, trans. Esther Allen: a re-publication of a neglected novel of pride and little accomplishment in South America in the 1700s: Every Twelve Seconds: Industrialized Slaughter and the Politics of Sight, Timothy Pachirat: (RAW) A first-hand account of the operations of a modern slaughterhouse in the Midwest. You should not be eating meat, and this is all the information you need to make that decision easy; Quite Enough of Calvin Trillin AND Jackson, 1964: Collections of the peerless humorist and journalist's writings, with the latter a rewarding first-hand take on the civil rights movement; The Wicked Boy, Kate Summerscale: an overly long but eye-opening history of a surprising murder by a youth and his subsequent remarkable life; Mortal Sins, Michael D'Antonio: (RAW) If you can read this and still call yourself a Catholic, there are some parts missing in your brain. It heaped dirt on the coffin my Catholic faith was already in; Stringer, Anjan Sunderam: (RAW) often tedious memoir of reporting from the fringe, especially in the Congo. The Evangelicals: The Struggle to Shape America, Frances FitzGerald: (RAW) Another historical masterwork, which points out again and again that the reasonable in any religion are usually shouted down by the unreasonable who value their positions of authority more than reality. Slightly more boring, but still fascinating, is Japan 1941: Countdown to Infamy, Eri Hotta, about the events leading up to Japan attacking Pearl Harbor. It showed how gutless politicians allowed a very small group of jerky military figures to take them into an unwinnable and devastating war only for appearance's sake. I also read Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing, A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Merchant of Venice, King Richard II, King Henry VIII, Julius Caesar, and King Lear, and I continue to read the New Yorker and the Atlantic.

The best thing about being me: The stamina. Runner-up: sense of humor

The worst thing about being me: The Gas. I make the best of it and have figured out no other way to live, but it is a horrible curse. Runner-up: insomnia

Music: Not a great year, especially for new artists and me. The most rowdily enjoyable is a blast from the past, The Replacements - For Sale: Live at Maxwell's 1986, before the death of their lead guitarist; also nostalgic and recorded live, Jeff Lynne's ELO - Wembley or Bust. From down under, solid collections from Bernard Fanning - Brutal Dawn & Civil Dusk as well as Jeremy Redmore - Clouds Are Alive (two of rock's best voices, especially Mr. Redmore). Old stalwarts with new stuff were Our Lady Peace - Somethingness, Big Head Todd & the Monsters - New World Arisin', Roddy Woomble - The Deluder, The Goo Goo Dolls - You Should Be Happy, Van Wagner - River Rat, and Son Volt - Notes of Blue.

Quotes:

  1. "Alcohol consumption is a way to make doing almost nothing or something pathetic seem like fun to the consumer." Me
  2. "If more and more of a political party's members hold more and more extreme and extravagantly supernatural beliefs, doesn't it make sense that the party will be more and more open to make-believe in its politics?" The Atlantic
  3. "The results could not be clearer: Teens who spend more time than average on screen activities are more likely to be unhappy, and those who spend more time on nonscreen activities are more likely to be happy. There's not a single exception." The Atlantic
  4. "I know as much about God as any human, and I know almost nothing." Me
  5. "The nationalist, 'although endlessly brooding on power, victory, defeat, revenge,' wrote Orwell, 'tends to be uninterested in what happens in the real world." Nationalism is relativist, since the only truth is the resentment we feel when we contemplate others. As the novelist Danilo Kis put it, nationalism "has no universal values, aesthetic, or ethical.' A patriot, by contrast, wants the nation to live up to its ideals, which means by asking us to be our best selves. A patriot must be concerned with the real world, which is the only place where his country can be loved and sustained. A patriot has universal values, standards by which he judges the nation, always wishing it well - and wishing that it would be better." Timothy Snyder
  6. "The European history of the twentieth century shows us societies can break, democracies can fall, ethics can collapse and ordinary men can find themselves standing over death pits with guns in their hands. It would serve us well today to understand why." Timothy Snyder
  7. "In all human history, there has not been a bigger waste of public funds than the nuclear weapons programs." Me
  8. "There is not a nation on earth guilty of practices, more shocking and bloody, than are the people of these United States, at this very hour. The dissection of America reality, in all its complexity, is essential to political progress, and yet it rarely goes unpunished." and from the same article, "One is not always in raptures over this country and it prowess in nurturing, in its own distinctive manner, unsurpassable callousness, matchless greed, small-minded sectarianism, and a gruesome infatuation with firearms." The New Yorker
  9. "The changing climate should be seen as a series of discrete, manageable problems that can be attacked from all angles simultaneously. Each problem has a solution. And better still, each solution can make our society healthier and our economy stronger." Climate of Hope
  10. "It is always dangerous when those in power deceive themselves into thinking that they are acting in the interest of others, or of abstract principles, when, in fact, they are serving only themselves." Mark A. Wolfgram
  11. On expensive watch collectors: "There's some pocket of rot in the oak of their soul that can only be patched up by watches." The New Yorker
  12. "Sloman and Fernbach see this effect, which they call the 'illusion of explanatory depth,' just about everywhere. People believe they know way more than they actually do. What allows us to persist in this belief is other people....So well do we collaborate, (they) argue, that we can hardly tell where our own understanding ends and others' begins." And "'As a rule, strong feelings about issues do not emerge from deep understanding.'... If we dismiss as unconvincing any information that contradicts our opinion, you get, well, the Trump Administration." The New Yorker
  13. "The one thing that stands out in my short time in Norway is how the government clearly tries to make everyone's lives better in meaningful ways." Me, on hike in Svalbard
  14. "Whatever I may have seen as (Nixon's and George W. Bush's) limitations of character or intellect, neither was anything like as humanly impoverished as Trump: ignorant of government, of history, of science, of philosophy, of art, incapable of expressing or recognizing subtlety or nuance, destitute of all decency and wielding a vocabulary of 77 words that is better called Jerkish than English." Philip Roth, in the New Yorker
  15. "If a linguistic anthropologist camped out in Manhattan for a while, I suspect he'd discover that New Yorkers have fifty or sixty different phrases for expressing irritation and maybe two for expressing enthusiastic approval ('not that bad' and 'it could be worse')." AND "New Yorkers have believed in the old saying that they learn at their mother's knee: 'If you can't say something nice, you're never in danger of being taken for an out-of-towner.'" Calvin Trillin
  16. "(James) Madison argued that as you increase the 'variety of parties and interests' contained within a republic, 'you make it less probable that a majority of the whole will have a common motive to invade the rights of other citizens.'" The Atlantic
  17. "To actually watch Trump's miracle (election) come in is a shock like missing the last stair or sugaring your coffee with what proves to be salt. It's not just an intellectual experience. The whole body responds." Katy Tur

My new word for the year: Jerkocracy. This is the government you get when you elect mostly jerks to run it. America is currently a Jerkocracy. I have a short essay on this posted in the Politics and Religion section of this website. There are also several new travel articles from my trips. I got two very positive comments from some travel agents in India who found the site and read some of it. I also reread many of these past letters and I must say they stand the test of time, as do my many videos on my Terence O'Rourke youtube channel. It is too bad they are so little appreciated.

Health: No big issues. My thyroid has been fine. Still don't need reading glasses.

Fitness: Fighting aging is a struggle, but I got into decent shape a few times since last year's letter - right before Christmas of 2016, in June, and the end of August. I had a bunch of weeks where I exceeded 50 miles of running. Each time was right before trips where it was hard to keep up all of my habits, though the running was the easiest to sustain (I did get in outdoor pull ups in a park in Oslo and several times in Golden and Jasper in Canada - I just tallied I have done pull-ups in at least 18 different countries). I had a really annoying hamstring tendinitis (high up at the pelvic origin in my butt) from early January until the middle of May I tried to train through, as rest didn't help much, and it was such a relief to have it ease up - pain with every stride is not much fun (I ran 16 miles with it once!). I only ran two races, a relatively spontaneous one in Bermuda in which I won my age group, though when I finished the announcer said I was one of the better older runners in the race but certainly not one of the best (!). It was a tough route, with a brutal hill in the last mile. The other race was with my sore hamstring holding me back, but I managed to break 70 minutes for 10 miles on a fast course in Alexandria. Now I am rehabbing some elbow pain again after getting rid of it for about a year.

Car: I got my VW Jetta diesel revamped for free and it still runs well and efficiently. I also got a big chunk of money from VW. The downside: VW mistakenly took my car title from me in the state of Michigan and I had to make a lot of phone calls and send a lot of emails to get it straightened out so I could renew my registration in Pennsylvania.

New Faves: Xero shoes, Daiya non-dairy, non-soy yogurt, Newman's Own Organic Chocolate, Vega Sport Bars, 24 hours of daylight in Norway/Svalbard, Buffs, Kombucha

Hobbies: I love jigsaw puzzles, and after I took my boards, I allowed myself to go wild. I did 7 1000 piece puzzles (I framed 2) from January to June, including one in just over 24 hours (Venice). I stopped them again in July in order to get a bunch of talks together and to write this beast, but I hope to do a lot more next year before putting my stuff in storage.

Hypocrisy Watch: I am sure only a few will make it this far, so I will indulge myself a little. When I was in high school, I became starkly aware of the amount of hypocrisy in the world. I vowed I would try to limit my own hypocrisy as much as possible throughout my life, and it has served as my guide rail throughout. Insight and self-awareness ride alongside mental toughness and self-sacrifice. It's not enough to recycle, walk most places, keep your thermostat turned down in the winter and the AC off in the summer, to not just preach good health but live it all day, every day. I can still do better.

Thoughts for the year: I exercise a lot, and I can imagine someone looking at me and thinking "Terry is addicted to exercise." But it is the exact opposite: I am addicted to sitting around and reading, and I have to work every day to fight that addiction. It is astonishingly easy for me to take a few days off from exercise and completely forget what it is like to do it. It helps that I am really good at it and it makes me look great, but am I delusional about my personal toughness? Would it be more impressive if I wasn't blessed with huge lungs, a comfortable life with enough free time and this physique and still put in as much time, or if instead of overcoming muscle stiffness, inflexibility and bad feet and ankles I was dealing with even more difficulties?

Thank yous: As always to my mother Sandy and father Terry Sr. for their generosity, hospitality and tolerance of my lack of patience in dealing with them. Aunt Judy is a gem of a hostess. Greg and Kathy Wright for sharing a week of their busy lives on a great trip that would not have been much fun at all by myself. Kelsey O'Rourke for being a most able sounding board. My cousins for making get-togethers possible.

I hope you all have a wonderful end of the year and enjoy your time with others and can find ways to make next year even better for you and for the world around you!

Terry O'Rourke

 

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