Dark Eyes

"But I feel nothing for their game where beauty goes unrecognized,
All I feel is heat and flame and all I see are dark eyes."
Bob Dylan

Roxana Saberi has gone on a hunger strike. Iran's crazy president is promising to keep her unscathed in prison. And I fear it will be several more weeks before this wonderful journalist will return to her prairie home in North Dakota.

I get the feeling now that the State Department is putting all of its muscle into resolving this delicate standoff. I'm hoping the guilty verdict against Saberi for spying is just a ploy by Iranians to work out an exchange for some of their people captured in Iraq by our military.

This brings me to the whole mess in the middle east and the prickly situation over torture. Torture is wrong. It goes against everything the United States of America stands for. A lot of people try and justify its use because of the heinous nature of the 9/11 attacks. It's hogwash. Lets look at the British. At the height of "The Blitz," their version of 9/11, Great Britain didn't torture the hundreds of German spies it captured during the war.

The soldiers of Abu Ghraib should have never been punished for their acts. Neither should the CIA operatives who engaged in the practice. The people who deserved to be punished are those that twisted our laws and ignored our treaty obligations to justify this inhuman treatment of prisoners. Let's start with Jay Bybee and John Yee and go all the way up to Rumsfeld, Cheney and Bush.

Unfortunately, President Obama is probably going to be forced into a corner by granting some pardons. Hopefully this chapter will help roll back the overreaching power grab of the executive branch orchestrated by Cheney. Congress needs to reassert its role as a co-equal branch of government.

The Czarina Tells a Story in Pictures

This happy family gathered to enjoy a morning in the Southwest Florida sun.

But Mama is easily distracted when it comes to watching her baby

Little does she know that a predator is lurking nearby

Snack time, the snake begins her meal

She opens wide so her treat goes down easily.

After lunch its time to relax in the sun and digest her meal.

But here comes trouble...

Rudy wants to play with his new friend.

But after a short chase into a corner, Rudy finds the friend isn't so friendly.

So it's off to Rudy's favorite outdoor pursuit, eating grass.

And after a quick bite it's time to go exploring.

Meanwhile yard work is taking a turn for the worse.

A clip here, a clip there...

And the stress of it all turns to terror.

The unhappy husband returns to his toil.

When suddenly he spots another potential victim.

Success... one fat cat up a tree!

But as with any story we have a happy ending!

Crushed

I cannot begin to explain how utterly sad I am right now. Iran found Roxana Saberi guilty of spying and sentenced her to eight years in prison. The United States government bares a lot of responsibility for this mess. Its hostile attitude toward the Iranian government for the last 30 years is behind this verdict. We supported a terrible tyrant in Saddam Hussein in his war against the Iranians. This foreign policy debacle began even before this with our support of a horrible dictator in Shah Mohamed Reza Pahlavi.

It was a different time in U.S. foreign policy when we openly supported dicators like the Shah, Hussein, Noreiga, and Duarte. During my four years at the University of Kansas I can remember the abject terror visited upon the Iranian students that were my classmates. They feared the Shah's secret police called Savak. I can remember a huge fight breaking out just outside one of my classes between two Savak agents and some Iranian students.

Then the buffoon who occupied the White House, Jimmy Carter, failed to realize the threat that the Ayatollah Khomeini posed to the Shah. Before he knew it the Shah was in exile and a bunch of religious nutjobs that hated the United States were controlling the country. Then the hostage crisis erupted and the rest is history.

We learned to forgive Vietnam and its people in less than a generation but we couldn't do the same with the Iranians. It's a shame. I see glimmers of hope. This week's news of the loosening of relations with Cuba, something that should have happened 10 years ago with the end of the Cold War.

But let's get back to the matter at hand. Say your prayers for Roxana. Pray that our government can find a fix for this horrendous mess and bring a good woman home to her family.

Take This Job and Shove It

After 29 years of working in television news I moved into the world of public relations. I'm doing things that I would have never considered necessary to the job. Such as the scene in the photo above. We have these banners with safety messages sitting along a stretch of I-75 between Fort Myers and Naples. A strong wind came along and pulled one of these banners down.

Without thinking I decided to give one of our inspectors an assist up the fence to try and re-hang the banner. Unfortunately my workmate decided it was a great photo opportunity. It took only a second to realize the folly of our efforts and we returned later with a ladder. The photograph made it onto our "Wall of Shame." It's a collage made up mostly of inspectors getting their trucks stuck out in the work zone.

I shall exact my revenge. You see there was this time when we needed a horse and. . . well I show you the results later.

I am McLovin

One of my guilty pleasures are movies aimed at teenagers. I love movies like "American Pie," "Ferris Bueller's Day Off," and "Fast Times at Ridgemont High." Last year my work colleague and I went to "Super Bad" for a little male bonding. The more times I see it, the more I appreciate its vulgarity and tastelessness. It's tough talking the Czarina into seeing this kind of movie although once in a while she'll break down and go. For example she liked "American Pie" but it's like pulling her teeth to get her to the theatre.

She's more likely to catch a movie like "Tropic Thunder," "Old School," or "Wedding Crashers." Her all-time favorite is the subtle yet classic "Office Space." She even had a work colleague that she dubbed "Red Stapler."

Reality Bites

The summer of 1974 was a challenge. I wanted to be a walk on for the cross country team at Kansas. That meant getting in a summer of good training to rebuild the base I had lost from my various illnesses I suffered through my senior year of high school. But I also needed to work a summer job to earn enough money to go to college. I lacked the discipline to do both.

Work caused my running to suffer. Icouldn't make myself do the 50 to 60 miles a week to rebuild my strength. Instead I ended getting in at best 30 miles per week. My speed was good, my endurance was horrible. It became painfully clear during the first week of practice with the team at Kansas. It was one of those infamous journeys in the back of Coach Bob Timmons pick up truck out to some forlorn spot in the country. After getting dropped off we were to run the ten miles back to campus.

I should have gotten out of the truck at eight miles with an out of shape George Mason and a group of middle distance runners but I was determined to show Timmie I was made of sterner stuff. I was quickly dropped from the group and struggled all the way back into Lawrence. The workouts got more and more difficult. After two or three weeks I looked forward to Tuesday's and Wednesday's, the easy days of six to eight mile runs. I never ran in the morning which was supposed to be part of the equation. I simply didn't have the strength to run twice and day and go to school.

It was on a fateful Wednesday afternoon about six weeks into the season that I made the mistake of getting into the back of Timmie's pick up missing out on the last of a series of repeat two miles over the hills north of Lawrence. The following afternoon coach told me to come back when I was in shape. Now I had been warned by my teammates that such transgressions would raise Timmons' ire. But I had seen various teammates quit workouts over the previous two weeks with no consequences. Catching the blade came as a shock, especially given the fact that out of the 18 or so runners we had on the team, I had finished 10th in both time trials.

I kept running with Kent McDonald who was red shirting that fall. Kent had broken an arm over the summer and was trying to get back into shape. About a month into our training regiment I got a nasty case of strep throat and that was all she wrote. My grades were suffering and I simply didn't see the point.

By the beginning of the second semester at KU I had put in 20 pounds and couldn't have been happier. I continued to run at my leisure, two to four miles, three or four days a week. I even tried my first marathon that spring at the Kansas Relays. Running beside an old childhood friend Kirk Duncan, I made it through the first 18 miles at seven minute pace without a problem. But then I hit the wall and struggled back to the stadium to finish in 3:14:15.

Throughout college I ran the occasional road race now and then and even made it through another marathon my junior year hitting the finish line in 2:57:14. Not bad for 20 miles a week training. It even brought a smile to the man who had left me heart broken, Coach Bob Timmons. He had a team of runners at this particular race, each runners had already finished. But he was still standing there when I crossed the line. I could tell he was surprised to see me. Timmie smiled and gave me a well done. It's hard to describe what his simple acknowledgment meant to me. But it would be nearly a decade before I would run a faster marathon.

Super Steve

Rink Clay Schmitty

Moving back to Lawrence, Kansas at 14 years of age was like being reborn. Growing up in Abilene was a fantastic experience. It was everything you dream of small town America being. But by the time you've hit adolescence, growing up in a community where everybody pretty much knows everybody else can be a drag.

So my running career resumed at South Junior High under Coach Ralph Wedd. Disciplinarian wouldn't even begin to describe Coach Wedd. He was a frightening, menacing man, who told me I couldn't be a great runner without learning to run on my toes. So I spent that winter learning to run up on my toes. I had a measure of success that spring, winning a couple of races and setting a school record in the mile. But the training was ridiculous compared to what I had done the previous fall at Abilene High School

The formula called for plenty of interval training. I got intervals in Abilene and more intervals when I moved to Lawrence. I can remember running intervals the first day of cross country practice for Steve Sublett. Super Steve or "Coach Roach" as we liked to teasingly call him. Coach Sublett was a gregarious man. He would look me over at the beginning of a workout and say, "Rinkenbaugh, I've seen better bodies in a morgue." I could understand, being 5 foot 10 inches and all of 125 pounds.

We worked hard but we were never very good. It's not to say that Coach Sublett wasn't a good coach. He had a handful of great runners like Kent McDonald and Doug Peterson during his tenure at Lawrence High. But he wasn't a screamer or authoritarian in any way. He wanted us to develop a lifelong passion for running. For that I thank him. He also talked me into running heel toe as God had meant me to. Amazingly the week I went back to my old way of running I dropped my two mile PR by 32 seconds from 10:21.0 to 9:49.5 my sophomore year in high school.
Part of my problem during high school is that I worried more about beating my teammates than I did about beating competitors at the other schools. I just worried about being #1, the top dog. It really wasn't conducive to good training or good racing. I was too young, too stupid, and too immature to grasp what running and competing was all about.

I enjoyed some success. I went to state. I beat some quality runners during my three years at LHS, and after good sophomore and junior years of track I was looking forward to great things going into my senior year. I had enjoyed a great summer of training. I was lucky because two of my training partners were outstanding runners.

Kent McDonald was an All American at Kansas in the steeplechase. He finished second in the nation at the AAU nationals in 1975 and ran at the 1976 Olympic Trials. Kent still holds the KU school record in the steeple. Heck, Kent still has the Lawrence High 2 mile/3200 meter record.

Like Kent, Doug Schreve was a Lawrence High grad who attended Pittsburg State. Doug was an outstanding miler, running the metric equavilent of a 4:06 mile in college. Between the two of them, I'd get worked over like a rented mule.

But my dreams of senior success came crashing down due in part because of one workout. I was in great shape and it was the week before our first meet. I had picked up a minor stomach virus the weekend before that meet and went to Monday's practice just completely whipped. I warmed up and told Super Steve I wasn't up for the practice, our toughest to date, consisting of 20 quarters. After much begging and cajoling from coach to run just one quarter I did. I felt like complete crap but after a little more coach begging to do just one more I consented and ran one more quarter.

Suddenly I felt like a world beater and breezed through the rest of the workout without a thought. I remember the feeling I had to this day. I felt great, ran great, and pulverized a lot of my teammates. By the end I was exhausted but proud of getting through the grueling workout. That night after dinner the wheels came off. I became deathly ill. I ran a fever, wheezed, coughed, and missed three days of school.

I went back to class on Friday feeling less than stellar but knowing we had a meet that day and knowing full well I was the favorite to win. So on a cool, damp, September afternoon I ran a cross country race in Manhattan, Kansas. I led for the first mile and suddenly it was if there was nothing left in the tank. I faded over the final mile finishing 13th.

Now for some reason Super Steve had decided that this year we would run back to back meets. So on Saturday morning we headed off to Wamego, where the year before I had finished 3rd. We had never run back to back meets. It's really insane. It was a repeat of Friday's performance. I led through the mile and slowly faded and finished 13th.
I felt like crap and by that night I was sick again.

I had picked up a nasty lung infection with stayed with me for the next five months. The doctors could never figure it out. I can remember running and spitting up blood. It seemed like every time I tried to start getting miles in my lungs would seize up. I didn't start to feel like myself until late spring of the following year.

By then my conditioning was suspect and my attitude was worse. It's embarrassing now to think of how full of self-pity I was at the time. I simply wasn't mature enough to pull myself up by the bootstraps and do the kind of mileage I needed to do to rebuild my strength.

The dreams of a scholarship to run at a four year college were gone. Despite the disappointments, my love of running remained. And I was determined to give it one more go at the University of Kansas.