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​Friday Inspiration 553​

I try to ignore clickbait titles as much as possible, but I somehow had a hunch this one was going to be good even though its title was "We Built a Wall. 3 Months Later, This Happened." (video)

I can't say I remember the last time I was in a Marshall's, but the lengthy chain of responses to this Thread, which is a joke about the curious products one finds at a Marshall's, is hilarious. The one that got me laughing out loud was "I need a shirt for my dog that vaguely alludes to alcoholism."

I read Frank McCourt's trilogy of memoirs in the early 2000s and loved all of them, although I have the least memory of Teacher Man, the third one about his teaching career in New York. But this story from Tom Allon, about teaching in the same school as McCourt for two years before he became a journalist (and later hired McCourt as a columnist for the newspaper he edited), brought me back and made me want to read the book again—or the new collection of essays from Frank and Malachy McCourt linked at the end of this piece.

I don't know if this is too nerdy for the readership of this newsletter, but it wasn't too nerdy for me: Newsletter sponsor Precision Fuel & Hydration put together these case studies for two athletes who ran very fast at last month's UTMB, breaking down everything they ate and drank (including pre-race meals) during their big days around Mont Blanc: Rachel Entrekin, who placed 2nd, and Caleb Olson, who placed 3rd. [<-- these links will give you 15% off your first 2026 order of PFH stuff]

I love this data visualization, "Every building in New York by the year it was built," and if you want to nerd out for a bit about architecture and history, I encourage you to click around the 3D map a little bit. (via the r/dataisbeautiful subreddit).

When I wrote about running around in circles a few weeks ago, Katie emailed me and said, "How familiar are you with Ed Whitlock?" And I was zero familiar with Ed Whitlock, but thanks to her including a link to a Runner's World story from 2010, and this piece from writer Scott Douglas's Substack, I am now familiar with this man who, as I understand it, didn't like running all that much, but loved running, and did basically all of his training doing little loops around a cemetery near his house. And ran a sub-3-hour marathon at age 74, and a sub-4-hour marathon at age 85.

I did not read the very long football part at the end of this piece, but I did read the whole intro, which is about 1900 words of Drew Magary writing about aging, and forgetting things, and football, and fall, and being a dad, and it reminded me why I subscribe to Defector—well, writing like this, but also the ability to put gift links in this newsletter so you all can read them too. Totally worth the money. [GIFT LINK]

This is a few days old, but I watched this short video clip of these two tennis players hugging at the U.S. Open three or four times— I don't think you need to know anything about tennis, or the particulars of the situation, but essentially Frances Tiafoe won this long match, started to celebrate, then saw his opponent, his friend Alex Michelson, starting to tear up, and ran over to give him a hug, and you know, if that doesn't do it for you, I'm not sure I can help.

Books I’m Currently Reading:

• ​Dad Brain: The New Science of Fatherhood and How It Shapes Men’s Lives by Darby Saxbe PhD

My friend Sally recommended this brand-new book to us, and I of course was interested because of the big change in my life that has caused a thousand other little changes (including, presumably, how my brain works). I’m only one chapter into it so far but I am already impressed and grateful for Saxby’s engaging writing style.

• ​Lord of the Butterflies by Andrea Gibson

I missed the boat on Andrea Gibson’s poetry during their lifetime, only discovering them through the documentary Come See Me in the Good Light this year. When I told Hilary about the movie, she of course said, “Oh, I have one of their books in my office,” and grabbed Lord of the Butterflies for me. Which I am now reading at the rate of one or two poems per night, and loving it.

• ​Ninth Street Women: Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell, and Helen Frankenthaler: Five Painters and the Movement That Changed Modern Art by Mary Gabriel

Hilary was reading this for months and absolutely gushing over it, and there’s only so much you can hear about one book before you just say “I’ll go ahead and borrow that whenever you’re finished.” And I am happy to say it’s as good as she said it was (although I would be terrified of taking on the challenge of writing about five different [famous] artists all in the same book like Mary Gabriel did).

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