Walking from 2016 to 2017

Who spent a lot of time this past year walking and running?   Where and why?  Since I’ve been writing on these pages about walking, here’s one of those “2016 in Retrospect” lists, about folks famous and infamous who hit the road in 2016.

-Already in January there was a huge group of folks running every day, and they kept it up all year.  The US Presidential race.  I guess we call it “running for office,” because it’s a race to the finish.  But I didn’t see much actual running or even walking by the overweight Republicans and the not much better Democrats.  After 8 years of an incredibly fit and physical president, we now have an overweight slob whose only physical activity is chasing women and grabbing pussy and headlines.

-Continuing on the political theme, tens of thousands of women (and men) are strapping on their walking shoes and making plans to take part in Women’s Marches on Jan. 21 in DC and other cities in protest of Trump and his policies.  My daughter and I will be at the March in Oakland, on whose Facebook page 18,000 women have already said they are going and another 43,000 are interested.

-A big televised walk in August was the Parade of Nations that opened the Olympic Games.  I decided to watch until the US team came in.  I was touched by the different national teams’ excitement and pride and their interesting different outfits.  Then came the US team with their dopey Ralph Lauren shirts promoting the great people’s sport - polo.  Most of the US athletes entered with an entitled swagger that was strikingly different from the other national teams. Embarrassing.  Walk, don’t strut.

-But absent from the Parade were many Russian so called athletes whose walking and running was fueled by doping.  No power walking or marathon medals for them this year.

-Lots of people got swept up in the Pokemon craze, walking and running all over looking for those little creepy creatures.   Its founder says he started it as a way to get his kids away from their video games and outside walking and moving around.  OK, maybe it was a fitness craze.

-Way too many people walked this year out of necessity, not choice, marching hundreds and thousands of miles.  They walked across borders, they ran for their lives.  That would be Syrian and many other refugees, walking and dying or maybe finding a new home.

-Too many great people took their last steps on this earth in 2016.  Surely they are strolling in heaven.  John Glenn, Gwen Ifill, Leonard Cohen, Debbie Reynolds, Carrie Fisher, Elie Weisel, Muhammed Ali, Gene Wilder, Umberto Eco, Alan Rickman and my neighbor Owen Greenan are among the ones I miss the most.

-Some of the best walking and running took place this year on a historic field in Chicago, when the Cubs walked to first base, ran around the outfield, ran around the bases and ran home, and won the World Series for the first time in 108 years. Go Cubs Go!

We say “Walk, don’t run, to the nearest exit,” when there’s an emergency, like fire, or earthquake.  But this year we saw the UK run to the nearest Brexit.  And here in the US we who worry about what President Trump will do to our nation wonder if we should walk calmly and deliberately and see what happens, or run like hell to the barricades.  Either way, 2017 looks to be another year where we’ll have to keep moving just to stay alive.

For the sake of our souls, and our health, I recommend a good walk. Or run.

Copyright © 2017 Deborah Streeter