Hartford Marathon

[asakiyume]

Today Wakanomori ran the Hartford Marathon. With this marathon, he's run a marathon in every New England state (not to mention several in New York). But two people running in today's marathon were using it as a capstone for running a marathon in every state, so there are always new goals to achieve.

I kept myself entertained by limping around Bushnell Park, which is not named after a corporation, as I darkly suspected (there is a Bushnell Corporation, but it's headquartered in Kansas), but after Rev. Horace Bushnell (1802–1876), who in 1853 proposed a park for the city.

I spent some time on this carousel (video is under 10 seconds)

Watch on YouTube

--riding this horse, whose magnificently lolling tongue I admired:



The horses all had really horsehair tails ... I was reminded a little of sartorias's Marlovens.

Along with horses, the park had some charming frogs:



They have spouts in their mouths and were in a playground area, so I'm guessing they add a fun water component in warm weather.

The marathon was tremendously well resourced. Here is a helper:



But initially I was in some kind of a mood--maybe partly because of the evidence of poverty around the place we spent the night and on our walk from where we parked.

Not evidence of poverty; just a mood-appropriate image from some cornice


I couldn't help thinking how nice it would be if these amenities...







... could be available on the regular instead of as festive extras. Water *used* to be regularly available in public places for people--we could make it so again. Public toilets are available in other countries. As for medical aid, I won't start.

But everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves at the park, and after writing a letter and watching a fountain and seeing a monarch butterfly high up in the air--and riding the carousel--so was I. As I leaned on the railing in the spot I'd claimed at the finish, a young woman came and stood nearby for a while.

"Do you know how I can get over there?" she asked, pointing to the other side of the street.

"I think you just have to walk along until you come to a break in the barrier, and then you can cross," I said. "Do you have someone running?"

"No, I'm just visiting, and it happens to be a marathon," she said, laughing. Then, a moment later, "I admire their spirit."

Me too. It's not a zero-sum game. It's possible to have both public bathrooms AND marathons.

Comments

[threemeninaboat]

I love those frogs.

[asakiyume]

They are really sweet. If I were a kid and lived there, I'd love visiting them. (If I were an adult who lived there, I'd enjoy visiting them)

[osprey_archer]

I love the frogs too! (I think you may get a lot of pro-frog comments.)

I for one am in favor of more public water amenities, although we may have more public water fountains in Indiana than you do in the Northeast? I see them in malls and big stores as well as public parks and libraries.

[asakiyume]

Maybe you *do* have more out west. I have a memory--but from the 2000-zeros--of a town in Pennsylvania with a public watering trough left over from olden days. Even then, when bottled water wasn't quite so ubiquitous, it prompted thoughts like these. I know when Wakanomori took the kids on their bicycle journey to Canada, they noted where there were still public fountains on town commons (answer: not everywhere, for sure. Still in a few places, though. Or at least one place.)

[queenoftheskies]

Congratulations to your husband!

That's a beautiful carousel. I love the horse with his tongue hanging out. :)

[asakiyume]

Thank you, I'll pass on your good words!

The horse was a noble steed--I didn't think to name him or to wonder whether he had a name, but now I am!

[lilysea]

Yay frogs! ^_^

They look straight out of Spirited Away...

[asakiyume]

Yes! (And now I have the theme music in my head--which I like a lot, so that's fine)

[cmcmck]

Shrewsbury half marathon today!

I know what you mean about water- all parks used to have public drinking fountains.

We now have a local scheme where shops and cafés provide drinking water free if asked. They all have a label in the window offering the service- simple, but effective.

[asakiyume]

That's a good scheme! It used to go without saying that you could get water free in shops here, but then the shops started selling bottled water and were less willing to give you a cup of tap water. Or they'd want to charge you for the cup, if it was a disposable cup.

Have you run in the Shrewsbury half-marathon? I hear in the UK, wearing costumes for runs is more common. At this race there was one guy in a T-rex suit, and he really stood out!

[cmcmck]

I don't do running but I have to admit but costume is a big thing here.

[mallorys_camera]

Congratulations, Wakanomori!!!! 👍👍

Drinking fountains were a standard feature of NYC parks when I was growing up there. As were public restrooms.

People stopped wanting to use the fountains because other people—ugh!—drank from them, so they were infested with cooties! And money was never allocated fot the maintenance and upkeep of the bathrooms, so over time, they grew quite disgusting.

It's not just a matter of having a particular resource. It's also a matter of funding it.

[asakiyume]

Precisely. You have to be willing to keep spending to keep them clean. The difference between public bathrooms that are maintained (usable, a lifesaver) and ones that you don't maintain sufficiently (disgusting, not usable) is the difference between actually providing the resource and not really providing it. But if they can do it at highway rest stops--which, for the most part, they do--then they could do it in parks. If it were enough of a priority and enough people agitated for it. ... The problem is that it sashays close to the problem of homelessness, and that is NOT an easy fix (since many people are homeless for reasons that don't have easy solutions). Cleaning a toilet, anyone can do, and people will, if you pay enough. Helping people deal with drug addiction or mental illness (which are two big problems that contribute to homelessness)--that's complicated. We don't really have super successful ways of doing those things, and they're very, very labor intensive. It's definitely more than providing a roof.

[mallorys_camera]

I know you already know this, but a surprising number of the homeless did not start out as either mentally ill or drug-addicted but as one of the economically dispossesed. A significant number of them actually have jobs—but the jobs don't pay them enough to afford housing. And it's vastly more complicated than merely, Well, pay them more money to do those jobs!. Increasing the minimum wage is one of the factors that leads to inflation—as we are seeing right now.

I don't think homelessness is a problem with capitalism either. I've seen estimates that as many as 3.5% of Russia's population is homeless. And in Social Democratic countries like Denmark, there's a big homelessness problem—though you seldom see it reported upon. I suspect China doesn't have a homeless problem. But that's probably because they send the homeless to one of their camps. 😊

The homeless are kind of like a caste system that's built into every variation of human culture.
Doing away with the idea of inheritance might have an effect on this built-in caste system. But the idea of inheritance seems pretty hard-wired into humans, so it seems unlikely to catch on.

[asakiyume]

Yes, I do indeed know it! (I know you knew what I was writing too--but I edited out the part where I acknowledged that, lol.)

People being not paid enough and becoming homeless, or becoming homeless because of being struck by a disaster or a health emergency or some other financial wandering monster, is also big, for sure. I was mentioning the other two merely because when, on top of everything else, people have conditions that make other people less willing to interact with them, and when those conditions are hard to address, it makes everything harder. I think we're both saying from different angles that there are many different reasons for homelessness and dealing with that is not as easy as "here, have a thing."

[amaebi]

I suppose the city worthies sacrifice inconveniencing the less-well-heeled's health and comfort on the all-American altar of Sport.

[asakiyume]

I don't even think it's a direct trade-off--like, I doubt they said, "Host a marathon or take care of the unhoused.... hmmm, let's go with host a marathon." But I'm sure it's more popular to do an event than it is to tackle an intransigent problem. The ancillary benefits of hosting the marathon (the port-a-potties, the free rides on the carousel, etc.) were available for all comers. But just for this one day.

[amaebi]

Yeah.

I think part of it's the disdain for maintaining capital and services that's so wildly popular.