If you’re looking for one, I came across this today:  The Art of Manliness blog and on-line community.

There’s some good stuff here.  Some not so good, too — couldn’t some of the fluff have been left out of the “100 Must Read Books” to include We Were Soldiers Once… And Young and Calumet “K”?

Still, a good Internet resource if you’re searching for guidance…

I’ve done lots and lots of reading, and discussion with people at all levels of several organizations, on this topic.  In fact, I’m now declaring myself an expert on the subject.

The concept of strategy is vital in aligning people in any organization on a direction for the future.  Indeed, I think the best definition of the term (for the business world, anyway) I’ve come across in my studies is from the highest-ranking business leader I asked about it.  He said it’s an exercise in envisioning multiple possible future states for the organization, choosing the one you want, and then laying out a road map to get there.

He also made the point that strategy is about action.  He told the following story:  Five frogs are sitting on a log.  Once decides to jump off.  How many frogs are left?  The answer is five, because deciding to do something doesn’t get you anything.  He said he’d personally seen some seemingly brilliant corporate strategies that never did anyone a bit of good, because nobody ever made them actually happen.

I think the most disheartening finding in my study of strategy is how many people just don’t get it.  Most people seem to think strategy is about slogans.  Indeed, another high-ranking leader I’ve interacted with recently got into high dudgeon because the people in his organization didn’t get his three-word “strategy” and asked for both more direction and empowerment, which this leader saw as mutually exclusive.

They aren’t.  A good strategy gets into the high-level details — again, laying out the road map mentioned above — but leaves the real work of execution (operational planning and tactics) to the lower-ranking leaders and “ground troops.”  (The military parlance is appropriate, since the whole concept of strategy is from the military — it means, essentially, “the work of generals.”)

You know what I haven’t found?  A good book on corporate strategy.  Anyone??

You can hear a couple songs from Disturbed’s new album, Asylum —  the title song and one called “Another Way to Die” — at the band’s website here.

Good stuff — I hope the rest of the album’s this good.

Turns out I placed 69th overall, 63rd among all men, and 10th in the 45-49 age group.  Works for me.

Here’s the music that featured in the “iPod in my head” while I ran:

As an interesting aside, for all the age groups younger than mine other than the youngest, my time would’ve had me placing higher than I did in my own group.  Go figure.

We stayed in my hometown near the marathon finish an extra day to have some time with my parents (and so I could get over some of the soreness before spending hours cooped up in the car for the drive home!)

Today up there dawned bright and crisp, 57 degrees with 75% humidity, with a high expected of 75 with 45% humidity.  It was very windy, but I’m betting I could’ve cut a good fifteen minutes off my time with these conditions, rather than the warm and soupy mess we had when we ran a couple days ago.  Ah, well…

On the other hand, I saw a review of the event on Active.com that said the Paavo had the friendliest volunteers the writer (evidently an experienced marathoner) had ever seen.  I’ve done lots of other kinds of events, and I have to agree — they were at least as kind and pleasant as the ones at the Six Gap Century (a bike ride from hell in north Georgia), where the volunteers are phenomenal.

Anyway, I did a frickin’ marathon.  That still feels pretty darned good, especially now with the aches subsiding.

Here’s what I learned yesterday:  marathons hurt.

Okay, so I won’t bore you with all the gory details.  I’ll just say that my hopes for a nice crisp day were dashed; while it wasn’t hot, it was near 100% humidity and 70 degrees at the start, and up past 80 degrees with 75 percent humidity at the finish.  Plenty to make a super-heavy sweater like me really, really suffer.

It’s strange the things that hurt, too — like my right shoulder, which felt like I’d been socked in the front of it after I’d done 300 single-arm flyes.  And the agonizing sideache a few miles from the finish.  I don’t think I’d had a sideache before that since high school!

So the low points:  a) hitting the halfway point and feeling like hell already.  They say the marathon begins at mile 20.  Mine started waaayyy earlier!  And b) finally being forced by the aforementioned sideache to walk for lengthy periods from mile 22 on.

But the high points?  Making the final turn onto the finishing straight in Hurley, Wisconsin, the whole downtown lined with a cheering crowd.  Finding my family in that throng right there before the line and raising my arms in triumph, as my sister the finish line announcer made one of my years-long dreams come true and trumpeted my finish over the PA.  The kiss from my beautiful wife Miss ViVi and the high-five from my older son, The Reverend Doctor Vinoski Sweetness.  The nice cold bottle of Gatorade from my oldest brother John.  And the willingness of all of them to hug my sopping, smelly self!

Sitting down (glory of glories!) in the shade right after the finish.  And the nap later that afternoon.  And the effusive congratulations from all over, electronically from my friends on Facebook and in person from the waitresses at the Liberty Bell Chalet.

Note to Shell:  only my left nipple bled, just a little bit.

Today was my last run before Saturday’s big one.  Lemme tell ya, two miles sure doesn’t seem like much of anything anymore!

So I’ve got pluses and minuses going into the race.  Minus:  the weather forecast has taken a turn for the worse, and I now expect extreme humidity and slightly higher temperatures than earlier forecasts called for (albeit topping out in the mid-70s or so).  Pluses:  this is still cooler than I had for pretty much any of my long training runs.  And the course isn’t as constantly hilly as what I’ve been training on.

I’m feeling good, and can say that barring disaster I should absolutely finish.  Stretch goal:  under four hours.

I knew a lot about Patricia Neal’s physical beauty from watching a number of her movies on TV when I was growing up.

It was only when I read this article, about her death yesterday from lung cancer at the age of  84, that I found out about her real beauty:

Neal’s personal life was dogged by tragedy. Love was elusive. She married only once, to British writer Roald Dahl, father of her five children — Olivia, Tessa, Theo, Ophelia and Lucy — after an unhappy romance with actor Gary Cooper.

Her first born, Olivia, died of complications from measles; her son Theo was seriously injured when his pram was hit by a taxi in New York City; and Neal was paralyzed by three cerebral aneurysms and unable to speak.

Her husband pushed, prodded and willed her into recovery, only to leave her for her best friend.

Her battle back to a remarkable life that included her children, her career and eventually “her hospital,” as she regarded the Knoxville rehabilitation center bearing her name, is inspirational to many. She visited the patients at the Patricia Neal Rehabilitation Center each time she was in town.

“What a life, what an example of courage to face adversity with such style and grace,” said Jennie Morrow, president of the Fort Sanders Foundation, of Patricia Neal.

“She was so inspirational to the patients. She stopped to hear their stories, held their hands, applauded them on their accomplishments. And she knew a thing about the value of applause.”

Wouldn’t Viktor Frankl be proud of her?  Rest in peace, Miss Neal, and kudos on a life well lived.

Here’s a story about a store in London selling squirrel meat.

Now, I’ve never had squirrel meat — but I’m bright enough to know squirrels were commonly hunted and eaten in our nation’s recent past.  So they’ve got to be reasonably good eating — and of course, they’re plentiful, as the store owners point out.

But I loved this passage:

The actor and Viva patron Jenny Seagrove said selling squirrel meat was “unbelievable”.

“Anyone who cares about wildlife, as I do, should be appalled at Budgens for allowing this,” she said.

What’s unbelievable is that someone at once as colossally stupid and self-important as “actor” Jenny Seagrove should think she deserves to be taken seriously.  Or that The Guardian should expect us to do so.  Or that we’re to believe that a coddled “actor” has any care for “wildlife” beyond perhaps liking pictures of the cute, furry creatures.

As an aside, why are we expected nowadays to write like utter numbskulls, mixing masculine and feminine pronouns willy-nilly in a misguided effort at fairness, yet we can no longer use the feminine-specific “actress” — for females?!?

I sure wish I lived in London so I could support this store — and try some squirrel meat!

Many years ago I was prompted to re-establish contact with one of my college professors after he published a letter to the editor of the local paper castigating the US for its use of the atomic bomb against Japan in WWII.

We had a pleasant correspondence for several years after that, during which I became firmly convinced that this professor a) meant well, and b) was completely clueless about the world.

He simply could not fathom that there could have been a more horrific outcome than what actually happened in history, when the A-bombs killed hundreds of thousands of Japanese.

Today I read an article by a professor not nearly as addled in the head as my friend was — Professor Paul Kengor of Grove City College in Grove City, Pennsylvania.  It’s well worth your time to read it, too.

Anyone who has the faintest idea of what happened on Tarawa, New Guinea, Iwo Jima or Okinawa (to name but a few of the pinpricks of land in the south Pacific that the Japanese fought ferociously for, often to the last man) has no doubt that what Professor Kengor says is true.  (As he points out, even the Japanese at the time knew and admitted that it was so.)

My professor friend is gone now.  Thanks to many thousands of young men who lost their lives on those island in the south Pacific, he was able to spout his peacenik nonsense in complete freedom, right to his dying day.  (It’s one of the great, if sometimes trying, aspects of our American liberty.)  And thanks to Harry Truman, countless thousands of other young men — on both sides — were spared the horrific end suffered by so very many of their fellows in arms.