Bill Hayes's Blog
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May.21.2013
For years, I've been carrying around in my head thoughts, observations, and personal tips on exercise. I've started to keep a list--one a day until I finish my book. I call them "Sweat 101s."
#1: Try to learn something new every time you exercise. Start today.
#2: The gym is one place where copying...
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May.07.2013
One can exercise in a thousand different ways without ever breaking a sweat.
One can exercise caution, judgment, prudence, restraint, good taste, good manners, good behavior, the desire to do good, or, for that matter, the desire not to. For every virtue there is a vice to be exercised just...
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May.01.2013
I met a fisherman on the 1 train last night. I have met fishermen before—I’m from the Pacific Northwest, and have fished myself—but this was a first in New York. It would have been hard to miss him even in a packed subway car. His two large fishing rods, like a pair of periscopes...
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Apr.20.2013
I've just returned from my third trip to Iceland in a year. When this comes up in conversation, I am inevitably and understandably asked why--what brings me there?
It's not business; yet vacation doesn't seem the right word either. The question as to why Iceland would be...
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Apr.13.2013
I am still stunned by and will always be grateful for this honor: a 2013 Guggenheim Fellowship in Nonfiction.
I was in the locker room at my gym on Tuesday night, still in my swimsuit and dripping wet, when I picked up the news on my BlackBerry--which was appropriate somehow, given that...
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Apr.07.2013
SOMEONE asked me the other day how I had gotten over the sudden death of someone I loved. What I wanted to say but found myself unable to explain (for it would have sounded too strange) was that I learned a good deal about moving through grief from some trees I once knew. They were not my trees...
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Mar.31.2013
The saddest thing I’ve ever heard said about New York is also the most romantic: A friend once told me she loved New York so much she couldn’t bear the thought of it going on without her.
Sad because New York can never return the sentiment.
Sad because my friend is now gone...
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Jan.29.2013
Nice news to share: Bloomsbury UK/USA, publisher of my forthcoming book "SWEAT: A History of Exercise," will also publish "Insomniac City," a collection of my stories of New York (some of which have been appearing in The New York Times).
The book will include photos I've taken...
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Jan.17.2013
I saw a girl on a Manhattan-bound train wearing a knock-off Louis Vuitton headscarf and false eyelashes long enough to make a Daddy Long-legs envious. Her look—a sort of Sally-Bowles-does-Brooklyn—was complete with a matching knockoff LV handbag and umbrella. She was seated next to a...
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Jan.14.2013
I don’t like to be late but I am not averse to getting lost. Which, when I stop and think about it, seems to happen with some frequency. I don’t do it deliberately. But I also do not pre-plot every step and turn when heading somewhere I do not know, and I don’t have a...
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Dec.24.2012
Middle age arrives not with a birthday, with 48 candles on an angel food cake, but with a sudden unbidden insight in the middle of a sleepless night. You roll over and eye the clock and see all at once that the phrase “anything is possible” is not true. That is, it is no longer true for you, if...
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Dec.06.2012
One night last year I called my friend Oliver and told him to meet me on the roof of our apartment building. He lives three flights down from me. I had pulled together a simple dinner — roast chicken, good bread, olives, cherries, wine. We ate at a picnic table. I’d forgotten wineglasses, so we...
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Jun.05.2012
A new piece http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/04/from-a-familiar-stranger-a-poem-written-on-the-stars/?ref=nyregione in the NYT
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Apr.22.2012
A word from Plato--and me.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/22/opinion/sunday/platos-body-and-mine.html?_r=1&ref=opinion
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Jun.06.2011
My essay on the 30th anniversary of AIDS is now appearing in The New York Review of Books. See link below in Articles section.
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"One can learn to be alert to the extraordinary and press pause — to memorize moments of the everyday." ”
—"On Being Not Dead" - NY Times essay
About Bill
The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in nonfiction (2013-14), Bill Hayes is a frequent contributor to The New York Times and the author of three books: "Sleep Demons: An Insomniac’s Memoir"; "Five Quarts: A Personal and Natural History of Blood"; and "...
Causes Bill Hayes Supports
International AIDS Vaccine Initiative