Sweat Home, Alabama: My 90 Year-Old Mom Demonstrates Staying (Literally) on Track Into Your 6th Decade

Posted on July 23, 2025 by gretchenwing

Look carefully at the number on my mom’s back.

USATF Master’s Nationals, Huntsville, Alabama, July 19 2025

That “W 90” means what you think it means: the person wearing that number is a woman at least 90. I only saw one other “90” at the meet, and that was a man.

All weekend, people kept approaching my mom, Martha Klopfer, to tell her how inspirational she is. Her response was generally something along the lines of a shrug and an “All I do is keep going.”

Waving at her fans? No, probably just loosening up before the start of the 800.

Exactly.

Here she is, “keeping going” in the 800, at one p.m. in July in what felt like a caricature of a steamy Southern summer day:

And here are the results:

As you can see, she just nipped under the 6-minute mark. This was almost 30 seconds slower than a year ago. Just as she’d kept reminding us, Mom hadn’t been training as much; COVID, then the chaos of the death of their farm’s last two equines (the Brown Boys) had pulled her off her schedule.

That race earned her the rest of the afternoon off. The younger part of her support team–me, my oldest sister & her husband–took our GIANT rental car…

Couldn’t resist this picture of the hood, which a storm decorated with a tiny snippet of pink crepe myrtle!

…to Huntsville’s main tourist attraction, the U.S. Space and Rocket Center.

My brother-in-law kept coaching me: “Not a ‘rocket,’ Gretch–it’s a Saturn V!”

Even for a non-space-geek like me, it was pretty cool.

Next morning, the 1500 was blessedly scheduled before the heat took hold. Since I’m my mother’s daughter when it comes to competitiveness, I had to give myself quite the talking-to, not to hope for a national record in this longer distance either. (After all, she ran a 10:55 last year, and the record is 11:30!)

The 15 starts around the turn, so we had to watch them line up via Jumbotron.

Sure enough…she ran her hardest…every step an inspiration…

…and finished strong, at 11:59.

And I do mean strong! She beat at least two women–maybe 3?–in younger age groups.

Was she happy and proud? Were we all, especially her coach, my dad?

Go ahead and call her “inspirational,” as I did–reminding her that simply seeing her out there was the inspiration–records, shmrecords.

She’ll laugh and shrug.

Next week: Wait, did you say ALABAMA??? Tell me more.

…4…3…2…1…Launch That Book! Altitude Takes Flight.

Posted on December 1, 2017 by gretchenwing

Ladies and Gentlemen, Young Adults and Adults of any age, it is my delight to present to you…Altitude, The Flying Burgowski Book Three.

Click here to purchase a copy of Altitude

“To thine own self be true…” Yeah, right.

I banked toward the warehouses, skimming the trees. Gotta find some way to USE my power…Reaching the first ratty rooftop, I hovered, quivering. If I could get Vivian back to the sky… put our powers together—What’s THAT?

Not a seagull. This sound was coming from the alley below. A quiet wail—kittens crying. Was that rusty blue shipping container there before? I landed behind the gnarliest warehouse and peeked into the alley. From street level, the giant rusty container towered above me. The kitten-cries were definitely coming from inside. Maybe someone dumped a pregnant cat in there. The box was hinged at one end—a pair of doors belted with a big ol’ rusty chain and padlock. Why lock a cat in?

“Kitty-kitty-kitty?” I called. “You in there? Poor thing!”

Two syllables floated from the stinking metal monster. A word I recognized from my Mandarin Terms a Traveler Should Know: “Bāng wǒ.” Help.

After a summer of betrayal and heartbreak and an epically rotten year, 16 year-old Jocelyn (The Flying) Burgowski is fleeing family and friends on Dalby Island for school on the mainland. What good is flying if it wrecks relationships? The guy she fell for almost destroyed her power. Now, discovering the ugly underbelly of mainland life, has Joss stumbled upon a fellow Flyer—only to bring her down? Confronting the dual forces of magic and maturity, Joss must face the question: what does “to thine own self be true” really mean?

What if you had a superpower…and it wasn’t enough?

Click here to purchase a copy of Altitude

White Privilege for Dummies (Like Me)

Posted on November 7, 2017 by gretchenwing

I have been thinking about white privilege, trying to articulate its meaning…then here comes this teacher who just sums the whole thing up visually:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPjmIXx9gUI

(…with thanks to Allison Snow, from whose Facebook page I first saw this, and datniggakel, whose YouTube I used.)

As this worthy teacher/coach would probably say after a lesson: “Any questions?”

Is “So” is the New “Well”? Fun Trends in Verbal Throat-Clearing

Posted on November 3, 2017 by gretchenwing

So have you noticed that no one on the news can begin a sentence without the word “so”?

So this has been happening with such frequency on TV and radio news, from anchors to reporters to people-on-the-street-answering-questions, it has me wondering: where did this habit come from?

So they do it in a way that pays no attention to the meaning of the word, as in “thus” or “for that reason”. So they’re just saying “so” as a kind of motivational noise, like the grunt we older people make when rising from a sofa.

So there’s no comma. So it’s not, “So, what I mean is…” So it’s more like: “I am starting to speak now.”

So it’s also not just newsy people priming their sentences with “so.” So it’s regular people, friends of mine…even, to my bemusement, myself!

(So if I hear The Mate say, “So I’ll be working on the gutters this morning,” I will consider that as a sign of impending Apocalypse.)

So it’s also showing up now in print, like on Facebook and blogs. So I’d give an example, but I don’t want to embarrass anyone. So keep an eye out for it, and you’ll soon see what I mean.

So, when did this start? (So did you notice–that time I actually used the word properly, logically, as in, “Okay, people, let’s think about this”?)