In October I ran for a total of 161 miles, putting in time on every day of the month. My longest single run was for just 5 miles as I employed the strategy of shorter runs and multiple activities within the day. I also walked quite a bit, something I plan to intentionally increase in emphasis. Because of COVID-19 I see no races for myself anytime in the future...I knew some other places downstate were apparently hosting races but I didn't realize until today that my own Gainesville will be holding something on November 20th called the Cupcake Race, with 5K, 10K, and half-marathon events all to begin at 8 am. It uses the Hawthorne Trail as a course and starts and ends from Boulware Springs Park on SE 15th Street. I'm trying to wrap my head around the logistics involved in bringing all these people together in one spot at the same time and then starting the race and with them all breathing heavily in each others' faces...sadly sounds like a super-spreader event tailor-made for pandemic deniers and herd immunity proponents. No, if I run a half-marathon anytime in the next few months I think I'll just do it by myself and save the money and exposure danger. The other day the weather turned pleasantly cooler and drier...maybe if it lasts I'll see if I can't notch up the distances with my neighborhood runs. In October I ran slowly and often...for November I see no reason to change...
Saturday, October 31, 2020
Friday, October 30, 2020
Quote of the Week...from John Dewey
Thursday, October 29, 2020
Unintentionally Funny '56 Newspaper Column about Henry Wallace, "The Prophet"
Wednesday, October 28, 2020
Weekly Short Stories: 1964 Science Fiction, Part 5
Here are my reactions to the final three stories in the anthology Robert Silverberg Presents The Great SF Stories (1964). Of them, the second below was by far my favorite and, hey, turns out it's written by the guy who presented the book! Starting next week I'll be switching to a different sci-fi short stories year's best anthology series that covers the years 1965-89...I'll deal with 1990-onward when I get there...
Tuesday, October 27, 2020
A Great Information Chasm Cuts Right Through My Life
At age 64 I belong to the historically unique group of people who have one foot of their lives squarely within the digital era and one foot squarely outside it...right now there are a lot of us, but like the almost extinct group of folks who experienced World War II, there will be a time when we're all gone and everyone alive will have the span of their chronological lives covered by computer technology and the Internet. How does my life in this respect differ from my younger friends and the generations preceding me? Let me explain about this great information chasm...
A few days ago I subscribed to an online service displaying old newspapers from years gone by, as they appeared in print. Among these papers was the local Ft. Lauderdale rag, and it covered the years I went to school there and a few thereafter. Just browsing through them I would occasionally see a picture or article with a familiar name from school...one who made repeat appearances was Jim, whom I knew very well for 11 years from the 2nd through 12th grades as we were in the same year in school and grew up living close to each other. I already knew he had tragically passed away from complications relating to cancer in 1998 and that he had developed a penchant and talent for poetry in his adult life. On the tribute website for him was mention of a book containing some of his poems. I went to Amazon and Google and there is not a trace of its title and very little if anything about this remarkable man. Yet he only left this Earth 22 years ago, but it might as well have been 220 since his work was largely done before mass digitalization revolutionized communications. Contrast that with this blog of mine, a daily journal of general interests begun in 2007: you can easily find it on a Google search, but only because it's on this side of the great digital divide. And that's what I'm discovering with my perusals of the old newspapers: these people I went to school with and closely knew...some in friendship and regrettably some in enmity...seemed to have suddenly just fallen off the planet. The advent of Facebook did perform a service in that several "resurfaced" from the anonymity that assimilation into the masses and the march of the years had placed them under, and I respectfully recognize that probably many people wish to remain there. Ol' Jimbo, I'm confident, would have loved the opportunities that social media gives us today to reconnect...but the information chasm has now left his significant voice largely and sadly on the other side...
People in my generation, like me, can develop an ongoing digital history of ourselves but it only naturally extends to the edges of the advent of digitalization...to go beyond further back in time requires special efforts such as digitalization of old pictures and, in my case, taking advantage of old newspapers online and blogging while recounting old memories. Life is now openly being reported and recorded on a daily basis...and it all remains in the great digital cloud...while life before this era, as it retreats further and further into the past, becomes exponentially more of a mystery shrouded in uncertainty with its evidence stored away in boxes in dusty rooms. I wonder whether at some point, probably later this century, people will look back at the transformation of the 20th into the 21st century as a kind of cliff beyond which information drastically drops off. Maybe today is the time to try to salvage some of it while some of us who were there can remember it. I like the successful efforts to digitalize old music recorded before CDs, but with literature we're way, way behind on reaching the same level of progress. I wonder if anyone knows where I can get a copy of Arrival: One or Only?...
Monday, October 26, 2020
My #9 All-Time Favorite Song: Landslide by Fleetwood Mac
Sunday, October 25, 2020
Our Excursion to Ormond Beach
This past week Melissa and I enjoyed one of our traditional destinations: Ormond Beach, Florida, which is a relatively close and inexpensive way to enjoy the beach for people like us who are Florida "inlanders". The weather was sometimes rainy and stormy (but without lightning), the skies sometimes clear and cloudy...a good mix with temperatures on the warm (but not sizzling) side. We enjoyed our hotel's balcony and pool and went on frequent long walks on the beach. The Orionid meteor shower was peaking earlier in the week and I was able to spot a couple of meteors a few minutes past midnight early Wednesday from the hotel balcony. As we were leaving Walgreens Thursday afternoon I noticed that the local newspaper's front page warned that those pesky truckers were planning to swamp Daytona Beach (right next to Ormond) this weekend...but apparently it fizzled out: good, I had enough of them on Labor Day! Our Saturday visit to Tomoka State Park (the last two photos) was our first ever. It is north of Ormond Beach, on the mainland side of the Intracoastal Waterway. They have boating, fishing, hiking, picnicking...it's also the site of an old Indian village. On the beach during our stay I observed several species of sea birds...other than the pelicans they tended to flock together on the shore. I'd like to learn each of their names...there were also a lot of grackles and pigeons there. Wednesday morning Melissa and I went on a long beach walk just at the peak of the King Tide, which has caused elevated high tides up and down the Florida coast...Hurricane Epsilon in the deep Atlantic may have been a contributing factor as we slogged through the sandy mud and waves along the nearly nonexistent beach: that was a unique experience! Mostly though, we took it easy and enjoyed the ambiance...still, I am very happy to be back home now...
Saturday, October 24, 2020
Just Finished Reading Ubik by Philip K. Dick
Back in 2009-10 I got into reading famous American science fiction writer Philip K. Dick's novels...I went through ten of them, and then drifted away. The other day, though, I picked up his 1969 novel Ubik, which received a lot of recognition back then as one of his best works. It deals with alternate reality and the slippery philosophical concept of solipsism and is in places pretty danged confusing. The setting is 1992, 23 years into the future as society is run by rampant consumerism while corporations hire telepaths and precogs (predicters of the future) to spy on each other and engage in sabotage. To thwart them a consultation company provides "inertials" who detect and dampen the telepaths' presence...whoa, I see a direct, prescient analogy to today's computer hackers and viruses, and those who combat them. Joe Chip, the protagonist, works for such a company and is sent to the moon to clean a company based there of telepathic subversion...and there the story explodes into deep mystery as to what is real and what isn't. Chip's boss is widowed, but his wife is only "half-dead", her body deep in "cold pack" and it is possible for him to still communicate with her still-active mind...this idea of partial death is central to the story's progression and resolution. If you've seen The Matrix you might find yourself treated to a similar confusion as to what is real and what is only illusion. So, what exactly is Ubik? Ah...guess you'll have to read it yourself to find out. As for my reaction to the story, I recognize that once an author inserts paranormal abilities and time travel into his or her narrative, then it's easy to come up with all sorts of speculative mysteries and paradoxes. Ubik is full of them, but after it was all over I couldn't help but feel that this all was an allegorical exercise in philosophical solipsism...I'd be interested in reading your own reactions. One humorous aside: Philip K. Dick, apparently harassed by coin-operated toilets and the like in his own life, decided to include and expand the feature in his future world to coin-operated doors, with the story's hero often finding himself stuck in his own room...
Friday, October 23, 2020
Quote of the Week...from E.T. Bell
'Obvious' is the most dangerous word in mathematics. E.T. Bell
Thursday, October 22, 2020
Enjoying Putting Together Jigsaw Puzzles Lately
Wednesday, October 21, 2020
Weekly Short Stories: 1964 Science Fiction, Part 4
Here are my reactions to three more science fiction short stories from the anthology Robert Silverberg Presents The Great SF Stories (1964). These three are the kinds of tales that motivate me to read more in this genre, all of a reasonable length with each one written in a different style and expressing a different mood. And the authors are all pretty well known as well. With the first story below, references I find online to it refer to it as The Dowry of the Angyar, but Silverberg's anthology omits the second "the"...
Tuesday, October 20, 2020
With NewsNation WGN TV Provides Viable Alternative to Cable News Channels
If you're into watching TV during the prime time hours sometimes you'll find yourself wanting to check in to see what the news is...traditionally when I grew up in the 1960's and 70's we got all that in a half-hour span on one of the three network news shows, nowadays usually airing at 6:30 pm: my parents preferred Cronkite on CBS. Now, if you wait a little later to 8:00 then you can tune in to WGN/Chicago which, in my hometown of Gainesville, Cox Cable provides on Channel 14. At that time they present a great three-hour-long news show called NewsNation that covers the news straight and much more comprehensively with a wider variety of stories than do CNN, FoxNews, and MSNBC...and it's on seven days a week. From 11 to 2 they repeat the earlier evening show, which is great for someone like me who gets off from work at 10 pm. I am so utterly fed up with the out-of-control spin and manipulation on those aforementioned three channels that I'd rather forego the news than spend any appreciable amount of time watching them. But now we have NewsNation, which only began its run just a month and a half ago. Try it out and see if you agree with me that here is a more reliable news source. I also recommend the more obscure Newsy channel, which in Gainesville is Channel 276 on Cox Cable. That station presents news around-the-clock and genuinely tries to present the facts without drowning the viewer in the announcers' own opinions. Newsy and WGN's NewsNation: two welcome alternatives to the mind-numbing, slanted crap we're getting elsewhere. Of course, in our very polarized, emotionally-extreme electoral season simply watching the news...especially with regard to politics...might pose a mental health hazard to viewers, even without the spin...
Monday, October 19, 2020
My #10 All-Time Favorite Song: Living for the City by Stevie Wonder
MY #10 ALL-TIME FAVORITE SONG: LIVING FOR THE CITY...Stevie Wonder
Back in the early 1970s I used to listen a bit to album rock radio...in South Florida my radio station of choice was 103.5/WSHE. In late 1973, after I had just turned 17, they kept playing a lengthy epic about a young black man's nightmare experiences with racial discrimination, first in Mississippi where he grew up and then on the streets of New York City and the unfair justice system...the narrative was gripping, the music top-notch, and the singer...Stevie Wonder? I didn't recall anything by Wonder...or other soul stars for that matter...getting air time on album rock radio: for me it was long overdue. I strongly encourage you to hear out the song for yourself...not the cut-down singles version but the complete 7:25 album track: you have to hear it for yourself to get the full impact. The album it's on is Innervisions, which is widely critically considered to be one of the greatest albums ever made and which also contains the hits Higher Ground and Don't You Worry 'bout a Thing. Stevie Wonder, blessed with a beautiful, versatile singing voice, is perhaps unmatched in this performance as he switches character roles and at one point holds a single note for what seems like forever. As the doomed protagonist steps off the bus in New York, the song breaks into an eerie scene of city sounds as his fate becomes sealed by prejudice and injustice before Wonder breaks back in with a much rougher voice. I believe that Living for the City is a song of transformation...anyone with a semblance of a conscience cannot help having their eyes open and their perspective permanently altered by this significant piece of art, truly Stevie Wonder's greatest single work in my opinion...
Next week: my #9 all-time favorite song from my list of 500...
Sunday, October 18, 2020
About COVID, Coffee Shop, and Gator Coach Mullen
Saturday, October 17, 2020
Bean Counting Motivates Everything in Washington
Friday, October 16, 2020
Quote of the Week...from a Local Hazardous Waste Center Employee
When in doubt, bring it out! --Alachua County Hazardous Waste Center Employee
Having accumulated assorted old bottles of cleaning agents, paint cans, other caustic agents...as well as a couple of useless old push lawn mowers, I decided to unload them and discovered that here in Alachua County we have an excellent one-stop center for doing just that. Called the Alachua County Hazardous Waste Center, its at 5125 NE 63rd Avenue, which you get to going north on Waldo Road a little past the NE 53rd Avenue light and turning right just past the green roadside sign advertising the site. Then go down a little and follow the sign on the right and you're there. Earlier this week I somehow managed to cram the two cruddy old mowers into my two-door Honda Civic and drove down there and then to the drop-off spot the helpful gentleman working at the site directed for me. After that I mentioned some other items I might bring on another day and he bestowed the above perfect quote on me. I recognize that this waste center is a bit of a drive for many, but it has the convenience of being available when you want to use it (weekdays and Saturdays), instead of having to wait for specified times of the year for drop-off. Here's their webpage, which lists the various items that they will receive: [Waste Center]. Hopefully, if you live in a different area, your own community provides a similarly convenient service...
Thursday, October 15, 2020
Constellation of the Month: Pegasus (the Winged Horse)
Wednesday, October 14, 2020
Weekly Short Stories: 1964 Science Fiction, Part 3
Monday, October 12, 2020
Just Finished Reading Danny, the Champion of the World by Roald Dahl
Danny, the Champion of the World is a short 1975 children's novel by Roald Dahl, which I just finished reading and which is my fourth Dahl story, following Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, James and the Giant Peach, and The BFG. As with these other stories, the setting is England and once again a poor child is the protagonist...in this one it's nine-year-old Danny who lives with his widowed father behind their filling station in a Gypsy caravan (also called a varno). His father is a great mechanic as well as an amateur naturalist and storyteller...the bond between father and son is very strong. One night Danny awakens to find his father is gone...turns out he was poaching wild pheasants on a wealthy landowner's property a few miles away. It also turns out that poaching the pheasants was a family tradition...not only did dad's ancestors do it, but also Danny's mother. The landowner is painted as being arrogant with his wealth and treats practically everyone in the village with contempt...especially Danny and his father. The plot progresses around the poaching and the two's adventures...and misadventures. And then the rest of the town weighs in on what's going on, and eventually I realized that the author had written a story about unjust class divisions, with the "people" in a continual struggle against the "elite" and the rules that unfairly favor the latter. I enjoyed this novel, in which Dahl presented a reasonable, positive philosophy of living...although I wouldn't recommend poaching to anyone. I'm still trying to create a mental picture of that stroller scene at the end...must have been an awfully big stroller, that's all I have to say. At this point in my personal tour of Roald Dahl's writings, Danny, the Champion of the World is my favorite...but I'm still reading on. I think the story has been adapted to the screen although I don't plan to check it out: you'd probably be better served to read it before watching a TV version...
My 500 All-Time Favorite Songs: #13-11
Sunday, October 11, 2020
Just Finished Reading The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
Saturday, October 10, 2020
Surprised by Florida Pro Teams' Success in This Pandemic Year
Friday, October 9, 2020
Quote of the Week...from Prince
Technology is cool, but you've got to use it as opposed to letting it use you. ---Prince
A few weeks ago I wrote that I was about to embark on a project whereby I would listen to each and every one of Prince's 39 studio albums he released from 1978 to his tragic, untimely death in 2016...so far I've covered 16 and can confidently state that there's not a bad album among them. Now as with every other musical act I like, some tracks are better than others, and a few I'd just as soon avoid in the future. But once you know where the artist is coming from then it's easier to embrace his music and flow with it. Prince tended to go for an upbeat sound, danceable and fun...and oftentimes very, very funny: I always leave a Prince album feeling pretty doggone good although the lyrics can be over the top in places. So the dude was clearly inspired and professional with his craft, and I thought checking out some of his quotes was in order: the above one was in sync with my own feelings on the subject, so I chose it...
I believe that Prince's meaning with his quote centered around how recording can be enhanced and made easier in the studio with the ever burgeoning digital technology that enables just about any kind of sound to become available and minutely edited, but since I'm not a musical recording artist like he was I see it more in terms of my own experiences. Take cell phones, for example. It's clear that having a phone with me when I leave my house...especially while driving...adds a big element of security as I can call for help should anything go wrong. The problem is the corresponding feeling of insecurity when I'm separated from it, yet I've lived most of my life with telephones hardwired to the wall at home. The same goes for the incredible braking and warning technology embedded with newer models of cars: drivers have these added features of security but when they find themselves behind the wheels of an earlier model then will they feel like it's much more dangerous...and even possibly forget that the car they're driving won't compensate for their dependence on the later models' protection systems? And I've written a bit recently about the dangers of letting social media get the best of its users...I certainly use it myself but I don't live there. Companies like Facebook, Twitter, Google, Apple, and Microsoft want us to derive so much meaning from their products that we become dependent on them and feel incomplete when we go for any substantial length of time without accessing them. I used to go running with my smartphone in my hand while listening to music from it...lately, though, I've found it personally liberating to just get out there on the road and leave the phone and even my MP3 player at home. Maybe it would be a good idea for each of us to schedule time away from our little gadgets and reacquaint ourselves with the world as it really is. I like the new technology and appreciate its uses the more because I vividly remember a time when it wasn't available...that to me is an advantage I have over younger people who have always had it and may not be as adaptable when it's absent...
Thursday, October 8, 2020
Online Newspaper Archives a Source of Interesting Material
Wednesday, October 7, 2020
Weekly Short Stories: 1964 Science Fiction, Part 2
Here are my reactions to three more science fiction short stories from the anthology Robert Silverberg Presents The Great SF Stories (1964). For some reason I found the writing style in each of them a little cumbersome to read...maybe it's because I've recently been reading some of Kurt Vonnegut's works and he deliberately writes in a plain, clear manner. Still, I plowed through the below stories of Smith, Zelazny and Brackett and have nothing but high respect for each of these wonderful writers...
Tuesday, October 6, 2020
Thanks to All for Birthday Wishes
Monday, October 5, 2020
My 500 All-Time Favorite Songs: #16-14
The following three songs on my list of 500 all-time favorites are all oldies, the most recent coming out 48 years ago. They're so good you could put them on a loop and play them over and over again, but #15 is very short and #14 is very long, while #16 is just right...sounds like Goldilocks and the Three Bears, doesn't it? They are all recording production masterpieces and display the three bands at their peaks when all the members collaborated in significant ways to the outcome...
Sunday, October 4, 2020
Just Finished Reading Welcome to the Monkey House by Kurt Vonnegut
A few days ago I saw a posting on Facebook by WKTK radio announcer Storm Roberts that quoted the late American writer Kurt Vonnegut...it got me interested in his works, and Storm himself recommended his short story collection Welcome to the Monkey House to me...I just finished reading it. Published in 1968, this collection contains 25 relatively brief tales spanning the years back to 1950, and in numerous genres including science fiction, romance, satire, human interest, and war. My favorite stories were Tom Edison's Shaggy Dog, Deer in the Works, Unready to Wear, The Foster Portfolio, Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Who Am I This Time?...in that order. My least favorite of the bunch was the futuristic dystopian story (and title of the collection) Welcome to the Monkey House which seemed to implicitly justify sexual assault...it seemed completely out of character with Vonnegut's other entries. I also didn't care that much for Where I Live, Long Walk to Forever, and The Manned Missiles...but to each his own I say, you may think differently should you read them. The stories originally appeared in various magazines, chief among them Collier's, the Saturday Evening Post, and Lady's Home Journal...the sex-obsessed title story naturally was first published in Playboy. The book is an interesting assortment of diverse stories...I'm sure you'll find something here to like, as well as something not to like. Below I've listed each title followed by its original year of publication and a few words intended to refresh my own memory later on...
Saturday, October 3, 2020
Mailed Off Ballot, Avoiding Political Stuff in Media
Friday, October 2, 2020
Quote of the Week...from Neil deGrasse Tyson
Thursday, October 1, 2020
My September 2020 Running Report
In September my health and running rebounded considerably as I ran on all but one of the days, amassing 160 total miles for the month with a 7-mile run last Saturday being my longest single run. Yesterday the weather turned comfortably cooler and dryer...I'm looking forward to some good, long runs for this coming month. As for races, I don't see any local ones planned for anytime soon...understandable because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Is the Tom Walker Memorial Half-Marathon, originally slated for next month here, cancelled or not? I checked the Florida Track Club's website...they are the event's organizers...and I received no information whatsoever as to this pertinent question: guess I'll email them without necessarily expecting a reply. And I'd like to try and run the Five Points of Life half-marathon held annually in Gainesville during mid-February: what's going to happen with that one? Guess I'll have to wait to find out. If both races are cancelled then fine, as far as I see it: I like to run in races from time to time, but my main focus is always my personal daily training...