Quote of the Week...from Pablo Picasso

I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it.        ---Pablo Picasso

Of course, the famed artist with the above quote probably wouldn't have stepped off a mountain cliff in a hang-glider without first gaining a little bit of proper instruction on the subject, but that in no way contradicts his statement.  After all, he didn't say he was doing anything he couldn't do...Picasso's emphasis is the importance of stepping out and taking action on those things that do matter.  And yes, swirling around in the midst of a situation with new rules that require different skills from what one possesses is a good way to speedily pick up those skills...assuming that the necessary failures in the process can be overcome without dire results and that someone or some process is providing instructive feedback. For most of us, I imagine that the more common fear of humiliating failure, witnessed by others, keeps us from trying out a lot of new things...for me speaking in foreign languages, writing stories and doing podcasts are forefront on my list of endeavors that the co-founder of cubism would probably jump into with reckless abandon were he around today (and interested in doing those same things).  And I don't think he'd have any problem with impulsively just getting on a plane to somewhere new for a weekend adventure.  Sometimes many of us...myself included...tend to feel that we have to know all or most of the steps in detail in order to successfully accomplish something new when just going out and being an active participant, stumbling and falling, can be in the end more instructive.  Just make sure you have a soft landing, though...

My Mid-Week Neighborhood 7.1 Mile Run/Walk

This morning I went out on my routine run/walk training session up and down the residential streets of my Gainesville subdivision, Northwood Pines, and the adjacent one...Northwood Oaks.  The skies were clear with only a few puffy clouds to speak of.  It was 80 degrees with 65% humidity...not so bad. I set my Amazon Music to a mix of Arcade Fire tracks and began. As usual, I felt a little rough at the start, planning at first to go for at least 5 miles, with my customary alternating 2 minutes of moderate running with 2 of brisk walking.  But toward the end I felt energized enough to add to my course and finished covering 7.1 miles, taking 1:17:33  to do it.  Downing some Gatorades afterwards, my recovery seemed fast, although later on in the day I realized I should have hydrated more before and during my training.  I'm thinking of focusing on walking during the Thursday training in future weeks, knowing that the weather will only get hotter.  Doing these road outings twice a week is one facet of my training.  Another is going to my local gym two or three times a week on the treadmill and gradually increasing my maximum running and walking speeds on it.  More on that in a later article...for now, it's on to work!

Weekly Short Stories: 1996 Science Fiction, Part 6

It's Wednesday again, so time for another installment whereby I react to short stories and novellas I've read in the realm of science fiction, inching ahead in time. I'm still in the year 1996, looking at the Gardner Dozois anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction, Fourteenth Annual Collection, featuring his picks from that year. I went back in this blog to when I wrote about my favorite songs from that year...appears that I had a pretty dark, Goth perspective on things with my "song of the year" being Again by Alice in Chains with the runners-up Novocaine for the Soul by the Eels and Stupid Girl by Garbage (with their great singer Shirley Manson).  Don't get me wrong...I still love that music and wish there was more like it around today.  But as I usually say at this juncture, back to those stories...

THE WEIGHING OF AYRE by George Feeley

The historical late 17th Century wars between England and the Netherlands is the setting for this tale of intrigue as an English researcher is compelled by his country's spymaster to discover the secret behind the superior lens of the Dutch in their optical instruments.  Those newly developed instruments...the telescope and the microscope...hold great promise for science.  But which do the English want to use for fighting their enemy?  Sometimes hard to follow, this story discusses the era's epidemics of plague and other horrible, contagious diseases while sadly confirming that in war, often anything goes...

THE LONGER VOYAGE by Michael Cassutt

This story is set around the end of this century as, while human life is being extended, so is the departure time for humanity's space mission to Alpha Centauri.  The space station where dwells a second-generation population who have never been anywhere else, much less Earth, is full of conflict and corruption...test failures keeps kicking the mission down into the future, months or years at a time.  But what will change things this time around? An excellent depiction of the base corruption underlying organized human society where insiders with underground connections hold the real power. But I didn't need to read a futuristic sci-fi yarn to figure that out...

Next week: more from '96...

Shortcomings in Digital Technology Skills Impair My Computer Use

I have had a Google Chromebook for the past few months...still a long way off from figuring out this supposedly simple device.  For example, I had just typed out several sentences introducing a completely different subject for today's blog article entry, but somehow the way I rested my hands on the keyboard caused the whole thing to erase...and without any means of undoing it!  I've also had issues with the word processing here and certain keyboard functions I'd normally consider standard, such as the absent "Capitals" key normally available anywhere else. Yet overall I'm pretty satisfied with it, since after all I'm a big user of Google applications, including this blog, YouTube, Google Search and Google Maps: they seem to be well integrated.  It's also true that I lag behind many others in my knowledge of how to maneuver around the computer...not an advisable shortcoming in this age of heavy dependency on digital information and the Internet.  I think my problems are probably more due to needing to improve my digital IQ than with the computer hardware or software.  Then again, something inside me says to not get too involved in it all and stay as long as possible on this side of reality.  That might explain why I feel a strange sense of relief whenever I sign out and shut off the computer.  And at least I managed to get this article out before inexplicably erasing it...  

Just Finished Reading Discipline is Destiny by Ryan Holiday

Ryan Holiday is an entrepreneur and author of several books supporting his adopted philosophy of stoicism mixed with Buddhism.   In his book Discipline is Destiny (2022), he uses examples from mythology and history to show how superior a life of temperance and self-discipline is, and that each of us can choose our own way, preferably a life of virtue: excellence in the physical, mental and emotional realms.  The Four Cardinal Virtues he breaks down in the book's introduction: courage, temperance, justice and wisdom.  Discipline is Destiny is the second of Holiday's four-part series on these virtues: he's already written Courage is Calling and the next book, about justice, is titled Right Thing, Right Now and is due for release next month.  This book I just read is loaded with examples of people, mostly famous, who either implemented the author's stoically-derived principles of self-restraint or who fell victims to excess and impulse.  Freedom is discipline, he stresses, while making the wrong choices in life can lead to one's voluntary subjugation to others.  There's a lot of good stuff in this book that can spur inner reflection.  You may not like some of the historical figures he cites for examples, but the examples themselves are pertinent and worthy of attention.  Before I read the new book coming out soon, I think I'll check out Courage is Calling...

My Mother's Day Neighborhood 8.8 Mile Run/Walk

Not that Mother's Day immediately relates to my recently established routine of venturing out into my neighborhood (and adjacent ones) for distance run/walks, but that's how this particular Sunday went for me.  The first half of the day was a celebration of motherhood in all its forms, as Melissa, an ordained pastor, gave an inspiring and thoughtful message to the fellowship we attend.  Then we, along with our two grown children Will and Rebecca, went out to lunch at a familiar haunt...you know, the place known for their breadsticks, salads and soups.  Then came the afternoon and nap time as I fell asleep in the living room recliner.  When I awoke I wondered whether it wouldn't do too much harm to just pass on my planned twilight run/walk.  But no, somehow I got my reluctant body out the door and managed to extend my covered distance to 8.8 miles, again alternating throughout between two minutes of moderate running and two of brisk walking: final time was 1:40:56.  This I did to a shuffle of Police songs, thanks to Amazon Music.  Unlike last Sunday, there was no rain this week, just clear skies and the temperature had dipped a bit, thanks to a (very mild) cold front, to around 80 degrees during my training, with a very pleasant 41% humidity.  But my body feels a little sore, and I may just take a nice little break from any workouts tomorrow, at least from anything strenuous...  

My Cumulative Running/Walking Race Record Update

I've updated below my cumulative running race record...you can see that since the previous update on December 10th 2023, most of my ventures have been to a single location: Gainesville's pretty Depot Park where, on Saturday mornings, they hold a free 5K race/run/walk called the "Depot Parkrun"...I've covered it 42 times at this writing on May 11, 2024.  I also ran half-marathon and 10-mile races during the intervening weeks.  Races 10K (6.2 miles) or longer I have highlighted in red. If you see a race you'd like to read more about, just click on the listed title to read my same-day blog article (the first five, though, are "ancient history" from the previous century).  As for the distance abbreviations, m=miles, K=kilometers, M=marathon and HM=half marathon. And now, on to more running (and walking) adventures...

3-23-73        2m       11:56      Nova HS at Piper track meet         Piper High School, Ft. Lauderdale

4-10-73         2m       11:35      Broward Country South Division Meet    S. Broward HS, Dania

11-27-74      ~2m      ??            Turkey Trot  (BCC) (1)                  Davie, FL

11-?-75      ~2m      ??            Turkey Trot (BCC) (2)                     Davie, FL

7-?-76      ~5m      ??            -unknown-                                         Hollywood, FL   

10-04-08    5K       25:10      Red Cross                                         University of Florida

10-18-08    5K       24:07      Hope Heels                                       Westside Park

11-01-08    5K       24:28      Dog Days                                            Westside Park
2-14-10     HM    2:17:10     Five Points of Life (1)                      Gainesville
3-27-10     15K    1:23:55    Climb for Cancer                                Haile Plantation
4-24-10      5K        23:05     Run Amuck                                        NFR Office Park
5-22-10      5K        25:00     Somer's Sunshine Run                   Orange Park
6-05-10      5K        23:23     Cpt. Chad Reed Memorial                     Cross City
7-04-10      3m        23:04     Melon Run  (1)                                Westside Park
11-6-10    HM    2:01:41       Tom Walker Memorial (1)              Hawthorne Trail
1-23-11      M       6:04:35    Ocala Marathon                                South of Paddock Mall
11-12-11    HM    1:59:38    Tom Walker Memorial (2)              Hawthorne Trail
1-01-12      HM    1:56:07    De Leon Springs                              De Leon Springs
7-04-12      3m        25:45     Melon Run (2)                                Westside Park
11-22-12   10K       53:10     Turkey Trot (1)                                 Tacachale
1-20-13      HM    1:55:20    Ocala Half-Marathon                    South of Paddock Mall
3-03-13      HM    1:50:53    Orange Blossom                             Tavares
11-09-13    2m     untimed    Gator Gallop                                   University Ave, SW 2nd Ave
2-01-14      5K        25:53     Education for Life                           Westside Park
2-16-14      HM    2:07:36    Five Points of Life (2)                    Gainesville
11-27-14   10K        56:56    Turkey Trot (2)                                Tacachale
12-20-14    HM    2:03:30    Starlight Half-Marathon               Palm Coast
1-31-15     15K    1:18:21       Newnan's Lake (1)                          West of Newnan's Lake
2-15-15     HM     1:58:48    Five Points of Life (3)                    Gainesville
3-14-15     10K        56:24    Run for Haven (1)                           Tioga
12-05-15   6.5m   1:03:52    Lumber Around the Levee           Micanopy
1-30-16     15K    1:31:20    Newnan's Lake (2)                           West of Newnan's Lake
3-12-16     10K       59:00    Run for Haven (2)                           Tioga
5-14-16       5K       28:36    May Day Glow Run (1)                    Tioga

7-4-16         3m      28:22    Melon Run (3)                                  Westside Park

11-24-16    10K    1:01:13    Turkey Trot (3)                                Tacachale

2-26-17     HM    2:24:29    Five Points of Life (4)                    Gainesville

3-11-17      10K        58:45   Run for Haven (3)                           Tioga

5-21-17        5K        33:00   May Day Glow Run (2)                 Tioga

1-27-18       15K    1:38:41    Newnan's Lake (3)                        West of Newnan's Lake

2-18-18    HM      2:19:37    Five Points of Life (5)                   Gainesville

3-17-18        5K        29:17    Chris Lacinak Scholarship           Gainesville

12-8-18      15K     1:37:33    Season of Hope (1)                       Hawthorne Trail

1-5-19          5K        30:00    Depot Parkrun (1)                        Gainesville

2-9-19         5K        30:36    Depot Parkrun (2)                        Gainesville

3-16-19       5K        31:16     Miles for Meridian                        Tioga

4-27-19      10K    1:01:52    Run the Good Race (1)                 NFR Office Park

5-5-19         5K        30:38    May Day Glow Run (3)                Jonesville

11-10-19    HM    2:35:20   Tom Walker Memorial (3)          Hawthorne Trail

11-28-19    10K    1:02:16    Turkey Trot (4)                             Tacachale

12-7-19      15K    1:35:48    Season of Hope (2)                       Hawthorne Trail

4-3-21         5K        32:40    Headwaters (1)                             Gainesville

5-29-21      5K        30:50    Depot Parkrun (3)                        Gainesville

6-12-21       5K        33:06    Depot Parkrun (4)                       Gainesville

12-4-21       5K        33:03    Depot Parkrun (5)                        Gainesville

2-12-22       5K        31:28    Depot Parkrun (6)                        Gainesville

2-20-22     HM   2:33:51     Five Points of Life (6)                  Gainesville

3-19-22      10m  1:48:24    Micanopy Ten-Mile (1)                    Micanopy

3-26-22       5K      30:45     Depot Parkrun (7)                        Gainesville

4-9-22         5K       29:28     Headwaters (2)                            Gainesville

10-15-22     10K   1:04:55    Tom Walker Preview (1)                   Hawthorne Trail

10-22-22    10K   1:03:20    Run the Good Race (2)                Gainesville

11-06-22     HM  3:05:29   Tom Walker Memorial (4)           Hawthorne Trail

11-12-22       5K       31:38   Depot Parkrun (8)                         Gainesville

12-10-22      5K       31:46    Depot Parkrun (9)                        Gainesville

1-1-23           5K       32:59   Depot Parkrun (10)                      Gainesville

1-15-23       HM   2:34:42   FTC Mary Andrews (1)                 Hawthorne Trail (east end)

3-11-23        5K         34:02  Depot Parkrun (11)                      Gainesville

3-25-23       5K         33:19   Depot Parkrun (12)                     Gainesville

4-22-23       5K         32:47  Depot Parkrun (13)                      Gainesville

4-29-23       5K        33:34   Depot Parkrun (14)                      Gainesville 

5-6-23         5K        33:08   Depot Parkrun (15)                      Gainesville

5-20-23       5K        31:46    Depot Parkrun (16)                     Gainesville

5-27-23       5K        45:14    Depot Parkrun (17)  (speed-walk)  Gainesville

6-3-23         5K        31:22    Depot Parkrun (18)                     Gainesville

6-10-23       5K       33:38    Depot Parkrun (19)                      Gainesville

8-19-23       5K       32:52    Depot Parkrun (20)                     Gainesville

8-26-23      5K       31:29     Depot Parkrun (21)                      Gainesville

9-9-23        4m      41:59     Is It Fall 4-Miler                            Squirrel Ridge Park, G'ville

9-16-23      5K       32:17      Depot Parkrun (22)                     Gainesville

9 -23-23     5K      30:23     Depot Parkrun (23)                      Gainesville

10-14-23    10K    1:04:51  Tom Walker Preview (2)               Hawthorne Trail

10-21-23    5K       30:19     Depot Parkrun (24)                      Gainesville

10-28-23    5K      30:38     Depot Parkrun (25)                      GaineGainesvillesville

11-4-23       5K      30:14     Depot Parkrun (26)                      Gainesville

11-12-23     HM  2:18:06    Tom Walker Memorial (5)          Hawthorne Trail

11-25-23     5K      29:47     Depot Parkrun (27)                      Gainesville

12-2-23       5K      30:39     Depot Parkrun (28)                     Gainesville    

12-9-23      15K   1:33:02    Season of Hope (3)                       Hawthorne Trail

12-16-23     5K      28:57     Depot Parkrun (29)                      Gainesville

12-23-23    5K       42:20    Depot Parkrun (30) (speed-walk)  Gainesville

1-1-24         5K       27:38    Depot Parkrun (31)                      Gainesville

1-13-24       5K    1:00:40   Depot Parkrun (32) (with Melissa) Gainesville

1-14-24      HM  2:07:40   FTC Mary Andrews (2)                Hawthorne Trail (east end)

1-20-24     5K        57:26    Depot Parkrun (33)  (with Melissa) Gainesville

2-3-24       5K     1:10:25    Depot Parkrun (34) (volunteer walker) Gainesville

2-10-24    10m   1:39:18    Micanopy Ten-Mile (2)               Micanopy

2-24-24     5K        27:36    Depot Parkrun (35)                      Gainesville

3-16-24     5K        28:19     Depot Parkrun (36)                      Gainesville

3-30--24   5K        28:18     Depot Parkrun (37)                      Gainesville

4-13-24     5K        28:47     Depot Parkrun (38)                     Gainesville

4-20-24    5K        39:43     Depot Parkrun (39) (speed-walk)  Gainesville

4-27-24    5K         27:10     Depot Parkrun (40)                     Gainesville

5-3-24       5K        28:19     Depot Parkrun (41)                      Gainesville

5-10-24     5K        29:11      Depot Parkrun (42)                     Gainesville

*******************

As for the standard-distance races from 2008 through the present, here are listed my total races finished for each distance along with my personal best time for them...

                         # of Finishes   Personal Best

5K                         56                 23:05  (4/24/10)

10K                       11                  53:10   (11/22/12)

15K                         7               1:18:21  (1/31/15)

10 Miles                2               1:39:18  (2/10/24)

Half-Marathon  17               1:50:53  (3/3/13)

Marathon             1                6:04:35  (1/23/11)

Ran Today's Gainesville Depot Parkrun 5K

This morning I sprang out of bed before my irritating phone alarm was about to go off and prepared myself for yet another Depot Parkrun 5K, a free, volunteer-run Saturday community event at the pleasant nature/recreation park bearing that name just a few blocks south of downtown Gainesville.  I knew this race would be warmer and more humid...with the temperature at 7:30 race time rising in the low 70s and the humidity around 90% (and no cloud cover), it turned out pretty much as I had expected.  There seemed to be more people there than usual...I had to park in the overflow side lot.  My plan today was to run/walk the event, so every 6 minutes I ran briskly, then walked fast for 50 seconds...this seemed to keep me fresh under the weather conditions until I finished.  My time was 29:11, not close to my personal best here at Depot Park but still under 30 minutes.  Melissa did her own 5K this morning as well...on the treadmill.  She suggested that perhaps the Parkrun seems longer than 5K (3.1 miles)...maybe I'll measure it on my phone app next time around.  Click HERE to see today's results...

Quote of the Week...from Epictetus

If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid.                      ---Epictetus

Epictetus was a Stoic philosopher, living within the Roman Empire during the early Christian era.  Earlier in his life he was a slave but was later freed and then banished to Greece.  Many of his sayings form the basis for the Stoic way of life that grew during that period, to the point when a later Roman emperor, Marcus Aurelius, embraced this philosophy.  I ran across the above quote of Epictetus and it struck me as being especially true and relevant to me.  Nobody likes to look clumsy and awkward in what they do, nor do they like to publicly make mistakes.  Yet if you're learning to do something new, then by necessity you're going to screw up a bit at whatever stage of it you are in, and come out of it looking a little "foolish and stupid" as the good philosopher pointed out.  Of course, the opposite is true: you're being wise and smart in stretching yourself with this new endeavor...as well as courageous and strong!  We were in a store in the Oaks Mall yesterday when we ran across an employee who I heard speak Russian...my first impulse was to keep my mouth shut, but then I thought, why not see how well she understands my speech?  I felt very silly even with the basic things I said to her, but she understood it all quite well: a good experience that would never have happened were I too afraid to step out of my comfort zone.  The truth is, though, that I probably could have been bolder about practicing my speech then, but I'm still a bit skittish about looking like the fool...which in itself is foolish...

How My Neighborhood Training Run/Walk Went This Morning

This week I decided to switch my mid-week neighborhood training run/walks from Wednesday to Thursday, so it was this morning when I set out once again.  I planned to go for 5.8 miles on my slightly-amended course, and so I did, alternating the distance between two minutes of running and two of fast walking...I covered it in 1:04:22.  The temperature climbed quickly so that in late morning it had reached 90 degrees with 45% humidity.  But I was able to do the task at hand and managed it well, with a fast recovery (but I did drink a lot of Gatorade).  Since Thursday is also garbage/recyclables/brush-pickup day in my neighborhood, I was thus able to perform a public service by picking up empty brush containers that the workers had left rolling around in the middle of the street...I see a developing pattern to this.  If conditions keep getting hotter in days to come, then my strategy will be to increase my time spent walking in relation to running.  During my outing today I listened to a shuffle of songs by the alternative band Gorillaz, which included my current favorite song so far of 2024, New Gold...

Weekly Short Stories: 1996 Science Fiction, Part 5

Below are my reactions to two more stories appearing in the Gardner Dozois anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction, Fourteenth Annual Collection, in which the editor picked his favorites from the year 1996.  For me, I started out that year at the Gainesville Post Office on the Tour 3 shift (late afternoon to early morning) on the LSM sorting outgoing letters and ended it as a manual clerk on the letter aisle on Tour 1 (the graveyard shift)...much more peaceful as they were getting rid of the Letter Sorting Machine anyway.  I definitely preferred that latter assignment.   But back to those stories...

THE COST TO BE WISE by Maureen F. McHugh

This is a searing indictment of how anthropologists...and academia and government in general...convicted of the past in which explorers and settlers often chauvinistically (and sometimes accidentally) wiped out the cultures of peoples they encountered, adopt a severely hands-off attitude toward their study targets.  Change the setting to other planets in the galaxy and we have a brutal, more primitive culture on one, visited and studied by a more advanced one from Earth.  Yet the "teachers" refuse to intervene when gross social injustice is going on, much to the consternation of the story's chief protagonist, a native young woman in desperate plight.  The brutality of the closing paragraphs demonstrates that any policy taken to extremes without regard for needed flexibility in cases that scream for mercy is in itself brutal and harmful.  This story's very last paragraph made a strong impact on me...

BICYCLE REPAIRMAN by Bruce Sterling

In the Chattanooga area many decades from now, the economy and sociopolitical order have undergone massive changes along with the rest of the world and America.  A young man, disenchanted with the system and the expectations from others (including his mother), has built his own bicycle repair business...with the protection of a tough gang he's befriended...in the remains of a large, abandoned building complex now populated largely by squatters.  One day he receives the delivery of a primitive cable TV box from his old roommate.  This sets in motion his encounter with the Deep State, as the agent makes one blunder after another to recover the box.  Times will change, but human nature doesn't.  This tale was very prescient in its prediction of the exponential and over-encompassing rise and manipulation of Artificial Intelligence.  Only 28 years after the story was first published, I see signs around me of what then was only in the author's imagination...

Next week I review more stories from 1996...

Enjoying Amazon's Music Unlimited Feature

A few weeks ago Melissa, who is infinitely more adept than me at maneuvering through the intricacies of the Internet, got our household on Amazon's Music Unlimited feature.  Since then I've enjoyed listening to various artists I've loved in the past and have been reacquainted with a lot of forgotten music.  I've also used it to listen, commercial-free, while I do my neighborhood runs.  Alexa, who seems to be everywhere, is the AI voice I speak with to make my requests...sometimes she gets them and sometimes she's off track: hey nobody's perfect!  Already an Amazon fan...as well as with Google, which provides the platform for this blog as well as its amazing YouTube...this music feature has done for me what I had hoped Amazon Kindle would have done for books but hasn't by a long shot, with so much written material still digitally unavailable.  But I'll gladly take the music, both from Alexa and from YouTube, and take a rain check on the books.  Now excuse me while I get out my headphones and ask Alexa to play some Kinks...

Just Finished Reading Age of Ash by Daniel Abraham

Back in 2014-16 I read Daniel Abraham's five-volume fantasy series The Dagger and the Coin.  It's been too long since then without me reading this writer's wonderful fiction...I think the main reason is that I had gotten away from the fantasy genre.  But recently I decided to try another Abraham fantasy series, this one ongoing: The Kithamar Trilogy, with the first two books already out.  I just finished reading the first installment, titled Age of Ash...published in 2020.  In this particular fantasy world, Kithamar stands out as the capital city of a kingdom with a mysterious cult of magic that plays a secret role in the succession of its royal leaders.  The prince in charge has just died and the cultists are in a frenzy because the new, young prince in succession has not taken to the "magic".  Just what is this magic and what role does a sinister knife play in it all?  Two girls from the city's poverty zone of Longhill, Alys and Sammish, survive by being instrumental parts of a thieving band, their chief source of income derived from performing "pulls", that is pickpocketing and burglary through intricate coordination.  Alys' brother has his own assignment, to recover a stolen knife and return it to that aforementioned cult, with the woman Andomaka being the instrumental character there.  When Darro turns up in the river murdered, Alys, succumbing to grief and desire for revenge, searches for the killer and, with Sammish...who secretly harbors romantic feelings for Alys...go through danger and intrigue to unravel the mystery.  Expertly written, I was once again impressed by Abraham's ability to draw out each character's personality.  I initially thought he was making Kithamar an unduly dreary and harsh place, but the story itself ends up explaining that to my satisfaction.  I'm looking forward to the next book in the series, titled Blade of Dream (it came out last year).  Hopefully, I won't have to wait too long for the final one to be released after I finish that one...

My Neighborhood 8 Mile Run/Walk Today

Late this afternoon I continued my recent change in training to covering some lengthier distances on my home neighborhood streets, using courses I've already designed through the MapMyRun app and alternating two minutes of running with two minutes of brisk walking throughout the session.  I started it off from my own house at 5:20 PM knowing, with partly cloudy skies above, that there was a distinct possibility of rain showers at some time on my venture.  I put my earplugs in and set my Amazon Music to play a shuffle of songs by The Doors...and set off.  The temperature at the start was a hotter 88 degrees with 39% humidity...for about twenty minutes near the end it rained and that did cool it a bit to 81 with 66% humidity when I finished.  I covered a distance of 8.0 miles with a finishing time of 1:28:40...a slightly faster pace than my previous 7.2 mile outing this past Wednesday.  Unlike last Sunday I encountered much fewer people out and about, which suited me just fine...I think the showers also helped in that regard.  I also had a much quicker recovery than with Wednesday's effort.  All in all it was a positive experience and I plan to continue this twice-a-week system to complement my other workouts...

Ran This Morning's Depot Parkrun 5K Here in Gainesville

Amid excessive humidity (can't get much higher than 99%) and 65 degrees at the 7:30 race time, Melissa and I went down to Gainesville's Depot Park this morning to participate in their "Parkrun 5K" held each week, free (sign up online) and volunteer-run.  She walked the course (doing quite well, I might add) and I ran it, not trying to set a personal best but rather to enjoy a good sustained pace.  After the overcrowded start in which it was nearly impossible to break free of many slower runners boxing me in, I did reach that groove and rode it to the end, finishing at 28:19 with plenty of energy to spare.  It was pretty muggy out there, but both of us enjoyed the experience, Melissa's 6th Parkrun finish and my 41st.  Sometimes the organizers designate a theme for a race...today since it is May the Fourth, they made it Star Wars ("May the force be with you") with some folks dressing up for the occasion (but not too many).  Afterwards we went for breakfast at the 43rd Street Deli, a popular haunt for Gainesville natives.  For today's results, click HERE...

Quote of the Week...from Eleanor Roosevelt

No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.               ---Eleanor Roosevelt

Eleanor Roosevelt, Franklin Delano Roosevelt's wife and the nation's First Lady throughout his twelve-year presidency that began with the Great Depression and took us through World World II, was a powerful speaker and activist, noted for her championing of marginalized peoples.  Rob Dial, in today's podcast, gave her above quote that dovetailed nicely with his assertion that others...especially those with toxic personalities...can only hurt you with their words if you sense their truthfulness for yourself and internalize them.  How such triggers are processed...between the time they are heard and your response...can determine the quality of your life as psychologist Victor Frankl once emphasized.  I tend to agree, not that my own reactions to such negative experiences have demonstrated this for much of my life.  I can remember numerous instances of encountering toxic people and allowing their barbs to cut me.  Yet at the same time I didn't necessarily feel inferior as a result but rather grew to hate those committing the offenses.  As Max Ehrmann in his prose poem Desiderata once wrote, "Avoid loud and aggressive people, they are vexatious to the spirit".  Yet Dial regards toxic jerks and their insulting bullcrap as a gift to aid in people's personal development...oh, please, I bet you were one of them, dude. By the way, "bully" can be substituted for "toxic person"...

My Wednesday Neighborhood Run/Walk

As I've already written, since the abandoned marathon attempt on April 7th I decided to add a feature to my running and walking training, involving going outside on the streets in my home's vicinity to run and walk.  So far so good...the idea is to do this on Wednesday mornings before work and on Sundays at dusk, weather permitting and no precluding special events, of course.  Last Sunday I covered 7.2 miles alternating two minutes running with two minutes walking...yesterday I did likewise.  Sunday's time was 1:21:03...Wednesday was 1:20:24.  Not much difference, but the conditions were, although in both days the temperature hovered around 80 degrees.  The humidity yesterday morning averaged around 52%...pretty good, but the sky was clear and the sun baked down on me the whole run/walk...quite a contrast to Sunday's sunset shadows.  But on the positive side, the little kiddies that littered the road with their playing were off at school and the motor traffic was immensely lighter...I pretty much had the course to myself.  Still, I had to cool down more after it was over, downing a few Gatorades and resting.  Because of the time constraints on Wednesday, I think 7.2 miles will likely be my maximum distance, It will be the weekend...most likely Sunday...during which I expand things to see how far I can go.  But in it all I intend to mix up the running with brisk walking at regular short intervals...

Oh, by the way, for yesterday's jaunt around the 'hood, I listened to a shuffle of Regina Spektor songs...

Weekly Short Stories: 1996 Science Fiction, Part 4

It's Wednesday and time for another review of tales out of editor Gardner Dozois' anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction, Fourteenth Annual Collection, and featuring his picks from 1996.  This was the year that the Florida Gators football team under head coach Steve Spurrier, along with Heisman Trophy winning quarterback Danny Wuerfful, won the national championship, securing a rematch against rival Florida State after first losing to them and then incredibly seeing other schools lose upsets in their respective conference playoffs.  And now to those stories...  

THE LAST HOMOSEXUAL by Paul Park

This story takes a broad swipe at the junk science sweeping our society by suggesting a near future in which religious-based "science" carries the weight of law.  Very sarcastic, and it's really not about homosexuals, as one of the characters makes bluntly clear...

RECORDING ANGEL by Ian McDonald

An unforgettable, vivid tale about a gradual but inexorable invasion of a different kind of reality on the Earth, most prevalent in Africa.  The line of division between "our" world and that which lies beyond the creeping line is clearly marked as a reporter does a piece about the impending end of Nairobi while decadents there "party like it's 1999". It's thought the transforming Earth is a kind of alien terraforming for their own life forms, but someone has a different explanation.  Pretty damned profound, it all is...  

DEATH DO US PART by Robert Silverberg

The idea of being physically immortal, not susceptible to disease or aging, is examined as humanity in the not-so-distant future has achieved this prized objective...if the individuals undergoing the necessary treatment take to it, that is.  For the few that don't, what used to be an ordinary, long life span turns into an ordeal of exclusion and unwanted pity. And people's values certainly drastically change with their expanded lifespan, as the author clearly shows...

THE SPADE OF REASON by Jim Cowan

An inmate at a mental hospital, formerly a brilliant physicist, is about to be released as he explains to his friend, the facility's night janitor, what brought him to be institutionalized.  If you want your eyes opened to quantum mechanics, chaos theory and the limits to reason, then this one's for you.  Very instructive, made me think (but not too much, I hope)...

Next week: more from 1996...

My April 2024 Running and Walking Report

In April I ran every day and racked up the mileage, both in running and walking.  I had planned on running the Run Your Buns Off Marathon on the 7th but let it pass by chiefly because of an acute case of insomnia for the two nights before...and I had issues with that race's format which I discussed earlier on this blog.  Instead, on the 13th and 27th I ran Gainesville's Depot Parkrun 5K, last Saturday actually getting a "personal best" at that weekly event.  On the 20th I speed-walked it, accomplishing one of my walking goals by breaking 40 minutes in a 5K.  In mid-month I began an incremental process of building up my covered run/walk distance by taking Wednesdays and Sundays and covering my own created courses going through my neighborhood and the surrounding ones here in northern Gainesville.  I'm hopeful that this will strengthen me through the rest of the spring and summer while giving my body the needed recovery time. The outings, at least right now, consist of running for two minutes, then walking two minutes, then running two minutes, etc.  As for upcoming races, the only thing I see right now ahead of me for the next few months is that Depot Parkrun.  I omitted swimming from this article because, frankly, I didn't swim any during April...my local gym, which touts its pools to lure prospective subscribers, hasn't exactly been forthcoming recently in providing adequate pool opportunities for me: let's see if they can do something about that.  And if not, I'm ready to explore other options... 

About the Recent LIV Golf Tournament in Australia

This past weekend I watched some of the action on the LIV professional golf league tour, this particular tournament taking place in Adelaide, Australia.  The 54 golfers on the 54-hole tourney...they're all 54 holes instead of the standard PGA 72-holes, hence the Roman numeral "LIV"...were largely recruited and paid millions just to jump over to the new league, funded by Saudi interests. I'm no golf purist and, even if I "should", don't care about the ongoing controversies between the old and new leagues: let 'em duke it out.  No, I just wanted to watch an LIV event, which it turns out was easy enough.  The first round was streamed live on YouTube and the second and third rounds broadcast on CW, which I loaded for free on Roku...the Gainesville CW version didn't carry the LIV.  On one hand, I liked the fact that the coverage included most of the field of players while typical PGA coverage on the Golf Channel or major networks like CBS and NBC tend to only follow the leaders.  That's fine, but I was still taken aback at how fast they switched from one golfer to the next...almost like a mass assembly line of brief takes...and most of them were just putting the ball.  I saw very little of the Adelaide course and realized that showing the different courses in detail is one of the things that the PGA tour coverage is getting right.  The announcers were very gung-ho promoting the LIV and their prized golfers...it got to be a bit overwhelming, as a matter of fact.  And what's with the loud music on the putting greens, unless it's just the new league's way of saying that they're cooler than the PGA?  I'm still going to follow LIV golf...next weekend they're playing in Singapore.  But overall, in spite of my criticism that general PGA televised coverage is too narrow regarding most of the participants, I think I prefer their approach to the hack cheerleaders broadcasting on behalf of LIV and their cast of over-hyped stars...

Neighborhood 7.2 Mile Run/Walk Successful But Sometimes Annoying

Since the Wednesday before last I have changed my training routine a bit, inserting outdoors road running (alternated with walking) for Wednesdays and Sundays.  The mid-week outing by necessity takes place in the morning before I go to work in the early afternoon, while on Sunday it looks to be more in the early sunset period...like today was.  I had already run this 7.2 mile course, which is an extension of the 3.3 and 5.0 milers I ran the last two Wednesdays.  It was 81 degrees with 36% humidity when I started out around 6:40 PM...not bad at all.  But what was vastly different from my mid-week runs were all the people out in the neighborhood...especially the children with their street games, remote control car toys and bike riding, although toward the end they tended to thin out as the evening shadows increased.  And I wasn't too happy to have to contend with the weekend traffic around me, either.  All in all, though, I felt good with my venture, alternating the running and walking at two minute intervals...my finishing time was 1 hour 21 minutes 3 seconds.  To help me along the way I asked Alexa on my Amazon Music to play a mix of Kasabian songs...that's a British alternative group I've followed for the past couple of decades.  My plan is to keep increasing the distance covered...at least on Sundays when I have more time at hand...while sticking with my 1:1 run/walk ratio.  Hopefully the brats wonderful kids will stay out of my way... 

Ran Gainesville's Depot Parkrun 5K This Morning

With the weather forecast hinting of morning rain, I woke up this morning to clear skies, and they lasted pretty much through Gainesville's weekly free, volunteer-run 5K (3.1 miles) walk/run event, held at Depot Park a few blocks south of downtown and appropriately called the Depot Parkrun.  It's part of a worldwide network of Parkruns, having originated in England and spreading across the globe: Florida now has five of them.  Today was my 40th Depot Parkrun finish, and unexpectedly was my fastest there, finishing at 27:10...it's also the fastest 5K I've run overall in more than ten years: click HERE to view the results.  I had decided just before the race to forego the usual Galloway Method of alternating running with brief, regular walking breaks and sought to gut it out in the old-style way we used to run in high school eons ago.  It worked: my endurance training paid off in the last two laps of the four-lap race as, although uncomfortable, I had plenty of energy to finish it strongly.  The temperature at 7:30 race time was 62 with 98%...I doubt that conditions will be any better during the ensuing months of spring and summer... 

Quote of the Week...from Zeno of Citium

Well-being is realized by small steps, but it is no small thing.            ---Zeno of Citium

Zeno of Citium, also know as Zeno the Stoic, was the ancient Greek founder of that school of philosophy.  I picked up on the above quote while watching a YouTube video explaining stoicism.  Zeno here speaks of what in our times is often referred to as "atomic habits"...thanks to the popular same-titled book by James Clear, a work that has strong stoic undertones.  People who are fed up with their lives and want to reinvent themselves, in the process throwing away everything they have built up over the years, might be well-advised to heed Zeno's dictum, especially when considering that another element of stoicism is the elevation of a sense and expression of gratitude for the things one has been blessed with in life.  No, better to start small and fit the little changes into daily routines...after some time the effects can be revolutionary.  But don't expect or even desire perfection: it's all a process, a grand, exciting adventure...