Shows and Kids

I remember as a kid watching the Our Gang comedies, also known as the Little Rascals, over and over again. They had very funny episodes, especially the earlier ones. The later ones weren’t very funny at all to me. Why was this so? The early Little Rascals, going from Jackie Cooper though Alfalfa and most of Spanky’s tenure with the series, depicted life as kids would normally experience it: going out with friends fishing, playing hooky from school (and suffering the consequences), having a crush on the pretty young teacher, and building a long, ramshackle cart to race against a rich kid’s store-bought “car” (to impress a girl) were examples of what these early shows were about. Not only could children relate to them, but so could adults, at least those who could remember being kids at one time. From time to time, the gang would put on a show, which they dubbed “Our Gang Follies”. The first “Follies” reflected the idea of kids just coming together to put on a simple show, without any pretenses. Each of the following “Our Gang’s” follies-type shows became slicker and more professional-looking than the previous. The last of this type that I saw, titled “Ye Olde Minstrels” was almost unrecognizable to me as an Our Gang comedy.

I have a theory as to why this happened. The first Our Gang comedies were silent 1920s productions. When the talkies began, the country had gone into the Great Depression. The original idea was to let the children in the series be natural. Adult characters were often inserted into the stories to serve as comical foils to the gang’s antics. But once the political push to show that the U.S. had recovered from this troubled economic period took hold in the late 1930s, then it was considered more important to put on slicker productions instead of highlighting the kids as before just being themselves, living often under near-poverty conditions. Also, there apparently was pressure exerted to portray adults as more respectable in the later flicks, while the children displayed the expected deference to them. So it was a social agenda, I believe, that made the series less about the humor and joy involved with being a kid and made it more of kids acting like model citizens, which is actually unrealistic, and to be truthful, pretty boring to watch as well. So, what, if anything, does this have to do with today?

I could be totally off base with this, but in my opinion, putting children on stage in big productions is a phenomenon in schools and churches that’s getting a little out of hand. I recognize that participating in a performance here and there has always been a legitimate part of a child’s education and social training. It’s important to learn how to handle oneself in a poised manner in front of an audience. But it just seems to me that sometimes these shows are given more significance than they really merit. The pressure, be it real or imaginary, felt by teachers, parents, and volunteers to put on professional-caliber shows starring the children who are in their care, is apparently very strong. Instead, at least the way I see it, there should be more of a balance between excellence and participation. The idea that putting on a flawless production with near-professional acting and singing is supposed to promote the agenda of the organization putting it on doesn’t cut it with me. The performance, along with the preparation that goes into it, should be about the children, not the other way around. And anyway, life’s got to be more than just putting on one show after another. But that’s sometimes what it seems like, though. I do appreciate the efforts of all involved in putting on these shows nonetheless.

Tariffs and British Music

I am an unapologetic fan of the British musical invasion of the 1960s. From early 1964 through much of 1967, British music dominated the American pop music charts. Leading the way was the legendary band the Beatles, but there were many other artists that made the oceanic jump with varying degrees of success. Artists like Petula Clark, the Animals, the Dave Clark Five, the Rolling Stones, Dusty Springfield, Herman’s Hermits, Peter and Gordon, Gerry and the Pacemakers, and Chad and Jeremy all had multiple hits over here that owed, at least a small part, to appearances on TV variety shows, most important among them the Ed Sullivan Show. But then something strange happened around in 1967. British acts as a wholesale phenomenon began to not do so well. Other than the superartists, radio played fewer and fewer British songs. It wouldn’t be until the early 1980s when British music would reinvade American airwaves. What happened?

In the 1970s, my parents told me that it was the U.S. recording industry that manipulated British music off the American scene in the late 1960s by pressuring Congress to impose stiffer tariffs on British music imports. It wasn’t just idle speculation on my parents’ part: they had actually seen a news story on TV explaining that. And it figures this way: I have a book that goes back to that 1960s period. Month-by-month, it lists the top-ranked songs for each the United States and Britain, on facing pages. And around 1967, a curious thing happened. Groups like Herman’s Hermits and the Hollies, who had been doing equally well on both sides of the Atlantic, suddenly were only charting high in Britain, and in the U.S. they charted low if at all. And groups like the Who and Pink Floyd, who were really coming in on their own at this time, had great difficulty getting their singles played and charted. Did American listeners’ tastes suddenly change like this? I seriously doubt it. But I’ve tried to research this tariff idea and so far I’ve come up with nothing. But I know that there is at least a kernel of truth somewhere. So I’m floating it out there in the blogosphere: do you know anything about this? Even as a kid back then, I could sense that something had changed, but I couldn’t put my finger on it until a few years later.

Going the Extra Mile

The idea of going the extra mile is entrenched within our culture, the actual reference being from an exhortation by Jesus related in the New Testament. Some dismiss the wisdom of doing more than asked by another in authority. The reasoning is two-fold: one, it would only legitimize the hierarchy of authority that imposed open the “doer” in the first place. Two, if the authority making the demand (or “request”) is treated with a better-than-asked-for result, that may just become the new minimum standard when a new demand is levied. And this could be imposed on everyone, bringing up peer resentment against the overachiever. It would seem to be a wiser option, in the minds of these people, to do a mediocre job of technically fulfilling the chore so that the “boss” figure will have second thoughts about asking again. And to be perfectly honest, I see some truth in this argument! I think that some people will deliberately go “above and beyond” on assigned tasks in order to: one, give themselves a sense of freedom or self-determination and, two, encourage the authority figure to let them work more independently. To me, the first reason rings true, but anyone who thinks that someone who has scraped and clawed their way to a position of authority is going to simply turn a blind eye to a subordinate because they overachieve is a bit deluded. If anything, this would in reality send out an alarm that the hard-working subordinate is an ambitious person who at some future time may challenge or even replace the person in charge. So, at least how I see it, the best thing to do would be to honorably fulfill the assigned job, but to be careful not to overstep oneself in such a way as to ostentatiously attract the authority's attention. But I think it also is important that in fulfilling assignments, one does them with an attitude of respect and cooperation toward those in charge.

The idea of going the extra mile has a broader application than this, though. In school, for example, it behooves a student to consciously exceed the homework assigned, at least marginally, by answering a few more questions and reading a little more material. Putting a foot ahead into the not-yet-assigned material that is to be covered in the immediate future is another way of marginally exceeding expectations. As a principle of habit, it’s a good idea to overshoot (a little) whatever is on our plates at the time. This gives us the healthy perspective that we are a more active force in our own lives and less prone to seeing ourselves as passive, helpless victims of our circumstances, something that helps no one.

My Blog in Its Third Month

It’s been just a little over two and a half months since I’ve begun this blog. There has been no shortage of things to write about, and doubtless that will always be the case. Doing this has been, for me, more of a joyful exercise than I ever would have imagined. Not only has it helped with my writing, but the act of sitting down and sorting my thoughts out to where they make sense on a blog entry has helped me to be prioritize areas of my life better, as well as to look different sides of issues before I render opinions. And even with opinions that I disagree with, I’ve found that there is value to those as well.

I deeply appreciate the enormous variety of blogs out there and the people who make the effort necessary to maintain them. Some blogs, which share the same ideologies, seem to band together in their own circles, promoting and feeding off each other. There are things in the blogosphere called “carnivals”, whereby some parties review blog articles from approved sources that support a particular ideology, select the ones that most meet with their approval and interest (keeping within that ideology’s parameters, of course), and publish them as a separate blogging event, tailor-made for the ideology-in-question. Don’t get me wrong: there’s nothing at all inappropriate for people to link to (and be linked by) others who have the same point of view. But the problem is that I don’t think any of us really have the exact same positions on issues and priorities, and some of us, as bloggers, may feel compelled to an extent to customize our expressed opinions so that whoever it is judging our works for acceptance into a particular ideology’s carnivals or family of blogs won’t think that we’re too “impure” in our opinions. Speaking from my own experience, I would probably be excluded from just about all of these types of “blog-conglomeration societies” because I have varying views on different issues that don’t fit neatly into someone else’s shoebox. Besides, my blog is deliberately eclectic in nature. And frankly, I don’t know why anyone would just want to read stuff that parrots his or her own beliefs, anyway. When I surf around blogs, I like to read about all sorts of different takes on things. To borrow Rush Limbaugh’s terminology, I don’t need to be a blog “ditto-head”! Now many “carnivals” out there (such as the History Carnival or Mathematics Carnival) are oriented to certain interests rather than ideologies. And likewise, I have certain interests and show them on my featured blog links. But I also know that my pages will never pass an ideological litmus test for inclusion in someone else’s club, which means that it probably will be read by fewer people. That’s too bad, since I have something to say, too. And the consolidation of blogs on the basis of ideology gives a false sense that if a large bloc of blogs conveys a particular outlook, then that outlook is somehow more real or true. The counterargument could be made, though, that putting blogs together that share an ideology performs the useful function of making that ideology easier for anyone, regardless of their viewpoint, to explore.

So, I don’t have any particular ideological agenda with this blog, specific issues and opinions I express from time to time notwithstanding. But if you, my reader, enjoy reading it, whether you agree or disagree, then that’s good enough for me!

Favorite Song #6

#6 Father and Son by Cat Stevens (from Tea for the Tillerman, 1970)

I didn’t hear Father and Son for the first time until late 1972, when someone played it (for reasons I don’t remember now) in my eleventh-grade English class. It became another example of the legacy of my secondary school education: the most enduring impressions that I came away with were not from any of the paid faculty, but rather from media events like films or songs or from books that I read, some within and some outside of the prescribed curricula. Later, I would hear it many times on the radio, played on the album-rock stations in South Florida. Father and Son, like my #7 song Dialogue, is itself a dialogue, this time between a father and his son. But only one singer, Cat Stevens, sings both roles, singing in low and high pitches to signify the father and son, respectively. The father in the song sees the son as an extension of himself who should follow his example and advice, while the son cries out for respect and support for his own independent decisions.

Father and Son also illustrated for me the crunch of pressure and anxiety that a young person can experience as he or she enters adulthood. It seems that almost any direction taken carries with it some dire consequence, with some loved one there who is only too willing to point out the folly in taking the “wrong” path. Why is it that we as a society put this incredible burden on our young, when in truth life can be a vast stretch of time within which one can change directions many times? It’s no surprise to me that so many young adults suffer mental breakdowns, with all of the conflicting expectations, imposed both from without and within, that they must deal with in some way. To be sure, there are certain specific pitfalls that can befall them about which parents would be unloving if they did not act or speak out to warn or protect them. But in a broader sense, everyone needs to be treated in a dignified way as individuals who need to make, as adults, significant life choices for themselves.

This subject has never been more compellingly illustrated than by this poignant but sad song. There are other songs of this genre, most notably Neil Young’s Old Man and Conway Twitty’s sweet tear-jerker, That’s My Job (one of my all-time favorite country songs). Cat Stevens produced some other songs I liked, such as Sitting, Crab Dance, and Oh Very Young. He later converted to Islam, abandoned his pop music recording career, but later came back. He has now apparently reconciled his faith with his music to the point where he is recording and performing again.

Next favorite song: #5

Affirmation: I Am

One of the principles that author Steven Covey laid out in his book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People was to “begin with the end in mind”. In other words, look back on your life from an imagined point near its end (or even beyond) and get the perspective on what you really should be doing with it now. How do you want to be remembered? A lot of that has to do with the roles a person plays with which they identify themselves. For example, Michael Jordan will always be known as a basketball player. Steven Hawking has his identity as a physicist. Donald Trump is known to be an entrepreneur. At what point did these people (and others) assume their identities? Only when they achieved their fame and material reward? If not, how far back would you have to go to see the beginning point, say, when Jordan thought of himself as a “basketball player”? I submit that it was the moment that Michael, in his early youth, decided for himself that he was. Did he play well? Not at first. Did he have a lot to learn? Of course! But he identified himself with the sport, and that’s what he became, long before he achieved any appreciable recognition for his accomplishments. And so it goes for the rest of them.

I say this because I see myself as being certain “identities” as well, even though I may be in the “infant” stage of growing in them. I recently began piano lessons and feel awkward at the keyboard. The inclination is for me to say that I don’t yet play the piano since I’m just a beginning student. Nevertheless, I am a piano player (read piano teacher Dan Starr’s excellent take on this). I am a runner, although I probably won’t run in (much less finish high in) any races in the near future, just having resumed the activity recently after a long hiatus. And I am a writer. I write this blog, and at this stage of writing, it suits my purposes. As a writer, I’m bound to expand into frontiers that I would like to explore, and at a point in the future this may involve professional writing. Whatever happens, though, one thing is certain: I am a writer. Also, from now on if someone asks me whether I speak any foreign languages, I’m going to answer yes: I’m a speaker of Spanish, French, German, Polish, Russian, Chinese, Vietnamese, and Japanese. No longer am I going to hem and haw about not being fluent in them. Fluency will come more easily with the deep feeling of identification within me of speaking them already.

I think the key with regard to affirming one’s identity this way is to do it in relatively generic terms, not being too specific. Thus, I don’t call myself a concert pianist, Olympic runner, best-selling author, or United Nations interpreter. That would be delusional. But saying that I’m a pianist, runner, writer, and speaker of foreign languages is the absolute truth!

This affirming of one’s identity, even at the beginning of a possibly long-term effort to achieve competency (and ultimately excellence) in an area cannot be underestimated in its importance. When one identifies closely with a dream, this internalizes it, giving it a better chance to grow to fulfillment. And that fulfillment of a dream can be anything from a humble showing of success or proficiency all the way to outstanding achievements and recognition!

Conservative Talk Radio

When I’m at work, sometimes I have access to the radio. And there are a couple of talk stations that, of course, are saturated with opinion shows from a right-wing, conservative perspective. Now there’s nothing wrong about this, as far as I’m concerned. I like hearing different takes on the issues of the day. I’d just like to hear a more liberal take on them every now and then, that’s all. But even conceding that I’m only going to hear the conservative shows on my radio, I would at least expect the shows to show some reasonable variation as far as the actual subject matter for discussion is concerned.

And, to be fair, there are some differences between shows. Neal Boortz is a confirmed libertarian (except when the military is concerned) who lashes out from time to time against organized religion and what he sees as attempts by them to influence public policy. Michael Savage is hung up on his own continual rant about “borders-language-culture” and sometimes goes off on autobiographical tangents (which I often find to be touching). When he pitches an occasional angry fit on the air (like he did recently against Mississippi Senator Trent Lott), he reminds me of that insane newscaster in the movie Network who said, “I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!” It really cracks me up when Savage explodes like this. Both Boortz and Savage express unremitting contempt for fellow talk show host Bill O’Reilly, whom Savage sarcastically dubs “The Leprechaun”. In spite of the fact that I personally dislike and usually politically disagree with these two, I find myself respecting and listening to them more than other hosts like O’Reilly, Laura Ingraham, Mark Davis, Jerry Doyle, Rush Limbaugh, or Sean Hannity, all of whom sound disingenuous and phony to me. Also, I like the way Boortz and Savage talk about their home towns on the air (Boortz in Atlanta and Savage in San Francisco).

But there is one conservative talk show host who is, in my opinion, leaps and bounds above the others: Gregg Knapp. I first began to listen to him in 2000, when he was the local Gainesville, Florida, weekday-morning talk show host on 97.3 WSKY. Later, he left to join a station in Texas. But now he’s come back with his own nationwide syndicated show, and is on a different Gainesville station (99.5 WBXY) early on weekday evenings. Knapp can be counted on to parrot most of the conservative talking points you’d hear on the other shows, but he works hard to win you over to his side with detailed facts and reasoned arguing. One of his most compelling tactics is to take an issue and progress through the pro and con arguments from each side’s point of view, usually at a breakneck pace. Sure, he makes fun of people whom I generally support, but that’s part of the game. I personally like and respect Gregg. He’s the “real McCoy”! Neil Boortz and Michael Savage are entertaining, but I have my guard up against them. But Greg Knapp is a different kind of host: he persuades by appealing to the listeners’’ common sense, without drowning them in a sea of insults, fear-mongering, ideological mumbo-jumbo, and phony patriotism the way too many of the others carry out their craft. His style should be the imitated standard that other talk show hosts try to live up to, regardless of which side of the political spectrum they may speak from. He’s still got a ways to go in his career, but he’s going in the “right” direction. I wish Gregg Knapp the best!

The Block and the Search

A long, long time ago, back in the mid-1970s, I used to run regularly. The course I usually ran on was around a 2.9 mile block in Davie, Florida that encompassed Broward Community College and some public schools. The terrain varied greatly from place to place. Sometimes I’d run on asphalt, while other times I’d run over different types of grass and dirt. There was a stretch along the northwest corner of the course that was rocky and riddled with holes. The two main characteristics of my course were wide-open spaces and the surrounding schools. The fact that I wasn’t running through residential neighborhoods was a big plus, since at that time runners were generally jeered at by people and chased after and bitten by the nice dogs running around loose (at least in my fine neighborhood). The culture of “Runner’s World” had not yet descended on our society, and people who were running out in public were seen, at worst, as suspicious and at best, as ridiculous. So I always sought out places to run that were more out in the open country, so to speak. This did not prevent people from cursing me, honking at me, yelling at me, and/or throwing garbage at me from their cars as they passed by. But those events were the exceptions and not the rule. Usually, people around there went about their business and I went about mine. At the beginning of each run, I often felt uncomfortable and even stiff, but once I put in a mile or so, I was “sailing”! I experienced a kind of detached, peaceful feeling while running out there, something that I haven’t been able to recapture to any significant degree since I moved to Gainesville.

But now I am on the search for a similar place in my current hometown. Around my neighborhood is a stretch called “Mile Run” that many people use to run, walk, ride bicycles, or walk dogs. But it seems a bit too “urban” to me. My residential neighborhood is okay, as far as worrying about dogs or unfriendly people is concerned. But I’d be pretty much limited to running on asphalt here, and, once again, it doesn’t have an “out in the country” feel to it. And besides, there are asphalt tracks that I can use if I want to run on this kind of surface. I’ve thought about the University of Florida campus as a possibility, but the traffic there is horrendously high, even out in the more rural areas. There are some places further out west from Gainesville that seem more promising. Thanks to an Internet site called MapMyRun.com that I picked up off a running blogsite, I can now design my own course using any combination of roads I want and measure out its distance on my computer. Up to now, I confined my runs to a treadmill until I built my distance up. But now I’m covering three miles per run and would like a more interesting experience than that treadmill, although I’m grateful to be able to use it when it’s an unbearable 95˚F outside (or raining cats amd dogs)! The search is on, though. I know that somewhere out there is a running course with my name on it, waiting to be discovered!

Civil War and Religion in China

Being an American, I have grown up being taught about the different crises that my country has gone through in its long history. The most severe one has to be our Civil War, which lasted from 1861 to 1865 and cost more than 600,000 lives, mostly due to disease. Since antibiotics had not yet been introduced, soldiers wounded in battle often had their injured limb(s) amputated as a preventative measure to prevent gangrene from fatally infecting them. I remember seeing a photograph once of the surgeon’s area in one of these outdoor army “hospitals” following a battle that show a large pile of sawed off arms and legs. For decades after the war, the whole country had a very large number of men coping with the burden of living out the rest of their lives without arms and/or legs. And the southern part of the country (along with border states loyal to the Union like Kentucky and Missouri) was devastated and took many decades to recover. As severe as the scale of carnage and damage was to us in this country during the U.S. Civil War, though, it was insignificant in comparison to what occurred in China during the same general period.

In south central China, during the mid-nineteenth century, an ostensibly Christian movement rose up, proclaiming the arrival of a self-proclaimed Christ-Messiah figure in the carnation of a Chinese man, Hong Xiuquan. Together with his associate, Yang Xiuqing, they began a campaign of religious and class warfare that swept through central and south China, destroying anything and anybody in its path that could be remotely construed as straying from the Taiping movement’s doctrine. They were enormously successful for the first few years and took over many large cities, including Nanjing. They, seeing themselves as Christians, invited the Western nations to support them in the rebellion. But the West instead uniformly aided the Qing government to hold them off, and ultimately the rebels were defeated, both by outside attacks and by inside weakness and corruption. The leaders of the rebellion died. The Taiping Rebellion lasted from 1851 to 1864. The most conservative estimates put the dead from this conflict at twenty million, giving it the second highest death toll ever in a war (after World War II)! Some of the tactics used by the Taipings, including show trials of landowners and communal sharing of property looked like forerunners of the Communists in the following century. But this movement also rightly put the fear of spontaneous grass-roots religious movements in the hearts of the Chinese leadership, a fear that explains to a great degree why the government only tolerates some long-established religious denominations (or, better yet, state-controlled denominations) and persecutes a group like Falun Gong, especially after they showed their ability to quickly mobilize a protest demonstration a few years ago.

Although it would be tempting to judge the actions of the current Chinese regime regarding banned religious activity from our perspective as members of Western society with its long-established respect for the principles of religious freedom, it is very important to understand the traumatic historical experience of China with regard to a religious movement that grew out of control and spread like a cancer across this great nation. Certainly the China back then is much different than the China today, and there may be some “victim as aggressor” in play as they hold down growing religious movements that are out of the state’s control. But traumatic experiences in history do play a big role in a country’s take on later events. Just look at how the American Civil War and our more recent experiences with Vietnam and 9/11 have painted our outlook on society and history in this country.

Extremes in Space and Time

As human beings, we are oriented to a certain range of space and time that is the most conducive to our survival as organisms. With space, we interpret the real world around us according to events and things that are on a relatively narrow spatial scale, from the very smallest things we can see with the unaided eye to the most distant things visible on the edge of the horizon. Things beyond that, such as the sun, moon, planet, and stars, are intuitively out of our grasp, which goes a long way toward explaining why they have been given supernatural or mythological status in the past. Speaking temporally, we tend to understand events transpiring from the duration of a second all the way through the span of a lifetime. Once again, this may go a ways toward explaining the tendency of some to worship their ancestors (who lived beyond their range of intuitive understanding) as well as that of many to give special status to ancient writings as being of a supernaturally-inspired origin. For many centuries, of course, these ranges have been greatly expanded through the recorded and shared collective experiences of people to give those who have been “educated” a wider sense of what the real “world” is like, even as it conflicts with their intuitive grasps of things. But nowadays, with our electron microscopes, Hubble and radio telescopes, atomic clocks, general relativity, quantum mechanics, and radiocarbon and isotope-dating systems, the ranges of space and time have been stretched so far that even for the “educated”, there no longer remains a sense of connection between the extremes of time and space and their own day-to-day existence, which for the most part is within the same space/time range as always. And when considering the extremely short distances, the extremely far distances, the extremely short durations in time, or the extremely long durations in time, the processes that we can relate to on our human level become distorted or even seem to be transformed into something altogether different and alien.

With this in mind, I sympathize (but only up to a point) with those who cannot fathom the concept of evolution and who instead attribute their human existence literally to the account given in the first chapters of Genesis. But I don’t agree with that viewpoint. Rather, the way I see it, people who insist on oversimplified explanations like this for the mysteries of the universe (and they usually involve the “extremes” of space and time) are basically stating that if they themselves cannot understand something, then their God cannot either. Doesn’t that seem a bit insulting and limiting to God, who is supposedly omniscient and omnipotent? Before microbes were relatively recently (historically speaking) discovered and determined to be the cause of many diseases, people commonly attributed outbreaks and epidemics to either God's wrath or to demonic forces instead of just admitting ignorance. That was another example of something outside of people's intuitive grasp (the extremely small).The Bible itself makes repeated points about the mysteries of God, but some people apparently don’t seem to dig those sections. Why can’t these people just have the honesty to say that they don’t know everything and that they have difficulty, like most everyone else, understanding on a deep level the sometimes bizarre world of the extremes in space and time, along with the processes occurring therein?!

Last Month's Readings

Over the past month, I’ve been continuing my reading of Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series, just finishing the fourth book, Foundation’s Edge and starting the fifth book, Foundation and Earth. These two books, written decades after the original trilogy, are much longer and are closely connected with each other in terms of plot and characters. There are further Foundation novels written later, of which I have Prelude to Foundation and Forward the Foundation. So, I’m going to be busy for a while longer with this interesting series! As far as I know, no one ever adapted the Foundation series to the screen, but it would be a worthwhile undertaking.

Besides Asimov’s famous series, I finished Stephen King’s short story collection Night Shift. Like any other collection, I like some stories more than others. If you have time to read just a few of them, I would recommend The Ledge, Gray Matter, Quitters, Inc., and Sometimes They Come Back (which was made into a movie). Jerusalem’s Lot is similar to his novel Salem’s Lot, but takes place at a different time. Children of the Corn was made into a movie, but the two versions diverge greatly from each other at times with regard to the characters and the plot. Another story, Battleground, was presented on the miniseries Nightmares and Dreamscapes (based mainly on stories from the book with that title) shown on cable network TNT a few months ago. Overall, I enjoyed Night Shift. I also read The Tommyknockers and The Shining, both made into movies that I have yet to see. I read somewhere that Stephen King wasn’t altogether happy with the movie version of The Shining, though. I just began reading his short crime novel The Colorado Kid. One other Stephen King note: look for the movie 1408 to come out soon. It’s based on the story with the same title from the book Everything’s Eventual. I thought 1408 was the best one in the book!

Aside from reading a lot of Asimov and King, I finished Robert Ludlum’s first novel The Scarlatti Inheritance. It wasn’t quite as good as I had hoped it would be, but I think one of the reasons for that was that the novel contained a lot about the world of high finance, something about which I am relatively ignorant. But I plan to keep on reading more of his work.

I’ve got to pick another short story collection to read. Maybe I’ll pick out a “year’s best science fiction” book off my shelf and resume tackling some of the old classic sci-fi short stories!

Favorite Songs:#8 to #7

#8 Invisible Sun by the Police (from Ghost in the Machine, 1982)

Invisible Sun is a chilling, ominous song about an apocalyptic, nightmarish world of the future. Or is it singer/songwriter Sting’s take on today? Along with the enormous steps in technology that seem to progressively weave the world together into an tapestry of increased communication, transportation, and material abundance comes the flip side, the progressive unraveling of society, crazed mass movements of extremism, genocide and destruction, ever-spreading pollution, sporadic outbreaks of disease and famine, and most of all the suffocation and desperation arising from the overcrowding that is strangling this planet. Is that what Invisible Sun is about? That’s the reaction I get from it, at least. I first heard this disturbing song when I saw the video in 1983, and it was equally as somber as the music was. The Police only made five studio albums during their short existence together, but had an enormous impact on the rock music scene, fusing reggae and rock together with seamless ease. My favorites of theirs are It’s All Right For You, Walking On the Moon, The Bed’s Too Big Without You, Don’t Stand So Close to Me, Canary in a Coal Mine, Synchronicity I, Synchronicity II, and King of Pain. After the group’s breakup in 1984, Sting came out with solo gems like All This Time and Fields of Gold. I’ve heard they reunited this year to give some concerts, but I’m skeptical that they’ll ever recapture that tight dynamic cutting-edge sound of theirs when they were at their zenith.

#7 Dialogue (Parts I & II) by Chicago (from Chicago V, 1972)

Just listen to this 35-year old song and tell me that it doesn’t totally apply to today: “Don’t it make you angry when a war keeps draggin’ on? ---Well, I hope the President knows what he’s into, I don’t know…”. The first part of Dialogue is just what its name says: a brutally frank conversation between two very different souls. One is a gadfly who questions and provokes the other, a complacent and materialistic figure who rationalizes all matters of conscience in terms of how well he is personally feeling while turning a blind eye toward anything that doesn’t promote his personal agenda. The song’s second part is a great instrumental jam interlaced with the optimistic litany “We can make it happen”. Dialogue is, to me, the best of that era in Chicago’s long history when they took bold chances with their music for the sake of creativity. Make Me Smile, Questions 67 & 68, and Saturday In the Park are other examples of this group’s “golden age”. In later years, they would succumb to the allure of cranking out one slow, insipid, commercially-successful ballad after another, but they were an exciting band to follow in the early 1970s, with their blaring horns and electrifying drums and guitars. I first heard Dialogue in early 1973 when it was played once during my high school’s daily morning Ad-Com (short for administrative communications, you see, they never made anything easy) TV show. So, every time I hear it, I’m transported back to that time and (personal) turmoil. It’s a great, powerful piece of inspired music!

Next favorite song: #6

The Space Odyssey Series

When I was a teenager, I went out and saw the groundbreaking, sensational science fiction movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, conceived and written by Arthur C. Clarke and directed by Stanley Kubrick. Like many who saw it, this movie made a lasting impression on me in different ways. For one, it set a timetable for putting up a base on the moon by the late 1990s, which of course we’ve failed miserably to do. By 1999, (in the movie) we already had a huge, sophisticated space station that had Bell Telephone booths to call to Earth from space as well as long hallways with weird red avant garde furniture. It also established that by 1999, we had the technology to build a complex spaceship for a manned expedition to as distant a place as Jupiter. The idea that humanity’s progress was in fact guided by aliens was put forth in this movie as well, a viewpoint that probably didn’t have a resoundingly positive effect on our society. The most striking thing about this movie, to me, though, was the dazzling, puzzling, and ultimately frustrating ending, which seemed to depart somehow from science fiction and enter into obscure mysticism. Arthur C. Clarke wrote the book following the movie and changed some things, including the ultimate destination of the deep space mission. But I enjoyed the book and got a good taste of this great author’s writing. A few years later, 2010 was released as a sequel to 2001. It, as well as its book, lined up with the 2001 movie instead of the book. 2010 had a much more literal interpretation of things than 2001. And whereas in 2001, the U.S. and Soviet Union were characterized as having reached a peaceful accommodation with each other, 2010 portrayed them as being on the precipice of a nuclear war. 2010 was nowhere as popular as 2001, and that may be why the series ended there, at least as far as movies were concerned. Once I realized the scope of 2010 and stopped trying to compare it with 2001, I came to appreciate and like it. It did have an incredibly exciting ending! Clarke followed up these two movie/books with two more books: 2061: Odyssey Three and 3001: The Final Odyssey. I very strongly recommend these two books to anyone who enjoyed either of the movies. There are factual discrepancies between all four books that the reader needs to understand and then “get over”, but they don’t interfere with the overall flow of the stories. Clarke has such a smooth, enjoyable writing style that I whizzed through these books very quickly. Why they weren’t made into movies is beyond me. After all, look at what they did with Battlestar Galactica, resurrecting it from an earlier, failed series! At the very least, they could combine the last two books into a Sci-Fi Channel mini-series. I think there are an awful lot of people out there that would regard something like that as a special event to set aside time to watch!

Producing a Product

I’ve found that, sometimes in life, it’s necessary to emphasize the continuity of my endeavors, especially during periods when it seems difficult just to go through the motions. Well, going through the motions is at least something, and sometimes the best work is accomplished when all I’m trying to do is just “produce a product”. Some of my best papers in college were written hastily, with the thought of just getting them turned in and through with. Later, when I got them back with “A”s and complimentary teacher remarks on them, I’d read them again and wonder how I was able to write quality work like that! The best mile run I did, 5:25, occurred one morning when I felt physically weak and queasy. I decided to run just doing the best I could to finish without going too slow. And ended up surprising myself and some others! When I was originally hired at my current place of employment, it was necessary to undergo difficult training that required much memory, hand-eye coordination, and manual dexterity. From day to day, it seemed like little progress was being made, but I was assiduous in my efforts and made dramatic progress over a span of weeks, easily passing the required training.

Much of what we aspire to in life is the culmination of long stretches of time within which we train, practice, study, strive, or whatever else you’d like to call it. At any given time, progress seems to come at a snail’s pace or even not at all. But even over relatively short spans like a couple of months, improvement can seem sudden, and at times almost miraculous. But this involves punching through the all-too-many times when there seems to be little motivation, time, priority, or energy to keep up with things. But if stuck to, I believe almost anything is possible!

Nowadays, I’m engaged in a number of self-improvement projects, apart from my family and home. One is writing a daily substantive entry in this blog, not necessarily the easiest thing to do as some of you may already know from experience. I’m taking piano lessons for the first time, faithfully practicing each day, but feeling totally clumsy each time (although I know I’m improving daily). I’ve also started to run again. It would be easy for me to compare myself unfavorably with all of the younger, more talented, and more experienced runners out there, especially those I read about in the blogosphere, but I’m fifty years old and have to make my progress one step at a time and in a prudent manner that gradually increases my load. Just since May 14, when I started, I’ve made a lot of progress. But that has only come because I forced myself to run on days that I really didn’t feel like making the effort. There are some other areas in my life that it would be cool to get better at, and perhaps in the future, if I get started on these, I’ll share them with you as well. For my self-improvement guru-friend Anthony Robbins has said that making a public commitment to accomplish something is a very helpful step toward that end in itself. And I add to that, “Just produce a product!”

The Four Personality Types

I’ve attended a few different churches over the course of the past twenty years. For the ones that I’ve stayed at for a while, inevitably, either in a discipleship class, a small group “family” meeting, Sunday school, or in a sermon, the folks “in charge” have presented the idea that there are four basic personality types and that people are distinguished from each other by which category they favor the most. Along with this presentation, there usually was a self-test that people would take to determine which personality type they had. The names given to these four types were either based on ancient notions of the body or on names of animals that gave clues as to the nature of each type. There were the choleric (“lion”), melancholy (“beaver”), phlegmatic (“golden retriever”), and sanguine (“otter”) personalities. In a very small nutshell, cholerics tend to be bossy, type A’s. Melancholies are finicky, perfectionist, and slaves to detail. Phlegmatics are more relaxed and laid back, with a tendency to be lazy. And sanguines are naturally sociable types who sometimes have trouble keeping up with their commitments.

I remember when one small church I attended gave out the self-test and then asked those in the assembled group to stand when the personality name that they belonged to was called out. I stood up by myself when “phlegmatic” was called. When “choleric” was called out, almost everyone else stood up! This was in spite of the fact that the teacher had just said that the choleric personality accounted for only about 2% of the general population. That should have been a dead giveaway that I was in a decidedly unbalanced social environment. I probably should have left that church then, but, you know, I’m a phlegmatic and, well, I didn’t see what the point would be in making a big fuss about it. Besides, I suspect that some of those who stood up were trying to paint themselves as “leaders”, so answering questions to appear choleric was, to them, an exercise in virtue (as opposed to lazy old me, who just answered the questions honestly). I think the rationale behind the churches promoting this four-type idea was threefold. First, they wanted their congregations (or fellowships, or whatever you want to call it) to appreciate rather than pass judgment on people, especially fellow church-goers, just because their personalities were oriented a little (or a lot) differently. Second, the idea was put forth that Jesus was the perfect balance of all four categories, and that believers should consciously strive to grow in those areas that do not come naturally to them. And third, it gave church leaders another opportunity to get their people to “volunteer” to perform service functions for the church (in other words, you don’t have to be a “lion” to mow the church lawn or clean the bathrooms).

Although it was organized religion through which I became aware of this four-part psychological division of humanity, I’ve found that it's enhanced my understanding of the different characters presented in fictional literature. And one of the true masters at depicting people by personality types (albeit not in the described formal manner) is Stephen King. In his novel The Tommyknockers, which I just recently finished reading, Bobbi Anderson’s sister Anne has to be the “choleric from hell” (actually most cholerics seem that way to me, that former church notwithstanding). But most fictional characters, as well as most real people, don’t fit perfectly in one particular category. They are rather composites of the four in different proportions, and at different times and under different circumstances may seem to be more like one than the others. I think this four-personality-type idea is a good exercise, but I wouldn’t advise anyone to get carried away with it. With a little effort, I could probably come up with a different system to divide up the collective human psyche along completely different “fracture lines”.

Piano Lessons

Since early childhood, I’ve been an avid music listener. There are many different genres of music that I like, such as classical, some jazz, blues, rock and roll, dance, country, zydeco, children’s, seasonal, soundtrack/themes, and hymns. My main musical interest and “mental catalogue” resides in the area of rock and roll. In spite of this, I have for my whole life been a listener and not a performer. Well, I’ve just decided to change that. I have now begun to take piano lessons. My goal is nothing less than to be able to play any song that I can remember, as well as master playing sheet music in any key. I believe this is totally within my capabilities, and if there is any uncertainty with me about this, it is in answering to myself why I didn’t do this earlier! In learning how to play the piano proficiently, I will emphasize two principles that I picked up a while back from self-improvement guru Anthony Robbins: one, I will keeping trying until I succeed (giving up is not an option), and two, I am committed to unconscious competence rather than cognitive understanding. In other words, like any other skill, piano playing involves persistent determination and the commitment to unconscious habit (without thinking). I am supremely confident of my eventual success. It might be noted, though, that I am starting at the very beginning! Unlike Bill Murray in Groundhog Day, I won’t become a virtuoso pianist in a day, and it will be a bit humbling for a while at first. But I have everything in place to make rapid progress. Now I just have to take the time to practice rigorously. I’m using the same teacher who has been teaching piano to my two children, and they’ve done quite well by her. She holds her students accountable for learning the assignments and practicing them, and also knows what to say that can encourage and inspire them to transcend previously believed limitations and to achieve a higher level of skill and understanding.

Empty Fields

Back in the early-to-mid 1980s, I lived in an apartment complex here in Gainesville, situated on the edge of a large field (formerly the site of an airfield). The reason I had moved out here away from the more central part of the city was largely due to the fact that it was quieter, with less traffic. And it was closer to my workplace, which happened to be within walking distance (across this field). Nowadays, though, this is one of the most congested areas in Gainesville, and for various reasons. I think there are some people in the world who think that an open field is a waste of space. Buildings and parking lots should be there, in their view, for the space to have utility. But in my experience with that field, people at-large came up with many uses for it. Kids played soccer there. Golfers used it as a practice driving range. Some people set up a small obstacle course in a corner of the field to ride bicycles and ATV’s (now this is something that I’m strongly against, ATV’s being too dangerous). On weekends, some model plane enthusiasts flew their planes there. For a while, on Sunday mornings, there were hot air balloon rides offered to the public. From time to time, the field was used for special events, such as the circus I went to one time. People brought their dogs out and let them run around a little. Many sandlot games in football and softball were played there. Some nights I would walk to the center of the field and just stand there, thinking or gazing at the stars. And it was from this field that I observed and charted Halley’s Comet in late 1985. Around 1986-1987, a Lowe’s and a Wal-Mart shopping center, with the obligatory vast parking lot, plugged up my field. There was also a large theater and several restaurants that soon lined the bordering streets. Goodbye, peaceful wide-open spaces and hello, noisy overcrowding! The only saving grace to this was that, by this time, I had moved somewhere else.

Wide-open spaces always carry with them an appeal for me. I love the scene in the movie North by Northwest when Cary Grant is out on a remote Indiana road next to a cornfield and suddenly finds himself being chased by a crop-duster. I also enjoyed running around and through the many fields that existed (and no more) around my old high school. I also wonder what happened to the supposedly-protected species of owl there that built their homes in the ground and would stand by them, angrily screaming at any humans who came too close. Sometimes, when I’m on the road sitting as a passenger looking out the window, I’ll just stare at empty fields, wondering what the running surface there would be like, how bright the stars would look at night from them, or how numbered are their days before “civilization” supplants them with asphalt and concrete.

John Roberts, Alan Dershowitz, and Standing

A few weeks ago, Time Magazine came out with its list of the hundred most influential people in the world. The fact that President Bush was left off the list makes its legitimacy suspect, regardless as to how one would appraise his performance. On the other hand, U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts was included, to the magazine’s credit. Noted showboat defense attorney Alan Dershowitz wrote the article accompanying Robert’s selection. He complimented the new and relatively young Chief Justice (confirmed less than two years ago) as being very qualified for the job. But Dershowitz cast suspicion on Roberts’s early decisions on the high court, claiming that he may be using “standing” to deny cases that could challenge the constitutionality of laws and actions. He implied that Roberts could be using this so-called “technical mechanism” (Dershowitz’s own words) to further his own agenda in a disguised manner so as not to appear biased.

Standing, however, is a fundamental element of law that refers to a plaintiff’s ability to show his or her relevance to the case being brought to the court. It is embedded within the U.S. Constitution and has always had its place in determining the suitability of cases to receive a court hearing. There is a trail of cases that were refused hearings before the Supreme Court because of a lack of standing, going back well before Roberts was there, some of which challenged the constitutionality of laws or actions. Dershowitz himself admitted that he could not as yet see any bias in Roberts’s actions, but would continue to monitor them to see if any developed (in other words, to see if Roberts sometimes becomes lax in invoking standing in order to allow cases to be heard of which he’s inclined to support the plaintiff’s position).

All I see from this is a new Chief Justice who, like all of his predecessors, has his own way of doing things. In his case, that includes emphasizing that parties seeking hearings before him adhere strictly to the rules pertaining to being in standing. It appears to be an effort on his part to make the court a more disciplined body. Once all parties involved accept this and adapt to it, there shouldn’t be a problem. And Dershowitz should not have cast aspersions on Roberts’s objectivity in this article. I am not a fan of Chief Justice Roberts. But painting a picture of him that is unsupported by current facts is unfair.

Favorite Songs: #10 to #9

#10 Close to the Edge by Yes (from Close to the Edge, 1973)

This incredibly long song, lasting for more than eighteen minutes and spanning the entire first side of the album with the same name, is worth every second. It is a spectacle of sound, in my opinion the culminating work of Yes, a very talented band to begin with. There is nothing like it, before or after. Yes itself tried five other album-side-long pieces after Close to the Edge and only managed anything remotely as good with their beautiful At the Gates of Delirium from Relayer. Close to the Edge features, like most Yes tunes, singer/lyricist Jon Anderson’s high-pitched incomprehensible singing. It wasn’t that you couldn’t discern his words: they just didn’t make any sense! But to me, that’s part of the fun of listening to Yes. But the main attraction was keyboardist Rick Wakeman’s virtuosity. Yes showed off some of that skill in their 1972 radio hit Roundabout, but in Close to the Edge, Wakeman pulled out all of the stops in the wildest keyboard jam I’ve heard (toward the song’s ending). Within Close to the Edge, the tempo and melody varied greatly, but the transitions from one part to the next were done well enough to give the whole piece a feeling of coherence. This was a song that I first heard in the early-to-mid 1970s but did not fully appreciate until 1993, when I bought the CD and was astounded by it. Yes has gone through many member changes over the years. One time, they all got back together (two drummers, two lead singers, etc.) and did a critically-panned album titled Union. As far as I know, they’re still together in some form or another. Other songs of theirs that I like a lot are I’ve Seen All Good People, Yours is No Disgrace, South Side of the Sky, Heart of the Sunrise, And You and I, Leave It, and Changes.

#9 For My Lady by the Moody Blues (from Seventh Sojourn, 1972)

The first Moody Blues song I heard was their moderately successful mid-1960s hit Go Now with Denny Laine as the lead singer. This band didn’t take off in popularity, though, like their contemporaries the Who, the Animals, the Rolling Stones, and of course, the Beatles. Laine left the band (later to join Paul McCartney’s band Wings) and it looked as if the Moody Blues had little prospect for a successful future. But then Justin Haywood and John Lodge joined up and they began a flood of prolific creativity that enveloped all of the band’s members. They also were very adept at composing and recording off of a device, called the mellotron, which effectively simulated symphonic instruments. From 1968 through 1972, the Moody Blues recorded seven studio albums, every one of them a classic in my eyes (they recorded three in 1969 alone). My favorite of these was To Our Children’s Children’s Children from 1969, but my favorite song of theirs was For My Lady, a song written and sung by band member Ray Thomas, appearing on their Seventh Sojourn album and sometimes played on album-rock radio stations as a lead-in piece to their popular singles hit Isn’t Life Strange. Thomas’s contributions have always been my favorites of the Moody Blues. They usually have a whimsical though sometimes spooky feel to them that can be riveting at times. And For My Lady was one such time. From the time that I first heard it until now, I have loved it as one of my all-time favorites, being one of very few songs that I instantly deemed as being great. I think the Moody Blues are still out there performing and I wish them continued success. Some others of my favorites from them are Peak Hour, Nights in White Satin, Legend of a Mind, Lazy Day, Are You Sitting Comfortably, Floating, Out and In, Candle of Life, Nice to Be Here, One Step Into the Light, The Day We Meet Again, Gemini Dream, and Celtic Sonant. The Moody Blues, you may have concluded, is another band whose studio albums I have bought in their entirety. Because they’re such a good, quality band!

Next favorite songs: #8 to #7

Life's Things-To-Do List

I remember reading, many, many years ago, an article in Life magazine about a man who, early in his adult life, had made a list of all the different things that he wanted to do in life and all of the different places he wanted to visit. By the time that the article came out, he had accomplished much of what he had set out to do. Due to various factors, though, cold war politics being one of them, he still hadn’t done everything or visited everywhere. But that was all right, because this man’s list was deliberately made so that he would have to spend a lifetime in order to fulfill it. I think I was somewhere in my teens when that Life issue came out, but I didn’t make a list then, even though I thought what that guy did was pretty cool. But “now” is always a good time to start, isn’t it? Actually, it’s the ONLY time to start anything! And my goals nowadays probably wouldn’t necessarily coincide with what I would have set out to accomplish thirty years ago. On the other hand, some of the goals I may have set for myself back then may have already been fulfilled by now anyway. For example, I’ve graduated college, I’m married to a wonderful woman, I have two great kids, I’ve finally ridden in a plane, and a few other things as well. But what are some things that I haven’t done yet that I’d like to do?


--Visit another country. I have yet to be outside of the U.S., not even for one second! Naturally, there are a few countries I’d like to visit, chief among them China, Germany, France, and Russia. Of course, to accomplish this as a goal would demand time and money that I am currently investing in other areas of my life, but if visiting these places were made lifetime goals, then whatever is going on right now should not limit me from realizing these goals at some time in the future.

--Play a musical instrument well. I already own a piano, and my two children have been taking piano lessons for years. But not me. Until now! Last week was my first piano lesson, and I’m not going to stop until I am competent enough to play from written music in any key and to play any song that I have ever heard that I can remember the tune to (numbering in the thousands), written music or not.

--Write a novel, get it published, and make a generous amount of money from it. There is an intermediary goal to this, which is to write anything, get it published, and make any amount of money from it! Like other things, I’m just going to have to keep plugging away at it. But first I need to START plugging away at it!

--Run and finish a marathon. And not by walking part of the way, either. I have resumed running again, but at a very gradual, measured buildup. I don’t see running marathons as my main focus in running, but finishing one does represent a great milestone to aim at.

--Speak a foreign language fluently. Although I’ve had an off and on interest in studying foreign languages, I never did achieve fluency in any of the several that I have taken an interest in over the years. But I believe that there now is a lot of good language-learning material, especially from computer software, and many more opportunities to practice my comprehension and expression because of the World Wide Web.

--Star gaze the Southern sky in person. To accomplish this goal, I need to travel to the Southern Hemisphere to some place that has cloudless nights and little interference from city lights or other man-made sources. Places like Peru, Australia, and Namibia come to mind because of their arid climates, southern location, and availability of areas far from cities. I do need to be far enough south of the equator, though, so that I can observe a larger section of the Southern Circumpolar sky. And, of course, I would need time to explore the sky as well.

--Sky dive. If “Daddy” Bush (former President George H.W. Bush) has the guts to do it, then so should I! Of course, he did fly on bomber planes during World War II and he also survived one that was shot down, so maybe I should just scratch that comparison. But I would like this experience anyway, even if it were only a “tandem” jump with a more experienced jumper in charge of pulling the chord and giving timely instructions to me (like “jump”!). This is something that I’m just going to have to get up and do someday, but when I do I think I’m going to want to have a video recording made of my experience.

Are there other worthwhile goals to pursue in life? Of course! Some of them are a little more mundane than others, and I’ll pursue those goals as part of my ordinary day to day living. Perhaps if I come up with some other goals, I’ll collect them and present them another time.

Randi's Challenge

James “The Amazing” Randi is famous, not only for his trade as a magician, but also for his role as a skeptic who is scornful of any claims regarding the paranormal, especially phenomena attributed to psychic abilities. As part of his efforts in this regard, for several years he has offered a million dollars to anyone who could prove their psychic or paranormal abilities publicly and under scientific scrutiny. To this date, many have tried and all have failed. They are listed on his website. I’m not against him doing this, but I believe that he is not proving anything other than that people who make public claims of paranormal powers tend to be either seriously deluded or outright frauds. But to make any claim denying the existence of people with psychic abilities, based on the results of this project of his, would be extremely prejudiced and unscientific in itself.

In making this point, I am not claiming that there are any psychic people out there. But if I did have a psychic power such as reading minds or clairvoyance, then the last thing that I would want to do is let others know about it. Knowledge is power, and there are too many people in the world, many who are very powerful, who have deep, dark secrets (at least to them) that they don’t want others knowing. So knowing for a fact that someone is psychic and possibly privy to their secrets would probably put that psychic’s safety, and even life, in jeopardy. And that’s just common sense. The way a true psychic or paranormally talented individual would use this gift (if any actually existed) would be to surreptitiously obtain marginal profits in financial transactions based on his or her insights, as well as be in (or away from) certain places at opportune moments. But not enough to raise suspicions in others. Everything would be done behind-the-scenes, in small, hard-to-detect portions, not in some big act of grandstanding. So, publicizing this talent to the point of trying to convince others and winning a big jackpot of money would be an irrational act if one really had paranormal abilities. Furthermore, if someone were one of the public, “career” psychics, it would be in their best interests to take Randi’s test and fail it. By doing so, those who might be concerned that they have something to fear from them can wave them off as harmless fakes, while the “failed” psychics can still practice their craft with the true believers (or, in the view of Randi, the truly gullible). In light of my reasoning, then, Randi’s offer to test self-proclaimed psychics is meaningless to its implied purpose, which leads me to speculate that perhaps its main, unstated goal is to draw public attention to career showman James Randi himself.

Extinct Gainesville Eateries

I’ve lived in Gainesville long enough (nearly thirty years) to come up with a pretty good list of now-extinct eating places that I liked to dine in. Here are some of them:

Dale’s Roast Beef … NW 13th Street (US 441)
The site that once was Dale’s is now an empty weed-grown lot just north of NW 7th Avenue. Dale’s was a wonderful restaurant that was really fast-food but had a very pretty, comfortable, and roomy dining area. Its specialty was roast beef, which was very good (I am partial to roast beef). Dale's also had one of the first all-you-can eat salad bars (its heyday in Gainesville was during the late 1970s) for a fast-food place. But what I liked the most and had to buy whenever I went there was one of their scrumptious apple turnovers (with a cup of coffee). Dales seemed to be part of a chain of roast beef eateries that just didn’t make it and died out.

Georgia Boys Barbeque …SW Archer Road
In my opinion, Georgia Boys had the best barbeque around. The dining room was cramped, but what I usually did was buy their take-out one-half barbeque chicken special that came with garlic bread, coleslaw, and fries, for a very good price. Unfortunately, Sonny’s Barbeque decided to build their own place directly across the street, and a rivalry between the two blew up in the press in the form of a contest as to which barbeque the public preferred. Nobody asked me my opinion, but soon thereafter, Georgia Boy’s closed down their business. Too bad. Sonny’s is okay, but the Georgia Boys barbeque was better.

Gordy’s Subs … SW 34 Street (now a reptile store)
For about six years, I lived in an apartment complex that was within two minutes of a bicycle ride (cutting through the adjacent apartment’s parking lot) to this establishment. It was extremely convenient to come to this place, buy a sub sandwich (they had the best turkey salad subs), and pedal quickly back home. This was back in the early to mid-1980s. Now, whenever I buy sub sandwiches anywhere, I compare them (usually unfavorably) to Gordy’s.

Primrose Inn … West University Ave
On Thanksgiving in 1977, during my time as a student at the University of Florida when I resided on-campus, my roommate and I stayed behind instead of traveling back home for the holiday. His entire family came up for a visit, and they invited me for dinner with them at the Primrose Inn. The dining there was wonderful, and it was enhanced by all of the gracious, friendly, and generous people in this wonderful family. My roommate’s mother, who as a girl had escaped the Nazis in the western USSR during World War II and spoke Russian, Polish, and Yiddish, presented me with the gift of a book titled Opowiesci Biblijne, a Polish-language book delving into Biblical stories. The next year I did take a course at UF in Polish. I still have the book and would sometime like to use it as a Polish language-learning reader. I’m not sure when the Primrose Inn closed for the final time: one day I just noticed that it wasn’t there anymore.

Brown Derby … US 441
The only times that I ate at this restaurant located on the northern border of Paynes Prairie south of Gainesville were when my sister and her family would visit Gainesville in the early 1980s and take me out to dinner with them. So, I always associate our pleasant reunions with the Brown Derby. This restaurant predated the barrage of later restaurants that invaded Gainesville and provided similar menus. At that time, in the early 1980s, it was the place to go out with others and have dinner, with something there for just about anyone’s preference in food. I don’t know about its final closing, but for a while a different restaurant occupied its location and, if memory serves me correctly, one day it burned to the ground. Nowadays, on the same site, stands a place called the Islamic Study Center.

Cathay Tea House … SW 35 Blvd (Butler Plaza)
I worked for a while at this Chinese restaurant located in a strip shopping center off Archer Road in southwest Gainesville. It was here that I learned of the great diversity of Chinese cuisine that’s out there, far above and beyond the processed La Choy and Chung King products on the grocery store shelves. There are so many Chinese foods I like (especially the way they were prepared at Cathay Tea House) but my favorites are Sichuan eggplant, Hunan duck, hot and sour soup, and fried rice. The dining room there was cozy, dark, and comfortable. Cathay Tea House is, like Gordy’s is with subs, the standard that I compare all Chinese restaurants with. And most come up short, although there are some real good ones around in Gainesville.

Wuv’s Hamburgers … NW 13th street near UF
Wuv’s was a Florida hamburger chain that lasted from the late 1970s until it filed for bankruptcy in 1981. It was known, not only for its burgers, but also for its fries with the skins on them, chili, and fried chicken. It should have been a bigger success than it was, but I guess the quality of the product is only one factor in whether a business ultimately survives. When Wuv’s closed its doors, Granny’s, a fried chicken eatery, replaced it. After that closed, Maui Teriyaki moved in. Now the entire west side of 13th Street, from University Avenue and up to NW 3rd Avenue, has been torn down in order to build more condo units (yes, that’s all we need in an already overcrowded area. Way to go, Gainesville!).

Lum’s … SW 13th street
Lum’s was an old restaurant chain. I remember one in Hollywood as well. They always advertised hot dogs steamed in beer, although I never took them up on that delicacy. I mainly used Lum’s around 1979-80 to have occasional breakfasts. The restaurant that replaced them was Cedar River Seafood, a good place to eat in its own right.

(old) Krystal … West University Ave
Right across the street from UF, this 24-hour establishment was my most oft-visited restaurant during the period when I lived on campus. They didn’t just serve those dinky almost nonexistent Krystal burgers, but also sold full breakfasts, big hamburgers, fried chicken, and chili. And their coffee was pretty good, too. Most of all, I liked just being able to sit in there with some books and study in that ambiance with a view of the campus. That particular Krystal shut down, and for a while there wasn’t any in Gainesville. Then, a few years ago they came back, with great fanfare, to a new location about three miles north on NW 13th Street. But the only hamburgers they were serving were those puny Krystals and minor variations thereof, with the rest of their former menu wiped out. I’ve noticed that they’ve lately begun to diversify their menu some, but they're still not the same as the 24-hour Krystal I grew to enjoy eating and studying at.

Sambo’s … SW Archer Road
This is the restaurant with the unfortunate name. The allusion for the name is meant to be to pancakes, of course, but a lot of people think the story of Sambo is racist. I didn’t think so when I was a kid, but then again, I guess it’s all in the way that one tells it. Anyway, I liked this restaurant, which was close to my apartment in the early 1980’s. I liked to sit up at the bar and have some coffee there and, occasionally, breakfast. After it closed for good, a similar restaurant called Season’s took its location; then a Jerry’s replaced Seasons for a brief time. Other restaurants (and a building-gutting fire) followed. Now the location has been rebuilt to house Starbucks, Moe’s, Panera, and Coldstone Ice Cream.

Jerry’s … NW 13th Street
Jerry’s had a similar menu to Sambo’s, but was closer to what was originally an all-night zone on NW 13 Street that had several stores and restaurants. I remember they had some kind of tettrazini dish that I liked a lot. Its location is now occupied by a restaurant with the strange name “The 43rd Street Deli on 13th Street”! I worked for a few months once as a cook at a Jerry’s in Leesburg, Florida. That Jerry’s went out of business soon after I left. I guess they couldn’t handle the loss!

The Eatery … NW 69th Boulevard
Between the Oaks Mall and I-75, just off Newberry Road was this great seafood restaurant. Its main attraction was its incredible seafood buffet, the likes of which I have not seen since. I remember dining there during the late 1980s. After it closed, a Red Lobster took its place.

Ryan’s Steak House … North Main Street
Simply the best all-around buffet I’ve seen in Gainesville, plus great to-order steaks, if that’s what you want. This was a place my family and I went to a lot in the 1990s. I think another restaurant took it over, but I’m not sure if it’s in business anymore.

Rax Roast Beef … SW Archer Road
I loved their roast beef sandwiches and baked potatoes. There was another Rax on NW 13th Street as well. I don’t know what happened to roast beef places like Rax and Dale’s. But I can’t speak for everyone else’s tastes, I suppose. The Rax location on SW Archer Road is occupied now by a Chick-Fil-A.

I could go on and on with this topic. But I did go over the restaurants I missed the most. There are some that are gone that I don’t miss, though, but it’s probably for the best that I don’t bring them up.

Whatever, Coach Donovan

Early this past Sunday morning, I posted an entry wishing Gator basketball head coach Billy Donovan the best with his new position as Orlando Magic head coach. Well, less then a day later, he decided that he didn’t want to job he had just signed the contract for and wanted to come back to the University of Florida. That complicated things, to say the least. Now the Magic have to figure out what they’re going to do with the contract, what they’re going to do about hiring another coach, and what they’re going to do about all those Magic fans who rushed in to buy season tickets because they thought Donovan was going to coach there. From the UF side, it seems pretty clear that Athletic Director Jeremy Foley has graciously welcomed back his two-time national championship coach. But Donovan, in first clearly committing himself to a different job and then backing out, did harm, in my opinion, to his old associate Anthony Grant, who had expressed interest in the then-open Gator coaching position and was on the verge of an interview with Foley when Donovan called the UF AD to express his misgivings about the Magic and that he wanted to come back. Now Grant has to forgo the great salary increase he would have had with Florida and then go back and face his current school, Virginia Commonwealth, who must be having their own thoughts about his loyalty to them. So there’s no doubt that Billy Donovan’s image, so positive immediately after his two NCAA titles, has been considerably tarnished.

And I’m very tired of this ongoing soap opera. It’s the off-season as far as college basketball is concerned. I don’t know what all is going to come out of this controversy, and frankly, I don’t care. So Donovan is coming back to coach the Gators. Okay, whoopee. I’m sure I’ll root for them when they actually start playing next season. But I’ve given it some thought and have come to the conclusion that Anthony Grant would have been a great head coach (which he already is at VCU). When he was at UF before, he was instrumental in developing the players that directly contributed to the Gators’ great successes. It’s a shame he had a wonderful opportunity like this presented to him, only to have it suddenly snatched away because of the actions of his supposed friend. Whatever, Coach Donovan. So today you want to be a Gator. What are you going to want to be tomorrow? We're all waiting with baited breath...NOT! Regardless what happens, I think I’m going to take a vacation from UF basketball and its “whatever” coach until there is actually Gator basketball being played.

Running and Running Blogs

I have discovered that one of my favorite types of blogs to visit on the Web is the running blog. The people who write these blogs are, for the most part, running enthusiasts who write about their training, races, and general thoughts about running and what it means to them. There are some running blogs that are usually updated daily, but most of the ones I’ve found are done in a sporadic fashion. And sometimes I’ll connect with a blog whose last entry was in 2005 or 2006, giving the impression that its author has moved on to other interests. But there are other blogs that have more or less daily entries. As long as it looks like the blog is still more or less active, then I’ll look at it from time to time. There is a lot of good advice out there, and the best of it comes from runners offering their personal testimonies about their own experiences and strategies, which cover many topics, such as types of shoes, workout schedules, running styles, aerobic/anaerobic factors in training, terrains & courses, and training for different types of races (or just training for fitness).

I’m interested in running blogs because I was once a runner myself (not a very fast one, though) when I was a bit younger. The period I was the most active in was 1973-1976, when I was 16-19 years old. The fastest mile I ran then was 5:25 and the longest distance I ran without stopping was fifteen miles. I’ve started it up again recently, going very gradually at first to avoid tearing anything. I’m not sure how far I want to go with my resumed running, but from time to time it would be fun to enter at least a 5K (five kilometer) race just to see my name and time posted in public sometimes. I started my training on May 14 with a quarter-mile run on a treadmill. I’ve been doing this since then, always spacing runs two or three days apart and going a little faster each time. I’m just increased the distance to a half mile, starting on June 1. Yesterday, I went out and bought a comfortable, though inexpensive pair of running shoes, which I felt would be necessary before I started running longer distances. I doubt that I’ll start my own running blog, but instead will just write about my running progress from time to time on this one.

The Strange Case of the Bird People

Back when I was a kid, in 1969, my family started, in a modest way, to participate in the interesting hobby of birdwatching. It wasn’t that we would go traveling out in the wild with binoculars and cameras; all we did was throw bread crumbs and birdseed on the ground directly in front of the “observation window” from our dining room that looked out on the north end of our back yard, and then see what kinds of birds would show up. And they came, all right! House sparrows, grackles, mockingbirds, shrikes, cardinals, catbirds, cowbirds, blue jays, red-winged blackbirds, and mourning doves were our regular “customers”, with Baltimore orioles, robins, and cedar waxwings coming by on a more seasonal basis. One thing they all had in common: between pecks at the food, they all spent an inordinate amount of time looking around them. That shouldn’t be surprising, since they obviously needed to be on the watch for predators (mainly cats). But I think they were also looking around at each other. Most everyone has seen this phenomenon with birds. But it also exists with some people. Regardless where I go or what I am doing, there seems to be people out there, whom I (tongue-in-cheek) dub “bird people”, who spend more time and effort minding everyone else’s business than their own. Come to think of it, they may actually believe that everyone else’s business IS their own. Not only are these people more prone to spreading and receiving personal gossip, especially that of a malicious nature, but they actually physically resemble birds in that they cannot be engaged in any activity for more than a few seconds at a time without looking around them to see what others are doing. And if there’s no one around? Well, they just may have to find an excuse to go wander around a little.

There may be a little of this “bird people” in all of us in that we want to fit in wherever we go and not make fools of ourselves in the company of others. The way to do this is to observe others so that we can know how to conform to our social environment, at least to a point. Also, humans are social creatures who have a natural interest in what’s going on around them. But taken to an extreme, the “bird person” sees keeping tabs on everybody as a form of manipulative personal power that gives him or her the feeling of security that comes from being in charge of judging others. I’ve gotten to where I can pick out this personality trait within minutes of meeting someone. And I don’t think I need to say how objectionable I think it is. Should I disdain these people, or just pity them? Or throw birdseed at them? Or am I just overreacting, with this whole line of argument strictly “for the birds”?

Favorite Songs: #12 to #11

#12 Destination Unknown by the Missing Persons (from Spring Session M, 1982)

More than any other song, Destination Unknown captures for me the spirit of the New Wave movement in popular music, something that, in light of the disco “dark ages” of preceding years, I’ll be forever grateful for. Missing Persons was a west-coast band that dressed outlandishly in their performances, especially lead singer Dale Bozzio. While this group’s appearance was, in my opinion, tacky and comical, the production they used in their studio recordings was very refined and professional. In late 1982, they came out with two successive single hits, Words and Destination Unknown. Words, which I also liked a lot, featured Bozzio showing off her tremendous vocal range, with an occasional wink of an eye to classic cartoon character Betty Boop’s singing style. The longer of the two songs, it was about the frustration of someone who felt she could get no one to listen to her or care. I preferred the latter tune, Destination Unknown. Shorter and more repetitious, it nevertheless connected with me on a deeper level, conveying a mood of mystery and excitement about life’s courses. Missing Persons, despite these two wonderful songs, never really took off as a major international band the way that its contemporary, Blondie, did. And its videos were so shallow and silly that they were embarrassing to watch. But during its peak popularity in late 1982, Missing Persons, in my opinion, was the best New Wave band around.

#11 Number Nine Dream by John Lennon (from Walls and Bridges, 1974)

John Lennon and I go back to 1964, when I used to love hearing him scream out songs like Twist and Shout, Slow Down, Money, and Rock and Roll Music. Later on, songs like A Day in the Life, Doctor Robert, Tomorrow Never Knows, I am the Walrus, Strawberry Fields Forever, Everybody’s Got Something to Hide Except for Me and My Monkey (my favorite long-title song), and Across the Universe were all basically John Lennon contributions to the Beatles that are favorites of mine. I think that, looking back on their careers, John Lennon was the Beatle who had the most profoundly significant solo career, this in spite of the fact that he was in self-imposed retirement from 1976-79 and then murdered in late 1980. If I were to make up a “Top Ten” of my favorite solo Beatle works, George Harrison would have a couple on it and John Lennon would have the rest. Songs like Instant Karma, Working Class Hero, Gimme Some Truth, Oh Yoko, Mind Games, Watching the Wheels, and Nobody Told Me (released three years after his death) were all classics that only grew in stature through time. But Number Nine Dream was his best. Although this song had a Phil Spector feel to it, it was Lennon who produced it as well as the other tracks on his acclaimed Walls and Bridges album, pouring out his sensitive, mystical side in this beautiful, slow, dreamy piece. Ah! böwakawa, poussé, poussé…

Next Favorite Songs: #10 to #9

Wild Adventures

A few days ago, a group of us went to Wild Adventures, a theme park located a few miles southwest of Valdosta, Georgia. On the trip northward on I-75 to the park, the smoke level in the area kept increasing to point where it appeared that just walking around outside would be hazardous to our health. But once we were there, the air seemed a bit better. Once we got into the park, it was time to seek out the all-too-familiar rides and have another go on them. The first ride that we went on was Bugout, a rickety old roller coaster (actually, most of the rides there seemed rickety and old) that steers you around on a high plateau on top in very sharp turns that make you feel that the car you’re in will tip over the edge. After that part, Bugout goes through a few steep drops and then, it’s over. After finishing that ride, we went over to Power Surge, a tilting, inverting, and rotating ride that is probably the scariest looking ride in the park from ground level. It is one of my favorites. On the newest ride they have, the Gauntlet, we sat strapped in a little compartment, which was swung back and forth faster and faster, higher and higher, until we felt as if we would rise out of our seats and out of the compartment (if we weren’t restrained). Then it slowed down and ended. Next we walked over and rode their wooden roller coaster Cheetah, the most bone-rattling coaster I’ve experienced. Then we rode Double Shot, which I jokingly dub the “slide rule”, your typical vertical “raise ‘em fast and lower ‘em faster” kind of ride. Some rides (Yo-Yo, Inverter, and Boomerang, and Geronimo) were inoperative. Later my party split up (some wanted to try the water park Splash Island) and the rest of us went back and tried some of the other rides such as Swingin’ Safari, Pharaoh’s Fury, Ant Farm, and Aviator (my other favorite ride along with Power Surge). There were several rides I skipped on this trip because we just didn’t have that much time. Despite this, I became exhausted walking around Wild Adventures and was relieved to be back in the car homeward.

I have mixed feelings about visiting theme parks like this. On the one hand, driving there and back (although this time I was fortunate that someone else drived), along with all of the walking through the park and having to wait in (sometimes long) lines for some rides is very grueling. On the other hand, I deeply enjoy the actual rides once I’m on them. I wish there was a special recliner-like chair I could get that simulated the sensations I would get on rides (such as drops, lifts, and turns). I’d wear a special helmet that had a surround-viewing screen within it. Then I’d punch in the code for the ride I wanted on a special console and sit back and experience whichever ride I selected sitting in this special (albeit imaginary) chair in my own living room, without needing once to set foot (or tire) on asphalt or concrete. The best of both worlds, and without the smoke or lines!

Best Wishes, Coach Donovan

A couple of days ago, two-time defending national champion University of Florida basketball coach Billy Donovan decided to leave UF to pursue coaching on the professional level. He is joining the NBA’s Orlando Magic as their new head coach with a five-year contract exceeding twenty-five million dollars. It is sad that he is leaving, but for his sake, this was the perfect time for him to take such an action, with his recent incredible two-year championship run giving him the optimum prospects for moving up in his career. I appreciate that he turned down an earlier offer given him to coach at the University of Kentucky. Not that I have anything against UK, but I would not have wanted my own school’s former coach as a rival coach in the same division of the same conference. That’s already going on in football, with former Gator coach Steve Spurrier coaching South Carolina.

I wrote in an earlier entry how I wasn’t really following the Magic. Now, given its new coach, I’m going to have to reconsider that. I’d love to see some of the former Gator star players get on the Magic roster, but since Orlando has no first round pick in the upcoming draft, that will only happen through a trade or if someone like Taureen Green or Chris Richards gets selected by them. They were good enough to get into the playoffs this past season, and it will be interesting to see what Billy Donovan will be able to do with them to make them better.

As for the Gators, they are currently seeking Virginia Commonwealth coach Anthony Grant to take Donovan’s place (and with his highest recommendations). Grant worked with Donovan for several years at UF as assistant coach, including their first national championship season in 2005-06. I don’t know how it will all turn out; getting Coach Grant on board would go a long way toward reassuring the current Gator basketball players and the new recruits that they will be able to continue playing in a top-quality program with a sense of continuity. So, I’m definitely rooting for him. I just hope people around here give him some time (if he’s hired, that is) to develop the Gators into a championship-caliber team without making undue comparisons with his predecessor.

Commentary and Interpretation

When surfing around the TV dial, one of the types of programming I often stop at and watch for a while is commentary, and there’s plenty of it. It’s good to hear all sides of an issue, even if I know that I may vehemently disagree with some of them. Even with these, though, there is usually a kernel of truth or a valid concern that underlies them. And knowing what motivates people to have such differing points of view is the beginning step in reconciling them with each other to form a reasonable synthesis of opinion.

The best sources of opinion on TV are the C-Span channels because those running them allow a wide span of diverse opinions to be expressed, while giving the speakers enough time (not just sound bites) to express them. Sometimes, on the cable news channels, I can hear some good opinions being espoused, but with these I have a problem with supposedly unbiased news reporting being mixed together so seamlessly with the editorializing. I want my news straightforward. If I want to hear different reactions to a story, I can then go somewhere else for that.

There is special type of commentary around that I have little use for, and that is interpretation, particularly of speeches. Just look at those Geico Insurance commercials where a lady is giving a testimonial about how good Geico is, with somebody like Burt Bacharach or Little Richard sitting next to her giving his own comical interpretation of her experience. Some sort of interpretation is necessary, like sign language or foreign language interpretation. But it’s really bothersome for me to sit through a speech, be it by the President or another speaker, and then have to listen to someone else tell me what he said. And usually those performing this annoying task focus in on small portions of the speech to make a big deal about. It’s one thing for someone to give their opinion about something; that’s what I do all the time on my blog. But it’s another thing for someone to tell me what I just heard, as if I am unable to assimilate the speech myself!

Interpretation carries over into other areas besides public speeches. In religion, the interpretation of scriptures has become a pervasive element in our contemporary religious culture. Apparently, it’s not enough for someone to read the Bible, the Quran, or some other religion’s scripture; he apparently must also have someone telling him what he just read. Now I have no problem with someone analyzing or commenting on scriptures. What I object to is for some self-appointed “holy person” to dictate to me what these scriptures must mean or else I’m in error and oppose God! In other words, I don’t need a buffer between me and what I’m reading. After all, isn’t the original author of any scripture supposedly writing his own interpretation of a revelation to him from God? Why would I need a “second interpretation”?! I suspect, in some cases, that the religious interpreter may have a agenda to promote that involves overemphasis on some parts of scripture and underemphasis on others in order support the interpreter’s own viewpoints. It’s true that, like the Ethiopian in Acts 8:26-40, I may reach a passage in my reading that I don’t understand. Then I might ask someone what they believed it meant. But even then, I would still characterize their take on it as no more or less than their opinion, which I could accept or reject based on whether it made sense to me.