My March 2015 Running Report

In March, I ran a total of 322 miles, spreading my mileage out over each day with few long individual runs.  My longest distance for a single run in the month was only 6.3 miles...I ran 6.2 when I finished the difficult Tioga Run for Haven 10K on March 14 on an unseasonably hot and muggy Saturday afternoon.  I found running not as enjoyable as usual for most of the month, and my right foot began aching toward the end.  But taking a couple of days off from running, stretching before runs and running only with my thick-soled shoes seem to have alleviated the problem.  As it was, those two days were the only ones in March in which I didn't run.

I'm not sure which direction I'm going with my running.  We are entering the "hot" season here in northern Florida and the long-distance races that I am more inclined to enter are pretty much gone until well into the fall season.  But I can still continue my "one race a month" string by running in local 5K events, of which there seem to be a preponderance around Gainesville year-round.  Melissa likes to walk in them, so we can find one this month to our liking and do a run/walk together.  As for how many miles I want to tally up running, I may consider doing less...

Sad to See Congress Polarized Against Country's Greater Interests

I have been watching the United States Senate floor proceedings off and on for the last few weeks on C-Span2, which on my Gainesville cable TV lineup is on channel 81.  As you may already know, after last November's elections, the Republican Party regained majority operational control of this body and now holds a 54-46 advantage over the Democrats.  This puts them in line with the House of Representatives, which has been with a GOP majority since 2011 and places Congress as a whole in opposition to President Obama.  They can pass bill after bill that they want, but if it's something that the President opposes, he'll most likely veto it...and it's highly improbable that either the House or Senate will be able to muster the two thirds super-majority to override...so what we have here is a stalemate if either side decides to take a strictly ideological stance.  Unfortunately, that seems to be what the Rebublicans have done, first by inserting (and later withdrawing under pressure) provisions overturning Obama's recent executive action concerning illegal immigration within a crucial Homeland Security funding bill...and most recently putting anti-abortion language into a human trafficking bill, language that the Democrats would very predictably oppose.   Now Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has said that he will retaliate for the Democrats holding up that bill by refusing to bring to the floor the nomination of Loretta Lynch as Obama's choice for Attorney General to replace outgoing  Eric Holder...despite the fact that Lynch seems to have the votes for confirmation and is more highly regarded by the political right than is Holder.  The atmosphere in both bodies is becoming more heated and contentious, with each side drawing their own lines in the sand and refusing to step across.  It's more than a little disheartening to me when I see grown adults, who supposedly represent the highest elements of our society as they have been democratically elected to represent us in a constructive and mature manner, behave this childishly when they are in a position of such responsibility and authority to work together for the greater good...

Just Finished Reading Susan Hill's The Man in the Picture

If you've ever read anything by H.P. Lovecraft or Edgar Allen Poe and enjoy that genre of fiction, you might just want to get a copy of Susan Hill's 2007 short novel The Man in the Picture.  Simply described as "a ghost story", this engrossing tale traces the history of a mysterious, sinister painting of a Venetian carnival scene as it passes from one owner to the next.  The chief setting is Cambridge University in England, where Oliver, the primary narrator and an alumnus from years gone by, pays a social visit to Theo, his old professor, by now into his seventies and who has lived on campus for decades...and currently possesses the art work.  This picture has the quality of riveting observers' attention and creating the impression that different people depicted in it are looking back out at them in a calling, beseeching sort of way...as well as changing from one viewing to the next.  There is a background story to this painting, told first to Oliver by Theo and and then, as Theo relates, to himself years earlier by a former owner in her nineties, named Lady Hawdon.  As each account unravels, the forboding feeling of the story intensifies...and the ending is not a letdown in this regard..

The Man in the Picture is only 145 pages long, a very quick read.  I just happened to be browsing the bookshelves at my local (Millhopper) branch of the Alachua County Library, caught sight of it and checked it out...maybe it was "calling out" to me!  Sometimes you can strike gold perusing the shelves this way...it seems to have worked this time!  I recommend it if you're someone who's into that gothic horror/Night Gallery kind of storytelling...

NCAA Men's Basketball This Weekend: To the Final Four

Now the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament is temporarily down to eight teams, and that number after tomorrow night will be four.  Today, Wisconsin plays Arizona and Notre Dame plays Kentucky.  Tomorrow, Louisville faces Michigan State and Duke battles Gonzaga.  Of these teams, my top two favorites are Louisville and Michigan State (in that order)...naturally, they have to play each other, dang-it.  Still, should the Fighting Irish knock off my Florida Gators' nemesis, the UK Wildcats, I'll be rooting for them to win it all, just out of gratitude...I've been pulling for the New York Giants, for a similar reason, since 2008 when they ruined New England's quest for a perfect season with their last-minute Super Bowl victory.  Notre Dame has been a giant-killer before: they ended UCLA record 88-game winning streak in the early 1970s...let's see if they can do it again!  As for the other games, I'd like Arizona (another Wildcats team) to win, but it won't hurt my feelings if  the Badgers prevail as long as they put up a good fight against Kentucky should the opportunity present itself.  And Duke vs. Gonzaga...when I see such good teams playing down to the Final Four, I think to myself that Kentucky has some pretty high hurdles yet to clear before it can finally lay claim to its "perfect" season...

Today's two games are broadcast, starting at 6 this evening, on TBS.  Tomorrow's will begin around 2 in the afternoon and are on CBS.  Should be quite entertaining...

Just Finished Reading Daniel Abraham's The Widow's House

I have finally caught up with fantasy writer Daniel Abraham's progress in his presumably five-part series The Dagger and the Coin after just finishing the fourth book, titled The Widow's House.  I say "presumably" because series authors' best intentions regarding that "final" book can often unexpectedly change...not to mention the temptation to write prequels or even begin a "new" series based on characters and/or events from the original.  Still, I'm looking ahead for the fifth installment, due to be released in August this year, to also be the last.  And I also plan to promptly get a copy and read it, because to me this has been one of the best fantasy genre series I've read so far...

Daniel Abraham has left, after The Widow's House, a core of interesting characters who share of web of experiences and relationships and slip in and out of alliances and conflict.  The main thread in the story deals with the threat caused to the world (Abraham's imaginary one, that is) by a continually war-mongering "tainted" people...tainted by little spiders in their bloodstream (how utterly gross).  The source of this contamination is from an ancient, apparently long-dead dragon named Morade (you see, dragons used to rule this world thousand of years earlier, with humanity serving as their slaves).  Morade did this to create a weapon in a war he was involved with against another dragon, named Inys.  What happened to Inys is something that I would prefer any prospective readers to find out for themselves, as I am not in the habit of giving away stories.  Suffice to say that the series title refers to how history can be influenced by both the dagger (representing armed warfare) and the coin  (representing banking and commerce)...and that either aspect can be ignored only at one's peril.  Another interesting feature of this series, to me, is the presence of the wild-card character of Geder Palliako, whose ultimate role in the story's final resolution is a profound mystery...I'm thinking that, although he has allied himself with the villains for most of the series, he will play a crucial part at the end contributing to their downfall.  Should be interesting to see whether I'm right...

Interesting Four Games This Evening in NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament

Tonight's four games in the NCAA Men's Basketball Championship Tournament should be interesting.  Were I not at work, I'd most likely be watching them (they'll be on CBS and TBS).  North Carolina vs. Wisconsin, Xavier vs. Arizona, Wichita State vs. Notre Dame, and West Virginia vs. Kentucky all are worth watching, and anybody can win...despite some who predict that Kentucky will easily glide on to a perfect 40-0 championship season.  My preferences in these games are for North Carolina, Arizona, Wichita State, and West Virginia, but should Wisconsin, Notre Dame, or Xavier prevail in their contests and end up being the team that finally beats Kentucky...well, they'll suddenly become one of my favorite teams, too!

Mexican Soccer Premier League's Relegation System Questionable

In professional league soccer, during the regular season, standings are determined by the point system.  If your team wins a game, they get 3 points, lose and they get 0 points.  If a draw occurs, then each team gets 1 point added to their total.  In most leagues around the world, if there are one or more lower-level leagues around in a country, they have a process called "promotion and relegation" that rewards the lower league champions and punishes poor performance in the upper league.  In it, the worst-performing team(s) from the higher league in a particular season is/are demoted (or regulated), while an equal number of outstanding teams from the lower league get promoted. So in English soccer, we have three teams, Burnley, Queens Park Rangers, and Leicester City, who are at the bottom of their 20-team Premier League standings as the current 2014-15 season is winding down.  If nothing changes in the standings, they will be relegated for next year to the second-tier Championship League, while the top three teams in that league will get a shot at the Premier League.  I like the relegation system as it makes the late-season games more meaningful and that teams which aren't doing well can't just write off the season and expect to be rewarded with high draft picks, as is the case in many American professional sports leagues.  Unfortunately, in America, there is no relegation system as of yet in professional soccer, although there are three tiers of leagues here.  In Mexico, there is relegation, but the system seems confusing and unfair to me...

The top-tier Mexico pro soccer league is called Liga MX, with 18 teams in it.  They annually promote into it the winner of the second-tier league Ascenso's championship from the previous year and send back, through relegation, their own most poorly-performing team.  But in the Liga MX, relegation is determined by going back from three entire years of a team's performance and calculating the average points per game it has.  If a team has been in the league less than that time, like the newly promoted Universidad de Guadalajara Leones Negros, only the time they've been in the Liga MX is counted.  So a team like Morelia, which did well three years ago and tabulated a lot of points back then, but is by far the worst team in the league this year, hopelessly rock-bottom in the standings, is safe from relegation because its three-year average is higher than others.  Puebla and the Leones Negros, on the other hand, are doing reasonably well this year, far from the worst in the league...yet it is they who are battling each other to avoid demotion.  Puebla is actually the last in the relegation table right now, meaning that were the season to end today, they would be relegated down to Ascenso.  But at the same time, they are also in position to qualify for the league championship playoffs for the winter/spring Clausura season...and could conceivably win the Liga MX championship for the 2014-15 season while at the same time be demoted to the next lower league!  Now there is something  awfully, awfully wrong with such a system...

Foot Strain Necessitates Break from Running

For the past few days, my right foot has felt a little tight and twisted, and a little swelling may have been going on there due to a strain.  In any event, I've indefinitely put off my running, starting yesterday, until it feels better...and then I can gradually build my mileage back up again.  In times like this, the wisdom of cross-training comes to the surface of my thinking, and while I am recovering I'm going out on some short bicycling excursions.  The main thing is to stay in as high a state of conditioning as possible while resting my foot from the high-impact running.  It's been a while since I rode my bicycle, which I deliberately bought cheap, as usual, for around ninety bucks at Wal-Mart (or was it Target) a few years ago.  I had to re-inflate the tires, lubricate it a little, and wipe off the acculumated grime.  But it's sitting out there, locked to my gate (we've had two bicycles stolen off of our property since living here), and waiting for a little ride around the neighborhood.  I'm also thinking of re-incorporating the elliptical machine (which is available at my local 24-hour gym), into my regular exercise routine, along with a light daily no-impact session designed to stretch my body and exercise most of my body's muscles, all of which need activity to avoid deterioration over time and to help prevent damage to joints and soft tissue in the long run.  There was a promotional show on PBS-TV the other day featuring a woman who sells DVDs in which she leads exactly this kind of workout: I think I'll check into it and get a copy...

...Well, I just finished a 6.3 mile ride around my neighborhood on my old ramshackle bicycle...a nice little workout on a lazy Sunday afternoon...

Recently Read Hermann Hesse's Steppenwolf

During the first few decades of the twentieth century, there was a movement in the arts, be it music, art, or literature, to shed the more traditional forms of expression and create new structures.  Sometimes this resulted in works whose meaning and significance were shrouded in ambiguity and uncertainty.  German writer Hermann Hesse's novel Steppenwolf is a case in point.  Written during the interwar Weimar period in the late 1920s,  Steppenwolf is a curiously constructed hodgepodge of psychological, political, and philosophical analysis focusing on the fictional character of Harry Haller, a middle-aged intellectual whose life has become that of a recluse and whose cynical view of the bourgeois society around him, with its nationalistic, pro-war fervor and its petty day-to-day concerns, has caused a personal crisis to come to a head.  This crisis is between his inherently benevolent nature and the Steppenwolf personality he has stylized to describe what his experiences have taught him and led him on as a singular entity, apart from society but passing through it just the same.  Unable to reconcile the two, as he considers his nature to be two-fold,  he is contemplating suicide as an option.  Then, he chances to meet in a bar a prostitute named Hermine (either her real name or the name he gives her) and she leads him on a convoluted path to self-discovery.  But it's a bit more complicated than that, for the author chooses to present his story in a form that belies understanding...

First, incredibly (looking back after reading the story), Hermann Hesse, in his preface to Steppenwolf that was written decades after its initial publication, decries the degree of misunderstanding that readers have come away with regarding his intended message.  Well, I say in response, if you're going to deliberately present your message in such a cryptic and cloudy format, what do you expect?  It begins with the third-person account about Haller from the viewpoint of a co-tenant who lives a conventional "bourgeois" existence and who sees Haller as rather disagreeable, with slovenly habits.  While snooping through the latter's apartment one day, he finds his personal journal and presents it in his account.  Then we progress to Haller's own words as he describes in detail, from his journal, the terribly cynical view in which he regards the world around him.  One day, as he relates, he comes across a peddler of "magic", who hands him a pamphlet, highly improbably titled "Treatise on the Steppenwolf"...which names Haller and goes into minute detail psychoanalyzing him with brutal detachment.  One of its premises is that each person, in refutation to  Haller's assumption about his own two natures, is composed of a multitude of "souls".  After presenting this "Treatise" in full, Hesse goes back to Haller's narrative and recounts his meeting with Hermine and her introduction to the other primary characters Maria and Pablo.  Initially critical of the two, Haller comes to appreciate aspects of himself that they represent, but which he has repressed.  In the context of a "magic show" with assorted fantasy experiences behind different doors that Pablo has concocted, Haller comes to more fully understand the treatise's view of the multiplicity of souls within each person, and there is much more to life than the simple and pessimistic model that he had constructed for himself, embodied within the Steppenwolf role.

It is unclear whether Hermine, Maria, and Pablo are "real" characters or just constructed aspects of Haller's own self...the story delves into the area of magical fantasy and, as such, the traditional literary notion of plot, based on some semblance of reality, breaks down.  This left me with a profound sense of dissatisfaction after I had finished reading it.  As for the message I came away with, who knows whether or not Hermann Hesse would agree?

To some, the Steppenwolf persona represents going one's own way against the flow of the world.  Combine that with the book's implied endorsement of mind-altering drugs like cocaine, opium, and hallucinations, along with abolition of restrictions on sexual behavior, and you come up with a cocktail custom-mixed for the counterculture movement of the 1960s...which may explain why a rock group in that era changed its name to Steppenwolf...

Close Games Characterized Yesterday's NCAA Hoops Tournament

60-59, 60-59, 66-65, 66-65 (in overtime), 67-65, 69-65, 57-56, 56-53...and 75-72 (in overtime).

These are the amazing scores of yesterday's NCAA Men's Basketball Championship Tournament.  There were, to be sure, other games with wider margins, but the sheer number of these nail biters was incredible...and even the identity of scores as well.  I did get to see a couple of them, but had to be at my job during the late afternoon and evening games.  Not that I would have spent all of my time glued to the TV had I been off, mind you. Still, this flood of fantastic, competitive games is something to behold, and it continues today...

One of the above contests was a "sad" pairing for me: LSU against North Carolina State.  For although I wanted the Wolfpack to win (which they barely did), I also would have liked to see the Tigers advance further in the tournament.  Today I see another such matchup, with Georgia set to play Michigan State at 12:30...I'm going for the Spartans with the same degree of melancholy, knowing that one of these two teams won't be going any further.  But right this minute, I'm watching New Mexico State going up against Kansas, a team I generally root against...

March Madness: NCAA Basketball Tournament in Full Swing Today

After the initial four-game elimination round yesterday and Tuesday (one of which saw the only Florida entry, the University of North Florida Ospreys, losing their game), the NCAA Men's Basketball Championship Tournament begins in earnest, with sixteen games today and sixteen more tomorrow.  Right now, as I get myself ready to go to work (reporting time 3:30 PM), I'm toggling back and forth between TruTV and CBS as I watch the University of Alabama at Birmingham-Iowa State and Northeastern-Notre Dame contests, both very competitive and close so far in spite of the fact that they are both 3-14 seed pairings.  UAB is even leading at halftime against their favored opponent, but I expects both favorites to eventually win and advance.   Unfortunately, I'll miss the bulk of the schedule today and tomorrow, but should have more opportunities this weekend as the field gets narrowed down, after Sunday's games, to the "Sweet Sixteen"...

My Favorite and Least Favorite Teams in NCAA Men's Hoops Tourney

Yesterday I mentioned on this blog that I had a group of "favorite" college basketball teams that I tend to root for during the NCAA men's basketball tournament.  Well, here's the list of those teams, in order of preference.  Florida wasn't good enough to make the tourney this year; still, I put them (and any other schools I like that didn't have a good season this year) on the list...

1 Florida (not in tournament)
2 North Carolina
3 North Carolina State
4 Louisville
5 Michigan State
6 Florida State (not in tournament)
7 Miami (not in tournament)
8 Other Florida colleges (this year it's just North Florida)
9 Tennessee (not in tournament)
10 Virginia Commonwealth
11 Georgia Tech
12 Villanova
13 Georgetown
14 The Rest of the SEC Teams (except Kentucky)...this year it's Texas A&M, Georgia, LSU, Mississippi, and Arkansas (in no particular order)
15 Wake Forest (are they in the tournament this year?)
16 Virginia

At the other end, representing teams I root against the most, is this list:

1 Kentucky
2 Kansas
3 Connecticut (not in tournament)
4 Notre Dame
5 Michigan (not in tournament)
6 Duke

Note that nowhere are there any Pac-12 teams...I used to go against UCLA, but, since the "experts" seem to think that they don't belong in the tournament this year, I might support them this year just for the sake of being obnoxiously contrary...

I don't have any predictions for the tournament, but plan to keep up with it and pull for "my" teams!

Brackets, No Gators, and the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament

Last year at this time, bracket fever had swept into Gainesville for basketball's NCAA Men's Basketball Championship tournament, which comprises 68 teams in single-game eliminations for the next few weeks until only the champion is left standing.  I would hear conversations going on around me like "Have you done your bracket yet?" and people discussing which teams they thought would upset others.  There was then (and most likely now) a prize offered nationwide to whoever had filled out their bracket perfectly.  That possibility ended very early in the tournament in 2014 with some highly unlikely upsets early on.  Oh, maybe you're unfamiliar with the concept of "filling out a bracket".  Basically, it involves taking the initial games in the first round, picking the winners of those games, and based on that, go to the next round and pick those winners...and then the next round...and then the next, this way until you are left with the last two teams...setting up the championship finale, for which of course you pick the winner.  In the end, you have a sheet of paper predicting exactly how the 67-game tournament will go.  So "bracketology" was such a big deal with many people in my good ol' home town of Gainesville last year.  Why doesn't it seem very popular this year?

In 2014 at the start of the NCAA Tournament, the University of Florida was ranked #1 in the nation and was on a long winning streak, so enthusiasm and interest for college basketball was at a peak in its surrounding community of Gainesville.  This year, though, the Gators not only weren't ranked highly: they didn't even make the tournament!  Moreover, they didn't even get invited to the "runner-up" National Invitational Tournament with its field of 32 teams.  Probably ending up with a 16-17 win-loss record had something to do with that.  So Florida wasn't in the running this time around...and the area's interest in the tourney dried up, with only the regular basketball fans carrying on with the brackets.  As for me, I began following the NCAA tournament in earnest back in the early 1980's when Florida didn't have a very good basketball program, so my enthusiasm wasn't based on what kind of season they were having.  I enjoyed the Atlantic Coast Conference back then, with my favorite teams being North Carolina and North Carolina State, and over the years I've tended to root for them tourney-time...as well as a few others I've picked up along the way.  This year, Kentucky, Florida's arch-rival in the SEC East Division, is undefeated...and that is unacceptable to me.  Somebody, anybody, must knock them off in the tournament!  They'll have six chances, for that is the number of games the Wildcats will have ahead of them to win in order to finish the season at an unprecedented 40-0...

The tournament begins today and Wednesday with the field being whittled down to 64, and then on Thursday and Friday 32 games will reduce it further to 32.  By Monday they will be down to the last 16 teams left, hence the "Sweet Sixteen".  In the meantime, basketball will dominate television.  Incidentally, UF may not have made the tournament this year, but my son's alma mater, the University of North Florida, did!  Go Ospreys!

Gainesville City Commission Election Tomorrow: Go Vote!

Tomorrow in Gainesville we'll be experiencing one of those oddball out-of-season March elections in an odd-numbered year, this one for two city commission seats.  One is specifically for District 1, which comprises the eastern part of town (I'm in District 2, so I won't be voting in it).  The other is a city-wide at-large seat...so anyone who lives in Gainesville and is registered to vote has something to choose...and an opportunity to exercise their civic duty to actively participate in this representative democracy of ours by going to the polls and casting their ballot.  Not that I expect more than a trickle of the electorate to do this, though, although I'm sure that many of the overwhelming majority who choose to stay away from their precincts tomorrow won't have any problem complaining about their high utility bills or the often neglected, crumbling streets we have to drive our cars and trucks on...two issues that are at the top of the discussion list for the candidates.  I know...democracy isn't perfect and it's often a guessing game as to which candidate will do the best job once he or she is in there.  But it is a lot better than authoritarian government by decrees, with those issuing them having no sense of accountability to the people.  Why not instead put your apathy and cynicism on hold for just a few minutes sometime tomorrow and vote...once you're finished and safely back outside your precinct's doors you can go back to not caring again...

Ran Yesterday's Tioga 10K Run for Haven Race

Tioga is a small community a few miles west of Gainesville.  They staged a 5K/10K race yesterday (March 14th) that drew a moderately small number of participants.  Seeing how nuts my home town of Gainesville is about running, I was a little surprised that there weren't more, but then I realized that Jacksonville was also holding its Gate River Run 10K the same day...the real hard-core fanatics probably went there instead.  My race started and ended at the Tioga Town Center, a sizable shopping center large in proportion to the surrounding population...I have gone to its Starbucks a number of times over the years.  At the start/finish  area is also a stage where Natalie Nicole Green, an emerging local country artist, performed before and after the race.  She sang very well and didn't confine her act to country and western, diplomatically choosing to include some rock songs (like Fleetwood Mac's Dreams) in her act.  There was also free food and drink (including beer) for the runners (not exactly "free"...you had to pay to run the race).  There were a lot of runners dressed in green (for St. Patricks Day)...I inadvertently wore my green Tom Walker Memorial Half-Marathon running shirt without thinking. The race started at 4:30 in the afternoon, which normally in the middle of March isn't so bad temperature-wise...except that we're currently in a mini-heatwave (for this time of year) and it had gotten up into the mid 80's.  And the humidity, officially at 57%, felt more like it was in the 70's to me...very, very muggy.  So I knew from the start that the race would present a  challenge...

When the race began, both the 5K and 10K runners set off together for about a mile through the residential subdivision behind the Town Center.  Then, at an intersection, the 5K-ers veered down a street to the right and stayed in that subdivision the duration of their 3.1-mile race, while we 10K runners headed on straight ahead down a dirt path...into the woods.  For more than three miles, we kept going down a maze of crisscrossing, curving, and sloping dirt pathways.  I completely lost my bearings out there and had only my watch to give me any semblance of distance covered. The dirt surface was bad, too, giving my shoes poor traction...in places it was like running on soft beach sand.  But the worst part was the heat and mugginess...and the refreshment stations set up along the way every mile or two only provided water, not Gatorade.  In this weather, not providing electrolyte replenishment was a big mistake on the organizers' part.  Although I struggled through the entirety of the run, and wondered when the trek through the woods would ever end, I did manage to keep up with the runners I was around...until one would stop running and just walk...and then the next...and the next.  As a matter of fact, I can't recall ever running any race, including half-marathons, in which such a high percentage of runners just flat-out had to stop running.  It became a mental struggle for me to keep going, in spite of all the mileage I've built up in practice.  But I kept pressing on, and as I drew near the finish line, I was running strong.  I finished with a time of 56:24, not my best in a 10K race by a long shot, but still better than my Turkey Trot time last Thanksgiving by 32 seconds.  As for my age group (55-59), I won it...of course, I was the only one in it!

I didn't know whether the race organizers were giving out awards for age group winners or not, and immediately after the race I didn't know how I did compared to others in my group, so I didn't linger around...getting back in my car and driving home after getting a couple of slices of "free" Dominos pizza. Besides, it had begun to rain...

Although this race was something of an ordeal due to the heat and humidity, it was refreshing to finally not be hopelessly boxed in by other runners for a good stretch of the race as I have had to endure in the previous few.  I imagine, though, that had I chosen to run the one in Jacksonville instead, I would have been boxed in that entire hopelessly overcrowded race!  Now my string of one race per month has been increased to five straight months.  I don't know exactly when or where my next race will be, but I think I'll make an effort to pick an EARLY MORNING one!

Just Finished Reading Robert Jordan's Book Winter's Heart

As I continue to plod my way through Robert Jordan's fourteen-part fantasy Wheel of Time fantasy series, I just finished reading the ninth book, titled Winter's Heart.  Once again, we have here our main characters of Rand al'Thor (the "Dragon Reborn"), his boyhood friends Mat Cauthon and Perrin Aybara, and their allies fighting against his foes, who are numerous and seem to spend about as much time and effort fighting each other as they do against the "good guys".   In this volume, Rand is trying to free the male source of magic of the taint placed upon it by the supremely evil Dark One by gathering his allies and performing a special, elaborate ritual...this is how the book ends.  In the meantime, subplots and minor characters reign supreme...this flood of characters and story lines is by far the main gripe I have with this series.   I did enjoy the greater emphasis given to my favorite character Mat, one of the main protagonists (he was completely omitted from the previous book), and how he encounters the Daughter of the Nine Moons, whom he knows he has been prophesied to marry...

I have five more books in this series to get through, but only two that were written by Jordan himself.  He died after writing the eleventh book, and the series was completed by another fantasy fiction writer, Brandon Sanderson...an author I respect from his Mistborn series that I read a few months ago.  It should be interesting to see how he manages to to tie up the myriad loose ends Robert Jordan left...

Orlando City Team Doesn't Provide Radio Play-By-Play

With the 2015 Major League Soccer regular season opening last weekend, I was grateful to be able to watch Orlando's expansion team play its first game ever on TV...ESPN-2 showed it.  Besides that network, FoxSports and the Spanish-language Univision Deportes are showing live games of the MLS this year.  That's wonderful...but where is the radio play-by-play coverage?  I searched high and low on the Internet, and for the Orlando City MLS team, I found only "Real Radio"/104.1 in Orlando claiming to be the Orlando team's station...and they're only featuring a commentary show, not live play-by-play.  Now you might be asking why would I want radio when I have TV?  For one, even with the three channels broadcasting MLS games weekly, my team isn't always going to be featured.  For another, I may be in the car or elsewhere without access to a television...and I'm not one of those folks with their eyeballs constantly glued to their cellphones with all the sports apps.  And yet further...although it may seem counter-intuitive, you can sometimes pick up more from the radio than you can from TV...

When I was a kid, in the fall of 1968, I discovered that the relatively new American Basketball Association was starting a franchise in Miami (dubiously nicknamed the Floridians).  Since I was in the habit at the time of fiddling around on the radio to find interesting stations to listen to, one evening I came across a weak 250-watt AM station, WOCN, transmitting out of Miami on 1450 kHz.   Normally a station that played only elevator music, WOCN surprisingly was broadcasting a Floridians game play-by-play.  I remember the team they were playing that first time I heard them: the Minnesota Pipers.  From then on, I would listen to the broadcasts and soon got to know all of the players on the team, even the subs.  Why?  Because the announcers, given the fact that listeners couldn't see the game, had to describe everything in detail.  So although I didn't get a complete picture of what was going on, in some ways I ended up with much more information!  I don't think I ever did watch a Miami Floridians game on TV (the lack of the ABA on television probably did more to sink it than anything else), but I did follow them on the radio.  Nowadays, it seems things have reversed themselves, with TV access easy and radio often difficult to find.  I think that's a shame and counterproductive for the franchise as well:  radio is a relatively cheap way to promote your team and build up a fan base.

Maybe Orlando will come up with a radio play-by-play option eventually.  But I think they have already made a big mistake by not have one from the beginning.  Of course, with satellite radio being what it is now, for all I know they may do play-by-play there.  But that would miss the entire point of exposing the product to the general public to generate interest...

Recognizing Cognates an Early Help in Learning Some Languages

In studying various languages, knowing a few things in advance can help.  For example, many languages have many cognates, i.e. words that are similar in pronunciation, writing, and meaning that an English speaker can quickly use to expand their vocabulary.  Sometimes, though, these "copied" words, when processed through the particular foreign language's phonetic and writing systems, can still seem strange.  Japanese cognates of English are a case in point. Their assimilation of English terminology is quite large, but other languages, particularly in the Germanic and Romantic (or Latin) branches of the Indo-European language family, contain treasure troves of similar vocabulary, easily learned...although endemic to those languages and not "borrowed" from English.  If you've ever studied Spanish, French, Portuguese, or Italian, for example, you've probably hit upon the fact that most nouns in English ending in -tion have counterparts with at least a similar (if not identical) meaning in the Romance language.  With Dutch and German, many words are cognates of English due to their common origin.  I've also noticed with German that they have also made use of many Romance cognates that are recognizable to English speakers. So, with some languages at least, using cognates can help the beginner to attain a good degree of experience and confidence...which is doubtless why many textbooks in some foreign languages will have an early section on them...

Other languages like Russian, Chinese, Hindi, and Arabic still have some cognates, but not anywhere to the degree that the aforementioned languages do. But regardless which foreign language one is studying, the core of the vocabulary is going to come down to words that are truly unfamiliar to the native speaker of English...

Sports and Studying Foreign Languages

It doesn't seem entirely appropriate somehow, lumping these two topics together in an article.  For me, I happen to like both.  With sports, I like to run, sometimes competitively, but with anything else I'm content with being a spectator (mainly of the couch-potato-in-front-of-the-TV type), with my preferred sports being soccer, baseball, basketball, and football.  As for studying foreign languages, I am no gifted polyglot but instead am very interested in them, having studied several to varying degrees over the course of my adult lifetime, up to the present.  As for how society regards these pursuits of mine, I find it interesting how differently they are treated...

With sports, one can be interested in many of them without actually participating in any of them.  I can go anywhere and strike up conversations about what's going on in the current sport of interest, and being able to remember statistics and other facts only contributes to the discussions in a positive way.  In fact, sports analysis can get to be quite abstract, if you check out the "standings" tables in your local newspaper and see the arrays of columns of numbers next to each team or athlete.  That's quite a departure from actually being out on the field, court, rink, or track and actually participating in the sport yourself.  With the study of foreign languages, on the other hand, my experience has revealed a different attitude on the part of others...

I don't have to be considered as an athlete myself in order to enjoy some kind of social acceptance in the context of being knowledgeable or interesting about sports.  Yet with foreign languages, if the topic comes up with others, no matter what aspects of a particular language I'm talking about, the person I'm trying to communicate with almost inevitably personalizes the conversation by trying to elicit my fluency level and what am I going to do with my study of said language.  Once, when discussing an aspect of Polish grammar with a fellow student in a Polish class, he refused to listen to me because that wasn't how HE learned languages (so why was he in that class, I should have asked).  That was a negative interaction, but almost the entire rest of the time, people express disinterest in the more passive, impersonal analysis, acceptable with sports, whenever foreign languages come up for discussion.  Instead, it gets real, real personal...and I don't like it.  When I'm sitting there studying Vietnamese like I was once in a nearby Starbucks (where I also happen to be writing this article right now) and an acquaintance entering the store notices what I'm doing, I don't want the cop-out question "What are you going to do with it?", which is what I got at that time.  Instead, why not ask, "Gee, what's Vietnamese like?".  Now that would be a "sports"-like question inviting me to share my not-inconsiderable (but still very incomplete) knowledge about that language. And along the way in that "better" conversation, I would most likely slip in some personal information, such as that I used to work in a local Chinese restaurant that had several freshly-arrived Vietnamese immigrants whom I befriended and with whom we practiced speaking each other's native language...and I didn't want what I learned back then to slip away. I admit that most folks don't want to discuss languages on a more analytic level for the same reason they wouldn't want to talk about mathematical topics: they don't want to be shown to be ignorant in the area (and people, especially in this university town, are so, so excessively prideful about their levels of educational attainment).  With sports talk, that doesn't seem to be a problem, though...

So if you see me studying a foreign language somewhere, you're welcome to interrupt my train of thought and ask the boneheaded, implicitly accusatory question, "So what are you going to do with it?", if that soothes your pride somehow.  But instead, why not put me "off" the spot and ask me to describe the language I'm studying?  Who knows, you'll probably end up finding out what I'm going to "do with it" anyhow, plus you might then actually learn something...as well as maybe, just maybe, find a new area in your life that piques your interest...    

Warm Winter in Gainesville Has Its Ups and Downs

In spite of all of the winter storms afflicting the eastern part of the United States north of Florida, in this state, at least, it has been yet another remarkably warm winter.  There have been very few nights here in Gainesville (in the northern part of the state) when temperatures got down to freezing...although in many years past we would go through spells when it would plunge into the 20's, sometimes for several nights at a time.  And now, still technically in the winter, we have a forecast today for a high of 87 degrees...with little change in the next few days!  I suppose that I should be grateful that we haven't experienced the almost continuous sequence of severe snow and ice storms, with their accompanying drifts and treacherous roads, that has caused so much hardship in the states north of us, and also that during this very mild winter here it has rained to a good degree...that will help forestall springtime forest fires that have plagued us in the past.  But with the warmth here also comes an increase in pollen, something that affects people like me who suffer from respiratory allergies.  Also, I am not a gardener by nature and would just as soon spend my time doing things other than working in the yard, so I'm not looking forward to the outdoor trimming and maintenance facing me earlier than usual due to the warm weather's vegetation growth spurt...

Senators Talking Past Each Other in Labor Rules Changes Debate

The National Labor Relations Board, a Federal government agency, recently updated its rules concerning holding elections in businesses to determine whether or not their employees want to form a union and engage in collective bargaining with their employers.  It had been several years since any changes in the rules were made, and the stated aim of the revisions was to bring the Board's policies more in line with the computer technology so prevalent today in communications.  The Republican Party has taken issue with these changes, as I saw the other day in a US Senate debate on the subject (shown on TV's C-Span2).  Speaker after speaker, including Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, would get up and refer to the actions as authorizing "ambush" elections with their new 11-day deadline for elections to be held once the employer is notified...and that something more reasonable like 30 days would be fair for both sides.  That sounds reasonable to me, but then the Democratic senators got up in opposition to the Republicans' proposed rescinding of these new rules and, instead of focusing on the new 11-day limit, kept going on and on about how important in this day and age unionizing elections need to be electronicized to keep up with how business is now almost universally done...and why do the Republicans oppose the newly-authorized use of e-mail and the Internet for this application?  They also repeatedly recited the history of the labor movement and emphasized how important collective bargaining had been for the growth of the American middle class in the last century...and how the National Labor Relations Board, begun under Franklin Roosevelt in 1935, was instrumental in ensuring a fair process.  Then Republican Senator Lamar Alexander got up and said no, that the new rules were against the middle class because it put the several hundred thousand franchise owners at a big disadvantage...with a different part of the rule changes that seemed to force the umbrella company to unionize if a smaller franchise site did.  H-m-m...

I'm no expert on government regulations and labor law...and I didn't read the proposed Republican Senate bill.  So I'm not in a position to judge the merits of these arguments, although I will say that in recent years, the Republican Party has become virulently anti-union and would like nothing better than to see all unions abolished and the organized labor movement destroyed.  But I do recognize when two sides in a debate are doing little other than talking past each other at the special interests to whom they are beholden.  It seems to me that with this proposed legislation, whose outcome I don't know about, it would have been better served going first to a Senate committee where the two sides could express their biggest objections and a compromise could have been reached that would have received enough votes to pass and get the President's signature...

Major League Soccer's Orlando City Plays First Ever Regular Season Game

I just finished watching, on TV (ESPN2) the very first regular-season game for both of Major League Soccer's expansion teams this year, Orlando City and New York City, as they faced off in Orlando's Citrus Bowl to more than 62,000 spectators.  It was an exciting contest with the level of play better than I had expected.  Of course, I was rooting for the Iron Lions, the nickname that Orlando goes by. Their star player is a Brazilian with one of those funny stylized singular names, Kaká, who plays midfield and is whom they consider as their "striker".  Orlando looked dominant in the first half, but couldn't manage a score due to the New York City goalkeeper's several excellent saves.  In the second half, NYC managed a goal to take the lead, and when Aurélian Collin, one of Orlando's defenders,was ejected with a red card and the team was reduced on the field to ten players, it looked dismal for them.  But just past the 90-minute mark, they were awarded a free kick near the goal and Kaká was able to punch it through for the score, with the ball deflecting in transit off a New York defender.  So the game ended as a 1-1 tie.  I was impressed with both the fan support and the team's play, and hope they both continue strong through what promises to be a challenging first season.  I definitely want to get down there and watch a game or two...

Just Finished Reading Daniel Abraham's The Tyrant's Law

Reading Daniel Abraham's The Dagger and the Coin fantasy series is, in some ways, the antithesis of that of Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time.  The former keeps the characters and story lines limited in number and easy to follow, while the latter is overly encumbered with minor characters often dominating the text for long passages.  I definitely prefer Abraham's work, and just finished the third volume, titled The Tyrant's Law...and have already gone a few chapters into the next one, The Widow's House...

I read up a little on Daniel Abraham on the Internet, and if what I uncovered is to be believed (and I don't have any persuasive reason to think otherwise), he is primarily a science-fiction writer who decided to try out writing a fantasy series like his friend, writer George R.R. Martin.  He reportedly got together with Martin and some other writers to get down the essence of this genre...and subsequently laid down an outline for this five-part series.  Now that's something I doubt that Robert Jordan ever did.  There are a lot of derived themes in The Dagger and the Coin, such as a distant past with dragons once dominating the picture, but also there are two innovations as I see them.  One is the diversity of humanity in the form of thirteen distinct races...and they are much more different from each other than the so-called human "races" we think of in our real world and over which have created such a fuss throughout history (and even now, sadly).  The other is the corruption of a segment of humanity with little spiders running through their veins, the effect on them being that they can distinguish truth from lie as well as giving them Jedi-like powers of persuasion.  Well, maybe that last feature WAS derived, wasn't it?  This conspiratorial group drives the story line in the series as they try to take over Abraham's imaginary world...

As in other fantasy series, the main characters of Cithrin (a young female banker), Geder (the "tyrant", besotted with Cithrin), Clara (widow to a nobleman who unsuccessfully tried to assassinate Geder), Marcus (war hero from bygone years who goes on various adventures), and Kit (an apostate from the spider-people group who is on his own quest to destroy them) spend the book crisscrossing the lands and seas in their various narratives.  Even with the welcome limitation of characters, it can get to be a little bit tedious trying to keep up with all these wanderings, but I am holding out the hope that the author will stick with his plan to conclusively tie it all up in that yet-to-be-published fifth book...

Changed Shift Times at My Workplace

This morning, when I finished my work shift at six and walked out of the building, it ended a two-year long stint working the late-night/early morning "graveyard shift".  Since the post office needs to process the mail passing through it in a prompt and efficient way in order to assure timely delivery, many of its workers in the mail processing section have these shifts.  It's what I started out doing in 1987 when I began my employment there and I worked these difficult hours for fifteen of my first sixteen years.  However, I never did get used to it and had much difficulty getting enough sleep.  Also, I believe it made me more susceptible to illness.  From 2003 to 2013, I was able to switch to an afternoon/evening shift and my sleeping patterns normalized, with my general health improving.  But due to my organization's sweeping consolidation decisions in the past few years,  my position with this preferred schedule was abolished...and I chose the best available post for me back on the late night shift.  Only this time, I was determined to stabilize my sleep by going straight to bed soon after I got home from work in the morning.  Still, on my days off I would revert back to sleeping like most of the world during those late night hours.  Although I handled this better than in the early years, I still felt that I was getting sick way too often.  So when the opportunity recently presented itself for me to switch back to an afternoon/evening shift, I jumped at it and got the position.  After a couple of days off, I will begin it this coming Monday afternoon...

Just Finished Reading Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness

Joseph Conrad is one of those classic writers whose works inevitably find their way into high school and college English class reading assignments.  It happened to me in the tenth grade when I was instructed to buy a paperback copy of his novel Lord Jim at the school bookstore, read it, and then summarize it.  I neither bought nor read it...although my summary paper garnered me a "B" grade (talk about winging it).  Since then, 43 years have passed and I finally got around to reading some Conrad, this one his short novel Heart of Darkness.

The 1902 story Heart of Darkness, on which Francis Ford Coppola based his epic 1979 movie Apocalypse Now, differs from the latter in that Conrad's setting is the deep recesses of the Belgian Congo as his hero Marlowe travels up river to encounter the enigmatic ivory trading agent Kurtz (whom I constantly envisioned as looking like Marlon Brando as I read it).  Yes, the quest is similar to the film adaptation's Cambodia-based quest for Colonel Kurtz, there an American renegade soldier...although Coppola was obviously going for a heavy political statement about the American war effort in Vietnam.  In Heart of Darkness, Marlowe is a seaman who wants adventure in his life...and plunging into the depths of Africa's "heart of darkness" to find the ailing Kurtz is irresistible to him.  Along the way he discovers the reprehensible way that the native blacks are treated by the colonialists, with disease, near-starvation, and gross overworking just the most glaring symptoms of their exploitation.  In this sense, this novel was an important eye-opener into how native populations were being abused by occupying colonial powers...in this case the late nineteenth-century Belgium Congo, as run by their King Leopold, being one of the most extreme abusers...

Eventually, as in the movie, Marlowe (or the cinematic character played by Martin Sheen with a different name) meets up with Kurtz and discovers him to be a fascinating combination of idealism, charisma, and utter disregard for others' lives.  The local people living under his rule, also as in the movie, adore him and fear losing him as the traveling party (through Marlowe) convinces him, as he is dying, to go back down river with them.  There is a curious character in the book, a Russian, who, like a similar hippie-like character in the movie, who has lived with Kurtz in his strange, reclusive new society and regards him as a great genius with a flare for poetry, teaching...and instilling terror. Despite knowing what a murderer Kurtz is, Marlowe can't help admiring him and comparing him favorably to the other, more petty-minded traders around him. It is this strange approval of such a sinister character that gave me pause, considering the villains of similar ilk that have victimized the world during the century following the publication of this story... figures like Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Che Guevara, Charles Manson, Jim Jones, and others...who entranced those around them with their presence but who ultimately were agents of destruction and darkness.  Hence, the double meaning of the title "Heart of Darkness".  In one sense, it refers to going to an extremely remote, isolated place, in the middle of an area unfamiliar to most of civilized society.  In another sense, it can mean how one's own heart can be made full of darkness. Perhaps one lesson, intended or not, that can be taken from it all is that trying to effect great changes, no matter the idealism or good intentions behind them, by isolating oneself from the "corrupt" world, also removes the good from that very same world and gives evil and darkness an opening to work its own aims within one's soul...

My Running During the Past Few Months

The past few months have seen me both increase my overall running mileage and participate more in middle-to-long distance races.  Here are the races I've run during the last four months (three of the four in Gainesville):

11/27.....10K Turkey Trot...Time 56:56

12/21.....Starlight Half-Marathon (in Palm Coast)...Time 2:03:30

1/31.....Newnan's Lake 15K...Time 1:18:21

2/15.....Five Points Half-Marathon...Time 1:58:48

Now that I have unwittingly set a pattern of one race per month, I now feel compelled to continue it.  The obvious choice for March is a 10K Saturday afternoon race to be held on the 14th in Tioga, a small community a few miles west of Gainesville.  As for any more half-marathons, I'll have to think about a possible late March or April race that would be held within a reasonable driving perimeter. Let's see...there's a combination marathon, half-marathon, and 5K race March 29 in Ormond Beach and also a combo half-marathon, 12K, and 5K race in Clermont on April 25.  Well, I'll have to see how things stand as these dates approach, I suppose...

Looking back on the four races I've done recently, I have to state that they all tended to be rather frustrating efforts, at least at the start of each event.  This is because of the problem of "runner congestion", when I repeatedly found myself boxed in due to slow runners around me who also would make no effort to offer any opening for me to get around them.  In the last half-marathon, I was nearly halfway through it before the path finally opened up for me! As for how I physically felt during these races, I seemed to hold up well, although I experienced some aches and cramps at various moments...the most serious being the leg cramps near the end of the Five Points race.  Perhaps better electrolytes/hydration (i.e. more Gatorade) will alleviate this problem in the future.

After April, the prospects for long-distance races in the northern Florida area disappear with only the 3.1-mile 5K event available from time to time. If I continue running monthly races from May through September, I'll have to stick with this shorter distance...unless I begin to travel to places further north and/or west where the longer races are held that time of year...

Reading Sue Grafton's Series from "A" to "Z"

As I had mentioned in a blog entry a few weeks ago, I have begun reading mystery writer Sue Grafton's "Alphabet Mystery" novels...this time in alphabetical order.  I've been hopping around the "letters" indiscriminately, beginning several years ago with the book "L" is for Lawless.  Since each book's story is complete in itself, jumping around the series out of order isn't in itself such a bad thing, although its main protagonist, Santa Teresa, California private detective Kinsey Millhone, does undergo changes in her personal life and relationships progressively with each successive book.  The main drawback with what I've been doing is that I have lost track as to which books I've already read and which ones I haven't.  And since I truly love Grafton's writing in this series and like the Kinsey Millhone character a lot, I decided to just go back to the beginning, to "A" is for Alibi, and read on through "W" is for Whatever (I don't know the title offhand), her latest book.  Grafton plans to end the series with "Z" is for Zero.

As it turns out, I had already read "A" is for Alibi a while back and knew who the main culprit is (there is more than one guilty party in this story).  So although I knew roughly how it would turn out as I reread it, it was interesting to see how the author introduced the villain early into the story and how she laid down hints of his culpability at various points while at the same point inserting other suspicious characters into the narrative.  All in all, I enjoyed the second time around as much as the first!  Oh, and I counted in it four different times that Kinsey went out jogging, something I particularly identify with...

Now it's one to the next book, titled "B" is for Burglar...

MercyMe Concert at Yesterday's Florida Strawberry Festival in Plant City

Yesterday, Melissa and I drove down a few miles west of Tampa to Plant City, where they have been holding their Florida Strawberry Festival.  Naturally, strawberries are a big focus of the event, but as is the case with county fairs elsewhere, there's a lot going on.  Rides, stands selling food of any kind you can imagine, and crafts exhibits dominate the landscape.  Also, there's a stadium there where they hold concerts.  That's convenient, because at 3:30 yesterday afternoon the Christian contemporary band MercyMe held a concert there that we attended.  I've heard them before, especially that big hit of theirs If I Could Only Imagine from a few years back, but I didn't realize what good musicians they truly are.  The selection of songs they performed during the slightly more than one hour they were up there went across the spectrum of musical styles...I was impressed!  I'm going to have to get hold of some of their material to listen to on my MP3 player...

Yesterday morning before we set off, I checked out the Weather Channel website on my computer and it had for the Plant City forecast a 25% chance of "showers" and a high of 72.  I looked at the radar map for central and northern Florida and saw a small band of clouds around the Tampa area, a very big clump of clouds heading for Gainesville...and a wide swath of clear skies in between.  Instead, though...in the real world...it rained all the way from Gainesville to Plant City...and throughout almost the entire MercyMe concert.  But speaking of "mercy", it did let up afterwards and Melissa and I spent the next hour or two walking around the fairgrounds...and of course we had to try out some strawberry shortcake!  Also, there was a stand selling fresh-popped kettle popcorn...you can see above a picture of me holding my "prize catch".

Almost from the moment we got back into the car to drive back home, it had resumed raining...all the way back to Gainesville with only minor periods of respite.  Well, the rain was tough, but the fair, and especially the company, was great!