My April 2015 Running Report

In April, I kept up with my total running mileage while limiting the lengths of individual runs, managing this with multiple runs per day.  My total mileage for the month was 309, with my longest single run being for only 5.3 miles.  I ran on 29 of April's 30 days, in spite of suffering a pretty severe rear-end collision on my car on the 20th and spending the day two days later at the hospital undergoing medical tests for a life-long condition.  With both of these, I emerged with no injuries or complications...so onward with the running!

I wasn't able to run in a race this past month, but then again races are secondary for me to the daily running itself.  Maybe I'll pick and choose some races during the next few months to enter...most likely they'll be of the 5K sort.  I also got out my old rusty, cheap bicycle a couple of times and rode around my neighborhood.  Just for the sake of recording it, I rode a total of 8.3 miles with 5.0 miles being my longest ride.  Next month, though, I intend to do much more bike riding and combine that with my running...so I look forward to greatly increasing the mileage there...

Just Finished Reading Edith Wharton's Novel Ethan Frome

Published in 1911 and set in that time period in a rural New England community, Ethan Frome, a short novel by Edith Wharton (and one of those books that tend to be high school English class reading assignments), tells the story a man beset by a feeling of entrapment as he struggles between his true feelings and his strongly held sense of duty and pride.  Ethan Frome is a relatively poor farmer, intelligent and talented but duty-bound to care for his ailing parents instead of pursuing education and a career in engineering, his true calling.   After the death of his father, he hires a nurse, Zeena, to care for his mother until her death...after which he marries Zeena, who in turn takes on the role of an invalid (albeit a hypochondriac invalid).  Kattie, a young cousin of Zeena's, comes to stay with them at their farm and helps with chores while Zeena retreats further and further into her self-absorption with her own imagined illnesses.  Ethan's feelings for Kattie grow stronger and stronger, which of course causes great internal turmoil as he wrestles with jealousy over how other men treat her and his own guilty feelings about betraying his wife.  These three people are the focus of the story, and their interrelationship develops to drive the narrative to its climax...which produces a surprise ending.  

I got several different impressions while reading Ethan Frome.  The story begins from the viewpoint of an outside character who is visiting the area on a work assignment.  He sees and meets Frome, and then discovers the reason for his terrible limp: a terrible accident he suffered 24 years earlier when he was 28.  That accident, its causes, and its ramifications are the climax of the tale...although throughout the story the reader knows it is coming as part of an extended flashback narrative dominating the body of the novel.  But aside from getting a good sense of what life was like in rural New England in wintertime just before the advent of the automotive age and becoming thoroughly depressed with the dismal lives of the characters, the main thing I got out of Ethan Frome, intended or not, is that some families seem to have the need within them for someone to play the role of "invalid"...even when no one is ill or incapacitated.  Frome's mother is the invalid first and Zeena, the nurse, cares for her.  After the mother's death, the "invalid" role becomes vacant, so to speak, but then Zeena rushes in to fill it with her hypochondria.  And to confirm this, the surprise ending to the story, which I won't reveal (in case you decide to read it), further affirms this curious phenomenon in another way. Did the author mean to express this idea with this tale of a very dysfunctional family or not? Who knows, but it made a big impression on me...

Coffee Shops Like Starbucks Starting to Bug Me

For many years, I used to like to go out to diners and coffee shops...and just sit there and read, write, and study.  And after Starbucks opened its Magnolia Parke store here in Gainesville in 2000, I've gone there a lot, along with other Starbucks locations.  But in recent years I've grown tired of going out like this...besides, with so many people also going to these locations (especially to Starbucks), I often find that there is no place to sit.  I also find myself more and more irritated by the crowds and the noise, so why bother when I can stay at home and accomplish the same things while drinking better tasting and less expensive home-brewed coffee?

I'm sure that one of the big contributing factors to my discomfort at coffee shops is the fact that, now with the omnipresent Internet, customers will take their tablets and laptops there and sit for hours upon hours...making it difficult for me to find a spot for myself.  I don't want to sound like a hypocrite, though: that's what I used to do, too, and for decades before the Internet was ever an option...

Went to Yesterday's Friends of the Library Sale in Gainesville

Yesterday my son and I went to the Friends of the Library book sale on Main Street, here in Gainesville.  Will wanted to get there early on the first day of the sale, which lasts through Wednesday.  I'm glad he was keeping up with it, for I had forgotten about the sale.  We drove over there and found that parking was a bit of a problem, but managed to find an available space a healthy walking distance from the site.  When we finally walked across Main Street, we found a very, very long line of people waiting for the impending opening of the building warehousing the thousands of books that would be for sale.  The line actually went to the end of the block and curled around the corner.  One of the crossing guards said that we might as well just stand there and let the line catch up with us, but Will and I decided to just go ahead and get in line...entailing another considerable walk.  When the sale opened and we finally got inside, the place was predictably packed with book fiends (I wonder what the fire code's maximum limit of people was).  It was almost impossible to get anywhere because of the density of customers, but eventually I was able to make my way to the areas I was the most interested in.  I found a couple of 50-cent mystery novels and three foreign language Bibles: a 10-cent Spanish version, a $1 French version, and, best of all, a $1.50 Chinese/English dual translation version.  And I was able to find a book on the history of Christianity that I hope will help Melissa in her studies.  Will was also able to find some good books, and we were both satisfied with our purchases, not to mention finally getting out of that overly congested building.

The Friends of the Library sale is held each April and October.  The event's organizers were expecting a crowd yesterday, but according to an article in the local newspaper Gainesville Sun today, the turnout was much, much larger than they had anticipated.  Of course, with a good public library system like we have here in Alachua County,  I can check out books for free and then return them when finished..hoarding piles of cheaply bought books can be a bit troublesome in the long run. So I'm not quite as much of fan of the FOL sale as others...but that Chinese/English Bible was a special find...

Just Finished Reading Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels

A few days ago, I finished reading Jonathan Swift's classic novel, titled Gulliver's Travels.  Because it came out in 1725, nearly 300 years ago, I feared that the language might be a little too antiquated...but it turns out that Swift's writing is easy to follow.  Most people who haven't read Gulliver's Travels are aware that Gulliver is a sea-goer who gets himself shipwrecked on a strange island...and wakes up to find himself bound and surrounded by minuscule people: the Lilliputians.  But that's just the first part of his odysseys into fanciful lands populated, not just by the diminutive Lilliputians, but also by the ultra-giant Brobdingnags, the Laputans with their floating capital, the Balnirabi with their ridiculous, pointless science projects, the Luggnaggs with their shunned and pitied immortals, the Glubbdubdribs with their ability to drum up ghosts...any ghost you'd want to converse with, and finally, the Houyhnhnms, horses who within their domain replace humans (which they call "Yahoos") as the intelligent, reasoning species.  Because of the funny-sounding names Swift imagined for these "peoples", reading aloud can contribute greatly to the effect of his writing...and it can lead to uncontrollable fits of laughter, especially when Lemeul Gulliver (a physician by profession) goes off in a laudatory rant about the esteemed and superior Houyhnhnms.

I have read that there is a lot of satire in Gulliver's Travels, and I'm sure that Swift had different groups in mind when he wrote about various societies that his hero encountered.  But there is a punch line to his satire: after Gulliver discovers and reveals the various down-sides to these very disparate cultures, he tries to convince the Houyhnhnms how reasonable his own English culture is and that they should be regarded as equals.  Only one problem: as Gulliver goes on describing his own society, he finds himself continually criticizing it and exposing its many injustices and flaws.  Finally, he sees that his own native world is just as bad as the strange ones he had encountered previously.  Upon returning to England at the end, he can't adjust to even being in the presence of his fellow humans, much less interacting with them...

I was pleasantly surprised with Gulliver's Travels.  Not only did it crack me up with its humor, but its sobering description of Swift's contemporary English society still holds up nearly three centuries later with ours of today.  I don't think you'd regret it if you found a copy of this book and read it...

Car Accident and Annual Medical Checkup

It's been a few days since I wrote an article on this blog, but I've been a little preoccupied.  On Monday afternoon, I was driving to work and, while I was stopped at a traffic light, another (larger) car plowed into the back of my car, crumpling up the back of it like an aluminum can.  Fortunately, I had my foot solidly on the brake pedal and my car remained stationary throughout...so I avoided hitting the car in front of me.  And, oh yeah, I also had on my seat belt, a real life saver.  People around me seemed surprised that I was walking around afterwards without a scratch.  Two days later, I'm still not feeling as if I sustained any kind of injury.  I suspect that the driver (also apparently uninjured) who hit me was distracted, because the impact was pretty severe...not like someone who was slowing down for the light but whose brakes couldn't completely stop their car...

Yesterday I spent the whole day at Shands Hospital getting my annual checkup for a chronic condition that was discovered in early 2012 and which, as it turns out,  I had from birth.  The condition hasn't worsened in the three years since that diagnosis, and as such I've been "cleared" again for another year.  I was a little surprised (and dismayed), though, to discover that my weight had creeped up to an unacceptable level.  This in spite of all the running I've been doing.  But then again, of late I have been eating too much, and especially too much of the wrong foods.  It looks as if a "dietary reset" is due for me...

Southeastern Storm Squall Line Finally Hits Gainesville

A massive storm system, full of lightning, hail, high winds, heavy rain...and, yes, tornadoes, has slammed into the southeastern part of the United States and has just begun to pass over Gainesville...hopefully as briefly as possible.  The squall line just hit, and if we're fortunate we'll just get soaked, along with a few tree branches blown down.  The above photo tries to capture a little of the enveloping storm...

Just Finished Reading John Irving's Last Night in Twisted River

Many years ago, I once saw an episode on the 1980s sitcom Newhart, in which Bob Newhart's lead character, an author living in Vermont, had just published a novel.  Curiously, every character in his story was almost exactly like a "real"-life friend or family member...and the laughs began as each of the people discovered themselves in the book and reacted to their portrayal.  It was a pretty funny episode, as I remember it.  And that memory has returned after reading John Irving's novel Last Night in Twisted River. 

In Last Night in Twisted River, published in 2009 and which I've just finished reading, John Irving explores the craft of writing through the character Daniel Baciagalupo, a cook's son who spends his childhood years at a logging camp in New Hampshire.  As the result of a horrible accident at the camp, Dominic, the father and his son are forced to flee elsewhere, with the aid of Dominic's close friend, Ketchum, as they try to avoid the wrath of the sadistic and vengeful Constable Carl.  Starting in 1954, the story flashes back to 1942 and then jumps ahead in spurts, to 1967, 1975, 1983, 2000, 2001...and, finally, 2005.  But even with that abrupt progression, the story isn't told in a linear chronological order...in 1983, for example, events from earlier years are told in flashbacks, a frequent device of Irving in this novel. As for my earlier allusion to Newhart, Daniel as a novelist keeps churning out book after book whose characters are eerily close to the people in his past and present...to the point where his father discovers details of his son's life that otherwise would have been too intimate and controversial to discuss openly. Parallel to this, Irving himself seems to be revealing his own life through this author, who has renamed himself with "Danny Angel" as his pen name.   For example, Danny goes to an Iowa writers workshop where he meets and befriends the great author Kurt Vonnegut...it was actually Irving himself who did this in real life.  And the New Hampshire setting along with Daniel's attendance at Exeter Academy closely dovetails with Irving's personal experiences...along with the fact that both Daniel and John were able to avoid being sent off to Vietnam during that war because they were fathers of young children. In all of this, Irving seems to be telling his readers that in order to write effectively, you must put all of yourself into it and avoid self-restraint...and that will most likely result in your own personal experiences, along with the people you come to know and the events you encounter, in one form or another, becoming a part of your stories...consciously or unconsciously. In other words, each of us has to write from where we are, not from the point of view of some hypothetical "objective" person: they don't exist, anyway...

I was frustrated at the often foolish decisions made by Danny, Dominic, and Ketchum in the story, but now, looking back on it, I respect Irving for having made these characters seem so real through their imperfections.  On the other hand, the author unrealistically had Danny, in his forties, going out on casual 6-to-7-mile country runs, in which he could collect his thoughts and come up with new writing material...all the while running at a 6-to-7 minutes-per-mile pace.  Casually. A little too fast for my tastes, I would think...

As a couple of side notes, if you're inclined toward the culinary arts, you'd enjoy the many sections in the book that Irving devoted to different types of food and how they are prepared.  And for the politics junkies among you, there's plenty of that, too, with Irving expressing, through his characters, what he thinks about George W. Bush and his policies.  Although I wasn't too keen on the political potshots, I did appreciate that the author had people well into their elder years, several even well into their eighties, who were active, lucid, and deeply involved in the high drama of the story.  In this it reminded me of Stephen King's earlier novel Insomnia, one of my favorites of his...

NBA Playoffs Begin This Saturday

The National Basketball Association "second season" of the playoffs begins this weekend as sixteen teams vie in eight best-of-seven series in the first round.  The pairings, based on the seeding according to regular season win-loss records in each conference, are thus:

East
Atlanta vs. Brooklyn
Toronto vs. Washington

Cleveland vs. Boston
Chicago vs. Milwaukee

West
Golden State vs. New Orleans
Portland vs. Memphis

Houston vs. Dallas
Los Angeles Clippers vs. San Antonio

The playoffs are constructed in a bracket format, similar to the NCAA tournament.  So regardless of the relative seeding of the winners of the first round, the next opponents will be within the groupings that I have set off...hence, suppose Atlanta and Washington win their opening series, then they'd face each other the next round...and so on.  Then, the two remaining teams from each conference will play for the conference titles...and then those two winners will play for the league championship, to end some time in early June.

I'm rooting for Atlanta, Washington, Boston, Chicago, New Orleans, Memphis, Dallas, and San Antonio in the opening round, but I suspect that Cleveland and Golden State will easily win theirs.  As for the eventual NBA championship series, I'd like to see Chicago playing San Antonio, with the latter winning the title...but I suspect it will be more like Cleveland playing Golden State, with Lebron James of the Cavaliers adding another championship to his resume...

Read Robert Jordan's Crossroads of Twilight a While Ago

Usually when I have just finished reading a book, I'll review it (without spoiling the ending) within a week at the latest.  However, I was going over my reviews of Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time series, a fantasy venture in which the author seemed to have lost his way over the years in the process of writing it.  Crossroads of Twilight is the tenth volume of this fourteen-part series.  Jordan would write one more before dying...and writer Brandon Sanderson (who wrote the excellent Mistborn fantasy series) would finish the final three volumes.  But this last book I read (from March 17 to the 27th) was so inconsequential and left so little an impression on me that I forgot all about it very soon after I finished...and thus never got around to writing a review.  Eventually, since the beginning of the Wheel of Time series, we've been told that main protagonist Rand al'Thor, also known as "The Dragon Reborn", will unite the forces of good behind him and defeat the evil Dark One in a monumentally cataclysmic final showdown battle.  This battle, after ten books, seems to be even further away than it was at the start, and Rand seems to be failing miserably in his quest to bring people together behind him: other than his closest, inner circle of loyalists, they are obsessed with petty bickering and backbiting.  Minor characters abound, and I wonder what ultimate purpose the author had in bringing their subplots to the foreground of the narrative...

Well, I reviewed the story line in Crossroads of Twilight, which as I can see it has one important development...right at the very end.  I'm prepared to embark on Jordan's eleventh and final (for him) book  and then see what Sanderson was able to do to salvage the series.  I could just walk away from it right now, seeing all of the other books I could be reading instead...but I've already invested too much of my time into it.  To the bitter end!

Yesterday's City Commission Runoff Election, Deplorable Turnout

In yesterday's Gainesville City Commission runoff elections, Harvey Budd and Charles Goston squeaked out very narrow victories over their respective opponents Jay Curtis and Yvonne Hinson Rawls.  The turnout was an abysmal 11.8% of registered voters.  Goston won his election by only 69 votes.

I keep hearing how we're supposed to honor our brave young men and women in the armed forces who defend our liberties with their service and have done so over the course of our country's history.  And I do honor and respect them.  One way that I do this is to take seriously the hard-won liberty of being able to choose our own leaders and representatives through the democratic voting process.  Apparently though, 88.2% of Gainesville's registered voters don't agree with me about the value of their collective and individual sacrifices for our freedoms...freedoms which too many take for granted...

Today is Election Day in Gainesville...Why Not Vote?

Today is election day here in Gainesville, Florida.  In last month's two city commission races, there was only a 12% turnout.  Based on the early vote attendance in the last few days, today's runoff vote will have an even smaller turnout.  Needless to say, I went down to my local precinct, which was crowded (it's a senior recreational center) and voted, being the only voter there...and probably had been for quite a while.

The two races are for District One, in which I don't live, and for an at-large seat comprising the entire city.  Therefore,  I only voted in the runoff election between Harvey Budd, who seems to be supported by the more left-leaning faction of the Democratic Party, and Jay Curtis, who seems to be represent reasonable growth and lower utility rates.  In the District One race, Yvonne Hinson-Rawls is running against Charles Goston.  Budd and Curtis each got about 33% of the vote in the initial election: I think Budd will win it, though...although I had a more favorable opinion of Curtis.  I'm not sure about the other two, although Hinson-Rawls seems to be garnering more support from the political establishment here.

So if you're a resident of Gainesville and are a registered voter, why not refamiliarize yourself with your local precinct and have a voting experience today?  Then you can go around the rest of the day and lord over others the fact that you voted and they didn't...

Hillary Declares Candidacy for President

Hillary Clinton has now declared herself to be a candidate for the Presidency in 2016, joining Jeb Bush and the minor league field of Republican hopefuls.  The Democrats no doubt would love to see someone like Ted Cruz or Rand Paul get the GOP nomination as it would be little of a contest, regardless how you might feel about these candidates.  Marco Rubio has also stated that he is running, and his candidacy should be seen as a bit more problematic.  He is just as ideologically on the extreme right as Cruz or Paul, but he is a soft-spoken and skillful speaker who presents himself as a reasonable leader...much in the same way that Barack Obama did in 2007 when he launched his improbably successful presidential bid.  H-m-m, I don't plan to vote for Rubio, but he is, at least at this stage, a big threat to Bush in the upcoming primary campaign season.  And about Wisconsin's governor Scott Walker, I don't see him getting very far in the campaign other than maybe being selected as a vice-presidential running mate...but that might just be due to the fact that of all candidates so far (although I'm not sure he's officially declared himself yet), he repels me the most...

I won't equivocate...I'm a Democrat and I plan to vote for Clinton for President.  But should Jeb Bush manage to get himself elected in 2016, I won't grieve too much...he was quite an able governor of Florida during his two terms from 1999 to 2007 and is well superior to the rest of the Republican field.  But to each his or her own, I suppose, and it is not for me to tell you or anyone else which candidate or party to support...

Game of Thrones and Hobbit Shows on HBO Tonight, Diverge From Books

Although my current cable television service has on it many, many channels, I don't subscribe to HBO.  Every now and then, however, they offer a short period of time in which HBO is shown for free.  It just so happens that this weekend is one of those times, and I'm taking advantage of it by watching old Game of Thrones reruns, as well as the new season's opener for the series, which will air at 9 PM.  Then, at 10, I plan to watch (on a different HBO channel): The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, which is the second part of the movie trilogy based on J.R.R. Tolkien's relatively short book The Hobbit.  These two shows bring to the forefront a major gripe I have with screen adaptations of literary works...

The HBO TV series Game of Thrones is based on George R.R. Martin's ongoing fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire, of which he has published five volumes and still has two in the works.  Yet the TV adaptation has taken some major liberties with Martin's story, virtually ignoring some characters (which the author may intend to later play a more significant role) and at times creating brand new story lines.  I was watching one of season #4's reruns earlier this afternoon and it had Bran Stark and his entourage kidnapped and imprisoned by a character that he never encountered in the book.  And Bran's mother...at a point in the series, they began to ignore her while the book continued to show her as a meaningful part of the story.  But Game of Thrones is just one example of this problem (or least it's my problem): the movie adaptation of The Hobbit goes even further in diverging from Tolkien's book, both by invoking an ultra-somber mood and by injecting completely foreign story lines with subplots to which the author would probably strenuously object were he still alive.  Then, to top it all, the makers of The Hobbit movies decided that they could capitalize on the success of the Lord of the Ring movie trilogy by placing some of its characters in it (and who weren't in the book)...supposedly as a draw for those many Ring fans...

Still, in spite of my criticisms, I do enjoy seeing how the works of Martin and Tolkien have been realized on the screen, especially in regard to the special effects and the generally good acting and direction.  But I am glad that I read the books beforehand, at least the ones that have already come out...

NBA Needs to Relegate Worst Teams to Preserve Game's Integrity

As I look at the current National Basketball Association standings, with teams having only two-to-four games left to play in the 82-game regular season, I see that there are still a few playoff spots open for contention in both the Eastern and Western Conferences.  In the East we have five teams vying for the last three spots and two in the West competing for the last spot there.  Here they are, as they currently stand, with their win-loss records:

EASTERN CONFERENCE

#6 Milwaukee (39-40)
#7 Boston (37-42) (wins tie-breaker)
#8 Brooklyn (37-42)
#9 Indiana (36-43)
#10 Miami (35-44)

WESTERN CONFERENCE

#8 New Orleans (43-36) (wins tie-breaker)
#9 Oklahoma City (43-36)

Each day, whenever these teams are playing, their scores are significant as to who eventually gets into the playoffs and who has to wait for next year.  However, some of the games they are playing are against teams that have failed miserably this year and have a motivation to lose, not win, since having a worse record will gain them better prospects in the upcoming college draft.  But if the NBA employed a system of relegation and promotion the way that most of the international soccer leagues practice it, they could have a second-tier league to which the worst teams would be relegated (i.e., demoted) while the best finishers in that league would be promoted to the NBA for the following season.  That way, those teams at the bottom of the standings would also have very meaningful games ahead of themselves that they would feel pressure to go all out and win.

Suppose that the two teams in the NBA finishing with the worst win-loss records were relegated to the hypothetical "lower" league...in other words, the teams with the 29th and 30th positions for the league as a  whole.  Then, this is how their situation would present itself as the season draws to a close:

#27 Los Angeles Lakers (21-58)
#28 Philadelphia (18-61)
#29 Minnesota (16-63)
#30 New York (15-64)

Last night, the Lakers played Minnesota and beat them in a meaningless game (except for the draft), 106-98.  But if "my" relegation system was in effect, that game would have had major repercussions as winning it freed Los Angeles from the prospect of being demoted while the Timberwolves, on their way to relegation, could have gotten themselves closer to Philadelphia in the standings had they won. I'm getting tired of seeing teams giving up halfway through the season, even benching their star players.  Not only are their fans being ripped off, but the integrity of the sport is being challenged as the level of competition artificially slackens off with certain teams...  

Once Again Reading Ultramarathon Man by Dean Karnazes

One book that I have read, reread...and keep rereading, since 2010, is Ultramarathon Man by Dean Karnazes.  Karnazes, who goes by the nickname "Karno", just turned 52 and, since he was 30, has been running races longer than the traditional 26.2-mile marathon length: hence the term "ultramarathon".  He's even gone as far as running a 199-mile event, and has ranged from marathons in the Death Valley under intense heat to the frigid cold in a run to the South Pole in Antarctica.  However, I have no intention of emulating his extreme running, either regarding the long distance or the climatic conditions.  But I do want to continue running long distance races like the half-marathon, and eventually get myself back in condition for regular marathons.  I'm having my annual medical check-up in a couple of weeks, and if I get the "thumbs up" from my doctor, I plan to work for the next few months to strengthen my body, lose weight, and increase my running endurance...and then see if I can't handle a marathon this upcoming fall or winter...

I think that's why I like reading Ultramarathon Man so much: it has a positive "can do" type of message to it that is infectious and inspiring...

Facebook As I See It

I have to admit that, although I am technically active in Facebook with a few Facebook friends, I'm not very versatile or prolific about the various forms of posting, such as YouTube or linking from other people's posts.  Nor am I very adept at the quick picture-taking-and-posting from my cell phone that I see so often on this site.  No, I confine my Facebook use to either passively looking at others' posts or putting (usually daily) links to my own personal blog (to which this article belongs).  And I enjoy seeing posts with positive, uplifting messages on them!  However, I see, from time to time, some of the users venting on a more personal level about hardships they are going through, usually either about relationships, health, or money.  That used to bother me more than it does now, but social media like Facebook provide a good emergency outlet for people if they feel the need to call out in distress about troubles they are facing in life.  However, it's important to be careful about using this site to verbally attack others (unless they're critiquing public figures like politicians or entertainers...and even then there has to be some self-restraint). Posting in the middle of extreme anger is probably a bad, bad idea...

Facebook has a feature on it that lets the one who posted an entry know who "liked"  the  posting.  This tends to make it more of a social encouragement  and popularity site, in my opinion.  I'd rather they had an option that users could click on that simply stated that they read my blog articles. Whether the reader agrees or disagrees with me about what I wrote is secondary...I'm more interested in the readership, and I always leave plenty of room for comments, which I welcome...although readers are also welcome to maintain anonymity, if that is what they wish.  If you see Facebook as a site to encourage your friends, then as a Facebook friend please encourage me by reading my blog!

This Blog: 8 Years and 2,522 Posts Later

Today marks the eighth anniversary of the beginning of this blog of mine, on which I have tried, with mixed success, to write something at least on a daily basis.  Sports, news, society, personal, politics, history, languages, weather, memories, running, books I've read, television and radio...these have tended to be the general themes of my articles.  And they're all still there, in the archives on the left side of the page...going back to April 8, 2007.  From time to time I look back on some of my writings and discover that I tend to hold to the opinions I had back then...although sometimes they have changed.  And almost always I'll find a ridiculous spelling or grammatical error I had committed, and correct it...

I do this blog as a personal daily discipline to engage my mind in writing, and I think it has been a very constructive experience.  I encourage others to do the same: there's a lot out there to write about! Since last year I have been placing a link to this blog on Facebook and like to hear when folks have read it, although that's not really necessary.  The main thing is that I engage my brain and write something, silly as it might turn out from time to time...

My Take on This Year's Major League Baseball Season

Last Sunday, the 2015 edition of Major League Baseball began its regular season with the supposedly revamped and drastically improved Chicago Cubs once again stumbling and losing to the St. Louis Cardinals.  Oh well, they have 161 more games to try to pick things up!  The main teams I have decided to follow this year are few in number: just the Florida teams: Tampa Bay Rays and Miami Marlins.  The Rays lost their long-time manager Joe Madden to the Chicago Cubs this year and don't seem, by anyone's estimation, to have any bright prospects this year...most likely they'll finish last.  The Marlins, on the other hand, have been greatly hyped in the media as being an upcoming team that could sneak into the playoffs as a wild card entry.  Who knows what will ultimately happen...we have six full months of games before we'll know how they end up.  I just decided to follow these two, for better or worse, because of the simple fact that reruns of their games will usually be televised after I get home from work a little past midnight.

I did watch some so-called baseball experts on of the sports channels, and they seem to think that Washington, St. Louis, and Los Angeles are the teams to beat in the National League, while Seattle, the Chicago White Sox (?), and a resurgent Boston should prevail in the American.  For me, it seems that Baltimore and Toronto are the best in the American League East while Detroit should win the Central.  The AL West should go to the Los Angeles Angels...who gets the wild card spots for the playoffs is something I'm not ready to predict, for either league.  In the National League, I tend to agree with the "experts" about the divisional winners, except perhaps in the West.  There the Dodgers should face stiff competition from defending World Series champion San Francisco and a new-look San Diego.  It should be an interesting season, but I don't think I'm going to spend as much time and effort following it as I did last year...

One-and-Done Rule Unfairly Exploits Players

According to Frank Deford, the University of Kentucky men's basketball team this 2014-15 season had nine ready-to-go NBA prospects on its roster...meaning that, for all practical purposes, we've had a team in "college" basketball that should have been in a class by itself.  The NCAA rule that a player must spend at least one year in college before turning pro not only creates these artificial one-and-done teams like the Wildcats have had during the past few years, but it is grossly unfair to players whose money-earning craft in life lies not in academics, but rather in sports talent and achievement.  How much money has the University of Kentucky, greater Lexington, and the overall "UK Nation" made from these young men, who have spent their "year" working for nothing but a promise...but still subject at any moment during that span to potentially career-destroying injuries?  John Calipari, the Kentucky coach who went all out for the best players as soon as he saw the implications of the new rule, himself has stated that he opposes it, and other coaches like Mike Krzezewski of Duke have begrudgingly recruited, albeit to a lesser extent, these one-year-pro prospects right out of high school who have no intention of sticking around...

Let's face it...amateurism in sports is an antiquated joke, and the butt of it is the young athlete who aspires to fame and wealth through his or her efforts, but has to play this charade of being an "amateur" for a designated period...while the media, gambling industry, sports paraphernalia industry, and the local economy feeds and rakes in the money for themselves.  The professional leagues should follow the example of what baseball has done with their minor league system or how soccer in other countries has an infrastructure of multiple layers of leagues, allowing the aspiring athlete to develop within the sport...and get paid from the start.  As a matter of fact, you can see in many countries, most visibly Mexico, that several top-level professional soccer clubs themselves are affiliated with local colleges...

The bottom line is that, if others are making money from your efforts, following their own economic bottom line, then you should be paid as well.  And a "scholarship" means nothing if everyone knows you will leave college in only a year...

Final Four Just Started, Rooting for Underdogs Tonight

The NCAA Men's Basketball Championship Tournament, now down from 68 teams to 4, will whittle that number further to 2 after this evening's games, first between Michigan State and Duke, and then between Kentucky and Wisconsin.  My overriding wish at this stage is to see Kentucky, "my" Florida Gators' biggest basketball rival, out of it and finished with their hopes for an undefeated season.  So to this end, I want underdog Wisconsin, a team toward which I normally have no opinion, pro or con, to beat them.  As a matter of fact, should the Badgers manage this improbable feat, I'm prepared to make them a favorite team of mine out of sheer gratitude...even for the next few seasons!  But only if they beat the Wildcats.  As for the other game, Michigan State is traditionally a school I support while Duke is one that I don't...so the Spartans, likely to lose this contest, still get my nod.  So I want Wisconsin to face Michigan State for the championship game to be played Monday evening...but in all likelihood it's going to be Kentucky vs. Duke...

Just Finished Reading Pearl S. Buck's The Good Earth

In 1931, writer Pearl S. Buck published The Good Earth, which I just finished reading, a story which explores the lives, beliefs, and traditions of a Chinese farmer and his family, set from the late 19th century and apparently projecting ahead beyond 1931 (which can be a bit historically problematic, as I'll explain later).  You can see in the above map of China, politically divided into its provinces, the story's locale of Anhui province highlighted in red.  And just east and slightly to the north is Jiangsu province, where protagonist Wang Lung, his wife O-Lan and their fledging family once moved to escape a famine in their homeland.  At the southwestern edge of Jiangsu lies Nanjing (back then called "Nanking", which is probably the "big city" described in the novel and takes on the meaning of the numerous references to the way things are "in the south".

The Good Earth reads like an Old Testament narrative, from Genesis, in that the language is simple and unadorned.  It depicts life from the viewpoint of Wang Lung, initially a poor Chinese farmer, as he first sets out to buy a wife (or "slave"...women in his society tend to be referred to as "slaves") from a nearby rich family's estate.  So he ends up with O-Lan, a faithful, industrious, but plain country woman who performs the functions he is primarily concerned with: she works tirelessly and bears him children...although he wants boys to further the family name, not girls, which he (as was the traditional Chinese custom back then) sees as a burden on the family, not an asset.  Buck very clearly sets out in The Good Earth to depict many of what we would now see as backward and unjust attitudes toward women in the context of how ordinary people in that culture saw things without thinking.  Wang Lung, for his part, although enmeshed in his particular culture's traditional views, is also in a sense a universal character in how he seems ashamed of his poverty...but quickly assumes an air of arrogant superiority over others once events turn in his favor and he gains wealth...

How far should I go in this review telling the story?  Well, I'm writing this not for an high school or college English class grade, where the teacher who would be reading this already knows the ending.  Instead, this article is to encourage prospective readers to pick up this good book and explore it for themselves.  So, I'll just leave the ending for those readers to discover and just bring up a couple more points...

Pearl S. Buck achieved great fame and accolades when The Good Earth came out, and she ended up winning a Pulitzer Prize for it.  She followed up on it in the following four years with two more books.  You may want to read up on her interesting life afterwards, as she was active in various causes.  I'm not sure whether I'll read the other two books, but I'm leaning in favor of it...

Another point is that, although based in historical reality, this book chronologically projects itself into a future that never existed: Japan began its brutal invasion of China by starting with Manchuria in 1931.  By 1937 they occupied both Jiangsu and Anhui provinces, the setting of The Good Earth, drastically altered the landscape, and massacred hundreds of thousands of people.  The occupation there lasted until the war ended in 1945...and then there was the Chinese civil war between the Nationalists and Communists until 1949, when the latter ultimately prevailed.  The story line seems, however (and correct me if I'm wrong), to project itself into the future when all this tumult and disaster was happening...without acknowledging any of it.  But of course, how could the author in the early 1930s know of the upheaval that lay in store for China...or for the rest of the world, for that matter...

A Little Wary About New Sufjan Stevens Album

Independent/alternative musical artist Sufjan Stevens, who made his first CD back in 1998, has a new one just released, titled Carrie and Lowell.  It is his first album since Carrie, his mother, died in 2012 and is said to be very introspective and stripped of much of the instrumentation has been typical of his music.  I'm probably going to buy it, even though I was disappointed with his previous two albums All Delighted People and The Age of Adz.  My initial interest in this highly talented and creative artist stems from three albums he made from 2003 to 2006: Greetings from Michigan, Illinoise, and The Avalanche.  I consider each of these to be a masterpiece and was amazed to hear the depth of orchestration he used in the songs.  But on the last two albums, Stevens largely replaced standard musical instruments with electronic bells and whistles, and the sound quality suffered badly as a result. I had wanted him to return to the previous albums with their beautiful instrumental virtuosity, but at least I won't be treated to another arcade-like experience...at least I'm hoping I won't...

Nationalistic Fan Misbehavior at Soccer Matches

During one of those soccer matches between national teams, a horrendous event occurred recently.  Russia was playing on the road at Montenegro (in former Yugoslavia) in one of those interminable world or continental tournaments...this one had something to do with the "national" team European championship (as opposed to the "league" team tournament).  Shortly into the match, someone from the stands fired a flare at the Russian goalkeeper and hit him, burning him.  He was taken off the field, in great pain.  The match was resumed and a little while later, another Russian player was hit with something...and the referee then wisely ended the game. This is another example of why I deplore the national team format in international sports competition: it brings out the worst in people...

Still, that doesn't preclude nationalism from creeping its ugly head even into league contests, despite the fact that league teams, especially those at the top of competitive standards, tend to recruit their players from all over the world. The other day I sat down to watch a Major League Soccer match between the Salt Lake City and Toronto teams, held in the town of Sandy, Utah.   Before the match, as is customary, both Canada's and the United States national anthems were played.  While Canada's was going on, the stadium continued to be very noisy, with the fans seeming to ignore our northern friend's anthem.  But when the Star-Spangled Banner was played, respectful silence, only interrupted by some loud, enthusiastic cheers, took over the stadium.  I found this behavior, albeit obviously not on the same level as hurling flares and objects at the opposing team, to still be highly jingoistic and disrespectful.  Sure, be a true-blue American and honor your own national song, but also as a host show courtesy to the other side as well...