In June, following May's left leg strain, I built back up my total running mileage, finishing the month at 303. I spread out my runs over the course of each day, so I didn't have a "long" run per se. My longest single run was for 4.2 miles. I ran on each day of the month...
The weather where I'm at is horribly hot and muggy...and when the humidity does drop, the temperature goes into the upper 90's...not very conducive to long-distance running. So indoor running has become the norm for me, although I like to get outside on the road for a short run from time to time.
As for races in July, this upcoming weekend features two on July 4th, both starting at 8 AM. In Gainesville, there's the three-mile Melon Run at Westside Park, which I've raced in before. In Branford, a few miles west of Fort White and Ichetucknee Springs on US Highway 27, they are holding the Firecracker 5K/10K. I'm wondering which, if any, of these events I want to run in. If I do decide to participate, I plan to just treat the race as a training run, with my focus on just covering the distance. And this time I'm carrying a bottle of Gatorade with me...in my last 10K race, the organizers didn't provide us with anything but water in that very humid afternoon event...
Tuesday, June 30, 2015
Monday, June 29, 2015
USA Plays Germany in Women's World Cup Semifinals Tomorrow
Tomorrow (Tuesday) will see what I call the "World War II" semifinals in the FIFA Women's World Cup of soccer. Why? Simply because of the pairings: England plays Japan and Germany plays the United States. So, depending on the outcomes of these two matches we'll either have an Axis final (Germany-Japan), an Allies final (England-USA)...or a continuation of the war...
The so-called experts in soccer have Germany ranked #1 and the United States at #2, so it's a little disappointing that there won't be a chance of them facing each other in the final. Still, should defending World Cup Champion Japan win against England, the final should be very entertaining regardless who wins between Germany and the US. The Japanese impressed me greatly during their last game against Australia with their aggressive play, team coordination, and skill with the ball...
Two important scorers on the American team missed the previous contest against China due to yellow card (foul) accumulation in the previous round against Colombia, but they'll be back to face Germany. Germany may well win tomorrow's game, but I believe their "favorites" status is largely due to them running up the score to 10-0 in their group stage match against relatively weak Ivory Coast. I think the Americans will prevail in the end, but then again I'm not going to be out there on the field determining the result...
One striking difference between women's and men's national soccer teams is that the players on the women's teams tend to be amateurs and the men professionals. This is because the professional league system for men has been around much longer and women's pro soccer leagues are simply not yet bringing in the fan and media attention that would sustain a level of income appropriate to a professional career for the players. I bet most of my readers...even many soccer fans...don't know that the U.S. has its own women's league: the National Women's Soccer League, with nine teams and which plays its regular season concurrently with the men's Major League Soccer. I understand that many of the games, although not on regular television, can be viewed on YouTube...
Largely because girl's soccer in America is often promoted in high school athletics as a counterpart to boy's football, on an international level women's soccer in the United States, with its large pool of developing talent, has grown to a higher level of respect than has the men's sport. It would be a shame if the most talented of these athletes were continued to be denied the opportunity to make a decent living from their sport when male soccer players of much lesser stature in their own respective leagues can support themselves with their higher pay...
Tomorrow's games will be shown on FoxSports1 Channel, which in Gainesville is on Cox Cable Channel 62. Unfortunately, I'll be at work during the games and won't be able to watch them...
The so-called experts in soccer have Germany ranked #1 and the United States at #2, so it's a little disappointing that there won't be a chance of them facing each other in the final. Still, should defending World Cup Champion Japan win against England, the final should be very entertaining regardless who wins between Germany and the US. The Japanese impressed me greatly during their last game against Australia with their aggressive play, team coordination, and skill with the ball...
Two important scorers on the American team missed the previous contest against China due to yellow card (foul) accumulation in the previous round against Colombia, but they'll be back to face Germany. Germany may well win tomorrow's game, but I believe their "favorites" status is largely due to them running up the score to 10-0 in their group stage match against relatively weak Ivory Coast. I think the Americans will prevail in the end, but then again I'm not going to be out there on the field determining the result...
One striking difference between women's and men's national soccer teams is that the players on the women's teams tend to be amateurs and the men professionals. This is because the professional league system for men has been around much longer and women's pro soccer leagues are simply not yet bringing in the fan and media attention that would sustain a level of income appropriate to a professional career for the players. I bet most of my readers...even many soccer fans...don't know that the U.S. has its own women's league: the National Women's Soccer League, with nine teams and which plays its regular season concurrently with the men's Major League Soccer. I understand that many of the games, although not on regular television, can be viewed on YouTube...
Largely because girl's soccer in America is often promoted in high school athletics as a counterpart to boy's football, on an international level women's soccer in the United States, with its large pool of developing talent, has grown to a higher level of respect than has the men's sport. It would be a shame if the most talented of these athletes were continued to be denied the opportunity to make a decent living from their sport when male soccer players of much lesser stature in their own respective leagues can support themselves with their higher pay...
Tomorrow's games will be shown on FoxSports1 Channel, which in Gainesville is on Cox Cable Channel 62. Unfortunately, I'll be at work during the games and won't be able to watch them...
Sunday, June 28, 2015
Some 1965-66 Nova Elementary School Memories, Part 3
As I continue on with memories of my fourth grade experiences at Nova Elementary (in Davie, Florida) in 1965-66, I'll present the rest of them anecdotally, in no particular order of chronology or importance...
--My first physical education class at Nova was unforgettable...most likely because it was one of my first classes there with a teacher actually teaching something. My teacher/coach was Mr. Tilton, an amiable jock type who, for some reason known only to himself, decided to take advantage of this groundbreaking event to give the class a clinic on how to punt a football. I took his lesson to heart and am still a pretty damned good punter. Only a couple of things, though...(1) He didn't bother to actually explain the rules of football, which in 1965 I didn't know, and (2) To this day, I have NEVER punted a football in any game on any level...
--One of our first science projects was to take seeds of a plant and grow them under different conditions and observe and record the results. My assigned plant was given the adequate water and soil...only it was kept in darkness, in one of the lab's cabinets...and grew wildly with a sickly pale color...
--In that same lab, led by Mrs. Bethune, I went though the fifth grade textbook and performed experiments. For much of the time I worked with Jill (who, like me, went all the way through the Nova system) as a lab partner. We had lab report sheets we had to fill out for each experiment, with spaces for PURPOSE, MATERIALS, PROCEDURE, OBSERVATIONS, and CONCLUSIONS. At the time, I felt that filling these sheets was tedious, to say the least, but now I realize their value, and not just for science. When you undertake anything, you need to determine why you're doing it, what you need in order to do it, how to do it, what happened when you did it, and what are you going to do with what happened...
--At the beginning of the school day, we would meet in our respective home "bases" where students could order supplies they needed (there was a designated student who would then go down to the "bookstore" down the hallway to get them). One item always in great demand was a box of "gummed reinforcements", those doughnut-shaped stickers we'd lick and then place on papers so that they wouldn't rip out of notebooks. Back then they were necessary because we'd have to poke papers without holes punched into them into binders, and the gummed reinforcements would keep them from ripping apart. But ever since the Nova Elementary School experience, I have never used a gummed reinforcement...
--The five classrooms in our Suite C were connected to each other by movable partitions, a new innovation in schools that would quickly spread throughout the school system and become a standard feature. This way, the teachers could at times hold assemblies just by pulling back the walls. I never could get the knack of closing them...
--Since Nova Blanche Forman Elementary School in 1965-66 was the debut of elementary education into the experimental Nova system (there was already Nova Junior and Senior High School, which my sister Anita attended), from time to time during certain school days we could look out of our classroom windows into the hallway (our school was completely enclosed in one building) and see well-dressed visitors looking in on us, apparently being on tours as part of whatever educational, business, or political groups they were associated with. These visitors always made me feel a bit uneasy, as if I were some kind of zoo animal on exhibit...
--There was musical instruction given this year in Suite C, first for those wanting to learn how to play the recorder, and then, with the acquisition of an electric organ (with headphones) for those wishing to play that instrument. I never did take to either of these, although I loved music and have always had a high degree of manual dexterity...
--In Nova, they were very proud of the innovation they introduced as the "LAP", an acronym for "learning activity package"...in common parlance, you and I would call it a "lesson" or "unit"...always in the form of some papers stapled together and handed out to the students by the teacher. We would get these LAPs, which always seemed to be overly pretentious as to what exactly they were trying to say, and then be expected to just automatically take off on our own initiative in doing them. Although LAPs were a common feature of Nova, I cannot, to this day, remember any of them, in any subject. In my judgment, looking back more objectively on it all, they were designed to replace the teacher as the driving force in our education...in fact, it was uncommon to have classes then where teachers actually stood up in front of the class and taught lessons. In all of my years at Nova, I cannot remember one single time when any teacher ever took it upon his or herself to sit down with me and discuss a LAP. The burden of communication was always on the student, as if we kids automatically knew how to educate ourselves. What folly...
Stay tuned, there are plenty more random memories of this period in my student life to come...
--My first physical education class at Nova was unforgettable...most likely because it was one of my first classes there with a teacher actually teaching something. My teacher/coach was Mr. Tilton, an amiable jock type who, for some reason known only to himself, decided to take advantage of this groundbreaking event to give the class a clinic on how to punt a football. I took his lesson to heart and am still a pretty damned good punter. Only a couple of things, though...(1) He didn't bother to actually explain the rules of football, which in 1965 I didn't know, and (2) To this day, I have NEVER punted a football in any game on any level...
--One of our first science projects was to take seeds of a plant and grow them under different conditions and observe and record the results. My assigned plant was given the adequate water and soil...only it was kept in darkness, in one of the lab's cabinets...and grew wildly with a sickly pale color...
--In that same lab, led by Mrs. Bethune, I went though the fifth grade textbook and performed experiments. For much of the time I worked with Jill (who, like me, went all the way through the Nova system) as a lab partner. We had lab report sheets we had to fill out for each experiment, with spaces for PURPOSE, MATERIALS, PROCEDURE, OBSERVATIONS, and CONCLUSIONS. At the time, I felt that filling these sheets was tedious, to say the least, but now I realize their value, and not just for science. When you undertake anything, you need to determine why you're doing it, what you need in order to do it, how to do it, what happened when you did it, and what are you going to do with what happened...
--At the beginning of the school day, we would meet in our respective home "bases" where students could order supplies they needed (there was a designated student who would then go down to the "bookstore" down the hallway to get them). One item always in great demand was a box of "gummed reinforcements", those doughnut-shaped stickers we'd lick and then place on papers so that they wouldn't rip out of notebooks. Back then they were necessary because we'd have to poke papers without holes punched into them into binders, and the gummed reinforcements would keep them from ripping apart. But ever since the Nova Elementary School experience, I have never used a gummed reinforcement...
--The five classrooms in our Suite C were connected to each other by movable partitions, a new innovation in schools that would quickly spread throughout the school system and become a standard feature. This way, the teachers could at times hold assemblies just by pulling back the walls. I never could get the knack of closing them...
--Since Nova Blanche Forman Elementary School in 1965-66 was the debut of elementary education into the experimental Nova system (there was already Nova Junior and Senior High School, which my sister Anita attended), from time to time during certain school days we could look out of our classroom windows into the hallway (our school was completely enclosed in one building) and see well-dressed visitors looking in on us, apparently being on tours as part of whatever educational, business, or political groups they were associated with. These visitors always made me feel a bit uneasy, as if I were some kind of zoo animal on exhibit...
--There was musical instruction given this year in Suite C, first for those wanting to learn how to play the recorder, and then, with the acquisition of an electric organ (with headphones) for those wishing to play that instrument. I never did take to either of these, although I loved music and have always had a high degree of manual dexterity...
--In Nova, they were very proud of the innovation they introduced as the "LAP", an acronym for "learning activity package"...in common parlance, you and I would call it a "lesson" or "unit"...always in the form of some papers stapled together and handed out to the students by the teacher. We would get these LAPs, which always seemed to be overly pretentious as to what exactly they were trying to say, and then be expected to just automatically take off on our own initiative in doing them. Although LAPs were a common feature of Nova, I cannot, to this day, remember any of them, in any subject. In my judgment, looking back more objectively on it all, they were designed to replace the teacher as the driving force in our education...in fact, it was uncommon to have classes then where teachers actually stood up in front of the class and taught lessons. In all of my years at Nova, I cannot remember one single time when any teacher ever took it upon his or herself to sit down with me and discuss a LAP. The burden of communication was always on the student, as if we kids automatically knew how to educate ourselves. What folly...
Stay tuned, there are plenty more random memories of this period in my student life to come...
Saturday, June 27, 2015
Just Finished Reading Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere
The novel Neverwhere, by Neil Gaiman, is a fantasy exercise into an alternate reality secretly coexisting with the conventional real world. In this it bears a slight resemblance to the world of Harry Potter in that those on the "other side"...in Gaiman's case those dwellers of "London Below"...are aware of the conventional inhabitants (or "muggles", with Potter), but the reverse isn't necessarily true. The protagonist, a young man named Richard Mayhew, painfully discovers this. He has moved to London and has a budding, successful career underway as a financial trader. He is also newly engaged to Jessica, who besides being beautiful is a bit on the controlling side. One day, they are walking down the street and they come across a teenage girl lying and bleeding. Richard stops to care for her and Jessica leaves in an angry huff, hardly thinking about the girl and her plight. This insensitivity on her part is later explained by the fact that those living "above" are incapable of holding on to thoughts or memories about those dwelling "below"...and the injured girl, named Door (appropriately named, for she has a special knack for opening them), is one of the latter. But Richard, by taking her in and caring for her, has himself inadvertently slipped through into London Below and cannot return to his former life...no one remembers or recognizes him anymore. Returning to London Below, he becomes further drawn into the drama as Door flees from two sadistic hired murderers, Croup and Vandemar, and helps her try to discover who hired them to kill her family. He meets up with what I call a "wild card" character in the Marquis de Carabas, a scoundrel who nevertheless seems to be fighting on the side of Door. But is he really?
Neverwhere, besides creating an enchanting imaginary world of a complete, hidden society underneath London proper, examines the ideas of loyalty and betrayal...and how, on the one hand it is so easy to rationalize one's betrayal of another...and on the other hand, betrayal sometimes seems to be impossible to avoid, even with the best of intentions. The character of Richard Mayhew reminded me a bit of another fantasy fiction hero, Bilbo Baggins of The Hobbit. Like Bilbo, Richard is rather ordinary and believable, with his compassion for those who are suffering being a strong trait of his...
As is usually the case when I write about books I've read, I'll leave what happens to Richard, Door, the Marquis, and those two awfully bad dudes to you, the reader, should you decide on take on this book. This story is a maze of plot twists and turns...just when you think that things are improving, you discover that they're getting worse instead (and vice versa)...it can almost get to be a little dizzying. But that's a positive feature of Neverwhere, as I see it...which, among its other qualities, is why I recommend Neil Gaiman's book, which I recently discovered was also adapted as a BBC-TV series in the late 1990s...
Neverwhere, besides creating an enchanting imaginary world of a complete, hidden society underneath London proper, examines the ideas of loyalty and betrayal...and how, on the one hand it is so easy to rationalize one's betrayal of another...and on the other hand, betrayal sometimes seems to be impossible to avoid, even with the best of intentions. The character of Richard Mayhew reminded me a bit of another fantasy fiction hero, Bilbo Baggins of The Hobbit. Like Bilbo, Richard is rather ordinary and believable, with his compassion for those who are suffering being a strong trait of his...
As is usually the case when I write about books I've read, I'll leave what happens to Richard, Door, the Marquis, and those two awfully bad dudes to you, the reader, should you decide on take on this book. This story is a maze of plot twists and turns...just when you think that things are improving, you discover that they're getting worse instead (and vice versa)...it can almost get to be a little dizzying. But that's a positive feature of Neverwhere, as I see it...which, among its other qualities, is why I recommend Neil Gaiman's book, which I recently discovered was also adapted as a BBC-TV series in the late 1990s...
Friday, June 26, 2015
Soccer: Women's FIFA World Cup Quarterfinals Start Today
The 2015 FIFA Women's World Cup in soccer is continuing today and tomorrow, with eight national teams playing in the quarterfinal stage. The pairings are remarkable, when you look at them: superpower rivals USA and China play this evening while the afternoon game is between traditional European rivals France and tournament favorite Germany. Tomorrow has Pacific foes Japan, the defending champion from 2011, playing Australia while the two other British Commonwealth national teams have their own private game: England vs. host nation Canada. I wonder whether these games were deliberately set up this way, or did they just randomly fall into place...no matter, we're in for some great games! Unfortunately, I'll miss today's contests since I have to go to work...but tomorrow I should be able to see the other two.
There was another World Cup soccer tournament going on, too, this one being the U-20 (under 20) Men's World Cup. FoxSports had been showing games in the earlier group stages and tournament rounds, but I didn't see any final match shown...maybe they did show the championship game and I was at work when it happened...but all the same I'm disappointed that I didn't get to see Brazil play Serbia for the title, which the latter won 2-1...
There's also a concurrent national teams tournament focusing on the Western Hemisphere, but I haven't been able to follow it as well as I might have liked...let's face it, I like league play more and the only league around right now is North America's Major League Soccer. As for all the tournaments involving national teams, as I've said before, I tend to be a bit turned off by the overly nationalistic attitudes taken by the fans, media, and even the players...
There was another World Cup soccer tournament going on, too, this one being the U-20 (under 20) Men's World Cup. FoxSports had been showing games in the earlier group stages and tournament rounds, but I didn't see any final match shown...maybe they did show the championship game and I was at work when it happened...but all the same I'm disappointed that I didn't get to see Brazil play Serbia for the title, which the latter won 2-1...
There's also a concurrent national teams tournament focusing on the Western Hemisphere, but I haven't been able to follow it as well as I might have liked...let's face it, I like league play more and the only league around right now is North America's Major League Soccer. As for all the tournaments involving national teams, as I've said before, I tend to be a bit turned off by the overly nationalistic attitudes taken by the fans, media, and even the players...
Thursday, June 25, 2015
U.S. Supreme Court Rules for Obamacare 6-3
The United States Supreme Court has just upheld an important provision of the Affordable Care Act (aka "Obamacare") by a 6-3 vote, with conservative judges John Roberts and Anthony Kennedy siding against the Republican-backed plaintiff and in favor of the Obama administration. The provision involved whether federal subsidies of health insurance exchanges are constitutional in states where no state exchanges were authorized. Supposedly, had the Court ruled the other way, the ACA would have been severerly hurt. In any event, I have felt that those who fought to pass it into law back in 2009-10 had the generally correct idea, but they left out a crucially important principal involving health care, insurance, and expense...
To my admittedly possibly simplistic way of viewing things, health care can either be regarded as an economic good, which then would obey the laws of scarcity and demand, or as a type of human right to which all in society are entitled. If you believe in the first option, then you most likely would be against Obamacare as it aims to insure those previously unable to afford health insurance and diminish that concept of economic "scarcity". But if you are like me and want everyone to have access to health care, then the entire concept of "insurance" becomes redundant, since therefore there would be no need to demographically separate people based on their medical history or ability to pay. Besides, having the health insurance industry positioned between the people and their desired professional health care just adds a great burden of expense to the whole process. If you are employed in the health insurance business or are dependent on someone who is, I'm sorry about all this...but the fact that you're making a living off of it tends to prove my point. In any case, the Affordable Care Act, in my opinion, just kicks the can down the road regarding the burden that health insurance places on people. Also, who says that businesses should be saddled with the burden of providing health benefits to its employees? In my opinion, if we as a society believe in universal health care, then we should fund it through taxes and congressional budgeting in just the same way that we fund our national defense or road systems. But the word "tax" has, for many years, been relegated to taboo status, politically speaking...so we're left with this halfway measure called the Affordable Care Act that does a lot of mandating of insurance but does little to guarantee that it will be affordable or that it will lead to quality health care. Although countries like Canada that have nationalized health care are often termed as practicing "socialized medicine", in truth they have freed their own (capitalist) businesses from the cost of providing health insurance and thus have given them a competitive advantage over our own companies. And the prospect of people not being economically devastated by illness or injury means that they can participate more actively in their economy as consumers, further stimulating the economy, or put the money to use with investments...
In spite of my own view on the subject, I'm realistic enough to recognize that it is politically unfeasible to reform health care on a national level that would restore the patient-doctor relationship without middleman interference or prevent catastrophic health issues from financially destroying families. Neither the current law nor the system preceding it adequately address these issues, sad to say...
To my admittedly possibly simplistic way of viewing things, health care can either be regarded as an economic good, which then would obey the laws of scarcity and demand, or as a type of human right to which all in society are entitled. If you believe in the first option, then you most likely would be against Obamacare as it aims to insure those previously unable to afford health insurance and diminish that concept of economic "scarcity". But if you are like me and want everyone to have access to health care, then the entire concept of "insurance" becomes redundant, since therefore there would be no need to demographically separate people based on their medical history or ability to pay. Besides, having the health insurance industry positioned between the people and their desired professional health care just adds a great burden of expense to the whole process. If you are employed in the health insurance business or are dependent on someone who is, I'm sorry about all this...but the fact that you're making a living off of it tends to prove my point. In any case, the Affordable Care Act, in my opinion, just kicks the can down the road regarding the burden that health insurance places on people. Also, who says that businesses should be saddled with the burden of providing health benefits to its employees? In my opinion, if we as a society believe in universal health care, then we should fund it through taxes and congressional budgeting in just the same way that we fund our national defense or road systems. But the word "tax" has, for many years, been relegated to taboo status, politically speaking...so we're left with this halfway measure called the Affordable Care Act that does a lot of mandating of insurance but does little to guarantee that it will be affordable or that it will lead to quality health care. Although countries like Canada that have nationalized health care are often termed as practicing "socialized medicine", in truth they have freed their own (capitalist) businesses from the cost of providing health insurance and thus have given them a competitive advantage over our own companies. And the prospect of people not being economically devastated by illness or injury means that they can participate more actively in their economy as consumers, further stimulating the economy, or put the money to use with investments...
In spite of my own view on the subject, I'm realistic enough to recognize that it is politically unfeasible to reform health care on a national level that would restore the patient-doctor relationship without middleman interference or prevent catastrophic health issues from financially destroying families. Neither the current law nor the system preceding it adequately address these issues, sad to say...
Wednesday, June 24, 2015
Just Finished Reading Jules Verne's The Mysterious Island
Published in 1874, The Mysterious Island, by Jules Verne, fulfills the qualifications for what constitutes true science fiction perhaps better than any story in that genre that I've read. It obviously is fiction, no doubt about that. But there is so much science (and engineering) in it that I would recommend this book for a general middle school science class. Unfortunately, the often excessively detailed attention that the author devotes to explaining how different things were devised and constructed slowed down my reading to the point where it took me much longer than I had expected to complete this 500-page novel. That having been noted, I still thought it was a good tale...
The setting for the opening of The Mysterious Island is the besieged Confederate capital city of Richmond, Virginia in February of 1865, just two months before the end of the U.S. Civil War and the ensuing assassination of President Lincoln. Engineer and Union Army Captain Cyrus Harding is a prisoner of war there, but is allowed to freely roam through Richmond without being allowed to leave. He is joined by his servant Neb, a freed slave who has been employed by Harding as a servant on his Massachusetts farm for much of his life. They meet up with a New York reporter named Gileon Spilen, a sailor named Pencroft, and a young teen-age boy accompanying Pencroft named Herbert. Pencroft points out to Harding that the Confederates had constructed a large hot-air balloon to break the siege and were planning soon to use it. Instead, with the aid of a fortuitous strong storm, the five of them sneak aboard the craft and take off. The storm, much stronger than they had expected, puts them on a perilous flight for thousands of miles into the open South Pacific Ocean. There, with some adventure, they manage to land on an uncharted island and, using their individual talents, create shelter, agriculture, and industry using the raw materials available. But there is a mystery here on Lincoln Island, as they named it. Some anonymous person or force, at different times of crisis, keeps intervening to save them...just enough so that they cannot trace the source of their benefactor. Without wanting to give away the assorted adventures that our "heroes" encounter throughout the book, let me just say that the mystery does get eventually resolved...and it points to a hilarious time contradiction that Verne must have known about but still allowed to stand...
It isn't apparent for most of The Mysterious Island, but this novel is indirectly related to an earlier Jules Verne work...the name of which I'll let you, the adventuresome reader, to discover for yourself. The problem with time here is that both novels are set in the same time period, yet The Mysterious Island is supposed to take place many years after the conclusion of that earlier novel! I think that the author had wanted to tie in two different historical events: the Indian Mutiny of 1857 and the end of the Civil War in 1865...and couldn't integrate the two dates without creating a troublesome overlap. Oh well, that's the author's prerogative...I'll just roll with it (but it's still funny)...
With most stories I read, the characters have all sorts of conflicts with each other...this is usually one of the desired effects that the authors are trying to produce. Not with The Mysterious Island, though. The "five", although truly distinct individuals with their own personalities and bents, all continually work together with a common spirit, camaraderie, and commitment . I was very impressed with their high level of cooperation...maybe The Mysterious Island should be taught in social studies classes, too!
The setting for the opening of The Mysterious Island is the besieged Confederate capital city of Richmond, Virginia in February of 1865, just two months before the end of the U.S. Civil War and the ensuing assassination of President Lincoln. Engineer and Union Army Captain Cyrus Harding is a prisoner of war there, but is allowed to freely roam through Richmond without being allowed to leave. He is joined by his servant Neb, a freed slave who has been employed by Harding as a servant on his Massachusetts farm for much of his life. They meet up with a New York reporter named Gileon Spilen, a sailor named Pencroft, and a young teen-age boy accompanying Pencroft named Herbert. Pencroft points out to Harding that the Confederates had constructed a large hot-air balloon to break the siege and were planning soon to use it. Instead, with the aid of a fortuitous strong storm, the five of them sneak aboard the craft and take off. The storm, much stronger than they had expected, puts them on a perilous flight for thousands of miles into the open South Pacific Ocean. There, with some adventure, they manage to land on an uncharted island and, using their individual talents, create shelter, agriculture, and industry using the raw materials available. But there is a mystery here on Lincoln Island, as they named it. Some anonymous person or force, at different times of crisis, keeps intervening to save them...just enough so that they cannot trace the source of their benefactor. Without wanting to give away the assorted adventures that our "heroes" encounter throughout the book, let me just say that the mystery does get eventually resolved...and it points to a hilarious time contradiction that Verne must have known about but still allowed to stand...
It isn't apparent for most of The Mysterious Island, but this novel is indirectly related to an earlier Jules Verne work...the name of which I'll let you, the adventuresome reader, to discover for yourself. The problem with time here is that both novels are set in the same time period, yet The Mysterious Island is supposed to take place many years after the conclusion of that earlier novel! I think that the author had wanted to tie in two different historical events: the Indian Mutiny of 1857 and the end of the Civil War in 1865...and couldn't integrate the two dates without creating a troublesome overlap. Oh well, that's the author's prerogative...I'll just roll with it (but it's still funny)...
With most stories I read, the characters have all sorts of conflicts with each other...this is usually one of the desired effects that the authors are trying to produce. Not with The Mysterious Island, though. The "five", although truly distinct individuals with their own personalities and bents, all continually work together with a common spirit, camaraderie, and commitment . I was very impressed with their high level of cooperation...maybe The Mysterious Island should be taught in social studies classes, too!
Tuesday, June 23, 2015
Major League Baseball: Following Florida and West Coast Teams
Although they've just lost a couple of games in a row, baseball's American League East Division-leading Tampa Bay Rays have come a long way from last year. Currently, they are 40-32, while after 66 games in 2014 they were a dismal 24-42. With proven success Joe Madden leaving the team after last season to manage the Chicago Cubs (which he has predictably turned around into a contender), many weren't giving the Rays much of a chance this year, especially in such a competitive division. But Kevin Cash has stepped in and done a great job so far. Still, the East has four of the five teams bunched up close together at the top, while even cellar-dwelling Boston could well be a factor in the second half of the season should they put things together...
The same good news cannot be said for the Miami Marlins in the National League East, currently mired in fourth place at 30-41. The good news is that this team is in the same situation as the aforementioned Red Sox, i.e. should they catch fire and go on some winning streaks in the second half of the season they might be able to contend for a playoff spot at the end. Still, when I consider some of their additions this year, like Dee Gordon, Michael Morse, and Ichiro Suzuki, along with the productivity of slugger Giancarlo Stanton, I'm more then a little dismayed by this team's failures so far...they should be at the top of the standings with the Nationals and Mets...
Although I tend to follow the two Florida teams in baseball, my work schedule, which has me getting home a little before 12:30 AM, has given me the opportunity to watch the conclusions of games played out west...so I'm becoming more familiar with Seattle, both Los Angeles teams, Arizona, San Francisco, San Diego, and Oakland...and I tend to root for the Mariners (who aren't playing up to expectations so far) and the Giants (who are matching, if not exceeding expectations)...
The same good news cannot be said for the Miami Marlins in the National League East, currently mired in fourth place at 30-41. The good news is that this team is in the same situation as the aforementioned Red Sox, i.e. should they catch fire and go on some winning streaks in the second half of the season they might be able to contend for a playoff spot at the end. Still, when I consider some of their additions this year, like Dee Gordon, Michael Morse, and Ichiro Suzuki, along with the productivity of slugger Giancarlo Stanton, I'm more then a little dismayed by this team's failures so far...they should be at the top of the standings with the Nationals and Mets...
Although I tend to follow the two Florida teams in baseball, my work schedule, which has me getting home a little before 12:30 AM, has given me the opportunity to watch the conclusions of games played out west...so I'm becoming more familiar with Seattle, both Los Angeles teams, Arizona, San Francisco, San Diego, and Oakland...and I tend to root for the Mariners (who aren't playing up to expectations so far) and the Giants (who are matching, if not exceeding expectations)...
Monday, June 22, 2015
Some 1965-66 Nova Elementary Memories, Part 2
This is a continuation of the article I wrote on June 13...
There were a lot of different things going on at Nova Blanche Forman Elementary School (in Davie, Florida) during the 1965-66 school year, when I was in the Fourth Grade, assigned to its "Suite C". But there were also events taking place in the news as well. The War in Vietnam was escalating throughout this time as more and more troops were sent over there, out into the jungles and enemy-occupied lands to basically "draw fire" and locate them for aerial attacks. This cynical strategy of my country's military planners to sacrifice the precious lives of our young soldiers (many of them draftees, not volunteers) as bait wasn't to be revealed for decades. Instead there was a great patriotic fervor about how brave the soldiers were and they were out there preserving our freedoms back home. In my school, we would often have assemblies within our classrooms when we would do nothing but sing American fight songs and anthems. Mr. Johnston (the Room 11 teacher) and the librarian (whose name I have forgotten) held a mini-course about American patriotism, complete with a nifty textbook. We would meet in small groups in one of the library's conference rooms and discuss topics like patriotism...and, of course, being willing to lay down one's own life in a war like Vietnam. I remember the librarian mentioning that her own son was over there...which in retrospect was probably why Johnston had enlisted her help in teaching this course. I believe it was at that time that I mentally began to calculate the number of years before I would be old enough to have to go over there and dutifully sacrifice my own life...not something very appropriate for a nine-year old to have to be considering. Anyway, Mr. Johnston, who must have been a soldier of sorts in his own youth, possessed a sizable collection of military insignia and mementos, which he displayed in his home room. One day, though, someone must have stolen some of his items, for the entire Suite C was told to sit there quietly in their rooms for upwards to an hour while the teachers went around haranguing everyone about the theft and that the thief was making everyone else suffer for their misdeed. How "professional" of my teachers to do that to us...
Aside from Vietnam, during my Fourth Grade at Nova they would send up the orbital Gemini space flights, which preceded the Apollo Moon missions and were designed to prepare the astronauts for space walks and docking and releasing the modules in space. Whenever such a flight was going on during the school day, I remember the TV being on, with endless coverage of the event, complete with tedious, unchanging "simulations" interspersed with Tang commercials...
More on my 1965-66 Nova Elementary School memories to come...
There were a lot of different things going on at Nova Blanche Forman Elementary School (in Davie, Florida) during the 1965-66 school year, when I was in the Fourth Grade, assigned to its "Suite C". But there were also events taking place in the news as well. The War in Vietnam was escalating throughout this time as more and more troops were sent over there, out into the jungles and enemy-occupied lands to basically "draw fire" and locate them for aerial attacks. This cynical strategy of my country's military planners to sacrifice the precious lives of our young soldiers (many of them draftees, not volunteers) as bait wasn't to be revealed for decades. Instead there was a great patriotic fervor about how brave the soldiers were and they were out there preserving our freedoms back home. In my school, we would often have assemblies within our classrooms when we would do nothing but sing American fight songs and anthems. Mr. Johnston (the Room 11 teacher) and the librarian (whose name I have forgotten) held a mini-course about American patriotism, complete with a nifty textbook. We would meet in small groups in one of the library's conference rooms and discuss topics like patriotism...and, of course, being willing to lay down one's own life in a war like Vietnam. I remember the librarian mentioning that her own son was over there...which in retrospect was probably why Johnston had enlisted her help in teaching this course. I believe it was at that time that I mentally began to calculate the number of years before I would be old enough to have to go over there and dutifully sacrifice my own life...not something very appropriate for a nine-year old to have to be considering. Anyway, Mr. Johnston, who must have been a soldier of sorts in his own youth, possessed a sizable collection of military insignia and mementos, which he displayed in his home room. One day, though, someone must have stolen some of his items, for the entire Suite C was told to sit there quietly in their rooms for upwards to an hour while the teachers went around haranguing everyone about the theft and that the thief was making everyone else suffer for their misdeed. How "professional" of my teachers to do that to us...
Aside from Vietnam, during my Fourth Grade at Nova they would send up the orbital Gemini space flights, which preceded the Apollo Moon missions and were designed to prepare the astronauts for space walks and docking and releasing the modules in space. Whenever such a flight was going on during the school day, I remember the TV being on, with endless coverage of the event, complete with tedious, unchanging "simulations" interspersed with Tang commercials...
More on my 1965-66 Nova Elementary School memories to come...
Sunday, June 21, 2015
Just Finished Reading Voltaire's Candide
French philosopher Voltaire wrote in 1759, during the Enlightenment and before the French Revolution, the satirical short novel Candide...which is also the name of its protagonist, a young man who plays the common literary/cinematic role of the "noble innocent" (like Prince Myshkin in Dostoevsky's The Idiot, or, in our own era, Forrest Gump). Candide is a German from Westphalia, placed in a castle and then thrown out of it by the distantly related Baron when he becomes infatuated with his daughter, the beautiful Cunegonde, and is caught kissing her. The eviction leads Candide to join the Bulgar army, after which he discovers that the same army has ravaged the land around his former home and butchered the very people he lived with...including Cunegonde herself and his teacher, an unreasonably optimistic fellow named Pangloss, who sees everything that occurs, no matter how negative on the surface, as "all being for the best". Subsequently, Candide finds himself travelling from one land to another...to Portugal, then Argentina, then Paraguay, then Suriname, back to Europe in the Netherlands and off the coast of England, then in Venice...finally culminating in the Turkish Ottoman Empire. Early during these journeys he discovers that Cunegonde has survived the earlier attack. While in South America, he and his servant Cacambo accidentally discover the hidden realm of El Dorado, whose inhabitants amaze him with their wisdom, grace, and untold riches...reminding me a bit of the horse-like Houyhnhnms in Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels. Along the journeys, Pangloss has resurfaced alive, only to be hung as a heretic by the Inquisition in Portugal following a severe earthquake...and then resurfacing alive later. While in South America, Candide encounters the pessimistic counterpart to Pangloss in Martin, a man of Manichaean belief whose cynical views continually contradict the unwarranted optimism that Candide has learned to exhibit from Pangloss.
Much of Candide's travels are motivated by his search for his love Cunegonde, with whom he had been reunited for a little while but had been again separated from when a powerful Buenos Aires nobleman decided to take her as his mistress. Will they ever see each other again? Well, you can read Candide for yourself to find out, if you're interested. To be perfectly honest, though, I began to lose interest in what happened to the novel's various characters when I realized what Voltaire was trying to do here, which I believe is twofold...
First, Candide is a concentrated piece of satire, heavily dripping with sarcasm directed at the society of his time. Voltaire rips apart the notion of war being fought by "international rules" while innocent people are being tortured and killed and their land and possessions either destroyed or stolen. The idea that nobility is an absolute quality that someone can possess is also ridiculed (Cunegonde's noble line counts back to 72 generations, just a little too many for Candide to "qualify" as a husband). And the various nations of the time, not to mention religious institutions, receive their share of abuse at the author's pen.
Aside from satire, though, Voltaire has an important, serious philosophical point to make with Candide. The various characters go through the story looking for the key to happiness and freedom from suffering...and only at the end, through a happenstance encounter with a modest Turkish farmer, does Candide realize the "magic formula": work at cultivating your own garden and be devoted to it. As the farmer put it, by focusing on purposeful, hard work you will be engaged and not in danger of falling to the three great evils of boredom, vice, and poverty. Cultivate your own garden...this is an "internal" approach for one to take instead of "externally" seeking out the answers from wealth, adventure, pleasure, politics, religion, or any other "solution" the world has to offer. I think that's pretty profound, if I might say so...
Much of Candide's travels are motivated by his search for his love Cunegonde, with whom he had been reunited for a little while but had been again separated from when a powerful Buenos Aires nobleman decided to take her as his mistress. Will they ever see each other again? Well, you can read Candide for yourself to find out, if you're interested. To be perfectly honest, though, I began to lose interest in what happened to the novel's various characters when I realized what Voltaire was trying to do here, which I believe is twofold...
First, Candide is a concentrated piece of satire, heavily dripping with sarcasm directed at the society of his time. Voltaire rips apart the notion of war being fought by "international rules" while innocent people are being tortured and killed and their land and possessions either destroyed or stolen. The idea that nobility is an absolute quality that someone can possess is also ridiculed (Cunegonde's noble line counts back to 72 generations, just a little too many for Candide to "qualify" as a husband). And the various nations of the time, not to mention religious institutions, receive their share of abuse at the author's pen.
Aside from satire, though, Voltaire has an important, serious philosophical point to make with Candide. The various characters go through the story looking for the key to happiness and freedom from suffering...and only at the end, through a happenstance encounter with a modest Turkish farmer, does Candide realize the "magic formula": work at cultivating your own garden and be devoted to it. As the farmer put it, by focusing on purposeful, hard work you will be engaged and not in danger of falling to the three great evils of boredom, vice, and poverty. Cultivate your own garden...this is an "internal" approach for one to take instead of "externally" seeking out the answers from wealth, adventure, pleasure, politics, religion, or any other "solution" the world has to offer. I think that's pretty profound, if I might say so...
Saturday, June 20, 2015
Record Heat and Ichetucknee Springs Logjam
The temperatures in north-central Florida, where I live, are off the charts and have been almost unbearable for about a week. Today the forecast high, as I viewed it on my television screen, was to be a "near-record" 95 degrees. I looked at this prediction at the same time they were showing the current temperature: 98! Just stepping out of the door is like stepping into a furnace, it is so hot. This morning, Melissa and I drove out past Fort White (a few miles northwest of Gainesville) to Ichetucknee Springs, where on the Ichetucknee River, largely shaded, visitors traditionally ride tubes down the slow current. We were going, however, to attend some river baptisms that our church was holding there. As we drove through Fort White on our way to the park, we passed, on the right side of the road, business after business renting out the huge inner tubes used at Ichetucknee...and the visiting vehicles were being loaded up. But when we got to the park's entrance, there was a backup of 70+ vehicles. As it turned out, Ichetucknee Springs was packed to the hilt and each car had to wait for one to leave in order to enter...an excruciatingly slow process. Seeing the pointlessness of hanging around, I turned the car around and headed back. On the way, we passed into High Springs and I stopped at a place, alternately called "The Corner" and "The Talented Cookie" which serves coffee, tea, desserts, sells some antiques, and rents out boating and water sports equipment. Melissa and I enjoyed our respective tea and coffee along with our sweets. A nice place to stop by, if you happen to be going in that direction (it's on the left side of US-27 going northwest, just before the US-41 intersection). Afterward, we continued on home. I felt sorry for all those people who had gone to all the trouble to rent out those tubes and had expected to soon be enjoying themselves in that river...only to be hopelessly in an endless line just to get into the park to find a parking space. Some other time, though, I'd like to go there with Melissa and tube down the river...but not on a weekend, especially one when there are baptisms taking place...
In spite of the weather, I had an impulsive urge this afternoon to spring into action and mow the front yard, which was beginning to look like a wheat field. That being done, I washed up and am now at my favorite Starbucks (at least as I write this) working on iced coffee and iced water...I think a refill is in order. The main thing, though, is that I'm on the air-conditioned side of the window!
Friday, June 19, 2015
Just Finished Reading Madeleine L'Engle's A Wind in the Door
A Wind in the Door, by Madeleine L'Engle, and which I just finished reading a few days ago, is the second book in her TIme Quintet science fiction series aimed at young adults and teens. Like its predecessor, A Wrinkle in Time, the Murray children of Meg and Charles Wallace, along with their friend Calvin O'Keefe, are involved in another adventure to save the world from evil forces threatening it. But unlike the first book in this series, the focus here is on microbiology, with the Murray kids' mother, a microbiologist, being the science expert instead of their father, a physicist and whose adventures were featured in the previous story, which involved planet-hopping through a device called the "tesseract".
The crisis in A Wind in the Door focuses on the human mitochondria, found in each cell and which are indispensable to life. A disease that infects them has spread among the population, and young Charles Wallace catches it, his life in peril. In the meantime, Meg has discovered that her hated former school principal, Mr. Jenkins, has tripled in number, all three identical on the surface. But two of the Mr. Jenkins are Echthroi, which go about destroying things by "un-naming" and emptying them (also called "X"-ing). Meg is tasked with the problem of naming which of the three is the real Mr. Jenkins, and she discovers that love for this thoroughly unlikable person is the key in accomplishing this. Then, with the help of a dragon-like cherubim, the real Mr. Jenkins, and a visiting human-like Mr. Blajeny to teach them, Meg and Calvin (along with the cherubim and Jenkins) shrink way down in scale, recalling to me the movie Fantastic Voyage (but much, much smaller), and enter the mitochondria of Charles Wallace to determine what is causing the sickness. There they encounter a rebellion of young "farandolae" (one of them, named "Sporos", is also a pupil of Blajeny), which according to the author's imagination are in symbiosis with the mitochondria and are needed for their healthy function. And who is stirring up the trouble among these mouse-like creatures? None other than those troublesome Echthroi...and it's up to Meg to quell the rebellion, defeat the Echthroi, and save the life of her little brother...
There's a lot of science in A Wind in the Door...much of it speculative. I can see how Madeleine L'Engle's stories can spur young readers to take a greater interest in areas like biology, physics, and astronomy. But the main emphasis is more about ethics and philosophy...and how love is the driving force in life and creation...
The crisis in A Wind in the Door focuses on the human mitochondria, found in each cell and which are indispensable to life. A disease that infects them has spread among the population, and young Charles Wallace catches it, his life in peril. In the meantime, Meg has discovered that her hated former school principal, Mr. Jenkins, has tripled in number, all three identical on the surface. But two of the Mr. Jenkins are Echthroi, which go about destroying things by "un-naming" and emptying them (also called "X"-ing). Meg is tasked with the problem of naming which of the three is the real Mr. Jenkins, and she discovers that love for this thoroughly unlikable person is the key in accomplishing this. Then, with the help of a dragon-like cherubim, the real Mr. Jenkins, and a visiting human-like Mr. Blajeny to teach them, Meg and Calvin (along with the cherubim and Jenkins) shrink way down in scale, recalling to me the movie Fantastic Voyage (but much, much smaller), and enter the mitochondria of Charles Wallace to determine what is causing the sickness. There they encounter a rebellion of young "farandolae" (one of them, named "Sporos", is also a pupil of Blajeny), which according to the author's imagination are in symbiosis with the mitochondria and are needed for their healthy function. And who is stirring up the trouble among these mouse-like creatures? None other than those troublesome Echthroi...and it's up to Meg to quell the rebellion, defeat the Echthroi, and save the life of her little brother...
There's a lot of science in A Wind in the Door...much of it speculative. I can see how Madeleine L'Engle's stories can spur young readers to take a greater interest in areas like biology, physics, and astronomy. But the main emphasis is more about ethics and philosophy...and how love is the driving force in life and creation...
Thursday, June 18, 2015
FIFA Women's World Cup in Soccer Finishes Group Stage
The 2015 FIFA Women's World Cup in soccer yesterday completed its group stage of play, with two exciting games within Group E determining the final lineup, heading into the "knockout" round of sixteen. Originally, I had erroneously reported that each team within a group played the others twice...but, alas, there are only three total games in group stage. That's good, though, for the United States, which had been for some reason thrown into a group with two 2011 group qualifiers, Australia and Sweden (and the latter had made it all the way to the semifinals) and had managed to be first in that group after playing everyone once. By contrast, Canada, which is hosting the World Cup this year, had no opponents within their group that had advanced last time, giving them an easier run at it. The field of teams in 2015 was increased from 16 to 24, and instead of eight coming out of the group stage into the quarterfinal round, this year we have 16 qualifying for the new knockout round, which will be played in various locations across Canada June 20-22. All eight teams making it out of group stage in 2011 are still in the running (defending champion Japan, runner-up USA, Sweden, France, Germany, England, Brazil, and Australia). Canada plays against Switzerland on June 21st, while the United States plays against Colombia, a powerhouse in men's international soccer but a fledgling team in the women's sport, on the 22nd. The tournament will proceed until the final championship game, which will take place on July 5th.
I'm finding the level of play within women's international soccer to be very high, and the games carry a lot of excitement with them. One thing I noticed, which maybe some of my readers have also, is that there is an enormous amount of yelling back and forth between the players. Then again, I experience the same phenomenon when watching other women's sports like basketball, lacrosse, volleyball, and softball. I'm sure that the men playing these sports also yell from time to time, but not anywhere to the same extent that the women do. I wonder what this discrepancy between the genders means. Any ideas?
I'm finding the level of play within women's international soccer to be very high, and the games carry a lot of excitement with them. One thing I noticed, which maybe some of my readers have also, is that there is an enormous amount of yelling back and forth between the players. Then again, I experience the same phenomenon when watching other women's sports like basketball, lacrosse, volleyball, and softball. I'm sure that the men playing these sports also yell from time to time, but not anywhere to the same extent that the women do. I wonder what this discrepancy between the genders means. Any ideas?
Wednesday, June 17, 2015
My Favorite Songs of 2015 So Far
The first half of 2015, as far as my own personal musical preferences are concerned, has been dominated by two sources: alternative indie/rock music on two different radio stations (WHHZ/100.5/Gainesville and WXXJ/102.9/Jacksonville) and the release of Sufjan Stevens' beautiful new album, titled Carrie and Lowell (largely a tribute to his deceased parents). As a matter of fact, I prefer his album over Beck's Morning Phase of last year (which I also liked)...a work that garnered him a Grammy for Best Album. Sufjan (pronounced "soof-yan") should at least get a nomination for his work...
I'm still working through the tracks on Carrie and Lowell. Sometimes it takes a while for a song to "reach" me, and sometimes I "get it" from the first listen. I have a feeling that this album features both kinds of songs. In Carrie and Lowell, Sufjan has abandoned the annoying "bells and whistles" of his electronic musical laboratory and returned to a more acoustic-like sound (well, generally so...he tactfully does use some electronic background arrangements as well on some tracks). For those who tend to be turned off by ear-splitting, screaming rock songs, this album will be easy to digest with its subdued mood...
As for the alternative music I'm hearing of late, there's a lot of good stuff out there. Last year, one of the more minor songs I liked that didn't make my "Top Ten" list was Sail by a group called AWOLNATION (always written with capital letters...no, I don't know why, either). This year "my" stations are playing another of their songs, Hollow Moon (with the alternate title Bad Wolf). This is a rather complex song, compared to others getting radio play. It's fast-paced, with widely divergent musical themes alternating but somehow seamlessly fitting together. It's danceable...yet there's a bit of the Nirvana sound as well, especially toward the end. A pretty interesting piece, I'll say...which, besides the important fact that it is just plain fun to listen to, is why at this point of time it's my favorite song of 2015. Next, at number two, is a song by Bear Hands titled Agora...it actually was released in 2014 but has such a following that it gets regular air time even now. Other songs I like to listen to are Mess is Mine by Vance Joy, Cigarette Daydreams by Cage the Elephant, Renegades by X Ambassadors, and Saint Motel's My Type, a curious song that sounds like a cross between K.C. and the Sunshine Band and Franz Ferdinand. Here's my list of favorite songs so far in 2015:
1 HOLLOW MOON (BAD WOLF)...AWOLNATION
2 Agora...Bear Hands
3 Death With Dignity...Sufjan Stevens
4 Mess is Mine...Vance Joy
5 Cigarette Daydreams...Cage the Elephant
6 Should Have Known Better...Sufjan Stevens
7 Blue Bucket of Gold...Sufjan Stevens
8 Renegades...X Ambassadors
9 My Type...Saint Motel
10 Fourth of July...Sufjan Stevens
So, as Casey Kasem used to say on his weekly Billboard Top 40 radio show, there you have it. But don't expect this list to remain static throughout 2015...it's bound to change quite a lot before the year is through...
I'm still working through the tracks on Carrie and Lowell. Sometimes it takes a while for a song to "reach" me, and sometimes I "get it" from the first listen. I have a feeling that this album features both kinds of songs. In Carrie and Lowell, Sufjan has abandoned the annoying "bells and whistles" of his electronic musical laboratory and returned to a more acoustic-like sound (well, generally so...he tactfully does use some electronic background arrangements as well on some tracks). For those who tend to be turned off by ear-splitting, screaming rock songs, this album will be easy to digest with its subdued mood...
As for the alternative music I'm hearing of late, there's a lot of good stuff out there. Last year, one of the more minor songs I liked that didn't make my "Top Ten" list was Sail by a group called AWOLNATION (always written with capital letters...no, I don't know why, either). This year "my" stations are playing another of their songs, Hollow Moon (with the alternate title Bad Wolf). This is a rather complex song, compared to others getting radio play. It's fast-paced, with widely divergent musical themes alternating but somehow seamlessly fitting together. It's danceable...yet there's a bit of the Nirvana sound as well, especially toward the end. A pretty interesting piece, I'll say...which, besides the important fact that it is just plain fun to listen to, is why at this point of time it's my favorite song of 2015. Next, at number two, is a song by Bear Hands titled Agora...it actually was released in 2014 but has such a following that it gets regular air time even now. Other songs I like to listen to are Mess is Mine by Vance Joy, Cigarette Daydreams by Cage the Elephant, Renegades by X Ambassadors, and Saint Motel's My Type, a curious song that sounds like a cross between K.C. and the Sunshine Band and Franz Ferdinand. Here's my list of favorite songs so far in 2015:
1 HOLLOW MOON (BAD WOLF)...AWOLNATION
2 Agora...Bear Hands
3 Death With Dignity...Sufjan Stevens
4 Mess is Mine...Vance Joy
5 Cigarette Daydreams...Cage the Elephant
6 Should Have Known Better...Sufjan Stevens
7 Blue Bucket of Gold...Sufjan Stevens
8 Renegades...X Ambassadors
9 My Type...Saint Motel
10 Fourth of July...Sufjan Stevens
So, as Casey Kasem used to say on his weekly Billboard Top 40 radio show, there you have it. But don't expect this list to remain static throughout 2015...it's bound to change quite a lot before the year is through...
Tuesday, June 16, 2015
At Starbucks Waiting for Auto Repair
Here I am, at this writing (at 9:30 AM, although it will be posted later in the day), sitting in my favorite spot at my most frequented Starbucks in Magnolia Parke on 39th Avenue. I'm here, and not at home rousing myself out of bed, because one of our cars has some air conditioning issues and is getting a look-over at the auto shop on the other end of the complex. I have a number of little routines that I try to get in on a daily basis; I'm knocking off a few of these while waiting for the verdict on the car...
First, I like to practice temporarily memorizing sentences in certain foreign languages...Chinese, German, Spanish, and Russian...that I use various books for and whose meanings I make sure I understand...and then write each one down on paper from memory. Daily I do this with ten Chinese sentences and four each for German, Spanish, and Russian. It obviously isn't the same as being immersed in a foreign language environment, but it does keep me thinking in each language, albeit to a limited degree...
I am currently engaged in another daily routine: writing an article for this blog of mine! Sometimes it's hard to come up with a topic, and sometimes it's easy...this morning's circumstances automatically furnished me with one...
After finishing this entry, I will embark on another routine, which is daily reading. Currently, I am nearing the end of Jules Verne's adventure story The Mysterious Island and just finished the second book in Madeleine L'Engle's Time quintet, titled A Wind in the Door. And I'm about to start on Voltaire's short novel Candide (translated into English, of course). For now, I'll read some of Jules Verne's tale...
Hopefully, this auto repair today won't take too long and I'll get back home in time to perform another daily routine of mine...running!
First, I like to practice temporarily memorizing sentences in certain foreign languages...Chinese, German, Spanish, and Russian...that I use various books for and whose meanings I make sure I understand...and then write each one down on paper from memory. Daily I do this with ten Chinese sentences and four each for German, Spanish, and Russian. It obviously isn't the same as being immersed in a foreign language environment, but it does keep me thinking in each language, albeit to a limited degree...
I am currently engaged in another daily routine: writing an article for this blog of mine! Sometimes it's hard to come up with a topic, and sometimes it's easy...this morning's circumstances automatically furnished me with one...
After finishing this entry, I will embark on another routine, which is daily reading. Currently, I am nearing the end of Jules Verne's adventure story The Mysterious Island and just finished the second book in Madeleine L'Engle's Time quintet, titled A Wind in the Door. And I'm about to start on Voltaire's short novel Candide (translated into English, of course). For now, I'll read some of Jules Verne's tale...
Hopefully, this auto repair today won't take too long and I'll get back home in time to perform another daily routine of mine...running!
Monday, June 15, 2015
WUFT-FM To Add Classical Music Station on 92.1
On June 11, WUFT-FM, which broadcasts a talk/news format on 89.1 mHz, announced that, pending expected FCC approval, they will soon be starting a new station on 92.1 that will feature classical music, the 89.1 station's original format years before they changed their programming (to my chagrin). This station already exists as an HD-radio option for those equipped with such receivers, but I don't have one and am looking forward to the resumption of good classical music over the open airwaves here in Gainesville. I have three questions about the new station, though. One, when is the new station going to begin its broadcasts? Two, how powerful will the signal be...will it be as strong as the 89.1 signal, or will it be a hard-to-pick-up low-power signal like the station on 94.7?. And, three, will it actually be broadcasting classical music 24/7, or will it have that late night/early morning jazz programming from before, which used to annoy me to no end?
All questions aside, I welcome the new station and look forward to listening to it...
All questions aside, I welcome the new station and look forward to listening to it...
Sunday, June 14, 2015
Just Finished Reading Robert Jordan's Knife of Dreams
After reading the tenth book in fantasy writer Robert Jordan's expansive The Wheel of Time series, I began to wonder whether or not the author was truly interested in reaching a final resolution, as he kept introducing new minor characters to the epic and obscuring the main story line with numerous subplots. But with this, his eleventh book, titled Knife of Dreams, I can start to see some light at the end of this tortuously long and convoluted reading experience. The main protagonist, a young man named Rand al'Thor, is the reincarnation of an ancient hero who had defeated and imprisoned the supremely evil Dark One...now Rand has the title of Dragon Reborn, and the prophecies strongly point to his fateful rematch with his nefarious adversary in the Last Battle...we've known about this fact since very early in the series. In the meantime, though, Rand has been crisscrossing the land, alternately making alliances and war, much as have done his friends Mat, Perrin, and associated supporting characters like Egwene, Nynaeve, Elayne, Min, and Loial, to name a few of the most important. There are all these various kingdoms and movements around, most of them at complete odds with one another, and Rand seems to be saddled with a thoroughly hopeless cause trying to unite them together under his leadership. But some of the main story threads have attained some resolution in Knife of Dreams, especially regarding the main characters. This gives me hope for the future books in this series! Only one problem, though...
Robert Jordan died after the publication of Knife of Dreams. In order to continue and ultimately complete the Wheel of Time series, his extensive notes outlining what he wanted to do for the final book(s) were collected and examined, and esteemed fellow fantasy fiction writer Brandon Sanderson was hired to complete the series. This he did in three books, making the final The Wheel of Time series a rather unwieldy fourteen volumes. It will be very interesting to see how Sanderson manages to tie so many divergent tales together...I sincerely hope he doesn't introduce many more insignificant characters or irrelevant side stories as did the original author...
Robert Jordan died after the publication of Knife of Dreams. In order to continue and ultimately complete the Wheel of Time series, his extensive notes outlining what he wanted to do for the final book(s) were collected and examined, and esteemed fellow fantasy fiction writer Brandon Sanderson was hired to complete the series. This he did in three books, making the final The Wheel of Time series a rather unwieldy fourteen volumes. It will be very interesting to see how Sanderson manages to tie so many divergent tales together...I sincerely hope he doesn't introduce many more insignificant characters or irrelevant side stories as did the original author...
Saturday, June 13, 2015
Some 1965-66 Nova Elementary Memories, Part 1
How old are you? I'll be 59 in October and sometimes, looking back on my life, have vivid memories of certain circumstances along with big, gaping holes of time, my recall of which seems elusive. One of those "vivid" times was entering the Nova educational system in 1965, when I was starting the fourth grade. Eventually, I would graduate in 1974 from Nova High School. But that first year at Nova Blanche Forman Elementary School, which was also the very first year of its own existence, still evokes strong memories...
The previous three years, I had been attending Boulevard Heights Elementary School, which was about a block and a half from my home in West Hollywood, Florida (before it all was annexed into Hollywood in 1965). To get to Nova, though, I needed to ride a school bus to cover the five mile distance north into Davie. So from the very beginning I got to know a circle of kids at my bus stop like Martin, the two brother combos of Jim/Greg and Mike/Scott, along with pipsqueaks Harold and Kenny (who got us into trouble at our bus stop with his uncontrollable shrieking)...and also Glen, the "senior" among us. Yes, for some random reason at the beginning my bus stop was all boys...and this eventually may have been one reason why we tended to get into trouble. But I digress...
Nova Elementary School, when I went through it, comprised grades one through six, the concept of "middle school" still yet to be implemented in the public school system. My school was divided into four "suites", as they called them: A,B,C, and D. I was assigned to Suite C, which had all of the fourth-graders and half of the school's fifth graders. How the folks in charge of all this decided which fifth-graders were to be assigned with us fourth-graders and which were assigned with the sixth graders in Suite B (renamed Suite D the following year) is beyond my understanding...but there we were. I was in Miss Kidder's home base Room 7 (initially it was Room 8, but for another unknown reason we were all switched around a few weeks after the school year began). Let's see if I can remember the other teachers in Suite C: Mrs. Hernandez (who replaced a different teacher whose name I forgot) in Room 8, Mrs. Jenkins in 9, Mr. Drew in 10, and Mr. Johnston in 11. Normally, a suite would have six classrooms, but where Room 12 would have been was the Practical Arts room, where Mr. Mielock held fort. Across from our suite, looking westward, on the far left, was the Multi-Purpose Room, aka the cafeteria (why couldn't they have just called it that), then the Science Room, complete with a botanical section and a top-level lab equipped with hard tops and gas jets for bunsen burners...Mrs. Bethune was in charge here. Then, continuing to the right, there was/were one or two little conference rooms, a hallway (containing the audio-visual equipment room) going back to the back of the building (where the supplies store and Suite B were) and then the library to the right (I have a mental block about the librarian's name). At the far right, from the perspective of Suite C, was administration, which for the main purposes of the students, was where the principal (then it was Mrs. LaBelle) and nurse's station was located. Across the hallway from the library, and next to our suite was one of the first-through-third graders' suites. Our outside-directed windows faced the bus-loading area (my bus number was at first #79, changing later in the year to #75...they were both rickety, old buses)...
I'm taking up a lot of blog article space writing about this topic, so I think I'll continue writing about it in a couple (or more) days. Part of all this is expository, to give a picture of my experiences back then to those (almost all of you) who weren't there. And part of this is just for my own sake of putting my memories on the record, as trivial as some of them may seem...
The previous three years, I had been attending Boulevard Heights Elementary School, which was about a block and a half from my home in West Hollywood, Florida (before it all was annexed into Hollywood in 1965). To get to Nova, though, I needed to ride a school bus to cover the five mile distance north into Davie. So from the very beginning I got to know a circle of kids at my bus stop like Martin, the two brother combos of Jim/Greg and Mike/Scott, along with pipsqueaks Harold and Kenny (who got us into trouble at our bus stop with his uncontrollable shrieking)...and also Glen, the "senior" among us. Yes, for some random reason at the beginning my bus stop was all boys...and this eventually may have been one reason why we tended to get into trouble. But I digress...
Nova Elementary School, when I went through it, comprised grades one through six, the concept of "middle school" still yet to be implemented in the public school system. My school was divided into four "suites", as they called them: A,B,C, and D. I was assigned to Suite C, which had all of the fourth-graders and half of the school's fifth graders. How the folks in charge of all this decided which fifth-graders were to be assigned with us fourth-graders and which were assigned with the sixth graders in Suite B (renamed Suite D the following year) is beyond my understanding...but there we were. I was in Miss Kidder's home base Room 7 (initially it was Room 8, but for another unknown reason we were all switched around a few weeks after the school year began). Let's see if I can remember the other teachers in Suite C: Mrs. Hernandez (who replaced a different teacher whose name I forgot) in Room 8, Mrs. Jenkins in 9, Mr. Drew in 10, and Mr. Johnston in 11. Normally, a suite would have six classrooms, but where Room 12 would have been was the Practical Arts room, where Mr. Mielock held fort. Across from our suite, looking westward, on the far left, was the Multi-Purpose Room, aka the cafeteria (why couldn't they have just called it that), then the Science Room, complete with a botanical section and a top-level lab equipped with hard tops and gas jets for bunsen burners...Mrs. Bethune was in charge here. Then, continuing to the right, there was/were one or two little conference rooms, a hallway (containing the audio-visual equipment room) going back to the back of the building (where the supplies store and Suite B were) and then the library to the right (I have a mental block about the librarian's name). At the far right, from the perspective of Suite C, was administration, which for the main purposes of the students, was where the principal (then it was Mrs. LaBelle) and nurse's station was located. Across the hallway from the library, and next to our suite was one of the first-through-third graders' suites. Our outside-directed windows faced the bus-loading area (my bus number was at first #79, changing later in the year to #75...they were both rickety, old buses)...
I'm taking up a lot of blog article space writing about this topic, so I think I'll continue writing about it in a couple (or more) days. Part of all this is expository, to give a picture of my experiences back then to those (almost all of you) who weren't there. And part of this is just for my own sake of putting my memories on the record, as trivial as some of them may seem...
Friday, June 12, 2015
Just Finished Reading Sue Grafton's J and K Novels
As I continue to make my way through the alphabet, Sue Grafton-style with her series of Kinsey Millhone mystery novels, each title based on a letter, I've just finished reading two more: "J" is for Judgment and "K" is for Killer...having skipped "I" is for Innocent, which I just read this past January. With each of "J" and "K", I thought I might be reading them for the first time, but as it turned out, both are books I've already gone through. Here is the link to my January article about "I" is for Innocent...
With "J" is for Judgment, Kinsey is hired to search for Wendell Jaffe, who had disappeared on his boat five years earlier and was assumed to have committed suicide in the face of insurmountable debts. But did he fake his death instead? Someone has seen a man who strongly resembles Jaffe in Mexico, and Kinsey goes down there to investigate. During the course of the story, she also discovers cousins, aunts, uncles, and her own grandmother who all had been living nearby her home city of Santa Teresa, California, but had never felt the necessity before to contact her, an orphan from early childhood after an auto accident had claimed her parents. Needless to say, Kinsey has very mixed feelings about these people...
"K" is for Killer introduces organized crime, the way you might imagine it practiced in The Godfather. But those criminals are not the problem here...although they may well end up being the solution. A young woman has recently died in her rented cabin and her mother hires Kinsey to investigate her death. Grafton introduces a plethora of potential suspects in this classic whodunnit story...
The most remarkable elements of these last two novels I've read of Sue Grafton are their memorable endings...one with Kinsey putting pieces of the mystery together long after everything had already apparently been settled, and the other with her realizing that the criminal justice system is often woefully inadequate when it comes to seeking and catching suspected killers...and maybe she has to skirt the system for real justice to occur, a very touchy matter indeed...
With "J" is for Judgment, Kinsey is hired to search for Wendell Jaffe, who had disappeared on his boat five years earlier and was assumed to have committed suicide in the face of insurmountable debts. But did he fake his death instead? Someone has seen a man who strongly resembles Jaffe in Mexico, and Kinsey goes down there to investigate. During the course of the story, she also discovers cousins, aunts, uncles, and her own grandmother who all had been living nearby her home city of Santa Teresa, California, but had never felt the necessity before to contact her, an orphan from early childhood after an auto accident had claimed her parents. Needless to say, Kinsey has very mixed feelings about these people...
"K" is for Killer introduces organized crime, the way you might imagine it practiced in The Godfather. But those criminals are not the problem here...although they may well end up being the solution. A young woman has recently died in her rented cabin and her mother hires Kinsey to investigate her death. Grafton introduces a plethora of potential suspects in this classic whodunnit story...
The most remarkable elements of these last two novels I've read of Sue Grafton are their memorable endings...one with Kinsey putting pieces of the mystery together long after everything had already apparently been settled, and the other with her realizing that the criminal justice system is often woefully inadequate when it comes to seeking and catching suspected killers...and maybe she has to skirt the system for real justice to occur, a very touchy matter indeed...
Thursday, June 11, 2015
Personal Favorites Lists
During the last couple of years on this blog, I've generally steered away from putting out lists of my personal favorites, which in preceding years I'd been in the habit of doing...usually in areas like music, television, movies, and reading. But I still do have my own favorites, and have of late felt that writing down a few lists might be interesting. In past articles, I've often headed an entry featuring such lists with the designation "List Madness"....maybe I'll leave that introduction off future lists...
Needless to say, like most everyone else, my favorites in different areas change over time. What I listed, say, as my top 25 favorite songs back in 2007 is obviously going to be a bit different now...so I think updating that list of all-time favorite songs is in order. Maybe I'll designate a certain day of the week to publish a "favorites" list in different categories. Should be interesting (at least for me)...
Needless to say, like most everyone else, my favorites in different areas change over time. What I listed, say, as my top 25 favorite songs back in 2007 is obviously going to be a bit different now...so I think updating that list of all-time favorite songs is in order. Maybe I'll designate a certain day of the week to publish a "favorites" list in different categories. Should be interesting (at least for me)...
Wednesday, June 10, 2015
Soccer Focusing on National Teams as Spring Passes Into Summer
Now that the soccer leagues other than America's Major League Soccer have finished their seasons, the summertime soccer focus has switched to national teams. In men's soccer, there are many exhibition games, for some reason called "Friendlies", going on between national teams. Today, for example, the USA team plays against Germany in such a contest (which can be seen on TV). There are World Cup tournaments going on this summer as well: the U20 World Cup featuring players under the age of 20 and the Women's World Cup. The U20 play is currently in the quarterfinal stage, while the Women's competition has just begun its group stage...
In the Women's World Cup there are six groups, each with four teams that will play the teams within each group twice, one "at home" and one "away"...actually, the games are all being played at various locations within Canada. The top two finishers in each group will advance to the "sixteen" stage, along with the four third place finishers with the best records. The United States is in the same group as Sweden, Nigeria, and Australia. They defeated Australia 3-1 in their first match. Both the Women's World Cup and the U20 World Cup are being shown at various times on TV...check your listings if you're interested. There is also a U17 World Cup, but I haven't seen any TV broadcasts of their games...
And, of course, there is still MLS, which plays its games (generally) over the weekend...
In the Women's World Cup there are six groups, each with four teams that will play the teams within each group twice, one "at home" and one "away"...actually, the games are all being played at various locations within Canada. The top two finishers in each group will advance to the "sixteen" stage, along with the four third place finishers with the best records. The United States is in the same group as Sweden, Nigeria, and Australia. They defeated Australia 3-1 in their first match. Both the Women's World Cup and the U20 World Cup are being shown at various times on TV...check your listings if you're interested. There is also a U17 World Cup, but I haven't seen any TV broadcasts of their games...
And, of course, there is still MLS, which plays its games (generally) over the weekend...
Tuesday, June 9, 2015
NBA Finals a Good Show So Far
Like a few of my readers, I have been casually following the National Basketball Association playoff finals between Cleveland and Golden State...which I predicted would take place (against my own preferences) a few weeks ago on this blog. The series has gone through two games, both home games for Golden State (at Oakland, California) with both going into overtime...each team winning once. I had pegged Cleveland, with the trio of stars Lebron James, Kyrie Irving, and Kevin Love, to overcome the high-flying offense of the Warriors, led by their MVP guard Stephen Curry. But the Cavaliers have suffered some serious misfortune of late, with both Irving and Love out with injuries for the rest of the playoffs. So now it's all up to Lebron and his entourage...incredibly, Cleveland handled Golden State Sunday by a combination of a career performance by James and Cleveland's tenacious defense of Curry, limiting his ability to get off any good shots. And by winning a game in Oakland, a very difficult task for visiting teams, the Cavs are unexpectedly in a good position to build a good lead in these finals with their upcoming home games. But I suspect that Curry and the Warriors are going to adjust to Cleveland's strategy and Lebron James, even with a good performance, will not be able to carry his team on his shoulders to two consecutive home wins. The main thing for me, as a basketball fan who doesn't have any particular preference in this series, is that the games continue to be close and that the series will go all the way to the seventh and deciding game...
Sunday, June 7, 2015
Just Finished Reading The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells
Seeing that I am in the prolonged (for reasons which I will reveal in the future) process of reading a rather lengthy novel (The Mysterious Island) by renown science fiction writer Jules Verne, I decided to tackle something shorter by another famous author within this genre. So I picked H.G. Wells, probably more famous for his stories The Time Machine and War of the Worlds, and read his 1897 short novel The Invisible Man. The title is the same as a sci-fi thriller movie in which the villain is a complete terror...or at least that's how I remember it from childhood. But that isn't how Wells portrays, at least initially, his protagonist, a brilliant young physicist named Griffin who, by dint of changing the refraction of light in his own body's living cells, has made himself invisible. Almost at once, he realizes that he hasn't prepared for the many bad things that can result by walking around without others noticing him...most immediately that traipsing around naked outside in England during cold times would have most assuredly give him a bad cold...which it does, burdening him with the embarrassment of continually giving away his presence to others with his sneezing. But more than that, Griffin keeps almost comically going from one predicament to another...and his angry rage grows. What he wants now, more than anything else, is to figure out how to restore his visibility...but the circumstances in the culturally provincial small towns in southern England where he struggles confound him time and time again. These nosy people just won't respect his privacy (he has tried representing himself, completely clothed and bandaged, as someone recovering from wounds), and the growing suspicions among the people that he is responsible for a local burglary (which he is) increases the unwelcome scrutiny on him. He becomes more and more emotionally unstable and resorts to physical violence against others, in particular against a vagrant named Tom Marvel with whom he has entrusted the task of carrying his crucial scientific notebooks and money. Marvel flees with the goods, and the invisible man is now in a state of murderous rage after him. The story's violence escalates, and the protagonist "looks" more and more like the evil figure portrayed in the movie. As a reader, I naturally try to empathize with the main character...which I was able to do to an extent at the first with this hapless invisible man. But Griffin's personality is so self-centered as he rationalizes away his abhorrent behavior toward others that I quickly began to root against him...a troublesome predicament for a reader like me who is accustomed to pulling for the story's "hero".
As usual, I left out the ending to this novel so that you might pick it up and read it for yourself some day. It gives a good picture of small-town England and its people at the end of the nineteenth century. But more than that, The Invisible Man carries an unspoken warning about scientific ventures undertaken without considering all of the possible negative consequences...
As usual, I left out the ending to this novel so that you might pick it up and read it for yourself some day. It gives a good picture of small-town England and its people at the end of the nineteenth century. But more than that, The Invisible Man carries an unspoken warning about scientific ventures undertaken without considering all of the possible negative consequences...
Saturday, June 6, 2015
Plenty of Sports to Watch on TV Today
There is plenty of interesting sports action to follow on TV today...although I'm not really interested in golf, tennis (women's final today in the French Open), NASCAR, or college baseball. And the NBA finals between Cleveland and Golden State won't continue until tomorrow evening...still, I'm surprised, even for a Saturday, how much is going on...
First and foremost, horse racing's Triple Crown culminates today in New York's very long Belmont Stakes, which will be shown on NBC with the pre-race hoopla starting at 4:30. American Pharoah, winner of the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness, has a very good shot at horse racing immortality if it manages to beat out the other seven horses in this endurance race. Last year it was California Chrome, also victorious in the first two races, trying for a sweep. But Tonality, which was entered only for the Belmont, prevailed...prompting the California Chrome owner to go off on a ridiculously bitter rant about the circumstances of his horse's loss. Funny thing is that I had a feeling about Tonality before the race...this year there is another similarly named entrant, Materiality, going up against American Pharoah. H-m-m...
The UEFA Champions League in soccer, a season-long European tournament of the previous year's top professional league soccer teams, will hold its finale starting at 2:45 PM (EDT) with the game, featuring Spain's Barcelona against Italy's Juventus, to be played in Berlin, Germany. Barcelona, the heavy favorite, features three of the all-time best soccer players in Argentina's Lionel Messi, Brazil's Neymar, and Uruguay's Luis Suarez. If you watched the World Cup last year, you'd know what I'm talking about regarding these highly talented players...and they're all on the same team! Good luck with that, Juventus!
In hockey, Tampa Bay tries to even the Stanley Cup finals tonight against the Chicago Blackhawks in their second game, starting around seven. This game will be shown on NBC. At the same time, FoxSports1 will show a FIFA Women's World Cup soccer match between China and Canada...
And, of course, there's plenty of Major League Baseball to watch today, with my Florida teams going unexpectedly in different directions this year. The Tampa Bay Rays, expected to do poorly with a rebuilding year, are at or near the top of their division, while the Miami Marlins, expected to be contenders, are underachieving and are well below .500...and have already undergone a managerial change. Still, I can see that this team has a lot of spirit and drive. I expect them to make a big comeback later on this summer...
So, there's a lot going on today! Not that I intend to spend the whole day watching sports on TV...I plan to do a little running of my own...
First and foremost, horse racing's Triple Crown culminates today in New York's very long Belmont Stakes, which will be shown on NBC with the pre-race hoopla starting at 4:30. American Pharoah, winner of the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness, has a very good shot at horse racing immortality if it manages to beat out the other seven horses in this endurance race. Last year it was California Chrome, also victorious in the first two races, trying for a sweep. But Tonality, which was entered only for the Belmont, prevailed...prompting the California Chrome owner to go off on a ridiculously bitter rant about the circumstances of his horse's loss. Funny thing is that I had a feeling about Tonality before the race...this year there is another similarly named entrant, Materiality, going up against American Pharoah. H-m-m...
The UEFA Champions League in soccer, a season-long European tournament of the previous year's top professional league soccer teams, will hold its finale starting at 2:45 PM (EDT) with the game, featuring Spain's Barcelona against Italy's Juventus, to be played in Berlin, Germany. Barcelona, the heavy favorite, features three of the all-time best soccer players in Argentina's Lionel Messi, Brazil's Neymar, and Uruguay's Luis Suarez. If you watched the World Cup last year, you'd know what I'm talking about regarding these highly talented players...and they're all on the same team! Good luck with that, Juventus!
In hockey, Tampa Bay tries to even the Stanley Cup finals tonight against the Chicago Blackhawks in their second game, starting around seven. This game will be shown on NBC. At the same time, FoxSports1 will show a FIFA Women's World Cup soccer match between China and Canada...
And, of course, there's plenty of Major League Baseball to watch today, with my Florida teams going unexpectedly in different directions this year. The Tampa Bay Rays, expected to do poorly with a rebuilding year, are at or near the top of their division, while the Miami Marlins, expected to be contenders, are underachieving and are well below .500...and have already undergone a managerial change. Still, I can see that this team has a lot of spirit and drive. I expect them to make a big comeback later on this summer...
So, there's a lot going on today! Not that I intend to spend the whole day watching sports on TV...I plan to do a little running of my own...
Friday, June 5, 2015
RFK Murdered on This Date in History
In Davie, Florida, on the morning of June 5, 1968, I found myself in Room 18 of Suite D in the grand, exalted Nova Elementary School "educational experiment" as a Sixth Grader. I was, for whatever reason...it was not the ordinary routine...sitting in the southwestern part of the room (closest, through the walls, to the basketball court), which was old man Bartfay's home base (you had to have been an original "Nova Titan", based in the elementary school experience, to know what I'm talking about). It was there and then that I was informed by one of my fellow students (or, more accurately, my fellow inmates), that New York Senator Robert Kennedy had been murdered in California following his victory speech after that state's Democratic Party primary had given him all of its delegates in the fight for the presidential nomination. The horrible act had occurred several hours earlier, but since in my own highly dysfunctional childhood family back then none of us ever gave a hoot about what was going on in the world during the early morning hours besides our own self-pitying circumstances, we all had woken up in the morning that sad day and each of us had gone off on our merry (check that, miserable) ways, completely oblivious to the terrible tragedy that had already taken place some three thousand miles west. But there I was...and I can't remember who I was with...with another assassination on my hands to deal with, after Martin Luther King's a couple of months earlier...
When I think of Robert Francis Kennedy, I naturally hearken back to his brother John Fitzgerald Kennedy, whose middle name was my mother's maiden. I also think of the very talented comedian John Byner and how he, on the Steve Allen television show in 1968, would perform his hilarious rendition of Bobby Kennedy by means of his character "Kenny Bobbity", which forever established firmly within me RFK's unmistakable voice (although you can still hear it by listening to Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal). I do remember watching Bobby Kennedy debating Gene McCarthy on television just before that fateful California Primary...and noticing that his opponent thoroughly creamed him in it. But Kennedy narrowly won the primary anyway...although historians seem to forget that Vice-President Hubert Humphrey, who had forgone campaigning in California, had already collected enough delegates to win him the party's nomination in the first round. I know this with confidence, because I actually went to the library (at the University of Florida) and examined day-to-day newspaper records of the ongoing events. It was only years after the fact that some revisionists began to claim that RFK would have gotten the '68 Democratic nomination had he not been assassinated. That claim is completely false...
My parents were very skeptical about Robert Kennedy, claiming that he was a political chameleon who changed his colors with the times, going from fervent anti-communist witch-hunter in the fifties...to his brother JFK's right-hand man in the early sixties...to Gandhi-like peace advocate later that decade. I tend to agree with their opinions, but nevertheless the man was done a terrible injustice with his shooting that terrible night 47 years ago...
When I think of Robert Francis Kennedy, I naturally hearken back to his brother John Fitzgerald Kennedy, whose middle name was my mother's maiden. I also think of the very talented comedian John Byner and how he, on the Steve Allen television show in 1968, would perform his hilarious rendition of Bobby Kennedy by means of his character "Kenny Bobbity", which forever established firmly within me RFK's unmistakable voice (although you can still hear it by listening to Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal). I do remember watching Bobby Kennedy debating Gene McCarthy on television just before that fateful California Primary...and noticing that his opponent thoroughly creamed him in it. But Kennedy narrowly won the primary anyway...although historians seem to forget that Vice-President Hubert Humphrey, who had forgone campaigning in California, had already collected enough delegates to win him the party's nomination in the first round. I know this with confidence, because I actually went to the library (at the University of Florida) and examined day-to-day newspaper records of the ongoing events. It was only years after the fact that some revisionists began to claim that RFK would have gotten the '68 Democratic nomination had he not been assassinated. That claim is completely false...
My parents were very skeptical about Robert Kennedy, claiming that he was a political chameleon who changed his colors with the times, going from fervent anti-communist witch-hunter in the fifties...to his brother JFK's right-hand man in the early sixties...to Gandhi-like peace advocate later that decade. I tend to agree with their opinions, but nevertheless the man was done a terrible injustice with his shooting that terrible night 47 years ago...
Thursday, June 4, 2015
Soccer's Joseph "Sepp" Blatter: Controversy and Accomplishment
I've been following professional soccer in earnest ever since the Men's World Cup games last summer. I discovered in the process that the globe is covered with leagues upon leagues...just about every place has at least one pro soccer league. And the countries all seem to be represented by national teams as well. After seeing how incredibly popular soccer is in England and how more popular it is becoming here in the United States, it is clear to me, without knowing who is in charge, that they must be doing quite a few things right. The organization FIFA has authority over the professional sport of soccer and, since the late 1990s has had as its president a Swiss watchmaker named Joseph "Sepp" Blatter. Blatter, it is reported, along with his predecessor, have often been accused of bias against the more industrialized countries of the West in favor of third world soccer development. And he does seem to have enormous support among the myriad countries comprising Africa, Latin America, Asia, and Oceania. That support enabled him to withstand a formidable challenge to a fifth term as president during the election held just last week...amid a severe scandal involving many high-ranking FIFA officers, accused of seeking and accepting massive bribes by countries wanting to be picked as World Cup hosts...most particularly Qatar, which won the honor for 2022 over its chief competitor, the United States...
Blatter was able to defeat his opponent, a Jordanian prince, by mustering up enough third world support to get a 133-73 majority on the first ballot. Before the second ballot (candidates must get a two thirds majority to win on the first ballot), the opponent withdrew, handing Sepp, as he is commonly called, the election and a fifth term. He immediately began by walking up to the podium and giving a condescending and arrogant victory speech, even once saying, "I am now the president of everybody". Even though I had never heard of the man before this election last week, he irked me a lot and I felt defensive about the U.S. and England, which he seemed to have issues with. And then, to everyone's surprise, just a couple of days ago Sepp Blatter held a press conference in which he announced his resignation...of course he has his own hand-picked successor (election pending), just as he himself was "picked" years before...I assume, to continue his agenda...
I don't know how deeply, if at all, Joseph Blatter is involved in the FIFA scandal, which the FBI is now investigating. Who knows at this point...I reserve judgement...except that he doesn't sound as if he thinks it is that important. It is that callousness that I object to, but after looking back on things, I have to reconsider (at least a little) my earlier objections to Blatter. Sure, he's obviously an egomaniac, full of himself and his position. He treats other people representing the various countries like little children, and it doesn't help that some of them grovel at his feet. My personal dislike of the man having been said, however, I have to note that soccer has exploded in popularity under his tenure, not just worldwide but also here in America, where we have a well-established tier of professional leagues. And also under Sepp Blatter's presidency, women's soccer has taken off as well: this summer we'll be able to watch as the favored U.S. women's soccer team goes for another FIFA World Cup championship. But finally, it is I as an individual who discovered how much fun it really is to watch soccer, at least as it is played with a high level of skill in the premier leagues. And since he's been the dude in charge of things, in some way Blatter deserves credit for all this...
Blatter was able to defeat his opponent, a Jordanian prince, by mustering up enough third world support to get a 133-73 majority on the first ballot. Before the second ballot (candidates must get a two thirds majority to win on the first ballot), the opponent withdrew, handing Sepp, as he is commonly called, the election and a fifth term. He immediately began by walking up to the podium and giving a condescending and arrogant victory speech, even once saying, "I am now the president of everybody". Even though I had never heard of the man before this election last week, he irked me a lot and I felt defensive about the U.S. and England, which he seemed to have issues with. And then, to everyone's surprise, just a couple of days ago Sepp Blatter held a press conference in which he announced his resignation...of course he has his own hand-picked successor (election pending), just as he himself was "picked" years before...I assume, to continue his agenda...
I don't know how deeply, if at all, Joseph Blatter is involved in the FIFA scandal, which the FBI is now investigating. Who knows at this point...I reserve judgement...except that he doesn't sound as if he thinks it is that important. It is that callousness that I object to, but after looking back on things, I have to reconsider (at least a little) my earlier objections to Blatter. Sure, he's obviously an egomaniac, full of himself and his position. He treats other people representing the various countries like little children, and it doesn't help that some of them grovel at his feet. My personal dislike of the man having been said, however, I have to note that soccer has exploded in popularity under his tenure, not just worldwide but also here in America, where we have a well-established tier of professional leagues. And also under Sepp Blatter's presidency, women's soccer has taken off as well: this summer we'll be able to watch as the favored U.S. women's soccer team goes for another FIFA World Cup championship. But finally, it is I as an individual who discovered how much fun it really is to watch soccer, at least as it is played with a high level of skill in the premier leagues. And since he's been the dude in charge of things, in some way Blatter deserves credit for all this...
Wednesday, June 3, 2015
Just Finished Reading Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time
Published in 1962, Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time is a children's science-fiction novel, the first of the Time Quintet. It involves the struggle between good and evil, championed by the "kids combo" of social misfit Meg Murray, her precocious younger brother Charles Wallace, and their new friend, Calvin O'Keefe...neglected by his own family. With the help and direction of the mysterious and angelic trio of Mrs. Whatsit, Mrs. Who, and Mrs. Which, they travel to different worlds by means of the "tesseract", which wrinkles space and allows them to cross great distances quickly (sounds like an episode of Wormhole). Meg and Charles Wallace are determined to find their missing father, a physicist who had traveled into space on a secret government mission. They ultimately land on a planet called Camazotz, where they find their father and struggle against the evil leader of the controlling darkness, called "IT". How does this all end? Hey...I have to leave you some motivation to read the book for yourself!
In A Wrinkle in Time, Madeleine L'Engle makes clear her Christian orientation, but also pays respect to other cultures and philosophers seen as fighting against the "darkness". But the evil that she presents here seems to be rather thinly-veiled communism...all together with the totalitarian brainwashing, severe restriction of individuality, and strict, forced egalitarianism that many in the West have stereotyped it as encompassing. It is clear to me that this story (and as I suspect, the subsequent ones in this series) is, at least in part, the author's attempt to indoctrinate the young with her own religious and political viewpoints...which, as far as I'm concerned, she has every right to do. However, that being noted, I found parts of it a bit annoying...
What I liked the most about A Wrinkle in Time wasn't the religion, politics, the sometimes very intriguing science, or even language (Mrs. Who continually dishes out great quotes in assorted foreign tongues), but rather its characters and their backgrounds and personalities. I felt a great deal of empathy toward both Meg and Charles Wallace (that is, until the latter seemed to assume a kind of superhuman psychic ability). Both are misfits at school and for different reasons...but both from which I suffered throughout my own school years. Another thing I liked about this book was less tangible...it just seemed to have a sweetness to it...
I'll be continuing this pleasant (so far) series through to its end...just because it's aimed at a younger readership doesn't mean that a budding old codger like me can't enjoy it, too...
In A Wrinkle in Time, Madeleine L'Engle makes clear her Christian orientation, but also pays respect to other cultures and philosophers seen as fighting against the "darkness". But the evil that she presents here seems to be rather thinly-veiled communism...all together with the totalitarian brainwashing, severe restriction of individuality, and strict, forced egalitarianism that many in the West have stereotyped it as encompassing. It is clear to me that this story (and as I suspect, the subsequent ones in this series) is, at least in part, the author's attempt to indoctrinate the young with her own religious and political viewpoints...which, as far as I'm concerned, she has every right to do. However, that being noted, I found parts of it a bit annoying...
What I liked the most about A Wrinkle in Time wasn't the religion, politics, the sometimes very intriguing science, or even language (Mrs. Who continually dishes out great quotes in assorted foreign tongues), but rather its characters and their backgrounds and personalities. I felt a great deal of empathy toward both Meg and Charles Wallace (that is, until the latter seemed to assume a kind of superhuman psychic ability). Both are misfits at school and for different reasons...but both from which I suffered throughout my own school years. Another thing I liked about this book was less tangible...it just seemed to have a sweetness to it...
I'll be continuing this pleasant (so far) series through to its end...just because it's aimed at a younger readership doesn't mean that a budding old codger like me can't enjoy it, too...
Tuesday, June 2, 2015
NSA Surveillance Reauthorization Advancing In Senate
The reauthorization for the NSA surveillance that has come under such scrutiny and controversy of late is advancing in the United States Senate (the House of Representatives has already passed it) with a cloture vote, which was just held at this writing. The 60 votes minimum to advance the bill was assured: only 14 senators opposed it. The champion of this small minority is Kentucky Republican Rand Paul, who, like his father in the U.S. House, Ron Paul, is an strong advocate of personal liberties and privacy from government snooping. Recently, as I recounted in an earlier article, he went on the Senate floor and blasted the Patriot Act, which included the NSA surveillance provision. This provision was to expire last Sunday, and Paul was able, by maneuvering through arcane Senate rules, to delay matters until it had already expired. And now the Senate is hastily trying to put it back into law...
I'm for the NSA protecting American citizens from an obvious and dire threat, which is the infiltration of terrorists from abroad into this country as well as their recruitment of American citizens to perform their nefarious deeds from within. My only problem with this is that, as Senator Paul mentioned during his ten-hour "filibuster" speech last week, the government can use data gathered from the collection of phone numbers and contacts to construct probability scenarios for various Americans who they think are likely to be involved in some sort of non-terrorist-related criminal activity...in other words, change the whole point of the law allowing this mass data collection in the first place. It's been done before: the government was using anti-racketeering laws, originally aimed at organized crime, to restrict anti-abortion protests. It took twenty years of legal fighting until the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled in 2006 that those laws were being misused against the protesters. I sadly see a similar potential for misuse with this mass data collection, all denials by the senators supporting reauthorization notwithstanding...
I'm for the NSA protecting American citizens from an obvious and dire threat, which is the infiltration of terrorists from abroad into this country as well as their recruitment of American citizens to perform their nefarious deeds from within. My only problem with this is that, as Senator Paul mentioned during his ten-hour "filibuster" speech last week, the government can use data gathered from the collection of phone numbers and contacts to construct probability scenarios for various Americans who they think are likely to be involved in some sort of non-terrorist-related criminal activity...in other words, change the whole point of the law allowing this mass data collection in the first place. It's been done before: the government was using anti-racketeering laws, originally aimed at organized crime, to restrict anti-abortion protests. It took twenty years of legal fighting until the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled in 2006 that those laws were being misused against the protesters. I sadly see a similar potential for misuse with this mass data collection, all denials by the senators supporting reauthorization notwithstanding...
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