My September 2016 Running Report

In September I continued to step up my level of running, covering 130 miles for the entire month with the longest run being for 5.4 miles.  I also ran on every day, although in the grand scheme of things taking a day off every now and then might have been more advisable.  I have also been running outside in the heat of the early afternoon a lot, and I believe this has helped toughen me up for the upcoming long distance racing season that's set to unofficially begin here in Florida next month.  There were some opportunities for me to enter local 5K (3.1-mile) races, but I passed them all up, seeing how I get off from work at midnight on Fridays and the races were all scheduled early Saturday morning.  As a matter of fact, it seems to be the pattern for 5K races to hold them at that time.  Fortunately, when it comes to half-marathons, quite a few of them occur on Sunday mornings...which gives me the advantage of having more rest beforehand.  The most likely prospects for half-marathons in the near future are on October 30th in Port Orange and on November 13th in St. Augustine.  Let's see if I'm in good enough shape to enter and finish one, or maybe even both...

One thing that's impeded my running progress is my difficulty losing weight, in spite of all the training I do...while also expending a lot of energy at my physically-demanding job.  I haven't always been careful with my food choices, but still I don't think I'm overeating, either...my metabolism must be slowing down.  Well, maybe if I start running for longer distances...as I plan to do from time to time during the next few weeks....some of the pounds may start to come off.  I'm also enthusiastically looking forward to the seasonal change to cooler autumn days...somebody let me know when that's gonna happen!

9/25 Sermon on James, Part 1

I regularly attend The Family Church,  which is a non-denominational Christian church situated off Parker Road west of Gainesville.  The pastors here have always given pretty incisive and interesting Sunday morning sermons, based on the Bible.  They emphasize the importance of Jesus Christ as Savior and the need to accept him as such and depend upon him in our daily walk through life.  Our current head pastor, Philip Griffin, has just finished a series on the Seven Churches of the book of Revelation and last Sunday began a new one on the book of James...found toward the back of the New Testament.  I have to admit that getting wisdom out of the previous reading was akin to squeezing water from a rock, but James, although a short book, is loaded with sagacious exhortations...I myself refer to it as the "Proverbs" of the New Testament...

Sunday's sermon appropriately focused on the very beginning of James, covering the first chapter, verses 1-12.  In it the author, who naturally calls himself James, greets the twelve tribes scattered abroad and calls on them to persevere with joy through the trials they are experiencing.  For in those trials they will be made stronger and provided the wisdom God intends for them.  Comfort, while pleasant, is much less important than maturity...and that can only come about by going through, and learning from, difficult times.   And, as the pastor pointed out, while those difficult times may be unavoidable, they can also be useful in shaping character and faith.  He also stressed that "life isn't fair, but God is".  And regarding the attainment of material wealth, it is considered, from the perspective of James, to be more an impediment to becoming wise and mature than by experiencing a life marked with hardship and poverty. 

From my own perspective, I feel that the times in my life when I had to undergo difficult circumstances and then came out of them stronger and more understanding in retrospect were often the most meaningful and memorable. However, I have known of people...and you most likely do as well...who have taken their perceived negative life experiences and constructed a cynical narrative for themselves, along with a overly critical view of humanity in general and loads of specific examples to support that outlook.  Hey, y'know, I've fallen into this trap a number of times! So with that innate tendency to be reactive to bad times and hardships comes the need to seek divine guidance and empowerment in order to instead put things in their proper perspective and cultivate wisdom and maturity...and that, I believe, was the intention of James with the opening passages of this book...

By the way, you can watch any of The Family Church (of Gainesville, Florida) sermons on its YouTube site...

And here are those first twelve verses of James, in the NIV courtesy of Bible Gateway:

1 James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ,

To the twelve tribes scattered among the nations:

Greetings. ² Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters,^[a] whenever you face trials of many kinds, ³ because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. ⁴ Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. ⁵ If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you. ⁶ But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. ⁷ That person should not expect to receive anything from the Lord. ⁸ Such a person is double-minded and unstable in all they do.

⁹ Believers in humble circumstances ought to take pride in their high position. ¹⁰ But the rich should take pride in their humiliation—since they will pass away like a wild flower. ¹¹ For the sun rises with scorching heat and withers the plant; its blossom falls and its beauty is destroyed. In the same way, the rich will fade away even while they go about their business.
¹² Blessed is the one who perseveres under trial because, having stood the test, that person will receive the crown of life that the Lord has promised to those who love him.

Tropical Storm Matthew Entering the Caribbean

Newly-named Tropical Storm Matthew, formerly Invest 97-L, is speeding westward at a 21 mph pace as it approaches the West Indies, focusing on the Martinique vicinity.  According to the Weather Channel report I just saw, its maximum sustained winds are at 60 mph and it is expected to continue strengthening as it enters the warm waters of the Caribbean Sea.  Matthew should continue its westward course through the central/southern Caribbean, largely missing Puerto Rico and Hispaniola, until the steering currents that determine its path force it abruptly into a northward direction.  The sooner this "turn" happens, the better for us in Florida, since this dangerous storm would then more likely pass through eastern Cuba and then the Bahamas, avoiding our state.  But should Matthew tarry along its westward course and make its northward shift later, we could be threatened.  The predicted timetable for Matthew, at least for now, is for it to strengthen into a minimal hurricane by Friday morning, start making its shift in direction on Saturday morning...and by Monday morning be a much more dangerous hurricane with 105 mph maximum sustained winds and located in the Jamaica/eastern Cuba area.  But as we all know, these forecasts are liable to change, and possibly drastically.  Still, the various computer models currently seem to be in unusual agreement that Matthew will veer off to the east of Florida and eventually merge with a front sweeping down from the northwest.  I don't know about you, but I'm quite content with missing out on this storm...assuming it follows the "prescribed" trajectory.  I'm certainly going to keep an eye on the weather reports for the next few days...

Soccer: English Premier League in 2016-17 Season So Far

I am following English Premier League soccer now for the third year, having witnessed Chelsea, managed by Jose Mourinho, run away with the championship two years ago and upstart Leicester City, on the brink of relegation (demotion to the next lower league) the year before, surprising everyone last year by coming away with the title.  As the different teams retooled themselves for the new 2016-17 season, there was a lot of speculation as to which one would be favored to win it this year, which has now played through six of the scheduled thirty-eight matches for each of the league's twenty teams.  Could Chelsea recover their old greatness or Leicester City repeat their miracle season?  Or would one of the more traditional powers like Manchester City, Manchester United, or Arsenal take their place on the top of the standings?  Well, so far it's been the latter as Manchester City is solidly in first place, having won all six of their games.  Tottenham, which challenged Leicester City during the second half of last season before slumping at the end, is also undefeated but with two draws, giving them second place.  Then it's Arsenal, Liverpool, Everton, and Manchester United in that order.  United, by the way, hired Mourinho and has spent a lot of money in the off-season to sign top European players, making them a team with high expectations.  As for Chelsea and Leicester City, the former is doing moderately well, at number eight in the standings (or "table" as they call it across the ocean), but the latter is mired with a losing record in the twelve-spot, a shadow of last year's glory.  Stuck in the three-team relegation zone at the bottom of the standings are West Ham, Stoke City, and Sunderland: I get Sunderland being there, but the other two...especially West Ham, which was strong last year...just don't seem to belong there...

I guess the surprises for me, besides Leicester City and West Ham being so disappointing at this stage of the 2016-17 season, is how well both Liverpool and Everton...also based in the city of Liverpool...are doing.  Everton had a reputation for fielding a quality team that has been absent for the last couple of years and Liverpool, while almost winning the championship three years ago, has also been a disappointment to its demanding fans.  I think it would be great to see these two teams continue to excel this year...

By the way, if you're interesting in watching English Premier League soccer action on TV, NBCSports broadcasts live matches on Saturday and Sunday mornings.  In Gainesville this is on Cox Cable channel 33...

Just Finished Reading Ursula K. Le Guin's The Farthest Shore

Actually, I "just finished" reading The Farthest Shore, the third novel in Ursula K. Le Guin's young readers' fantasy series Earthsea, a few days ago but chose to first write about the other two books I had just read (Ruth Rendell's From Doon with Death and Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre).  With the first Earthsea book, titled A Wizard of Earthsea, the author had initially intended it to be a singular work, but later decided to expand it into a trilogy.  Now, with the addition of other books as well, I suppose the final book in the series will be the last one written before her death...hopefully not to come anytime soon.  The Farthest Shore jumps years ahead in time and focuses on the series' unifying protagonist, the wizard Ged, as he tries to discover the source of the ongoing drain of magic in the world.  To this end, Arren, a young prince in a northern island kingdom, arrives on Archmage Ged's island of Roke to give more disturbing news and offer his services in the quest to save the world.  The two set out in Ged's boat and travel the seas, going first south and then to the "farthest shore" in the west on the island of Selidor.  Along the way they encounter numerous adventures, strange cultures, dragons, and news, both derived from others' accounts and via their own dreams, of a sinister wizard in the west who has conquered death and offers immortality to those who join him...

The Farthest Shore reminded me a bit of C.S. Lewis in his Chronicles of Narnia book Voyage of the Dawn Treader...albeit with an more Eastern philosophical flavor instead of the overtly Christian allegories of Lewis.  The idea that death is necessary for life and that there needs to be a balance and separation between the two sounds Taoist or Zen to me, given my admittedly relative ignorance of these belief systems.  So yes, it is natural for one to want to avoid dying and to stay alive...but it is unnatural not to see death as inevitable.  The contrast between the idea of thriving in the present and pursuing a life of meaning and virtue while looking and acting outwardly from oneself, and that of striving to ensure one's own perpetual existence only for the sake of that existence, is rigorously examined, skillfully interwoven throughout this interesting story's narrative.  Ged has matured and understands things on a deep level, to the point where he can be a mentor to the young prince Arren.  This book was my favorite of the series so far, but I recommend you first read books one and two (A Wizard of Earthsea and The Tombs of Atuan, respectively) before tackling it...

Sampan Off the Port Bow

If you've been anywhere near a TV set during the last few days and happened to hit upon one of those cable news channels, you've no doubt encountered the extensive coverage of the prolonged protests in Charlotte, North Carolina against the fatal police shooting of a young black man there.  At the same time, there is a parallel story going on in Oklahoma where a young white female cop is being charged with manslaughter after shooting to death a black man on a highway there.  As a matter of fact, these types of fatal encounters have been accumulating and have gotten quite beyond old...they are reprehensible.  Not just because some people got shot, or necessarily because the most highly publicized incidents involved black victims...I wonder if those in other demographic groups who have been killed in this fashion by law enforcement are being filtered out of media coverage because they don't fit the protesters' narrative.  No, the truly reprehensible...and frightening...aspect to all of this is the attitude that the police take to citizens under their jurisdiction when they decide that they are suspects: suddenly the lives of the very people they were supposed to be protecting...but whom they're now suspecting...no longer seem to matter very much...

Off and on for the last 52 years, the United States military, while avoiding officially declared wars, has instead been engaged in what our government has termed "police action", especially regarding the adventures in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq.  The missions in these places have been to protect their populations against the "bad guys" (like communists and terrorists) and give the people there the chance to enjoy freedom and prosperity.  The problem with all this is that, once the troops were there occupying the land that others called their own, the soldiers often could not distinguish among those who were friends and who were foes.  So in a sense the locals collectively became the "suspects", and that tended to cheapen their lives.  You may have heard of the terrible My Lai Massacre in South Vietnam, which is an illustration of this point, as well as seeing on the evening news back then the burning down of villages in order to "save" them.  The movie Apocalypse Now, which depicted the overwhelming suspicion that a sizable segment of the American troops had of the native population, has a scene in which the Navy boat transporting upriver the movie's protagonist, played by Martin Sheen, encounters a Vietnamese junk boat, also referred to as a "sampan".  Someone yells out "Sampan off the port bow!" and, despite Sheen's protestations, the Navy boat's chief insists on stopping it and investigating.  The Vietnamese on it dutifully provide the necessary papers, but no, they are now "suspects" and so the boat has to be searched for contraband.  While this is going on, a woman in the boat suddenly lurches toward the back and the entire Navy boat goes berserk with gunfire, killing all of the Vietnamese on the sampan.  These were supposed to be the people that were being protected in this "police action" most of the world called the Vietnam War, but instead they were always going to be suspects from the soldiers' viewpoint and suffer the resulting peril...

I brought up the above illustration, admittedly in itself a work of fiction, to point out what I believe to be the main problem. Whether one is a policeman on patrol duty in this country or a soldier on "police action" duty in an occupied country, they should be respected and applauded for their brave service and sacrifices.  But the behavior of some of these courageous public servants seems to "go south" toward any individual once he or she gets put into the "suspect" category...and the value of that suspect's life becomes diminished as a result.  It is not for the police to administer justice or decide who is guilty.  I cannot understand how the only available option for subduing uncooperative suspects is to shoot them with deadly force.  As far as the racism angle being charged by protesters and movements like Black Lives Matter is concerned, I feel that there may be a tendency for some of those within the police forces to discriminately, even if done unconsciously, move African-Americans they encounter in the line of duty out of the category of the "protected" and into that of the "suspected".  And once you're a suspect, life can get very, very scary: make the wrong move and you're history, whether you are a Vietnamese running in a sampan or an American reaching into your pocket or your car...

Just Finished Reading Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre

Charlotte Brontë is one of three English sisters...the others are Emily and Anne...who wrote fiction in the early-to-mid 1800s.  I already read Emily's Wuthering Heights...here is a link to my 2014 article about it [link].  Jane Eyre was written in the first person from the vantage point of the title protagonist, an orphaned girl, growing up and encountering romance and moral/ethical quandaries in the setting of rural England around the beginning of the nineteenth century, complete with a rigid, entrenched class-based society.  A very sympathetic character, Jane has to endure unfair treatment in childhood at the home of her aunt, who heaps abuse on her while spoiling her own three children.  Eventually, Jane is sent to Lowood, a charity school primarily for poor orphaned girls.  There she grows into a young woman and then sets out to earn her own independent living.  She is hired as a little girl's governess and encounters the estate's enigmatic owner Mr. Rochester, along with an ongoing dark secret hidden in the third story of the mansion.  Will Jane find romance, and what or who is that mystery that from time to time manifests itself in violence?  And at this point, as is usually the case when I'm discussing what I just read, here is where I tell you, the reader, to just go find out the rest for yourself...I'm not gonna spoil the book!

I have a special affinity for stories written in the first person, and Jane Eyre is a very good story.  It may be hard to find a more likable character than the persevering, sensitive, generous, compassionate, intelligent...and above all, assertive Jane.  The irony of this tale, which for its time was very pro-women, is that the author felt the need to publish it under a man's pseudonym, Currer Bell, instead of her own name, due to the perceived prejudicial attitudes then about women writers.  Of course, Charlotte Brontë is now a great name in English literature, and Jane Eyre is the primary reason.  I felt, as I was reading it, that Brontë was making a comparison study in religion and ethics, and how structured, organized religion often failed to live up to the compassion and morality that it sought to impose on the general population, while "true religion", as Jane Eyre herself practiced it, was very personal and beautiful.  I liked that about this book, which I strongly encourage you to read...

2016 Baseball Wild Card Races

With only nine or ten games remaining in the 2016 Major League Baseball season, the teams are scrambling for the wild card positions in the playoffs.  Each league offers two slots, but the competition is close for them.  In the American League, while Boston, Cleveland, and Texas appear headed to become their respective divisions' champions, the wild card race is wide open (teams are followed by their win-loss records):

Toronto      83-69
Detroit        82-70
Baltimore   81-70
Houston     81-72
Seattle        80-72

With only three games separating these five teams, who knows how it will end up.  The National League likewise has solid division leaders in Washington, Chicago (Cubs), and Los Angeles...either already champions or close to clinching the division.  The wild card race here is also very tight, although more restricted:

New York Mets  81-72
San Francisco     81-72
St. Louis             80-72

There's no telling which one of these will end up the odd team out...I'm hoping the Cardinals finally miss the playoffs for a change.  I tend to root for San Francisco, but I'd be content to see the Mets get back to the World Series.  As for the American League, I'd like to see Houston or Seattle get in as wild cards...but I like Boston in the playoffs.  Now who do I think will actually make it to this year's World Series?  The Chicago Cubs and Texas Rangers...

Just Finished Reading Ruth Rendell's From Doon with Death

Within the span of only a few hours I happened to finish reading three different (very different) books last night and this morning.  I'll discuss them all in time, but today I'm focusing on the Ruth Rendell mystery novel From Doon with Death, her 1964 debut book and the first of the long-running Inspector Wexford series...

Having already been won over to Ruth Rendell's writing from her books Portobello and The Crocodile Bird, I was anxious to see what this Inspector Wexford series would be like.  The locale is a small English town named Kingsmarkham and Reginald Wexford is the Chief Inspector for the police there, accompanied by Inspector Mike Burden on their cases.  In this first book, they have a murder to solve, that of a seemingly ordinary housewife with no apparent enemies or history to speak of.  What were Margaret Parson's routines, who knew her, what was the state of her marriage with her husband, and what was her past like? Wexford and Burden tackle these issues in detail and...guess what?  They solve the crime, of course...the culprit, while in 1964 probably caught the bulk of readers totally by surprise, in this year of 2016 would raise hardly an eyebrow.  So being as I am now a temporal resident of 2016 and no longer of 1964, I had pretty much figured it all out before the good inspector delivered his speech at the end revealing the murder mystery's solution...

I'm hoping that further books in this series are a little more difficult to solve and that the personality of the lead character of Inspector Wexford will be better developed.  He came across to me as a cranky, judgmental sort...not exactly someone that I would care to follow through a series.  On the other hand, Inspector Burden was more thoughtful and compassionate.  But it's not his series, is it?  Still, I intend to plod on through the books, hoping for better.  I will say this: Ruth Rendell's The Crocodile Bird and Portobello were much more meaningful and enjoyable for me than From Doon with Death.  Having said that, it must be recognized that the latter was her first book, and with first books it's a good idea to be light on the criticism.  The next Ruth Rendell book I'll be reading is a 1990 story credited to Barbara Vine, a pseudonym of Rendell's...

Watching the Clouds and Moon Last Night

Last night after work, I came home, got a bite to eat, and then went outside to my backyard seat to look at the night sky.  It was around one in the morning, and the sky had shifted slightly from the previous time I had sat out there, with Pegasus directly overhead and the star Deneb Kaitos higher and more southern in the sky.  But with the exceptions of Capella and Aldeberan lying low above the horizon, that was pretty much all of the stars that I saw, for clouds...those with a small, patchy cotton-like appearance, covered much of the east, where I faced.  And near the bottom of the formation was the moon, very bright in almost a last quarter phase.  Clouds were flying over and around it, and I began to notice the visual interaction.  The closest clouds to the moon, as they generally approached it, did not seem to be going in a straight path, but rather in an unnatural, jerky sort of manner, as if some power were manipulating them.  I thought this most peculiar and turned my vision upward to the bulk of the cloud mass.  In it there appeared what looked like a face...no, two faces, one emerging at an angle from the other.  Then I looked back down at a torrent of low-flying darker clouds as they raced upward from the eastern horizon, passed directly over the moon, and then disappeared in the night sky...

Now you may want to take what I have just written, which is an honest account of what I experienced, and try to draw some sort of conclusion about it.  Those inclined to believing more in the paranormal and supernatural may pick up some meaning behind the connections I made with the cloud movements and the faces.  Or perhaps, some may decide that I am being unduly influenced by forces that I should leave well enough alone.  But the truth is that I just took a few minutes to exercise my faculties of observation and imagination, walking away from it with the pleasant feeling of having experienced something special.  So it's not necessary to delve "beyond reality", as a new radio talk show that deals with the paranormal and related topics is named, in order to see meaning in the world around us; learning to observe and imagine...and being able to recognize our imagination simply for what it is...can enrich one's life without going over to the "other side"...

The Pets of My Life

My life has been marked by the presence of pets, and these have been of the most familiar types to us here in America: cats and dogs.  In my early childhood, not long after my parents moved us into a house in  late 1960, they brought home a relatively old, gentle grey cat they named Tom.  Tom was the family pet until his death around 1963 or so.  Not long thereafter they took me and my sister to the humane society and we got two kittens, the grey/white-striped Tiger and the completely black Panther.  Although Tiger seemed to adjust well to life with us, Panther was a bit on the wild side...that one was eventually brought back.  Somewhere along the line, we picked up a giant of a cat we called Smoky...one day that cat just wandered off and never came back.  Tiger remained as our house pet through '64 and '65, but as we let our cats come and go as they pleased, Tiger became more and more estranged from us until we had given up on it coming back home.  In February 1966, my father brought home a cockapoo puppy we named Michelle, after the Beatles song that had been so popular the year before.  I think after that Tiger showed up once or twice more...and then never again.  Michelle began the era of pets we kept either indoors, in the fenced-in back yard, or on a leash.  She gradually became blind until the affliction was total.  But we all loved Michelle and she lived a long, happy life, born in 1965 and passing away in 1981...

It wasn't until after I was married a year when Melissa and I got our first pet together, a miniature poodle we named Taffy...after its color.  Taffy lived long, from 1987 to 2007, and it was sad at the end when she was finally put to sleep.  Cuddles, a dachshund/whatever mix, came along a little puppy in 1997 and also lived to 2007.  And then it was Freckles, another mixed-breed with some Australian shepherd in her, whom we got as a little puppy in 2005 and is still plodding along quite well.  Oh, I might as well also mention that our grown daughter has taken under her wings her own puppy...

In spite of the fact that I've had several pets in conjunction with the childhood and adult families I've been a part of, I have never decided, on my own initiative, that I myself needed or particularly wanted any of them.  It has always been others who seem to have desired the pets, and I was either a child without a say in the matter (although I liked the pets we got) or an adult who was accommodating others' feelings. That doesn't mean that I didn't bond to each cat or dog: I did, and loved them as members of the family, past and present.  But during those eight years when I was completely on my own as a single, I never once had the remotest desire to get a pet.  To me, they're nice to have in the context of a family, but I'm fine without them, too...

Second Frog

I've grown accustomed lately to sitting out in the middle of my back yard around midnight and looking out at the sky.  Because there is a lot of overhead tree growth facing the west, my direction tends to be toward the east, particularly the southeast.  And this time of the year at my latitude, the southeastern night sky isn't very much to behold.  As a matter of fact, under the city lights I have to endure with my star-gazing, there is only one isolated star out in that part of the sky to view: Deneb Kaitos, or Beta Ceti, the brightest star in the constellation Cetus...

In Greek mythology, Cetus represents the whale, or sea-monster...I don't suppose the ancients made much of a distinction between the two...that was attacking the fair Andromeda when the hero Perseus, flying in on the winged horse Pegasus, rescued her...while Queen Cassiopeia, Andromeda's mother, looked on with fear.  All five of these characters are constellations in the autumn evening sky, with Cetus being the southernmost.  While I sit there looking at the sky, Cetus stretches across it from just above the eastern horizon to the southeast.  It has some discernibly visible stars, but overall is still a relatively faint constellation.  As for the name Deneb Kaitos...

Deneb Kaitos, the more traditional name given to Beta Ceti, means "tail of the whale".  But just last year at a meeting of astronomers who apparently didn't have anything better to do, its official designation was changed to Diphda, which in Arabic means "second frog".  Diphda had been around for centuries as well and had been in a kind of competition with Deneb Kaitos for the star's name.  I grew up calling it Deneb Kaitos, but I'll keep Diphda handy in case that I hear or read someone discussing it that way.  As for "first frog", which star is that? The bright Fomalhaut of the constellation Piscis Austrinus, which just precedes it along approximately the same latitude in the sky.  Ah, now I see it: two frogs hopping endlessly across the heavens, one after the other...

Diphda, or Deneb Kaitos, or Beta Ceti, or Second Frog is an orange giant, much larger than our sun, cooler, and with a considerably shorter life span.  It is 96 light-years away and there haven't as yet been any planets discovered orbiting it (info provided by Wikipedia).   That's a bit different from "first frog" Fomalhaut, a triple-star system which is much closer at 25 light-years, the largest star not being a giant and recently discovered to possess a planetary system.   Sometimes while just sitting there gazing at the sky it's easy to just see the stars as dots...looking up facts about each of them can enhance the viewing experience...

Explosive Growth of Internet Information and Educational Resources

It seems that I am constantly in a state of "catch-up" when it comes to the Internet and the explosion of innovations in this exciting digital age of ours.  Being someone who likes history, languages, and reading, the amount of material now available over the World Wide Web is astounding, to say the least.  If you want to know what land Florida's counties covered in 1845, 1855, 1902, or later...all you have to do is perform a search and presto, there they are...I was surprised to see a sizeable town called Newnansville, where Gainesville would have been, on the 1845 map that also showed Alachua County extending to cover much of the Gulf of Mexico coastline.  You can now learn just about anything on YouTube...all that is needed is your time and attention. Just pick any college course and somebody's probably teaching it somewhere on this site.  There is so much language learning material available now on the Internet that it is mind-boggling.  And then you can translate anything you see on your screen into just about any language you want.  Amazing!  And what about the Wiki network that provides so much information and direction on just about any subject conceivable?  Today I accidentally stumbled upon one such site: Wikisources...

Wikisources offers a staggering amount of public domain literature, free of charge.  I like the fiction, but there are also works about science, history, law, religion, philosophy...just check out their categories for yourself!  And what's even cooler is that they has a mobile app called "Wikisurf" that enables me to read any of this material on my cell phone!

Maybe you're chuckling to yourself as I reveal all of these revelations that you might well have known about for some time...I wouldn't be at all surprised, being a bit behind the times in this area.  With this revolution of instant availability of information and educational resources, I'm going to have to sit back and consider revising my personal goals as I take into account the ever-expanding possibilities for growth in so many different areas...

Just Finished Reading Ursula K. Le Guin's The Tombs of Atuan

Three days ago I wrote about science fiction & fantasy writer Ursula K. Le Guin's book A Wizard of Earthsea, the first in her Earthsea Cycle series.  Now I've just finished reading the second volume, titled The Tombs of Atuan.  The setting is the Earthsea Archipelago on our fantasy make-believe planet, on the northeastern island of Atuan, controlled and populated by the vicious Kargish...analogous to our Vikings.  A young girl is taken from her family according to the traditionally held belief that when the Priestess of the Tombs dies, she is reincarnated into the body of another female.  And the Priestess has just died and an investigation ensues across the land to find another born at the moment of her death.  It is poor Tenar who is chosen to live her life among the dark and foreboding tombs in the middle of the desert...

The Tombs of Atuan continues on with Tenar after a few years...she is now called "nameless" or "Arha"...a seeming contradiction of terms.  She learns of the secret underground in the tombs, including a long and tricky labyrinth that contains a treasure room somewhere within.  And in that treasure room is half of the Ring of Atuan, which generations earlier a hero fighting the Kargish lost there.  The other half's fate is unknown, but legend tells that a family in the area may be hiding it.  Why is this important?  In the first book, A Wizard of Earthsea, it is told that protagonist wizard Ged would successfully get the ring and return it to its people.  Predictably, Ged does make his appearance in this second book, although under inauspicious circumstances.  And that's where I'll leave you, the potential reader of this series, to go see for yourself what happens...

In the realm of fantasy literature, there aren't too many female protagonists.  Tenar is a compelling character worth following.  Unlike with Ged in the first book, hers is a life of physical hardship and restrictions with little or no opportunity given for growth or glory.  Her spirit fights against these limitations...while Ged, in the face of his opportunities, had foolishly spurned them...

So now I've read two books in this series, and each one has its own main protagonist.  I wonder what Ursula K. Le Guin...who incidentally lives in Portland, Oregon...has to offer us in the third one.  Guess I'll just have to read it and find out...

Three 5K Races in Area This Saturday

Last Friday I was considering running in a local 5K race, to take place at Cofrin Nature Park off Newberry Road the next morning.  But I was tired that night when I got off from work at midnight and decided to defer my racing to another day.  Now it's the following Thursday and I'm looking at three 5K events, all scheduled for Saturday morning.  One is the Gainesville Youth Chorus Run/Walk & Fun Run at St. Francis Academy on NW 39th Avenue, one is the Sam Strong Run 2 End Duchenne (a form of muscular dystrophy) in Newberry, and the other is the Hunting for a Cure 5K (to cure sarcoma, a type of cancer) in Williston.  I can't run in them all, and if I feel like I did last week, I won't run in any of them.  But I also know that nobody around here is going to schedule any 5K races on a Sunday or Monday morning, when I've had plenty of rest.  So maybe I'll just have to tough it out and get up and run in one of these events Saturday morning...that Youth Chorus race should be the easiest to get to...although that area can be pretty hilly.  The course is described as cross-country/trail, and the race is set to begin at 9 am.  The Newberry race starts at 8:30 and might be easier to handle.  I guess I'll just have to wait and see how I feel about it all when I get off from work again tomorrow night...

Tropical Storm Julia Forms Over Florida Land

I was surprised last night while watching the eleven o'clock local news during my final break at work to discover that a new tropical storm, named Julia, had formed and was in the Jacksonville vicinity.  But I wasn't aware until a few minutes ago that Julia had developed into a tropical storm while its center of circulation was over land...about five miles west of Jacksonville.  This is the first recorded instance of a tropical depression intensifying into a named tropical storm while centered over Florida land, although Beryl likewise intensified while over Louisiana in 1988.  Normally, someone like me living in Gainesville would be concerned about so near a storm as Julia, but almost all of its bad weather lies to its east, over the ocean.  After passing through Jacksonville without much concern other than winds of around 40 mph and strong rip currents along the beaches, it has maintained its minimal tropical storm strength and drifted on northward, at this writing centered in the vicinity of Savannah, Georgia.  There are no steering currents to send Julia on any discernible trajectory, and the various computer models are all over the map regarding where it will eventually go...

It's funny how, with some tropical storms...such was the case with Hermine...we'll go on for days and days noting its position, the prospects for it strengthening, and wondering what direction it will take.  And then there's a storm like Julia that seems to have formed out of nowhere and is suddenly right on us.  And along the lines of storms involving days of anticipation, it's just been announced that there is a new, strong tropical depression that just came off the coast of Africa...

Just Finished Reading Ursula K. Le Guin's A Wizard of Earthsea

A Wizard of Earthsea, written by Ursula K. Le Guin and first published in 1968, is the first book in the Earthsea Cycle, a fantasy series for younger readers.  Being a glutton for punishment, I suppose, I decided to begin reading yet another fantasy series...will I ever learn?  Once again, here we go with the wizards, dragons, secret words and names, arcane histories, wizardry school, bronze age technology, special rules for magic, wise old masters of the craft, and so on.  Oh, and of course this all happens in a make-believe place, this one being the Earthsea Archipelago, basically on a world covered by ocean where the entire human population lives spread out on numerous islands...or so it seems.  The protagonist is a young wizard (or mage) named Ged, also called Sparrowhawk, who grows up on the island of Gont, the homeland of many in the magical trade.  Called to the "profession", Ged has an issue with personal pride and is always trying to impress others with his magical abilities.  At first I was tired of feeling that I was expected to root for this rather shallow character, but then the story took a turn and he became more of a tragic hero, evoking my sympathies...

A Wizard of Earthsea is a short book, but it is full of esoteric details and place names that can tax the reader's memory.  This aspect of fantasy literature I've grown to expect, though.  There is a lot of adventure here, but the story's ultimate messages evolve into themes of self-discovery and balance with the world.  So the story turns out at the end to be a bit deeper than it hinted at the start.  Because of the setting, the narrative has a strong maritime emphasis, giving it a special uniqueness in the fantasy genre.  And Le Guin departed from the stereotypical white-Nordic type of fantasy heroes by making hers dark-skinned...good for her!  I give A Wizard of Earthsea a "thumbs up" and am currently about halfway through the second book in the series, titled The Tombs of Atuan...

NFL Shows Double Standard with "Free Speech"

The National Football League's double standard concerning the issue of free speech as it pertains to player protests during the national anthem and one team's attempt to honor its slain law enforcement officers is too much for me to bear.  Following the refusal of the league to allow Dallas Cowboys players to display a small memorial to the recent murdered policemen from their city on their helmets, the same organization is bending over backwards to appease players who refuse to honor our national anthem, either by remaining seated, kneeling, or pumping their fists in the air.  Now if you are going to side with the players who protested in this manner before yesterday's games because you agree with their agenda but oppose what the Dallas players want to do, then perhaps you are one who believes in freedom of speech only as long as whoever is speaking "freely" agrees with you.  On the other hand, you may agree with some of the reasons for the protests...as I do and am also concerned about civil rights violations of minorities by police...but think that this form of expression is unacceptable.  I know that our Constitution's First Amendment, which protects us from being persecuted or censored by our government for what we say or express, does not extend to private employees who are expected by their employers to abide by a certain standard of demeanor for the sake of the company's public image...or go seek employment elsewhere.  No doubt this also includes playing for professional sports teams as well.  And the National Football League is quick to apply free speech restrictions in the case of the Dallas Cowboys players wanting to honor their fallen police heroes.  But they then turn around and say it is these other players' "rights" to openly show their contempt for this country while publicly on the field, wearing their teams' uniforms, and getting paid their millions.  Something is seriously amiss here.  I followed the first weekend of the 2016 regular season to see what would come of all this after second-rate 49er quarterback Colin Kaepernick started it all by refusing to stand for the anthem before an exhibition game. Sad to say, I am very disappointed at the outcome and plan to boycott the National Football League henceforth...

Since 9/11

The horrendous coordinated terrorist attacks against the United States on September 11, 2001 were done in the name of Islam by Al-Qaeda, using nineteen mass-murderers to hijack four passenger jet planes and bring down the two World Trade Center towers, hit the Pentagon, and unsuccessfully attempt to hit either the White House or Capitol building.  Some 3,000 people died from this abominable perversion of a great world religion by a few. And a few of us here in America may sometimes come to the erroneous conclusion that we brought it on as retaliation for something we had done, like supporting Israel or stationing troops in Saudi Arabia in order to drive Saddam Hussein's Iraq out of Kuwait in the Persian Gulf War.  Or maybe they just didn't like our liberal society with social freedoms of which they disapprove with their distorted view of the way things should be.  But before some of us go too far with this self-assessment...and before any of us condemns the entire religion of Islam for the actions of some who seem to be demonically-possessed and who commit their atrocities in that name, let's just take a look at the list of countries since that infamous day in 2001 who have likewise been victimized by Islamic extremist terrorism, whether by Al-Qaeda, ISIS (or Daesh, as Muslims derogatorily call it), Boko Haram, other terrorist organizations, or lone-wolf attackers (the list comes courtesy of Wikipedia):

India, Israel, Pakistan, Tunisia, Philippines, Indonesia, Russia, Kenya, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Turkey, Spain, Iraq, Bangladesh, Egypt, Netherlands, Lebanon, United Kingdom, Jordan, Yemen, Somalia, Uganda, Iran, Sweden, Germany, China, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Nigeria, France, Bulgaria, Libya, Algeria, Niger, Afghanistan, Syria, Australia, Canada, United Arab Emirates, Cameroon, Denmark, Mali, Chad, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Belgium,...and of course, the United States...

These terrorist attacks over the span of the last fifteen years have happened on five continents and in at least forty-six countries, of which twenty-two...nearly half of the total...have majority Muslim populations.  So, you see, it isn't just us in the U.S.A. they're fighting...don't you think it's about high time the world came together to firmly stand up against this perversion...and openly recognize it for what it is?

Just Finished Reading Ruth Rendell's The Crocodile Bird

A few days ago I read my first Ruth Rendell book, the novel Portobello.  I enjoyed it enough to want to investigate other writings of hers, including her celebrated Inspector Wexford series.  But first I decided to read another standalone Rendell novel, this one titled The Crocodile Bird.  Once again, the setting and culture is distinctly English...but whereas in Portobello the focus was mainly on three different men living in London, this story is about a mother and her daughter living in the secluded English countryside...

Ruth Rendell has been described as a psychological mystery writer.  I think I now understand that assessment: it isn't necessarily so much that her narrative immerses the reader in a whodunit-type mystery as much as unravelling the underlying background and motives of the characters and their actions.  Eve is the mother and Liza her daughter, and they live alone together throughout the girl's childhood in the gatehouse to an estate called Shrove.  Eve, already well-educated in the classical sense, keeps her daughter out of school and teaches her at home.   Eve is obsessed with Shrove and wants to live the rest of her life there while insulating Liza from the rest of the world, which Eve loathes as a terrible place.  The problem here is that Eve doesn't own Shrove...it is another, Jonathan Tobias, an absentee-but-benevolent man about Eve's age, who controls the property she covets and lets her reside there in the role of estate manager.  The entangled, long-running relationship between Eve and Jonathan, the overly protective manner of mother bringing up daughter, and Liza's little acts of rebellion along the way are all significant parts of the story.  Of course, we want to know the roots of all this as well, and that is gradually revealed in the book.  If this were all there was to The Crocodile Bird, it might be interesting on some level...but Liza knows the dark secrets of her mother regarding the disappearances of men on the property.  She loves her mother and is protective of her while herself not subscribing to the latter's cynical view of the world.  And why should she, being brought up ignorant of things others take for granted...like television and shopping, for example...

I guess that's about as far as I can go discussing the plot of The Crocodile Bird without giving away important elements and spoiling it for the reader.  And this is a very good book, a worthwhile investment of your reading time.  One thing I got out of it was something that I had long known from personal experience.  As a child, you can grow to discern the faults of your parents and become reconciled to them, intellectually separating yourself from their undesirable traits while still loving and respecting them.  But there can still be a strong, unconscious imprint of the parents' personalities on the child, the result of which often is displayed throughout that individual's lifetime, for better or for worse.  Can we as adults rise above what we've unwittingly picked up as children and chart our own courses without that imprint negatively affecting us?  The Crocodile Bird is ultimately an examination of this important question...

McDonald's Beats Starbucks with Coffee, Prices, Seating Space

I'm sitting here about an hour before I have to go in to work, which is close by. "Here" is the McDonald's at SW 34th Street and Williston Road at the southern fringe of Gainesville, where I am enjoying their rather generous promotion of iced coffee, any size going for $1.39.  You can get it in different flavors: I prefer hazelnut.  The coffee goes down faster, but I enjoy it more than the hot version.  I can sit just about anywhere I want and, of course, get free Wi-Fi here...so why go to Starbucks when there is more than an even chance that I won't be able to find a place to sit while paying through the nose for less coffee?

McDonald's is more of a blue-collar place to visit as opposed to Starbucks' somewhat snobby, gentrified appeal.  But who am I kidding?  I'm a blue-collar kind of guy anyway...and besides, I know a good deal when I see it.  Also, this seems to one place in town where students haven't taken over, staking out tables for hours with their laptops.  This particular McDonald's is interesting because it is situated at the southernmost I-75 exit in Gainesville and is a frequent stop for travelers.  When I walk out of here, it's less than five minutes to my workplace.  So why do I even bother stopping off at another place before work? 

Just Finished Reading James Patterson's The 6th Target

So far I understand there have been fifteen books published in James Patterson's Women's Murder Club crime series.  I'm reading them in numerical order, having just finished The 6th Target.  This is another Patterson novel in which he shares writing credits with another, the collaborator again being Maxine Paetro.  As is the general pattern in this series, main protagonist Lindsay Boxer, a San Francisco police homicide officer, is embroiled in trying to catch a seriously deranged killer. This time one of her best friends, a fellow member of the informal group called Women's Murder Club, has been shot and seriously wounded.  And there are two other ongoing mysteries as well: abductions of precocious children of wealthy families...along with their nannies, and a series of nasty crimes committed at the apartment complex where Cindy, another "Club" member, resides.  As I read on into the novel, I kept expecting these three distinctly separate story lines to come together at the end, but no...Patterson/Paetro apparently decided to take what could have been three different short stories and combine them into the format of a single novel, adding assorted subplots involving the personal and professional life of Boxer.  I wasn't very surprised, since the same sort of thing happened with the previous book in the series, The 5th Horseman...

These Patterson crime novels are pretty short and simple to read, and I have no problem getting hold of them.  But there is something disturbing about the attitudes of the "good guys", i.e. the police, in these stories.  They tend to be insulting and unnecessarily rough with suspects, something that is easy enough for the reader to support since he or she enjoys the advantage of already knowing their guilt.  But in real life, being picked up and interrogated and/or arrested for a crime is all on the side of our system of justice known as "presumed innocent".  However, the cops in Lindsay Boxer's SF Police Department seem to go on the presumption "guilty until proven innocent".  I've seen this kind of attitude in numerous movies...Clint Eastwood's Harry Callahan series is a prime example...and several television police series.  Maybe the notion promoted in many of these shows that the police should be the arbiters of justice instead of the courts is why I have a sense of aversion to them.  It certainly doesn't help me to get through this Women's Murder Club series...

Happy 30th Anniversary, My Sweet Melissa

Wow, today I've been married thirty years.  It could only have happened with such a wonderful, precious woman like my sweet Melissa...I love you so much, honey!  I'm eagerly looking forward to the next thirty!

Fun and Interesting Labor Day Weekend for Me and Family

This won't be a long entry...I have to get on to work soon.  I had a wonderful, interesting Labor Day weekend with my wife and family.  Melissa, Will, Rebecca, and I attended the University of Florida's season opening football game, experiencing the crush of the crowd as well as the heightening anxiety as to whether or not the Gators were actually going to be able to beat their small college opponent.  It was a rainy night and we got to know the UF campus...at least part of it...quite well on our walks to and from the parking garage...

Then from Sunday afternoon through this morning, Melissa and I went to stay at a hotel we like on Daytona Beach.  That was a fantastic, memorable outing...too bad I have to go back to work now....

The Beach, The Who, and Politically Correct Self-Censorship

Right now I'm sitting here on my fifth-floor hotel balcony in Daytona Beach, looking out on the high tide coming in on the beach and the very windy conditions, thinking that, although this is the time of day that I typically do my outdoor run, I think I might just wait until I have a little more beach to run on.  On the other hand, it's already rained a bit this morning and the outlook for the afternoon just increases the probability of storms.  Oh well, maybe I'll just end up using the treadmill in the exercise room... 

When I'm at the beach like this, listening to the waves and sea gulls, sometimes I think of the great British rock band The Who.  Why? The answer lies on their masterpiece album Quadrophenia, which I bought in 1997 but was originally released in 1973, and contains a number of tracks that vividly put the listener on the beach.  One is Sea and Sand, which I moderately liked...I liked just about everything on this great album...and another is Bell Boy,  which I consider to be one of The Who's all-time greatest songs.  Bell Boy has two lead singers on it, Roger Daltrey and Keith Moon.  I wasn't aware of Moon's vocal contribution until recently, having thought all these years that Daltrey was just altering his voice in a comical way.  But on MTV/Live (Cox Channel 1098 in Gainesville) there was a documentary show about the making of Quadrophenia that spotlighted Moon's special role in the song.  And it was this very show that disturbed me concerning possible self-censorship for the sake of political correctness...

The documentary, titled The Who: Quadrophenia--Can You See the Real Me? went in chronological order to how the different tracks were finally arranged on the album.  It was toward the end, and they had just discussed the recording of Bell Boy and I was anticipating them reviewing how they made the beautiful...and sinister...next track, Doctor Jimmy, which in my opinion was the crowning achievement of Quadrophenia.  But they didn't discuss Doctor Jimmy...no, they just skipped right over it to the final song, Love, Reign O'er Me.  Although that last track was full of sexual overtones, Doctor Jimmy may have been considered too politically dangerous to discuss, with the themes of jealousy, violent revenge, and sexual conquest and aggression dominating its lyrics.  But it was not promoting any of these negative and undesirable feelings and behaviors: it was revealing something about the inner darkness of one of the story's characters (Quadrophenia is structured around a story, much as The Who's Tommy was three years earlier).  Surely they could have said something to this effect and still talked about the song on the show.  And who knows, maybe Pete Townshend, who nearly single-handedly created, wrote, and produced Quadrophenia, just didn't think it was significant enough to cover in the documentary.  But Doctor Jimmy was a big staple on album rock radio and any show about Quadrophenia that omits it has to be questionable, for whatever motives...

Hermine's Aftermath Brings Dreary Weather

In the aftermath of Hurricane Hermine, which only dealt the Gainesville area a glancing blow with minimal damage...although tragically a homeless man in the county to our south was killed when a tree fell on him and the Gulf coast town of Cedar Key suffered devastating storm surge damage...the rest of the Atlantic Seaboard is now in a state of alert with the storm predicted to stick to a meandering, aimless path for the next few days, causing intermittent bad weather, high winds, and severe rip current along their beaches.  Right now I'm sitting at my usual spot at Magnolia Parke Starbucks, having managed to procure the end seat at the window counter after trying sitting outdoors...that is until little raindrops started to fall on my laptop.  The skies have been pretty much uniformly overcast and dreary today with periods of rain.  I like the dreariness...at least in the daytime, but can do without the rain that often accompanies it.  It's best later on in the year when dry cold fronts sweep through us from the northwest, bringing the welcome cloud cover as well as pleasant coolness.  But now I'm happy just to have the clouds...but please, enough rain, already...

The other day a friend of ours gave Melissa four tickets to the University of Florida opening day football game tonight against the University of Massachusetts in whatever they're now calling the Gators' home stadium (they change its name every few years)...so the whole family will be venturing out there this evening.  Aside from finding a parking spot, I'm a little concerned about the weather and how much, if any, it will be raining...especially while we're making our way to and from the stadium (I've been told that our tickets are for seats with an overhang...we'll see).  Maybe a few ponchos will alleviate those concerns...

Although I like the clouds during the day, I feel the opposite about it all after the sun sets.  I love clear nighttime skies, full of stars, planets, and occasionally, the moon.  I have some autumn projects planned with my star-gazing, in particular concerning the fainter and more obscure constellations like Pisces, Lacerta, Grus, Aquarius, Capricornus, Camelopardalis, Sculptor, Phoenix, and Indus...well, Indus may be too far south for my Gainesville latitude.  I just wish I had an available location more out in the unlit country where I could go to see the stars in their full glory...

Just Finished Reading Ruth Rendell's Portobello

Ruth Rendell was a renown British mystery novelist, best known for her long-running Inspector Wexford series.  However, this writer, who sadly died just last year, is not as well-known here in America as she is in her home country.  I hadn't heard of her until just recently and decided to read a standalone novel of hers to get acquainted with her works.  The book was Portobello, published in 2008...

Portobello is a road in London, and various people of different socioeconomic groups live in its vicinity.  Although not so clear at the story's beginning, Portobello develops more as a character study of people as their vastly disparate lives touch upon each other and they deal with their own individual crises.  There is the middle-class bourgeois gallery shop owner Eugene, his girl-friend/fiancée Ella, a pathetic young man named Joel who suffers a heart attack and then claims to have someone from the other side in his mind, Lance, a ne'er-do-well, slow, socially naïve young man, and his reformed criminal-turned-religious fanatic uncle Gib.  While Ella, the most reasonable and "normal" of the characters, serves to connect the others together within the narrative, it is Eugene, Joel, and Lance on whom the novel focuses...

Lance, chronically unemployed and perpetually on the government dole, engages in petty burglaries to supplement his meager income.  At his core, though, he is very immature and even childlike: during one of his break-ins, he is completely distracted by a tasty cake made by the tenant, to the point where he eats most of it right there, strewing crumbs all over the floor and taking the rest of it with him when he leaves.  Joel is a tragic figure of sorts: his very wealthy father completely supports him financially but refuses to talk to him, years after Joel's sister died in an accident for which his father holds him responsible by neglect.  Now his health is poor and he retreats into darkness...with his "companion" increasingly taking hold of his mind.  And Eugene?  This is where Ruth Rendell makes a great contrast.  Eugene has no outstanding difficulties...at least as far as anyone else might be able to discern.  But he is a secretive man, and he has an increasingly obsessive habit of eating sugar-free candies called "Choc-orange".  Surreptitiously procuring and then hiding bags of this stuff from Ella eventually consumes his thoughts...the contrast between Eugene's ridiculous and trivial obsession and the ordeals facing Joel and Lance points to a message I think that Rendell was trying to make to the reader: what really is going on in our lives and our subjective judgments about what is going on are two entirely different matters.  And that, whether or not things are going smoothly in an objective sense, it is our own biased appraisals that will ultimately prevail as to whether we're O.K. or not. But then again, maybe that's not what she was trying to say at all.  I guess it's too late now to ask her...

Portobello is a good story that weaves together the lives of different folks who live under very different circumstances, but close to one another.  The ending is great, and if you like extensive character development in your fiction, you can't beat it.  I'm definitely not through with Ruth Rendell's books...maybe I'll start next on that Inspector Wexford series...

Hermine About to Strike North Florida Gulf Coast

I wrote about what is now called Tropical Storm Hermine last week in an article (here is a link to it [link]).  Back then it was a low pressure disturbance termed "Invest 99-7L".  At that time the meteorologists were giving it as much as an 80% chance of development as it made its way through the Bahamas, posing a threat to South Florida.  Those predictions never materialized, and Invest 99-7L drifted on through the Florida Straits into the Gulf of Mexico, causing little more than some stormy weather in the Florida Keys.  But the area slowly began to develop and eventually was given "Tropical Depression 9" status.  It wasn't until yesterday, though, that its maximum sustained winds reached the point where it was named Tropical Storm Hermine.  And since then it has been rapidly organizing, strengthening, and enlarging, while my worst-case scenario from that earlier article of a tropical system switching directions in the Gulf and hitting Florida around Cedar Key has come true...

To be sure, the projected path of Hermine has shifted a bit to the north, with its center set to hit the Florida Gulf coast south of Tallahassee.  Still, this storm is assymetrical, with its worst weather...including strong thunderstorms, winds as high as 60 mph, heavy rains, and tornado threats...lying to its center's east.  And guess what?  That's exactly where we in Gainesville are!

By noon, Hermine had already strengthened to a powerful tropical storm with maximum sustained winds of 70 mph.  It is expected to be upgraded to Category 1 hurricane status by the time it makes landfall later today.  Since I don't live by the Gulf, I don't have to be concerned with storm surge, which by all accounts is going to be very dangerous...and is already making its effects felt there.  But the strong winds, heavy rain, and chance of tornados are going to be matters that we in the Gainesville area will have to deal with during the next 24 hours, in spite of apparently having "dodged the bullet" of a direct hurricane hit...