My Vacation Effectively Begins Today

Although my week off from work technically began at midnight Friday night when I finished my shift, Saturday and Sunday were off-days anyway, so I haven't yet been feeling like I'm on vacation...until now that is.  Normally, I would be going to work right now, so being off instead is a sweet, sweet feeling.   In a couple of days Melissa and I will be traveling to northern Georgia to enjoy the sights, fall season, and hiking.  Today and tomorrow are "home" days, which I also greatly savor.  I had planned to try running for ten miles, but early on my lower throat, which is a little sore, got too dry and I was coughing too heavily, curtailing the run after 3.5 miles.  I'll either try again tomorrow or wait until after Georgia to go on another long run.  In the meantime, I went to AAA and picked up some trip information and maps, after which I stopped off at the Starbucks on NW 13th Street (US 441) and 16th Avenue.  I hadn't been there in a while, mainly because I'd previously experienced a string of frustrating failures at finding parking spots there.  Today, however, I pulled right on into an empty slot and walked in, planning to sit at the long red counter facing the window.  But lo and behold, the counter was gone and the place's entire seating was changed...I opted instead to sit at a long, library-style table where I am right now, writing this.  And now I think I'll first take a little time to study some foreign languages, temporarily memorizing sentences in Chinese, German, Spanish, and Russian and then writing them out as I do on a daily basis, and then read a bit...I'm currently in the middle of a Ruth Rendell Inspector Wexford mystery novel and just starting a James Patterson Women's Murder Club book...

Social Visit and Sports Watching

Late this afternoon, Melissa and I attended a get-together in rural southwestern Alachua County celebrating the successful adoption of two little boys, brothers, into one of our church's families.  The location was way out in the country, the landscape dominated by vast cow pastures and wetlands.  Just outside the lodge where our party was being held is a pretty wetlands area...look at the picture.  Didn't see any gators, though...

And right now I'm toggling back and forth on my television between the World Series and the Major League Soccer playoffs...see the other two pics.  So far game number five between the Indians and Cubs has been close and exciting...if Chicago can't hang on (they're currently leading 3-2 in the bottom of the 7th inning in Wrigley Field), Cleveland will close out the series 4 games to 1 and continue the "Curse of the Billy Goat" for the Cubs, who haven't won a World Series since 1908.  Meanwhile, I've been watching the divisional semifinal round in the soccer playoffs: right now it's the Seattle Sounders playing at home against Dallas.  Well, those are the two major sports I'm following right now...as I've mentioned before, I'm boycotting the "Anti-American" Football League (see link: [link])...

Just Finished Reading John Grisham's Gray Mountain

Although I never considered myself a John Grisham fan, I just realized I've read more of his books over the years than I first thought: The Pelican Brief, The Firm, The Brethren, A Painted House, The Appeal...and now, Gray Mountain.  Other than A Painted House, which was a fictionalized autobiographic work about his childhood on a cotton farm near the Mississippi River, these books focus on lawyers and their cases...not exactly something I typically care to delve into.  Let's face it: I can't even stand walking into a courtroom for jury duty, and I feel an instant repulsion when the lawyers...either for the prosecution or the defense...spring into action and begin to speak.  Yet here I am reading John Grisham books...all I can say is that the dude must be a good writer...

Gray Mountain, recently published two years ago, is set in 2008 just as the Wall Street financial crash is causing massive downsizing in Manhattan corporate law firms.  The protagonist, young attorney Samantha Kofer, works for one of these and is put on unpaid furlough for a year...she just has to work for a nonprofit group doing pro bono work and she'll be able to retain her benefits and possibly return when the economy improves down the line.  There is a free legal clinic down in coal country, in the town of Brady, Virginia...and Samantha is hired and moves down there.  The clinic helps poor people who need legal aid but can't afford the fees that paid lawyers usually charge.  The woman heading the clinic has a nephew, Donovan Gray, who practices law in town and specializes in suing coal companies.   In his childhood, his father had sold strip mining rights to the coal on their private property, on Gray Mountain...and the company they dealt with devastated the mountain and the area.  More personal tragedy followed, and Donovan is on a personal crusade to do everything he can to fight the coal interests.  Naturally, he and Samantha become friends and, well, this is where I feel the need to taper off the plot description in case you might someday want to read this story for yourself...

I was a bit taken aback by the intense opposition to coal mining and the companies behind it that John Grisham expresses in Gray Mountain...there are no "grays" here, bad pun notwithstanding...everything is black or white, courageous heroes or diabolical villains, depending on which side of the coal issue they're on.  It kind of reminds me how people who are deeply into partisan politics will ascribe nothing but virtue and good intentions to their own side but will then paint those in the other party as degenerate and corrupt...even calling them "evil" or "monsters" or "deplorables" (see, I'm trying not to take sides here).  I find it hard to accept that only bad people are involved in running the coal industry, although I'm sure that there are also those who have cut corners at the expense of the environment, workers, and the general population in order to maximize profits. But if you're looking for a balanced analysis of this issue, don't waste your time reading this book.  Still, Gray Mountain is a good story and I give it a "thumbs up"...

Long Runs, Pain, and Injuries

This past Tuesday, around noontime, I ran eight miles, winding up and down my neighborhood streets. It was my longest single run since this past January, when I ran the Newnan's Lake 15K (9.3 miles).  I felt good at the end, not only knowing that I could have run for longer, but also that my body seemed to be suffering no adverse effects.  Other than a brief thigh cramp about an hour later, the rest of that day gave me a sense of optimism that I could start going on a couple of longer runs per week, which would put me in a constant state of preparedness for entering, running, and finishing any half-marathon race that might come along my way.  I strategized staging these long runs on Mondays and Fridays, so I had intended to run today.  Instead, I'm writing about NOT running today after experiencing a sporadic, unusual feeling on my right shin yesterday evening while at work...no pain whatsoever, but still something I want to monitor at least through today before I run again.  After going through that IT-band injury just below my knee in early 2011 and having to deal with plantar fasciitus in one of my feet two years later, I am learning to pay more attention to warning signals from my body.  Endurance running training inherently involves feeling sore and aching a bit, but some pains may indicate problems "down the road" and need to be addressed before complications can develop.

I'm still looking forward to going on long distance runs.  If things look clear on Monday, I'm trying out another one, maybe getting to the ten-mile level: the course is already mapped out in my mind and my running music is already downloaded on my mp3 player...

10/23 Sermon on James, Part 5

The series of Sunday-morning sermons about the book of James continued at my local non-denominational church this week covering Chapter 2, Verses 14-26.  The topic was "true faith" and Pastor Philip Griffin discussed how such a faith is reflected not in "talk, good intentions, or knowing the right things"...no, it is revealed and made complete in how we act upon it, i.e. our deeds.  Here are those Bible verses, in the New International Version courtesy of Bible Gateway:

¹⁴ What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save them? ¹⁵ Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. ¹⁶ If one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it? ¹⁷ In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.
¹⁸ But someone will say, “You have faith; I have deeds.”
Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by my deeds. ¹⁹ You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that—and shudder.
²⁰ You foolish person, do you want evidence that faith without deeds is useless? ²¹ Was not our father Abraham considered righteous for what he did when he offered his son Isaac on the altar? ²² You see that his faith and his actions were working together, and his faith was made complete by what he did. ²³ And the scripture was fulfilled that says, “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness,” and he was called God’s friend. ²⁴ You see that a person is considered righteous by what they do and not by faith alone.
²⁵ In the same way, was not even Rahab the prostitute considered righteous for what she did when she gave lodging to the spies and sent them off in a different direction? ²⁶ As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead.

Pastor Philip, throughout his talk, emphasized something he has repeatedly covered in the past: as believers, we should aim for inner transformation through Christ...with our actions following from that change...instead of the often held belief that we must keeping trying and trying harder to do good things in order for God to approve of us.  In other words, it is "being into doing", not "doing into being".  Furthermore, the "shuddering" by the demons in verse 19 refers to their actions, which are motivated not by their love for God, but rather by their fear of his wrath upon them...this idea of avoiding divine retribution through acts of goodness is also "motivation by shuddering".   The point of this passage in James is not so much to make people go around "proving" their faith by going around helping others...although the deeds themselves might be laudable...but rather to make them inspect their own faith and whether they feel prompted by the Holy Spirit to manifest that faith in their lives...

There are Old Testament references to Abraham and Rahab to illustrate that these two were known by their faith because they followed it up with obedient action.  Pastor Philip also mentioned that Abraham might have raised the value of his beloved son Isaac to himself above that of God: this command to sacrifice him...rescinded when Abraham demonstrated his obedience...returned God to the ascendancy in his life.  And the theme of the father giving up his son as a sacrifice carries strongly into the Christian faith, with Jesus replacing Isaac as the offered sacrifice and God as the father...

You can watch this sermon, as well as others, on the Family Church YouTube website.  Here is a link to it [link]...

Signed Up at the Senior Recreation Center

I turned sixty a little more than three weeks ago, which makes me eligible to join the Senior Recreation Center, just a few blocks down the road from where I live here in far northern Gainesville.  I first found out about it because it is also my voting precinct...I was looking forward to finally meeting their minimum age requirement.  Oh, did I not mention that it is free for members?  Well, about an hour or ago I signed up and got my membership card.  I don't know how often I'll go there and what all I'll be doing...I guess time will tell.  I do like their computer room, as well as that front lobby area with the comfy-looking chairs.  There are a lot of classes and programs that they hold during their 8am-5pm weekday hours, including yoga, tai chi, bridge, chess, dancing, and so on.   They also have an exercise room, but alas, only one treadmill.  That's all right, I can run around my neighborhood...and besides, I still have that Gainesville Health and Fitness membership with their hellacious number of treadmills...

This Senior Rec Center looks like a good place to meet others and develop some friendships.  For someone with a reclusive nature as myself, this might be a healthful place to hang around.  I don't know when I'm going back, except that I KNOW I'll be there this coming November 8...to cast my ballot...

Just Finished Reading John Green's Looking for Alaska

The 2005 young adult novel Looking for Alaska, John Green's first book, didn't capture my attention until recently.  But it was a big bestseller as well as highly critically rated...although some folks tried to get it removed from their libraries because of its language and the subject matter.  After all, we are talking about a story describing relationships among teenagers at a boarding school and, well, sooner or later the subjects of sex, alcohol, smoking, and drugs are bound to come up...plus, you know how the profanity can fly between peers at that age.  But that's not what made this book significant: rather, it was a modest introduction, in story form, to philosophy as well as being a study about people's attitudes concerning death and grieving.  It is difficult for me to go much further in describing Looking for Alaska unless I begin to give away the plot (I'm afraid I might have already unwittingly done so).  So instead, let me contrast my memory of adolescence with that of this novel's characters...

One of the first things that protagonist Miles "Pudge" Halter, who tells the story in the first person, experiences as he enters a private Alabama boarding school as a junior in high school is cigarette smoking...and then drinking, thanks to his roommate Chip "The Colonel" Martin and friends Takumi and Alaska.  Throw in lots of talk about sex and some scenes to that effect.  Then add the school's dean, nicknamed "The Eagle", who is continually going around trying to catch his students breaking the rules, and we have a situation where emotionally immature, bratty kids, albeit remarkably intelligent, are totally engrossed in petty dares, feuds, and stupid pranks.  Miles chose to go to boarding school for his own enlightenment...he called it looking for the "Great Perhaps", based on the purported last words of Rabelais (Miles collects famous people's last words).  Chip is fiercely loyal and demands the same from his friends, while...along with Alaska Young, a girl who to me seems to have bipolar personality disorder and with whom Miles becomes infatuated...being incredibly smart.  I could dig the story, and the author spun a good tale, which does provide some life lessons.  But what really bugged me about it was that these kids acted as if they knew more than the grown-ups around them.  When I was that age, the adults around me were very dominant and unyielding: I had none of the kinds of freedom that the young characters in this book enjoyed.  In a way, I'm glad...for example, I never did start smoking, for which I am very grateful.  But my own circumstances were so vastly different from those of Miles and his friends that it interfered with my reading...they somehow just didn't seem to be authentic...

Looking for Alaska is not very long, and it is interesting although pretty disturbing.  Go ahead and read it...you might get something out of it.  I'm not very happy, though, about the way that some high schools are using it as reading assignments.  Author John Green also seems just a little too smug about his success with this work...

Early Voting Begins in Florida Today

Early voting has begun today in my state of Florida, yet another positive sign that this overly drawn out, tedious, and extraordinarily ugly campaign season is finally about to draw to a close.  Yippee!  Still, I personally don't care to vote early...I like the tradition of going down to my assigned precinct on Election Day and savoring the experience on the same day that the results are later revealed.  Besides, the early voting site I'm closest to also happens to be my branch of the Alachua County Library System...and while early voting is going on it's well-nigh impossible to find a parking space, a nuisance I'm willing to endure, however, if it helps others to get out to the polls...

The sample ballot I received recently in the mail has a number of races to be decided, as well as votes on the retention of three State Supreme Court justices, some state constitutional amendments, and a couple of Alachua County questions about special projects and taxes.  But of course, the main item of interest is the presidential election, followed by the Florida U.S. Senate seat currently occupied by Republican Marco Rubio, who is running for reelection against Democrat Patrick Murphy.  My U.S. House race has Republican teabagger incumbent Ted Yoho running against Democrat Ken McGurn in a redrawn district that Yoho is still expected to win.  In my State Senate district (also redrawn), Republican Keith Perry, currently a state representative in an adjacent district, is running against Democrat Rod Smith, a former state attorney and legislator who is trying to make a political comeback with this race.  The television ads between these two have turned horribly negative...the irony is that I could see this two otherwise decent, reasonable public servants working together in Tallahassee were they serving in different districts.  As for my Florida House district my incumbent (Clovis Watson) is running unopposed, so that race won't appear on my ballot.  But just a few blocks over is the 21st District and it features Democrat Merihelen Wheeler going against Republican Chuck Clemons.  Our county sheriff Sadie Darnell is also running again for reelection, favored to win easily.  And a couple of my county commissioners are essentially running unopposed, with only write-in provisions offered as alternatives to them...

Maybe I'll discuss some of these races a little more before election day, as well as those constitutional amendments and county proposals.  I think I'll lay off the presidential election, though: if you haven't yet figured out who the best candidate for that office is by this time, I seriously doubt that reading what I have to say is going to influence you...

Watching Soccer and Doing Jigsaw Puzzles While Resting

Today has been one of those days I experience from time to time when the old body just doesn't feel all that well...happily, I have the day off and am quite content to hang around the house, resting and watching television.  Right now, I'm toggling back and forth on ESPN and ESPN2 with their broadcasts of the final week in Major League Soccer's 2016 regular season: the playoffs are at stake today, at least in the Western Division.  There are four teams there vying for the final three playoffs spots, with the 2015 defending champion Portland Timbers currently the odd team out...and losing its matching so far in the second half, 4-0 to Vancouver.  The other three are Real Salt Lake, Seattle (these two playing each other with Seattle ahead 2-1 at the half), and Sporting Kansas City...ahead in their game at half with San Jose 1-0.  This will most likely all change by the time you read this...I supported Portland last year and am disappointed they probably won't make the playoffs this time around.  In the Eastern Division, my home state's team of Orlando, in their second year in the league, once again missed the playoffs.  The rest of the playoff lineup is pretty much set, with the only other outstanding issues being which two teams in each division will receive first round byes: right now in the East both New York teams are in a good position with Toronto right behind them, while in the West Dallas and Colorado are in front with Los Angeles challenging for that bye: all will be decided by the end of today's matches.  Personally, I prefer the system in England, Spain, and Germany where the team with the top regular season record automatically wins the league championship with no playoffs.  But here in North America, we're playoff-crazy and have to go through this high drama...whatever the sport...wondering which mediocre teams will eventually qualify...

Yesterday Melissa and I attended the opening day of our local Alachua County Friends of the Library book sale, something I've done regularly for this twice-a-year event while she hasn't been there in a few years.  Melissa picked up several books while I bought three 300-piece jigsaw puzzles and a book full of cryptograms.  H-m-m, today would be a fine time to get out one of those puzzles to work on...

Just Finished Reading Ruth Rendell's Wolf to the Slaughter

The 1967 book Wolf to the Slaughter is the third in English writer Ruth Rendell's Inspector Wexford crime mystery series.  Once again the chief police inspector for the Sussex town of Kingsmarkham is confronted with a disappearance, this time of Anita Margolis, the sister of an eccentric, celebrated artist.  An anonymous note alluding to her murder puts Wexford on the hunt for her body and the killer...and down a frustrating path of investigation as different witnesses, each with their own secrets to hide, point him to dead end after dead end.  Mike Burden, who has been Wexford's subordinate inspector throughout the series so far, has more of a role in this story...but his character becomes judgmental and envious, different from the way he was earlier portrayed...while Wexford himself comes across as more sagely and gentle.  A new character, young detective Mark Drayton, takes up a great portion of the narrative as he falls for the charms of Linda Grover, a poor shop-owner's daughter.  That this subplot seemed important for the author to insert into the story and dominate it so much made me suspect that there was more to it under the surface...

In most mystery series, the sleuth detective solves it while the other characters...along with the reader...are looking in a completely different direction.  With the Inspector Wexford series, however...and especially Wolf to the Slaughter...the solution is just as likely to be stumbled upon through good luck as through superior deduction and observation.  In other words, I'm not at all coming to any sense of respect for Inspector Reginald Wexford as a crime solver...surely in subsequent stories he will play a larger role in tackling the mysteries.  This was my least favorite of the Inspector Wexford books so far, and partially because I had early on correctly suspected the fate of that aforementioned character of Anita Margolis and the undue emphasis on the seemingly irrelevant subplot involving Drayton and Linda.  Oh well, there's always the next book, which I will be starting in a couple of days...

Looking Forward to the Day After the Election

Well, it's getting closer and closer to the day I've long been looking forward to...since early in 2015, as a matter of fact.  Of course, the great, wonderful day I'm speaking of is...the day AFTER the presidential election, Wednesday November 9th...only 18 more days and counting!  This relentless, unprecedentedly negative campaign has rendered watching certain TV channels like CNN, Fox, and MSNBC worthless...unless you want to watch a panel of "experts" and spin artists yell at each other across their little "squares" that are more reminiscent of the Brady Brunch or Hollywood Squares than an actual, reasonable discussion of the candidates and what they will do if elected.  Unless we have a repeat of the 2000 election debacle...and I don't see that happening...there will naturally be wall-to-wall coverage of the election results, but it will be more news and analysis-oriented instead of this disgusting spinning by interested parties out to convince irresponsible voters to finally get around to making up their minds...after having months upon months to have already done so.  Come that Wednesday morning next month, the inflammatory, personal invective currently being hurled about won't matter anymore: only the results will count....

I've written a number of times on this blog about the 2016 presidential campaign, whom I support, whom I oppose...and the reasons why.  I'm not a campaigner, though...although if you want to go down that road then good for you.  My Facebook newsfeed page is getting to be almost as impossible to bear as those cable television news channels, with advocates for either Trump or Clinton posting mostly negative material about the other.  Although there were a couple of posts made that I "liked" because of their editorial significance, I seriously doubt that this use of social media will do very much to change people's minds...mostly it puts those posting this stuff in a situation of being pigeonholed as a certain political type who, like the campaigns themselves, will avail themselves of whatever mudslinging opportunities they find on the Internet.  So ultimately this serves to discredit them in my mind, well beyond the election.  I hope, when this sordid election is finally finished, that some of these folks, who seem completely spaced out right now with their political fanaticism and even conspiracy theories, will return to a saner mindset and rejoin us on planet Earth.  Well, I can at least hope...

10/16 Sermon on James, Part 4

This past Sunday at The Family Church here in Gainesville, Pastor Philip Griffin continued his series of sermons on the New Testament book of James.  We're now into Chapter Two, and the talk was about Verses 1-12, given below in the New International Version, courtesy of Bible Gateway:

 My brothers and sisters, believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ must not show favoritism. ² Suppose a man comes into your meeting wearing a gold ring and fine clothes, and a poor man in filthy old clothes also comes in. ³ If you show special attention to the man wearing fine clothes and say, “Here’s a good seat for you,” but say to the poor man, “You stand there” or “Sit on the floor by my feet,” ⁴ have you not discriminated among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?

⁵ Listen, my dear brothers and sisters: Has not God chosen those who are poor in the eyes of the world to be rich in faith and to inherit the kingdom he promised those who love him? ⁶ But you have dishonored the poor. Is it not the rich who are exploiting you? Are they not the ones who are dragging you into court? ⁷ Are they not the ones who are blaspheming the noble name of him to whom you belong?
⁸ If you really keep the royal law found in Scripture, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” you are doing right. ⁹ But if you show favoritism, you sin and are convicted by the law as lawbreakers. ¹⁰ For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it. ¹¹ For he who said, “You shall not commit adultery,” also said, “You shall not murder.” If you do not commit adultery but do commit murder, you have become a lawbreaker.
¹² Speak and act as those who are going to be judged by the law that gives freedom, ¹³ because judgment without mercy will be shown to anyone who has not been merciful. Mercy triumphs over judgment.

Pastor Philip emphasized that while treating people differently according their wealth or social status is an example of us glorifying the wrong things, racial prejudice is also a problem...he cited Mahatma Gandhi's statement about Christianity: " I like your Christ...I don't like your Christians.  Your Christians are so unlike your Christ"...and then referred to the Indian leader's earlier experience of being barred from entering an Anglican "whites-only" church due to his skin color.  But whether it is glorifying one's race, wealth, or any other thing one may value more than God, then it impedes them in that relationship...and it is the poor in spirit whom the Creator welcomes into his kingdom.  As for the passages (verses 8-13) about the law, remember that this letter of James is being addressed to the "scattered tribes", i.e. the Jewish people...and that there are two laws: the Old Testament law of judgment (verses 8-11) and the New Testament law (verses 12-13) that gives freedom through the atoning sacrifice of Christ.  It is the mercy shown through this law that covers the judgment contained within that Old Testament law...and that's very good, since all of us in the end are lawbreakers.

Ultimately, the question is whether we value our relationship with God less than our social positions, wealth, color of skin...or anything else in our worldly lives that we glorify.  This, more than anything, was what this passage and the accompanying sermon was about. As for me, my temptation is to tell myself that this "doesn't apply"...after all, I'm not a wealthy person or a political leader or oh-so-proud of my academic credentials or with "Dr." prefixing my name...nor do I hold my myself superior to others from different demographic groups.  But then again, how much do I value the possessions, job, and academic accomplishments I do have...nothing wrong with wanting to better oneself, but there has to be a sense of perspective.  And if it spills over into behaving toward others in a judgmental manner...even into practicing favoritism...then I've definitely gone over the line.  So I suppose the point here is that this message needs to be applied by each of us, with our own individual circumstances in life, as we honestly reflect on our own attitudes and possible prejudices...

Just Finished Reading Ruth Rendell's 13 Steps Down

Ruth Rendell, as you already well know if you've been reading this blog regularly, was a highly-respected British author who concentrated her efforts in the mystery genre.  I'm currently engaged in reading her Inspector Wexford series, so far about two thirds of the way through its third book.  But she wrote many novels that stand alone, and 13 Steps Down, from 2004, is the fourth of those that I've read.  Once again Rendell is at her strength as she goes deeply into the personalities and (mis)conceptions of her characters...

The core character in 13 Steps Down, set in London, England, is a young psychopathic man named Mix Cellini.  He has taken up lodging in an old house owned and solely inhabited by an elderly spinster named Gwendoline Chawcer.  Mix's motivation in moving there is twofold: for one, he wants to explore where notorious serial killer Reggie Crist, for whom he has an obsessive, morbid interest, had performed his awful acts decades before...for another, he is head-over-heels infatuated with a young model, Narissa Nash, who lives nearby.  Mix uses his employment as a repairman for a fitness equipment company as a means to stalk Narissa while he convinces himself that the two only need to meet in order to set in motion the events leading to them becoming a couple...and his own consequent fame and fortune.  Meanwhile, Gwendoline is similarly deluding herself over a physician she knew when young and wanted to marry but who back then suddenly left without notice and married a different woman.  These two, Mix, and Gwen...along with the more realistic and emotionally well-adjusted Narissa, form the trio from whose viewpoints the story's narrative is presented.   Oh, I forgot to mention that there is a murder in this story that points the plot in an inevitable direction...but I'll leave that and how it all ends to anyone wanting to read this book for themselves...

Other than the frightening idea that there really are people with the totally amoral, narcissistic and violent personality of Mix Cellini living among us, the main message I got out of 13 Steps Down is how far people will go to convince themselves that things are a certain way...such as the hopeful belief that someone they want, even a relative stranger, loves them back...when any objective, realistic examination of the situation would clearly tell them otherwise.  People thus believe what they want to believe...often because they feel that facing up to the truth would be too difficult to bear.  This was a good book...but I'm not surprised, for Ruth Rendell just keeps rising higher and higher in my estimation of her writing talent and insight...

A Quote from Oprah Winfrey

Part of my cable television package here in Gainesville is Music Choice, which presents several channels each of which provides a different genre, spanning much of the musical spectrum...although it's missing three of my favorites types: zydeco, classic Christian traditional songs and hymns...and that crazy, entrancing Middle Eastern music.  One of my favorite channels from what they do provide is Soundscapes (channel 943), which plays ambient/space music.  Sometimes when there's nothing else I want to watch, I'll put that one on and sit back and relax to the soothing music.  But there's more to this channel: they place on the screen various quotes of wisdom and philosophy from different famous figures, past and present.  Some of these sayings make good sense to me, some I don't exactly understand...and then there are a few that I have a problem with.  Among those that bother me to a degree is an Oprah Winfrey quote, which reads as follows:

Only surround yourself with people that will lift you higher.

I believe I understand the gist of what Oprah was trying to express here: your social environment, especially those with whom you have the most contact, can have a great impact on your attitude, demeanor, and how well you can succeed in your personal goals.  So yes, in a way I agree with this statement...it's good to have positive, encouraging folks in your life, people whose own lives serve as an example that you can imitate and who can influence you in a constructive manner to improve yourself.  No problem with that.  The problem I do have with this quote is the word "only"...

There are all kinds of people around me whom I want to avoid, chief among them being criminals...both blue and white collar types... as well as manipulative drama queen prima donnas (of both sexes), and loud and aggressive people...the Desiderata specifically mentions the latter, stating that they are "vexatious to the spirit".  So no...dishonest, manipulative, loud and aggressive people are not on my list of those with whom I want to become bosom buddies.  But people-at-large are neither typified by those groups nor are they necessarily heroic and uplifting role models that Oprah Winfrey wants to exclusively associate with.  Most folks have their good and bad moments...and almost all have their needs, many of which can be a burden on the ones around them, posing a drain on their emotions and personal agendas.  Maybe Oprah wants to make sure these people don't stand in her way, but I think differently: having some social challenges in your life and learning to deal effectively with them is a form in itself of personal growth and will ultimately make you stronger.  The key is not to cut off negative people from your life: the key is to learn how to interact effectively with them so as not to allow the relationship to become dysfunctional, with yourself as the increasingly resentful victim.  There are ways to deal with anger, conflicts with others, forgiveness, and appropriately asserting oneself.   You're not going to learn these important life skills, however, if you only insist on having people around you who don't anger you, argue with you, or challenge your sense of guilt or self-esteem.  So maybe here we also need to meditate on what really lifts one higher...

Just Finished Reading (Again) Stephen King's Needful Things

About eight or nine years ago I read Stephen King's 1991 novel Needful Things for the first time...and just got around to reading it again.  More or less a rather gruesome adaptation of the great late Ray Bradbury's chilling 1962 Something Wicked This Way Comes to King's fictional universe full of sinister Maine small towns, this story examines how people will sell their souls in order to get and then hold onto what are essentially worthless things.  We've seen this sort of theme before in popular fiction and especially in TV shows like Twilight Zone, but here the ultimately demonic character of Leland Gaunt, who has just set up his new business called "Needful Things" in downtown Castle Rock, isn't at all transparent with his customers about what he is offering...and the final prohibitive price they will be expected to pay.  With each person entering his shop, Gaunt presents something that he knows will ensnare them to serve him as he practices a kind of evil hypnosis to make whatever they buy seem priceless.  With each "sale", besides a nominal, cheap cash payment, he demands of each a "small prank" that they are to play on another citizen...usually someone they don't know too well.  There is one individual, Sheriff Alan Pangborn (who appeared in an earlier Stephen King novel The Dark Half) whom Gaunt fears for his skepticism and integrity.  But will Pangborn succumb to his own "needful thing" in the end?  I guess it's about time for me to shut up about the plot so as not to give away too much about this book in case you haven't yet read it and might like to...

In Stephen King stories the characters often spew out profanities and the violence can get to be quite gory.  That having been said, he is an outstanding "character" writer in that he probes deep into their minds and what ultimately motivates their actions.  His heroes are typically vulnerable and flawed...making them realistic and believable, even if the surrounding circumstances and events seem resoundingly unreal.  There is almost always a morality play going on in his fiction (especially the novels), with good and evil being real forces that work their respective wills in the world through the thoughts, feelings, and actions of the characters.  His books in this way are quite fascinating...there are several more besides Needful Things that I intend to read again, especially 11/22/63, Lisey's Story, Insomnia, and It...not to mention the entire Dark Tower series...

The Elusive Memories of One's Life

The other day my sister Anita...who lives in what might be the last remaining rational part of Texas...was on the phone with me.  Anita is someone that I can never get tired of talking with...she always has interesting things to say and very enthusiastically wants to know about what I'm thinking and doing.  We were going over the topic of each of our personal recollections about our childhoods and wondered why it seemed to be that the old, old memories were easier to conjure up than things that happened in more recent times.  I volunteered my own opinion of why this might be so: when you are young, your responsibilities in the world are relatively few and, when you are in different settings, you have more freedom to look around and observe without the need to focus your attention on just those things that you would need to act upon.  As you grow older, you learn to filter out those things in your experiences that don't bear on your priorities.  And that includes not just ignoring the decorations in a grocery store, the cloud formations above, or the furnishings in an office, but also memories of whole periods of time that don't seem to have any relevance to your current life. But I believe that all of the memories are there in our minds, even if it has been decades since we have thought of them.  The trick is how to tease them out...

For my own purposes, I classify memories into one of two groups: trends and special events. These seem...although I'm no expert in neurology...to come from different types of thinking.  With trends, you can sometimes patch together a sense of what regular life was like in different periods, noting where you lived, who you were with, where you worked or went to school or elsewhere or stayed at home, how you dressed, what TV shows you watched, what songs you liked, how you ate, dressed, and so on.  But special events are a different type of memory...maybe it would be better to call them "punctuated events" because sometimes these memories are not of anything particularly special but have for some reason endured through the years nevertheless.  Like me looking, outside in my front yard in the year 1962, at a Detroit Tigers player's baseball card and marveling at how they wrote the capital letter "D".  Or standing out on the front porch, when I was about two years old, and being told that we weren't allowed to play on the swing set far over (to the left)...the one nearby sadly had no swings.  Or my father, around that time, giving demonstrations to the neighborhood of his ability to stand on his head, performing the feat to an informal crowd outside on the lawn.  "First time" memories can be of this group: I become an avid reader of Mad Magazine in the mid-1960s (a "trend" memory), so it shouldn't come as a surprise that I can recall where I first saw this publication, a couple of years before in a news/magazine shop next to a 7/11 store off Taft Street in West Hollywood (a "special event" memory).  And of course, whenever a major news event happens, like the assassination of John Kennedy or 9/11, most everyone remembers in great detail what they were doing at the time...

There are different ways to draw out memories, listening to music being one that works well for me.  Starting in late 1963 just before the Beatles exploded in popularity here and continuing more or less to the present day, I have unconsciously associated different songs I've heard with concurrent events going on my life.  With Gale Garnett's 1964 Sing in the Sunshine, I'm sitting on the back porch with my mother and Anita.  Whenever I hear Ticket to Ride, a 1965 hit from the Beatles, I think of my father taping it on his giant primitive tape recorder and endlessly playing it back.  Somebody had a radio once during one of my high school track team's practices in April 1973 and Stealer's Wheel's Stuck in the Middle With You just happened to be on.  Steve Windwood's Higher Love (a hit at the time) and the Carpenters' We've Only Just Begun (played at the ceremony) remind me of my September, 1986 wedding with Melissa. At Valdosta, Georgia's Wild Adventures theme park in early 2002 I heard, from a loudspeaker, Madonna's song Music while my son and daughter began their slow climb at the start of the Cheetah wooden roller coaster ride...it would be the last time I was too "chicken" to ride it.  And on and on it goes, with hundreds of songs eliciting different memories...

I already probably have too many personal projects going on right now, so starting a new one may not make much sense.  Still, I think devoting a little time regularly to remember my own past would be fruitful in the long run.  Call it a "personal memory project"...
 

Local Radio Station Switches to Talk Format

I remember back in 2004, during the baseball playoff series between the New York Yankees and their perennial doormat the Boston Red Sox, I was listening to my local Fox Sports Radio station on 104.9 kHz. It was just after the Bronx Bombers routed Boston in a game and had built up a 3-0 series lead when one of the announcers, a dyed-in-the-wool Sox fan, repeatedly lamented, "The Yankees are the dogs...and the Red Sox are the hydrants".  I never forgot that tirade, especially since Boston turned around and did the unthinkable: they came back from a series 3-0 deficit and won it...and then went on to win their first World Series in nearly a century.  I also never forgot that station, which a few years later sadly switched its format from sports talk to country music (it's sad when a change is made from any format to c&w).  And then, not too long ago, this station, whose call letters are WYGC and is based a few miles northwest of Gainesville in High Springs, switched again to playing a wide range of popular music, both rock and pop, from the past.  But that changed, too, when just a few weeks ago  WYGC went to talk radio...

When you say the words "talk radio", that almost always means "conservative talk radio", because it's a rare thing indeed to hear liberal or even politically centrist talk shows on the radio anymore.  Alan Colmes has a show on the Fox Radio Network that I used to be able to pick up on a weak AM station here in Gainesville, but I don't think they're airing it here anymore.  And with WYGC's new format, it looks like more of the "same ol' same ol'" as I hear the early afternoon rebroadcasts from the reactionary Imus morning TV show, while late at night they have the Jim Bohannon show.  Well, at least Bohannon, who likes to be called "Jimbo", while conservative in his convictions, does tend to show some decorum and tact in his programs...something sorely lacking in just about every other conservative talk radio show around.  I've only heard these two shows so far, and I can't seem to find the station's website...if they in fact have one...to determine their program schedule.  But I'm holding out some hope that they'll find some room somewhere to put in some programming with a broader appeal to the general population besides just teabaggers and right wing populist/nationalists...

10/9 Sermon on James, Part 3

This past Sunday we at The Family Church here in Gainesville continued to examine the New Testament book of James.  Focusing on Chapter 1, Verses 19-27, Pastor Philip Griffin talked about how to grow beyond a shallow faith...here is the scripture in NIV translation, courtesy of Bible Gateway:

¹⁹ My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, ²⁰ because human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires. ²¹ Therefore, get rid of all moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent and humbly accept the word planted in you, which can save you.
²² Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. ²³ Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror ²⁴ and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. ²⁵ But whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues in it—not forgetting what they have heard, but doing it—they will be blessed in what they do.
²⁶ Those who consider themselves religious and yet do not keep a tight rein on their tongues deceive themselves, and their religion is worthless. ²⁷ Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.

I have to admit that after simply reading the above passage...although I'm sure it's all interrelated...I didn't exactly come away with the notion that it was explicitly about deepening one's faith...although this can clearly be a wonderful by-product of the exhortations contained in the words, if followed...

I've tried in the past two articles about James to more or less summarize what my pastor was saying...I'm not sure that it wouldn't be a better idea for you to listen to him for yourself on YouTube: The Family Church shows each week's sermon, which you can access through its website (here is a link to it [link])...Pastor Philip's hilarious illustration in reference to the "mirror" mentioned in Verse 23 is something you won't want to miss.  Instead, I'd like to bring up three of the biggest reactions I got out of the sermon and the scripture...

Verse 19 was full of wise advice: be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger.  Wow.  Not only does this produce the righteousness of God, as the following verse reveals, but it is extremely important practical advice when dealing with others.  I think that if I just took this one verse and focused on it for a month, then my life might be transformed for the better.  Hey, I think I'll just take myself up on that...

In Verse 22, the author exhorts the reader to view his or her newly-found knowledge not as an ends in itself, but also to act upon it. Learning should thus lead to application, something that I haven't exactly been on board with in the past...

The other section of the passage I got a lot out of was Verse 27, defining pure religion not in terms of what we normally refer to as "organized religion", but rather as one's personal expression of their faith that is reflected in benevolent deeds to the needy and forgotten, while maintaining high standards of behavior in the face of constant temptations from the world.  A very interesting definition indeed...

Yes, the book of James is loaded with some pretty cool stuff...

Binoculars a Great Aid to Star Gazing

As you may have discerned from reading some of my blog articles, I enjoy going out after sunset and looking at the night sky.  I learned the constellations and brightest stars by name and location back in the spring of 1964, when I was only seven...and I've enjoyed this hobby ever since. I suppose the comforting familiarity I get when I look up and see the same old star patterns is similar to someone who is knowledgeable about plants and who recognizes different species and varieties at different times and places.  There has always been one problem I've had with sky-gazing, though: except for a period of about three years when we had a privacy fence around our backyard, I have been very hesitant about using binoculars or telescopes to explore the sky in greater detail.  I did, back in late 1985 when I was still single and living in Sundowne Apartments off Windmeadows Boulevard, go out into the wide open field across the street (filled-in less than two years later for a Wal-Mart, Lowes, and movie theater) and train my binoculars on the skies, with a specific goal in mind: observing and tracking the path of Halley's Comet, which I recorded in a star chart in a pocket handbook that I still have to this day.  But subsequently living in a suburban neighborhood, surrounded by houses that naturally have windows and potentially suspicious neighbors, keeps me from using binoculars for fear that someone might accuse me of invading their privacy with them.  We'd like to get another privacy fence put up...and that would naturally solve the problem.  In the meantime, I'm brainstorming how to create a little makeshift "observatory" around me when in the backyard that shields me from being seen by my neighbors while enabling me to enjoy the sky in greater detail...

Although the fall evening sky isn't exactly known to be spectacular in any sense, there is always the Andromeda Galaxy to see...and in 2016 the planets Uranus and Neptune are in the constellations Pisces and Aquarius, respectively.  But in order to see any of these...especially under city light conditions where I live...I'm gonna need those binoculars...

Just Finished Reading James Patterson's 7th Heaven

James Patterson is a writer whose works, like those of Ruth Rendell, I have belatedly begun to read.  Besides his Alex Cross crime series, he has another called The Women's Murder Club...with each successive book featuring the next number in the series.  Seeing how Sue Grafton's "Alphabet Mystery" series uses letters in its titles (like A is for Alibi and B is for Burglar), there is a definite ending to it...at "Z is for Zebra" or whatever.  But with this "numerical" series of Patterson, he could potentially go on forever.  Especially when he isn't devoting all of his time writing the books, but rather "co-writing" them with another writer, in the case of 7th Heaven...which I just finished reading...being Maxine Paetro...

The Women's Murder Club is settling down into a formula series.  Lead protagonist Lindsay Boxer, a San Francisco homicide investigator, has at least two different murder/disappearance cases per book, and there is usually a demented serial killer involved. Her three friends in the informal "club" are an assistant prosecutor, an investigative newspaper reporter, and the city chief medical examiner, each being provided subplots concerning their lives and work.  And Lindsay's personal and often frustrated romantic life fills in the narrative.  As I've mentioned before while writing about this series, the police here tend to be overly judgmental against their suspects, something I have found to be borderline disgusting.  Still, as a reader, I play the game and pull for the "good guys" to win...

7th Heaven is one of the better of the seven in this series, with one major reason being its completely unexpected ending.  Then again, I remember a Sue Grafton book ending similarly...I'll have to find out which book came out first so I can ascertain which author ripped off the other.  Lindsay is confronted with two mysteries: a string of arson murders at wealthy homes and a lead into the disappearance of a young man who had a potentially fatal heart defect.  The story went more smoothly than with the previous books in the series, and I'm looking forward to reading #8, albeit with the recognition that this is pretty escapist literature...  

Some Presidential Campaign/Election Thoughts

Let's see, come tomorrow it will be only four weeks until our country collectively chooses its next president.  It's either going to be Republican nominee Donald Trump or Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton who walks away with the victory...you're welcome to vote instead for Gary Johnson or Jill Stein, but by doing so you are by default voting for the main candidate you'd least like to see in there.  It's the same if you decide to sit out the election because you dislike them both.  So let's just consider Trump and Clinton...and my attitude about this election and the next president, whoever that might be...

I have been assiduously avoiding the presidential debates, the second of which took place last night.  Fortunately, I had an exciting baseball playoff game to watch, not to mention a great jigsaw puzzle to put together.  But today I slipped into my old channel-surfing habits, inevitably ending up on the cable news & opinion channels.  And, of course they were all abuzz about the debate, the new polls, and what it all meant...complete with the usual tedious gang of spin artists from each party.  I had little or no use for what was said other than a couple of items, both relating to Donald Trump.  The first concerned his base of support: many of those supporting Trump say that they don't always agree with him, but they like him because he says what he means.  And yet when the Donald goes over the line in his tweets and interviews, the same people turn around and make excuses for him, holding that he didn't really mean what he said.  So let me see if I understand: Trump says what he means, and he doesn't mean what he says.  Sure.

The other item of interest I derived from watching TV this morning is how much Trump and his vice-presidential running mate Mike Pence differ on foreign policy.  It was noted that Pence, who is very conservative in both domestic and foreign policy, was much closer to Hillary Clinton with his concern about the aggressive behavior of Russia in the Middle East and East Europe, as dictated by its autocratic ruler Vladimir Putin.  But Trump's all chummy about Putin and wants to let Russia and its Syrian client regime of Assad do as they want in that country...not to mention threatening to refuse to defend fellow NATO countries against attack by Putin's Russia.  That, to me, is a dangerous path to go down, but Trump just came out and openly acknowledged his complete disagreement with his own running mate's more cautionary view.  As for Hillary Clinton, I'm not...as I have repeatedly said...a big fan of hers, but I do think she will do a better job as president.  But you may think otherwise and that's all right, too.  Let's all make our own decisions about the vote and see how it turns out.   Now regarding whoever ends up winning the election on November 8, when he or she is inaugurated next January that person will be MY president, and consequently I will find myself torn between standing in opposition to poor decisions they make and standing behind them in the greater interests of my country and its people.  I'll feel that way whether Trump or Clinton gets in, but I suspect I'll be more torn if the former wins...

A Tale of Two Postponed Football Games

This past Friday Hurricane Matthew blew past the east coast of Florida, in the process inflicting some tropical storm weather over the Gainesville area.  Because there was a mass evacuation of the population living in the coastal areas, hotels in more inland counties like my Alachua were used by those under evacuation to have a place to lodge while riding out the storm...which was well out of the area by Saturday morning and on its way to South and North Carolina.  Because of the uncertainties surrounding the effects of Matthew on the local area as well as those hotel considerations, the Southeastern Conference decided to indefinitely postpone the scheduled Saturday afternoon home football game between the University of Florida and Louisiana State.  The make-up game between the two schools will presumably be held at a later date toward the end of the season.  That was all fine with me...that is, until I turned on the TV this Sunday afternoon and beheld the game between Georgia and South Carolina...at the latter's stadium in Columbia...going on live!  So, let me try to understand...the UF-LSU game was postponed indefinitely, even though they could have rescheduled it for Sunday.  Yet for some reason, the very same football conference, while putting that game in indefinite limbo and rejecting the next-day Sunday option, turned around and staged the Georgia-Carolina contest on Sunday...even though Matthew had affected that area more recently...

There had occured some kind of controversy when an ESPN talking head accused the University of Florida of trying to get their game with LSU postponed...he seemed to think that meant cancelling the game outright...and Gator quarterback Luke Del Rio tweeted a stinging rebuke to him.  But then why was it that one game was postponed indefinitely because of Hurricane Matthew and the other just put off until the very next day?  This makes little sense to me...maybe someone can explain the Southeastern Conference's rationale for rendering these two vastly different decisions under such similar circumstances so that I can see the logic here, which is right now evading me...

Just Finished Reading Ruth Rendell's Sins of the Fathers

In recent weeks I have become a fan of the late English novelist Ruth Rendell, having now read five of her books.  The latest one is the second book in her Inspector Wexford mystery series, published in 1967 and titled Sins of the Fathers (formerly A New Lease of Death).  The setting is once again the English town of Kingsmarkham where Reginald Wexford is the Chief Inspector for the local police.  He works with Inspector Mike Burden...the two teamed up in the first book, too...to tackle a nagging murder case from sixteen years back.  A brutish, violent man named Herbert Painter had been convicted of killing his 87-year old employer in her house and was hanged for the crime.  Although Wexford, who investigated the case back then, is utterly convinced of Painter's guilt, the verdict is now questioned by Reverend Henry Archery, whose son is engaged to marry Painter's daughter...at the time of the murder just a little girl.  The story involves the murdered woman's housekeeper, neighbors, and children as Archery surprisingly assumes the role of lead protagonist in what appears on the surface to be a "whodunit" tale but evolves into a different sort of mystery involving why the characters turned out the way they did.  Archery comes across as very sympathetic while Wexford continues to be somewhat cantankerous and blunt.  Okay, I didn't like him in the first book either, but now I'm seeing that Rendell was creating this persona of a police detective with a deceptively callous-appearing personality, but who is, underneath it all, wily and perceptive.  Yeah, I think this dude might even be likeable, a few more books down the line...

Ruth Rendell is probably best known for this Inspector Wexford series...which I plan to continue reading in its chronological order of publication...but I have so far gotten the most from her "single" novels that are complete in themselves.  Stories like Portobello, The Crocodile Bird, and Gallowglass (written under the pen name Barbara Vine) go deep into their characters' psyches and histories as well as providing a detailed look at life in England.  I don't see why I can't eventually read all of her books...I'm just a little sad I didn't know about her until just recently, a little more than a year after she died...

Spending Today With a Tropical Storm

At this writing it's currently around 2:30 pm here in Gainesville.  I am sitting on the south end of town in a McDonald's near my workplace, having driven eight miles through a tropical storm more commonly known as Hurricane Matthew as it is now battering the northeastern Florida coast from the Daytona Beach area to Jacksonville.  Matthew is currently about as close as it will get to Gainesville, but other than schools and local government offices being closed today, business seems to be going on exactly as before...and the streets are full of traffic.  Looking out the window here, I see the rain falling at a 45 degree angle in waves, while the branches of all the trees are shaking violently.  Yet as far as many of  the people around here are concerned, it's another ho-hum "day in the life".  Well, that's not completely true: there are some people in my locality who have lost their power, and the folks sitting in the next booth over appear to be temporary refugees from the east coast area (this McDonald's is on an I-75 exit).  But at least at this time, we're not in the "everybody clear the streets and hunker down" mode of existence that characterized my home town back in 2004 when Frances and Jeanne were the hurricanes of interest.  Still, if you can stay indoors at home you're probably better off, not to mention that conditions may worsen some later on.  But I'm glad that the ornery ol' hurricane decided to veer off a tad to the east, where its effects here are lessened as well as keeping the wind and storm surge damage down more on the coast.

Yesterday while at work, I was listening to my local talk station 97.3/WSKY "The Sky".  After 6 pm they switched from their usual programming to a continual audio broadcast of The Weather Channel as various meteorologists were spread along the coast, giving live reports as Matthew approached.  I appreciated that about WSKY...much of its normal talk show programming is heavily biased toward one political party, but they do have a sense of community when it comes to something like a threatening tropical storm.  As for me today, I am glad to be going to work on my normal schedule...I don't care for the weather dictating the course of my day and I am relieved that my office is open and running.  By the time I get off from my shift at midnight, the storm should have passed to the north and things should be improving here in Gainesville...

10/2 Sermon on James, Part 2

The sermon I heard at church this past Sunday continued the theme of the New Testament book (or letter or epistle) of James, found near the back of the Bible between Hebrews and 1 Peter.  The focus remains on the first chapter, now verses 13-18, and the topic is temptation: its nature, identifying it, succumbing to it, and resisting it.  Quite a lot in only six verses...hey, I know...I'll "expand" it into five languages!   (Courtesy of Bible Gateway)

James 1 New International Version (NIV)
¹³ When tempted, no one should say, “God is tempting me.” For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone; ¹⁴ but each person is tempted when they are dragged away by their own evil desire and enticed. ¹⁵ Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.¹⁶ Don’t be deceived, my dear brothers and sisters.¹⁷ Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows. ¹⁸ He chose to give us birth through the word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of all he created.

Santiago 1 Nueva Versión Internacional (NVI)
¹³ Que nadie, al ser tentado, diga: «Es Dios quien me tienta.» Porque Dios no puede ser tentado por el mal, ni tampoco tienta él a nadie. ¹⁴ Todo lo contrario, cada uno es tentado cuando sus propios malos deseos lo arrastran y seducen. ¹⁵ Luego, cuando el deseo ha concebido, engendra el pecado; y el pecado, una vez que ha sido consumado, da a luz la muerte.
¹⁶ Mis queridos hermanos, no se engañen. ¹⁷ Toda buena dádiva y todo don perfecto descienden de lo alto, donde está el Padre que creó las lumbreras celestes, y que no cambia como los astros ni se mueve como las sombras. ¹⁸ Por su propia voluntad nos hizo nacer mediante la palabra de verdad, para que fuéramos como los primeros y mejores frutos de su creación.

Jakobus 1 Schlachter 2000 (SCH2000)

¹³ Niemand sage, wenn er versucht wird: Ich werde von Gott versucht. Denn Gott kann nicht versucht werden zum Bösen, und er selbst versucht auch niemand;

¹⁴ sondern jeder Einzelne wird versucht, wenn er von seiner eigenen Begierde gereizt und gelockt wird.
¹⁵ Danach, wenn die Begierde empfangen hat, gebiert sie die Sünde; die Sünde aber, wenn sie vollendet ist, gebiert den Tod.
¹⁶ Irrt euch nicht, meine geliebten Brüder:
¹⁷ Jede gute Gabe und jedes vollkommene Geschenk kommt von oben herab, von dem Vater der Lichter, bei dem keine Veränderung ist, noch ein Schatten infolge von Wechsel.
¹⁸ Nach seinem Willen hat er uns gezeugt durch das Wort der Wahrheit, damit wir gleichsam Erstlinge seiner Geschöpfe seien.

Иакова 1 Russian New Testament: Easy-to-Read Version (ERV-RU)

¹³ Никто из подвергаемых искушению не должен говорить: «Это искушение послано Богом», потому что Бог не имеет ничего общего со злом и никого не искушает. ¹⁴ Но каждого искушают его же собственные желания, которые завлекают его и держат в плену. ¹⁵ Желание — первоисточник греха; грех же, в свою очередь, когда утвердится, порождает смерть.¹⁶ Так не позволяйте же себе обманываться, любимые мои братья и сёстры. ¹⁷ Всякий добрый и совершенный дар приходит свыше, от Отца, Создавшего свет Небесный. Бог постоянен и неизменен. ¹⁸ Он решил сделать нас Своими детьми через истинное Послание, чтобы мы стали самыми важными среди всех Его созданий.

雅 各 書 1 Chinese New Testament: Easy-to-Read Version (ERV-ZH)

¹³ 受到诱惑的人不该说∶“上帝在试探我。”因为上帝与邪恶无关，他也不试探任何人。 ¹⁴ 受到诱惑，是受到自己的邪恶欲望牵制和怂恿。 ¹⁵ 欲望受到孕育，便会生成罪恶，罪恶一旦成熟，便会生出死亡。¹⁶ 我亲爱的兄弟们，不要上当受骗。 ¹⁷ 一切美好和各种完美的恩赐都来自天上。这些美好的恩赐来自一切光明（日、月、星）之父。上帝永不改变，始终如一。 ¹⁸ 他决定通过真理之言赐予我们生命，要我们在他所创造的万物中，居最重要的位置。

Getting back to the sermon, Pastor Philip referred to a recent survey of about two thousand people asking about their particular temptations and how they handled them.  As for the type of temptation, responses were varied: worry, procrastination, overspending, pornography, drugs/alcohol, angry outbursts, etc.  What did they say led to these temptations?  Boredom, loneliness, feeling hurt.  And what were they doing to curtail giving in to their temptations? Over half said, "Nothing"!

Later on in his sermon, our pastor listed five fallacies that people trapped in temptations use to justify their behavior: I can control this, no one will know, everybody's doing it, it fulfills me, and how can it be wrong if it feels so good.  The problem with temptations is that they are deceptive, poor substitutes for our already-existing, healthy desires. Our own bodies are chemical factories producing natural drugs that regulate our feelings...taking drugs disrupts the process and partially shuts it down.  Normal sexual desire is perverted by objectifying people through  pornography.  It is all right to feel some anger if the situation dictates...but not as a regular response to everything negative...or even to positive things that have been interpreted in the context of chronic discontent.  The same is true with other temptations and the corresponding legitimate desires and impulses they distort and undermine.  Having to deal with temptations is normal, giving in to them is sinful, and being able to handle them requires trusting in God's goodness and taking delight in him, walking by his Holy Spirit...

This was one of those sermons that have a very practical value for those hearing it.  Many of the ideas expressed could have presented in a completely secular setting.  But we're a Christian church and we're studying the Bible, which is essentially all about God and how He sees things.  And effectively dealing with temptations clearly involves drawing from outside our own capabilities...

Just Finished Reading Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray

Yesterday I referred to English writer Oscar Wilde's 1890 novel The Picture of Dorian Gray when I compared the worsening appearance of the title character in his portrait to the weather maps progressively showing the projected path of very dangerous Hurricane Matthew edging more and more into my state of Florida.  But Wilde was writing about something quite different from the weather: what is a good life well spent? Virtuous living while caring for others or pursuing one's own hedonistic inclinations to their fullest without regard to the harm it can do?  Along with that is another question: does one's beauty in itself denote goodness...and if not, why are the beautiful and handsome exalted in our world while the ugly vilified?

There are three central characters in The Picture of Dorian Gray: the painter Basil Hallward, Lord Henry Wotton, and Gray himself.  The beginning sets the stage for the rest of the book as Basil shows Lord Henry the portraits he has painted of Dorian Gray, a very handsome young man whose appearance captivates the artist.  Basil introduces the two to each other, and Lord Henry almost immediately sets out to indoctrinate the relatively innocent, young Dorian with his own worldview of hedonism, his equation of beauty with goodness, and that experiences are justified in themselves regardless of their effects.  Dorian is taken up with both "Harry's" message and his friendship and they end up shutting out the increasingly concerned Basil from their company.  But before that happens, Dorian makes a wish: may he always stay young and beautiful and that any changes to himself instead appear on the final portrait that Basil has made for him...

No, I am not going to lay down the plot of this book...you just might want to look into it to see what happens.  But it's pretty common knowledge...so I don't think I'm giving anything away... that whenever Dorian Gray does something evil, it is reflected in a change in his picture, which he owns and eventually (and understandably) decides to hide away from others.  Yet Dorian remains through the years as youthful and unblemished as when Basil painted his picture for him.  This does not mean that the lifestyle he lives at the expense of others doesn't carry its own negative consequences.  The general society around him begins to shun him for his profligate behavior and the harm he has done through it to many.  And there is one individual dedicated to killing Dorian in revenge...although he knows him neither by name nor appearance...

The ending to The Picture of Dorian Gray was right on target and would have been perfect as the conclusion to a Night Gallery or Twilight Zone episode.  But of course, it was stories like this one written by Oscar Wilde that inspired the genre that these two great television series presented, as well as renown writers like H.P. Lovecraft and Stephen King.  And Wilde himself may have derived this kind of "gothic horror"/psychological fiction from Edgar Allen Poe...but I'm just speculating.  I recommend this novel, but be forewarned that it can delve into some seriously abstract philosophical ramblings...

Hurricane Matthew Beginning to Threaten Florida

I just finished reading Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray, where a young man's portrait keeps changing and getting uglier each succeeding time he looks at it.  In like manner, during the last 24 hours, it seems that each time I see the projected path of monster Hurricane Matthew on the map provided by The Weather Channel, it seems to shift a bit westward...toward my Florida.  Although the predicted trajectory of Matthew's center eye is still off-shore,  the red-colored "cone of probability" now includes most of northern peninsular Florida...including my hometown of Gainesville.  And these westward shifts of the forecasts...like Dorian Gray's portrait...keep looking worse...

Ironically, it was a shift eastward of Matthew that has resulted in it pummeling the already-reeling, poverty and disaster-stricken nation of Haiti, with large low-lying areas full of tent cities in the direct path of its 145 mph winds and massive storm surge and rainfall.  So far they've reported three fatalities there from this Category Four storm...that figure is certain to drastically rise.  Now, instead of traveling through the mountainous region of eastern Cuba, which would have substantially weakened it for at least a while, Matthew will mostly pass between Cuba and Haiti, keeping it more intact...and dangerous...as it plows through the Bahamas toward our fair state.  At this time it is expected to pose its greatest threat to northern Florida on Friday...but the timetable we've been given for this hurricane has been off more than its predicted path.  Also, it looks at this point as if Matthew will continue to hug the eastern United States coast all the way to New England...but don't expect that forecast to remain stable, either.  Now excuse me while I go get some flashlights and water...

2016 Major League Baseball Playoffs Set

The 2016 regular season for Major League Baseball just ended late this afternoon, and the remaining wild-card races have likewise ended...they were close in both leagues.  For the American League wild-card spots Toronto and Baltimore got in with identical win-loss records...the Blue Jays won the tie-breaker and will be hosting the Orioles in the one-game playoff this Tuesday.  The next day will see the New York Mets at home against the San Francisco Giants...both also finished with the same regular season records, N.Y. winning this tie-breaker.  The two teams just missing the playoffs were Detroit and St. Louis in the AL and NL, respectively.  On Thursday the League Division Series will start and go on for a few days.  Texas will face the American League wild-card playoff winner and the Chicago Cubs will go against that of the National League.  Other series will see Cleveland against Boston and Washington against the Los Angeles Dodgers, the Indians and Nationals enjoying home-field advantage.  I've already indicated a few days ago that I'm going to support Boston and San Francisco for these playoffs...but I feel that the World Series most likely will eventually pit the Rangers against the Cubs.  On the other hand, any one of the ten teams that made the playoffs can get hot and surge through to the World Series title...the last few seasons have clearly shown that to be true...

As for me following the baseball playoffs, most of the games will take place while I am at work...meaning that I will miss out on watching the action.  I'll just have to wait until the weekends and watch what's available then...

Just Finished Reading Ruth Rendell's Gallowglass

Gallowglass is a 1990 novel credited to the name Barbara Vine, which was a pseudonym for renown mystery writer Ruth Rendell.  Since I've been focusing lately on her works, I thought I'd try out one by Vine.  As it turned out, Gallowglass in many ways reminds me of the other two Rendell standalone novels I've read: Portobello and The Crocodile Bird.  It goes deeply into the personalities, histories, and relationships of its characters, a Rendell trademark.  And while mysteries abound here, the story isn't a "mystery" per se...rather a suspenseful drama...

Much of Gallowglass is told in the first person by an uneducated young Englishman named Joe, who has suffered through much depression in his short life and was on the verge of jumping in front of a speeding train when another young man, Sandor, pulls him out of danger.  Sandor demands unquestioning loyalty from Joe because he saved his life, and the latter is not only compliant in this but develops a deep, nonsexual love for him.  Sandor, who unlike Joe had gone to college and is well-versed in the arts and literature, dubs his new obedient friend as his "gallowglass", referring to a class of Scottish Celtic warriors of the distant past who fought for their chief.  But Sandor is not wholly benevolent in his leadership role and often shows sadistic streaks as well as continually belittling Joe, who is only too willing to quickly forgive him his faults.  And Sandor has a big secret he gradually reveals through a story he tells in snippets to Joe: he had been involved, with some young Italians, in the kidnapping of a wealthy Englishman's wife while they were in Italy a few years back in order to obtain a large ransom.  It starts to become apparent that he now wants to repeat the feat here in England, kidnapping the same woman, Nina...but with Joe as his new accomplice.  So they begin to survey the heavily secured estate where she lives with her paranoid third husband, and the story then departs from Joe's account to a third-person narrative...

One of the main characters in Gallowglass is the bodyguard that Nina's husband hired to look after her.  Paul Garnet is a sympathetic and strong individual who devotes himself to taking care of his young daughter Jessica after her mother had essentially abandoned the two of them a few years earlier.  He plays an important role in the story's outcome, as do a few other characters whom I have omitted from this short review.  Suffice to say that I don't want to reveal anything that would keep you from wanting to read this engrossing story...

I thought it was interesting how Rendell would alternate between writing in the first person from Joe's perspective and in the third person whenever the narrative was about Paul Garnet.  I also picked up how Joe would abandon his own conscience and conform himself to whatever Sandor said or did...that, to me, is reminiscent of the numerous "toadies" of the bullies I had the disgust and displeasure of growing up with, most notably at my own school bus stop.  I also see the same unquestioning, nearly idolatrous attitude being taken by many supporters of a certain presidential candidate who displays every aspect of being a bully.  No, neither Joe nor Sandor are very compelling people for their often revolting personalities...but that by no means detracts from them being very interesting.  Gallowglass is a pretty dark tale that might require someone of a tougher constitution to get through.  Well, I got through it, anyway...and thought it was a very worthwhile read...

In 1993 BBC made an on-screen adaptation of Gallowglass, which I naturally haven't had time to watch.  Maybe it's available on Netflix or another resource...if you don't feel like reading the book, you might want to check it out...