My November 2017 Running Report

This month began on a positive note with my running as I gradually increased my endurance and mileage.  But then I began to experience some pain in my left heel that felt like plantar fasciitis and I took a break for a few days...later I came down with a really nasty variety of viral cold and I took a longer break...in the end missing running for 10 days in November.  I managed to run for a total of 69 total miles, most of it in the early part of the month...and my longest single run was for 5.4 miles.  I had been hoping to be able to run in a couple of races this past month, but circumstances conspired against me and I'll have to just see what's up in December and how well I'm back "into the groove" before I take on any of them...during the past week I have been gradually getting back into running but still have to deal with a residual irritation in my throat from that awful cold...

11/26 Sermon on Questions I'd Ask God, Part 4

At The Family Church here in Gainesville, our senior pastor Philip Griffin concludes his message series Questions I'd Ask God with the final question: What If I Have Doubts?  While customarily focused on one particularly section of scripture and its meaning for us, in this series...and especially with this message...Philip instead draws upon several references.  When I've indicated one, just click on it and you'll be able to read it via Bible Gateway...

Pastor Philip structures this sermon about doubt by first discussing the truth about it and then how to move past it.  His first point is that spiritually mature people can still have times of doubt (Matthew 11:2-3, Matthew 14:31, Matthew 28:17). Philip distinguishes between two different Greek words translating to "doubt"...one means a wavering between options while the other denotes judgment and making wrong conclusions.  The former is the acceptable usage of "doubt" that he is discussing here and that it is normal and healthy for people to ask questions when confusion arises before them. Secondly, God doesn't condemn questions, but encourages them (Matthew 7:7, James 1:6-8).  Jesus encouraged seekers...the problematic condemnation of doubt expressed in that passage from James refers to the second translation of that word which means judgment, not an open search for truth.  Now how does one move past doubt? Philip lays out four steps: go to the root (Jeremiah 20:18), ask God for help (Mark 9:24), trust scripture, (2 Peter 1:16), (Ephesians 4:14-15), and hold any remaining questions in perspective (1 Corinthians 13:12).  In this process our pastor stresses that the problem with doubts is when we hang onto them instead of seeking their resolution...

I have a couple of reactions to this message.  One is that there is another word in common use, "skeptic", that can be interpreted in two different ways...either as someone who actively and honestly questions the truth of something or as someone who has already firmly made up their mind in disbelief.  So nowadays you hear of climate change skeptics, 9/11 skeptics, Kennedy assassination skeptics...all of these have already committed themselves to a negative judgment.  My other reaction to this sermon...as well as to the series as a whole...is that I believe that there are things in our faith that don't necessarily lend themselves to seeking answers for the simple reason that they are a deliberate part of God's mystery, beyond inquiry.  I don't believe that my Lord wants me to stand behind him and have the same degree of understanding about him and his creation that he has, but rather that he wants me to be in relationship with him...to walk with him...

You can watch Pastor Philip's message on the church's YouTube video website through the following link: [link].  The Family Church, located at 2022 SW 122nd Street, meets each Sunday morning at 9:30 and 11 with the weekly message, worship music, prayer, and fellowship.  Next week will begin a new series...

Weekly Short Story: Imposter by Philip K. Dick

I first read Imposter, which is the first story by the great, late science fiction writer Philip K. Dick that I had ever read, many years ago.  It's the fourth short story I'm reviewing from the retrospective anthology Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 15 (1953).  Maybe you know of it from the 2002 feature-length film starring Gary Sinise, but Dick's original tale only was only 17 paperback pages long...the movie obviously added a lot of extraneous material, something I don't dig at all...

The premise of Imposter is simple enough: Earth in a not-to-distant future time is at war with unseen beings called Outspacers, from Alpha Centauri.  The enemy's technology is developed to the point where they can create duplicate android robots that are indistinguishable from real people...and they can tailor them to copy specific persons, even their own memories.  Spence Olham is employed on a crucial project to develop a super weapon and gets up one morning with his wife Mary to get ready for another grueling day of work.  When the "bug" comes by to pick him up, he sees his friend and colleague Nelson...accompanied by a stranger, whom he learns is Major Peters.  After a little conversation, Peters explains his mission: the arrest of Olham, accused of being a robotic Outlander spy! Nelson and Peters grab and restrain Olham and then transport him to the moon for safe disposal, for they have been informed that the robot has a very destructive u-bomb within him and that it is activated by an unknown, specific phrase spoken aloud.  Olham loudly proclaims that he is himself, not an imposter...but Peters and Nelson always have an answer to each protestation...and Nelson seethes with hatred as he believes that the imposter killed his best friend in order to replace him...

The rest of this short story deals with Olham's struggle for survival and determination to clear himself by finding the real robot, which he believes is in a crashed ship in the woods nearby his home.  You can read it all for yourself (here's a link to it: [link]), but I'll just say that the ending was pretty surprising and abrupt...with a memorable final line.  I rather doubt that a drawn-out movie with its distracting subplots could have come anywhere close to capturing this compact tale's feel and effect...

If our memories are based within the complex neurological framework of our physical brains...and these can be duplicated...then it raises the question as to what constitutes one's sense of selfness, that is of having an identity, of being "me".  Have I been "me" my whole life and how could I prove it: no matter what calendar moment the "now" is resting on, at that moment I have access to my physically-based memories...but that in itself just means that I am "here" at this moment with access to them and not that I have been here in the past forming them.  This can get a bit overly metaphysical and speculative, but that's a trademark of Philip K. Dick, who was always trying to get his readers to stretch themselves...

Tuesday's List: My Favorite Songs with the Bo Diddley Beat

I once met the late rock and roll great Bo Diddley while he was getting a new set of tires put on his van at the Sam's here in Gainesville...I was there to get one of my tires repaired and was seated waiting for service while he was standing in line chatting with other customers.  I don't know what folks expect when encountering famous people like him, but he was unpretentious, friendly, funny...and very talkative.  I didn't get a chance to chat with him, but I did get to acknowledge him and say hi...that's good enough for me.  Bo Diddley, who sadly passed away nine years ago and whose real name was Ellas McDaniel, was a pioneer during the fifties in the development and popularization of rock and roll.  He may be best known for the special "Bo Diddley beat" that many other acts have used in some of their best songs.  The following is a list of my favorites songs with that unmistakable beat in order of preference.  But hey...they're all good!

1 WHO DO YOU LOVE?...... George Thorogood and the Destroyers (originally by Bo Diddley)
2 DESIRE................................U2
3 MAGIC BUS........................The Who
4 NOT FADE AWAY.............The Rolling Stones (originally by Buddy Holly)
5 DON'T LET HIM GO..........REO Speedwagon
6 (MARIE'S THE NAME) HIS LATEST FLAME.......Elvis Presley
7 HOW SOON IS NOW.........The Smiths
8 AMERICAN GIRL..............Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
9 I WANT CANDY................Bow Wow Wow
10 FAITH................................George Michael

The Ancestry Genetic Test Fad

A while back they began to show these DNA testing commercials on TV, Ancestry.com being the major company doing this.  In one of their ads, a man who had taken on the persona of what he deemed to be a "German" because he had a German-sounding name took one of these tests.  The result came back with little-to-no German ancestry, but a lot of Scottish...so he began to wear a kilt.  Oh, come on, folks...do people really take this ancestry thing that seriously?

Forgive me for being a little skeptical about this latest craze of people sending in their DNA samples to the big company for a fee and then getting a readout as to where their ancestors came from.  For one, I believe that there is a built-in bias in the process because of the names of the ethno-national groups and the criteria for dividing them from one another: since the company wants a saleable product pleasing to its customers, it will make familiar distinctions among the different groups that they can easily recognize.  Secondly, I wonder about the accuracy of it all, assuming that the DNA sample sent in is pure to begin with.  I wonder what the results would be if I sent in samples to various competing companies...how much would they vary from each other? And thirdly, all my life I have been educated to believe that, under the skin and outward appearance, we're all just fellow human beings.  The notion of "race" that we've been snowed under to believe for centuries isn't a matter of objective reality, but rather one of subjective perception.  After all, geneticists have concluded that our species is relatively very homogeneous in comparison with others, with very little genetic diversity between the so-called races and ethnic groups.  And lastly, I wonder whether people engage in genetic testing in order to classify themselves...at least partially...as members of a group that they want to identify with for whatever personal reasons...

The way I see it, you and I are what we are, and our respective lives, the things we have gone through, screwed up, learned, and accomplished create individual tapestries that are far more interesting and significant than any pie chart showing our ethnic origins...

Happy With New, Detailed Star Atlas

When I was seven, back in the spring of 1964, my father sat with me one evening and opened up his own very ancient, tattered boy scout handbook...showing me a series of star maps of the evening sky and explaining the constellations to me.  He pointed out that the sky, along with the positions of the stars, changes over the course of the day as well as throughout the year. I took it all to heart and have been enamored with star-gazing ever since.  I picked up a couple more star guides, one of them that my father and I saw at an outdoor Miami newsstand off Biscayne Boulevard...that was around '65, I believe.  Nowadays, of course, there are many resources and detailed star maps accessible through the World Wide Web, but there's nothing quite like having the paper maps in my hands.  The other day I was shopping at Publix and lo and behold, in the checkout line there was a special issue of Astronomy magazine titled Atlas of the Stars.  Not only do the maps cover all the celestial sphere from the north to south poles in great detail, but there are plenty of interesting accompanying articles.  It makes me want to pay another visit to my local Gainesville planetarium, located at Sante Fe College...and check to see whether there isn't still an astronomy club at the University of Florida...I remember that years ago they used to regularly hold telescope viewings of the night sky...

The Telephone Game, Updated with Google Translates

I imagine that most if not all of us have during our childhood experienced...usually at school or parties...the Telephone Game.  This is when a group of several kids sit around in a circle and each one whispers a short message to the next one...who then whispers it to whoever's on the other side.  When the message finally returns to the first kid after going around the circle, it is usually...and hilariously...very different from its original form.  Which is the whole point of the game, naturally.  We can in our Internet age do a different version of this, by starting with a basic sentence in English and then with the use of the Google Translates feature translate it into a different foreign language.  So 1 translates to 2, 2 translates to 3, and so on down the line until 14 translates back into English...which is usually altered from the original statement.  I tried this out by taking yesterday's quote from Igor Stravinsky and passing it from English through 13 successive languages and then back.  The result wasn't altered too much, but there still was a divergence from the originally expressed quote;:

1: I haven't understood a bar of music in my life, but I have felt it.
2: No he entendido un bar de música en mi vida, pero lo he sentido.
3: Ich habe kein Musikstück in meinem Leben verstanden, aber ich habe es gefühlt.
4: Я не понимал музыки в своей жизни, но я это почувствовал.
5: 我一生都不了解音樂，但是我感覺到了
6: Je n'ai pas connu la musique toute ma vie, mais je l'ai ressentie.

7: मुझे अपने सभी जीवन में संगीत नहीं पता था, लेकिन मुझे यह महसूस हुआ।

8: Tôi không biết âm nhạc trong suốt cuộc đời, nhưng tôi cảm thấy nó.

9: Nem ismerem a zenét egész életemben, de úgy érzem.

10: 나는 내 인생의 모든 음악을 모르지만, 나는 기분이 좋아.

11: Hayatımdaki tüm müzikleri bilmiyorum, ama hoşuma gidiyor.

12: أنا لا أعرف كل الموسيقى في حياتي، ولكن أنا يتمتع بها

13: 私は私の人生のすべての音楽を知らないが、私はそれを楽しむ。

14: Nie znam całej muzyki mojego życia, ale lubię to.

15: I do not know the whole music of my life, but I like it.

As you can see, between the translations somewhere "understand" changed to "know", "whole" was added, first to modify "life" and then switched to modify "music" (which dropped "bar"), the tense changed from present perfect to present, and "felt" changed to "like".   Now the fun in this game is to look back on the translations and see where the changes occurred.  For example, the change from "understood" to "knew" occurred between the Chinese (#5) sentence and the French (#6).  "Whole life" first appeared in Chinese (#5) as 一生.  Since I know some of these languages better than others, there are sections where the changes can be hidden and it takes some extra linguistic detective work to find them.  By the way, do you know which languages are featured here? 

Quote of the Week...from Igor Stravinsky

I haven't understood a bar of music in my life, but I have felt it.      ---Igor Stravinsky.

I feel tempted by this quote from one of the greatest composers of all time to put myself squarely by his side and justify my own shortcomings in intellectually understanding music, especially its very intricate technicalities.  After all, it is the feeling I get...just as Stravinsky stated it...upon hearing an especially compelling song or classical piece.  But I'm sure that Stravinsky knew quite well all there was to know about reading and writing music and that his "understanding" of it far, far surpassed mine...or the great majority of people in the world, for that matter.  Instead, I think his quote was intended to emphasize that the feelings and emotions that music elicits are much more significant than the nuts-and-bolts of the art and that while his often very complex compositions may have opened themselves up to much technical scrutiny and analysis, he did not create them from his mind, but rather from his heart...

Sometimes at night I listen to my local classical music station and it broadcasts various syndicated shows that discuss and play various pieces of the featured composer.  And sometimes I feel frustrated by their analysis, which often is over my musically-untrained head, and I just want them to shut up and play the entire work, not just snippets interspersed with drawling, affected chatter.  On a different level, I grew up listening to rock and roll, in particular during that time in the 1960s called the British Invasion.  Rock bands from Britain were forming in multitudes and the members, many of them teenage kids untrained in music theory and incapable of reading it, would imitate songs off records until they could cover them well and record them...and then later came up with their own compositions,.based on how they felt...someone else was given the job of writing them down.  Yet it was music all the same, and some of my favorite songs come from people who didn't know much of the technicalities of music beyond what they could do on their own instruments to create the effects that brought out the feelings they sought...

So while music lends itself to intellectual scrutiny, that isn't what makes it tick.  Feeling music, as Igor Stravinsky stressed, is by far more important than "understanding" it...

11/19 Sermon on Questions I'd Ask God, Part 3

This past Sunday I missed the weekly message of The Family Church here in Gainesville due to illness.  Instead, I watched it on the church's YouTube video website...you can, too, through the following link: [link].  The series Questions I'd Ask God continued as senior pastor Philip Griffin discussed another question: How Do I Know What God Wants from Me? The Biblical sources he used are varied...I'll put links to Bible Gateway for some of them as this summary continues...

Pastor Philip presented four fundamental transformations that God wants to work in me: he wants me to be saved, surrendered, sanctified, and spirit-filled.  The salvation part necessarily comes first and involves my recognition that I am powerless in my sin to save myself: only through the atoning sacrifice and resurrection of Jesus Christ and my belief in him will this happen and my heart will truly turn toward God (John 6:40).  Surrendering involves that both of my will and my circumstance (Romans 12:1-2, 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18).  Sanctification involves avoiding immorality...in particular sexual immorality as the Bible passage states (1 Thessalonians 4:3-5).  To live a Spirit-filled life is important...instead of escaping from reality through alcohol or other drugs (Ephesians 5:17-18).  Philip once again employed the analogy of a sailing ship on the high seas with the sails full of the wind's power (like the Holy Spirit in us) as it drives the ship along...

The Family Church, at 2022 SW 122nd Street, holds its Sunday morning services at 9:30 and 11...there is free coffee between services in the hospitality room next to the entranceway.  A good message, praise music, prayer, friendly folks...a good way to spend a Sunday morning...

Weekly Short Story: The Three Hermits by Leo Tolstoy

I found the great Russian author Leo Tolstoy's 1886 short story The Three Hermits in an anthology designed for Russian language students: Russian Stories Русские Рассказы: A Dual-Language Book (1961, Dover Publications)...you can read it for yourself through the following link to the Online-Literature website: [link].  I suggest that you first do this, for this article will discuss the story's ending, something I usually don't do because I don't like playing the spoiler...

A church bishop traveling to a distant monastery learns of three elderly hermits living on an small uncharted island off the northern coast of Russia and insists to his ship's captain that he be allowed to visit them.  The captain sends him out to the island on a boat and waits...the Bishop meets the hermits and hears that they take care of each other, are generous and hospitable to visitors, and are seeking salvation and mercy...but do not know how to pray to God.  So he painstakenly sets out to teach them the Lord's Prayer...they stumble and forget, but after several hours he is satisfied that they have learned it.  He returns to the ship and they continue on their voyage.  But a little while later they see something quickly approaching on the water from where they were...it is the three hermits speeding...gliding...on the watertop toward them!  Upon reaching the Bishop, all three exclaim in alarmed unison that they had already forgotten parts of  the Lord's Prayer and would he please help them relearn it...the astonished Bishop calls them men of God and says that it is not for him to teach them...and for them to please "pray for us sinners"...

Book learning, formal training, and doctrine are useful things in a field...but Tolstoy (and I) would make the important distinction that one's heart takes precedence over all.  Knowing and repeating the "right" words to say to God is nothing better than a magically-intended incantation if there is no heartfelt spirit behind it, while a contrite, humble soul grounded in love for God and others will fare much better.  But that's my religious take on this overtly religious story: there is, I believe a broader application here...

I cannot begin to count the different times I have been in situations where I was captivated by what was around me, be it a spectacularly clear night sky full of stars, listening to a beautiful piece of music, riding a convoluted, looping, speeding roller coaster, running a very long distance along winding roads and paths, hunched over a radio trying to pick up distant stations, exploring the basics and intricacies of a foreign language, and so on.  There is that primal level of enthusiasm about a subject that I am always searching to tap and experience, but when I find other so-called "like-minded" people to relate with, I inevitably come across skeptical, nit-picking, correcting...and sometimes even demeaning responses...as if we're in some sort of competition with each other because of our common interest and they seem to feel the need to put me in my "place".  Like the three hermits, I don't seem to come across as being an "expert" in many areas that I maintain a high level of interest and enthusiasm for...it would be a refreshing change if the people I encounter who shared my interests were more "incompetent" like myself (and the three hermits) and less like the pedantic, "correct" Bishop in Tolstoy's tale...

Tuesday's List: The First-Magnitude Stars in Order of Brilliance

Way, way back in late 1960 I had just turned four and lived in a small apartment with my parents and sister in Opa-Locka, Florida...a little town just northwest of Miami with a strange penchant for Arabian architecture and street names.  My father worked close by at the Opa-Locka post office as a letter carrier and wanted to move us into a house...so the hunt began.  My parents apparently decided at the outset that our new neighborhood would be a commute a few miles away from Opa-Locka and so we ventured north into southern Broward County to look for a suitable house.  Had they instead gone south of Miami for a new home, I might well have been able to claim to have seen every star on the following list of all twenty-three of the first-magnitude (i.e., the very brightest) stars.  In West Hollywood, where we ended up moving, the latitude was just north enough that, combined with the city lights of Miami and obstructions on the horizon, I could never observe the brilliant southern hemisphere constellations of Centaurus and Crux that cross the meridian in the evening during mid-spring.  But south of Miami, the latitude would have raised them in the southern sky and the city lights would have been less of an interference, leading to a better shot at catching them from time to time.  As it is now, I live some four degrees further north in Gainesville, so forget it from where I am...I just have to get off my butt and travel to a more southern location (with clear skies) to finally get a look at these bright stars.  Crux, also known as the Southern Cross, has two first-magnitude stars and is situated in the sky right next to Centaurus' Hadar (also known as Beta Centauri) and Alpha Centauri.  Alpha Centauri is actually a three-star system, composed of Alpha Centauri A, slightly larger than our sun, Alpha Centauri B, slightly smaller...and Proxima Centauri, much smaller and distant from the other two as well as being the closest star to us besides the sun.  Alpha Centauri A and B are each bright stars in their own right, but are indistinguishable to the naked eye because of their proximity to each other...

Here's my list of the twenty-three brightest stars from the vantage point of Earth.  Their constellations are given in parentheses (our sun naturally traverses the Zodiac over the course of each year) and the numbers are their distances from us in light-years.  In the not-to-distant future I'll examine the nearest stars.  The distances I picked up from Wikipedia...I've noticed that some of them tend to vary from source to source...

1 THE SUN (The Zodiac)..................(.000016)
2 SIRIUS (Canis Major)...........................8.61
3 CANOPUS (Carina).............................312
4 ARCTURUS (Bootes)..........................36.7
5 ALPHA CENTAURI A (Centaurus).....4.40
6 VEGA (Lyra)........................................25.3
7 CAPELLA (Auriga)..............................42.2
8 RIGEL (Orion)......................................773
9 PROCYON (Canis Minor)....................11.4
10 ACHERNAR (Eridanus).....................144
11 BETELGEUSE (Orion).......................427
12 HADAR (Centaurus)...........................525
13 ALTAIR (Aquila)................................16.8
14 ACRUX (Crux)....................................321
15 ALDEBERAN (Taurus).......................65.1
16 SPICA (Virgo).....................................262
17 ANTARES (Scorpius).........................604
18 POLLUX (Gemini)..............................33.7
19 FOMALHAUT (Piscis Austrinis)........25.1
20 BECRUX (Crux)..................................353
21 DENEB (Cygnus).................................3229
22 ALPHA CENTAURI B (Centaurus)....4.40
23 REGULUS (Leo)..................................77.5

Just Finished Rereading Stephen King's The Tommyknockers

As I continue to look back through Stephen King's long bibliography, I just finished reading his 1987 allegorical science fiction novel The Tommyknockers.  While just about all good fiction is allegorical to a degree, this story is especially so.  Set once again in Stephen King's mythical Maine country, a huge chunk of its beginning focuses on Bobbi Anderson, a young writer of western novels who lives on the outskirts of the small town of Haven with her dog Peter.  The two enjoy their walks in the adjacent woods until one day Bobbi trips over some metal object sticking out of the ground.  As she starts to uncover it, she discovers not only that it goes down deep, but that it has an influence over her by giving her the ability to invent amazing things out of the ordinary objects she has around her.  The more the object is dug up, the more it exposes its effects in the air and soon more people in the vicinity and within Haven become similarly affected...one of the by-products being that they loose their teeth.  And they also become telepathic as the air around them changes its composition. Bobbi quickly becomes fanatically determined to fully dig up the artifact, and the townspeople join her...

In the meantime, Bobbi's on-and-off-again boyfriend Jim "Gard" Gardner, a poet of some talent with a drinking problem, has been making the recital circuit in the general area.  He has one issue that he regularly gets himself in trouble about: his adamant opposition to the use of nuclear energy.  One night at a party for the poets, he drinks way too much and encounters someone who is speaking in favor of nuclear power. A big fight ensues and when it is all over he finds himself waking up several days later out on a pier.  Wanting to end it all, he considering jumping into the sea, but mentally picks up the feeling that "Bobbi is in trouble" and returns to Haven.  There the two reunite and work together on the excavation: but Gard is impervious to the effects of what is now revealed to be a huge alien spacecraft because he has a metal plate in his head from a boyhood skiing accident...

So now, while necessarily leaving out a lot in this long book, I have essentially set up the scenario for The Tommyknockers...you're welcome to read it for yourself to find out what happens to Bobbi, Peter, Gard, and the rest of Haven (and others).  Instead, I'd like now to go back to that allegory, which is about the effects of drugs on people...since they are all mind-altering in nature and impart a sense of special power to their users, much like the effect of the ship on Bobbi and the Haven residents.  And abusers of the same chemicals tend to bond more with each other and insulate and rationalize their use against the "outside" world...just like in this story.  Of course, Jim Gardner is himself almost constantly in a state of intoxication through much of the narrative as well.  In the end, though, the altered people...the "Tommyknockers"...are really only smarter in a very specialized way and have very little common sense or social intelligence...

Stephen King himself admits that he wrote Tommyknockers while dealing with his own drug habit and that this was reflected in the story.  Today around us we are confronted with a dire opioid abuse epidemic that stems from carelessly prescribed pain medicine starting a few years ago and is now blossoming into mass heroin addiction across this country, with the death rate spiraling upward.  All drug abuse, from nicotine to alcohol to all sorts of illegal substances, functions to first imitate and enhance the effects of already naturally-established biological processes within our bodies and then, with regular use, to supplant them, thereby shutting them down when use is interrupted, causing withdrawal. Better to never get started with them in the first place, as Nancy Reagan used to urge us.  But seeing things for what they are is an important first step to recovery, and one useful lesson is that using this stuff doesn't really make you wiser or more enlightened in spite of what you might think while under the influence...

NFL Games in London and Mexico City

Starting in 2005 when Arizona played San Francisco in an October regular season game in Mexico City, the National Football League has been staging regular season games abroad, most of them in London, England and a few in Mexico City.  Apart from this project, the Buffalo Bills as a franchise decided to hold some games a few years ago in Toronto...that's a separate issue since all of those games were the Bills' home games.  One of the two main problems I see with this international promotion on the part of the NFL is that it interferes with the fairness of regular season team competition by regularly taking away a scheduled home game from one team while taking away an away contest from another.  This wouldn't be important were it not for the fact that home teams by and large do much better than the visitors...and some teams, like the Jacksonville Jaguars and Miami Dolphins, have too often had to bear the burden of giving up one of those precious home games during the year just to suit the league office's fancies.  This year, for example, both Jacksonville and Miami had "home" games in London while the Dolphins' chief divisional rival, New England gets a break with their ongoing "away" game against Oakland, the game taking place at the neutral site Mexico City.  I honestly don't know why the schedule makers go to so much trouble to ensure that every team in each division plays the same teams in other divisions in order to make it "fair" while at the same time pulling this grossly unfair stunt on some teams and their fans...

The other objection I have to staging NFL games in countries like England and Mexico is that the sport simply isn't played there.  When I was growing up, we were constantly starting up football games at the bus stop or during free time...in other countries like Mexico or England the kids would be doing the same with soccer, which is their version of football.  There is no way that American football will ever take hold over soccer in those countries, and the National Football League is very shortsighted for not seeing this.  But instead of cutting back, they keep expanding the schedule to hold more games abroad, penalizing certain franchises while favoring others.  Really bad idea, dudes...

Under the Weather, Resting and Watching TV

I could feel it coming on late Wednesday, and all day Friday I was virtually nonfunctional with this terrible viral attack that hit much harder than a regular cold...but not quite as bad as the flu.  Bad headache, coughing, sinus congestion, and general lack of vitality characterized this ailment.  Today was better...but I'm still a long way to recovery.  In the meantime, while I was essentially immobilized, I was able to take advantage of some free premium channel promotions that my local cable company (Cox in Gainesville) was offering.  All of the HBO channels and some of the other premium channels are being shown free of charge this weekend, and because of this I was able to "clean up" with some movies I had been meaning to watch.  I saw Spectre and Star Trek: Beyond, the latest two installments in the James Bond and Star Trek movie series, respectively.  I also watched Mockingjay, Parts I & II, based on the Hunger Games young adult book series that I had already read.  And I managed to finally watch JFK, Oliver Stone's conspiratorial masterpiece that laid out an alternative explanation for the assassination of our 35th president.  I enjoyed all of these...but that Star Trek movie was hard to follow with the plot's too-fast pace coupled with the overwhelming special effects: sometimes you can go just a little too far with the visuals at the story's expense.  I also enjoyed watching the University of Miami come from behind this afternoon to beat Virginia 44-28 and remain unbeaten, as well as "my" Florida Gators finally putting on an impressive performance while beating a good University of Alabama-Birmingham team 36-7.  And Michigan with their obnoxious coach Jim Harbaugh got whupped by Wisconsin, hooray...

Mexican league soccer is also on the boob tube right now, and I'll probably flick back and forth between football and that.  Speaking of soccer, after the American national team failed to qualify for next year's World Cup in Russia, I predict that the growing interest within this country for that sport will sadly diminish.  Aggravating the problem is that Major League Soccer, which is the premier professional league for the United States and Canada, had become very stingy with showing its games on TV, opting instead for premium packages that require extra payment.  Hey you soccer bigwigs: you don't pull that kind of nonsense with the viewing public when you're trying to promote your league and keep it afloat...

Quote of the Week...from Ludwig van Beethoven

Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy.      ---Ludwig van Beethoven

Music seems to be an intrinsic part of humanity, interwoven into the diversity of cultures all across the world.  From infancy onward we are exposed to songs that open up a part of our consciousness to a different way of communicating and thinking...my life memories have always had a parallel track of musical experiences that, while in themselves worthy of being remembered, also serve to help me vividly recall by association...often in detail...what was going on at different times in my past.  Recently I have begun to listen in earnest to classical music...it was inevitable that I would pick up a CD of one of my favorite works: Ludwig van Beethoven's Ninth Symphony in D-Minor, featuring what I consider to be one of the most fascinating pieces of music ever: the Second Movement...

Like many of you of a more senior age like myself, I was introduced to the Second Movement of Beethoven's Ninth as a child, at the closing credits of the Huntley-Brinkley Report, which was NBC's weeknight news program.  Eventually I learned that a very important musical genius named Beethoven composed it, which he accomplished while stone deaf!  But music does not have to be perceived through functioning ears to be heard: once I've heard a song a number of times, it independently plays itself within my mind...and to a trained musician like Beethoven this ability was probably greatly magnified.  In any event, I have that CD in my car and play that movement over and over again...and yes, my brain now plays it as well long after I've shut off the engine...

To bring Ludwig van Beethoven's quote to its proper conclusion, let me just say that music transcends language in its effect on people's personalities, values, and behavior.  And if a talented artist can effectively combine the music with meaningful lyrics, he or she can yield an enormous influence over others.  If you want to evaluate how our society has changed over the past few generations...for better or for worse...you cannot reach any reasonable conclusions as to the causes unless you seriously consider the effects that music has exerted on our world...

11/12 Sermon: Questions I'd Ask God, Part 2

Senior pastor Philip Griffin at the Family Church here in Gainesville continued his message series titled Questions I'd Ask God with this week's topic/question: How Could A Good God Allow People to Suffer?  In presenting it he focused on the New Testament story of Lazarus's death and resurrection found in John 11:1-44...here's a link to it in the New International Version translation via Bible Gateway: [link]...

Implied within the question "How could a good God allow people to suffer?" is the accusation that God is responsible for that suffering. As Pastor Philip pointed out, scripture however reveals that sin has brought into the world suffering and death. In this fallen world, people suffer yet they can turn to God, who not only uses their trials to accomplish good, but is also deeply moved by them.  Philip continued by noting that, while God is not the cause of people's suffering, he has entered into it and conquered death by sending into the world his son Jesus, who took on the sins of the world so that those who believe in him will be saved.  In the end, God will make all things new...and as written in Revelation 21:4-5, "He will wipe every tear from their eyes".  God is compassionate, but he is also good and just.  He wants all of us to freely choose to follow him and, through this, he will be glorified...

I think that this idea of people suffering because of the sin in the world can be one of the hardest doctrinal points of this faith to understand.  Little children can suffer more than anyone and yet they have little power or knowledge to understand fully the doctrines of sin and salvation.  I personally grasp that God has allowed us the free will to either accept or reject him, and that he did this in love.  But the kind of suffering that doesn't directly arise as a result of one's own behavior...say a devastating cyclone in Bangladesh, a tsunami in Thailand, a hurricane in Puerto Rico, or an earthquake in Mexico...can be hard to figure out in terms of our own sinful natures...

This sermon can be viewed on the Family Church YouTube video website...here's the link to it: [link].  The Family Church is at 2022 SW 122nd Street on the far western edge of Gainesville.  It holds Sunday morning services at 9:30 and 11 with inspiring, lively music, a relevant message, and opportunities for prayer and fellowship.  Wonder what the question will be next week...

Weekly Short Story: The Liberation of Earth by William Tenn

I read The Liberation of Earth several years ago when I bought the science fiction anthology Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 15 (1953), published by DAW Books in 1986.  For some reason 1953 featured several outstanding short stories of this genre...I discussed Time is the Traitor by Alfred Bester in an earlier article.  Today's story is another one by William Tenn, the pen name for Philip Klass...you might have read my article about his 1959 story The Malted Milk Monster...

The narrative in The Liberation of Earth is from the future...nine generations after the described events.  One day an alien ship arrives on Earth and proclaims that they are the Dendi, who preside over the galactic federation and have been observing humanity from a distance...without interference...while we develop to the point when we are admitted as a participating member.  But events have interfered with this as the invading Troxxt have occupied nearby star systems and our solar system is within their sphere of influence.  To counteract them and "liberate" Earth from the Troxxt, the Dendi have arrived to set up their own base here.  Then the Troxxt attack and drive away the Dendi and proclaim themselves as liberators.  This conflict between the two galactic powers goes back and forth...and each time untold numbers of people are killed and the environment progressively ruined.  At the end, well...the story is told as an oral history handed down from generation to generation...the narrator gives a hint of his current situation on Earth by stating. "Looking about us, we can say with pardonable pride that we have been about as thoroughly liberated as it is possible for a race and a planet to be!"

The Liberation of Earth is a very thinly-veiled satire about how the East and West during the Cold War treated the many different countries that they deemed as strategic in their struggle against the other.  It was written at the opening of the Korean War in 1950 and published at its conclusion, three years later.  Each side in that conflict...as well as in Vietnam a few years later...made great public fanfare about "liberating" the country's people...while increasingly making their homeland uninhabitable.  After the Cold War we still have our proxy conflicts...look at the devastation in Syria and Yemen as other countries interfere with them while proclaiming themselves as liberators...

Earth as a proxy war target between two much more advanced alien races may seem a little bit too speculative for anyone to seriously consider as a possibility, but if you happen to live in one of the Third World countries with relatively little military might to defend themselves and you have little to interest you other than taking care of yourself, your family, and immediate community, the relatively sudden presence of super military powers and "wars of liberation" on your land may seem just as far-fetched to you...and just as tragic...

Tuesday's List: Ten Leading Causes of Bankruptcy

I was watching the U.S. Senate floor proceedings on C-Span2 this morning when Senator Dick Durbin (D, IL) spoke about the proposed Republican tax reform bill...specifically its provision eliminating deductions for medical expenses.  Durbin pointed out that many households have large accrued medical expenses and need this deduction to keep themselves afloat...he said there were more than 300,000 in his home state of Illinois alone.  This is nothing minor: as the senator stated, medical expenses account for the number one cause of bankruptcies in this country...and it's not even close.  Well, Durbin's speech made me wonder exactly what are the primary causes for bankruptcy, so afterward I did a search and quickly came across Clear Bankruptcy, which seems to be designed to help people in tough financial straits: good for them, I suppose...there are other sites that have similar lists.  On their webpage they listed the top ten causes of bankruptcy, which I've listed below:

1 MEDICAL EXPENSES (42%)
2 JOB LOSS (22%)
3 UNCONTROLLED SPENDING (15%)
4 DIVORCE (8%)
5 UNEXPECTED DISASTER (7%)
6 AVOIDING FORECLOSURE (1.5%)
7 POOR FINANCIAL PLANNING (1.5%)
8 PREVENTING LOSS OF UTILITIES (1%)
9 STUDENT LOANS (1%)
10 PREVENTING REPOSSESSION (1%)

Now I believe that for many of the bankruptcy cases the causes are probably a mixture of different factors coming together for a "perfect financial storm", but it is inarguable that medical expenses present a very big problem for Americans, regardless how well they plan their finances and handle their money. And it's because of our health care system here that, Obamacare notwithstanding, still regards medical treatment more as a privilege than a right.  It is almost academic that as people age their health will decline and more and more serious medical problems will present themselves.  And with the improvement of the medical community's means to handle those problems with often very expensive treatments comes a drastic increase in the costs, which can devastate people's finances, often just as they are either preparing for retirement or already there.  And now one of our political parties apparently wants to aggravate the problem by eliminating medical tax deductions. If this provision of the tax reform bill becomes law, expect that "42%" figure to get higher (other sources already have it as high as 62%)...

Need to Learn Robert's Rules of Order

I regularly watch the televised proceedings of the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate on C-Span1 and C-Span 2.  Sometimes, though, I get confused and lost as to what exactly they are talking about...tabling, reconsidering, quorum, objections...these and many other aspects of parliamentary-constructed meetings are obviously necessary, since they are used so much.  Yet I don't know all the ins-and-outs on when, how...and, most importantly...why they are used.  My own union local also uses the rules of order, and having started attending its bi-monthly meetings in September, I am similarly taken a little aback at how the proceedings flow there.  Supposedly, Robert's Rules of Order lay out everything one needs to know regarding how to conduct such meetings, and I feel it's about time I learned them.  Of course, sometimes in these assemblies the rules can get to be stretched or overlooked, and it's always good that the participants go into them with a spirit of comity, which is the attitude and expression of mutual courtesy and respect.  Sometimes this can be difficult with some folks by their nature, and also the degree of familiarity they might feel about those with whom they are attending.  I do know from watching the U.S. Senate for some sixteen years that it is possible to engage in some pretty passionate verbal combat on some issues while at the same time maintaining a sense of at least formally-expressed goodwill toward the opposing speaker, being deliberately generous with praise...and absolutely NO criticism or animosity on a personal level.  So order and civility go hand in hand in formal meetings, be they legislative, labor, or any other kind...it's probably a good idea to become well-trained in both...

Some People Change When They Get Behind the Wheel

I never was a particularly adept middle-to-long distance runner, although in the end that seems to be the sport I took to for much of my life, especially for the last ten years.  When I was growing up, I was in fact a pretty ferocious sprinter in high school and did very well in the 50-yard dash...until around the 11th grade when fellow classmates grew up past me.  But one crucial difference that made running the longer distances more attractive to my higher instincts was that it forced me to go out into the world to train...when my natural inclinations were bent toward staying home, safely indoors. And consequently, I got to observe the flow of that world around me, including how people tended to compartmentalize themselves in their motor vehicles...anonymous to the world while I was out there in the open, along with the other runners, pedestrians, and bicyclists.  I noticed that when folks were safely ensconced in their cars, they would sometimes shed the common respect and courtesies they would normally be careful to display were they personally identifiable.  So cars would honk at me for exercising my right-of-way, curses yelled safely from behind windows as they sped by...once someone threw their soft drink at me just to be an [expletive deleted]. And I've experienced eggs, glass beer bottles, and even a firecracker thrown at me while riding my bicycle on different occasions.  This dichotomy between the insulated and unaccountable masses and the vulnerable few (like me) came to influence my view of the world and human nature...

For most of us, we slip in and out of situations where we are traveling in motor vehicles and walking, running, or bicycling.  Yet a few don't have that option: for various reasons, someone may be forced to walk or bike to wherever they need to go...many others have to take public transit and spend much of their time walking to and from bus stops.  But in a city like Gainesville, the traffic is weighed very heavily in favor of road travel, and pedestrians are often overlooked as drivers allow themselves to get distracted by their various gadgets that they like to play with when they should be paying attention to where they are going.  The other day, Tommy, a middle-aged man whom people in this area had come to know well and who due to his life circumstances had to resort to walking to get where he wanted to go, was crossing NW 39th Avenue from his home, just across from where I am sitting here in this Starbucks.  A car was switching lanes and took no notice of the pedestrian stepping out onto the pavement and struck him, killing him.  Now there is one of those sad flowery memorial displays at the site to remind us...or at least try to remind us...to please look out for people and not just take the narrow view of the vehicles around us when we drive.  But I look back at the conclusions I drew from running roadside way back then in the 1970s and I know it's all probably an exercise in futility: some people just go through an ugly metamorphosis whenever they get behind the wheel.  I don't know the exact details of what the driver who hit Tommy was thinking or doing...or even whether Tommy may have stepped out too soon...but I have had too many personal experiences over the years with drivers who imperiled my life with their distracted or aggressive driving and others who harassed me while I was out there walking, running, or bicycling.  Yet if I encountered any of the same people in a store or restaurant...in person...I'm confident that they would all be on their best behavior...

Just Finished Rereading Bag of Bones by Stephen King

I first read Stephen King's 1998 ghost story novel Bag of Bones nine years ago and decided that a rereading was in order...I remember liking it, but forgot a lot of the reasons why.  Well, now I've been updated...

As is the case with many other Stephen King stories, the protagonist of Bag of Bones is a relatively successful writer.  But Mike Noonan has writer's block, ever since his wife Jo suddenly died of a brain aneurysm.  After her death, hints begin to come out that she had been leading a double life...and she was pregnant, information she had withheld from her husband.  With these disturbing facts, coupled with his own inability to write in the face of increasing pressure from his agent and publisher, Mike decides to move from their hometown of Derry, Maine (oh-no, not another Stephen King story with Derry) to their lakeside estate in the unincorporated area of rural western Maine called TR-90.  The estate's name is Sara Laughs, named after Sara Tidwell, a blues singer who more than a century earlier had travelled through this area with her family and entourage and lived at the very house that Mike and Jo later purchased.   It isn't long before Mike hears voices in his country home and objects begin to move around...including the magnetic letters on his refrigerator.  So he rightly suspects that his domicile is haunted by ghosts and he vividly dreams and starts to have visions of the past.  In the meantime...

One day Mike is driving and encounters a young girl walking alone down the center stripe of the highway.  He pulls off the road and whisks her out of danger...just before a large truck comes speeding by.  The three-year-old is Kyra and her mother, Mattie Devore soon shows up frantically searching for her straying daughter.  And so Mike is drawn into their story, which involves widowed Mattie's wealthy computer magnate father-in-law struggling to wrest custody of Kyra from her.  What begins as an apparently unrelated subplot eventually becomes woven into the fabric of the story, involving Kyra and Mattie with the secrets of Jo, Sara, and Mike's writer's block...as well as that town's dark and dirty past and its current residents...

No, as usual I'm not going to say how it all comes out.  But Bag of Bones lays forth the proposition that the dead will call out from their graves for justice and that there is an ultimate accounting for our transgressions against others.  The term "bag of bones" is multi-layered and referred to in different contexts throughout the book: Thomas Hardy once referred to characters in a story as nothing more than a bag of bones, but the term comes to take on a more literal meaning...but what else would you expect, this being a ghost story written by the King of horror fiction...

I've heard that Bag of Bones was adapted to television a few years ago, but I don't plan to watch it.  Sometimes Stephen King will place characters and events from other stories into the latest book he's writing: this novel is no exception as Insomnia's elderly hero Ralph Roberts has a pleasant conversation with Mike Noonan.  But, thankfully, there's no sign of Pennywise the Clown...another Derry denizen...here.  On the other hand, I'm now rereading Tommyknockers, and I know from the first reading that this evil dude from It gets to make a cameo appearance toward the end of that novel. Well, that's Derry for you...

Quote of the Week...from Donald Trump

We must have universal health care. Just imagine the improved quality of life for our society as a whole...The Canadian-style, single-payer system...helps Canadians live longer and healthier than Americans...There are fewer medical lawsuits, less loss of labor to sickness, and lower costs to companies paying for the medical care of their employees.                ---Donald Trump

Yes, our current president, who seems to have gone in the diametrically opposite direction from this 2000 quote with his national health care agenda, at one time was strongly in favor of the kind of universal, single-payer health care systems almost all of the world's developed countries use.  He also stated back then that this is the one big issue that he, although mainly conservative, was liberal about.  The above quote of his I took from a reprint in my bi-monthly union magazine of an editorial article written by my union president Mark Dimondstein.  In his article Dimondstein laid out the reasons for the United States to join the rest of the civilized world and deem health care to be a right and not a privilege...and to free its people from the financial bondage and uncertainty imposed by our current health insurance system, be it Obamacare, Trumpcare, or what we had before.  I would make one correction to Trump's earlier stance on this issue: I believe that universal health care should be embraced by conservatives as being compatible with their political philosophy, and here are some points to make in that regard...

1-Businesses would be shed of the red tape and financial burden of providing health insurance.
2-Universal health care encourages job-changing, risk-taking, and entrepreneurialism by those in mid-life and/or with pre-existing conditions...or by those related to such an individual.
3-Deprives liberals of what conservatives often see as "divide and conquer" political strategy by demographic groups.
4-Gives people a greater sense of liberty with their lives...they can invest their money back into the economy.
5-Insurance companies provide no health services but add greatly to the total cost of care as a middleman between provider and patient.

And how does this all get funded? Well, this is where the "modern" conservative, for whom the expression "raise taxes" is anathema, and I part ways: you fund it by raising taxes. The net effect, though, will be to reduce health care expenses, provide universal coverage, and end catastrophic medical events in people's families leading to personal bankruptcy...

As Mark Dimondstein wrote in his article, and our current president implied with his remark 17 years ago, we need as a nation to decide whether health care is a right or a privilege.  If it is the former, then let's get down to business creating a universal health care system modeled after the most successful countries that employ it.  If is the latter, let's go back to the way it was before the Affordable Care Act and let the marketplace freely determine its financing.  The way things are now is an unholy, messed-up mishmash of both approaches, whether you call it Obamacare or Trumpcare...

11/5 Sermon: Questions I'd Ask God, Part 1

For the next few weeks The Family Church here in Gainesville, Florida will be examining common questions related to Christianity that come from our surrounding community.  The question this past Sunday was "How Could a Good God Send People to Hell?".  In presenting his response, senior pastor Philip Griffin focused on Luke 16:19-31, found in the New Testament of the Bible and which you can read through the following link to Bible Gateway: [link]...

Pastor Philip presented three important points to try to answer this problematic and troubling question of the existence...and destination for some...of hell: hell reveals the love of God, it reveals the justice of God, and God has gone to great measures to rescue us from it.  That first one just sounds wrong at first glance, but as Philip explained, God has given us the freedom to choose our identity in him...or elsewhere.  And our identity is where we find our sense of value, justification, and meaning.  God does not force us to depend on him in this regard: it is our choice, and the default choice is separation from God in this life...ultimately leading to eternal separation: in a word, hell.  As far as the justice of God is concerned, Philip continued: we see so much violence today in our world, much of it based on the flawed notion that God won't punish those deserving it, and therefore people have to take vengeance into their own hands to see real justice done.  This idea rings true to those either believing in no God, an impersonal and uncaring God, or that God will allow all, believers or not, into his heaven after death and that there is no hell.  But in this world, the ability to forgive others can greatly depend on the belief that God is just and will hold those transgressors accountable.  As for that third point, God went to the extreme measure of sending his only begotten son, Jesus Christ, to this world to live among us and die as an atoning sacrifice for the sins of all who accept him as their savior.  As for me, I can't get too intellectual or doctrinal about the concept of hell...let's just say that (1) I believe that it is by definition the eternal separation from God and (2) I really don't want a whole lot of detailed knowledge about it, seeing how I don't want to ever go there anyway.  And I agree with Philip, who emphasized that the primary motivation for us in our faith should be to love and be closer to God and not just to escape hell...

You can watch Pastor Philip's sermon via the church's YouTube video website...here's a link to last Sunday's message: [link]. The Family Church, at 2022 SW 122nd Street, meets each Sunday morning at 9:30 and 11 for the weekly message, beautiful and inspiring music, worship, prayer, and fellowship.  I wonder what the next question will be...

Weekly Short Story: Successful Operation by Robert Heinlein

Twentieth century science fiction writer Robert Heinlein is probably best known for his novels Starship Troopers, Stranger in a Strange Land, and The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, but he also wrote a multitude of short stories.  Being a strong anti-fascist when Hitler and Mussolini had their followers in America before World War II,  Heinlein put his philosophy of liberty into his stories and never wavered from it after the war when he became equally anti-communist.  Successful Operation was one of his earliest works...from 1940...and is also very short, four pages long.  I'm happy to be the proud owner of Off the Main Sequence (SFBC Books, 2005), which is an extensive collection of short stories that tended to be left out of other collections of Heinlein's...this tale started off the book...

Heinlein had Successful Operation first published with a different title, "Heil!", in a pulp fiction magazine under a pseudonym, "Lyle Monroe".  That original title gives a hint about the story, as a racist dictator meant to be Adolf Hitler is in a health crisis with an undesirable solution.  His pituitary gland, which is located at the base of the brain, is diseased and he will only survive with a transplant.  The only surgeon available who can perform the operation, however, is Doctor Lans, who is implied to be Jewish and is in a concentration camp.  Lans and the Leader meet, and the doctor lays out his conditions for the operation, which include the restoration of his fortunes, passports for his family and himself, and that the operation take place on foreign land away from the Leader's control.  Begrudgingly, the dictator accedes and the operation is set.  The healthy pituitary gland to be transplanted belongs to a fellow inmate of Lans, and the donor agrees that he would rather have a sick pituitary and be free than have a healthy one and be under oppression.  Then the operation takes place and it's a success...only one problem, though, the Leader and the donor have both been secretly whisked back to their country.  And thus is the setup for the predictably outrageous ending for such an abbreviated story...

If our consciousness and identities are based within the strict confines of our own bodies, then where are they located there?  The obvious choice would be the brain...but beyond that it's an open question.  Robert Heinlein takes a deep dive off the board of speculation and comes up with an answer that would easily fit well in a Twilight Zone episode...I wonder whether that might in fact have been done... this story just seems familiar to me, as if I had already experienced it or something very similar before.  And now you can read it through the creative commons license via this link to the Free Speculative Fiction online site: [link]...

Tuesday's List: Olympic Games Sites Since 1968

You may be wondering why the following is a list of the sites of the Summer and Winter Olympic sites since 1968...why that year, considering that the former began in 1896 and the latter in 1924?  It's because 1968 is the year I began following the Olympic Games, at the age of eleven: I watched Peggy Fleming win the gold medal for the USA in figure skating.  So this list is more like a personal life memory project for myself: some of these Olympics I vividly remember...like the 1968, 1972, 1976, 1984, and 1996 Summer Games, while others slipped by almost unnoticed.  Of course, the United States boycotted the 1980 Moscow Summer Olympics because of the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan the previous year and most folks here agreed that they couldn't care less about that one.  Corresponding to my 1968,1972, and 1976 interest in the Summer Games was my following of the Winter Games those years, as well as the Lake Placid Winter Olympics in 1980.  Through 1992, the Summer and Winter Olympics were held the same year, but in 1994 the Winter Games started during even-numbered off-years, the same year that the men's World Cup in soccer takes place...

It's interesting how during the Cold War, the communist bloc nations staged essentially professional Olympic athletes while strict rules of amateurism were enforced for the rest of the world...an offensive double standard, in my opinion.  Ironically, it was after the Cold War ended that standards for professionals competing in the Olympics were relaxed and suddenly you began to see all these multimillionaire pro athletes competing while at the same time being featured on commercial breaks...I see very little amateurism anymore and that's sad...

Well, here's that list...another one that probably works better for me than you, the reader.  The Summer Olympics sites I highlighted in red, the Winter in blue...

1968 Summer  Mexico City, Mexico
         Winter     Grenoble, France
1972 Summer  Munich, West Germany
         Winter    Sapporo, Japan
1976 Summer  Montreal, Canada
         Winter     Innsbruck, Austria
1980 Summer  Moscow, USSR
         Winter     Lake Placid, NY
1984 Summer   Los Angeles, CA
         Winter     Sarajevo, Yugoslavia
1988 Summer  Seoul, South Korea
         Winter     Calgary, Canada
1992 Summer  Barcelona, Spain
         Winter     Albertville, France
1994 Winter     Lilliehammer, Norway
1996 Summer   Atlanta, GA
1998 Winter     Nagano, Japan
2000 Summer   Sydney, Australia
2002 Winter     Salt Lake City, UT
2004 Summer   Athens, Greece
2006 Winter     Turin, Italy
2008 Summer   Beijing, China
2010 Winter     Vancouver, Canada
2012 Summer   London, United Kingdom
2014 Winter     Sochi, Russia
2016 Summer   Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
---------------------------------------------
-----------(Future Games)---------------
2018 Winter     Pyeongchang, South Korea
2020 Summer  Tokyo, Japan
2022 Winter     Beijing, China
2024 Summer   Los Angeles, CA

Texas Church Massacre Just Five Weeks After Las Vegas Massacre

A young Texas man, dishonorably discharged from the U.S. Air Force and with a history of domestic battery, opened fire Sunday morning at a small town church that was holding its weekly services, killing 26 and injuring 20 more...before apparently taking his own life after a high-speed chase by two brave heroes.  The immediate verdict I'm hearing about the perpetrator of this massacre of the congregation at the First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs is that he was mentally ill, deranged as President Trump put it.  Oh, I didn't know Donald Trump was qualified in diagnosing mental illness...

When you consider somebody like the Las Vegas shooter or the Sutherland Springs creep, it's easy to take the mental illness route of explanation...after all, how could anyone in their right mind commit such terrible atrocities?  I'm afraid that this argument, however, has two counterproductive consequences.  One, it paints a picture of those suffering from mental illness as being more violent and a danger to society, when in fact they are much more likely to be the victims of others.  Two, it ignores the concept of evil as it infests the souls of people throughout their lives.  These two men, whose names are beneath mentioning, made a deal with that evil and deliberately killed and injured scores of innocent people.  They were not only evil, but also cowards...this last one dressed up in military costume and gunned down a baby, children, women, and old people.  I get where the mental illness arguments are coming from, but in the end when do you stop going down that road and start to hold people responsible for their own actions?

University of Florida Football's Perennial "Hot Seat"

After Jim McElwain was fired from his head coaching job at the University of Florida following his football team's humiliating 42-7 loss to rival Georgia eight days ago, speculation quickly arose as to who would eventually take his place while Randy Shannon served out the remainder of the 2017 season as interim coach.  Gator quarterback legend Tim Tebow weighed in on the matter and, to me, put it best: "It’s a program that can ascend very quickly to the top few in college football, but also what it is, it is a very hot seat." He then went on to claim that Florida's greatest two coaches, Steve Spurrier and Urban Meyer...who combined guided them to lots of SEC titles and three national championships...were both finally worn out by the job and sought employment elsewhere.  And that's the problem: usually, the term "hot seat" is used to describe the position a coach is in when his team isn't doing well and he's about to be canned.  But with the University of Florida football program, every day as head coach is the hot seat...and as Tebow added, it will take someone with a very strong, unwavering personality to fill it without suffering burnout.  Gator fans come in all shapes and sizes and follow their team with varying degrees of fervor.  But there seems to be a more abundant supply of fans with very demanding and unrealistic expectations, more so than with other schools.  If two coaching icons like Spurrier and Meyer reached their own breaking points here, then something's terribly wrong...

Tim Tebow believes that the next coach will be the right fit for Florida, but as far as I'm concerned that means someone who will have a very thick hide and stand for little criticism.  Because no matter how well or poorly Florida does, there will always be a quantity of "bad fans" around.  For myself, I just want whoever does get the job to consistently put on the field a complete team, both offensively and defensively, recruiting not just star high school players but also creating depth in the roster for those inevitable injuries that take out starters.  And please, please, no more of these ridiculous scandals among the players: it's the coach's responsibility to provide some leadership here.  I don't expect the Gators to set the football world on fire every single year, but wanting them to be consistently competitive winners isn't asking too much.  And we've had too many games in recent years where they've been given little-to-no chance of winning.  At least field a team that doesn't go out there and humiliate themselves on a regular basis...

Selective With Even My Favorite Musical Acts, TV Shows, and Movies

Although I like rock music, television, and movies, in truth whenever I have the opportunity to listen to my favorite musical acts, or watch a TV series or movie I like, I find myself rejecting most of my choices...

With rock music, I may like a particular act...but usually, with very few exceptions, I have little-to-no interest in hearing most of their material.  It got worse this year when I listened to new album releases from artists I have recently preferred: Arcade Fire, Kasabian, Sufjan Stevens, Spoon, and Gorillaz.  I listened through each their new LPs' tracks and concluded that I didn't care for any of them.  I've recently heard Twenty One Pilots on the radio, and because I liked some of the songs decided to check out their most recent album...most of that stuff didn't cut it, either.  Even with classic bands and solo acts from the past, the overwhelming amount of their recordings don't resonate with me...I'd rather listen over and over again to their very best works and scrap the rest...

When I'm checking the program listings for a favorite TV series, I take care to note which episode is showing before I decide to watch it.  No matter what the series...even the original Star Trek, the early Andy Griffith, All in the Family, Columbo, Mary Tyler Moore or Twilight Zone...all series that I like a lot...chances are that whatever episode they're showing is one I don't want to watch.  Turns out that most of even my favorite series' episodes I could do without...

And with movies, you'd be correct in assuming that if I owned the DVD for a particular movie, then it would be one of my favorites.  So here I am with the Lord of the Ring series (extended version), The Godfather, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, Polar Express, The Producers, A Beautiful Mind, and You Only Live Twice...to name a few.  Yet whenever I am watching one of these movies I find myself skipping most of the scenes and confining my viewing to just a few, leaving the rest of the movie unwatched...

I wonder whether others are like me in this regard, becoming more and more selective as to what they will watch and listen to.  Now there are some things that I am much more open to, though: classical music, ongoing sports events like football, soccer, hockey, and baseball, the U.S. Senate floor proceedings, and live coverage of major news and weather stories.  With these, however, my attention isn't completely riveted to what I am hearing and/or watching and I can be engaged in other activities while they are going on...

Quote of the Week...from Sue Grafton

Books are like movies of the mind and it's better to leave Kinsey where she is.
                                                         ---Sue Grafton

Sue Grafton is the author of the successful ongoing "Alphabet" mystery novel series featuring Kinsey Millhone as the resilient, blue collar Californian private eye.  Each successive book, starting with "A" is for Alibi, progresses further down the alphabet...we're now close to the end with "Y" is for Yesterday just recently published.  Grafton has stated that with the "Z" book, her series will conclude.  She has also insisted that as long as she lives she will never allow it to be adapted to movies or television...

I can sympathize with Sue Grafton's opposition to any film adaptation of her Kinsey Millhone mysteries.  Look at all the great Stephen King stories that made it to the big (or small) screen and how so many of them were drastically altered. The author himself allowed much of that to happen, but as a reader I still feel a bit put out by it, especially when some of those changes (like in The Mist and The Shining) directly affected the outcome of the story and the message I received from it.  Even when adaptations work well, as in the Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings series, an enormous amount of background material, large sections of the story, and even some characters may be trimmed in order to fit the movies into a reasonable time length: e.g. three successive chapters in The Fellowship of the Ring (which included the very interesting character Tom Bombadil) were completely omitted from the movie version.  But The Hobbit adaptation was a travesty, with entire subplots and new characters added with impunity...that was disgraceful.  I recognize that a lot of folks, while capable at reading, really don't like doing it for pleasure and would prefer a cinematic experience instead.  For me, though, when I read books, they are, as Grafton said, like movies of the mind...my mind...and I visualize for myself the various characters and scenarios, which to me is more fulfilling than having it already done for me on the screen...

As for "Y" is for Yesterday, its release back in August flew right by me...now I'm on a long waiting list to check it out from my public library...
 

10/29 Sermon on David, Part 7

Senior pastor Philip Griffin of The Family Church concluded his series about King David of Israel with Part 7, titled The Ingredients of an Unhealthy Home.  Not exactly a positive-sounding title, is it? Well, that's because David himself gave a multitude of examples of poor parenting...and these weren't just his shortcomings: we have to deal with the same issues today.  The scripture of focus was 2 Samuel Chapters 13-18...you can read it through the following link to Bible Gateway: [link]...

Pastor Philip listed five ways in which parents can create an unhealthy home for their children as well as for themselves: setting a bad example, refusing to discipline, denying problems, avoiding reconciliation, and not expressing true feelings.  In the selected passages, David set a very, very bad example to his children through his adultery with Bathsheba and murder of her husband: Amnon, one of his sons, raped his own half-sister Tamar.  When her full-brother Absalom found out, he expected his father to punish Amnon...but David refused to discipline him.  So a severe family problem came into being, and Absalom lured Amnon into a deadly ambush...with David willfully oblivious to the developing crisis.  After Absalom fled, he was allowed to return to Jerusalem but David made no effort to meet with his son: no reconciliation ever happened.  The embittered Absalom then usurped David's throne and publicly slept with his wives...it wasn't until Absalom's eventual death at the hands of his old enemy Joab that David expressed contrition toward his now-diseased son: but it came too late...

Although the example of David and his sons is very dramatic and moving, all of us have our own dual memories and responsibilities with our families.  With our childhood families, we not only remember how our parents treated us, but we tend to unconsciously copy them as we in our own turn become parents, for better or for worse...sometimes even things we know that our own parents did wrong.  Pastor Philip laid out some very constructive principles to help guide us to become more Christ-like in our parenting roles and apply the ingredients of a healthy home: setting a good example, choosing to discipline, acknowledging problems, welcoming reconciliation, and expressing true feelings...

Although I usually hear the weekly sermon at church on Sunday, sometimes I'll click on their YouTube video website to brush up on some of the speaker's points.  You can watch this week's message, too, through the following link to YouTube: [link].  The Family Church meets each Sunday morning at 9:30 and 11, with the  weekly message, music, prayer, fellowship, hospitality, and opportunities for discipleship and learning.  Oh, and the complimentary coffee isn't bad, either...

Weekly Short Story: The Pedestrian by Ray Bradbury

One of the late Ray Bradbury's more important stories is a very short one: The Pedestrian, five pages long, which he published in 1951 and appears in the retrospective anthology Isaac Asimov Presents the Great SF Stories 14 (1952).  When I first read it, I instantly knew that Bradbury had nailed it perfectly.  Although it was written many years ago, its significance has if anything increased over the years.  And why not?  Its setting is in the future, in the year 2053...

In a time when a young Sanford, Florida man couldn't walk home alone in his neighborhood from a nearby convenience store without being scrutinized, accosted, and ultimately killed by a "do-gooder" vigilante driving around the subdivision, the message of The Pedestrian is clear: if you're inside enclosed walls, that's cool...it's also okay if you're outside, as long as you are safely enclosed within the confines of your motor vehicle.  But don't you dare get out on the street and walk down it...why, then you're a menace to society.  The irony of all this is that, while people who are taking walks are the least likely folks to present a danger to others, it is those driving around in vehicles who potentially could present the much greater threat, what with their mobility, insulation, ability to transport and hide weapons, and room to abduct victims.  In my frequent runs around my neighborhood and the nearby ones, I have often experienced cars (and worse, vans) creeping up on me, sometimes even stopping down the road before taking off again.  It's obvious that I was their target of interest: were they George Zimmerman wannabes, are maybe they were just your garden-variety Ted Bundy sort of predator...it's easy to get carried away with these thoughts when you're out there, vulnerable to whatever comes by.  And then, of course, there is always the fortified security-minded neighbor, probably with an arsenal of guns in his house, who keeps in his yard ferocious attack dogs that from time to time get loose and wreak havoc up and down the block with anyone who has the nerve to walk, run, or even ride their bicycle down it. Finally, the police themselves, when patrolling an area, are much more likely to look down suspiciously on pedestrians...especially men...as potential criminals, especially within residential areas where home invasions are feared possibilities...

On the plus side, walking as a fitness activity seems to be on the upsurge, and I like seeing people out there improving their own lives with exercise.  Being a pedestrian boils down to the most basic form of human locomotion: walking, and if you can't freely walk around in public anywhere and anytime you want without suffering some sort of harassment or unwarranted scrutiny and suspicion, then you aren't truly free...

And now YOU can read The Pedestrian for yourself...just click on the following link: [link]...