My March 2018 Running Report

This month I ran a total of 67 miles, a relatively low figure for me, with my longest single run also low, at 3.2 miles.  Toward the end of March I had to take a few days off from the activity, suffering from an unknown inflammatory/allergic response to something...these things happen to me from time to time and I just have to function through it all until things get better.  Still, I did manage to run a race, the Chris Lacinak Scholarship Fun Shamrock 5K in northeastern Gainesville.  And I only missed running for 5 days...

I think it might be a good idea to change where I run, just to make things more interesting.  I do have a GPS mileage counter app on my phone, so I can improvise and do something different each day and still be able to tally my mileage.  As for races in April, I think there are a couple of 5K events around town, one on the 21st and the other a week later...guess I'll just have to wait and see how I feel then.  I've been getting a lot of overtime work on my job lately, and the coming month promises more of the same, if not even more hours...this cuts into my running, albeit for a good cause.  If it isn't too late when I get off from work, I go to my local 24/7 gym...I like to use the elliptical cross-trainer there.  I don't plan to be running very long distances in the foreseeable future...just keeping a regular routine of shorter daily runs may be the best strategy for me...

Quote of the Week...from Dean Karnazes

I think I have some of my clearest thoughts when I'm out running.          ---Dean Karnazes.

A little more than a year ago I quoted Dean Karnazes, a long distance runner whose book Ultra-Marathon Man: Confessions of an All-Night Runner remains as one of my favorites...here's a link to that quote.  The above comment is something I can also relate to...well, not lately...

For a few years at the start of this decade I was like Karnazes (although my running mileage was much lower than his) in that I would go out on daily long training runs in the late morning/early afternoon before I would go to my job.  During those runs there really wasn't anything to distract me...unless you consider the mp3 music I was listening to as a distraction...so I did a lot of thinking, too.  My thoughts during those runs were mostly of an uplifting, constructive nature...not the self-defeating thoughts that too many of us get into a rut repeating to ourselves.  And the successful conclusion of these long runs also gave me a push into a more positive frame of spirit that carried over to the rest of the day...

Nowadays I run either indoors, at the gym, or outdoors in my back yard...not the same thing as getting out on the road and touring the neighborhoods.  And consequently I've found it easier to let myself get out of the "zone" while running and sidetracked by distractions.  Road running, on the other hand, is something of a commitment of my time and it's easy to go off into a good state of cognitive reverie when I'm out there.  I need to do more of it if for no other reason...but there is also another good reason to get back out on the road: it gives me a sense of belonging and engagement with the world around me and reduces the sporadic feelings of alienation that I am prone to experience...

Maybe running isn't for you, but there is probably another kind of activity that can produce the same positive results that Dean Karnazes suggested.  In any event, all of us need to be able to find a time and place to "break the limiting pattern" of our routine daily existence and provide a different setting that gives us a chance to see things from a more objective...and hopeful...perspective...
                                                 

3/25 Sermon: Jesus in His Own Words, Part 1

Last Sunday...which was also Palm Sunday, celebrating Jesus' entry into Jerusalem...senior pastor Philip Griffin of Gainesville's Family Church began a new series titled Jesus in His Own Words.  This message focused on his words "I am he", using the passage John 18:1-11, which you can click on and read via Bible Gateway.  In it, Jesus is about to be betrayed by Judas and arrested, and his statement not only identifies himself from the crowd, but also reveals his divine nature, as Philip makes clear.  Bible translations often quote him as saying "I am he", but in essence Jesus is saying "I AM"...staking the claim that he is the great I AM God of the Old Testament.  In this, Pastor Philip stated that one cannot sit on the fence: as C.S. Lewis once wrote, Jesus is either a liar, a lunatic...or Lord.  When Jesus speaks this "I am" in the presence of the arresting soldiers, they all fall down...no one can stand in the presence of God's glory.  But when Peter dashes forward, in his own mind trying to defend Jesus, and lops off a priest's servant's ear, Jesus restores the ear and rebukes him, revealing that his mission is to give his life so that those who believe, confess, and repent may have a living relationship with God through him and eternal life.  So as our pastor outlined, Jesus demonstrated in his words his claim to be one with God, his power that greatly dwarfs that of man-made armies, and his mission of personal sacrifice for us.  That's pretty remarkable, isn't it?

You can watch this message through the church's YouTube video website...click on the following link: TFC Video.  The Family Church, at 2022 SW 122nd Street, regularly meets for its Sunday morning services at 9 and 10:30 with the sermon, praise and worship music, prayer, and opportunities for fellowship, learning, and discipleship.  This coming Sunday is Easter, and there will be an extra service held at 7:15 AM.

Weekly Short Story: Ur by Stephen King

Continuing with discussions about short stories from Stephen King's 2015 collection The Bazaar of Bad Dreams, today it's about Ur, a novella-length piece that touches upon alternate realities.  Wesley, a digitally-challenged college English instructor...after breaking up with his girlfriend who would ridicule his insistence on using only paper books...decides to buy a Kindle online.  It arrives...strangely colored pink...but he soon discovers that this is the least of its anomalies.  Turns out that he can use it to access and purchase works of different authors that are not in their bibliographies...many written after their supposed deaths!  In time he sees that he can hit upon different alternate scenarios of reality...and then he explores the device's news archive feature.  One selection has the world ending in a nuclear holocaust...no future there.  And speaking of the future, a local news app on the Kindle displays future newspaper headlines...leading to the story's climactic crisis...

Ur combines good characters and a Twilight Zone-like speculative mood to form a great story of suspense and possibilities.  It also forms a part of Stephen King's "universe" of related stories that tie together on different levels.  It's definitely a worthwhile investment of your reading time...as are most of the tales in The Bazaar of Bad Dreams... 

Tuesday's List: My Favorite TV Channels

What I watch on television depends on what happens to be on at any given time, and what my own schedule is.  I'm usually watching during mid-to-late mornings on workdays and after 10:30 at night when I usually get home...if I didn't get overtime or stop off at the gym.  On days off I watch more in the afternoon and early evening, depending on what I'm doing then and whether there is anything good to watch.  None of the channels are always watchable...I have to pick and choose what different ones are showing and going to show by checking the cable service's schedule.  Still, there are some channels I watch more than others, and this list ranks them...along with the reasons why.  By the way, I don't get most of the premium channels like HBO and Epix...and I don't plan to sign up anytime soon...

Each entry is followed by the Cox Communications (Gainesville's cable provider) channel number...and then the brief, brief commentary...

1 C-SPAN 2 (81)......ever since 2001 I have been following live US Senate proceedings here
2 UNIVISION (40).....I like to watch Mexican league soccer and practice my Spanish
3 CNN (37).....still my "go-to" channel to check out the news...but they tend to get sidetracked
4 NEWSY (276).....covers a broader range of news issues than the other cable news channels
5 MUSIC CHOICE CLASSICAL MUSIC MASTERPIECES (949)....full pieces of classical music
6 THE WEATHER CHANNEL (31)....not as dependable as before with their "features" preempting ongoing weather coverage
7 CARTOON NETWORK (43).....only reason I watch it: Family Guy
8 COMEDY CENTRAL (44)....only reason I watch it: South Park (newer, inferior episodes excepted)
9 ESPN/ESPN2 (26, 27).....I like the live sporting events, you can have the talk shows
10 WCJB-ABC (7)....this is my local news source
11 MTV LIVE (1098)....formerly called Palladia, live rock and pop performances
12 C-SPAN (80) .....live US House proceedings, book and commentary programs
13 TURNER CLASSIC MOVIES (46)......uninterrupted classic movies, sometimes a good one is on
14 MUSIC CHOICE ROCK CLASSICS (918)....usually there's something good being played here
15 MUSIC CHOICE THE '70S (929).....listening to this channel brings back a lot of memories
16 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC (83)....a good source for programming about science and geography
17 METV (117).......great old shows like Honeymooners, Twilight Zone
18 WNBW4 (115).....more old series, including Johnny Carson
19 SY FY (51)....I avoid original series, focus on movies
20 AMERICAN MOVIE CLASSICS (52)....ditto with #19
21 TNT (45)......I enjoy their NBA live broadcasts, occasionally their movies
22 MSNBC (63)......I used to watch it more, but got tired of all the smug head-nodding
23 FOX NEWS (38)....I sometimes watch it to analyze how propaganda is purveyed
24 MUSIC CHOICE ALTERNATIVE ROCK (915).....the best "popular" music of today as I see it
25 NBC SPORTS (33)....English Premier League soccer, hockey, other interesting sports

Just Finished Reading Bad Monkey by Carl Hiaasen

Carl Hiaasen is a south Floridian journalist and novelist, having written several stories set in that area in which I grew up. Although I'd heard his name before, I never did get around to reading anything of his until, once again, I was randomly scanning the shelves of my local public library where I found a copy of one of his recent works, the 2013 crime novel Bad Monkey...

Andrew Yancy is a former Miami area police detective who has been suspended for assaulting the husband of a woman he was having an affair with...not exactly the model of a virtuous hero.  While suspended, he has been assigned as a health inspector in the Florida Keys where he resides, performing routine inspections of the local eateries.  Meanwhile, a tourist out fishing hooks a severed arm, and, before his suspension, Yancy is entrusted with taking it to Miami forensics to attempt an identification.  Ultimately, it turns out that the arm belongs to a Nicholas Stripling, a man who was under investigation for defrauding medicare.  The plot develops and before you know it, the setting shifts to the Bahamas...specifically Andros Island, where new characters, including that "bad monkey", are introduced...

Bad Monkey, with all of its serious issues and violence, was nevertheless a pretty funny novel. Hiaasen, like my favorite author Stephen King, apparently has quite a sense of humor and he infected this work (and I presume his others as well) with it.  Yancy lives on Big Pine Key and is horrified that his next door neighbor is building a high-rise structure that blocks his view of the sunset...so throughout the story he schemes to sabotage the project, with very humorous results.  No, I did not at all like Andrew Yancy, but he filled his role perfectly...Bad Monkey is good escapist literature, and I recommend it with that in mind...
 

Stepping Out Back, Stargazing Last Night

Last night I went outside in my back yard and looked up at the sky, something that I had fallen out of the habit of doing recently.  You see, since I was seven I have enjoyed star-gazing, checking out where "my" constellations and their stars are against the celestial background while noting the moon and planets (if they're visible) as well as the weather...and how the neighborhood seems to be doing.  It was easy to see the moon, high up in the west in its first quarter phase and emitting a faint halo through the thin clouds surrounding it...it was in Gemini, one of the bright constellations marking the brilliant winter evening sky.  There was Orion, Auriga, and Canis Major as well in that sector...always a visual draw with their brilliance...but my eyes turned more eastward as I observed the ascending springtime stars.  Leo was nearly overhead and Corvus was low in the southeast, just above the treeline of tall pines.  On the eastern horizon were the stars Arcturus and Spica...and looking north there was the inverted Big Dipper from the constellation Ursa Major.  My home seems to be directly under a jet route, because in the few minutes I was out there I saw a number of them passing overhead...we're also not very far from the Gainesville airport...

Lately the humidity has been higher than usual, and I prefer dryer air when I'm outside.  Last night conditions were cool and very pleasant.  Since I have a chain link fence surrounding my back yard, the rest of the neighborhood is pretty transparent to me...someone was out walking their dog with a flashlight and a car in the opposite cul-de-sac briefly flashed its headlights at me as it rounded it.  I can see how having a sense of neighborhood community is a good thing...but frankly, I'm getting tired of feeling like I'm in a fishbowl every time I step outside my back door.  Yes, I think a nice privacy fence will coming soon to my home...

Just Finished Reading City by Clifford Simak

City is a 1952 science fiction novel by Clifford Simak, one of the greatest writers in this genre from the twentieth century.  Actually, it is more or less a coherent stringing together of several short stories that Simak had published from 1944 to 1951...two of them, Huddling Place and Desertion, rank among my all-time favorites.  I was overjoyed to see it on my local public library's bookshelves and readily checked it out...what an intriguing story!

In City, Simak envisions a future for humanity that I doubt anyone else could have concocted in their wildest dreams...as well as what lies in store for animal life on Earth, particularly dogs.  This having been noted, I must stress that the author inserted a very, very unlikely scenario in our near future when humanity has developed the technology to (1) develop a body based on a completely different biology and chemistry than our own, intricately adapted to life on a crushing, extremely poisonous planet like Jupiter, and (2) to be able to transfer a person's consciousness, or soul, into that synthetic body.  Not very likely, I'd posit...any more than we would train dogs to speak and think on the same level as people...another feature of this book.  However, alongside these far-flung speculations was a soberly realistic one: the development of artificial intelligence...as personalized by the robot Jenkins... to such a degree that it would assume the role of determining the future of life on Earth, as well as that on other worlds.  Now that prediction, made way back in the late 1940s, I'm afraid, is a very likely possibility as even today we find ourselves being swept away and confounded by the Internet and "smart" machines as we push buttons and delegate to them more and more of the things we used to do ourselves...

One reason I like to read old science fiction is that it often places our own time as the future that it describes...invariably there is a wide discrepancy between the author's vision and our own present reality.  Often there has been nuclear war and apocalypse, and often space travel has progressed much faster and to much farther places than it actually has.  I guess that having neither of these in our recent past is better than having both, but why couldn't we just have passed up on the war stuff and gone straight into settling other worlds?  But what if, in the process of exploring other worlds to populate, we discover paradise and virtual immortality?  Would Earth's population empty out as people by the billions are enticed to that other world and life?  Maybe that notion, put forth by Clifford Simak in this thought-provoking book that is both funny and a little scary, isn't quite as far-fetched as it may sound...

Quote of the Week...from Madeleine L'Engle

The great thing about getting older is that you don't lose all the other ages you've been.
                                                              ---Madeleine L'Engle

Madeleine L'Engle  was a renowned author of children's books, most famous for her Time series that opened with the 1962 book A Wrinkle in Time...now adapted to a new movie currently out in theaters and starring Storm Reid (great acting), Oprah Winfrey, Reese Witherspoon, and Chris Pine, among others.  I just saw it with Melissa this past Saturday and was duly impressed...I wish all film adaptations of books I read were as faithful to the spirit, characters, and flow of the story.   Go see it...but first I recommend you read the book.  I read it back in June, 2015...here's my review: [link]...

There's a corollary to the above quote, and it's also from Madeleine L'Engle: You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children. I like her take on aging and writing, as exemplified by these two quotes. She should know, having lived a full life (passing away in 2007 at age 88) with a gift at writing for the younger reading audience...

As sentient beings, we humans...regardless of our current age...have this duality in our lives that we each have to deal with, some of us more successful at it than the rest.  On one hand our past experiences, accumulated over the course of a lifetime, determine to a great extent who we are in the present.  So in a significant way, we are who we were...as the first quote of l"Engle would indicate.  This tends to come out in the difference between how people see themselves and how others see them...let me explain...

When folks know each other well over a span of time and have built up memories of each other, they tend to regard each other based more on those memories and less on how each one really is in the present...this causes a resistance to accepting change in others with whom one is familiar.  On the other hand, when people are strangers they tend to judge one another strictly on their behavior and appearance in the present...understandable since they have nothing else to go on, but still unrealistic in that we all have our own respective pasts that help to define our presents.  But L'Engle takes a more positive approach to being able to draw upon our pasts while we live in the present...we are each of us, after all, individual, unique tapestries spanning the years...

3/18 Sermon on Philippians, Part 10

Last Sunday at The Family Church here in Gainesville, senior pastor Philip Griffin delivered his tenth and final sermon on the Bible's New Testament book of Philippians, a series themed on how to achieve joy.  This installment, Joyful Contentment, focuses on the final verses of Paul's letter from a Roman prison to the church in Philippi: click on Philippians 4:10-23 to read it via Bible Gateway...

In opening his message, Pastor Philip stressed that satisfaction is found in a soul-level contentment in Jesus Christ...this doesn't come automatically, but rather is something that has to be learned and worked on.  To achieve true contentment is indeed a process, and it involves recognizing what will lead...and not lead...to it.  Philip brought out five pointers to this end: stop comparing, stop tying contentment to circumstances, depend on Christ's strength, become a giver, and learn to distinguish between needs and wants.  Instead of being on the endless, pointless treadmill of comparing ourselves to others, why not pursue God's virtues of righteousness, faith, love, and endurance?  Contentment doesn't come from circumstances...either having what others have, having more and more, or falling for the myth that God's will is for us to be happy (leading to doing whatever we please to do).  Regarding giving, Philip pointed out that studies have shown the poor, percentage-wise, are greater givers than the rich...supporting the sad truth that the more we have, the more we trust in what we have.  And as for needs vs. wants, I feel that too many of us can't distinguish between them...one big reason is the lack of appreciation for the concept of "enough".  In sum, our joy and contentment do not come from our circumstances or "stuff", but from God...we need to change our focus and attitude...

You can view this message on YouTube through the Family Church's video website...just click on the following link: [TFC Videos].  Located at 2022 SW 122nd Street (Parker Road), The Family Church holds its Sunday morning services at 9 and 10:30...this coming Easter Sunday will also feature an earlier one at 7:15.  There will be, along with the message, praise and worship music, prayer, and discipleship and fellowship opportunities.  There is a hospitality room where refreshments are provided and folks can mingle before and between services.  Looking forward to this Sunday...

Weekly Short Story: Mile 81 by Stephen King

In 2015 Stephen King came out with yet another of his short story collections, titling this one The Bazaar of Bad Dreams.  The first story was another of his "monster car" tales...remember Christine and From a Buick 8? This one, Mile 81, is set at a closed and abandoned Maine rest stop off I-95 between Portland and Augusta.  Little Pete Simmons is out with his big brother George and George's twelve-to-thirteen year-old friends as they ride their bicycles around and look for fun.  When they decide to go on a trail they designed for daredevil stunts, George...who feels responsible for taking care of Pete...tells him to stay back and "hang around" while he and his buddies do their daring bike jumps.  Instead Pete, looking for an interesting experience to tell the others, sets out to find the old abandoned I-95 rest stop, where he knows the older teenagers like to go to drink and make out.  Getting there, he finds a bottle of vodka and drinks himself to sleep.  In the meantime...

A mud-covered nondescript station wagon pulls off the road in front of the rest stop.  One good Samaritan after another pull off the road to provide assistance.  But when they touch the car...well, I did say that this was one of King's "monster car" tales, didn't I?  So what does little Pete have to do with this contraption from the gates of hell and the resolution of the story?  Guess you'll have to read it to find out!

What I liked about Mile 81 was how the author took two apparently different narratives and brought them together at the end to make it all seem sensible and satisfactory...a hung-over little kid is hardly the kind of hero anyone would expect, but little Pete has brought with him the solution to this crisis.  And yes, Stephen King did get around to explaining what that awful car was all about...which is more than he ever did in From a Buick 8...

Tuesday's List: My Favorite Songs from the Band Yes

Last Sunday night I was driving home from work with the car radio on the local classic rock station on 92.5.  They were broadcasting the nationally-syndicated program The Acoustic Storm and a familiar song was being played, albeit in unusual acoustic fashion: Yours is No Disgrace by Yes, with vocalist Jon Anderson making his characteristically high-pitched presence known.  It renewed my interest in this talented progressive rock band and I decided to make a list of my all-time favorite Yes songs.  I first learned of Yes late in 1971 when the radio began to play I've Seen All Good People.  Then Roundabout came out early the next year and their popularity took off.  The band subsequently began to record album-side-length pieces that endeared them to their fans but impeded further radio exposure, causing their mass popularity to decline.  After a two-year hiatus in the early 1980s, Yes reformed and reinvented itself...with the aid of MTV and music videos.  Since then and over the course of its existence the personnel in Yes have undergone a lot of changes.  It's still a band, but Anderson is no longer the lead singer.  I haven't heard the albums they have done over the past twenty years...maybe there's some good stuff on them, who knows.  But I do know that their earlier works contain some masterpieces!  By the way, on the list below, entries 1, 5, 8, 9, 12, and 16 are all album-side-length pieces... 

So here's the list of my favorite Yes songs over the years...each song title is followed by its album.  Check out Yes if you haven't yet...

1 CLOSE TO THE EDGE..........Close to the Edge (1972)
2 I'VE SEEN ALL GOOD PEOPLE.....The Yes Album (1971)
3 AND YOU AND I..................Close to the Edge
4 LEAVE IT...............................90125 (1983)
5 THE GATES OF DELIRIUM.....Relayer (1974)
6 ROUNDABOUT.......................Fragile (1971)
7 YOURS IS NO DISGRACE.....The Yes Album
8 THE ANCIENT........................Tales from Topographic Oceans (1973)
9 THE REMEMBERING............Tales from Topographic Oceans
10 SOUTH SIDE OF THE SKY.....Fragile
11 NO OPPORTUNITY NECESSARY, NO EXPERIENCE NEEDED....Time and a Word (1970)
12 THE RITUAL..........................Tales from Topographic Oceans
13 HEART OF THE SUNRISE....Fragile
14 ARRIVING UFO.....................Tormato (1978)
15 WE HAVE HEAVEN..............Fragile
16 THE REVEALING SCIENCE OF GOD....Tales from Topographic Oceans
17 ONWARD................................Tormato
18 CHANGES...............................90125
19 SWEET DREAMS...................Time and a Word
20 SIBERIAN KHATRU..............Close to the Edge
21 WONDROUS STORIES..........Going for the One (1977)
22 WALLS....................................Talk (1994)
23 FUTURE TIMES/REJOICE....Tormato
24 TIME AND A WORD.............Time and a Word
25 IT CAN HAPPEN....................90125
26 LOVE WILL FIND A WAY....Big Generator (1987)
27 LONG DISTANCE RUNAROUND.....Fragile
28 OWNER OF A LONELY HEART........90125
29 THE FISH.................................Fragile
30 EVERY LITTLE THING.........Yes (1969)

Tomorrow's Gainesville City Commission Election

Tomorrow the city of Gainesville, Florida will be holding an election for two city commission seats.  In both, the incumbents are running for reelection, with challengers.  The at-large seat, for which I will be voting, encompasses the entire city while the District 1 seat is only for the delineated section comprising mainly southeastern Gainesville.  Usually these March elections are generally ignored by the voting population with turnout hovering around an appalling 12%.  Folks, if you've been upset and have complained of late about the sorry state of politics in this country and you're not bothering to get up and vote when the opportunities arise to select your representatives and leaders, then you're part of the problem!  Start being part of the solution, check up on these races and the candidates if you live here, and begin the civically responsible habit of regularly voting as a caring, informed citizen...don't just vote when you happen to "feel the Bern"... 

At-Large:
GAIL JOHNSON
HARVEY BUDD (incumbent)

District 1:
TYRA "TY LOUDD" EDWARDS
CHARLES EDWARD GOSTON (incumbent)
GIGI SIMMONS

Just Finished Reading Books by Frank Herbert and Stephanie Garber

I just finished reading a couple more books: Dune Messiah by Frank Herbert, the second in his Dune science fiction series, and Caraval by Stephanie Garber, a fantasy/romance novel targeted at a young adult reading audience...

Dune Messiah, which came out in 1969, four years after the introductory Dune, continues with the saga of Paul Atreides as he struggles...with his prescient vision...to achieve the best possible future for both the universe and himself.  This series has a curious mixture of fantasy and science fiction...not that much removed from the formula used in the apparently never-ending Star Wars movie series.  Dune combines a highly technologically-advanced society with a stagnant, medieval-like social structure featuring rule by nobles, shamanistic priesthoods, and legalism run rampant...it can get pretty tedious plowing through all this stuff. I got the feeling that Herbert used the game of chess, with the powerful pieces as well as the pawns...along with the various strategies to achieve victory...as a model on which to base the flow of his story.   Each character seemed very intent on self-examination as well as minutely analyzing every nuance and implication of whatever those around them were saying...frankly, I think the author grossly overdid it in this area.  Still, I'm planning to continue with the series, at least with those Dune books that Frank Hebert wrote on his own...

Caraval is set on Earth, apparently several centuries ago when Venice ruled much of the Mediterranean and fought maritime wars there.  Stephanie Garber's tale places her heroine protagonist Scarlett in a tough family situation with a widower father who brutally tyrannizes over her and her little sister Tella.  There is a traveling magical show/carnival called Caravel, led by an enigmatic man named Legend. For years Scarlett had written him, asking him to perform in her restricted home city of Trieste, but to no avail.  Finally, after an arranged marriage engagement she writes him again and he finally replies, sending her tickets for the show to be held on a not-too-distant island.  How Scarlett gets away to attend Carnaval, along with the circumstances concerning Tella and a mysterious, problematic sailor named Julian, sets the tone for the rest of the story...which turned out in the end to be a pretty fun book to go through, with a thoroughly twisted ending.  I got the feeling, however, that the author intended its primary readership to be young teenage girls...especially with regard to the "romance" passages.  I selected Caraval at random from my local public library, but first I checked to see if this novel, published just last year, was part of a series...turns out it may well be the first book in a new one, which works for me...

Ran the Chris Lacinak Scholarship Fund Shamrock 5K This Morning

For the previous three years on the Saturday of St. Patrick's Day weekend I ran in the Run for Haven 10K race in Tioga, just on the western outskirts of Gainesville.  After they decided to move their race to the fall, I switched over to the "other" St. Patrick's weekend race: the Chris Lacinak Scholarship Fund Shamrock 5K.  Held in northeastern Gainesville, the race is put on annually to honor Chris Lacinak, a St. Patrick's Interparish Catholic School alumnus who passed away in 2012 at the age of 19 and to contribute to the fund bearing his name.  It begins across NE 16th Avenue from the church in Northeast Park, with the course taking runners south through the Duck Pond area, winding up and down various roads until it returns to the park for the finish.  The racetime (9 am) weather was 55 degrees with a heavy 97 % humidity.  I enjoyed the positive spirit of all participating in this worthy event...but that humidity was awful.  Fortunately, the cooler temperature and the shorter length of this race made it much more bearable than my difficult half-marathon experience last month among similarly muggy conditions.  Plus, I think that my daily gym sessions after work with the elliptical cross-trainer put me in better shape...

Planning to avoid pushing myself too hard, I regarded the race as a training run, determined to stick with a reasonable, but not too fast, pace...and to avoid tripping and falling over obstacles in the road.  I finished with a time of 29:17 at a mile pace of 9:27...you can get all the results through the following link to Start 2 Finish Race Management.

Quote of the Week...from Stephen Hawking

People won't have time for you if you are always angry or complaining.
                                                                                               ---Stephen Hawking.

Stephen Hawking, the British astrophysicist most known for surviving...even thriving through his horrific decades-long physically debilitating ALS affliction while popularizing science and producing advances in studies on black holes, passed away last week.  He is noted for saying many things...his final quote stirred a lot of interest, as he urged humanity to leave Earth and settle on other worlds in the face of the looming danger caused by increasingly powerful (and survival-savvy) artificial intelligence.  I've read tributes about him from others relating to his chosen scientific field, but I selected the above quote because, one, it is very different from his others and, two, I happen to disagree with it...

It has been my experience in life that it is precisely those who regularly display anger, complaints, and are verbally aggressive toward others who end up being the more popular ones while those who are restrained, gracious, and show a more dispassionate, thoughtful manner of looking at things and others tend to be more ignored and isolated.  Yes, I know this runs counter to just about every self-help philosophy out there, but I can't ignore the blunt reality of my actual memories. Just look at the dude currently occupying the White House: have you ever seen anyone so full of venom and who seems to be in a constant state of agitation, publicly calling out others by name to tactlessly criticize in the most scathing personal terms? Yet folks see him for this as an interesting person and are attracted to him...even his enemies who decry his behavior have plenty of time for him, even if it is in a negative sense.  Which brings me to a sobering conclusion: most people are passion addicts...

Being civil and positive in your speech may keep you out of trouble for the most part, but it won't win you many devoted friends, either.  Somewhere along the line the notion has arisen and permeated our society that "bad" speech and behavior is associated with being a passionate person while good manners and goodwill and grace toward others and one's own situation gets the rap for being traits of an uninteresting, "low-energy" personality.  The elevation of rational reasoning and civil discourse over appealing to emotions and the mob mentality never seemed to be a virtue that attracted others: people want to see passion in others, and will judge a more reserved and considerate person as lacking that passion...and consequently avoid him or her.  I believe that we should be assertive as to standing up for our own due self-interests...especially when they are being denied.  But that's not the same as those who are constantly lording themselves and forcefully pushing their own agendas over others...behavior that in our society is consistently (and sadly) rewarding. Sorry, folks...and the late Stephen Hawking...that's just the way I see it...

In Max Ehrmann's prose poem Desiderata there is the line "Avoid loud and aggressive people, they are vexatious to the spirit".   Well, the opposite effect seems true in today's world as people seem to desperately want their own spirits vexed as they flock to just these sorts...

3/11 Sermon on Philippians, Part 9

Last Sunday at The Family Church here in Gainesville we had a guest speaker, Darryl McCune, who continued in the series about the New Testament book of Philippians, which was a letter that Paul wrote for the Christian community there.  Darryl's chosen title for this message was Joyful Peace, and he focused on the nature of conflict and how to effectively deal with it. The scripture for this day, which you can read via Bible Gateway by clicking on it , was Philippians 4:1-9...

In his message Darryl related a memory when he was volunteering at a summer camp and coached one of the football teams.  When his superior made a decision to change one of the rules for the championship game, Darryl was taken aback and repeatedly tried to implore his friend to change his mind...but in the end realized that the dispute was in great part of his own doing and that he needed to change his own way of thinking and behavior.  As he examined the Biblical passage and an ongoing quarrel between two believers in the Philippian church there, Darryl presented his core theme: conflict with others comes from conflict within and only through the God of peace can we have reconciliation...

To Darryl McCune's incisive words I'd like to add a few of my own, based solely on my own personal experiences over a lifespan.  I can't recall ever deliberately seeking to be involved in conflicts...they often seem to arise out of nowhere and then take on a life of their own, sometimes escalating to ridiculous, even dangerous, levels.  To engage is to feed them...what Darryl did with his example is to step back and see his own role in perpetuating his conflict.  Looking at things as the other party sees them is also an important step.  Many times I have been in these situations and, when I withdrew from the "arena", I was better able to see the path of reconciliation...a path that seemed to be God's intention all along...

You can watch this week's sermon through the church's YouTube video website...click on the following link for it [link].  The Family Church, at 2022 SW 122nd Street in far western Gainesville, meets each Sunday morning at 9 and 10:30 for its services, which include the message, praise and worship music, prayer and discipleship opportunities, and a lot of wonderful people.  And if you like, there's coffee and other refreshments available in the hospitality room before and in between services.  I'm looking forward to next Sunday...

Weekly Short Story: Armageddon by Frederic Brown

Frederic Brown, who dabbled in both mystery and science fiction and is better known for his short, short stories that carry a big knockout punch line, has been one of my favorite authors from childhood...his Armageddon appeared in the retrospective anthology Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 3 (1941).  Only five pages long, it was a fast read, and had a superficially religious angle to it.  Herbie, a little boy who is a budding amateur magician in his own right, is attending a magic show in Cincinnati with his parents.  The magician onstage keeps performing tricks that the boy understands from his own experience, but there is one he doesn't that requires the presence of a volunteer from the audience...so he has planned to rush up to the stage at the expected moment of the call...this proves successful.  So there they are, the magician, the boy...and a box.  And then a prayer wheel in Tibet gets loose from its owner in a flood and stops spinning...causing an unlikely transformation across the world: the magician turns into the devil, complete with his fiery powers of destruction.  How the boy unwittingly saves the world from Armageddon...well, I'll leave that part for you to read...

We've not literally had the devil to directly deal with to avoid worldwide catastrophe, but like in Armageddon, there have been moments when disaster almost came about in happenstance fashion...and was squelched by a combination of what would appear to be heroism and pure luck.  One example: in September 1983 the Soviets received an erroneous early warning of nuclear missiles being launched against them from Europe.  Only one single Soviet officer was there to make the crucial decision to override the otherwise automatic chain of events that would have left the world in a nuclear holocaust.  For this he received no award or recognition...he had turned into an embarrassment to his superiors. Likewise, in Armageddon, little Herbie gets no respect for his act of heroism...in fact, both he and the Soviet officer end up being punished...

How many times have we dodged the bullet on this planet and avoided the worst kinds of disasters imaginable, with the truth hidden either to cover up for those who may have been negligent or to keep the public from panicking?  The 1983 Soviet incident was only uncovered after that country's dissolution in 1991 and secret files on the subject were revealed...that's not likely to happen very often.  Although Frederic Brown's premise in Armageddon was unrealistic...even silly...there are many real, seriously dangerous scenarios around us today that could bring it all down were events to combine in the "perfect storm" of calamity: will we have a Herbie to step up onstage and save us from it all?

Tuesday's List: Current Standings in English and Mexican Premier League Soccer

The two leagues I follow the most in professional league soccer are the English Premier League and Mexico's Liga MX.  The main reasons are that they are regularly available on television, with the English play broadcast Saturday and Sunday mornings and early afternoons on NBCSports and the Mexican matches on Univision and Galavision Saturday evenings and Sunday afternoons.  We're getting close to the final stretch in both leagues' regular seasons: in England they've finished 30 out of their 38-game schedule, while in Mexico...which uses a split-season system, this winter/spring season called "Clausura", they have gone through 11 out of their scheduled 17.  There are no playoffs in the English Premier League: the regular season winner is the outright champion and Manchester City is running away with it. In the Liga MX the top eight finishers participate in the Liguilla championship playoffs, which according to its rules reward teams for higher regular season finishes.  As for relegation...these are the teams at the bottom of the standings that are demoted to the next lower league...England has three spots reserved for this and Mexico one...in Mexico performance over a three-year period is evaluated, so it's a bit more complicated: Veracruz is currently the team in that league's "hot seat".  On one hand, if the teams are financially strong and viable, relegation is a good system that keeps interest across the league high throughout the season...unlike here where teams are often accused of "tanking" in order to be awarded with a higher draft status for finishing lower.  In leagues with relegation, nobody tanks because finishing at the bottom means you're booted out of the league!  However, especially in Mexico, being relegated has caused on a number of occasions the relegated team to fail financially, as was the case with Chiapas last year and sometimes the teams promoted up from the lower league are financially incapable of assuming a more competitive role in the higher league...so relegation has its pros and cons...

Here are the standings...or "tables", with each team (or "side") followed by its accumulated points (three for wins, one for draws, zero for losses)...


*****English Premier League*****
1 MANCHESTER CITY                        81
2 MANCHESTER UNITED                   65
3 TOTTENHAM HOTSPUR                  61
4 LIVERPOOL                                        60
5 CHELSEA                                            56
6 ARSENAL                                            45
7 BURNLEY                                           43
8 LEICESTER CITY                               40
9 EVERTON                                            37
10 WATFORD                                         36
11 BRIGHTON & HOVE ALBION        34
12 BOURNEMOUTH                              33
13 NEWCASTLE UNITED                     32
14 SWANSEA CITY                               31
15 HUDDERSFIELD TOWN                  31
16 WEST HAM UNITED                        30
17 SOUTHAMPTON                               28
18 CRYSTAL PALACE                          27
19 STOKE CITY                                      27
20 WEST BROMWICH ALBION           20

*****Mexican Premier League (Liga MX)*****
1 SANTOS LAGUNA                             23
2 AMERICA                                            21
3 TOLUCA                                              21
4 UANL TIGRES                                    21
5 MORELIA                                            19
6 PUEBLA                                               17
7 TIJUANA                                              16
8 MONTEREY                                         15
9 UNAM PUMAS                                    15
10 NECAXA                                            14
11 PACHUCA                                          14
12 LEON                                                  14
13 QUERETARO                                     13
14 CRUZ AZUL                                       11
15 GUADALAJARA                               11
16 VERACRUZ                                         9
17 BUAP                                                    8
18 ATLAS                                                  7

About the Upcoming NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament

The NCAA released its selections for the 68-team men's national championship basketball tournament early yesterday evening.   I was happy to see that Florida, Miami, and Florida State all made it...maybe one of them will catch fire and get to the elite rounds.  Unfortunately, many of the schools currently under a cloud of suspicion for violating the rules and paying its players...often with money laundering...are also in the tournament, including Arizona, Kentucky, Duke, North Carolina, Virginia, Seton Hall, NC State, Alabama, Texas, Michigan State, Creighton, Clemson, Wichita State, and Xavier...I probably left out one or two.  The NCAA has an investigation all lined up, headed by Condoleezza Rice, to start AFTER the tournament is over, so we will have a big cloud hanging over this March Madness the entire way.  I predict the NCAA will come down hard on a small number of colleges, even taking away their tournament victories and their championship should one of them win it.  As for me, besides pulling for my Florida teams (especially the Gators, of course), I'm just going to watch the games with the view of enjoying college basketball played on a high level without getting caught up in who's advancing and who isn't.  After all, this tournament is bound to be rewritten in some fashion a few weeks later by outside bureaucrats regardless what happened on the court...

Some Comments on Classical Music Radio

I like having a local station like 102.7/WRUF that plays classical music after many years of not having this accessible on Gainesville broadcast radio when their main station on 89.1 kHz switched from classical to a talk/news format.  Unfortunately, many of the programs on this classical music station are full of tedious talk, which would be fine were I attending a music appreciation class and wanted all sorts of background and historical information on the composers and performers.  But I want to hear classical music, and all this banter keeps the amount of music I'm able to hear during the time I'm listening limited.  I just wish they'd name the composer, the music, and performer for each piece beforehand and afterwards...and if they have some other data they'd like to convey to just provide a website through which I could access it...away from the radio.  I am also becoming increasingly annoyed at the way the music is becoming chopped up and played in bits and pieces, not at all the way the original composer had ever intended for it to be heard.  So some hot-shot announcer with a musical pedigree likes a cello passage from a particular work...why can't I hear the entire work instead of a five-minute extraction?  The answer is self-explanatory: these hosts feel...probably rightly so...that they have to justify their presence and, as such, feel compelled to fill much of the programming with their opinions, interpretations, and anecdotes, as well as emphasizing what they deem to be the more significant parts of various works and ignoring the parts they don't care about...well, maybe the parts they pass up on are the very parts that might convey the greatest personal meaning to me...

When I'm driving, I get broadcast radio and listen to 102.7/WRUF.  But when I'm not on the road and have the chance to listen to classical music, I used my phone app and listen on TuneIn Radio to either the Rhode Island station WCRI or New York's famous WQXR, both of which seem to play more music...including entire pieces...and don't engage in as much chatter as do the programs on WUFT.  The best classic music source is on my Cox Cable TV service, which has Music Choice, featuring on channel 949 complete classical music works...without any interruption.  Now THAT's my choice...

Just Finished Reading The Light of Paris by Eleanor Brown

The Light of Paris is a 2016 novel by Eleanor Brown, who achieved success in 2011 with her debut book The Weird Sisters. I found this story, as I often do with my reading, by randomly browsing my local public library's shelves...maybe I'd be better off being more selective...

Madeleine lives in 1999 as the wife of a wealthy businessman who is constantly berating and belittling her and her artistic interests.  She feels unappreciated and trapped, and her mother is equally critical of her, siding with the jerk of a husband.  One day Madeleine is going through her mother's attic and comes across a journal that her grandmother, Margie, had written about her own outlook and experiences.  Becoming engrossed in it, she feels a bond with her grandmother...who also had her own difficulties with people who refused to respect her as a viable individual with her own aspirations and talents.  The book then toggles with each succeeding chapter back and forth between Margie in 1924 and Madeleine in 1999 as they try to sort out their respective lives in the face of all those mean, selfish people who either don't understand them or don't care about them...or both...

Overall, I didn't have a very positive reaction to Brown's book.  I took in consideration the fact that her story is of two women, separated by two generations and 75 years, and who tend to both be excessively self-absorbed and self-pitying and wondered whether my own gender may account for a built-in bias against it.  But I think not...I am a man, but can remember many times in my life when I was belittled and bullied by others and not given the elemental degree of respect that any intelligent being on this planet deserves.  The problem with the people surrounding Madeleine and Margie is that they imposed their own models of what the two should be like on them, inevitably being repeatedly disappointed when they behaved as only their true selves, unrecognized or denied by others, would naturally behave.  As Madeleine and Margie each finally display their own assertiveness, they discover that there are others in the world who will accept them for who they are, and this revolutionizes their lives.  That's a good message, but the author could well have done without this massive self-pity party of a story in expressing it...

Incidentally, as to the novel's title, Paris is a recurring theme, real or figurative, of a place to escape to discover one's true self and be able to freely engage in creative expression, and it filtered throughout the book...

Quote of the Week...from Albert Einstein

Once we accept our limits, we go beyond them.                 ---Albert Einstein.

Arguably the greatest physicist since Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein was also something of a philosopher and had many interesting things to say about the world...and life.  I ran across the above quote of his and thought to myself how counterintuitive it is, especially considering the commonly-held belief nowadays that people are limitless in their potential...all they need to do is believe in their dreams and then work hard to implement them.  But like a similar quote from "Dirty" Harry Callahan in the movie Magnum Force ("A man's got to know his own limitations"), the idea of honestly assessing one's own limits of ability and talent can go a long way toward pointing toward the needed changes that will expand those limiting personal frontiers or cause us to redirect our goals and efforts to more effective ends...but you have to know what needs changing before you can change it...

I know of one limiting factor in many people's lives: they tend to think of things as static, stuck in the present...instead of recognizing the dynamic, ever-changing nature of life and the reality we inhabit.  Self-assessment involves examining ourselves closely and honestly, noting the flaws within that we'd rather not see.  I think this is one reason why so many of us are stuck in this "identity" thing where, instead of individually looking at ourselves, warts and all, in a dispassionate and humble way, we'd rather see ourselves in terms of being a "member" of a self-identifying group, with the accompanying support system and affirmations...and refusing to acknowledge the weakness within us.  But that is a static way to see ourselves, and life demands that we change...why not accept the good professor's advice and get real about who we really are, shortcomings and all...and then advance to a better life?

3/4 Sermon on Philippians, Part 8

Senior pastor Philip Griffin of Gainesville's Family Church continued his series on the Bible's New Testament book of Philippians as he continued in Chapter 3 with a message titled Joyful Victory. You can read the Bible passage of focus through the Bible Gateway website by clicking on it: Philippians 3:12-21...

So how do we as believers attain joyful victory through our walk with Christ?  Pastor Philip breaks it down into three parts: pursue the right prize, embrace God's plan for discipleship, and remember our true identity.  The Philippians passage reminds us to focus on the present, not the past...but Philip also stresses that what we value the most shapes us and will reorder our life, be it money, pleasure, power...or God.  We have the God-given power to choose our course...God will also give us the power to walk with him should that be our choice.  Regarding discipleship, Philip points out that we are all followers at first...as we mature we become models and leaders, while still allowing ourselves to be mentored.  And regarding our true identity, the Bible passage referred to "enemies of the cross"...what does that mean?  Pastor Philip responds this way: if we're enemies of the cross, we don't think we need what Christ died for, we're pursuing the wrong prize, and we live with the appearance but on the inside haven't changed.  He concluded by emphasizing the importance of understanding the truth of what we will be...it will enable us to handle anything now...

You can watch the video of Pastor Philip's presentation through the church's YouTube video website...just click on the following link: [link].  The Family Church is located at 2022 SW 122nd Street and holds its Sunday morning services at 9 and 10:30.  Not exactly the most comfortable person in social environments, I have nevertheless found the folks here to make me feel welcome and valued...and I think you would, too.  The services, along with the weekly message, feature praise and worship music as well as prayer and discipleship opportunities...and a hospitality center before and between services where you can get a cup of coffee, nibble on some treats, and chat with some of those friendly folks...

Weekly Short Story: The Crystal Crypt by Philip K. Dick

The Crystal Crypt is a 1954 science fiction short story by Philip K. Dick.  It is set many years in the future as Earth (now called Terra) and Mars...settled through many generations...are on the brink of interplanetary war.  The last flight to Terra has been launched from the Red Planet, but suddenly it is diverted to the moon Deimos and the passengers are searched and interrogated with a machine that detects lies: it seems that three people...two men and a woman...had destroyed a major Martian city and they are suspected of being on the ship.  They let the ship go, however, and a man named Thacher, also a passenger on the Earth-bound ship, encounters three people...two men and a woman...sitting together.  And the story goes on from there...

The Crystal Crypt is a good example of the limitations that short stories impose on both the writer and reader.  You know that the story will only last a few more pages and that a twisted ending of some sort is waiting at the end...so you're very conscious of any clues that the plot and characters are revealing.  In this tale, the clues are screaming at the reader...I figured out the ending very early on, although there was one mystery that I admit I was a little surprised at its revelation.  As for the Earth vs. Mars scenario, remember that this was written at the height of the Cold War between the West and the Soviet Bloc countries...we had just finished a brutal war against them in Korea.  So I'm sure when it came out, the receptive and conditioned reading public had no problem making analogies.  Since I've always enjoyed Philip K. Dick's writing, I enjoyed The Crystal Crypt as well...although it's definitely not one of his best works...

You can read The Crystal Crypt through the Gutenberg site...here is a link to the story: [link]...

Tueday's List: Past Oscars Best Picture Winners

With last Sunday night's Academy Awards, I decided it would be an appropriate time to list the past winners for Best Film...the Oscars go back into the silent movie era.  While compiling this list and reviewing the nominees, I noticed that in several years more prominent movies were nominated but relative unknowns won the award.   One of the more famous older movies, All Quiet on the Western Front, was a silent film that depicted World War I and its horrible trench combat from the perspective of ordinary German ground soldiers...I managed to see a little of it when TCM showed it last week and have placed it high on my list of movies I need to watch.  Then again, all of the below are most likely good movies...well, most of them I'm sure.  After each movie on the list I indicated whether I saw it in full or in part, followed by a 0-5 rating scale...you can see by the scarcity of "saws" that I'm not exactly what you'd call an avid movie fan.  I noticed something funny on the list: my longest stretch of Academy Award Best Picture winners that I haven't seen is for ten years, and it's the last ten years!  Yet I've watched my share of movies in theaters lately, and some of them had been nominated during this period...go figure.  So, here's that list of Best Picture winners (the year is for when they came out, not that of the actual award presentation)...

1927-28 WINGS
1928-29 THE BROADWAY MELODY
1929-30 ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT...saw in part:5
1930-31 CIMARRON
1931-32 GRAND HOTEL
1932-33 CAVALCADE
1934 IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT
1935 MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY....saw:5
1936 THE GREAT ZIEGFELD
1937 THE LIFE OF EMILE ZOLA
1938 YOU CAN'T TAKE IT WITH YOU...saw in part:3
1939 GONE WITH THE WIND....saw first half:3
1940 REBECCA
1941 HOW GREEN WAS MY VALLEY
1942 MRS. MINIVER
1943 CASABLANCA...saw:5
1944 GOING MY WAY
1945 THE LOST WEEKEND
1946 THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES
1947 GENTLEMAN'S AGREEMENT
1948 HAMLET
1949 ALL THE KING'S MEN
1950 ALL ABOUT EVE
1951 AN AMERICAN IN PARIS
1952 THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH
1953 FROM HERE TO ETERNITY...saw:4
1954 ON THE WATERFRONT...saw in part:4
1955 MARTY
1956 AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS
1957 BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI...saw:5
1958 GIGI
1959 BEN-HUR
1960 THE APARTMENT
1961 WEST SIDE STORY...saw in part:3
1962 LAWRENCE OF ARABIA
1963 TOM JONES
1964 MY FAIR LADY...saw:5
1965 THE SOUND OF MUSIC...saw:5
1966 A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS
1967 IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT
1968 OLIVER!
1969 MIDNIGHT COWBOY...saw in part:3
1970 PATTON...saw:5
1971 THE FRENCH CONNECTION
1972 THE GODFATHER...saw:5
1973 THE STING
1974 THE GODFATHER PART II...saw:5
1975 ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST...saw:2
1976 ROCKY...saw:3
1977 ANNIE HALL...saw:2
1978 THE DEER HUNTER
1979 KRAMER VS. KRAMER
1980 ORDINARY PEOPLE...saw:3
1981 CHARIOTS OF FIRE...saw:4
1982 GANDHI
1983 TERMS OF ENDEARMENT
1984 AMADEUS
1985 OUT OF AFRICA...saw:1
1986 PLATOON...saw:5
1987 THE LAST EMPEROR...saw:3
1988 RAIN MAN...saw:4
1989 DRIVING MISS DAISY
1990 DANCES WITH WOLVES
1991 THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS...saw:4
1992 UNFORGIVEN...saw:4
1993 SCHINDLER'S LIST
1994 FORREST GUMP...saw:5
1995 BRAVEHEART
1996 THE ENGLISH PATIENT
1997 TITANIC
1998 SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE
1999 AMERICAN BEAUTY
2000 GLADIATOR
2001 A BEAUTIFUL MIND...saw:5
2002 CHICAGO
2003 THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RETURN OF THE KING...saw:5
2004 MILLION DOLLAR BABY
2005 CRASH
2006 THE DEPARTED
2007 NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN...saw:4
2008 SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE
2009 THE HURT LOCKER
2010 THE KING'S SPEECH
2011 THE ARTIST
2012 ARGO
2013 12 YEARS A SLAVE
2014 BIRDMAN
2015 SPOTLIGHT
2016 MOONLIGHT
2017 THE SHAPE OF WATER

Some Music I've Been Listening to Lately

Although the default setting on my car radio is the classical music station on 102.7 in Gainesville (one of the WRUF stations), I usually don't know the title or composer of whatever piece I'm hearing unless the announcer says it...still, I generally love the flow of this music (unless it's operatic singing and then it's just annoying).  As for "popular" music, my main interest is still alternative/indie/rock...the station for this in Gainesville is 100.5/WHHZ "The Buzz".  Usually, though, I haven't lately been finding very much on this station to interest me.  Instead, I have been listening on my smartphone to old songs from ELO, the Rolling Stones, and the Moody Blues...it's no accident that I've recently listed my favorite songs from these great old bands on this blog.  As for individual songs, I've rediscovered Lazy Eye by the Silversun Pickups and listen to it a lot, along with current releases by Arcade Fire and Kasabian titled Creature Comfort and Twentyfourseven, respectively.  And my current favorite musical artist, Regina Spektor, has produced many personal favorites over the years that I also listen to, such as Us, Firewood, 20 Years of Snow, and The Light.  I'm finding that once again that I'm entering a period when I'm not all that interested in what's being played on the radio and instead am focusing on shuffling through old favorites.  But I never know what I'll hear the next time I tune in...maybe it'll be a new, truly spectacular song. Well, at least I can hope...

Just Finshed Reading The Fear Index by Robert Harris

I just finished reading The Fear Index, a 2011 book by Robert Harris.  It is a story about Alex Hoffman, an American mathematical genius who has moved to Geneva, Switzerland, first to work at its CERN Large Hadron Collider and then to settle down, get married...and start his own hedge fund company.  The abrupt change in career direction happens due to his invention of a very, very complex computer algorithm that permeates the Internet and infers patterns of investment behavior and factors, automatically acting upon them.  The rate of return in his company for his investors is staggeringly high, and his algorithm seems to work the best whenever there is any kind of panic in the market, causing fear reactions.  And then Hoffman discovers that someone in his own personal life is trying their hardest to cause him to be afraid for his own self...

The main characters in The Fear Index are Hoffman, his wife Gabrielle, his extroverted business partner Hugo Quarry, and the local police inspector Leclerc...who struck me as a Swiss version of Columbo (he lives across the border in France because it is cheaper there).  Hoffman's algorithm, set into action, is self-educating and as a budding Artificial Intelligence is developing two important traits of living things: a sense of personal survival and a tendency to test the meanings of words it learns...the most important one here being "fear".  The rest of the story flows from this and the ending perfectly describes the state we're plummeting headlong into with our increasing, devil-may-care dependency on computers and the Internet...

As a friend and former colleague...who recommended this book to me...alluded, there seems to be a tendency nowadays to see a lot of manipulation in the mass media...as well as social media...to frighten the population into adopting certain political stances, as well as making them rush to buy the "necessary" things that will protect them.  Fear is a great tool for propaganda as well as advertising, and it is pervasive...as well as running counter to informed, rational reasoning.  Folks terrified out of their senses tend to run in whatever direction the mob is going...and this is how those manipulating them can get what they want.  It seems like with too many people nowadays, their vision of the future is to avoid their artificially-induced nightmare scenarios instead of looking to create a better world for themselves and the society that they and their descendants will inhabit.  I also liked The Fear Index and recommend it...besides the message, the characters in it were well developed and believable while the story was suspenseful...

Sitting in a Starbucks at Noon on a Saturday

I'm sitting here in a very crowded Starbucks (the northernmost one in Gainesville) around noon on a Saturday.  The weather has changed to cooler and dryer conditions...it's about time!  It also looks as if we'll be enjoying a late winter here for at least another week, too.  Somehow I managed to avoid catching the flu this year...maybe I'm just one of those few lucky ones inoculated that the shot actually worked on, who knows.  Then again, it's not over yet...and friendly, well-meaning folks are still going around sneezing, coughing, blowing their noses...and wanting to shake my hand...

There's a college basketball game starting about now between Florida and Kentucky in the O'Connell Center on the UF campus.  Both teams are working hard to get into the NCAA tournament with the 23rd-ranked Wildcats having the edge right now...the Gators won the first game in Lexington earlier but have suffered injuries to center John Egbunu and forward Isaiah Stokes this year.  Still,  Florida seems to have recovered of late after undergoing a tough 2-5 stretch of conference games that included a few close losses...but will they be good enough to stop Kentucky's revamped and formidable scoring offense?  We'll see...the Gators right now have a 19-11 record but to their credit have played a challenging non-conference schedule, something that the NCAA usually takes into account when selecting teams for their championship tournament...

Beginning last Sunday after work I have begun splitting up my training by going at that late hour to my local 24/7 gym.  It was tough at the beginning to make that left turn on University Avenue instead of going straight home as I am usually tired at that time (10 pm)...but it's more of a mental fatigue issue than anything physical.  Getting a little exercise at that time seems to both help with my sleep as well as the following morning.  I tend to focus right now on the elliptical cross-trainer when I'm there.  The place is Gainesville Health and Fitness at 4880 Newberry Road...I'm glad that I am using their facilities more now and the time of day I'm there it's not too crowded...

At my job I have been working a lot of overtime over the past two months, especially in February when I put in at one time seventeen straight full workdays, with many of them having me report there early.  The extra hours are still going on in March, but so far I'm getting back at least one of my off-days: today is one of them, then it's back to work tomorrow.  Not that I'm complaining about the overtime: after all, I signed up for it...

Well, this Starbucks was very crowded when I first entered it, but it's since emptied out considerably.  I guess it's time to go up there and get a refill on my iced coffee...

Quote of the Week...from Frank Herbert

Seek freedom and become captive of your desires. Seek discipline and find your liberty.
                                                                                     Frank Herbert.

Frank Hebert was the author of the celebrated Dune science fiction series.  I just finished rereading the first book, simply titled Dune.  The remaining books I haven't read...but I'm getting ready to start on the next one, Dune Messiah.  The interstellar societies in this series, while technologically advanced, are autocratic and steeped in religion, intrigue, and exclusive organizations whose members are obliged to followed their strict discipline and way of thinking.  The protagonist is Paul, a young man who seems to be at the intersection of everyone's prophecies and as such finds himself continually confronted with situations directing his actions and words...he often sees his future as fated, with little freedom to change the tide of history of which he seems to be the center...

Apart from this series, the above quote stands on its own as something pretty profound.  Our true freedom lies in the choices we make...making choices leading to better self-control and positive behavior will lead to more and more opportunities to make further choices...this is the essence of freedom.  When I was a little kid in elementary school, we (and particularly I) would often raise the complaint "This is a free country, isn't it?" whenever one of those annoying grown-ups would come down on us for violating one of their many rules. Well, turns out that those rules serve a purpose: to give a dependable structure to our society where we can better see our options and ultimately have a chance to make good choices with our lives.  But try telling that to a ten-year old as he goes around skipping classes with impunity...

I don't know much about Frank Herbert, and I believe the quote I used is from one of his later Dune novels...so I don't know how he applied his own advice to his own life.  But sound advice is sound advice, no matter where it comes from.  If I consistently make undisciplined choices in the name of personal "freedom", I will eventually find myself more and more in dependency relationships where others have the upper hand over me and my choices will dwindle in degree and quality.  But practicing self-control and understanding the meaning of the word "enough" will engender both a sense of independence from the whims of other people and the ability to live out that true freedom.  I also believe that it is difficult to act in a sincerely loving, generous, merciful, and gracious way toward others while being in the throes of deep dependency that could have been avoided through better life choices.  Of course, we all exist in an interdependent world and I wouldn't want anyone to think I advocate complete independence...and having a personal relationship of dependency on God leads to those better choices, greater true freedom, and the social expression of our higher virtues...

2/25 Sermon on Philippians, Part 7

Our senior pastor at The Family Church here in Gainesville, Philip Griffin, continued his sermon series on the New Testament book of Philippians by beginning Chapter 3 and focusing on Verses 1-11, which you can read by clicking on Bible Gateway. The theme...and message title...was Joyful Confidence. The Biblical text featured Paul's opposition to those within the church who were insisting on physical circumcision on top of receiving Christ's salvation through his crucifixion and resurrection.  Paul insisted that what Jesus did was enough and had some pretty harsh words for those who maintained that it wasn't.  Pastor Philip took this reading to present some helpful ideas about the nature of confidence and how to truly attain and enjoy it...

In refuting those who erroneously were placing their confidence in the flesh, Paul listed several of his own "qualifications" for having confidence in salvation...and quickly dismissed them all as loss.  Pastor Philip listed areas where trust leads to false confidence: in religious rituals, in one's heritage, in one's titles and accomplishments, in one's sincerity, and in one's attempts at goodness.  As for heritage, Philip pointed out that God has no grandchildren, and where one's parents stood with God does not automatically pass down to their children. What leads instead to true, joyful confidence?  No surprise here, as Philip laid it out: it's all about Jesus: his presence in my life, his purity coming though faith, his power for living, his perspective on suffering,, and his promise in my death.  Wow, that's a lot to absorb, both on the positive and negative side.  Keeping my focus on God and not myself can go a very long way toward simplifying things, though...

The Family Church weekly sermons can be viewed through its YouTube video website...just click on the following link to watch the one I just discussed: [link]. I recommend you do so as Philip says so much that I simply cannot fit into the small space of a blog article...watching the message live at church is even better.  The weekly Sunday services there are at 9 and 10:30, and besides the message there is inspiring live praise and worship music along with prayer and discipleship opportunities.  This fellowship is located at 2022 SW 122nd Street, accessible via Newberry Road, SW 24th Avenue, or Archer Road.  A good way to start or end the week, depending on where you're coming from..