My February 2020 Running Report

For February I ran a total of 50 miles, missing 12 days in the middle of the month due first to not feeling well and then to a long cruise on my vacation.  I'm not sure what my longest single run of the month was, since with the days I did run I often broke them up into smaller runs...but I doubt that at no time did I ever run much further than three miles before stopping.  As I begin a new month, I'm also going to be building my running endurance back up.  I've also begun to consider my diet with the view to shed a little weight...I think having about 20 less pounds to carry with me on a run would certainly enhance the experience.  As for any future races, there's always something to look forward to this time of the year in northern Florida...it's just a matter of feeling that I'm in good enough condition to properly cover the distance.  I'm also looking at mixing more brisk-paced walking breaks in with my outdoor training runs, a tactic that should work to reduce wear and tear on my feet and knees...

Quote of the Week...from Clint Eastwood

The older I get, the less I try to tiptoe around other people's feelings.  You either like me or you don't.  Simple as that.                                               ---Clint Eastwood

This quote I picked up from a Facebook friend's posting a few days ago and I'm running with the idea that it's something the great actor/director actually said...it certainly dovetails with what I know about him.  And it's also become pretty certain in my mind that I'm getting older...I'm often reminded of this fact when people automatically give me senior discounts on my purchases.  Aging in itself does not impart wisdom, but one thing I have learned over the years is that it's impossible to please everyone and that even if I do or say everything "right", somebody is going to be offended and a few will even venomously despise me...there's no getting around that.  I like another quote, this one a line from Max Ehrmann's celebrated prose poem Desiderata: "As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons." This means to treat with benevolent consideration even those whom I dislike or think are toxic and/or disruptive influences in my social world...but only up to a point.  So I try...usually successfully...to maintain politeness and goodwill toward those around me.  Yet there are people who are so bullying and manipulative that I have to draw the line and assert my own personal boundaries when they egregiously step over that line...this is where Clint's quote kicks again, and no, those people aren't going to see me tiptoe around their precious little feelings.  For what it's worth, I happen to like Clint Eastwood...two of his "spaghetti" westerns, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly and A Fistful of Dollars are right there near the top of my all-time favorite movies list.  And the man is an independent thinker who calls things the way he sees them...if you've followed his politics for the last few years you know what I mean.  I wish him the best and appreciate all of his past contributions...

Our Recent Cruise: The CocoCay, Bahamas "Experience"

As I write about my impressions of the Royal Caribbean cruise Melissa and I went on a couple of weeks ago, I would be remiss without mentioning what happened with one of its highly promoted features: a stopover for several hours in the Bahamas at CocoCay, an island privately owned by the company and transformed into a water vacation paradise, complete with a water park and lots of beach to enjoy.  After a mechanical delay kept us from leaving Ft. Lauderdale on time Sunday the 9th, we went up to the top deck (16th for us general passengers) and stood at the rails practically overcome by the intensely strong winds, interspersed with even stronger gusts.  Up there was also what would turn out to be my own personal favorite restaurant: the Windjammer, all costs already included in the prepaid cruise fare.  It featured an enormous dining area ringing a large series of buffets offering a wide range of food and drink...it was only too easy to overeat there.  When our ship finally did leave port later that night, it traveled almost due east to the nearby Bahamas destination, to harbor there early Monday morning.  When Melissa and I awoke we were planning on a fun day of beach time and went up to the 15th level's Wipeout Café for a "free" breakfast and took our food outside to eat...if anything the wind was even stronger and we were fortunate to find a spot that shielded us from it.  Later we went back up to our stateroom to get ready for disembarking when the ship's public address system boomed into our rooms the captain's personal message that he had tried to safely harbor at CocoCay but due to the high winds he used his professional judgment in the interests of safety and would bypass the island and continue onward through the Bahamas with our cruise.  Well, that was a heavy disappointment for everyone...but we could feel the wind ourselves and easily see the very choppy ocean waters the ship was now plowing through.  During the next few hours the turbulence had caused a greater-than-usual rocking motion and Melissa began to strongly feel the effects.  Our cruise was rescued, though, through the combination of an over-the-counter product to deal with her seasickness as well as something (which I had never heard of before) called a "sea band", one worn on each wrist, which due to a process similar to acupuncture was able to alleviate much of what she was experiencing.  And the ship itself had much to offer us as well while we journeyed on to our Wednesday Puerto Rico destination.  More on our cruise to come...

Weekly Short Stories...Robert Heinlein, Part 1

I'm taking a few weeks break from my year-to-year look at good short science fiction stories from the past in order to examine some of sci fi writer Robert Heinlein, widely considered as one of the best of this genre, since his tales were blocked from the anthology series I've been using (Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories). I'm using his collection The Past Through Tomorrow, which contains the stories that make up Heinlein's fictional future universe...they tend to build upon each other. The Asimov book for the year 1939 did contain two Heinlein stories: Life-Line and Misfit: click on their titles to read my earlier reactions. Today I'm looking at three stories in the order of their appearance in The Past Through Tomorrow... THE ROADS MUST ROLL This 1940 story might have been the first one by Robert Heinlein I ever read...I think it appeared in one of those sci-fi "hall of fame" anthologies. From the author's viewpoint in time, the decades that we consider the near past were his near future, and he speculated about humanity's burgeoning technology and ventures into space travel. One of his ideas...which preceded President Eisenhower's Interstate Highway System begun in the 1950s...was that of roads that rolled on conveyer belts, replacing the federal highway system and most petroleum-consuming vehicles as well. Pedestrians would simply step onto a slow-moving belt and gradually move to incrementally-faster belts going up to 100 mph...Heinlein in this story examined the social and economic ramifications of such an innovation as well as its vulnerabilities, especially with regard to the workers who operated and maintained the "rolling roads"... BLOWUPS HAPPEN In this prophetic 1940 tale, Heinlein anticipates the splitting of the atom, both in terms of the development of the nuclear bomb and that of nuclear energy produced by fission. Here, though, the reactors are essentially bombs teetering at a precarious balance on the edge of explosion and their operators have by far the highest job stress level in recorded history...trained psychiatrists constantly observe them to detect in time which ones are about to crack. A couple of the engineers, however, make a discovery that will drastically change both how energy is produced as well as how to get rockets out of the atmosphere and into space...in Heinlein's universe chemical energy is insufficient to escape the Earth's atmosphere. Heinlein in 1946 made alterations to this story that included mention of the 1945 Hiroshima bombing...this tale isn't THAT prophetic... THE MAN WHO SOLD THE MOON A bigshot American business tycoon, hell-bent on landing someone on the moon for the first time...and that means himself...wheels and deals with his business partner as well as other super-wealthy financiers in this 1950 primer on how to get things done within a full-blown capitalist economy. Heinlein's target year for the first moon shot here was 1978, nine years later than we actually went there. And once the launched rockets were into space, Earth lost radio contact with the astronauts...maybe had that been the case in our "real" moon shots instead of the constant, numbing television programming, public interest in the Apollo program might have lasted longer and we'd now be much further along in our space program. The Man Who Sold the Moon is actually a short novel...Heinlein was meticulous in his stories for going into detail with processes, exploring here an area, including the implicit shadiness involved, where big money changes hands in response to even bigger promises... Next week: more about Robert Heinlein's stories....

Our Recent Cruise: Our Stateroom Balcony and Central Park

On our recent Royal Caribbean cruise...we rode on their Allure of the Seas ship out of Ft. Lauderdale...our living quarters, called "staterooms" and resembling small hotel rooms, had balconies.  Some guests' rooms faced outward, their balconies overlooking the seas and sky.  Across the hallway were the inner rooms, whose balconies presented a different picture: the interior of the ship.  Although Melissa and I would have preferred the ocean view, as it turned out we probably got the perfect inner balcony: not so high up that we couldn't see and hear what was happening below, and a perfectly centered location above the ship's so-called "Central Park" Deck #8 with its horticulture, restaurants, and musical performance area...all outdoor despite being located within the ship's "interior".  Sitting out there we could watch the pedestrian traffic and the entranceway to Giovanni's restaurant while listening to various performers.  Directly below us people would be sitting outside the Park Place Café, making the area as a whole a kind of informal meeting hub.  Each evening they would have a different performer, usually either a pianist or light jazz artist.  A couple of times Billy Pando, a musician from Texas, put on a show of old hits that he interpreted and sang on the piano...he is very talented, funny and engaging: I got a big kick out of watching and listening to him and apparently so did the rest of his audience.  On the last night of our cruise, as Pando was winding down his show I noticed that several couples who were just walking through the area would spontaneously stop and begin dancing with each other to the music...if I were Billy (and I am, in a roundabout way)...I'd consider that to be the best compliment of all.  Also, toward the end of the performance I noticed several couples seating themselves at Giovannis' outside tables in spite of the restaurant already having closed...and they, unlike previous Giovannis' customers, didn't seem particularly interested in the concert.  Finally, after having gone a few minutes past his scheduled 10 pm ending, Billy Pando finished and left...and those "customers", along with several others that seemed to appear from nowhere,  took over the area and began speaking in Russian and singing Russian hymns from their smartphones.  Now that I thought was about as cool as it gets...

Melissa and I occasionally walked through Central Park...sometimes we breakfasted at Park Place, one of the cruise line's "free" eateries, and on Friday the 14th we dined at Chops (a few steps to the left out of our balcony's view), where we celebrated Melissa's birthday (yes, it lies on St. Valentine's Day).  No doubt about it, I totally dug our balcony and Central Park...although being on the inside we were necessarily more conscious of the need to protect our room's privacy than we would facing the sea.  More on our February 9th-16th cruise to come...

My 500 All-Time Favorite Songs: #250-241

Well, it's time once again to go a little further up the list of my 500 personal all-time favorite songs.  The tendency here is for me to write too much about each one...sometimes I just have to cut off my comments on one song and move on, a skill I need to develop more and one that I wished more writers (and speakers) had.  Here's the next ten on my list...

250 WE'LL SING IN THE SUNSHINE...Gale Garnett
This was a big hit in the fall of 1964, around the time I was turning eight.  I associate it with being in our West Hollywood, Florida backyard with my sister Anita and sitting on the porch musing with her then about different things...real sweet, wonderful memories.  Funny thing was that at the time I didn't particularly care for this wistful, slow country-like ballad by the Canadian singer about a free spirit who is moving on from her love, but it grew on me and I eventually bought the single.  In my admittedly skewed memory, 1964 was one heck of a cool year...

249 BLACK WATER...the Doobie Brothers
Founding Doobie Brothers member Patrick Simmons wrote and sang lead on this early 1975 hit that pretty much resurrected the great old Bayou spirit so successfully imparted by John Fogerty and Creedence Clearwater Revival a few years earlier.  The big surprise in this song for first-time listeners comes near the end, just when you think it's over...the rousing "I'd like to hear some funky Dixieland pretty mama come and take me by the hand".  Interplay between fiddle and guitar figures heavily in this treasure...

248 WINDOWSILL...Arcade Fire
Windowsill is what I would term a "vent" song...here the singer vents about his father's legacy and against the world in general as he remembers experiences and makes observations on things he is averse to and clearly expresses how he doesn't want any of it on his "windowsill".  Win Butler delivers a passionate, emotional performance...the song appeared as a deep track on the band's wonderful 2007 album Neon Bible, one of the greatest works of popular music from this century, in my humble opinion...

247 ANGRY YOUNG MAN...Billy Joel
In this 1976 staple of album rock radio back then, from his Turnstiles album, Joel displays his prowess at the piano keyboard during the prelude and instrumental breaks...when he's singing the verses, the background is acoustic guitar as he lays out his take on young radicals, who he sees are out of touch with many of the realities that people in general face in order to just get by in life...but the "angry young man" immerses himself in a personal fantasy world of imagined utopia and revolution.  The lyrics are cutting and no-nonsense: "But his honor is true and his courage is well, and he's fair and he's true and he's boring as hell...and he'll go to the grave as an angry old man"...

246 YOU'VE GOT TO HIDE YOUR LOVE AWAY...the Beatles
John Lennon's written and performed introspective, moody pieces like this one before...I'll Cry Instead and I'm a Loser quickly come to mind.  This song from their 1965 Help! album hints of Bob Dylan's influence as well as foresees their more folk-oriented work on the following Rubber Soul album.  The only problem I have with this melancholy two-minute song is that it's too short: it deserves at least one or two more minutes...of course, I could play it repeatedly in a loop...

245 AQUARIUS/LET THE SUNSHINE IN...the Fifth Dimension
Back in 1969 when I was ignoring a lot of great music going on at the time, I still could clearly tell that this song was extraordinary...it became my "song of the year" as I lived through it and I still treasure Aquarius today.  Not that I'm into New Age mysticism or astrology, mind you, but this is an upbeat song about the future that came out at a time when both nationally and personally it didn't look like there was very much to look forward to...and an awful lot to dread.  I say chuck the horoscopes and just "let the sunshine in"...

244 EVERLONG...Foo Fighters
The quick transformation that David Grohl made from drummer in a band destroyed by the death of its charismatic leader/singer to heading his own instantly wildly successful group is unprecedented in music history...cite me a similar example if you can.  His Foo Fighters' second album The Colour and the Shape came out in 1997 and this was my favorite track on it...fortunately they released it as a single and it became a hit, one of the most romantic hard-driving rock songs ever produced...

243 HOLIDAY...the Bee Gees
My parents bought the album Bee Gees 1st (which incidentally wasn't actually their first) when it came out in 1967, hearing at least in their own minds a continuation of what they had liked in the early Beatles, and Holiday was one of its tracks that I took to during the many, many times they played it in my house when I was ten-eleven years old.  Ironically, its rich orchestral background and atmosphere of mystery with nearly indecipherable lyrics to me would place it more appropriately among the tracks on Sgt. Pepper, which was the ongoing Fab Four album back then that my mom and dad had rejected...

242 RUNNIN' AWAY...Sly and the Family Stone
This early-1972 follow-up to Sly and the Family Stone's larger singles hit Family Affair (which I also liked) just didn't get the charts action or radio play that it deserved...maybe because the lead singer on it isn't Sly Stone...I think it was Sister Rose instead.  I loved the horns on it as well as the beat.  Both Runnin' Away and Family Affair are from their There's a Riot Going On album, one of the most acclaimed in rock history...

241 VITAL SIGNS...Rush
Although the hard rock/reggae-fused music on Vital Signs is entrancing in itself, it's the lyrics that quickly won me over to this concluding track on Rush's 1981 Moving Pictures, another album that would easily make my personal list of all-time favorite albums...although I didn't actually first hear it until 1992.  The late Neil Peart, their outstanding drummer as well as lyricist for their songs, wrote the ultimate, reasonable rationale for nonconformity with this piece, loaded with wisdom such as "Everybody got mixed feelings about the function and the form, everybody got to deviate from the norm"...

Next week: #240-231...

Just Finished Reading Out of Their Minds by Clifford Simak

Out of Their Minds is a short 1970 novel by one of my favorite science fictions writers, the late Clifford Simak.  Unfortunately, the basis for this story by now is well-trodden and old: the notion that people's collective thoughts can generate a new type of sentient life that takes the forms of our imagined symbols and characters, both from fiction and from history, albeit transformed by culture into something quite different from the truth.  Horton Smith is a news reporter returning to his rural hometown to seclude himself in order to write a book.  He finds himself undergoing bizarre encounters such as a triceratops dinosaur charging him on the road or the comic strip characters Snuffy and Loweezy Smith inviting him to stay overnight.  A friend who had discovered the source of the manifestations has died in a mysterious, unexplained auto crash, and Horton realizes that he, too, is targeted for death by the "imagined" entities after he reads his buddy's papers...the race is on to warn the authorities in Washington: but will they listen to him or just laugh him off?

This story lays out many different fictional and real characters and settings in the context of collective imagination...the idea that thinking something makes it come into being sounded to me derivative of the older Star Trek episode Shore Leave as well as the 1973 chilling Harlan Ellison horror short story The Whimper of Whipped Dogs, Tad Williams' incredible four-part sci-fi Otherland series (albeit in a virtual reality context), Neil Gaiman's novel American Gods...and naturally that three-part South Park episode titled "Imaginationland".  Still, although it isn't one of my favorite Simak stories, I liked Out of Their Minds but think it would have been more effective on film or television.  I think I'll continue rummaging through this master of science fiction's works in search of something better, though...

About Our Recent Cruise

It's now been nearly a week since Melissa and I returned from our weeklong cruise through the Bahamas with stops at Puerto Rico and St. Thomas in the US Virgin Islands.  We were on the Royal Caribbean ship Allure of the Seas, which left Ft. Lauderdale's Port Everglades on February 9th and returned on the 16th.  The cruise was specially designed for married couples, with the organization FamilyLife running the show, providing numerous sessions and concerts themed around marriage enrichment from a Christian perspective.  Friends from our church, who have gone on this cruise in the past, shared the opportunity for us to be on this particular one...neither Melissa nor I had ever gone on a cruise before. The ship was humungous, with more than 5,000 passengers riding it...not to mention the many people comprising the support staff for Royal Carribean and FamilyLife as well as the invited speakers and performers.  The experience for us was uniquely special...and positive, with many things to remember about it. I'm looking forward to sharing various aspects of our cruise in the weeks to come on this blog, as I usually do following any substantial traveling...

Quote of the Week...from Ralph Waldo Emerson

Pictures must not be too picturesque.                         ---Ralph Waldo Emerson

After reading off the TV (Music Choice's Soundscapes channel) a quote from the nineteenth century American philosopher/poet Ralph Waldo Emerson, I went to the BrainyQuote website to look for it to use on today's blog. Instead, among the multitude of his cool sayings, I found this quote that pretty much captures the essence of my philosophy when it comes to taking pictures.  When reading quotes, especially the really brief ones, you're often never quite sure what their creators had intended...but I'm just guessing as to what Emerson meant here.  When I want to capture the essence with my camera of whatever setting I'm in, I don't necessarily want to crop out the "ugly" aspects to it and only include what my limited artistic abilities regard as aesthetic.  So within a nature scene I might deliberately include roads, vehicles, people, buildings, power lines, etc. to place it in its true context....the above pic I took from a mountaintop on St. Thomas in the US Virgin Islands last week is an example.  To me, I'm more interested in helping out my memory of my experiences by including more within my pictures that can more comprehensively restore how I felt at the time.  And this all reminds me of a movie I saw (more than once)...

The 1982 movie Koyaanisqatsi, beautifully scored by Philip Glass and containing a collage of stunning video sequences of the American West, begins with what Emerson probably would have regarded as "too picturesque" views of nature, with humanity's presence or influence completely omitted in the footage. Then, a few minutes into the film they begin to show construction vehicles and high-tension power lines supposedly marring the landscape...the film's title is Hopi for "life out of balance" and seems to promote the idea that modern human civilization throws everything out of sync.  Maybe they're right with that up to a point, but when I'm out there in the "wilds" I want to incorporate it all when I'm shooting photos, and we humans...along with our effects on our surroundings...are a part of the real, legitimate world that merits inclusion regardless what purists may want to insinuate...

The First Half of My 500 All-Time Favorite Songs List

This past Monday I just finished the first half of my weekly examination of my 500 all-time favorite songs, ten at a time.  Since it's a bit tedious going back to look at earlier articles of the list, which I've gradually been revealing in ascending order starting with #500, I decided to present links to them below...since I'm now at the halfway point.  Hope they're useful...

500-491 
490-481 
480-471 
470-461 
460-451
450-441 
440-431 
430-421 
420-411 
410-401
400-391 
390-381 
380-371 
370-361 
360-351
350-341 
340-331 
330-321 
320-311 
310-301
300-291 
290-281 
280-271 
270-261 
260-251

Weekly Short Stories: 1956 Science Fiction, Part 4

I conclude my look back at the year 1956 in science fiction short stories as they appeared in the anthology Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 18 (1956).  I've enjoyed reading through all the great old tales, most of which I've read before.  Still, I think a break is in order and starting next week on this weekly blog feature I'll start reviewing the short stories of the late renowned sci-fi author Robert Heinlein, whose stories were blocked from appearing in Asimov's series...you can't really take a comprehensive look at old science fiction without recognizing the works of Heinlein.  After I'm through with him, I'll resume my year-by-year retrospective, picking back up at the year 1957.  Anyway, here are my reactions to the final five stories from 1956...

THE DOORSTOP by Reginald Bretnor
On the outskirts of Detroit lives a physician with his wife, who has just purchased second-hand what she deems to be a doorstop, a small dumbbell-shaped object with cloudy ends and points visible within.  The doctor notices movement within the object's interior, and one night it shoots a beam of light into the sky.  He traces its past history to the ground beside a remote stretch of railroad track...a little boy had discovered it there a few days earlier and began the chain of sales that ended in his own house.  And now a team of government scientists are analyzing the object, which they believe to be extraterrestrial in origin.  This is a story of introspection as the physician delves into the ramifications of first contact: what kind of aliens are these, how advanced are they, and do they have benign or nefarious designs on humanity and Earth?  A lot of ground to cover in a pretty brief story...

THE LAST QUESTION by Isaac Asimov
Back in this time it was popular for writers to speculate on the development of computer technology and how all-encompassing and all-knowing it would become, with mankind becoming increasingly dependent on it.  Asimov jumps from the present (i.e. 1956) to hundreds, thousands, millions...and even billions of years into the future as humans...who are evolving and intertwining their existence inextricably with the eventually cosmos-spanning machine intelligence...continue to pose it one basic question: can entropy be reversed?  And the answer always comes back to them: insufficient data...that is, until the story's ending, which I should have seen coming...

STRANGER STATION by Damon Knight
This, another "first contact" story, examines the inevitable course that must prevail when two alien cultures first encounter each other: one will eventually come out as the more powerful and will then overwhelm the other in either a constructive, loving manner or with hateful oppression and/or destruction.  Humanity has encountered an alien race and the two meet in space within a specially-constructed space station that accommodates one man and one (humungous and extremely gross) alien. The experience is repulsive and traumatic to all who have preceded Sergeant Wesson and it is now his turn to try and withstand the experience while retaining his sanity...

2066: ELECTION DAY by Michael Shaara
This story is predicated on the notion that as our world becomes ever-so increasingly complex, then the task of serving as President of the United States will eventually become nearly impossible to do.  So instead Americans, in the period preceding "election" day, submit to tests, their answers processed by complex computers which analyze the results and then proclaim the next president...who more likely than not will greatly suffer physically and mentally over the course of his tenure.  I read this tale and think that if just one person had to make all the decisions, then this would be true...but any effective leadership involves skillful delegation of authority to others within the administration to practice their own abilities and decision-making.  Even with presidents in the past (or present) you may not like, you have to recognize this is true...the presidents who have seemed the most overcome by their jobs tend to be the ones having problems delegating authority...

AND NOW THE NEWS... by Theodore Sturgeon
I thought this was a very clever little tale by a writer who may have been the best in his craft at probing the inner workings of our minds and motives.  A happy, prosperous man with a family and house suddenly begins to take a frantic interest in following the news, reading daily newspapers thoroughly and attentively listening to hourly radio news broadcasts and watching TV news shows.  His exasperated wife comes up with a strategy to combat his "addiction", removing the tubes from his radios and TV set and damaging them (remember we're dealing with the state of tech in 1956).  His subsequent reaction sets in motion a series of events leading to a psychiatrist seeking him out for "treatment" and a return to normal social behavior.  The story's ultimate lesson, which is more than ever applicable to today in 2020, is very sobering and the ending isn't anything I'd want to wish on anyone...

Next week I start looking back at some of Robert Heinlein's sci-fi short stories...

Just Finished Reading Way Station by Clifford Simak

Clifford Simak was one of my favorite science fiction writers of the last century, responsible for several great short stories and the novel City.  I just finished reading his novel Way Station, which came out in 1963 and won the Hugo Award the next year for best science fiction.  I enjoyed it a lot, mainly because Simak raises several points of speculation about topics such as immortality, interstellar space travel, and universal consciousness.  Enoch Wallace, Union Civil War soldier, upon returning home to Wisconsin, finds his home transformed into a "way station" for travelers from other star systems, all of whom belong to the galactic federation.  Seeing that this story, famous at the time among science fiction circles, only predated the original Star Trek TV series...with its own "federation"...by some three years, it raised in me my own speculation whether that series may have at least in part been derived from Simak's tale.  Seeing how most of Way Station's narrative takes place in the early 1960s...and Wallace is for all practical purposes the same age as he was a century earlier...suspicions naturally arise as to what's going on with this peculiar, reclusive soul.  Eventually, the Feds catch wind of his situation and send an agent to investigate.  Why Enoch doesn't age, what comes out of the government snooping and what the extraterrestrials are really up to are just some of the interwoven story lines that at the end tie up very neatly...sometimes you just want to read a story that has been well thought out like that.  Although I preferred City, Way Station gets my recommendation as well.  One point that bothered me was what happened to the aliens when they "travelled" over vast distances of space almost instantaneously, but since that's part of the story development you may want to find this out for yourself instead of me spoiling the plot.  Ultimately, the story concerns itself with the nature of human violence and how we can curb our instincts in that direction in order to survive as a species.  Look it up and read it...it's a story in which I could put myself in the protagonist's place and let my imagination run loose.  I think Internet Archive has it for download...

My 500 All-Time Favorite Songs: #260-251

Well, after a week's break in which Melissa and I went on a terrific cruise, here are the next ten songs and my comments from my 500 all-time favorites list.  And with these ten, we have arrived at the halfway point in this blog project: 250 songs down, 250 more to go...

260 GIRLS JUST WANT TO HAVE FUN...Cyndi Lauper
Hearkening back to the sound of the early-to-mid 1960s...the song My Boy Lollipop by Millie Small comes to mind...this is, despite the title, ultimately a serious, pro-feminist song as Cyndi Lauper made her 1983 debut single a smashing success.  The video also contains possibly the high comedic moment of that era as Cyndi picks up a telephone and starts speaking through the receiver...I thought back then that if I Love Lucy were resurrected as a series, Lauper would be perfect for Lucille Ball's role in it.  Happily, Cyndi Lauper is still doing fine with her career and making pharmaceutical commercials...

259 LOOKING FOR SPACE...John Denver
John Denver was already firmly established with one foot in popular music and the other in the country and western scene when he got his own variety TV series...around this time he came out with Looking for Space. To me, this song's message speaks of sitting back and appreciating what's going on around me while setting aside time in solitude just to collect my own thoughts and achieve a greater perspective on things, both in the world around me and within my own personal life.  And the music is beautiful...

258 MOTHER'S LITTLE HELPER...the Rolling Stones
This 1966 song has a no-nonsense, blunt message on a number of fronts: prescription drug abuse, women trapped in a socially-imposed role as housewife, and aging as a rather unpleasant prospect: "What a drag it is getting old".  One of the more serious rock songs among many out there, its release only enhanced the band's "bad boys" image they were trying to foster in order to give them a special niche in popular culture opposite their chief rivals, the Beatles.  It's also one more song in which Brian Jones displayed his instrumental virtuosity and collaboration with Keith Richards on guitar...

257 DON'T LET IT GET YOU DOWN...Spoon
Among songs designed to comfort the listener in times of trouble and anguish, this one stands at the top of the list.  It's a track from the Austin, Texas-based alternative/indie rock band's 2002 debut album Kill the Moonlight.  I discovered it a few years later after hearing (and liking) their singles I Turn My Camera On and Don't You Evah, which prompted me to listen to their albums for other "goodies"..if they ever put Gainesville on their concert map I'm gonna have to set aside some time to watch them perform live...

256 FOUR STICKS...Led Zeppelin
In my opinion, Side Two of Led Zeppelin's Fourth ("untitled") album may be just about the best album side ever recorded, that is when albums used to have sides.  The other three tracks you will find ranked higher on this all-time favorites list of mine than Four Sticks, but this one stands well on its own as a hard-driving, fast-paced mystical-sounding piece showcasing all the bandmembers' abilities...

255 HANG ON TO YOUR LIFE...the Guess Who
Not one of the better known Guess Who songs, this one from 1970 is one of their best.  It's the song that belatedly turned my attention toward this talented Canadian band after they had already produced a string of hit singles.  Hang On To Your Life is a song of hope and not giving up in times of troubles...I hadn't heard it in a long time but it's just as good today as nearly half a century ago.  The Guess Who, alas, were yet another band that collaborated on some outstanding music but couldn't make it last...I wonder what they would have accomplished had composer/lead guitarist Randy Bachman remained with them...

254 PEAK HOUR...the Moody Blues
This British band's landmark 1967 album Days of Future Passed, better known for the tracks Tuesday Afternoon and Nights in White Satin, is structured around a single day, beginning with the sunrise and concluding with the dead of night.  In the middle is Peak Hour, a good old fashioned rock n' roll song with a lush orchestral introduction.  I've noticed in just about every one of their albums there are largely unnoticed little masterpieces, like this one...

253 BACK IN BLACK...AC/DC
There was a brief period in the early 1990s when I couldn't hear enough of this song, a celebration of the highly-regarded Australian hard rock band's resurrection following the tragic death of their front man Bon Scott early in 1980 when they chose Brian Johnson as his successor and made a stunning comeback, including Back in Black, later that year.  A song of defiance in the face of naysayers and adversity, I choose to embrace it as a kind of anthem for overcoming and survival...and the guitar work by Angus Young, as usual, is fantastic...

252 AND YOUR BIRD CAN SING...the Beatles
This two-minute song was on my family's Yesterday and Today album, which was a USA release from 1966.  In Britain and the rest of the world, it appears on that year's Revolver album...it's the British system that dictated the later CD releases.  John, who reportedly didn't care for the song, nevertheless sang lead on it and George's guitar work is extraordinary.  Of course, "bird" is British slang for "young woman"...

251 SCENES FROM AN ITALIAN RESTAURANT...Billy Joel
Billy Pando, a Texas-based singer/pianist playing on the Royal Caribbean cruise I just finished yesterday, isn't very well known but he is certainly talented, with a great ability to strike up a rapport with his audience.  He also tended to choose songs to perform that I really liked, like this epic Billy Joel piece from his greatest album, The Stranger, from 1977.  The beginning and end, describing the title's setting, sandwich the middle, a sometimes raucous, fast-sung narrative about the turbulent lives of Brenda and Eddy, "the popular steadies and the king and queen of the prom" to a virtuoso piano background.   I read somewhere that this was Joel's personal favorite...it's one of mine, too: I first heard it during the summer of 1978 and tend to tie it to that also-turbulent time in my own life...

Next week: #250-241

Happy Birthday, Melissa!

I'd like to take a break from my week-long break in blog writing to wish my wonderful and beautiful wife Melissa a very happy birthday!  I love you so much, Sweetheart!

Taking a Few Days Off from Blog

As Melissa and I will be leaving for a week-long cruise this weekend, I decided to put away the laptop and give myself (and you readers) a break from this blog.  If things go according to plan, I should be back here on Monday, February 17 with another article.  Until then, God bless you all...

Quote of the Week...from Guy Fieri

I have a boat, but when I first thought about taking a cruise, I thought, "You're going to trap me on a boat, and I'm going to walk in circles and go crazy", but it's awesome.         ---Guy Fieri

Guy Fieri, if the name doesn't ring a bell for you, is the host and traveling chef of the popular Food Network TV series Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives.  I haven't watched the show for some time but I did appreciate that Fieri departed from the stereotypical image of a famous gourmet chef as being something of an overly critical, fit-pitching prima donna type (as Gordon Ramsey is, for example).  Not that I want to devote this article to talking about him, though.  Melissa and I will be going on our first cruise this Sunday and it will be leaving Ft. Lauderdale and making stops at the Bahamas, Puerto Rico, and the US Virgins Islands over the course of its week-long voyage before returning.  I'm personally not too keen on the notion of thousands of people being crowded together with us on a boat...albeit a very, very big boat...but it's a new adventure and I'm looking forward to it...especially the idea of standing outside at night looking at the ocean and stars with Melissa.  Regarding the crowding, we'll see...I'm holding you to your words, Guy!

Just Finished Reading Cursor's Fury by Jim Butcher

Cursor's Fury, from 2006, is book number three in Jim Butcher's six-part Codex Alera series.  Once again it's war, war, war...this time against the High Lord of Kalare and the beastie Kalim invaders from overseas as they forge an alliance to overthrow the constantly-threatened supreme ruler Gaius Sextus.  Furies are spirits from the natural elements that most every human on this mythical world has the power to bond with (or "craft") and...according to their giftings...can then use for superhuman powers. The series' main protagonist, Tavi, is now a young man with no such powers and has been forced to rely solely on his courage, intelligence, diligence, nonmagical fighting skills and high moral compass to overcome the deadly foes that never seem to relent in this overwhelmingly violent and gory narrative.  Amara, a woman wind-crafter, is the other chief protagonist and she and Tavi have their own split adventure narratives while trying to save the realm, their loved ones and themselves.  Anything more I dare not share for fear of spoiling the plot, and the series as well...

Now I'm halfway through this series and should have ready access to the final three books, which I intend to plow through.  Not my favorite fantasy series by a longshot, there's no doubt in my mind that Butcher patterned much of his story after George R.R. Martin's constantly warring and backstabbing, dog-eat-dog nobility in his "Game of Thrones" (officially A Song of Ice and Fire) series.  If you're for that kind of stuff, you'll probably like Codex Alera...for me I tend to go more toward magic-based series like Harry Potter and The Magicians or the series of J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis about Middle Earth and Narnia, respectively...

Weekly Short Stories: 1956 Science Fiction, Part 3

Here are my reactions to four more science fiction short stories as they appeared in the anthology Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 18 (1956).  Three of the tales concern time-travel, while the other is on the level of a good Stephen King horror story...

THE MAN WHO CAME EARLY by Poul Anderson
Set in Iceland 1,000 years ago, an American soldier stationed there in the present (1956, that is) during an abnormal storm finds himself transported to that time and has to deal with the many often insurmountable cultural and technological differences between his age and that of his new hosts.  It's told from the perspective of an Icelandic clan leader...this story reminded me of the culture gap in that old comedy TV series The Beverly Hillbillies the way good old Jed Clampett used to, especially the parts where the narrator expressed his views on the way things were in society as absolutes, projecting his own people's motivations and onto that of the bewildered time traveler...

A WORK OF ART by James Blish
Richard Strauss has been brought back to life in a future society in order to compose some fresh works for performance...or so it seems in this story that has an unexpectedly good ending.  A Work of Art is an interesting look into the mind of a creative musical artist.  But what got me howling with laughter was the author's uncanny prediction, back in 1956, of a future phenomenon called "space music"...and he described it perfectly!  In the future, according to the author, machines will be the driving creative force behind music...I'm not so sure we're not close to that state of affairs right now...

HORRER HOWCE by Margaret St. Clair
Horrer Howce has to be one of the scariest stories I have read recently...if you're prone to nightmares you definitely want to avoid it.  As for me, this effect places it as one of my favorites.  Stephen King couldn't have done better with this tale of a creator of amusement park "horror houses" and his attempts to get entrepreneurs to buy his product...only one problem: he has trouble getting them past their examinations of his projects...

COMPOUNDED INTEREST by Mack Reynolds
Starting in the year 1300, a strangely dressed and speaking "Mister Smith" appears every hundred years at a Venice banking firm, investing gold, making instructions on his interest-accruing account and making predictions about the "future".  A time-travel tale that deliberately makes the reader wonder how it all could have come about, as the surprise ending reveals...

I'll be taking a break from this blog next week...my next review of sci-fi short stories will be in a couple of weeks...

Just Finished Reading "Room" by Emma Donoghue

To show just how far out of the loop I am regarding recent movies, I didn't realize until just now that the film adaptation to the 2010 book I just finished reading, Room by Emma Donoghue, came out in 2015 and was nominated the next year for Best Picture at the Oscars.  I discovered the book while surveying suggested reading on the Web and checked it out from the library.  The story, reportedly loosely based on a couple of real events, is about a mother and her five-year-old son, Jack, whose lives for years have been solely within the confines of a single room...for mom it's been seven years and for Jack he defines his entire existence and world from within those four walls.  A man they call "old Nick" had kidnapped her one day and taken her to a small building he had constructed in his heavily-shielded backyard...they're locked in and depend on him for food and supplies.  The narrative is told completely from Jack's perspective, and the author masterfully depicts through him his uneven intellectual, social and emotional development as well as the incredible job his mother did under such duress in raising him from birth while protecting him from their captor.  Beyond this, I'd better not reveal what happens as I don't won't to spoil the plot for you should you decide to read it or watch the movie...

For a five-year old, Jack is remarkably skilled at expressing himself...at that age I was much more reticent to open my mouth about anything and when I did as often as not I didn't adequately get my point across.  There is much of the book I can't describe for fear of spoiling the plot, but in a very general sense let me make an observation: many of the things people say as social convention, as well as subjects taboo for discussion, will come out in the book and become a major part of Jack's life and learning.   I thought Emma Donoghue hit a home run with this novel and its compassionate but very disturbing portrayal of people struggling in an extreme state of bondage...the analogies to other areas of life are endless.  None of us has complete control over our own lives either, and while we may not be forced to endure the level of oppression that Room's protagonists were forced into, each of us...like them...has the choice to decide how we will deal with it, whether it be to calculate the variables and try to adapt or to roll the dice and attempt complete deliverance. Also, each of us needs to be more compassionate and forgiving of our actions when we were children (and those of others as well), with Jack as an extreme case of someone whose worldview is so distorted that his spoken words can be shocking, but not at all his fault...he has to take life and reality in the way it was presented to him, just like us.  Room is one of the best books I've read recently, but I warn you that it's pretty intense, emotionally and in other ways...

My 500 All-Time Favorite Songs: #270-261

With one exception, the ten songs on this segment of my list of 500 all-time favorite songs are from the last century...it figures, since that was the time of my impressionable youth.  And the one song from more recent times turns out to be something of a tribute to an earlier one from 1968.  So without further ado, here's what I think about this week's songs...

270 BREAKFAST IN AMERICA...Supertramp
There's currently an indie band called Beirut that focuses on old, traditional European musical themes and instruments, creating a unique sound for themselves.  Breakfast in America, the title track of Supertramp's wildly successful 1979 album (I bought the cassette edition), does this as well while the lyrics describe an immigrant from the "old country" to the promised land overseas, full of false assumptions about the paradise he will encounter: "Could we have kippers for breakfast, mummy dear, mummy dear, they gotta have 'em in Texas, cause everyone's a millionaire".  I miss ol' Supertramp, another once-successful band where one crucial member left because he erroneously believed he'd do better going solo...

269 DEADWEIGHT...Beck
This was a singles release by the Los Angeles alternative musician, associated with his award-winning album Odelay but not on it...that's okay because in 1997-98 my local alternative rock radio station here in Gainesville played it a lot.  Like Beck's debut hit Loser, Deadweight is loaded with nonsense lyrics that in the end are funny as hell, lines like "Like an ice age, nice days on your way sipping the golden days on a riptide, freak's ride, sleep inside...a parasite's appetite"...

268 RAPTURE...Blondie
Although this 1981 singles hit acknowledged two other contemporary hip-hop artists by name, its driving beat and narrative rap style seemed to me as a tribute to the 1979 seminal rap hit, Rapper's Delight, by the Sugarhill Gang.  I'm sure that one day somebody will finally land on the planet Mars and return...and as sure as I am of sitting here writing this some wiseguy will then play this song with the silly lines about the "man from Mars".  I always liked singer Debbie Harry...she sings dreamily in the song's first part and then bravely goes into the awfully campy rap lyrics in the second.  I also loved the extreme guitar jam at the end...

267 ALL TOGETHER NOW...the Beatles
At the conclusion of the 1968 animated movie Yellow Submarine viewers got a treat: the Beatles themselves, not their cartoon avatars, sang this song which...save a pretty adult-themed line Paul threw in...is more on the level of a children's song.  When the movie came out, the Fab Four were full of praise for it although they didn't play much of a role in its development, production or promotion other than to contribute a couple of extra songs.  Since I didn't see Yellow Submarine until years later, this song was a real treat for me, a kind of "new" Beatles song long after the band had broken up...

266 LOOK WHAT YOU'VE DONE...Jet
I can only assume that this Australian alternative rock band made some sort of peace with whoever owns the rights to the Beatles' music because this 2004 song makes no pretense of copying one of theirs: Sexy Sadie, both with the music and lyrics.  Normally I don't care for ripoffs, but Jet's version beats the Beatles' enough to where I deemed it my "song of the year" back then.  Jet made a big debut splash in 2004 with a string of hits and then disappeared. I looked it up...they made three albums before breaking up, later reuniting and supposedly still together...

265 GOODBYE TO LOVE...the Carpenters
It's hard to imagining the Carpenters of all musical acts coming up with a dark song, but for them this hit from the fall of 1972 pretty much fits that description, and with an uncharacteristically rockin' electric guitar break in the middle to boot. It's a song about disappointment in love and an overwhelming since of discouragement that the feeling will ever arise again...pretty much dovetailed right in with what I was going through at the time: dark desolation...

264 WHO DO YOU LOVE...George Thorogood and the Destroyers
In the 1980s George Thorogood and the Destroyers revived old-time rock n' roll, adding to it a virtuoso electric guitar polish while capitalizing on video exposure through MTV.  Their Who Do You Love, originally by the late Bo Diddley with his trademark beat, is sharp and in-your-face.  This is one of the supreme air guitar songs...probably not a good idea to be driving while this one's playing: you might end up speeding and losing control of the steering.  The lyrics, however, are kind of violent and overly possessive; you really don't want to be like the dude expressing them.  Yeah, this is a great song that should have a warning label...

263 QUEEN BITCH...David Bowie
David Bowie's early-1972 breakthrough album Hunky Dory contained many good tracks...the unforgettable, introspective Changes is on it.  Toward the end is Queen Bitch, a Dylanesque-sounding narrative song that reminded me of the great bard's 1975 song Tangled Up in Blue...interestingly, the preceding track is titled Song for Bob Dylan.  Queen Bitch is a fun, funny song to listen to and I loved the interplay between acoustic and electric guitar.  I only heard it for the first time in 2016, following Bowie's death and my decision to investigate his recordings spanning the years...

262 THE FAMILY OF MAN...Three Dog Night
I treasured this singles hit from the spring of 1972, back during a down and cynical period of my teenage angst years. I associate it with skipping my after-school bus ride one late afternoon and walking the five-six miles home...only for a kindly teacher's aide to pull over and offer me a ride home about halfway through: how could I refuse such a gesture?  And then I realized that behind the scenes there actually were people looking out for me...or least one person.  The Family of Man bespeaks kindness and community as well, totally contradicting my worldview at the time...go figure why I liked it so much then (and still do)...

261 LITHIUM...Nirvana
A lot of Nirvana's music doesn't appeal to me because Kurt Cobain is just screaming out the lyrics in what sounds like an elevated state of rage...Lithium has him emptying out his lungs as well but for much of the time he's engaging in (almost) normal singing, with that hint of maniacal derangement always lurking in the background.  Although I think Cobain meant the lyrics as a criticism of the mind processes of some religious people he knew, I tend to broaden their meaning to encompass anyone who holds tenaciously to a personal narrative...only accepting input that confirms it and unthinkingly rejecting or ignoring anything contradictory.  I loved the bass/lead guitar interaction on this song as well as the contrast  between the song's alternating two sections...it's from their 1991 album Nevermind...

Next time: #260-251...

More (Groan) About the Impeachment Trial

I have three points to make about the impeachment trial of President Trump that is winding down in the United States Senate...

1) During the two-day period when the senators themselves could submit questions for Chief Justice John Roberts...the Constitutionally-mandated presiding officer at the trial...to read for either the House prosecuting team or the President's defense team to answer, I was taken aback somewhat by the fact that the Democratic senators addressed their questions only to their "side", i.e. the prosecution, while the Republicans posed theirs only to Trump's team.  The buildup to these sessions promised a robust and spirited cross-examination, but what we got instead was puffball questioning and the two sides talking past one another instead of engaging in honest interaction.  With the one time I'm aware of that a questioner crossed sides, House manager Adam Schiff angrily retorted that Republican senator Ron Johnson's question did not dignify a response. I'm sure this is all quite different for Roberts, who as a Supreme Court Justice is used to the court's oral arguments in which justices of all persuasions actively question the lawyers arguing both sides of a case.  Also, I've heard the argument propounded by a Trump lawyer that the Democrats' impeachment could lead to a more parliamentary system in which the leader can be easily toppled by a no-confidence vote.  While reminding readers that in the USA we have a very steep two-thirds threshold for conviction and removal while parliamentary systems, with governments often propped up by flimsy, unstable coalitions, only require a simple majority for the same effort, I have to look with envy at the British House of Commons sessions in which the prime minister takes on questions...sometimes very pointed and critical...from members of all parties, be they on his side or not.  Over here, though, the politicians can't seem to wait to get themselves before the cameras and media microphones to debate, away from their opponents...a strange way of doing things, I say...especially when while actually attending this impeachment trial they had ample opportunity to directly confront the other side...

2) I am not a Trump supporter and don't want to list here all the reasons I have for this stance.  But I have to stand back and wonder why it is okay to investigate him...both during and after an election campaign...and the burden is all on him to cooperate and not complain about it while, when a Democratic politician like Joe Biden is mentioned for possible investigation, it suddenly becomes a threat to our democracy and grounds for impeachment.  First of all, we need to sort out our thinking a bit and understand that an investigation or inquiry does not in itself constitute an accusation...neither does being called upon as a witness.  Unfortunately, the most partisan politicians and media figures out there like to pretend it is, taking the swayable section of the American voting electorate that has decided the last five presidential elections...and who will most likely decide the upcoming one...for the ignorant, complete dumbasses that they are.  I was for calling a limited number of witnesses for both sides in the impeachment...both John Bolton and Hunter Biden would have been fine as part of this group, as far as I was concerned...

3) The vote on whether to have any additional witness at the impeachment trial went 51-49 in favor of the Republicans' side not to call them.  If it have gone 50-50 it would have been up to Chief Justice John Roberts, who before the trial had stated that he would vote with the Republicans on any tie-breaker.  I find this hard to understand on a number of levels.  Maybe since Roberts was taking the place where Vice-President Pence, a Republican, would have sat on regular Senate business he was deferring in that way, although the vice-president is already implicitly a loyalist of the president and also stands to be president upon a possible conviction...sounds like a conflict of interest that Roberts shouldn't want to align himself with. And during Clinton's impeachment trial in 1999 Democrat VP Al Gore would have been the regular presiding tie-breaking Senate vote with a Republican majority back then.  If Roberts was instead simply deferring to the Republicans' majority status, then I believe he was stepping out of his Constitionally-mandated role...the US Constitution makes no mention of political parties.  The Chief Justice's presence on this solemn occasion placed all three branches of government there and Roberts should have been independent in his decision-making as the sole representative of the Judicial Branch...instead he voluntarily and openly abdicated his proper role in favor of one of the sides in the trial...

Well, the final impeachment vote is scheduled for Wednesday, one day after President Trump's State of the Union address to Congress and two after the Iowa Caucuses.  No doubt the talking heads on TV will be spinning every which way on all three events...I'll follow the actual events but try to steer clear of the professional "interpreters" who operate under the assumption that you and I are incapable of figuring things out for ourselves...

My January 2020 Running Report

In January I ran a total of 115 miles, with 7.2 miles being my single longest run.  I missed out on two long-distance races I was thinking of running in, the first...the Ocala Half-Marathon...because it was raining, and the second...the Newnan's Lake 15K...because I was feeling under the weather and didn't think it advisable to overtax my recovering body.  Now I'm fine...

I'm going on a vacation cruise this month with Melissa which coincides with Gainesville's Five Points of Life Marathon/Half-Marathon/5K races.  I was disappointed that they had altered the race course last year from the heart of Gainesville...with all its attractions including the University of Florida campus...to a nondescript area southwest of town.  But they're back in 2020 with the original, preferred course...if they stick with it and I'm ready to run that distance, I'll see if in 2021 if I can't run the half-marathon: it will be my sixth Five Points half-marathon if I do.  I'm also thinking about a half-marathon being held in Ormond Beach in March...it's been a while since I drove any distance to run a race.  In the meantime, I'll be trying to build up my distance endurance by running around the neighborhood on my convoluted courses, assuming my health holds up...