Quote of the Week...from Henny Youngman

I told my doctor I broke my leg in two places. He told me to quit going to those places.           

                                                                                           ---Henny Youngman

Henny Youngman...who died at the age of 91 in 1998, was king of the one-liners in the stand-up comedy trade...his trademark line was "Take my wife...please!" Only Rodney Dangerfield with his "I don't get no respect" theme compares in stature.  I picked Henny's above one-liner because, well, this past year I've seen plenty of doctors...including yesterday's regular visit to my primary physician.  One of the problems many of us experience nowadays is that it's difficult to communicate one-to-one with your doctor and that appointments can sometimes take weeks if not months.  I do have the benefit of an online portal through which I can ask questions to one of my now-several physicians, usually getting a prompt response from a designated physician's assistant or nurse practitioner.  Still, when discussing some subtleties of a test or possible upcoming procedure there is nothing like direct give-and-take dialogue between patient and doctor, something I was able to accomplish yesterday. Otherwise it's like the Henny Youngman joke, with the two parties talking at cross-purposes.  Ironically, although his joke was funny, it also contains an element of truth...whatever you were doing when you broke your leg, stop doing it!  I checked up on a list of Henny's more famous short jokes and quickly found myself chuckling...

My Favorite Songs of 2021 As I Lived Through It

Below is my top ten list of favorite songs from 2021 as I have lived through it.  Each entry lists the song's title, artist, and year of release.  It shouldn't take long to notice that nine of them are from earlier years...I just don't listen to broadcast radio with their present-day song rotations except for Gainesville's alternative rock station WHHZ/100.5 (which accounts for #6).  Five of the ten songs on the list I heard listening to the Music Choice Soundscapes channel on my Cox Cable TV service...they're all instrumental pieces, including the piano masterpiece standing at #1.  As for The New Pornographers, I wish they'd named themselves differently...it's tough telling folks that this is one of my favorite bands.  Regarding Twenty One Pilots, I think The Outside is my current favorite song and predict it will feature prominently on my list of 2022's favorites.  But for 2021, Lady's Grace is a spectacular piano piece with an enchanting flute accompaniment.  Whiteout Conditions is a brilliant description of someone struggling daily with depression...I've experienced it as well.  Palomatronics is an Eastern, Indian-sounding mood piece that reminded me both of some of George Harrison's sitar-based Beatles works and the eerie beginning and conclusion to the Doors' monumentally disturbing-but-beautiful 1967 song The End.  You can hear all these songs on YouTube...why not give them a listen?  As I usually do when suggesting this, I recommend you listen to the original studio recordings and not concert renditions....

1 LADY'S GRACE...Kerani (2015)

2 WHITEOUT CONDITIONS...The New Pornographers (2017)

3 PALOMATRONICS...Green Isac (2014)

4 PLAY MONEY...The New Pornographers (2017)

5 LADY LABYRINTH...Ludovico Einaudi (2009)

6 THE OUTSIDE...Twenty One Pilots (2021)

7 PILLS...St. Vincent (2017)

8 NIGHT...Ludovico Einaudi (2015)

9 SVANIRE...Angèle Dubeau (2015)

10 ILLEGAL FIREWORKS AND HIDING BOTTLES IN THE SAND...Jeff Rosenstock (2020)

Weekly Short Stories: 1980 Science Fiction, Part 2

Here are my reviews of three more 1980 science fiction short stories as they appear in the anthology Donald A. Wollheim Presents The 1981 Annual World's Best SF, featuring the editor's picks from the preceding year.  1980 was a rough time for our country, with the Iranian hostage drama dragging throughout the year, relations with the USSR turning icy cold, and the economy tanking at year's end. But saddest of all, in the evening of December 8th, just as I was rejoicing at the Miami Dolphins beating the New England Patriots with a closing field goal, I received the news that John Lennon had been shot and killed at his Dakota Apartments residence in Manhattan...the murderer was a deranged stalker whose name does not merit mention.  Lennon was enjoying accolades from his recently released Double Fantasy comeback album, on which he split the tracks evenly with his wife Yoko Ono...Watching the Wheels was my favorite track from it.  But back to the stories... 

ELBOW ROOM by Marion Zimmer Bradley

Set off in the future at the entrance (or exit, depending on your point of view) of a vortex...corresponding to our notion of a wormhole...a very introverted young woman is stationed there as a manual backup to the automated computer system processing spaceships going through it to and from distant points.  Isolated from her crew, she begins to wonder if they're really there at all or rather just computer projections.  I can relate to her introversion, but not to her sense of reality unraveling with such an extended period of isolation. I think I would come out of it all just fine, thank you...

THE UGLY CHICKENS by Howard Waldrop

This is a "what if" tale about the extinction of the dodo bird, native to Mauritius and neighboring Indian Ocean islands but soon killed off by colonizing Dutch and French by the mid-1700s.  The narrator has discovered a trail leading to a rural northern Mississippi farm...could there have been real dodos there, and if so what happened to them?  The scene at the end depicting the dodos' fate is one of the more vivid, unforgettable ones in my own reading history, but probably not all that far removed from what happened to other extinct species, notably the passenger pigeon...

PRIME TIME by Norman Spinrad

This is a disturbing story about virtual living.  People can buy their own personal movies and experience them first-hand, going through adventures, parties, history, even orgies if so desired...the real world has become a throwaway, trivial existence.  A married couple is mired in this vicarious lifestyle, but the husband has reached the breaking point, his efforts to reach his complacent wife in vain.  Sad, but I fear we're miring ourselves more and more in fake life as we depend more and more on social and mass media for our reference points and less and less on what and who are actually all around us.  Unlike the couple in this future dystopia, though, we can still step outside our artificial constructions and experience the world as it truly is...go ahead, finish reading this article, and then turn off that smartphone or computer! 

Next week: more about science fiction short stories from 1980...

Paul McCartney's Erroneous Assumptions in the Get Back Movie

As I continue to watch...a few minutes at a time...the Beatles' Get Back movie that Peter Jackson coproduced and is airing on the Disney Plus streaming channel, I've reached a scene in which the four are sitting in a rough circle in their makeshift studio along with various staff.  They're just throwing out thoughts to one another, but it's clear that Paul McCartney has taken center stage as he prattles on about how, since manager Brian Epstein's death in 1967, the band has been leaderless and without discipline.  McCartney here seems to think his bandmates are unmotivated and wants to whip them back into shape...but openly disclaims the role of leader in doing so. Finally, one of the staffers suggests the band go back to playing their music, which is why they came here in the first place.  So they work on the later Abbey Road track Maxwell's Silver Hammer, not exactly one of my favorite Beatles songs..I think I would have preferred they continue talking instead...

The notion that the Beatles...and presumably other acts of this time in the late 1960s...felt that they were under constant pressure to record a new album at least twice a year stands out to me in 2021 when my current favorite recording artist, Regina Spektor, hasn't come out with a studio album for six years and running and others in our era space out their releases similarly. McCartney was also railing that in the previous year, '68, the Beatles weren't as coherent a band as before, with the different members essentially writing and recording their own songs apart from the others...using their bandmates strictly as accompaniment without collaborative feedback and bringing in outside musicians.  Hindsight is very convenient, I recognize, but looking back on their emerging domestic lives and distractions at that time, the very things that McCartney was criticizing in this discussion...if implemented regularly...might have kept the band together for much longer instead of their dissolution just a few months later.  John, Paul, George...and even Ringo...could have put out their own solo albums at their own convenience while at the same time coming up with material that could be used for upcoming Beatles albums...which would be recorded every two or three years using the 1968 so-called White Album as a model without the bandmates getting on each others' nerves too much.  Everybody'd be happy with the band remaining intact, especially the fans although a few would be miffed...like me about Regina Spektor's few-and-far-between albums. And if Paul, George or Ringo wanted to go on tour while John didn't, then those three could still do so while promoting their solo albums...which is what happened anyway but with the Beatles split up. Ain't hindsight wonderful?

Rob Dial's Five Keys to Have More Energy Podcast

Rob Dial is a young entrepreneur and motivational coach who has a regular free 20-minute podcast called The Mindset Mentor, in which he lays out different ways the listener can change his or her life to the better...as you might have guessed, mindset is everything.  His show three weeks ago centered around what he considers five important areas in which your energy level can be enhanced (or hindered if you ignore them): the music you listen to, the people you surround yourself with, the information sources you use, the food you consume, and whether (or not) you "force motion", i.e. deliberately maintain a state of physical activity.  Now with music, most of us have our different individual tastes...Dial stresses that we should focus on music with uplifting moods and lyrics.  With people, he divides the human race into "batteries" (energy enhancers) and "black holes" (energy drainers)...like with music, people who emit positives vibes are the ones to hang with.  As for information, once again Dial stresses sources that give empowering news...he doesn't like to tune in to the standard newscasts since they're usually so negative.  With food, it's clear that unhealthful diets loaded with sugar, salt and fat will keep the fatigue level high, as will excessive dependence on mind-altering chemicals such as alcohol.  And his idea of "forced motion" promotes not only regular exercise but also a state of mind that emphasizes activity...walking and standing over sitting whenever the choice is available, for example.  As for my reactions to these five areas Rob Dial emphasizes, I'm in general agreement while differing on some specific points.  With music, I love beautiful hymns, instrumental classical music, and light ambient pieces...but I also like some pretty heavy, harsh-sounding hard rock stuff as well, and the lyrics can sometimes be a bit brutal.  With people I agree that it's important to have positive, supportive folks around while also recognizing that for some other souls who may be missing out on that positive mindset, I may be in a position to play a supportive role in their lives...in other words, spread the faith. With information, I don't think I should just sit there for hours ingesting bad news off the cable news channels, but on the other hand I'd be deliberately delusional if I only cherry-picked news sources that omitted true-but-unpleasant important information.  I don't exactly know of Rob Dial's dietary practices, but I can't think of anything I disagree with what he says about ingesting good vs. harmful substances...except that for some reason he's a big advocate of nicotine (the chemical, not tobacco).  But I'm completely on board with his notion of "forced motion" and have practiced that principle long before I ever tuned in to this podcast.  So in summary I'm generally in agreement with Dial's five principles of energy, with a few caveats.  Oh, at the end of his presentation he mentioned that as a sixth energy source he sometimes likes to immerse himself in 45-degree (Fahrenheit) water...no thanks, dude...

New Omicron Covid-19 Outbreak

Amid reports that COVID-19 cases are spiking, both in seasonal terms and due to the rise of the highly contagious Omicron variant, I'm getting two diametrically opposed narratives from the media.  One is that hospitals are filling up and we're entering another period of sickness and death through mass infection, with the voluntarily unvaccinated suffering the worst effects of the disease...just as it happened this past summer with the Delta variant.  The other narrative states that we're over Covid and are returning to our pre-pandemic lifestyles.  And then there is the third narrative: yes, here comes a new sweep of the virus through our population, both vaccinated and unvaccinated...but that this will bring about the "herd immunity" that had been the distant dream of just about everyone.  Not being an expert in the field, I have to react to all this noise by staying current on my Covid-19 vaccines (the first two Pfizer shots and the later booster) and avoid mass assemblies.  My mask usage had gone down, but with this flu season and the Covid resurgence I intend to go back to earlier adherence.  The reason is not to protect myself...I have the flu shot as well...but to protect those around me who for whatever rational or irrational reason have refused the Covid-19 vaccination, in spite of the fact that it's free, safe, effective, and convenient.  I wonder whether we'll start seeing shutdowns and event cancellations if the Omicron outbreak is as strong early in 2022 as some suggest.  I suppose the most bizarre thing I take from the media is how pandemic denial and the anti-vaccination movement has become a conservative political cause, with former president Trump even being criticized by his own fans for supporting vaccination...are you kidding me?

Merry Christmas to All

I'd like to take this opportunity to wish all of you a very Merry Christmas and a joyous holiday season in this month that also features Chanukah and Kwanzaa.  Besides celebrating the birth of Jesus, Christmas also marks the close to another calendar year. It seems that too much serious and somber stuff has happened to me, my colleagues, and loved ones in 2021...more than perhaps any single year I can remember, even including 2020.  I think I could stand a more light-hearted, fun year for 2022, how about you?  Season's greetings...

Quote of the Week...from John Lennon

Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans.                  ---John Lennon

Unforeseen circumstances are commonplace, even after the most elaborate plans have been made...the Beatles great John Lennon tersely and accurately spelled it out.  That doesn't mean that life shouldn't have a structure to it since things don't turn out as anticipated...when that happens you either go back to the plan or use the new information to set up new ones.  There is a continual dance in our lives between chaos and order...the former must be recognized while the latter is emphasized, a kind of duality, one element of which describes the world in general and the other our subjective being and proactive role in it.  Seeing in advance how overly-specific plans can fall apart, I've tended of late to make my plans based on my own behavior and routines...with options to participate in certain future events instead of hinging everything on that participation.  For example, I like to run and train a number of miles daily.  There are certain local races I want to run in, including a half-marathon planned for February 2022.  I "plan" to enter it, but I also recognize the current fidgety social climate about the ongoing Covid-19 resurgence with the Omicron variant and how different parties are reacting to it, some canceling or postponing their public events.  That's "life happening", but it doesn't affect my more primary plan of daily running with occasional long runs...race or no race.  Besides, even if it goes as planned I could still have a sore foot or feel under the weather on race day...or it could be stormy outside: that's life, and it tends to be chaotic.  Still, plans are good guides and worthwhile to make and execute...    

Just Finished Reading The Ten Equations That Rule the World by David Sumpter

David Sumpter is a professor of mathematics at a Sweden's Uppsala University, born and raised in Great Britain. His The Ten Equations That Rule the World, from 2020, is about the secret society of TEN, a loose group over the course of modern history comprised of mathematicians and those who have capitalized on ten fundamental formulas that describe aspects of our world and social organization. Sumpter goes chapter by chapter in laying out each equation, its history, and applications while inevitably slipping into rather technical mathematics. Still, he always returns to straightforward nontechnical prose illustrating principles that even those not inclined toward mathematics can understand and use to analyze the world around themselves and draw some benefit. If you're not well-versed in mathematics...and I certainly fit the bill here...you may feel a little lost in some parts of this book. But I'm confident that you'll come away from the reading experience with a greater respect for how things work and how to assess one's situation in diverse settings more reasonably and accurately. I wrote out the ten equations in the above picture...below are their corresponding names... 

1 JUDGMENT EQUATION (Baye's Rule)

2 BETTING EQUATION (Logistic Regression)

3 CONFIDENCE EQUATION (Confidence Intervals)

4 SKILL EQUATION (Markov Assumption)

5 INFLUENCER EQUATION (Stationary Distribution)

6 MARKET EQUATION (Stochastic Differential Equations)

7 ADVERTISING EQUATION (Correlations)

8 REWARD EQUATION

9 LEARNING EQUATION

10 UNIVERSAL EQUATION

Weekly Short Stories: 1980 Science Fiction, Part 1

Today I begin my look at science fiction short stories from 1980, as presented in the anthology Donald A. Wollheim Presents The 1981 Annual World's Best SF, featuring the editor's picks from the previous year.  1980 was marked by two major ongoing news stories: the 1980 presidential election and the Iranian hostage crisis.  I remember living at La Mancha Apartments back then, about three blocks from the University of Florida campus. Just before the contentious Florida Primary between Ronald Reagan and then-surging George Bush, Bush's son Neil gave a speech for his father at nearby Norman Hall.  Putting down "Voodoo Economics" and the former California governor's politics in general, Neil did a pretty good job...but his dad lost the pivotal primary anyway and Reagan rode a surge of disaffection about the hostages and slumping economy to an easy November victory while picking his former primary opponent as his running mate.  But back to those stories...here are my reactions to the first two...

VARIATION ON A THEME FROM BEETHOVEN by Sharon Webb

Humanity, through its advances in medical science in a future era, has conquered disease and aging, giving people their cherished dream of immortality.  One catch, though: without the pressure of eventual death, the arts have suffered.  The remedy is to take a tiny portion of the population from birth and take away the immortality treatments, allowing those few chosen to excel in their chosen field.  A boy is selected and taken to a rural location where he can grow in music, with the company of others selected for their talents.  They are given the option, though, at a certain time of deciding to return to immortality if they so with...the boy decides against what I would do, given the recent number of people I know who have died recently...

BEATNIK BAYOU by John Varley

Humanity has been exiled from Earth after an alien invasion...for generations the small remnant live within the moon, and their science has advanced tremendously, allowing for people to change their own sexes on whims...as well as their biological age...while living very long life spans.  In this setting a young teenage boy receives his education through teachers who live alongside him, chronologically much older but whose bodies have been regressed to his level.  This story plays a lot with your mind and what it means to be an individual with a specific identity.  H-m-m, maybe life under the aliens wouldn't be so bad after I read about the moon society's capital punishment for what we would consider as minor crimes...

Next week: more about 1980 science fiction short stories...

Just Finished Reading Tar Baby by Toni Morrison

Tar Baby is a 1981 novel by Toni Morrison. Set first on a small Caribbean island before it moves to the U.S. mainland in places like rural impoverished Florida and bustling Manhattan, the story examines the relationships and self-identification of several people, black and white, male and female, educated and unschooled, rich and poor, and young and old as they work, love, and fight together (and apart).  Jadine is a young successful model whose adoptive aunt and uncle have raised her following her mother's death.  They work as cook and servant to a wealthy white retired Philadelphia businessman, Valerian Street, and his wife on that Caribbean island at their estate.  Valerian has sponsored Jadine's education and budding career, and she in turn feels a sense of loyalty and obligation to him.  Jadine's family is black, and throughout the story you can read how race pops in and out of the narrative and exchanges between the various parties as they work out among themselves their often divergent takes on reality and their relationships.  A young black man who goes by the name Son has jumped ship and escaped to the island, where he has secretly stayed at the Street's home until discovered one day.  Instead of throwing him out or having him arrested, though, Valerian treats Son as an honored guest...Jadine, her aunt, uncle, and Valerian's wife on the other hand see him in more of a negative light.  Eventually Son and Jadine become romantically involved, and while the working and spousal relationships at the Street estate undergo some serious testing, the two young lovers leave for America to rediscover Son's home roots in a small poor northern Florida town and start a new life together in New York...where they undergo some serious testing of their own...

I love stories written to probe into the various characters' thought processes and choices as they struggle to relate with one another.  Racial division is spotlighted here as well as conflicting notions of what it means for a black man or woman...with a history of persecution and discrimination over centuries...to engage fully in the present-day opportunities society now offers them.  To Son this participation is a sellout while Jadine accepts it as a mature reckoning with the reality of the world and the need to be responsible for herself and her loved ones as she pursues her career while prodding Son, in vain, to capitalize on his own talents.  Toni Morrison was brilliant here in her use of dialogue to draw out the essence of her characters...pretty amazing. Sadly, she passed away two years ago at age 88 from pneumonia. Tar Baby was her fourth novel...the next one I'm reading was her first, titled The Bluest Eye...

The 100 Days, As Seen by Rob Dial

On his podcast show The Mindset Mentor, Rob Dial presents various ways to look at self-motivation and success.  Some of his angles work for me and some I have a little difficulty with.  I liked one idea he presented on his December 10th show in which he proposed that I decide what it is I want to take action on and do it for 100 consecutive days...no excuses.  This transforms whatever action goal I have into an established habit that I have internalized...I've heard that it takes fewer days to accomplish this, however. The point of making a big deal about "100 days" is that, sometime down the line, I'm going to be tempted to forego the designated activity because of my feelings or time constraints.  But having that rule already in plan will help me keep true to whatever I had made a commitment.  Dial says that success comes from consistency and failure from giving up...a lot of his presentation comes from notions that we all generally already know and accept, but he repackages and expresses them in a way that can be inspiring.  So step number one is to reflect on and write down what it is I want to incorporate into my life, and then with step number two set out on those 100 days.  Obviously it has to be something already within the scope of my ability to accomplish, at least at a basic level from the beginning: traveling to a new country or running a marathon each day wouldn't cut it!  It's also an invitation to be a little creative about myself: a reinvention of sorts...

Constellation of the Month: Eridanus (the River)

 

Eridanus is a large constellation in the southern evening December sky, starting at its northeastern end with its "beta" star Cursa near the star Rigel of the prominent constellation Orion and winding around, ending up much further south with the first-magnitude "alpha" star Achernar.  In spite of its size, Eridanus is rather devoid of bright stars besides Achernar, the rest being of third magnitude or dimmer.  Achernar, some 7 times the mass of our sun, is about 140 light-years away. Although technically it should be visible just above the southern horizon here in Gainesville when it crosses the meridian, in reality I cannot see it from this latitude because of trees and buildings almost inevitably blocking my view.  But growing up in south Florida...Hollywood to be exact...I was about 4 degrees further south and could see Achernar back then.  I don't recall having ever experienced a clear enough night when city lights or the moon didn't render Eridanus difficult to observe, but its occupation of a relatively large swath of the celestial sky qualifies it as my constellation of the month for December. The above drawing should make it clear why it represents a river...

Quarreling Among the Beatles in Get Back Movie

I'm about halfway through watching the first of three parts of the Peter Jackson-produced Beatles documentary Get Back, now airing on the Disney Plus channel.  In early January, 1969, they're a few days into rehearsing material at their makeshift studio for a new album (eventually becoming Let It Be) and a planned concert, place and time undetermined.  After Paul and George have a brief, rough-but-polite exchange, the four meet up the next morning...except John is late.  In the meantime, Paul, with George and Ringo backing him up, concocts the core elements of the future blockbuster hit song Get Back.  Later on John shows up, gamely trying to participate on a positive level with the band but appearing confused and out of it...something was definitely going on with him.  After some jamming, they sit around facing each other...along with the assistants...and Paul starts off on a lecture of sorts about how he doesn't want to be the leader of the band but seems to be forced into that role.  In both this scene and in the previous day's exchange with George, I felt that Paul was acting a bit like a drama queen and treating others with a patronizing attitude...and why not: every reality show...and this one certainly qualifies for that designation...seems to have someone who acts out on the others like this.  I just expected that John would have been the prima donna here...if Paul had just guarded his tongue and simply stuck with the incredible music he was producing, I think things would have gone a lot smoother in these sessions, as well most likely in the months to follow that culminated in John quitting the Beatles in September.  The documentary is already very, very long, but still had to selectively edit the Beatle's weeks-long sessions, each of which lasted all day for days on end each week: very, very grueling as I have said before.  I felt that George came into the studio with a great amount of enthusiasm and songs of his own to contribute, gradually becoming disillusioned about how he was being treated by both Paul and John.  Just a couple of days later he would walk out of the band with the other three trying to coax him back into rejoining during the ensuing two weeks.  As for the eventual final product, that Let It Be album, which was finally released in the summer of 1970 after McCartney had announced the Beatles' breakup, contained some very good songs like Get Back, The Two of Us, For You Blue, Across the Universe, The Long and Winding Road, and I've Got a Feeling (I never did care for the title song Let It Be)...pretty impressive coming from what I've seen and heard so far on this documentary movie.  So the Beatles quarreled among themselves...but this had probably been going on throughout their existence.  The idea of filming and recording their conflicts in January of 1969 may be informative and entertaining for us today in looking back on it all, but the rolling cameras themselves were active participants in shaping the individual bandmates' attitudes and behavior toward one another... 

Quote of the Week...from Noel Coward

Work is much more fun than fun.                             ---Noel Coward

The late playwright Noel Coward had it right, although he was probably a lot more fanatical about his work than I am about mine.  Although I enjoy unwinding and relaxing, what apparently many people think of as fun....social gatherings like parties, concerts and get-togethers...don't do anything for me. If anything, they cause me a lot of anxiety and I would rather be in a structured work setting...even one where the tasks are relatively menial and repetitive.  I like my personal projects like running, reading, studying, and writing this blog, all of which can be seen in more of a "work" perspective than "fun".  I know folks who are into gardening, cooking, knitting/crocheting, home improvement, musical performance, auto mechanics, charitable service and other pastimes that don't fit into the category of "fun" that you might see on beer commercials where the men and women are soaking in the enjoyment of their social throngs. I like to sit back and watch TV and listen to music, but it's more fun to be working on something, whether it's at my job for pay or rather as an activity I have consciously adopted for myself to pursue. One type of work I could do without, though...but know that I will need to do more and more in the future as I age: medical/dental appointments.  And I have one this afternoon, sad to say...

Miami Dolphins Still in Running for Playoff Spot

I tend to follow the National Football League...sometimes I wonder why with some of the controversy surrounding the sport in recent years.  But it's been a solid tradition for me since 1968, when I began rooting for my then-hometown team, the Miami Dolphins, in their third season of existence.  Since then I've ridden the roller-coaster of great-to-awful seasons this franchise has produced including their undefeated 1972 season and that awful year in 2007 when they went 1-15.  Currently, under third-year head coach Brian Flores after a near-playoff surprise 10-6 season in 2020, this year they got off to a horrible start at 1-7, culminating in a humiliating loss to lowly Jacksonville in a game played in London, England.  No, I don't know either why the NFL keeps staging games in a country where virtually nobody plays the game, much less demonstrating any degree of interest in watching it.  That said, the Dolphins under this inspiring coach never said die and has now won five games in a row to bring their regular season record to 6-7...and back into the playoff discussion.  This Sunday they play at home against their divisional rival New York and should beat the last-place Jets.  If they accomplish this they will have already merited special mention for coming back from so far to a .500 record.  Now I'm more keenly interested in how teams in the AFC with slightly better records in the Dolphins fare, creating the unusual situation where I'm pulling for hated New England to beat the Indianapolis Colts in their upcoming contest Sunday night...the Patriots are already too far ahead of Miami in the standings with just four games to go in the new 17-game regular season and the Colts sport a 7-6 record, making them one of the teams the Dolphins will need to hurdle over to get to the playoffs.  Of course, should Miami fail against the Jets then, oh well, that's how it goes sometimes.  But I've been impressed with this team coming together both on defense and offense, the latter highlighted by the marked improvement of their second-year quarterback Tua Tagovailoa.  I'm not one of those sports fans who expect their team to win the championship every year or it's all a disaster...just get me to this point in the season and if they're still in the hunt, that's all I ask for.  Go Dolphins!

Weekly Short Stories: 1979 Science Fiction, Part 4

Today I've reached the end of the science fiction anthology The 1980 Annual World's Best SF, edited by Donald A. Wollheim and featuring his selections from 1979. That was the year that the fledgling Tampa Bay Buccaneers of the NFL, after losing their first 26 games as a franchise in 1976-77, made it to their conference's championship game, bowing out to the L.A. Rams 9-0.  The Pittsburgh Pirates, with their theme of "Family" after Sister Sledge's ongoing hit We are Family, came from behind in that year's world series against the favored Baltimore Orioles for the second time in eight years.  President Jimmy Carter decided to boycott the 1980 Moscow Olympics after the U.S.S.R. invaded Afghanistan.  And the Florida Gators football team, under first-year coach Charley Pell, went 0-9-1.  That's sports...here are my reactions to those final three stories...

OUT THERE WHERE THE BIG SHIPS GO by Richard Cowper

The notion of humanity going out and conquering the galaxy gets a rude awakening here as an exploratory mission encounters an advanced alien culture already entrenched throughout it...and their unifying thread is in a special board game played throughout the stars.  Back on Earth at a Caribbean resort a boy notices the returning astronaut who has introduced the game to his home planet, where it has become the premier cultural attraction. Using games as devices for peaceful interaction and education among disparate societies reminded me of the ideals behind the resurrection of the Olympic Games in 1896...before they became nationalist propaganda tools and then completely professionalized...

CAN THESE BONES LIVE? by Ted Reynolds

A young woman on a future Earth when humanity has become extinct owes her own resurrection to an alien race that returns one specimen on from intelligent species on each planet to life, allowing them to plead the case for their own species' revival.  The woman struggles to justify why mankind should be given another chance...and then she discovers the answer.  And that alien race itself gets taught a lesson in humility and perspective...

THE EXTRAORDINARY VOYAGES OF AMÉLIE BERTRAND by Joanna Russ

The idea of a portal in reality that leads to other places and times isn't new.  Recently Stephen King has used this device in novels like 11/22/63 and The Talisman (with Peter Straub), Philip Pullman with the His Dark Materials series, and of course J.K. Rowling's Platform 9¾ from Harry Potter.  In this tale a traveler in France encounters such a portal at a train station, and the woman there who rescues him from accidentally falling through it tells her strange story about her exciting and exotic adventures.  This story was meant as a tribute to the great French science fiction writer Jules Verne...

Next week I begin looking at the year 1980 in short science fiction...

The Hierarchical Mindset: You Can't Take It With You

One morning about ten years ago I was sitting at the nearest Starbucks to my house, a small establishment at the end of a Publix strip mall...years later it would be relocated down the road in order to install a drive-through.  My table was at the front window just on the inside, putting me near customers standing in line.  At the time I was reviewing my old basic Vietnamese language vocabulary I had learned many years earlier while working at a local Chinese restaurant with several Vietnamese refugees when a church acquaintance whom I distantly knew walked into the store.  She turned, noticed me and my book, and asked me what I was studying...to which I replied.  Then, without missing a beat, she derisively asked "What are you going to do with it?"  Sounds on the surface like a reasonable question, but the fact that this was the one she chose to pose revealed something important about her personality makeup. She could have asked questions like how long I have been studying Vietnamese, what my background was with it, or more pertinently, what I thought about this east Asian language.  For some reason, though, when someone reveals they are pursuing any kind of academic endeavor they often get this "What's it for?" kind of response as if learning anything new must be justified in terms of material gain or climbing a social hierarchy...I call this type of person "hierarchical".  People who in their youth always had to be the star athlete or musician or have the teacher's favor and get straight A's or be at the top of a social circle grew up with a hierarchical attitude, a lot of it having to do with the fact that as humans we organize ourselves socially in packs like wolves, vying for who will be the "alpha" and continually sorting out our standing further down the line: this was especially prevalent at my bus stop with the biggest bully reigning as "top dog" and the most picked-upon and verbally abused kids stuck at the bottom. A few years ago, before the pandemic hit, I attended a monthly Saturday morning men's breakfast at my church, intending to establish a new, positive routine in my life and develop a little more sociability in my introverted existence.  It didn't take long for me to discover that too many of those attending were steeped in hierarchy, verbally jostling with one another about their academic, career and business credentials and accomplishments, all while comically feigning humility and spirituality...this was the single reason I finally gave up going to those meetings.  I am not hierarchical and as such find those deeply engrossed in the rat race and social standing to be tedious and boring to be around...but I also realize that each of them, too, has their own story and dignity, deserving respect and grace but instead too often expecting obeisance and servility, which ruins everything for me.  I study things because they are interesting to me...whose knows, maybe I'll find some material or social use for them later. But if you want to engage me in conversation about a project I'm pursuing then how about, at least temporarily, step down from your imaginary social ladder and ask me about the content of what I'm doing...or at least how I came about to it...instead of treating me like the low dog in a pack who has to justify himself.  No, I'm not judging people with a hierarchical mindset...I'm just sick and tired of them judging me.  The play You Can't Take It With You...I prefer the 1984 PBS Great Performances version starring Jason Robards...vividly illustrates what I've just been talking about...

About Rob Dial's 8 Things Successful People Do

Last Monday on this blog I referenced Rob Dial, a motivational podcaster whose almost daily 20-minute programs, titled Mindset Mentor, are very convenient to hear and insert into my daily routine. On one recent show he lists and discusses eight different things that successful people do:

1-Get up early and have an established morning routine.

2-Read regularly, preferably daily.

3-Exercise consistently.

4-Write goals down consistently.

5-Use mentors.

6-Engage in positive self-talk, avoid the negative.

7-Don't worry about failure, rather learn from it and move on.

8-Just don't ever stop...keep advancing.

Dial is a big advocate of reading, especially in one's field of endeavor, and is generous with crediting others before him for many of the ideas he promotes.  On some of his above suggestions for success I do pretty well, but others...not so much.  I get up mornings usually between 8 and 9...but that's largely due to the fact that my work shift ends at 10 pm...and I'm pretty faithful to my morning routines. I read quite a bit, although of late I've been starting a string of different books and then putting them down for various reasons. I did find one on mathematics that seems to hold my interest, though. I exercise daily, that's good. Sometimes I write down my goals, but probably not to the extent that Rob Dial wants.  I have never had mentors except for the distanced, impersonal kind in the media and on the Internet such as podcasts like this with no opportunity for dialogue.  I could use a lot more positive self-talk than I'm accustomed to, that's for sure.  And I'm definitely sensitive to failure, tending to use it to judge myself negatively instead of letting it instruct me toward better outcomes.  Not stopping, the final point, is something I do well in some areas and not so well in others. This most probably has a lot to do with a topic that Rob Dial presents in another podcast, and which I'll discuss next week...seems like Mondays on this blog are turning into "Rob Dial Podcast Discussion Day", at least for a while...

Starbucks, Running and Math

Today promises to be pretty dreary weatherwise here in Gainesville...I'm sitting here inside the Starbucks in northern Gainesville on 43rd Street for the first time since early in the year.  Some Starbucks have a more intimate, welcoming quality to them, but this one is more like a mall food court with noises amplified by the acoustics of the spacious room...that's all right, the other Starbucks I usually frequent was off-line for my order and I've had it with standing in line anymore.  Once again I'm sitting along one side facing the electric substation just south of Talbot Elementary School...connected by a walking path I would traverse during my marathon training phase back in 2010-11 while on one of my many long runs back then: ah, those were the days!  I'd like to return to that wonderful era, and yesterday's measured run around my house totaling 14.4 miles was a good step in that direction.  There is a specific type of lifestyle that I am seeking which mixes family, a small number of friends, learning, occasional travel, and running/walking into a pleasant-yet-challenging routine combining interaction, growth, and new memories.  Part of it I am already living...much more is yet to come.  I have been stepping out tentatively into the vast, wild ocean of mathematics by watching special programming and reading books on the subject...my goal is to be in deep waters by this spring and then see where it all takes me.  The book I'm currently reading, The Ten Equations That Rule the World, by mathematician David Sumpter, illustrates the conundrum I find myself in whenever such an expert in the field introduces various concepts.  It starts out quite clearly as he lays out the basics, but then suddenly it's as if he has taken off with his discussion and left me lost, standing on land while he is frolicking way out there, far offshore.  This also happens with the Great Courses DVD set The Joy of Mathematics as Arthur Benjamin takes on the role there as teacher.  I don't blame either Sumpter or Benjamin for me falling behind their respective narratives, but rather see this as a challenge that is similar to that which getting back to running imposed itself on me in the weeks following my July surgery: at first progress is slow and I can clearly see my own inadequacy in the area and where I want to go for improvement, anticipating a breakthrough down the line if only I just stick with my efforts.  For me, whether it's running or mathematics or any other area, this is fun stuff to pursue...

Yoko Ono: the Woman in the Room

As I continue to watch the Peter Jackson recompilation of the Beatles' Let It Be sessions from January 1969...which he renamed Get Back and is showing on the Disney+ channel...I am puzzled by the so-called controversy and division that Yoko Ono, then John Lennon's girlfriend and soon-to-be wife, was causing: she was supposedly breaking up the band if you believe the numerous accounts and analyses.  Yet I just see her quietly sitting next to John, being supportive of him as well as respectful of the other Beatles.  She's not making any kind of waves or acting like the kind of diva you would expect to see on any of these nauseating reality series that nowadays plague the TV dial.  Often she's just reading a book or magazine. I did see her pat John's back and smile at him, and being pleasant and encouraging toward his bandmates....OH MY GOD SHE'S BREAKING UP THE BEATLES! And even though the other Beatles have had their own girlfriends in the studio before, Yoko's presence there at John's behest has been regarded as violating some kind of sacred "men only" arbitrary protocol in the recording studio that the Beatles maintained (when it was convenient for them, that is).  I see nothing in any of this but extreme male chauvinism, and without going into details in order to protect another individual, I am personally keenly aware of the nasty, irrational and patronizing behavior that men can exhibit when their expected all-male group finds itself graced with the presence of just one woman...regardless of her demeanor or behavior. And, sadly, scapegoating her as being divisive instead of them taking responsibility for their own sorry-ass behavior toward each other is one of the results.  Yoko, you're not the only woman who has had to go through this, and I'm afraid it's just going to continue...

Quote of the Week...from Bob Dole

I just consider myself a Republican, none of this hyphenated stuff.  I was a mainstream conservative Republican, and most people are in that category.                    ---Robert Dole

Robert Dole, former U.S. Senate Majority Leader and a vice-presidential and presidential candidate, died this past Sunday at the age of 98 from lung cancer, having survived prostate cancer from thirty years earlier after undergoing surgery to remove it from his body.  Earlier on I was a skeptic about the Kansas senator, thinking he was a bit snide and derisive as President Gerald Ford's running mate during his 1976 campaign against Jimmy Carter and Walter Mondale.  But over the ensuing years I came to greatly respect this man, who was gravely injured during World War II for his bravery in combat in Italy.  By 1996, while Dole was leading the Senate during Bill Clinton's first term as president, his stature had risen to the point where he decided to run against the incumbent...and I supported him, very happy to vote for this decent and principled man.  Dole, sadly, lost...I wonder how American history would have unfolded had he won: no Bush vs. Gore, and the series of dynamics leading to 9/11 would most probably have drastically changed as well...but I acknowledge my hindsight reasoning here.  Bob Dole was an advocate for reaching across the aisle and making deals with the Democrats when he believed the country's better interests...and he was a patriot in the highest sense of the word...could be served this way.  And while at times he would take a stand and risk political gridlock, he didn't base his decisions primarily on how his party would gain or lose as the current Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell has repeatedly and cynically demonstrated.  It's a shame that Dole's legacy hasn't survived the Trump onslaught of recent years...to be a Republican as he described himself is no longer mainstream today, as his cherished party has devolved into one lamentably supporting fascism and a personality cult... 

James, My Friend and Brother, Has Passed On

It is with deep sadness that I mark the passing yesterday evening of a friend and brother: James, the husband of Melissa's sister Krista.  He passed away at their Kentucky home yesterday evening while recovering from a serious medical operation.  James was devoted to his wife and family and was full of good humor and grace.  He worked very hard all his life to provide for his loved ones, and the news of his sudden passing is devastating to all of us.  My prayers and thoughts go out to Krista, Amy, Tabitha, James's relatives, friends, coworkers, Melissa, Keith, Will and Rebecca...all who, as did I, experienced this wonderful man's presence and influence at different times of their lives.  I will miss him dearly...

Weekly Short Stories: 1979 Science Fiction, Part 3

Today I continue reviewing short science fiction from way back in the year 1979, as they appeared in the anthology The 1980 Annual World's Best SF, featuring editor Donald A. Wollheim's selections from the previous year.  I remember 1979 as a musically transitional year as a resoundingly hard rock song, My Sharona by the Knack, took over the top of the charts that summer and the disco era that had dominated popular music for years thankfully began to wane. The new wave, punk...and even rap... movements began to rise up, as well as the presence of music videos.  I had pretty much had it with all the dance music...even the Rolling Stones with their Miss You and Emotional Rescue hits were selling out to disco, as well as the Grateful Dead (Shakedown Street).  Whew, glad that's all over...wait, I haven't been consistently listening to pop music radio since the early 1990s so who knows what passes for music nowadays.  Anyway, here are my reactions to the next three stories in Wollheim's book...

DAISY, IN THE SUN by Connie Willis

Daisy is a girl who finds herself sometimes in her grandmother's house watching her put up kitchen curtains, with her brother on the floor reading a book...then the setting will suddenly shift and they'll be on a train, and then back again.  And who are all these apathetic-looking people milling around, anyway?  A teenage boy she doesn't like approaches her and eventually explains it all...along with introducing the notion that what comprises our sense of personal identity can continue within settings that would normally not be able to sustain life.  It all concerns our sun...and apocalypse...

THE LOCUSTS by Larry Niven and Steve Barnes

This is a profound tale about the fundamental parameters of what makes us human, told in the context of a new settlement on a habitable planet in a nearby star system.  Everything seems to be growing well on it, with their plants and animals thriving.  But then the settlers' new children are all born genetically changed to a human form going back millions of years in its evolution.  How do the grown settlers deal with their offspring other than see it all as a failure and that their line will now die out with them?  Only the settlement's doctor has a different perspective on the children and their humanity...this story's ending is brilliant, and it does tie in with the title and the nature of locusts...

THE THAW by Tanith Lee

Cryogenics, the freezing of bodies to prolong them into a future when medical advances can fix whatever problems they have, is the theme of this story, written from the vantage point in the late 22nd century by a young woman who witnesses the resuscitation of her grandmother of distant generations from the "deep sleep".  Only what comes back to life seems to be somebody with a completely different personality...with special, ominous abilities.  This tale reminded me of a line from David Bowie's masterpiece (and equally ominous) song Blackstar: "Something happened on the day he died, spirit rose a meter and stepped aside, somebody else took his place and bravely cried, 'I'm a Blackstar'"....need I say more about where this story is heading?  

Next week I conclude my examination of selected sci-fi short stories from 1979...

Eighty Years Ago Today: Pearl Harbor

On the morning of Sunday, December 7th, 1941...eighty years ago...the United States was openly attacked by Japanese bombers at their naval base in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.  The attack was intended to destroy the American fleet in advance of a Japanese strategy to forcibly take over much of the Pacific, but crucial American aircraft carriers and other boats were at sea when it happened and escaped to fight another day.  President Franklin D. Roosevelt promptly had Congress declare war on Japan, which was followed by both Japan and Germany in turn declaring war on the United States: American open participation in World War II combat had begun, more than two years and two months after hostilities began following Hitler's invasion of Poland on September 1st, 1939.  The number of people who remember the Pearl Harbor attack when it happened is dwindling rapidly as are those who served the country during the perilous years to follow, both as soldiers and civilians.  I salute the brave men and women who stood up for freedom and put their lives on the line for future generations...God bless them all!

New Endeavors Can be Slow and Arduous at Start

Rob Dial is a young man who has an ongoing podcast, titled Mindset Mentor, that he puts out several times a week and on which he discusses various topics concerning motivation and self-improvement.  I've been listening to him off and on for the past few weeks...sometimes he seems on-target with his message and sometimes he's a little off, in my opinion.  One of his messages I did resonate with was when he said that starting something new from scratch usually doesn't yield much significant fruit for some time...sometimes a few months will elapse before there are encouraging results.  To that I might add that often at the start of a new self-improvement project...losing weight, for example...there can be a false sense of great progress at the start followed by a more sobering degree of improvement if not stagnation for a while.  Being a runner, after my surgery this past July 15th I wanted to return to that activity, actually running in place a minute or two on August 18th.  Even though in the previous 11 years I had run 12 half-marathons and many more races of middle-to-long distance, starting again from zero has been a slow and arduous process...I wasn't able to simply run around my home neighborhood block (.7 mile) without needing to take walking breaks until October 20th, three months later.  But a little more than a month after that I accomplished a 10-mile slow training run and this past Saturday I finished my first race, a 5K event.  But those initial weeks were slow and often discouraging for me and I still have a long way to go.  I write this not so much about running per se, but about any endeavor that I or you or anyone else might be interested in, with the ultimate aim of achieving competency or even possibly excellence in it.  At the beginning the going can be rough and it might not seem like you're up to the task with any progress being slow and positive feedback in short supply.  But then a day will come when the hard work you have put into it for weeks or even months will result in a breakthrough...there aren't many things in life that beat that.  I have a new endeavor I'm tackling and expect the same slow, humbling initial apparent lack of progress...and also expect that breakthrough down the line in a few weeks.  The trick is in faithfully sticking with it during this challenging time...

An Upcoming Personal Project for 2022

I've been watching the Beatles' Get Back movie on Disney+, which depicts its members going through a series of grueling all-day sessions of song creation, rehearsing and jamming. My initial reaction was to question why anyone would subject themselves to this kind of regimen. Then it occurred to me that for Paul, John, George and Ringo this was their great love, where their skills and interests coincided and they were the most accomplished and recognized: that's why it worked for them (although they still quarreled).  The question I ask is for myself is what in my life is comparable to that which the Beatles experienced back in January, 1969 when they embarked on that project?  And I think I got the answer...

Engaging in cognitive reverie...which is what Russell Crowe's character, mathematician John Nash, often does in the movie A Beautiful Mind...is something I often find myself doing as well.  Sometimes it takes the form of regretful, retroactive daydreaming when I think of times in my distant past and wish that I had adopted different priorities and habits.  One of these areas involves my studying in high school...my attention to homework assignments was atrocious, especially with regard to mathematics.  This is lamentable since every standardized test I ever took showed an exceptional ability in the area...I even scored a perfect 800 in it on my SAT.  Well, they say folks shouldn't bury themselves in their pasts, and I agree...but with an important caveat.  If what I'm regretting can neither be resurrected or made relevant to the present, then I should let it go.  But if there is a way in which I can learn from my past experiences and apply those lessons to the current setting, then this kind of cognitive reverie can be useful and a positive force in my life, here and now.  To this extent I've decided to make the upcoming year 2022 as one themed with intense study of mathematics...I can definitely think of an application or two for the years to come. Much will be simple review and much will be a reexamination in greater depth of what I have earlier covered, but only shallowly.  I have to credit a birthday present I received a few weeks ago: The Great Courses DVD pack of The Joy of Mathematics, authored and presented by Arthur Benjamin...wish I'd had him as a teacher!  Of course, I'll keep all ya'll updated on my progress with my upcoming math adventures...to that end I think it's time to load up my computer with some basic mathematics software...

Ran Gainesville's Depot Parkrun 5K This Morning

When I stepped outside my front door around 6:30 this morning I already knew it would be foggy, but not to the extent that the fog was loud. The moisture was so thick that it was interacting with all the surrounding tree leaves to present the audio illusion of rain, yet I felt no drops falling on me.  Normally at this time of the morning...especially on Saturdays...I am safely tucked away in my bed sound asleep, but today I had somewhere to go.  In Gainesville we are blessed with a free weekly 5K racing opportunity on Saturdays at 7:30 am, the location always being Depot Park just south of downtown.  I had run the Depot Parkrun four times in the past starting in January 2019, the last time being on June 20th this year, four weeks before I underwent open heart surgery to replace a defective valve and repair an aortic aneurism.  Today's adventure was my first race since the operation, but going by my recent running training I was confident that I would be OK...the hardest part of it all was driving back and forth across town in the thick fog.  You couldn't ask for friendlier people among those volunteering to hold this event...if I make it a more regular activity, I'll be volunteering as well.  We were all cautioned just before the race that the fog (humidity 100% at 54 degrees) was causing the pathway to be a bit slick...good advice!  For about two thirds of the race I ran at a reasonably slow pace and then "put the pedal to the metal" the rest of the way, finishing with a time of 33:03, 3 seconds faster than my June race.  Over the years my speed has slowed (I'm 65 now), but I'm taking it all "in stride" and emphasizing covering the distance...hopefully in future years I'll continue to be fully mobile, with my running adventures eventually transforming into walking adventures (actually I'm already having a few of those).  Today's experience was very encouraging...

Quote of the Week...from Albert Camus

The modern mind is in complete disarray.  Knowledge has stretched itself to the point where neither the world nor our intelligence can find any foot-hold.  It is a fact that we are suffering from nihilism.

                                                          ---Albert Camus

Albert Camus, a renowned philosopher, essayist and novelist, passed away in 1960...long before the Internet, talk radio and slanted TV news networks fed into and bolstered people's belief systems based on their own presumptions and prejudices.  But today we've gone beyond formulating our diverse values and priorities according to the facts of the world.  Instead, it's our diverse values and priorities that seem to be formulating our own versions of the facts of the world around us: that is a nihilistic world view, which posits the notion that truth isn't absolute but rather relative to the purposes we have in using it.  Welcome to today's alternative facts, "fake news", bonkers conspiracy theories and knee-jerk accusations of "hoaxes" whenever someone presents a truth that someone else doesn't want to hear.  If the modern mind is a composite of how the masses today think and form their belief systems, then Albert Camus was spot-on in describing it as being in complete disarray...and it is only going to get worse, I suspect.  Well, I can at least take care of my own mental health by staying rooted in reality, which necessarily entails keeping those nihilistic thinkers around me at arm's length, both in person and in the social and mass media.  Go ahead and be conservative or liberal, I dig that...but as John Lennon once sang, "Gimme some truth"...

Following the Beatles' Get Back Documentary on Disney Plus

I have been pleasantly surprised by the Disney+ premium streaming channel since subscribing to it.  Being a stalwart Winnie the Pooh fan, I had missed the old movies as well as the television series The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, which aired in the 1990s and coincided with Will and Rebecca's early childhood...Disney+ carries it all.  The other day we sat down and watched the Broadway production of Hamilton on this channel...what an experience! And now Peter Jackson's project of Get Back, as he has reedited the material used for the 1970 movie Let It Be, has been on it since Thanksgiving...I've been watching just a few minutes at a time because of its intensity.  It's very strange seeing John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr, all still alive, young and sitting around together (with Yoko Ono naturally at John's side), joking, eating, jamming, and arguing as if it's all going on right now in the present.  And, knowing the eventual fate of these sessions, filmed and recorded in January 1969, that would ultimately produce their final album release, Let It Be, I find it intriguing as to how the four interacted with one another...I'm starting to form my own opinions. So far I've noticed that it wasn't all doom and gloom in the studio as I had been led to believe: there was a lot of positive musical energy here.  But the brief time I have watched it has also been typified by a frantic, chaotic procession of one song after another with no discernible direction or coherency.  Hopefully, Disney+ will keep Get Back on their lineup at least long enough for me to get through it all as I take in bite-sized portions on more or less a daily basis.  As for this blog, I plan to devote a day each week discussing it, along with other things Beatles: stay tuned...

Weekly Short Stories: 1979 Science Fiction, Part 2

Today I continue my look at science fiction short stories from 1979 as they appeared in the anthology The 1980 Annual World's Best SF, edited by Donald A. Wollheim and featuring his selections from the previous year. 1979 represented a special year in my life in which I decided to break away from the drifting college experience I was undergoing to just spend some time on my own supporting myself and living frugally within my means while working at a humble job.  To this purpose I was hired as a cook in a local Chinese restaurant, a position I would continue working at for a while as I sorted things out. In some ways '79 was a very difficult year to live through and in others it was a glorious time of personal growth and independence, depending on how you look at it. But I couldn't imagine how the rest of my life would how turned out if I hadn't lived through it as I did...most of the alternatives were decidedly negative. In the science fiction universe good stories abounded, and here are my comments about two from the book that weren't exactly my favorites...

UNACCOMPANIED SONATA by Orson Scott Card

In a future world claiming itself as a utopia allowing people to play the roles for which they are best suited, a young musical prodigy is selected as a "Maker" and as such subjected to abusive social isolation in order to enhance his senses for picking out music from the surrounding nature...and to avoid the unforgivable sin of derivation.  One day, though, a Listener traveling through hears his music and slips him a recording of Bach...the society's monitors, the Watchers, become aware of it and punish the Maker by removing him from his environment and forbidding him to create any more music.  The story spirals downward from there and I thought this was some hell of a utopia. The ending, which I guess was supposed to be happy, only left me puzzled...

THE STORY WRITER by Richard Wilson

This confusing story portrays a retired successful pulp fiction writer who discovers a second career in writing when he buys a second-hand typewriter at a rural northeastern flea market sale.  He uses it to write stories for the customers stopping by...including a peculiar soul who turns out to be an alien representing his race from another star system and which is planning to settle Earth, albeit primarily in another dimension.  The story gets further muddled when the writer, considered by the aliens to be a prophet whose writings always come true, finds himself in a copied world in the aliens' home dimension (but still on Earth): get lost yet?  The ending made little sense, either...the saving grace in this tale was the insertion of some elementary Polish language greetings and phrases, reminding me of that Polish class I took during the spring of 1978.  Yes, it's all very weird...

Next week: more from the year 1979 in short science fiction...

My November 2021 Running and Walking Report

In November I ran a total of 100 miles, with a slow and easy 10 mile run on the 23rd being my longest single run.  I missed running on 3 days due to feeling under the weather.  With walking, I covered 102 miles for the month, most of my mileage coming from walking back and forth at work. November has been a positive month for me with both running and walking, and my endurance has greatly strengthened.  Still, I recognize that my progress since the July 15th heart operation to replace a defective valve and repair and aneurism has not been linear, but rather an up-and-down curve over the weeks, with the net result being on the upside. With this in mind, my goals...both in terms of increasing my runs and in engaging in public running races...are contingent on where I happen to be on that fluctuating curve at any given time.  I had planned on running in Gainesville's weekly Depot Park 5K race this past Saturday, but when I woke up it was 36 degrees...maybe I'll wait a week or two and see what the weather's like then. The Florida Track Club has scheduled for late January 2022 its Newnan's Lake 15K, which I've enjoyed running a number of times in the past.  And in February we'll see a return in Gainesville of the Five Points of Life half-marathon...although they seem to have cut the full 26.2-mile marathon from this event.  In a perfect, linear world of constant, incremental improvement and fantastic weather I would run a couple of Depot Park races, the Newnan Lake 15K, and top it off with the Five Points half-marathon.  That's how I'm looking at it now at the close of November...let's see how it all materializes, though, in this somewhat less-than-perfect existence... 

Just Finished Reading An Abundance of Katherines by John Green

An Abundance of Katherines, from 2006, is yet another quirky young adult novel by John Green focused on adolescent self-discovery.  This time the protagonist is Colin Singleton, a very intelligent high school student obsessed with that intelligence...as well as the conundrum of why he has been repeatedly dumped by all his girlfriends: they are 19 in total and all named Katherine.  After Katherine the Nineteenth breaks up with him, Colin decides to develop a mathematical formula, based on his own experiences, for predicting how long a relationship will go...of course, this is preposterous.  Known as the nerdy smart geek in his class, he has but one friend, Hassan, who serves as a reality check for him as well as for those of us who tend to see young Muslims in a negative, even fearful, light. One day Colin and Hassan...with Colin's permissive parents' blessings...set off on a road trip from their hometown of Chicago into Tennessee, where they stop at a hole-in-the-wall town called Gutshot.  There they befriend Lindsey...whose boyfriend is also named Colin...and Lindsey's factory-owning mother Hollis, at whose house they stay.  They are hired by Hollis to interview the locals for an oral history of the area she is compiling.  Colin, assured of his prodigal intelligence, is nonetheless concerned that he will never attain the status of "genius", which in his definition involves producing something new, something that matters.  This reminded me of the movie A Beautiful Mind from four years earlier in which mathematical genius John Nash tells his Princeton roommate Charles essentially the same thing.  The story is funny and easy to follow, and I enjoyed the good-natured verbal sparring between the characters, especially Colin and Hassan.  However, I don't know that this story accurately portrayed the state of adolescence, at least as far my own recollection of this period of my life is concerned.  The kids all seem to be level-headed and reasonable, traits that I noticed were generally lacking in many of my classmates (and in retrospect myself as well)...these are all very strong, self-assured personalities.  Maybe Green deliberately wrote them that way to point out a positive direction for all his young insecure, awkward readers. He has done something like this with his other books I've read: Looking for Alaska and Turtles All the Way Down...click on the titles to read my earlier reviews.  I don't think you can go wrong with An Abundance of Katherines, but be prepared to read through some extreme silliness...

Omicron Covid Variant Reported

Surfing around the TV this morning I hit upon CNN...the big news story there is the Omicron Strain...no it's not a Michael Crichton novel or movie, but the latest mutant Covid-19 variant, apparently arising out of South Africa, where the vaccination rate is low because it's not widely available, unlike here where millions upon millions of people willfully perpetuate the virus by refusing it although the vaccine is convenient, free, safe and effective.  Omicron is definitely more contagious then the other Covid strains and has already spread throughout Europe and is expected to hit the U.S. soon.  But as it is newly discovered, not enough is yet known as to whether it is more virulent than its horrid predecessor, the  Delta variant.  Neither is there yet sufficient information about how effective the current vaccinations are against it: the major companies are engaged in testing as I write this and we should know in a couple of weeks.  In any event it's clear to me that Covid-19 is here to stay, both because of the worldwide vaccine production, distribution and inoculation logistics and because so many of us seem to have decided that they kind of like having this scourge around, as perverse as that may sound... 

Our Recent Visit to Asheville, North Carolina

 

Last month Melissa and I went on vacation to the Carolinas, first in Asheville, North Carolina for a few days and then on to Charleston in the South...I've written about the latter in recent articles.  As for Asheville, we stayed at a hotel on the city's east end, near the Billy Graham Training Center which we visited.  It was a pretty, pastoral setting perfect for retreats...I always felt a special respect for Christian evangelist Billy Graham, whose worldwide ministry rejected partisan and Cold War politics in favor of focusing on spreading the Gospel throughout America and the rest of the world.  He always avoided openly siding with one political party over the other, befriending a long succession of both Republican and Democratic presidents, and even sat with atheist authoritarian rulers like the Soviet Union's Nikita Krushchev and North Korea's Kim Il-sung.  Sadly, one of his sons, Franklin, has plunged himself deeply into fractious, divisive political partisanship, first publicly and repeatedly criticizing President Obama even to the extent of questioning his faith and then unquestioningly siding with Trump during his tenure, even going so far as questioning the 2020 election's outcome...very sad indeed.  But as for the retreat center, I loved it and recommend it for visitors, along with the tours they offer.  That visit we did the second day.  On the third we took the train ride on Great Smoky Mountain Railroads, which starts at Bryson City west of Asheville and goes through the surrounding country, stopping off for lunch at a little town called Dillsboro before returning...that was fun.  While in Asheville we ate a couple of times at an excellent locally-owned eatery on Tunnel Road called East Village Grille and did some grocery shopping at a nearby store called Ingles...I wish this chain were in Gainesville, too.  In our previous visit to this area in 2006 we toured the Biltmore estate south of town and also drove through the Smoky Mountain National Park on to Tennessee, stopping off for a few hours at Dollywood in Pigeon Forge before heading back... but not this time around. We did stop off at the Arts and Crafts Center on the Blue Ridge Parkway about a mile from our hotel, though...I got an excellent 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle there (see photo). I liked Asheville, although when walking around I quickly learned to keep a cautious eye on the ground since there were a lot of steep drop-offs everywhere, something that a flat-lander Floridian like myself isn't accustomed to dealing with...

Quote of the Week...from Sheryl Sandberg

Motivation comes from working on things we care about.                 ---Sheryl Sandberg

Sheryl Sandberg is a billionaire business executive, a key player in Facebook's dramatic rise within American society...you can take that as a compliment or criticism depending on your views about this pervasive company (to which I'm posting a link for this blog article that is hosted by Google...another pervasive company for which she also worked).  Sandberg's above statement at first glance seems so obviously self-evident that you might question why I even bothered to post it.  But in our daily lives there are a lot of different things tugging at our attention and most of them concern areas for which we personally hold little interest but still dutifully invest our time and efforts to deal with them.  I can always get around disinterest in a project by framing it in the context of another project: I don't like certain classes in school, but the "bigger" goal is getting good grades...or taking on tedious or stressful aspects of my job: a strong work ethic and consistency through all areas, interesting or not, are pillars of success.  Still, once I'm away from the classroom and workplace I can see Sandberg's point.  On the other hand, my interest in different things tends to fluctuate pretty dramatically over the course of even a single day, much less over longer spans of time.  So I guess the lesson I draw from this quote is that I need to find stuff I care about 24/7 in order to be motivated about it 24/7...

Happy Thanksgiving, Everybody

I wish you all a most happy Thanksgiving.  If you're working today I hope it's because you want to. For the many who traditionally spend it with family, best wishes that everyone shares positive, memorable moments together with lots of good stuff to eat, hopefully not in too much excess.  And if you're one of those who can't wait to go out on shopping sprees later today and tomorrow...well, I'm not quite sure what to say except to stay safe and that I never was into that Black Friday sort of thing.  As for me, my wonderful grown kids are having Thanksgiving dinner at my home with Melissa and me...that's definitely something I am most grateful for, along with the blessings of our health and positive outlook on life...

Weekly Short Stories: 1979 Science Fiction, Part 1

Today I begin looking at science fiction short stories from the year 1979, as they appeared in the anthology The 1980 Annual World's Best SF, edited by Donald A. Wollheim and featuring his picks from the previous year.  1979 was a big year in the news as Iran culminated its Islamic revolution early on and later took over the U.S. embassy in Tehran, precipitating an international hostage crisis that lasted until the end of the Jimmy Carter administration.  In the same year the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in order to sustain a friendly puppet government there it installed in a coup d'etat the previous year.  Meanwhile, science fiction did well with a number of good stories...here are my reactions to the first three from that book...

THE WAY OF CROSS AND DRAGON by George R.R. Martin

Martin obviously had a hang-up with organized religion, perhaps stemming from his childhood experiences,, for all I know.  In his ongoing fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire he has an intolerant fundamentalist group descend upon the capital city of King's Landing.  Here we have an interstellar group of inquisitors bent on upholding the orthodoxy of the brand of Christianity that has spread throughout the galaxy.  There is a planet that holds to the heresy of Judas being a savior/hero, and the story's inquisitor is assigned to rectify the situation.  He meets a man who revels in being a "Liar", that is he acknowledges the falseness of his Judas preaching as something he entirely made up...yet the revelation places further doubt in the mind of the inquisitor about his own beliefs....

THE THIRTEENTH UTOPIA by Somtow Sucharitcul 

Another (groan) tale about inquisitors and religious intolerance, here we see the enforcer of the orthodox faith with a new assignment regarding his specialty: the sabotage and destruction of societies across the cosmos that have claims to being utopias.  In this one, they seem to have conquered gravity and hold a special reverence toward their sun...the extent of this is revealed at story's end and also shows the author's own possible philosophy...that self-awareness and identity transcend biological life, a very heretical notion in the mind of this story's inquisitor.  But he gets sucked into what they call the "initiation", and is forever changed...

OPTIONS by John Varley 

Off into the future, this time solidly on Earth, gender identities are no longer as solidly differentiated as they were, with a "simple" medical procedure available for the masses that "only" involves creating a near-identical clone body of one's own...albeit in the opposite sex...and then having one's brain and nervous system transplanted into it.  I had to put down the book for a couple of minutes and laugh after reading that! Varley focuses on a married couple with three children and has the wife consider and then undergo a sex-change procedure...he then examines its effect on the husband and family.  A little ahead of its time this story is, although I have a feeling that transplanting brains into cloned bodies isn't going to be in our immediate future. Then again I had no idea a few years ago that people would be walking and standing around everywhere staring at little boxes in their hands...

Next week: more about short science fiction from 1979...

Just Finished Reading Profiles in Courage by John F. Kennedy

Profiles in Courage is a 1956 history book by John F. Kennedy while he was still a United States senator...it won him the Pulitzer Prize the following year, after which it was revealed that his speechwriter Ted Sorenson wrote the bulk of it.  Regardless who actually put the pen to paper, it was Kennedy who placed his stamp of approval on it, and for the sake of simplicity I'll refer to it as his book.  It is comprised of a set of short biographies of eight men who served over the span of American history as U.S. senators: John Quincy Adams, Daniel Webster, Thomas Hart Benton, Sam Houston, Edmund G. Ross, Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar, George Norris, and Robert A. Taft.  Kennedy was careful to spotlight members of differing parties and ideologies...his main thrust of argument was that at crucial points in their Senate careers they made principled decisions that went against the passions of their constituents, ending their political careers or at least delaying their fulfillment (Adams would later become president and then a representative in the House while Lamar would make it to the U.S. Supreme Court).  I don't think this book could (or should) have been written today since some of those profiled were on the pro-slavery side in the nineteenth century, even to the extent of owning slaves themselves.  And there were also a number of historical figures around these eight that the author criticized perhaps a bit unfairly.  Still, I think Profiles in Courage makes a couple of significant points applicable to today's political setting and the Senate in particular.  One, our national legislative bodies operate on the premise that we are a representative republic whose leaders are either directly or indirectly elected by the people...this gives them accountability to the population while acknowledging that they are in a better situation than most of us to get the needed information, expertise, and wisdom for the often difficult decisions that go with their positions. And two, the fact that Kennedy felt the need for this book to highlight just eight senators for their political courage demonstrates that in the vast majority of cases senators and other politicians...when push comes to shove...will usually abandon their principles and succumb to popular prejudices and pressure from their colleagues on important, divisive issues.  You don't have to look around very far today to see this going on with too many of our elected national officials, sadly... 

Dan Mullen Fired from Coaching Florida Gators Football

Back in 2018, when Mississippi State head football coach Dan Mullen was sought and hired to replace erratic Jim McElwain at the University of Florida, trumpets were practically sounding that he was a Spurrier/Meyer-caliber coach that would lead the Gators back to their glory days of Southeastern Conference titles and National Championship contention.  The first two seasons, in which Mullen capitalized on players recruited by his predecessor, were great successes and last year's was as well...until the season's end when UF lost three straight games (although in two of them they were playing for the SEC championship (46-52 against Alabama) and in the Cotton Bowl (20-55 against Oklahoma).  This year their roster reflected Mullen's recruiting efforts for Florida, but it became clear early on that the wide-open passing attack and a fast, aggressive defense that defined the Gators in its recent history would be lacking.  Their games in 2021 were marked by inconsistency from week to week, with the offense and defense alternating between good and awful.  For me, I am more supportive of a head coach being given more time to develop his team, and sometimes the season just doesn't go your way.  But with Dan Mullen, although I give him credit for promoting Covid-19 vaccination recently, I can't get it out of my mind that last fall he, in the middle of a deadly upsurge of the virus in the general population...and no vaccines yet available...advocated that Florida "pack the Swamp [its home stadium]" for a game after losing a close road contest at Texas A&M where the home school practiced lax safety protocols for its own stadium.  Until that moment I had been a supporter of Mullen...afterwards I realized that winning was his only yardstick for success.  Well, you win by your yardstick and in turn lose by your yardstick: his team has lost four out of their last five games and in their only victory over that span they gave up a record 42 points in one half (at home) against a small college.  Running and special teams coach Greg Knox will fill the Florida head coaching vacancy against Florida State this week...if the Gators win then they will be bowl-eligible.  I'm not one of those Florida fans who expect them to compete for the National Championship every year, and sometimes you have years like this one and have to shake it off and move on to the next.  Normally I'd say that the coach should be given more time, but after Mullen's tone-death pandemic denial last season my patience with him was gone long before 2021...

Just Finished Rereading The Shining by Stephen King

The Shining is a 1980 horror novel by Stephen King, one of his big early successes in his long, prolific career as a writer of popular fiction.  I first read it about fifteen years ago, a little before this blog began, so I don't have a review of it...until today, that is.  I was prompted to pick it up again after reading King's latest novel Billy Summers, which mentions the earlier novel's central Overlook Hotel and its topiary of shrubs shaped to look like real animals.  Now I've finished reading The Shining...and have a few things to say about it.  It is about a family of three, the Torrances: Jack, the father, is an alcoholic writer/teacher with a short, violent temper that has stood him poorly in recent times, and Wendy, his beautiful wife, tends to see him as a troubled man and a danger to their five-year old son Danny.  Danny has the special gift of "shining", that is to read others' thoughts and see into the future.  Jack is giving winter employment by his old reformed drinking buddy as caretaker of Colorado's Overlook Hotel and he takes his family with him for the bleak, snowed-in months.  Danny is warned by his "imaginary" friend about the hotel's dangers and befriends the chef Dick Halloran, who is psychically sensitive as well and quickly picks up on the boy's talents.  Halloran is leaving for Florida for the winter, but tells Danny he'll come back if called.  Although on the wagon for several months, Jack finds himself craving alcohol...but the hotel is bone-dry, or is it?  The Overlook seems to have a mind of its own and sees in Danny the means to bring itself power and presence...it intends to use Jack and his addiction to that end.  The rest of the story spirals into a mix of ghosts, violence, and soul possession as the three struggle to survive their experience in this clearly-haunted establishment.  Like several of Stephen King's earlier stories, The Shining deals with demonic forces that invade and possess people...in this sense his writing mirrors the attitudes of many religious people who see demons and evil spirits all around themselves while interpreting others' perceived wayward behavior in terms of demonic possession.  Also, as in the case with many of his works around this time, the narrative often slips into stream-of-consciousness mode...I don't notice this literary device used nearly as much in King's more recent novels.  When I first read The Shining, I misinterpreted the book's ending as to what happened to Jack Torrance...this time around I saw it all in a much different light.  As to the Jack Nicholson movie adaptation, what I saw of it diverged too much from the book, with Nicholson as Jack and Shelley Duvall as Wendy, both roles seriously miscast.  Finally, one message I received from this intriguing story is that people have a tendency to think they are in control and masters of their own lives' destinies while in reality they are often pawns manipulated by forces unseen and beyond their control: welcome to the universe of Stephen King.  Doctor Sleep is a 2013 sequel novel to The Shining, with Danny Torrance grown up and suffering from the same weakness to alcohol as did his father...and having to contend with creatures that prey upon psychics...