Game of the Week: Tennis

I'm currently watching the first round of the U.S. Open tennis tournament on ESPN.  Tennis has always seemed much easier on television than it really is to play.  I learned to play tennis in my late teens in the early-to-mid 1970s and never played or practiced enough to achieve a reasonable level of competency in it.  I remember running mile after mile in after-school track practice in high school and then later going out to a nearby tennis court with my sister and, after practicing our serves a little, just volleying the ball back and forth to get better with our forehand and backhand swings...no matter how tiring the running had been just an hour or so earlier.  And simply hitting the ball back and forth over the net...no one keeping score...has always been how I've enjoyed "playing tennis".  Yet I remember taking an introductory tennis course at college in the summer of 1975 to fulfill some of my physical education requirements (back when colleges had physical education requirements).  I remember my teacher, who seemed like he thought he was a real cool badass dude, sneering at me with disgust as I "aced" my serving exam by meekly placing each one squarely in the correct place...with absolutely no force or spin on the ball.  Yet I knew how to get an "A" and got it...not that I was any better in it afterwards.  No, after a humiliating game in 1979 I played with a college friend from Brazil in which he thoroughly demolished me and thought no one could play that badly, I put away my racket and would subsequently use tennis balls to play fetch and keep-away with my dogs.  Yet I do enjoy watching tennis on television...with one exception. For some inexplicable reason (maybe they think they're intimidating their opponent), certain professional women players from Eastern Europe (like Maria Sharapova, Victoria Azarenka, and Simona Halep) have this extremely annoying habit of giving loud voice to their exhalations each time they hit the ball, resulting in a horrible sounding sequence of grunts and chirps with each volley. It's gotten so that not only to I automatically root against these players, but I also mute the sound to avoid hearing that crap.  Oh well, maybe some people think what they do is cool...you never know what makes someone think something's cool.  And in the late 1970s when I was making the transition from adolescence to adulthood, there were two activities that people overwhelmingly (but not me) thought were cool: disco dancing and tennis.  They've both declined over the years as participatory activities, but I've always enjoyed watching a good tennis match...and I think I'd better leave my opinion on disco unsaid...    

Jeopardy!'s Process for Selecting Permanent Host Foolish and Demeaning

Ever since I was a kid in the 1960s when Art Fleming hosted the popular quiz show Jeopardy!, I have enjoyed pitting my own prowess at getting the right "questions" to the different posed "answers" in diverse categories of knowledge against the three on-screen players.  I thought that Fleming did his job well guiding each episode and interacting with the contestants, but the idea of slavishly following him as some kind of superstar idol never occurred to me.  Not did it ever when Alex Trebek helped to resurrect the series' mass popularity from the 1980s until his tragic death from cancer last November.  In my book, it doesn't take much to host this show.  You need to possess some degree of literacy, as well as quickly learning how to pronounce some of the more challenging material presented in the answers, but I always assumed that both Fleming and Trebek would go over them with the writers before each taping anyway.  You need to display tactful humor and goodwill toward each contestant, as well as a healthy respect for the wide world of learning.  Jeopardy! hosts should not be shock jocks who titillate the viewing audience with sexual innuendo and vulgar attempts at humor as does the host of Family Feud (among sadly too many other game shows) but rather communicate a sense of decorum and attentive enthusiasm for the episode at hand.  You want to host Jeopardy!, do you? I really don't care what your political views are or whether you foolishly said offensive things on a podcast years earlier or posted a controversial tweet in a moment of foolishness.  I think the producers of Jeopardy!, following Trebek's sad departure, made a really dumb mistake by having a procession of guest hosts each week and making the new permanent replacement a farce with popularity surveys on the Internet listing who's hot and who's not.  As for me, with every episode I've seen of late...and that spans quite a number of different guest hosts...there hasn't been a single one in which the host didn't do a commendable job of carrying the show properly in the areas I've mentioned above.  I think it's kind of humiliating to lead on the different candidates like this, something I doubt that neither Art Fleming nor Alex Trebek would have stood for themselves.  And once a particular candidate seems to be favored, then there is a mad rush to delve back in their pasts to uncover dirty laundry about them...disgusting, as if anybody is so perfect as to judge others like this.  Just draw the name of the "winning" permanent host at random out of a hat from those candidates who've hosted it already and be done with it all, for crying out loud...

Great Old TV Episodes...from The Andy Griffith Show

 

ERNEST T. BASS JOINS THE ARMY, from the classic sixties TV comedy series The Andy Griffith Show, originally aired in October, 1963.  Set in the idyllic, fictional small town of Mayberry, North Carolina, this series featured Andy Griffith as Sheriff Andy Taylor and his sidekick Deputy Barney Fife, played by Don Knotts.  Since Mayberry was supposedly situated below the nearby Appalachians, several episodes featured mountain folk descending on the town with their peculiarities, like the Darling family...and Ernest T. Bass, a figure that Deputy Fife grew to simply refer to as "a nut".  In this episode, Bass comes down to Mayberry to enlist in the Army.  Being rejected, he blames Andy and goes about town throwing rocks through windows.  Finally arrested and thrown in the county jail, Barney, on duty at the time, leaves to go to the diner to get breakfast...next to him another man sits, face buried in a newspaper.  Barney turns to ask him something, the paper is lowered, and there is Ernest T., captured in the above picture...to me a classic comedy moment in the history of TV.  The mystery of Ernest T. Bass escaping from his locked jail cell as he pleases flummoxes and frustrates Andy and Barney...until Andy learns why this rascal wants to enlist: the solution is also a classic TV moment.  This episode is loaded with many funny scenes...Howard Morris plays Bass, who appeared in four other episodes.  Morris did not play starring roles in his career, but did appear in the much older Sid Caesar series, has been the voice of numerous characters in animation flicks, and tried his hand at directing.  But to me his crowning success will always be Ernest T. Bass, one of the funniest characters I ever saw: he's a nut!

Potentially Catastrophic Hurricane Ida Threatens Louisiana

For the past few days, meteorologists have been projecting that a tropical storm, named Ida, would form and pass from the northwest Caribbean Sea and through the western end of Cuba while achieving hurricane status.  Once it entered the Gulf of Mexico, the consensus opinion was that it would rapidly intensify from being in the warm Gulf waters while avoiding any substantial wind shear...and eventually hit the coast of eastern Louisiana as a Category 4 hurricane with maximum sustained winds of 130-140 mph.  This makes the heavily populated New Orleans-Baton Rouge region of the state a bulls-eye target, presenting the greatest threat to the area since Katrina in 2005 swept through, causing levee breaks and sending New Orleans...situated under sea level...into a catastrophic state of flooding and causing many deaths and much suffering.  I'm writing this a little past 8 pm EDT, and this hour's advisory has the storm temporarily holding at a Category 2 level with 105 max. sustained winds and the barometric pressure...an indicator of a hurricane's true intensity...dropping from 976 to 969 millibars: much intensification expected in the next few hours.  The eye of Ida is expected to make landfall tomorrow morning, but tropical force winds and heavy rainfall will be making their way inland during the night...the one saving grace in all of this is that the storm is traveling along its course relatively rapid.  Louisiana isn't the only area seriously affected: virtually the entire state of Mississippi is threatened by flash flooding, and western Tennessee and Kentucky are also on severe weather alert.  The Weather Channel...I love these guys...have their meteorologist personalities stationed in place, reporting live from various targeted locales in the area: my television is locked on it (until I go to sleep later, that is).   My prayers are with the many people of these region for their lives, health and property in the hours and days to come...

*****

The next day: Ida made landfall early in the afternoon, with maximum sustained winds of 150 mph.  Unfortunately, this extremely intense hurricane has slowed down with its forward motion, at this writing to 10 mph...bad news for the residents of the area concerned about both high winds and flooding... 

Quote of the Week...from John Quincy Adams

Patience and perseverance have a magical effect before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish.

                                                                     ---John Quincy Adams

This current season in my life, the summer of 2021, has been an intensive training session in the arts of patience and perseverance.  In late June I made the decision to go ahead with my thoracic surgeon's strong recommendation to get my defective heart valve replaced and my aortic aneurism repaired, a procedure requiring open heart surgery...complete with taking apart the sternum and fusing it back together afterwards.  As such, it has been for me a long, long rocky road of triumphs and setbacks as I make my slow recovery and strive to return to my previously active lifestyle.  I had to be patient and persevere with being in the hospital's intensive care unit following surgery a little longer than planned due to a complication and then on the general floor, also a lengthier stay.  During this time I've had to faithfully endure extended limits on my mobility and drug-induced negative effects on my bodily functions, which included during my entire hospital stay absolutely no appetite whatsoever.  Upon final discharge, I have been homebound and limited in what I can do, being on "sternal precautions", designed to limit my arms, lifting, and upper body motion to protect my refusing rib cage...it is set to end on September 9th, after which I can begin to recover that use of my body...again in a slow, methodical manner.  I've also had to patiently deal with a-fib, fluid retention in my chest and pain as the medical authorities responsible for my care carefully adjust my post-op medications and procedures.  Early on after the operation I felt discouraged and demoralized, but kept up with whatever requests that were made upon me in as positive a spirit as possible.  Now, six weeks after surgery, I have made a great deal of progress: while living and struggling through it all, minute by minute, day by day, it seemed to last forever, the more I look back on where I was I am increasingly astounded by how relatively brief a time I have spent in this state.  There's more recovery to come, but I am glad I kept the faith and plodded on through the most trying times.  But patience and perseverance remain the watchwords here, and as one of my favorite U.S. presidents, John Quincy Adams, has said, they will lead to the conquering of my difficulties and obstacles...                                                

The Great Charlie Watts, 1941-2021

I was saddened to hear about the recent passing of Charlie Watts, the acclaimed drummer for the Rolling Stones all these years.  He was 80.  Charlie was, at I see it, a stabilizing element for the band who refused to take sides in his bandmates' squabbles while always conducting himself in public with dignity and grace.  He was dedicated to his craft and humble enough to recognize his own limitations.  He was born in 1941, which brings to my mind all those bands back in the mid-1960s like the Stones and Beatles: they're all getting old...the ones who are still left, that is.  Watts' bandmates Bill Wyman, Mick Jagger, and Keith Richards were born in 1936, 1943, and 1943 respectively...Ringo Starr entered the world in 1940 and Paul McCartney in 1942.  It's going to be a sad time when all these great musicians of my childhood are gone...of course, over the last few years I've had to hear of the deaths of various artists I've followed: when you love many you also mourn many.  As for Charlie Watts, in an industry loaded with prima donnas and excessive living, here we had someone who kept to his own standards while respecting and working with others with vastly different lifestyles and attitudes: what a class act...

Weekly Short Stories: 1975 Science Fiction, Part 4

Below are my reactions to the final four stories appearing in the book Donald A. Wollheim Presents The 1976 Annual World's Best SF, displaying the editor's selection of 1975's finest science fiction.  In less than a three week span of September, 1975 there were two separate attempts on President Gerald Ford's life, September 5th by Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme in Sacramento and Sara Jane Moore on the 22nd in San Francisco.  Neither was able to hit their target...yet it was only a gun loading mistake by Fromme and a heroic bystander stopping Moore that prevented yet another tragic assassination...a scary time in our history.  And now here are my reviews for those four sci-fi tales...

CHILD OF ALL AGES by P.J. Plauger

This story strongly reminds me of the old Twilight Zone episode Long Live Walter Jameson.  In each, the protagonist is an individual who has achieved immortality and lived through much of our history.  In Plauger's version it's a "14" year-old girl who just got in trouble for arguing with her history teacher about the Industrial Revolution in England...and she knows about it firsthand.  But Melissa knows she cannot reveal the truth, not even to her loving adoptive parents: she is 2,400 years old and soon realizes that it is time to move on...

HELBENT 4 by Stephen Robinett

A space war machine, Helbent 4, who which happens to be the first"person" narrator, has been sent from Earth with its fleet to battle and destroy the alien enemy (our hero calls them "Spacethings") amassing many light-years distant. After the victorious battle that lasts a tiny fraction of a second, Helbent 4 discovers itself to be the only "survivor" of the machine-run war and returns to Earth to receive further instructions...only this is a different Earth, one that sees this marvel of technology as the enemy.  I loved the colorful language of Helbent 4, a tragic figure in the end...

THE PROTOCALS OF THE ELDERS OF BRITAIN by John Brunner

A team of four experts working for a computer company with an exclusive contract with the government gets sent far below to try and debug one of their products.  It seems that the highly secretive officials cannot access their messages due to some sort of programming error.  Desmond Williams manages to get the communications decoded, and what he discovers is very enlightening...or disillusioning, depending on one's point of view.  From 2021's persepective, I didn't see anything particularly surprising, sad to say... 

THE CUSTODIANS by Richard Cowper

This is a tale about mysterious locations on Earth that allow someone there to see into the future, and how a tradition of prophecies passed from one "custodian" to the next within a remote German monastery.  The current custodian of the secret room knows what's coming, but withholds believing completely...until his successor arrives and fulfills another prophecy.  I thought this would be a great Twilight Zone episode...

Next week I begin my look at the year 1976 in the realm of short science fiction...

Game of the Week: Chess

When I was a kid we often played checkers, but never chess.  Chess to me was always this kind of advanced game that tested the players' intelligence.  In high school some of my classmates would spend their lunch hour and breaks playing chess with each other, but other than just learning enough of the rules to be able to follow it at a primitive level, I steered clear of the game.  Still, I have a few observations about it.  I'm always impressed when a game is going on and one of the players moves a piece and says something like "checkmate in 5 moves".  To me, each turn in chess is like a brand-new game: you may think that you have an intricate strategy at one time, but then your opponent moves their piece and everything is upset, and you have to start all over with your strategy the next move.  I'm very impressed by those who have learned to play the game at a level of competency, but I also know that success in chess doesn't necessarily mean you're smart in everything...just in playing chess.  When I turned 60 a few years back, I qualified to become a member of the local seniors recreation center just down the road, a mile from my home.  But even knowing that every Wednesday they had a chess group and were open to beginners, I have never taken advantage of the opportunity to go there and see what happens.  But who knows, once this Covid crap dies down I may just try it out...

The Recent "We Love NYC" Concert in Central Park

Saturday evening there was a big, open concert...open for those vaccinated against Covid, that is...in Central Park, New York.  Dubbed the "We Love NYC" concert, CNN for weeks touted it extensively, even toward the end showing an ongoing countdown to its beginning.  I get how it formed: New York City for weeks in the spring of 2020 was the pandemic's epicenter in America, and now that it seemed to be winding down, this mega-concert was intended to put some closure to it all, a "victory lap" of sorts.  Only problem was the Delta variant sweeping through the country, causing once again ICU beds to fill up...this time almost exclusively with patients refusing the readily-available and effective Covid vaccine.  So in essence this concert was a celebration of the vaccinated, but not of the disease's decline.  As the days approached the concert it also became apparent that a tropical storm, Henri, was going to threaten the region and cause bands of heavy storms to sweep through the area.  Yet New York City mayor Bill de Blasio insisted the concert go on at the scheduled time.  The result: halfway through the evening, a strong storm swept through the area sending the thousands of live spectators to flee for cover, with the remaining performers put in a state of limbo after mixed signals of the concert only being delayed a couple of hours, and those at CNN...which was broadcasting it all live...to struggle to fill in the empty air time.  But the storm did not relent and the concert was cancelled, leaving scheduled acts like Bruce Springsteen, Patti Smith, Paul Simon and the Killers off the stage.  No, I didn't watch the first half of the concert, but from what I've read about it, everybody seemed to be having a good time.  Until the storm struck, that is.  Well, maybe this was Mother Nature's way of saying, "Don't declare victory until the game is over!"...

Great Old TV Episodes...from Batman

Early in 1966 ABC began airing the series Batman, starring Adam West as the caped avenger and Bert Ward as his teen-age sidekick.  I was nine at the time and didn't pick up on the fact that this series was loaded with tongue-in-cheek comedy, instead focusing on the adventures of the caped crusaders as they fought various criminal masterminds in Gotham City.  Each weekly story was split into two half-hour episodes, with the announcer at the end of the first one (always with Batman and Robin in dire danger) reminding the audience to stay tuned to the "same Bat-time, same Bat-channel".  Since at the time I seemed to have this thing for long-haired blondes, I suppose it was inevitable that I would fall for the series' chief female villain: Catwoman, played by Julie Newmar (of My Living Doll fame).  The first Catwoman story was aired in March of '66 with the episodes titled The Purr-fect Crime and Better Luck Next Time.  Normally I'd be rooting for Batman and Robin to defeat the bad guys, but never with Catwoman...but since I knew the "good guys" would prevail at the end it got to be a bit depressing to watch all the Catwoman episodes knowing she'd end up losing.  I remember at the time being an avid Batman trading card collector, and enjoyed borrowing a friend's Batman books to read...my favorite one, naturally, focused on Catwoman and her alter ego, Selena Kyle.  Later in the series Newmar left Batman for the movies and Eartha Kitt was hired to play her role, but by then my age had caught up with me and I had lost interest in the series.  A few years ago there was a critically-panned movie titled Catwoman starring Halle Berry...to this day I consider it as one of my favorites while just about everyone else on the planet thinks it sucked...

Still Recovering Gradually at Home from Surgery

I continue to "shelter in place" as I recover from my July surgery.  On the second day after my operation all hell seemed to break loose about Covid-19, with its Delta variant spreading explosively among the unmasked and unvaccinated population.  I was informed, while lying in my ICU bed, that the visitation policy was changed and that I could name exactly two people who would be permitted to visit me in my room...any others would have to stay in the waiting area until I could be eventually wheeled out to see them.  All throughout my two-week stay in the hospital news kept growing of the disease's resurgence...the day after I was finally discharged, it was announced by UF Health that they were indefinitely postponing elective surgeries in order to ensure ICU beds for the dramatically rising Covid cases...that would no doubt have included my own surgery had it been scheduled just a little later.  And now here I am, some three weeks later, and there's no sign of abatement in the infection and death numbers.  But at least I'm getting better...but it looks like I'm back to mask-wearing in public once I am again able to venture forth into this disease-ridden world.  Because my rib cage was separated for my open heart surgery to replace a defective aortic valve and repair an aortic aneurism, my recuperation has centered around the re-fused sternum area growing back together while preventing water buildup within my chest. Also, following surgery my heart twice went into a-fib (no regular sinus heart rhythm), but a procedure called Cardioversion restored normal beating which I have maintained since.  I am looking forward to a full recovery and getting back to work. A physical therapist has been visiting twice a week and helping me, both to exercise those parts of my body that are safe to exercise, and to take it easy on those parts that are still vulnerable...my walking has dramatically improved. But I don't know what to make of this coronavirus resurgence, except for the fact that it was completely preventable if more people had simply worn a mask in public and gotten vaccinated...oh, the folly of the prideful...

Quote of the Week...from Neil deGrasse Tyson

Dear Science Deniers (Anti-vaxers, anti-maskers, climate hoaxers, flat-Earthers), You found one another and communicate via stupefyingly advanced technologies that pivot on the discoveries of scientists. Just thought I'd remind you of that fact.  Sincerely, Your Smart Phone.

                                                                       ---Neil deGrasse Tyson

It deeply saddens me when someone I personally know dies from Covid-19 as was the case earlier this week, but it's no longer a matter of being helpless about the subject.  For months we have have FREE, EFFECTIVE vaccines available to ANYONE age 12 or over, and for well over a year have had access to story after story of victims in intensive care units with tubes sticking out of them, many dependent on ventilators to do their own breathing for them.  None of these facts, by the way, require access to a smart phone.  And it was well reported about the current Delta variant of the disease and its devastating effect on the population in India long before it gained supremacy here in the United States.  Delta is much more contagious than the other strains of Covid and that has been hammered home countless times.  Yet people continue to play games about how not wearing a mask in the presence of others without being vaccinated is somehow an assertion of their human rights and dignity.  If you haven't been vaccinated and refuse to wear a mask around others, then you have made a conscious decision to dehumanize yourself into a petri dish for Covid to live on, grow, and become readily transmissible to others.  I repeat: this resurgence of Covid-19 and the tragic deaths resulting from it in the U.S. are completely due to the millions of people that have deliberately degraded their own humanity to the level of a petri dish by neither wearing a mask nor getting vaccinated.  Your bodies are not closed systems: they easily get infected from others and in turn infect still others.  And Covid debilitates and kills.  Or have you completely surrendered your ability to discern reality?  Seems of late that folks are so prideful that instead of recognizing they made a mistake about something, they "double down" on their flawed thinking...

Watching Sports on TV During Recovery

I've been spending a great amount of evening time during my recovery watching sports on TV, first with the Tokyo Summer Olympics and next with Major League Baseball and soccer, particularly the Mexican Premier League.  I was surprised to see "my" Mexican team had a new manager (i.e. head coach), and none other than the fiery, passionate Miguel Herrera, whom I got to know well as Team Mexico's manager during the exciting 2014 World Cup.  So what became of the Tigres' long-term, very successful manager Ricardo Ferretti?  The other night Univision was showing a game between Juárez and Club América and wouldn't you know, old man Ferretti was right there, managing Juárez!  Well I've always liked both Herrera and Ferretti...I guess Juárez, nicknamed the "Bravos"...will now be my second choice behind Tigres.  As for baseball, I am delighted at the continuing success of the Tampa Bay Rays...they seem to be clicking together in all areas.  And I love the way they tend to get stronger in games as they progress into the late innings.  As for the other Florida team, the Miami Marlins, well...better luck next year!

Weekly Short Stories: 1975 Science Fiction, Part 3

Here are my reactions to two more 1975 science fiction stories as they appeared in the anthology Donald A. Wollheim Presents The 1976 Annual World's Best SF, which presented the editor's choices from the year before.  1975 was a year of détente between the U.S. and U.S.S.R., exemplified by the two countries cooperating with the Soyuz-Apollo docking to become the first space station...yet tensions were growing in Africa with newly independent Angola and Mozambique aligning themselves with the communist bloc and Cuba's Castro sending troops to Africa to aid Angola's Marxist government in its civil war.  As for me, I was still living in Hollywood and attending Broward Community College. But let's get back to those two stories, both of which were long enough to be called novellas...

THE STORMS OF WINDHAVEN by Lisa Tuttle and George R.R. Martin

This is a tale about tradition vs. pragmatism as a stagnated society of survivors from an interstellar ship crash on a remote planet have developed a system of inheritance to determine their people's roles in life.  Maris is a young woman who is a "flyer", i.e. she is accorded possession of a set of special wings made from the former ships vast sails which traversed the cosmos with radiation blowing them along.  But now she is being forced to give them up because of her society's rigid rules.  In rebellion, Maris comes up with a new plan for her world...

ALLEGIANCES by Michael Bishop

Set off on a future Earth following a planetwide apocalypse, much of humanity now resides in insulated domed cities interconnected by tunnels.  From time to time they send out people into the outside "wilds" to bring in people with special skills...here Clio accompanies her colleagues Yates and Guest in search of two exiles for their special information about a rival society set up in northern Europe.  The story becomes one about the meeting of two different cultures and which one is considered more advanced or better than the other.  You start out thinking the domed civilization is supreme, then that of the "outsiders"...and finally that even they may be under the thumbs of yet another group.  A little hard to get through at times, I think the notion of cultural supremacy and inferiority gets a very good discussion here...

Next week I continue my look at 1975 and that year's short science fiction...

Game of the Week: Wordscapes

 

Wordscapes is one of a number of puzzle apps users can play on their smartphone...Melissa installed it first on her phone and I followed suit a few weeks later.  As you can see from the picture, for each game they provide either 6 or 7 scrambled letters and it's my task to fill in the accompanying crossword squares to form real words.  It's possible through a number of games to build up credit that I can use to get hints if I get stalled on a puzzle...otherwise I would have to pay them money to get the same hint.  Yes, these games usually have a premium version that eliminates all ads.  Each weekend Wordscapes stages a tournament that the user can play against 99 others...the field gets selected by when the players start playing.  Although I dig the competitive spirit of the tourney, I also just like to pick up my phone and play a few rounds.  If you like Jumble then maybe this one's for you, too...

Constellation of the Month: Aquila (the Eagle)

 

Aquila, representing an Eagle, is one of the more prominent constellations.  Part of this is due to its brightest star Altair (magnitude .76), which is only 16.7 light years away.  And part is due to Aquila resting on the celestial equator, which means that except from extreme northern and southern latitudes this constellation is visible high up in the sky when it crosses the meridian, with much less interference from urban lighting.  Altair is at the southern vertex of the Summer Triangle, an asterism composed of the first-magnitude stars Altair, Vega and Deneb.  The first time I went to the beach with Melissa was during the Memorial Day weekend in 1986, and the two of us stood at the edge of the St. Augustine public pier looking eastward, watching the relentless ocean waves below and waiting for Altair's late night rising, surrounded by people fishing...that was fun.  Aquila also has several deep-space objects, most of the brightest being star clusters.  When I pick a "constellation of the month", the only condition is that it crosses the meridian at 10 pm Daylight Savings Time...so like last year's August pick Sagittarius, Aquila does just that...but it's very visible for most of the year at some time during the nighttime hours from dusk to dawn...

Great Old TV Episodes...from M*A*S*H

THE GENERAL FLIPPED AT DAWN to me was the funniest episode of M*A*S*H, a half-hour CBS comedy series that spanned eleven years...even though its setting, the Korean War, only lasted two. The abbreviated title stands for Mobile Army Surgical Hospital, and the main character is Hawkeye Pierce, a very skilled and clever surgeon played by Alan Alda and who sees the war for what it is.  The particular episode I chose was from Season 3, originally aired in September, 1974.  General Steele visits the medical camp and arbitrarily commands that it all be moved five miles down the road.  His kooky behavior quickly alienates most everyone there, and when Hawkeye sends off a helicopter with an injured soldier and refuses to make it come back for the General's personal transportation, he court-martials Hawkeye.  Harry Morgan, who a year later would come back and portray a completely different character, Colonel Potter, to the series' end, played the bonkers General Steele in this episode.  With its original cast including Wayne Rogers as Captain John McIntyre, McLean Stevenson as Lt. Colonel Henry Blake, and Larry Linville as Major Frank Burns in the early years, I really liked watching M*A*S*H.  But as each of these three departed, the show progressively became more serious and intellectual and I tended to avoid it.  Ironically, it was the final years of the series that garnered most of its awards, critical acclaim and high ratings...

Recovering at Home from Surgery

Just to keep this blog more or less continuous, I'm writing today's article.  It's been two weeks since I was discharged from the hospital following my aortic aneurism/valve replacement surgery and then two weeks in the hospital.  Melissa has been taking good care of me in just about every phase of my slow recovery.  And sometimes the patient himself doesn't see any improvement in his condition...but I've been told I'm doing much better: very encouraging. My physical therapist has been giving me different projects to work on and I have found them helpful.  On the second day after surgery, Shands hospital policy drastically limited to two named people those allowed to visit me...all because of the Delta variant resurgence of Covid-19.  And just as I was being discharged they formulated their policy of postponing elective surgery because of the shortage of ICU beds...had they scheduled my surgery for August as originally planned, I have no doubt that my operation would have been put off.  In any event, I managed to get it in under the wire and am very glad to be at home...

Quote of the Week...from Frank Zappa

Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible.                             --Frank Zappa

Frank Zappa (1940-93) was an avant-garde musician and composer, his collected works spanning many styles while often fusing them together in one piece.  He was very satirical with his song's lyrics, and made another quote I discussed in December 2019 on this blog: "The United States is a nation of laws: badly written and randomly enforced." The above quote of his dovetails nicely with the Canadian rock trio Rush's Vital Signs track from their incredible 1981 Moving Pictures album.  And with the population's norm these days for disrespecting science in favor of their precious manipulative, egomaniacal idols, I'm starting to feel like the little boy in the story The Emperor's New Clothes who was "deviant" in simply telling the truth: the emperor is naked!  The great figures of our history were not afraid of standing alone among their surrounding peers.  They often suffered ridicule and insult for simply speaking the truth and many weren't recognized within their own lifetimes for their contributions to humanity.  So, like the little boy in that children's story, I'm going to "deviate".  The current upsurge in the Covid-19 pandemic here in the United States is TOTALLY due to those selfish dupes who refuse to both wear masks in public enclosed places and get the vaccine.  I keep wondering, mystified at how many people have decided to make wearing a measly little thing like a mask the great issue in their lives to take a stand on.  Really?  From what I know about human nature, though, many of the anti-masker/anti-vaxxer folks behave as they do because they see others in their immediate group behaving this way and want to fit in and not be put down by the aggressive ones in that group. Back in early April 2020 I made the decision to wear a mask while at work...even though others (including a supervisor) laughed at me.  I then had my first vaccine in March 2021 and the second in April.  I never entertained the wild conspiracy bullshit (the emperor's new clothes) circulating around me and only stopped wearing a mask when the CDC cleared doing so for those completely vaccinated. But the Delta variant for this already very contagious disease that kills across the age spectrum has prompted those with the proper scientific credentials to go back and urge everyone...even if already vaccinated...to resume wearing masks while in crowds or indoors.  I came too close to having my essential, but elective open heart surgery postponed when the demand at Shands for ICU beds exploded...all because of the jerks who won't mask up or get vaccinated.  I hear a lot of talk from my state's demagogic governor Ron DeSantis banning mask mandates from even private businesses, but I never hear about the need for the people to behave in a responsible manner when each other's health...and even lives...are at stake.  Those who are BOTH anti-maskers and anti-vaxxers, like those in the fawning crowd's open adulation of the emperor's new "clothes", have committed themselves to their delusion: they disgust me... 

Communal Jigsaw Puzzles

 

Ever since I've been at home following my surgery and hospital stay, Melissa and I have been doing jigsaw puzzles on our dining room table...the above three so far.  We take turns over the course of the day laying out each successive puzzle and then slowly-but-surely putting it together.  It reminds me of an old 1920s Laurel and Hardy short film involving a chase scene...with an ongoing jigsaw puzzle on a table.  Everyone is running about in madcap fashion...until they catch eye of the puzzle and feel compelled to pause for a minute and work on it.  I call it a "communal" puzzle that anyone's welcome to contribute to, but since we're empty nesters and the visitors we have don't seem that interested in it, it's just the two of us...and the puzzle, of course.  Now it's time to disassemble our latest and break open a new one...

Weekly Short Stories: 1975 Science Fiction, Part 2

Below are my reactions to two more science fiction short stories as they appeared in the anthology Donald A. Wollheim Presents The 1976 Annual World's Best SF, which covered sci-fi published the previous year.  I ran my longest single run until the year 2010, 14.4 miles, in March of 1975, making five loops around the giant block in Davie where I went to elementary school, high school and community college...I wouldn't top it until 2010. Gerald Ford was our president, Cambodia and South Vietnam fell to the communists, and the Miami Dolphins just missed the playoffs...for the first time since Don Shula became head coach.  But enough of memories and history, let's delve into those two tales...

THE BEES OF KNOWLEDGE by Barrington J. Bayley

A space tourist of the future finds himself the only survivor of a ship to a mysterious planet, and soft-crashes on it.  He discovers it is inhabited by something resembling gigantic bees and tries to communicate with them so that he can repair the ship's broken beacon for rescue.  Eventually he discovers that his hosts feed upon knowledge embedded somehow within their own honey.  And upon trying it himself, he goes into a downward spiral: what knowledge is real and what isn't...and who is he, anyway?

THE ENGINEER AND THE EXECUTIONER by Brian M. Stableford

An android robot has been sent to an asteroid in our solar system to destroy it by changing its trajectory into the sun.  Why? An engineer working in its habitable interior has developed a type of virus that drastically alters the life it infects through spores.  The engineer and his adversary robot spar verbally about their fate, and then in desperation talk turns into action...I thought the ending was top-notch...

Next week I review more science fiction short stories from 1975...

Game of the Week: Scrabble

Scrabble is one of the board games in my house...and I also played it way down yonder in Hollywood when I was growing up.  My mother, sister, and I would sit there with our letter tiles, trying to figure words that would optimize the points scored, with strategies such as creating two words at once and/or placing the tiles on special squares on the board that doubles or triples the letter, or squares doubling or tripling the entire word's value.  I believe that I've grown pretty good at Scrabble, but I do have one pet peeve about the game.  My mom had a penchant for coming up with words that neither Anita nor I had ever heard of, and for the most part they were indeed credible words after consulting the dictionary.  I remember back in the 1990s here in Gainesville the Books-a-Million store would hold Scrabble games once a week, with the winners' names published in the Gainesville Sun...but that would involve interfering either with my sleep or working hours, so I never participated.  There is to me an adequate mixture of luck and skill in this game, for players cannot tell in advance which letters they are picking up from the table top...but sometimes making the best of what appears to be an impossible situation is more enjoyable than making a long word...

Watched Tokyo Olympics

When I was in the hospital for two weeks following open heart surgery, I had available a TV to watch, both when I was in the intensive care unit and when I was moved one story below to a more general room.  Once I felt capable enough, I watched a lot of the Tokyo Olympics...which were shown on NBC, NBCSports, USA Network, and CNBC.  I focused on the events for which judges did not play a dominant role in determining scores, opting instead for games and races.  Volleyball, basketball, table tennis, water polo, swimming, badminton, fencing, soccer, bicycle track racing, team handball, field hockey, softball...I enjoyed watching them all, noting that badminton looks pretty brutal when played on a high level.  I somehow missed out on many of the track and field events...in perspective this was most likely due to the fact that they were mostly held after my discharge from the hospital.  But my favorite events, which I enjoyed greatly, were the women and men's marathons...they were among the final events there.  But for the most part I skipped on the diving, gymnastics, artistic swimming, and skateboarding due to the objectivity factor of the judges.  I also thought the rock climbing competition was mesmerizing.  The Tokyo organizers minimized spectator presence due to the pernicious pandemic...understandable. For the same reason they decided not to stage awards with the winning country's national anthem...for me it was refreshing as I had long believed that the Olympics had become way too divisive with the nationalism.  Still, I admit that I would consistently root for the "home" team or contestant.  In just a few months China will be hosting the Winter Olympics...I sincerely hope I won't be back in the Krankenhaus when it takes place...

Great Old TV Episodes...from The Bob Newhart Show

OVER THE RIVER AND THROUGH THE WOODS, from the sitcom comedy series The Bob Newhart Show, was originally aired in November, 1975.  The series has Newhart portraying a Chicago psychologist married to Emily (Suzanne Pleshette) with the scenes generally split between their high-rise city apartment and Bob's work floor, where  receptionist Carol (Marcia Wallace) and orthodontist Jerry (Peter Bonerz) also work. The Hartleys have a neighbor down the hall, Howard, a passenger jet pilot played by Bill Daily of I Dream of Jeannie renown.  The series lasted from 1972 to 1978 and benefited from its weekly schedule on CBS at 9:30 pm, right between The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Carol Burnett.  I always enjoyed this series, typified by running gags reappearing throughout each episode.  In this particular episode, when Emily is absent traveling one Thanksgiving, lonely Bob decides to share it with friends Howard and Jerry...along with obnoxious patient Carlin (Jack Riley) for an evening turkey dinner...with just a little too much booze thrown in.  It featured a great running gag of a knock-knock joke, which gets ludicrous and twisted toward the end.  And Newhart's "more goo to go" line has never left me to this day.  Like  Mary Tyler Moore and Carol Burnett, this series was moderately funny, but I was caught completely off-guard when I saw this Thanksgiving-themed episode and lost it laughing to the point that I was crying.  I would never see knock-knock jokes in the same light again...

Recovery from Surgery Impacts Blog for Next Few Weeks

I'm still recovering at home from heart surgery, and this will go on for a few more weeks.  As for this blog, for obvious reasons I got out of the habit of writing daily articles...the ones preceding today's were almost all written in advance of the operation.  I had been writing weekly features on it: Sunday was for my favorite TV episodes, Tuesday I discussed specific games, Wednesday was about science fiction short stories I've read, and Friday I presented a meaningful quote from someone.  I may or may not stick to this pattern, and I may also skip some days writing as I recover...

Quote of the Week...from Charles Barkley

Yes, I'm vaccinated. Everybody should be vaccinated.  The only people who are not vaccinated are just [expletive].  Can you imagine if one of these guys that is not vaccinated, if they get one of these players' kids, wives, girlfriends, moms and dads sick and they die over some unnecessary conspiracy bullsh**t?  I think that would be just tragic.                                  ---Charles Barkley

There's not much I can add to the great Phoenix Suns' player and National Basketball Association Hall of Famer...I disagree with him sometimes but not here: he hit the bulls-eye with this comment he recently made during a CNBC interview.  We would not be in this upsurge in Covid-19 right now were it not for those millions upon millions of fellow Americans who have refused to be vaccinated.  The vaccines are free and widespread: no waiting in line or appointments necessary.  The irony is that in much of the rest of the world the population is desperate for vaccines.  The anti-vaxxers here tend to coincide with the anti-maskers: can't these fools realize that wearing masks cuts down on the disease transmission rate and that their refusal to get vaccinated directly leads to new outbreaks and a return to mask mandates?  

Just Finished Reading Mental Immunity by Andy Norman

About three weeks ago I was with Melissa in Books-a-Million browsing around when my eyes fell on Andy Norman's book Mental Immunity in the "self-help" section.  I briefly surveyed the contents and discovered that the author, one of those rare professional philosophers among us, wrote it largely in response to some of the things I was noticing about how people were adopting really, REALLY bad ideas that they were picking up from friends, the Internet, TV and radio.  But how does one reverse the tide of "alternative facts" and confront those who believe in them?  After all, aren't we all entitled to our own opinions?  Norman hones in on this assumption and challenges it, concluding that no, that while legally we may be so entitled our own flawed views...even when the "facts" supporting our positions are false...we are in no way morally entitled to them...even with matters of religious faith.  And, in fact, the idea of NOT challenging those pushing false beliefs is in itself immoral.  Norman doesn't just come up with his notions spontaneously, but bases them on the historical development of philosophy, going back to that of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle and progressing up to the century-old dispute about faith between William James and William Kingdon Clifford, the latter of whom promoted a more scientific approach to philosophy...and in particular epistemology, that is the study of knowledge, its truth value and use...and with whose perspective the author essentially agrees.  James, on the the other hand, made one's faith and core belief system a kind of unassailable fortress, basically giving rise to the notion that what people thought was somewhat a sacred right and to confront them was out of line...it was James' approach that won the day, and according to Norman this is causing a great deal of trouble in our time with conspiracy theories and slanted narratives running rampant and people bubbling themselves off with others who share their peculiar beliefs.  It is necessary to dissipate the aura of sacredness regarding one's own beliefs and open them up to the open, public scrutiny that they merit.  As for me, I often find myself standing back from disputing what I hold to be unwarranted assumptions from others around me, falling back on that old James-inspired "everyone's entitled to their own opinion" mantra as a kind of cop-out excuse for avoiding possibly unpleasant and awkward engagement.  Mental Immunity is a very rigorous introduction to philosophy, particularly the branch of epistemology, and there are sections in which I experienced difficulty keeping up with Andy Norman's narrative.  Norman is a philosophy professor, and his evolving teaching approach to the subject reveals part of his strategy for stemming the tide of bad ideas infecting our culture.  After seeing that his lectures weren't getting anywhere with his students, he changed his teaching tactics to include their in-class input...while politely questioning their various assertions as to where they got them from.  The book is an attempted balance between the author trying to justify his views on the state of affairs in our misinformation society of today and explaining in as much detail as he can, with his academic background and knowledge that he uses to back up those views.  It's a tough balancing act, and I respect his efforts.  I'm sure a rereading will help me better understand Norman's approach.  He seems to have rejected the parade of philosophies over the ages, finally setting on a modified version of Socrates' in which the search for truth is marked, not necessarily by rationalization and proof, but rather by inquiry with the notion of commonly-held presumptions playing a major role.  For example, when confronting someone with "bad ideas", politely-leveled questions leading to clarification and giving the source of those ideas helps to keep that party off the defensive, with the dialogue more likely to lead to mutual enlightenment.  At the book's end, Norman has an elaborate strategy laid out for this...I'm gonna have to go back to it...

Weekly Short Stories: 1975 Science Fiction, Part 1

Today I begin reviewing science fiction short stories from the year 1975 as they appeared in the anthology Donald A. Wollheim Presents The 1976 Annual World's Best SF, with the editor's picks from the previous year.  1975 was the year in history that Gerald Ford was president (and shot at a couple of times) and South Vietnam and Cambodia fell to the communists America had been fighting for years.  I was still living in Hollywood and attending college in Davie...more about that in another article. For now, back to the first two stories in the book...

CATCH THAT ZEPPELIN! by Fritz Leiber

A man walking through Midtown Manhattan, circa 1973, walks though a shaded area in front of him on the sidewalk as he is making his way to the Empire State Building and finds his city, country...and himself transformed into an alternate history where World War II and Hitler's Nazis never happened and zeppelins...moored to the tops of skyscrapers...were the dominant form of air transportation.  I thought Leiber did a great job of envisioning things...especially including a much greater economic and cultural influence of Germany over America had not the horrors and shame of Naziism drastically diminished that influence...

THE PEDDLER'S APPRENTICE by Joan D. Vinge and Vernor Vinge

This story is set far off into the future when humans have already explored and settled other star systems and cultures on Earth have come and gone in cycles of growth and self-destruction.  Now it's a worldwide, stagnate society, except for remote pockets such as the Highlands.  Wim Buckry, a rowdy young man leading his gang of crooks, accompanies a strange peddler passing through the area into the more civilized Flatlands and finally the area's capital of Fyffe.  Just who is this peddler who seems to possess and wield great magic and what is the dark secret that the leader of Fyffe is withholding from his strangely passive Flatlands populations?  The moral of this tale seems to be that, sure, growth involves risk and danger...but it's necessary...

Next week I continue looking out sci-fi short stories from 1975...

Game of the Week...Wheel of Fortune

Wheel of Fortune has become a deeply established fixture in American culture, with its co-hosts Pat Sajak and Vanna White going back many decades.  I usually see it on Saturday evenings at 7 on my local Channel 4 station, just preceding the Jeopardy! broadcast.  The game show's premise is for contestants (three of them) to solve the on-screen mystery word puzzle...hinted at by its topic...by alternately guessing letters and spinning the wheel, which usually lands on a dollar amount for each time the letter appears in the solution...but sometimes also landing on "bankrupt" or "lose a turn".  At the end of the show, which halfway through has a puzzle bonus game awarding expenses-paid travel to some exotic location, the player with the most accumulated winnings goes on to the final bonus round, where if they solve the usually very difficult puzzle they win lots more money...or a new car.  Although I prefer Jeopardy! to Wheel of Fortune, I have always enjoyed Sajak's sly wit and the way he has fun, often at his contestants' expense.  Back in 1989-90 he had his own late night TV talk show...which I liked...but apparently few others did and it was soon canceled.  I like the way that contestants who are unlucky with the wheel's spin still have chances to win a lot of money on special challenge games in the show, and that no one leaves with less than $1000 even if they never won a round.  There's a kind of corny, old-fashioned, relaxed and friendly spirit permeating this series, a real feel-good kind of vicarious experience.  And I get a kick out of solving the puzzles before someone else does... 

Recovering from Surgery

On Thursday, July 15th I underwent aortic valve replacement surgery as well as aortic aneurism repair, at the Shands Cardiovascular hospital.  It was necessary to perform open heart surgery that involved splitting my ribs, so recovery has necessarily been a more painful and drawn out process than had I only needed the valve replaced.  After some post-operatic concerns I was finally released this past Saturday and am now at home.  In case you're wondering how I wrote daily blog articles through all this, I didn't, having written about three weeks of articles in advance.  I was first diagnosed with the aneurism and bicuspid valve, the latter a defect that I've unknowingly had my whole life, in early 2012 and had been getting annual examinations as to the aneurism's size and the valve's appearance.  My thoracic surgeon, who I've had through this whole process, this past April decided it was time for the operation, and after some initial hesitancy I agreed.  He had given me his assent to engage in physical activity (such as running) that did not involve lifting heavy weights...while being careful to monitor my reactions.  After I've fully recovered I want to return to running, but for now my goal is to gradually get better while keeping my lungs cleared...    

Great Old TV Episodes...from The Carol Burnett Show

 

SEASON 6 EPISODE 20 of the multiple Emmy Award-winning hour-long comedy variety series The Carol Burnett Show, which ran from 1967 to 1978, stands out in my memory for one sketch that feature Tim Conway playing his revered role as The Oldest Man.  In it Harvey Korman plays a rich man stuck upstairs in his swanky home as the smoke billows around him...Conway finally makes his appearance slowly climbing the ladder outside, and begins to painstakingly break with his axe every pane in the wall-sized window before entering...and then from the inside knocks out the remaining panes. When he did this, I fell apart with laughter...and it continued as Korman gets overcome by the smoke and tells Conway he needs to perform mouth-to-mouth resuscitation: the veteran comedian, who has already put his colleague into a laughing fit state, ad-libs a couple of lines and sends the skit over the edge.  My favorite Tim Conway role on this show has always been The Oldest Man...I remember an earlier episode when he plays a surgeon who stumbles into the operating room (Korman is the patient on the table, naturally), trips, and does excruciatingly slow somersaults across the floor.  Although it had aired since the late 1960s, I became a stalwart Carol Burnett watcher after CBS switched it to its great Saturday night lineup in 1973, closing it all out at 10. This fire rescue episode, also featuring Valerie Harper with Conway, Korman and Burnett in a blind date skit and one with Burnett spoofing Charro, originally aired in February, 1973...