My March 2022 Running and Walking Report

I'm not sure whether my increased running totals for this past month represent an aberration or part of a continuing process...I suspect the former...but I did have some higher figures: 290 total miles, I ran on all the days of the month, and 18 miles was my longest single run.  I ran in two races: the Micanopy 10 Mile hosted by the Florida Track Club on March 19th and a Depot Parkrun 5K the following Saturday.  I doubt that I'll be running as much as the weather warms further into the spring/summer seasons...I'm hoping to "step" up the walking, as well as begin some swimming workouts, to balance out the picture a bit...

On the April 9-10 weekend there are two upcoming local races.  On Saturday the 9th the Florida Track Club is holding another event, this one the Headwaters 5K that takes place near my home in northern Gainesville. I ran it last year and it's free with my FTC membership.  And then there is the "Run Your Buns Off" event the next morning, starting and finishing from the outlying town of Hawthorne and using a six-mile-plus strip of the Hawthorne Trail to simultaneously stage a number of races, ranging from 5K to a marathon. They accomplish these distances by having entrants undergo multiple there-and-back cycles...the half-marathon involves two and the marathon four, so you're basically covering the same territory over and over again.  The half costs $65 and the marathon a whopping $90.  I don't know...the prospect of spending this amount of money to run a half-marathon with such an unvarying, repetitive course just doesn't appeal to me, especially with the prospect of that free race the previous day (closer to home and with a more interesting course).  After that weekend the only local races I see in "my" Alachua County area are the Depot Parkruns that take place each Saturday morning...my intention is to try them out once or twice a month throughout the rest of the spring and summer.  I might try out some speed-walking in some of those races...I did walk for a total of 125 miles in March... 

Weekly Short Stories: 1983 Science Fiction, Part 4

Today, while keeping my emphasis on 1983, I am switching to the first book in a different science fiction short story anthology series: The Year's Best Science Fiction, First Annual Collection, edited by Gardner Dozois and featuring stories that for the most part do not overlap the concurrent "year's best" series edited by Donald A. Wollheim that I have been examining.  My intention is to review stories from both books until Wollheim's anthology series concludes after 1989.  Here are my reactions to the first five tales appearing in Dozois' book...

CICADA QUEEN by Bruce Sterling

I recently discussed a 1982 short story by Bruce Sterling titled Swarm...this one belongs to the author's same fictional universe in which the solar system is divided between two competing human factions: the Mechanists who tend to be cyborgs and populate the Asteroid Belt and the Reshaped, who alter their makeups through biology and dwell around Saturn's rings.  They trade with an alien reptilian race called the Investors. In this tale an Investor queen has defected and established her own independent zone between the Mechanists and Reshaped...one of the latter in turn defects with his own agenda, that of terraforming Mars for human habitation.  Lots of political maneuvering here...

BEYOND THE DEAD REEF by James Tiptree, Jr.

At a Mexican resort by an underwater reef, a man hears another's tale of adventure and near-death, beyond a dead zone in the water. This is one of those stories citing humanity's abuse of the environment...in this case the pollution and despoiling of the ocean floor...and a possible if rather fanciful defensive response from nature...

SLOW BIRDS by Ian Watson

The best story of today's lot, on an island in Earth's future, generation after generation of the population...spread out among country towns...there is a racing sport involving skates and small sails, played on the round glass surfaces generated by explosions created by "Slow Birds", which are slow-moving missiles that randomly crop up from time to time, occasionally exploding and destroying whole areas, including cities.  One of the sport's athletes crosses his opponent after a race and the chain of revenge threatens his family, leading ultimately leading to the truth about the Slow Birds. I'd love to see this story adapted to the big screen... 

VULCAN'S FORGE by Poul Anderson

This is one of those stories about a computer taking on personality characteristics of humans, to the point where it is treated as sentient, intelligent life with feelings.  The setting is Mercury as a project is underway to study an asteroid, Vulcan, that is so close to the Sun that its metal surface is molten...an unmanned ship has been sent there to gather data, and it contains one of those computers whose memory history deeply bond it with its owner...  

MAN-MOUNTAIN GENTIAN by Howard Waldrop

This is a peculiar take-off on the Japanese sport of Sumu wrestling, in this tale popularized into the 21st century with a special spin in which Zen and paranormal elements enter the ring between the two contestants.  And the wrestlers have funny names, like in our popular phony pro wrestling: Man-Mountain Gentian, Killer Kudzu, Ground Sloth Ikimoto, Typhoon Takanaka, to name a few.  My one personal point of reference with Sumo wrestling is the scene early in the 1967 James Bond movie You Only Live Twice...had I not seen it I probably would be lost in this story.  Still, I didn't quite get its ending...

Next week I'll continue looking at 1983 short science fiction from the Gardner Dozois anthology ...

Women and Men's NCAA Final Four Teams Set for This Weekend

I have been pleasantly surprised recently at the general competitiveness in the women's NCAA tournament, at least in the Elite Eight stage.  Although South Carolina thoroughly trounced upstart Creighton by 30 points in their game, the other contests were pretty close and exciting, Stanford, Connecticut and Louisville coming out victorious and advancing.  I'm looking forward to watching the championship game on Sunday, but will miss the semifinal round this Friday on account that I'll be at work.  I'll be rooting for Stanford against Connecticut and South Carolina against Louisville.  On the men's side, the Final Four action starts on Saturday with an ACC showdown between North Carolina and Duke, and then Kansas vs. Villanova.  I'm with the Tarheels and Jayhawks...I really like that new North Carolina coach.  If you plan on watching any of the Final Four games, the women's games are shown on ESPN and the men's on CBS.  I tried listening to the play-by-play on radio of yesterday's women's Louisville-Michigan game and just couldn't visualize what they were describing...yet I remember back in 1968-69 as a twelve-year old kid experiencing the entire Miami Floridians ABA season via radio...never did actually see a game: go figure...

Podcaster Rob Dial Muses on Self-Belief and Action

On one of Rob Dial's Mindset Mentor podcasts last week, the motivational coach brought up an interesting topic: why do so many people nowadays think that they must possess supreme confidence and belief in themselves before they can even begin a self-improvement project?  Dial maintains that they have it all backwards...nothing inherently wrong with positive self-talk and affirmations, but first we need to act, throw ourselves into the fray, so to speak.  Then, as the results of our actions become manifest, we can act on them while at the same time gradually build up that sense of self-confidence and belief that we had erroneously thought to be a prerequisite to getting started.  It's a variation of Dial's maxim "Ready fire, aim", juxtaposing the last two terms of this common exhortation to emphasis the need for action up front, followed by adjustment.  It's also an indictment of the overthinking folks tend to engage in before they undertake meaningful endeavors, especially the ones in which ego and potential social humiliation could be involved.  One tool I use is the humorous disclaimer "Don't mind me, I'm just a tourist!"...even in my hometown...whenever I screw up: a sense of humor about oneself is certainly helpful.  And as we engage ourselves in the activities that are important to us, stumbling is often on the menu: get used to it and don't fear it to the point where it immobilizes you.  But as our host also often says, we don't fail when we mess up while trying...on the contrary that's inevitable for growth. Failure is only the result of either never starting or giving up...

Just Finished Rereading The Waste Lands by Stephen King

The Waste Lands, from 1991,  is the third volume of Stephen King's seven-volume The Dark Tower fantasy series.  The series, ostensibly based on a narrative poem by Robert Browning, features Roland Deschain, the Gunslinger, whose mission and quest lead him...with the aid of his ka-tet of fellow travelers...to that fabled dark tower through which all of reality is spun and governed.  Before I go on, let me warn you that this article is going to contain some plot spoilers.  Something is amiss in the Tower and Roland is determined to follow his ka, or "destiny" as four special characters...Eddie, Susannah, Jake, and Jake's little animal friend Oy (a "billy-bumbler") make up that group.  The first part of The Waste Lands, which I initially read in 2009, concerns the effort to bring in Jake from his old world, an alternative universe that is, in essence, our own...Roland's world (and most of the story's setting) is from a different reality.  That being accomplished, after much struggle naturally, the group goes to the run-down, post-apocalyptic metropolis of Lud, where Jake claims an insane train named Blain is there to take them to a portal that can lead to the Tower...no, I don't get it, either. There's a really bad, bad man in Lud named the Tick-Tock Man that they have to get past, and a nefarious character named Richard Fannin is later introduced.  The biggest impact the book made on me was its depiction of Lud and what happens to a society and its culture when the world has "moved on": the population loses its earlier connection with its legacy of technology and, worse, forgets the crucial social institutions that held it all together as a civilized, cultured and rationally-based society.  Now the people are governed by fear, violence and greed, quick to subscribe to the latest conspiracy theory around and to follow charismatic and ruthless strongmen...starting to sound familiar?  I'd recommend anyone read the second part of this book about Lud to see the direction we're going as a society and pause to reflect on how to turn it all back around.  Of course, a series like this builds open itself and you'd probably be lost if you didn't read the preceding material first, not knowing what had transpired in the narrative up to that point.  The next book in the series, titled Wizard and Glass and which was my favorite one the first time I read through The Dark Tower, would come out in 1997.  For now, though, I will take a short break from rereading this interesting if not rather confusing series to read Ken Follett's latest novel Never, which Stephen King wholeheartedly recommended recently on his Twitter feed...

Ran in Gainesville's Weekly Depot Park 5K This Morning

Gainesville has a cool, free weekly 5K race on Saturday mornings at Depot Park on 874 SE 4th Street...the Parkrun concept is spreading through the USA and other countries, now with some 48 locations here and many more abroad.  You sign up for it online and print out the barcodes they provide you...these will be scanned at the end of each event so that your times can be recorded and posted.  I signed up at the start of 2019...so far, with today's run, I have participated in seven races, with a fourteen-month period of no races held between March 2020 and May 2021 during the Covid pandemic.  My finishing times have never been particularly fast, even by my own past standards.  But I enjoy the positive vibes generated by the volunteers and other runners and the park is beautiful...I especially enjoy listening to the various birds singing around me as I run by the many trees there.  This past Wednesday and Thursday we received a lot of rain in northern Florida, but come race time today at 7:30 the sky was clear and the temperature a pleasant 49 with 90% humidity.  It was announced just before the race that several folks were running the Trail of Payne 10K the same morning in Paynes Prairie State Park a few miles down the road...I passed on it, unwilling to endure the rain-soaked ground and mud of that trail race.  My goal with today's 5K was simple: find a faster pace that I could feel comfortable running for a sustained distance.  I think I accomplished that, finishing in 30:45 with a pace slower than I was running, say, ten years ago but one more suitable to my advancing age.  I mentioned a few weeks back that I'd like to occasionally try speed-walking the Depot Parkrun. There's an incredible 79-year old who does this for longer races and I'm very impressed by his speed...ultimately I see my own future in distance/speed walking as well.  Click HERE for today's results...

Quote of the Week...from Stephen King

The big boy's face was one that Jake had seen before.  It was the face of a kid who would think it the height of hilarity to douse a cat's tail with lighter fluid or feed a bread ball with a fishhook planted in the middle to a hungry dog. The sort of kid who sat in the back of the room and snapped bra straps...and then said, "Who, me?" with a big, dumb look of surprise on his face once someone finally complained.  There weren't many kids like him at Piper but there were a few.  Jake supposed there were a few in every school.  They dressed better at Piper but the face was the same.          --Stephen King, from The Waste Lands

I'm currently rereading Stephen King's fantasy series The Dark Tower, and just came across the above lines in the third book The Waste Lands.  When it got to "Jake supposed there were a few in every school" I thought, yes, that's true...only there were more than a few from the school I attended in south Florida.  And my own bus stop seemed to hold an extremely high concentration of them, commonly referred to as "bullies".  When I was growing up through the 7th through 12th grades there was a nastiness of behavior among many of my peers that I have not seen remotely matched ever since I left this school.  In King's story, he was referring to one individual, namely pivotal character Eddie Dean's bullying and disturbed big brother Harry.  On the screen bullies are also often depicted as loners feared and scorned by the majority of "normal" kids around them.  But where I came from it was the bullies who were the stars of the show, and not only did other kids rush to adore and suck up to them...even collaborating in their persecution of whichever targeted victim was the focus of attention...but the teachers themselves either turned a blind eye to this behavior or held the aggressors in high regard.  One of the traits that bullies have is that, when confronted, they often claim that they were just "kidding around" and "can't you take a joke".  And there has been a kind of ethos perpetuated among both kids and adults that in bully/victim confrontations, it's always the responsibility of the victim to stand up for his or her self alone...as if this is a necessary rite of growing up (see the Andy Griffith episode about Opie's bully).  Stephen King has written a lot about bullies, and it's one of the many things I like about him...they stand out in the stories It and the The Body.  King also brought up an important detail about standing up to them: sometimes they're armed, and in today's world that is becoming more and more of a likelihood...try "standing up" to that.  I've seen celebrities long grown-up fondly look back on their childhood years and claim that they were bullies, laughing it all off as good-natured fun...Bill O'Reilly comes to mind in this regard.  The question I have is whether bullies in childhood, even after many years of being adults, are constitutionally capable of recognizing the hurt to others from their past behavior and have truly transformed themselves into more compassionate, empathetic human beings...from what I've seen so far with some of my old classmates I've yet to see this happen...

The Awkwardness of Talking About Mathematics

Many decades ago, back in late 1973, I was a teenager working at a Miami Shores firm as a records clerk.  Hank, one of the auditors there, one day randomly asked me if I knew about trigonometry and could explain to him the meaning of sine and cosine.  Having studied the basics of it all a year earlier, I patiently presented the concepts as I had learned them: starting with a circle of radius 1 and center (0,0) and then explaining cosines and sines as the x and y points on that circle where the line intersecting said circle goes through the origin and creates an angle with the x-axis (of which cosines and sines are functions).  But I didn't speak any of this by itself...I got pen and paper and illustrated it.  Ol' Hank then got very angry and said he only wanted to know about solving triangles using trigonometry (which I was on the way to covering) ...and I walked away, not in the least bit willing to accommodate that anger: screw him.  Hank was a contentious little so-and-so who would take history classes at the local community college just to argue with the instructor...a real ditto-head long before Rush Limbaugh would coin it and turn it into a dubious badge of honor.  I mention all this not because I carry any grudge or offense against this forgettable character, but because it happens to be the last time anyone brought up anything about mathematics to me away from school that went beyond simple arithmetical problems.  And since I did not become a mathematics teacher, engineer or scientist, I have never professionally used anything I have ever learned in this field beyond early elementary school, although in college I studied calculus, differential equations, probability and statistics, and linear algebra. Yet within the academic corridors mathematics reigns supreme, although it's not exactly a conversational icebreaker.  In fact, I find bringing up mathematics in conversation with anyone extremely awkward and random...after all, mathematics is the antithesis of ego: it exists on its own terms and cares not whether folks like it, understand it, or even find it interesting.  But I think I'm going to experiment around a bit and see whether or not I can get people to open up about how they feel about mathematics, and even delve lightly into its contents if that's possible.  My initial results seem to indicate that people are a lot more interested in talking about how math made them feel and affected their lives than discussing it on its own terms...

Weekly Short Stories: 1983 Science Fiction, Part 3

Today I finish examining 1983 science fiction short stories as they appeared in Donald A. Wollheim's anthology The 1984 Annual World's Best SF, spotlighting what the editor deemed as the choice tales from the previous year.  Yet next week 1983 will continue as I switch to a new sci-fi anthology series, that one edited by Gardner Dozois.  But for now, let's look at the last three in Wollheim's book...

AS TIME GOES BY by Tanith Lee

This is a story of time travel paradoxes and second chances, its entire premise unique and bizarre.  You see, in this tale every star system in the cosmos exists in its own peculiar, different time frame...for travelers to interact between systems they must first go to way stations in which time does not exist.  It is at one of these stations that the captain of a ghost ship, supposedly destroyed in space but continually sighted, enters the bar and is confronted by a young woman...the story goes on from there.  The problem with stories like this is that as a reader I guess I'm supposed to be impressed by the paradox involved while at the same time meekly accepting the impossible "rules" the author has laid out concerning time and space.

THE HARVEST OF WOLVES by Mary Gentle

In a nightmare totalitarian future world in which people are only allowed to continue living if the State finds them useful, an elderly woman living in poverty must carefully maneuver around a young man...who she knows is an informant for the State...in order to preserve what little is left of her independence and life.  The moral of this story that has a twisted ending: we all do what we must to survive.

HOMEFARING by Robert Silverberg

In this novella, a man's consciousness is sent into the body of another in the future as part of a scientific experiment, but instead of landing within a human being just decades ahead as planned, he finds himself sharing consciousness with a highly intelligent, evolved lobster in the distant future.  Silverberg presents an intriguing look, not only of the possibilities for eventual intelligent life in the sea, but also a way that life forms could communicate through the medium of water by means of chemicals.  The story is also interesting because, in the second book of Stephen King's Dark Tower series...which I just finished rereading...the protagonist Roland walks through mysterious doors that lead to similarly shared consciousnesses with select individuals from different times.

Next week I continue my look at the year 1983 in short science fiction as I begin the "new" anthology series...

About This Year's NCAA March Madness Basketball

One of the problems with championship playoffs in various sports is that, unless you walk away with the title, your team's final game is bound to be a loss that will get under your skin for the entire off-season.  In each of the men and women's "March Madness" NCAA basketball championship tournaments for 2022, after so many teams struggled for so much in the latter part of the regular season just to "make" the tournament, the initial fields of 68 have been brutally whittled down to 16 in the span of five days...this weekend it will go down to 4.  I remember in 2014 when "my" Florida Gators, then under head coach Billy Donovan, made that Final Four and had visions of yet another championship.  But Connecticut, the eventual tournament winner that year, got hot and eliminated UF in the semifinal...I hardly ever hear of that wonderful season spoken in happy terms...why?  Because the Gators didn't win it all!  I for one did think of it as a glorious season...folks just have to get a better sense of perspective about what winning means...

On the women's side Florida bowed out early, 69-52 to the University of Central Florida.  But they had a great turnaround season with their new coach Kelly Rae Finley...I'm happy for them.  The men's team didn't make the NCAA championship tourney but were invited to the National Invitation Tournament, losing to Xavier in the second round...good for them, too.  Their coach, Mike White, left the team after their conference tournament to work for Georgia...Florida just hired San Francisco Dons coach Todd Golden to replace him after he led them to their first NCAA tournament appearance since 1998.  The Gators men's team, I strongly believe, has had issues for years about poor shooting...2022 was no exception.  Maybe the new coach can emphasize this need in his upcoming recruiting.  As for the remaining teams in the tournament, for the men my favorites North Carolina, Miami and Kansas are still in there...with the women the TV coverage is not only poorer, but there is much less parity between the elite teams and the rest of the field that has made the men's side more interesting to watch: sadly, it's always seemed to be that way. Well, come Thursday we will see the games resume with the Regional semifinals...

Life Coach Podcaster Suggests Journaling

Last week on his Mindset Mentor podcast...which I listen to regularly...Rob Dial urged listeners to engage in the constructive activity of personal journaling.  I've done this sporadically in the past, but in an unstructured way.  Dial suggests that many of us don't do it right, anyway.  He says that for journaling to be an effective device for improving our own lives, we might follow his advice of asking ourselves questions, particularly about how we feel about aspects of our lives, that we can reflect upon and write down...and then to go more deeply in turn by questioning those answers.  His rationale for journaling is that what we mentally ponder is often difficult to follow up on and explore in depth unless we put it on paper to look at.  Of course, one problem many have is that when they are reflecting upon highly personal topics, a frank self-discussion of what they want and where they are going may not be things they would wish to fall into the hands of others.  To this concern Rob Dial replies that if that's what is keeping anyone from journaling then all they have to do is just rip up and throw away whatever they just wrote...after all, it's the process of journal writing in itself that is the catalyst for personal enlightenment, focusing our thoughts on the things that matter.  Although I've been generally faithful in writing this blog of mine, it is (deliberately) far removed from what Dial is talking about regarding personal journaling.  I plan to try out his ideas and see where they lead, in a separate format of course...   

Just Finished Rereading The Drawing of the Three by Stephen King

The Drawing of the Three, the second novel in Stephen King's fantasy/science fiction series The Dark Tower, came out in 1987...the series is loosely based on Robert Browning's 1852 narrative poem Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came.  I probably need to interject here that since this is the second volume of a series, then my following discussion of it will necessarily involve giving away some of what happens in the first book...in other words, spoiler alert! The protagonist, a nobleman-turned-gunslinger named Roland Deschain, is from an alternate universe, having grown into maturity on a world that has "moved on" and is in a state of decline and stagnation...although from time to time there is evidence of a previous, technologically advanced society.  Roland is seeking the Dark Tower, an edifice that holds all of reality together...but it has an unwelcome occupant, the Crimson King, whose nefarious ends threaten that reality.  Roland's chief adversary on his quest has been the sorcerer Walter or "The Man in Black", who at the close of the previous book The Gunslinger revealed to him that he will be drawing three people into his life.  In this second book, Roland awakes on the western beach and is attacked by a huge predatory crustacean he calls "lobstrosity"...this sets into motion a life-or-death struggle for him as he also tries to find a remedy for the infection the monster's bites have inflicted on him.  To this end he encounters a door standing by itself on the beach...by entering it he also enters into the mind of Eddie Dean, a heroin addict from New York in the 1980s.  As the story develops, so does the adventure with another figure, Odetta Susanna Holmes, representing the second character to be drawn, from a second door down the shore.  Like Eddie, she is also to be found in New York City...but unlike him her time is in the early 1960s...and she has a dual personality in Detta Walker.  Eddie and Odetta/Detta generate enough drama for Roland to have to deal with while trying to both find medicine for himself as well as keep his body on the door's other side from being eaten by the lobstrosities.  But there is yet a third door, and Walter's prophecy only states to Roland that the third to be drawn is "Death, but not for you".  And thus approaches the book's climactic scene...

The Drawing of the Three enhances the depth of the Dark Tower series by introducing these two pretty complicated characters as they interact with Roland and one another.  On the other hand, although the idea of doors as portals into other realities seemed really cool to me the way Stephen King presented them, I still found the whole idea of Roland's quest and the doors kind of preposterous.  But, after all, it's just a story and I thoroughly dug this book...as well as the series as a whole: what a ride!  Now, on to Book Three, titled The Waste Lands...

Ran the Florida Track Club's Micanopy 10-Mile Race Today

 

This morning I got up at the ungodly time of 5:45 to get myself ready for a ten-mile race I had already signed up for.  The Micanopy event, which begins at 8:00, is a combination five and ten-mile race, starting in front of the cemetery on Smith Street, going down Whiting Road south of town and then turning into hilly dirt roads before heading back, finishing in front of the ballpark at 3rd and 6th.  The extra five miles for my chosen ten-mile run consisted of a loop of slopes and hills while the running surface was uneven, slick, rocky and full of treacherous little depressions.  I listened to my MP3 player the whole way, and once the race had gone on a few minutes we were all pretty much spread out on the course and distanced from one another...the way I like it.  The temperature during the race varied from 63 to 67 degrees and the humidity an unpleasant, muggy 83-87%.  The Florida Track Club holds these kinds of races year-round and maintains a positive, low-key spirit that is infectious.  I had set as a goal beating the time of an hour fifty minutes...when I crossed the finish line my time was 1:48:24. I've noticed a peculiar thing about this race and February's half-marathon: my pace seems to strangely speed up a bit when I'm tackling the hills, even though I often walk stretches of the steepest slopes.  My recovery from the race seems to be going well...Melissa and Rebecca accompanied me out there and enjoyed breakfast and then walked around the town while I ran.  Looking back on it, I, too, enjoyed the experience...maybe this can be the start of a new annual tradition...

Here's a link to the race results...

Quote of the Week...from Rick Pitino

Set higher standards for your own performance than anyone around you, and it won't matter whether you have a tough boss or an easy one.  It won't matter whether the competition is pushing you hard, because you'll be competing with yourself.                                   ---Rick Pitino

Rick Pitino is the current head basketball coach of Iona College, whom my Florida Gators just played (and somehow defeated) in the opening round of this year's National Invitation Tournament.  He's coached several teams over the decades, most notably Kentucky and Louisville, consistently taking them deep into the NCAA championship "March Madness" tournament and winning a couple of titles.  He mentored his assistant coach Billy Donovan, who would in turn coach Florida for many years, earning them consecutive national titles in 2005 and 2006.  But Pitino also fell from grace in scandal as in 2017, as part of a sweeping NCAA investigation covering many schools, as his program was found tainted by illicit escort services and bribery for players...he was first suspended and then fired, later suing Louisville on account that they did not provide him due process...the two parties ultimately settled.  I'm sad about all that, but also realize that people do fall from time to time in their lives from their own flaws, and the more famous they are the harder and louder they hit the ground.  That's too bad for Pitino as he absolutely did not need to cut any corners to generate competitive, winning teams: he was and still is a great, motivating coach...as his above quote indicates.  It's been my experience over the years that keeping high working standards for myself and consistently adhering to them, while possibly (and irrationally) perceived as a threat of sorts by insecure bosses and colleagues, over time works to liberate myself from others' control, whether it be from micromanagement or peer pressure manipulation.  It helps that I've seen as role models over the course of my life other people who have exhibited this independent consciousness to their assignments and always noticed how they tend to deflect controversy and intrigues away from themselves.  I'm not perfect in this regard, but along with another quote, from Max Ehrmann's Desiderata, I think I'm making a little progress: "Avoid loud and aggressive persons: they are vexatious to the spirit.  If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain and bitter for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself."  I wish Rick Pitino the best for the rest of his career and life...it was great seeing him coach his team against the Gators Wednesday evening...

Constellation of the Month: Canis Minor (the Lesser Dog)

 

Canis Minor is a small February/March evening constellation, just north of the faint constellation Monoceros (and further north of Canis Major (last month's featured constellation).  It lies just south of the Zodiac, at the junction of Gemini and Cancer.  Although small...only two stars are brighter than 4th magnitude...it is still more prominent than many other constellations, including the aforementioned Cancer and Monoceros.  It features Procyon, the seventh-brightest star in the night sky and one of the nearest, only 11.4 light-years distant.  The other readily visible star is Gomeisa at third-magnitude brightness but much more distant, around 160 light-years.  The easiest way to see Canis Minor from latitudes north of the Equator is to either go straight up from Sirius, the brightest star of the night sky, or fix on Orion and go due East (left) from the star Betelgeuse in the north part of that constellation.  In the evening sky, when spring rolls around the stars above are much dimmer...a look toward the west will reveal all those bright stars and constellations of the winter, now following the sun to the setting horizon.   But I always have a soft place in my heart for the springtime, for it was during this season back in 1964 when my father introduced me, at age seven, to the constellations, pointing them out to me in the sky...what a great memory!  Next month I'll pick another constellation to discuss...

Weekly Short Stories: 1983 Science Fiction, Part 2

Today I continue looking through 1983 science fiction short stories as they appeared in Donald A. Wollheim's anthology The 1984 Annual World's Best SF, featuring his picks of the choice works from the preceding year.  In 1984 another sci-fi anthology series began, this one edited by Gardner Dozois and it would last through 2018.  Like with Wollheim, his books also spotlight stories published the year before.  I intend to include it as well in my reviews...there's not much overlap between Wollheim and Dozois, so my weekly advance through the years is necessarily going to slow down as I go through more material.  Here are my reactions to the next three tales in Wollheim's book...

IN THE FACE OF MY ENEMY by Joseph H. Delaney

Kasioma, or Casey as others commonly call him, is an American Indian man who works on a crew for a space development company.  He has a secret, though...at a distant time in his past...hundreds of years before...an alien culture rescued him from a violent death and not only resuscitated him to life but modified his body so that he is virtually immortal.  On the planet Campbell they've discovered an alien structure and want to keep the authorities ignorant and distant...Kimberly Ryan (the narrator) has been sent to investigate but her flight is sabotaged and crashed. She and her bodyguard, who just happens to be Casey...survive and solve the mystery.  The story's plot was a little too convoluted for my tastes...

THE NANNY by Thomas Wylde

Humanity has foolishly blown itself up in war and its last dying hope is a ship dispatched from Earth orbit to Alpha Centauri, carrying wo astronauts and many eggs that carry the future of the human race.  An explosion midtrip awakes one of the crew, who discovers the other is dead and that the eggs must be unfrozen and incubated.  What follows is a race against time and a lesson in the positive, sacrificial virtues that people can demonstrate...often from those one would never suspect.  The ending was unexpected and encouraging.  I was also impressed with the hard science used to drive the plot...

THE LEAVES OF OCTOBER by Don Sakers

Unlike on Earth, tree life in the cosmos, the Hlut, is not only sentient but also telepathic, and the story's narrator is one such life form, describing its odyssey of assignment to Earth to assess for the "others" the intentions and possible threats of humans as they explore space and ultimately establish a military-based empire.  This story stood out by depicting things from a plant's viewpoint...pretty intriguing...

Next week I conclude my look at the 1983 stories from Wollheim's book before I start with those from Dozois...

Just Finished Rereading The Gunslinger by Stephen King

Having gone through a number of revisions over the course of years, The Gunslinger is the first of seven books in Stephen King's fantasy/science fiction Dark Tower series.  Here's an excerpt of my blog article about the series from January, 2009:

But let’s go over now to Stephen King’s history of writing a series. He conceived of the Dark Tower series during the late 1960s, beginning writing on the first installment, The Gunslinger, in 1968. The finished first volume was published in 1982. He built up a loyal readership with this series although the next three books were relatively spaced apart in publication: 1987, 1991, and 1997. Then, following the fourth book of the series, The Wizard and Glass, no more books came out for a while. Finally, after King was almost killed by a distracted motorist while walking down a Maine road in 1999, he resolved to complete the series. And in a torrent of writing, he rushed out the last three (lengthy) volumes in 2003 (#5), 2004 (#6), and 2004 (#7)!

Back then I didn't mention that King in 2003 made a number of revisions to The Gunslinger to bring it more in line with the rest of the series narrative...I think I must have read an earlier version the first time I read it fourteen years ago, but this time around it's clear that it had been updated.  The setting to the story is an alternate (but similar) universe set some time in the future, after the world has "moved on"...but is it really the future?  There is a sense of everything having run down, including civilization and the clues of a technology-based society destroyed by a past cataclysm.  Roland Deschain is the protagonist, the Gunslinger who in his boyhood was a young noble whose world was turned upside-down in a revolt...he is now on a quest to find and catch the "Man in Black" behind it all.  Along the way he encounters oracles and a boy, Jake Chambers, who claims he was in a completely different reality, in a big modern city, and was pushed into the street to his death by none other than the man Roland is pursuing.  There is a lot of prophecy and symbolism here...part of Roland's problem is that he doesn't really know yet what he's after, and meeting with the Man in Black is his hope to find some answers.  Much of the story is spent in flashback...there's even a flashback embedded within another flashback...of Roland's childhood experiences, family and friends as well as that of the doomed town of Tull that Roland had earlier encountered on his journey.  Stephen King is known for his ability to draw out the depth in his characters' personalities, and The Gunslinger is no exception.  Now I've begun rereading the second book, titled The Drawing of the Three...I'm already past the opening section about those darn lobstrosities...

Rob Dial's Podcast Discusses the Need for Action, Not Overthinking

The other day on The Mindset Mentor podcast, creator and host Rob Dial discussed a subject he's often stressed: the need to just get out there and start doing whatever it is you're trying to achieve in live...and stop the destructive overthinking and procrastination that is just a disguise, a self-deception masking the fear of being humbled and exposed as a failure.  Dial makes clear that the only time you fail in something happens either when you never start or when you give up...messing up in itself is an integral part of the ultimate success you will enjoy.  He likes to repeat his mantra of "Ready, Fire, Aim", deliberately juxtaposing "fire" and "aim" to emphasize that first you've got to get out there doing stuff...and then you can make the needed adjustments.  Dial also stressed that it does no good to dwell on the enormity of the quest you're on, as if you have to accomplish it all in a day. Instead, focus on what you're going to do today and let tomorrow...and the next ten years...unfold a day at a time.  Get closer to your goal by focusing on your direction and taking action, with less emphasize on your speed. The host gave as example that on a long road trip the driver takes in one stretch of the route at a time, not being concerned about what...say mile marker 240...will bring.  Dial says that people make things out to be much harder than they really are and that if they've never done something before then they tend to think that they can't do it...all symptoms of overthinking.  Instead, act like you're always "in the headlights" and immerse yourself in the area for which you've set your goals.  Will you screw up from time to time and, God forbid, reveal to others that you're not perfect and could stand some improvement? Sure, but's that's an important part of it all.  As for me, this broadcast hit home as I tend to delay starting new things because I'm usually at such a low level of competency in them...of course I am since I haven't started them yet!

NCAA and NIT 2022 Tournament Brackets All Set to Go

Today is the day that the men and women's major college basketball teams are selected for their respective championship tournaments' 68-team fields...along with the second-tier National Invitation Tournament.  My hometown women's University of Florida team made a dramatic improvement this year at 21-10 and made the NCAA tournament...they'll play the University of Central Florida in the first round.  The men's team not only didn't make it to the championship tournament this year, but they also lost their coach, Mike White, who left the Gators to fill the head coaching vacancy at Georgia.  Florida...with a 19-13 record... did make it, though, to the N.I.T. and will play their first-round game against Rick Pitino-coached Iona...some fan made the perfectly reasonable comment (reasonable to me, a Pitino fan) that Gainesville shouldn't let him leave town before signing him on as Florida's new coach.  For me, I like my local teams to do well, but as far as the NCAA tourney is concerned, by this time next week the surviving teams for each one will be down from 68 to 16.  Texas A&M, which beat Florida in the Southeastern Conference tournament a few days ago and made it all the way to the finale, was thoroughly ripped off by the NCAA selection committee and snubbed...they're in the N.I.T. as well.  As for the men's NCAA tournament, I plan to root for Miami, North Carolina and Kansas...and just enjoy the other games I'm able to watch.  I'm not sure about the exact dates for the tournaments, all of which are commencing this week...my strategy is since I'm scheduled to work until 10 pm Monday through Friday I'll just check out what's currently showing on TV when I do get home...

Just Finished Reading Death and a Dog by Fiona Grace

Second in the "cozy mystery" series by Fiona Grace featuring antiques dealer Lacey Doyle, Death and a Dog continues...and to an extent repeats...the protagonist's adventures and trials as she adjusts to life in a small English coastal village following her divorce from a deadbeat husband back in New York who gets spousal support from her.  After reading the first book Murder in the Manor last month, I concluded that "Fiona Grace" in all likelihood is a fictitious name since "she" has come out with 33 books in several different series in less than 3 years!  With this second installment of the series I'm reading, I was disappointed that, although new characters were introduced and technical aspects of the plot were different from the first (including the first time I've seen a sextant used in a story), I still experienced too much repetition...especially regarding how Lacey is always the first one to find the murder victim's body, the two clueless cops on duty always suspect her, the village's petty, gossiping people alternate between adoring and shunning her, and her mother and sister back home...and her ex...are overly negative and hostile. Neither the background stories of the romance between Lacey and Tom nor the mystery of her father's death in the area years before is advanced...I could go on.  Like the first book, the murder's solution in the end was lame...and yes, Lacey's adopted superdog Chester saves the day as the book's title clearly telegraphs.  I don't have a problem with the series being written by probably underpaid anonymous hack writers as much as I do about Lacey continuing to alternately seem spunky and assertive when around the cops and certain other people while playing the passive eternal suffering victim role around her own family and the fickle villagers around her. But maybe this is actually the one aspect of it all that rings true: don't we tend to stand up to some folks while folding to others?  Call me a glutton for punishment but I'm going to continue with this series.  I want to see if the "author" has the nerve to string out the repetition into a third book...

Quote of the Week...from Kyle Lowry

Go out there and play hard, understand your teammates, understand the other team's gameplan, understand your coaches' philosophies and what they want you to do.            ---Kyle Lowry

Kyle Lowry is a repeat all-star National Basketball Association point guard who helped guide the Toronto Raptors to several winning seasons as well as a league championship in 2019.  I've always admired his teamwork and positive demeanor on and off the court...now I'm really encouraged because this year he's playing for the Miami Heat, a team I usually root for since I'm from that area.  He joins another player I've followed for years, Jimmy Butler, a small forward/shooting guard who caught my attention years ago with the Chicago Bulls.  Back in that 2019 Raptor championship playoff run, Butler was on the Philadelphia 76ers opposite Lowry...that was one of the all-time best playoff series ever!  Lowry's philosophy is a formula for success, and I believe that the truly wise players all follow its basic tenets.  Other players that I've noticed with a team spirit combined with skill, athleticism and sportsmanship are Golden State's Klay Thompson and New Orleans' C.J. McCollum, who used to be with Portland for several years.  I tend to look for these kinds of "stars behind the stars" and pull for the teams they're playing on.  The other night Miami was playing Phoenix...unfortunately they got blown out by 21 points and Butler was out due to sinus issues.  I did see Lowry on the court, but he was in more of a supportive role than I usually see.  Still, Miami's currently leading the entire Eastern Conference and come playoff time, I'm looking forward to seeing how Lowry and Butler do, along with Thompson and McCollum on the other teams...

A Visit to the Dentist...and Starbucks

After my (ugh) teeth-cleaning procedure yesterday morning I thought I'd reward myself for having survived it all by going a few blocks down 13th Street and getting an iced coffee from Starbucks...but no, that outlet is often backed up to the street with its drive-through line, clogging up the parking lot even for those like me who prefer to drink their coffee on-site.  So, I instead went to my familiar Starbucks haunt, a store that's been there since 2000 and never converted to one with a drive-through.  I understand the Starbucks Corporation's policy about rebuilding and moving existing stores to ones with that option for customers...I'd do it, too if I were in their shoes.  But my preference has always been for coffee shops WITHOUT drive-throughs, and I bemoan the loss of several Starbucks that, in the past, I had frequented and spent time studying and enjoying the ambiance.  I miss the ones in Tioga, Hunter's Crossing, Newberry Road (near the Royal Park Cinema), Archer and 34th, and 13th Street and 16th Avenue...these five were great places to visit and were highly popular. I have always enjoyed hanging out in coffee shops and have found their slightly nerve-wracking public surroundings an excellent setting for energizing my mind and focusing my thoughts on creative writing and introspection.  I'm writing this article in that favorite Starbucks in NW Gainesville's Magnolia Parke...may it never close down!  Before Starbucks arrived in my hometown, I often used to go to Krispy Kreme on NW 13th Street and 3rd Avenue, close to the University of Florida campus...I just got a gift card for KK so maybe I should check them out again.  I've also been in the habit of going to fast food places and just ordering a coffee, accomplishing the same thing for less money than at Starbucks.  I've tried this at my public library...it's just not the same.  As for that teeth-cleaning, in the past I had always regarded visiting the dentist's office as a traumatic experience...this time, though, using Eckhart Tolle's principles of think-less/observe-more from his book The Power of Now, I mentally sank into the background and put my old thought reactions on hold during the procedure.  It worked, producing the most pleasant dental visit I've had in quite a while...if you can really properly place the words "pleasant" and "dental visit" together in the same sentence. Also, the experience of open-heart surgery the previous July...along with the following two-week hospital stay and subsequent weeks-long recovery period...puts relatively minor things like a simple teeth-cleaning appointment into sharper perspective...

Weekly Short Stories: 1983 Science Fiction, Part 1

Today I start reviewing science fiction short stories from the year 1983 as they appeared in Donald A. Wollheim's anthology The 1984 Annual World's Best SF, featuring the editor's picks from that genre for the previous year.  In '83 I was living a frugal, single life in Gainesville as a cook in a local Chinese restaurant, studying foreign languages on the side like Chinese, Vietnamese, and Japanese...almost a monastic kind of existence, looking back on it.  This was also the year in which the Nuclear Freeze movement took off in Europe, while a very important TV movie on nuclear war was shown here in the States: The Day After.  More on this special year next week...right now let's a take a look at those stories...

BLOOD MUSIC by Greg Bear

Predating the late Michael Crichton's interesting novel Prey on a similar theme by nineteen years, this story examines a scenario in which nanotechnology merges with microbiological synthesis to produce an unseen world within one's body that works much faster than does evolutionary change in modifying and "improving" it.  An employee at a company researching such stuff foolishly injects himself with some of the microscopic, synthesized protein material and the change begins to happen...what an ending!

POTENTIAL by Isaac Asimov

It seems that supercomputers have the capacity for breaking down the myriad sections within the human genome to find that which predicts telepathic abilities.  The government's top-secret espionage section is naturally interested in this and discovers that an Iowan teenage boy may well be endowed with such talent.  They visit, interview and test him...tough luck, guess they were wrong.  When they leave, he breathes a sigh of relief...then realizes that they had been mistakenly trying to see if he could read other people's minds... 

KNIGHT OF SHALLOWS by Rand B. Lee

This tale is a look at the world worlds of alternate universes, and it seems that there are certain individuals who have the ability (or curse) to travel in and out of them, each universe containing a different version of that person.  The story's protagonist is one of these and his subsequent adventures have him searching through wildly divergent realities for a murderer (an alternate self), who kills other alternate selves...while our hero collaborates with yet another alternate self.  All within a few blocks in Key West, Florida, centered around a bar.  Intriguing...and a little funny, too...

SPENDING A DAY AT THE LOTTERY FAIR by Frederik Pohl

This brief story, similar in theme to Shirley Jackson's famous 1948 short story The Lottery, takes place in a future of overpopulation as each nation on Earth takes its own path in dealing with it.  In America they hold fancy festivals involving lotteries...but a small percentage of the entrants will die while few believe their "number" will come up because of the low odds.  Yet in this story all abortion and birth control have been banned...while killing off little children in the lottery is okay.  Ultimately, this is a tale indicting the ongoing politics about abortion, with the author siding with those complaining how many of the "pro-lifers" lose interest in the lives they want to protect after birth occurs...

Next week I continue looking at the year 1983 as it pertained to short science fiction...

Just Finished Reading A Beautiful Mind by Sylvia Nasar

A Beautiful Mind, published in 1998, is Sylvia Nasar's biography of American mathematician John Forbes Nash, Jr. (1928-2015).  It is better known for its 2002 Ron Howard-directed movie adaptation with the same title, starring Russell Crowe as Nash and which won the Academy Award for best picture that year.  Yet the movie diverges in major ways from the book that took me aback.  In both versions we are presented with the life story of a brilliant, accomplished academic whose young adult life was turn upside-down...as well as that of his loved ones...when he became afflicted with paranoid schizophrenia.  The film version, however, takes great liberties with Nasar's account, weaving its own imaginary tale about John Nash suffering from visual hallucinations (which he didn't) and imaginary friends and foes (again, he didn't).  According to the book, in the late 1950s Nash began to have grandiose delusions of his role in the world with conspiracy theories abounding...in today's dumbass world that would have got him elected president but back then it just got him committed...and released...and committed...and released.  Ron Howard's movie makes the story of Nash's life very compact and simple, omitting the Noble Prize-winning mathematician's earlier affair and love child, for which he denied financial support.  It also omitted the fact that even following his mental breakdown he continued to produce mathematical works, many of which Nasar bravely attempted to describe for us nonmathematical readers: in the film you'd think that all he did of significance was that prize-winning paper on economic equilibrium.  The book and the film each sought to sell a narrative about the life of John Forbes Nash, Jr., but even though the print version was obviously closer to the truth about him, by its very structure and nature it was still far from what really happened.  A life is lived one minute, one hour...one day at a time and attempts to make a narrative tale out of it that conforms to traditional storytelling patterns is bound to distort it.  Although I found the movie version to be much more suspenseful, endearing and entertaining (I even bought the DVD), it's a bit unsettling to see how far it diverged from the true life of this extraordinary and flawed human being after reading Sylvia Nasar's excellent account.  If you saw the film...or didn't, for that matter...A Beautiful Mind will be a great ride through history...not only of one special individual's life, but also of the social and historical context in which he lived.  Sadly, in 2015 both John Nash and his wife Alicia perished in an auto crash in Newark after returning from Norway, where he had been honored with an academic prize...he was 86... 

I got two significant take-aways from the book and film.  One is that it's not prudent to automatically accept the truth and accuracy of a work's narrative and characterizations, just because the author or producer claims it to be nonfiction or based on real events: the very nature of the story structure with the presentation of a moral theme and the aim to be interesting is bound to twist it.  Two is that I think almost all of us, like Nash, believe in nonsensical, irrational...and sometimes farfetched ideas but that for "healthy" people they understand the extreme nature of those beliefs and thereby tend to avoid communicating them to others...unlike Nash, whose narcissistic sense of self-importance precluded this.  But if within society certain wacky ideas seem to become more mainstream then an explosion can ensue with masses of the population expressing adherence to them...do you know what I'm talking about?

Podcaster Rob Dial Lays Out Some Thoughts for Pursuing Goals

A recent episode of Rob Dial's Mindset Mentor podcast had the title How to Turn Your Life Around, but its theme was more precise: how to pursue goals to successful outcomes.  He starts out by acknowledging the current world of instant gratification where someone can just pick up the phone and get most anything promptly delivered...or flick on the TV and choose from an incredibly wide variety of programming.  But making progress in our personal lives still takes time.  And going in the right direction.  And planning.  Dial quoted a motivational guru, Tony Robbins, who said that people overestimate what they can do in a year but underestimate what they can do in a decade.  Instead of expecting success to happen quickly and then becoming discouraged when it probably doesn't, it's better not to hurry but consistently work toward the objectives in the right direction.  And to assure that correct direction, it is necessary to know...as precisely as possible...where in their lives people want to be, say, five or ten years in the future...along with the even bigger picture of the end of their lives.  So, some serious, concentrated soul-searching is in order, as well as the need to sit down with pen and paper and start planning out the strategy to achieve the arrived-at goals.  And the host adds (a bit more colorfully than me), that failure is not messing up...it's a part of the success process...it's giving up that causes failure.  I like how Rob Dial distills and expresses stuff I already knew, but in a more organized, systematic form that I can refer back to...this episode should help me as I figure some things out...

Interesting Pro Golf Tourney in Orlando Today on NBC

Call it "Arnie's Revenge" if you like, but this year's PGA Arnold Palmer Invitational, played at the Bay Hill course near Universal Studios and Walt Disney World west of Orlando, has turned into one of the more interesting and entertaining tournaments I've watched over the past few weeks.  Generally noted for scores well under par, this year it seems that the winds are playing havoc with the golfers...as well as very treacherous putting greens.  I don't think I've ever witnessed so many missed short putts as well as putts shot too hard past the hole.  The leaderboard has been in continual flux as the tournament draws to its close.  It looked like Viktor Hovland at one point was going to run away with it, but his putting woes gave him two consecutive bogies.  Then Scottie Sheffler, who won a tourney just a while back, surged into the lead, only to be passed by Gary Woodland when he eagled...but Woodland would fall back on just the next hole with a double bogey.  The tournament was renamed in 2017 after Arnold Palmer, who passed away the previous year.  Palmer was known for his expressive antics when he missed important putts in years gone by...I've seen quite a few grimaces and head shaking today from pros who seem completely mystified by the tricky slopes presenting by the putting greens.  Yet Tiger Woods won this tournament eight times between 2000 and 2013.  It's showing right now on NBC...I really don't care who wins it, but I want to see how they accomplish it.  Sheffler is the only golfer among the leaders in today's final round that I know of, but I'm gradually accumulating a list in my memory of several golfers over the weeks as Sunday afternoon golf is becoming a regular TV habit of mine...

My Depot Park 5K "Non-Run" This Morning

I deliberately woke up at 6 this morning, making a pot of coffee and checking to see whether I really was going to drive out to Depot Park and run one of their weekly 5K (3.1 miles) races they hold there on Saturdays at 7:30.  After a few minutes of self-assessment I decided to go back to bed...and woke up a little past ten.   It's a bit ironic, I think, that finally after having worked on my off day for several Saturdays in a row that on the morning of one in which I am truly off from work all day I would choose to sleep in...you might think that I'd be more inclined to stay in bed on other Saturday mornings, seeing that I get off from work Friday nights at 10 and sometimes get overtime up to midnight.  But it's how the mind interprets situations, not the situations themselves, that determines one's course of action and here I am, late in the morning and that dang race has gone by me for another week.  The weather was forecast to be great, in the low 50s...a Goldilocks Zone for runners like me...but I might have put too much pressure on myself for considering trying to set a personal record with today's race instead of treating it as a "cover the distance" training run as I had for the previous ones.  There's another opportunity next Saturday morning for a Depot Parkrun, as they like to call it, and then looms on the 19th a ten-mile run in the wilderness south of Micanopy held by the Florida Track Club...that will most definitely be a purely "cover the distance" event...

Quote of the Week...from President Biden

The State of the Union is strong...because you, the American people, are strong.  We are stronger today than we were a year ago...and we will be stronger a year from now than we are today.

                                                  ---Joseph Biden, President of the United States

So concluded our president in his first State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress this past Tuesday evening.  Although I did not watch it, I later heard that it was widely regarded by the American public in a positive light, garnering a 78% approval rating in one poll.  He touched among a number of topics, including the Russian invasion of Ukraine, infrastructure, voting rights, climate change and inflation.  His delivery from the highlights I did see later seemed good and he had a natural kind of folksiness that Democrats hadn't seen from one of their presidents since Clinton in the 1990s.  But his above quote, which he made at the end of his speech...while sounding appropriately optimistic in the setting of any State of the Union address...did not ring true to my ears.  I don't agree that the state of our union is strong.  Fascism is on the sharp rise, with a frightening level of the electorate poised to endorse their own party's overturning of any election result not going their way.  The cult personality worship of an incredibly flawed, authoritarian individual, namely Donald Trump, just won't go away as we approach the 2022 midterm elections in which he stands to gain de facto control of Congress if Democratic voters do what they are known to do every time they elect a president of their own party...which is to sit out the following election and passively allow the Republicans to win control of Congress and state governments.  And in light of the Covid-19 pandemic that has devastated our country (and the world) over the past two years, it has been very dismaying for me to witness the utter selfishness and disregard for public health on the part of such a broad swath of our population as they refused to wear masks in public or even vaccinate against this scourge that has to date killed nearly a million people so far in our country alone and caused many, many more long-term health problems.  Issues like global warming and racial reconciliation are now being treated as highly controversial by a major political party as we find ourselves as a country receding into backwardness, with anti-science and prejudice on the upsurge.  And people now tend to seek out the news sources that are biased to fit their own preconceived views while mass and social media accommodate this increasing refusal to face the reality of what is going on around them...

So no, Mr. President, although I support you and want you to succeed, I'm afraid and sad to say that it's we, the American people, who are going to let you down as we continue to slip further and further into weakness, not strength.  Sorry for the downer today, but I'm just calling it as I see it...you and Jill are still welcome to come over for some coffee and chat...

Music and Math, the Beatles and John Nash...and "Community"

I'm currently in the middle of two different projects, both concerning highly talented and competent people and their working relationships within their respective crafts.  One you already know about if you've been reading this blog: I'm watching the film version of the Beatles and their January 1969 "Let It Be" sessions that Peter Jackson has re-edited and renamed Get Back: it's being shown on the Disney Plus channel, to which I subscribe.  The other is the 1998 Sylvia Nasar biography of American mathematician John Nash, titled A Beautiful Mind and adapted as an Oscar-winning Ron Howard movie four years later.  In both works we get a glimpse into the interpersonal dynamics of those at the top of their respective professions and how the love of what they do often gets greatly distorted by their egos, jealousies, intrigues, suspicion and vendettas.  I don't think this sort of social dysfunction is just a trait of the highly adept and accomplished...I remember in high school how, within certain circles, the same situations arose between students.  And to be perfectly honest...in other social settings I've in which I've found myself as an adult...I've seen the same destructive kind of behavior.  Yet I'm continually being encouraged to seek "community" in relationships with others, something that not only I instinctively resist as a bona fide lifelong introvert but have also bitterly learned tends to be more harmful to me than keeping mostly to myself.  They say the mark of insanity is to keep repeating the same thing and expect different outcomes...I've seen enough in my life over the decades to be distrustful of "community". When I was in school and was found to excel in a subject or course, inevitably the faculty would take me out of my preferred setting where I was better than my fellow students and lump me in with the other "high achievers", immediately thereby canceling out the good feeling I had developed before from working so hard.  Likewise, I imagine that's how some of the musicians and mathematicians felt when in the immediate company of the standouts in their respective fields.  Unfortunately, although it seemed that those portrayed in the film and book seemed to love their work for its own sake, their primary motivation was to be seen as the "top dog" and universally acknowledged to be superior to their colleagues. I'm like this myself, but only to a point...I mainly just want to be considered as a legitimate player.  But it can get to be a little spiritually deflating to be in a field in which, by almost anyone else's standards I am very competent with even a history of achievements but not even recognized as an equal by others within my circle of interests...George Harrison would have understood this only too well as this accomplished and very creative musical artist sat for years, almost as an extra, across from John Lennon and Paul McCartney.  Also, in watching the Beatles film and reading the Nash book I noticed that these people's lives and their choices of projects seemed very chaotic...almost random, as if they were going about their business and relationships like pinballs in a machine, bouncing off one experience into another.  I wonder whether this was really what happened, or was an effect created by the stories' authors and editors.  After all, with both the Beatles and John Nash we have two different versions shaped and presented by third parties according to their own agendas...their real lives were most likely quite different.  Yet one truth did come out: the almost nauseating tendency of people to obsess about establishing hierarchical pecking orders among themselves whenever they meet and engage in "community"...

Weekly Short Stories: 1982 Science Fiction, Part 3

Today I finish examining some 1982 science fiction short stories as they appeared in the anthology The 1983 Annual World's Best SF, edited by Donald A. Wollheim and featuring his choices from the preceding year.  I remember 1982 as the first year I really paid deep attention to Major League Baseball by watching it on TV: the Atlanta Braves were featured on Ted Turner's Superstation WTBS and I followed their Cinderella season with manager Joe Torre, finally rising from obscurity in the National League West with stars like Dale Murphy, Bob Horner and Phil Niekro to win that division by a game over Tommy Lasorda's Los Angeles Dodgers...a terrible late-season slump by the Braves had made it much closer than it might have been.  Well, here are my reactions to those final three tales in the book...

SOULS by Joanna Russ

Many hundreds of years ago a European abbey is besieged by a group of barbaric, conquering Normans, but the abbess in charge attempts to save her own people by offering the invaders a special deal, promising riches that they couldn't imagine as long as they refrain from violence.  Over the course of the narrative, it becomes clear that she is something quite beyond who she is pretending to be, in this world but not of it.  This novella reportedly was only a part of a larger work, but editor Wollheim included it in his anthology...to me it was only marginally science fiction...

SWARM by Bruce Sterling

In the future what is left of humanity is divided in a life and death struggle between the Mechanists who control the asteroids and the Reshaped, who dwell out by Saturn's rings. An agent of the latter is on a mission to a special star system populated by a swarm of highly interconnected organisms...he wants to take their genetics and generate a force of slave labor for his own people.  The unexpected ending is profound and sadly timely, reflecting on mankind's self-destructive nature through war. When this came out, the Cold War was ramping up again...and now with the invasion of Ukraine, here we go again...

PEG-MAN by Rudy Rucker

Reading like a couple of South Park episodes I know, a woman's husband has become something of a video game addict where he works as an arcade mechanic.  Only he claims there is more to his favorite game, "Peg-Man", than it seems. One day she and her old calculus professor pay him a visit at his workplace...like I said, it's like South Park (especially that fifth-season episode with Towelie and the Crab People)...

Next week I'll begin looking at 1983 science fiction short stories...

My February 2022 Running and Walking Report

In February I ran on all the days of the month, totaling 154 miles with the 13.1 mile Five Points of Life half-marathon (in Gainesville) on the 20th being my longest single run.  In the same span I walked a total of 105 miles.  With races, along with that half-marathon I ran a Depot Parkrun 5K (3.1 miles) race on the 12th.  My times for the half-marathon and 5K race were 2:33:51 and 31:28, respectively.  I feel that this past month has been very encouraging with my running, and in March I intend to enter a couple more races, one being for 5K and the other 10 miles.  Besides that, I'm wondering whether or not to speed-walk one Depot Parkrun 5K per month...they hold these races weekly and they're free. I'm also considering possibly adding swimming to my exercise routine...I'll need to first work things out with the gym of which I am a member...