Weekly Short Stories: 1986 Science Fiction, Part 3

Today I conclude my look at 1986 short science fiction as they appeared in Donald A. Wollheim's anthology The 1987 Annual World's Best SF, featuring his picks from the previous year.  1986 was the year of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor meltdown disaster in northern Ukraine, then a part of the Soviet Union.  Now it's 2022 and the invading Russian forces seem to have learned nothing about the environmental consequences of damaging these kinds of facilities...doesn't look good for our planet's future when madmen can gain control over entire, heavily nuclear-armed nations and sacrifice untold lives and threaten the world order just to alter borderlines on maps. It's almost as if I'm living out a surreal apocalyptic story, sad to say.  But back to the book's final four tales...before we all run out of time... 

INTO GOLD by Tanith Lee

A historical fiction tale set in the frontiers of post-Roman Empire rule in Central Europe, the remnants of an outpost town, beset earlier by a devastating fire, are treated to a trade caravan from the East that includes a young woman who can transmute anything to gold.  The narrator is suspicious of her motives as she seduces and marries his old friend, the town's military leader.  A story that brings up notions of alchemy and the possibility that some of us just might be more than human...

THE LIONS ARE ASLEEP THIS NIGHT by Howard Waldrop

Imagine an alternative world where the African slave trade is reversed, colonization is overthrown much earlier, and this continent rises to become a modern society.  A little boy in a western African nation likes to read and has aspirations as a writer. His books inspire him to write a play based on an earlier, more traditional society...but will the local publisher accept it? 

AGAINST BABYLON by Robert Silverberg

Here "Babylon" is really Los Angeles in the present time (1986) as a firefighter pilot works with others to contain massive fires started by the landing of three large alien ships around the city.  What are their intentions, and were the fires, which seem out of control, deliberate or accidental?  The pilot's own wife, a freethinker, appears to have been abducted by the strange visitors, complicating matters further.  I think this could make a good movie...

STRANGERS IN PARADISE by Damon Knight

A space traveler finally gains permission to visit perhaps the only human paradise in the universe, a planet settled and terraformed a few hundred years before, with what seems to be a perfectly workable social system without violence.  He wants to visit where their great poet lived and learn why she suddenly ceased writing anymore.  A rather stark, sad reflection on what it means to be human, even a "good" human...

Next week I'll continue reviewing science fiction short stories from 1986, but from a different source: Gardner Dozois' excellent anthology series...

No Atlantic Cyclones Now, But Plenty of Awful Conditions Elsewhere

According to the National Hurricane Center based in Miami, Florida, no tropical cyclones are expected in the next five days.  This fits into the pattern of a lack of Atlantic tropical storms or hurricanes in July, in spite of earlier named storms this year.  In the meantime, during the past few weeks the United States mainland from coast to coast has been subjected to wave after wave of massive heat, some areas hit by 100+ degree temperatures on a repeated basis.  Oregon, Minnesota, New England...these are supposed to be the places people visit in the summertime to escape the heat, not find it.  And of course, the South and Southwest remain hot as always.  On top of this, we're seeing terrible forest wildfires in northern California and tragic flooding in eastern Kentucky.  But on August 2nd, there are crickets chirping over the Atlantic.  Not that I'm complaining about the stymied advancement of alphabetized names in 2022...it's been a long, long time since I've rooted for a tropical storm to threaten my home area.  Still, I recognize the seasonal threat is still out there although at this moment northern central Florida seems like the safest place to be, weatherwise.  Don't worry, Weather Channel meteorologists, I'm confident that within a few weeks you'll get your Florida beach assignments to stand out there in front of the cameras and pretend to be bravely roughing it while the "natives" continue to nonchalantly go about their business in the background...

About 9/11 and Our Country, Then and Now

Twenty years after the horrendous terror attack on our country on September 11, 2001 there are numerous ceremonies nationwide...and in particular on those sites of the villainous acts...honoring and remembering those who lost their lives.  America is unified in this, and the 3000 lives snuffed out on that day, along with the heroism of many who made that final sacrifice, should never be forgotten.  Arab extremist terrorists from Al-Qaeda plotted and carried out their scheme, which involved hijacking and piloting four passenger jets and flying them into the World Trade Center buildings, the Pentagon, and either the Capitol or White House...the last foiled when passengers and crew revolted and that plane crashed into a Pennsylvania field.  It's a shame that my country today is so divided about a different...but much deadlier...attack: that of a little virus, COVID-19, that so far in the past year and a half here has claimed nearly 660,000 lives.  Yet millions of people, many of whom were rightfully outraged at the 9/11 carnage and who expressed the willingness for our government...however intrusively...to drastically enhance its surveillance and security measures to protect us from future attacks, are hopelessly lost in a tangle of misinformation about the usefulness of masks and vaccines to save lives and curtail the pandemic.  I get it: comparing death figures can get a bit impersonal, and every one of those who perished on 9/11 should be treasured...especially those first responders who never hesitated to put themselves in harm's way to save others then.  But today's 660,000 number of COVID deaths (which is steadily climbing) is 220 times the fatalities from twenty years ago, yet these people all around me are sickly obsessed with losing their "liberty" from just wearing a flimsy little cloth mask to protect others around them from their exhaled germs, a common measure taken during epidemics that predates today by much longer than twenty years.  When the COVID vaccines came out a few months ago I thought good, now these bizarre anti-maskers can get inoculated and won't be such a threat to me, my family, friends, and society at-large.  But no, too many of them had to get themselves all hung up over the vaccine and refuse it as well...the resulting overcrowded hospitals with COVID patients, most of them by far unvaccinated, and the universal upsurge of the much more virulent Delta variant has prevented others with different life-threatening conditions from receiving their needed treatment. I myself came within days of having my own scheduled open heart surgery cancelled a few weeks ago, just because so many refused their civic duty to mask up and get vaccinated, easy and convenient measures that pose no danger to them.  I contrast this with the brave, sacrificial behavior of those 9/11 firefighters and others who laid down their own lives to save others and I cringe at the disparity between then and now...and it makes me much more apprehensive about our future than it ever did on that fateful day in September, 2001...

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... 

Just Finished Reading Four Three Two One by Courtney C. Stevens

Usually when I visit my local public library (Millhopper on NW 43rd Street) I browse around the cart that contains "Play-Around" audiobooks. They are basically listen-only MP3-like small cartridges containing an entire book, with me only having to supply my own AAA battery and earphones.  The other day I ran across the 2018 young adult novel Four Three Two One, by Courtney C. Stevens, in this format and checked it out.  I just finished it and, although it probably wasn't targeted at my age group, I still came away from it thinking that it had a universal message that applies to everyone...

Golden, or "Go", Jennings is a seventeen-year-old survivor of a New York City bus bombing the summer before that killed nineteen...including the young psychopathic bomber...and spared only four, including Go.  The other survivors are her boyfriend Chandler from Kentucky, Rudy...who had flirted with her just before the disaster, and Caroline, the bomber's girlfriend.  One of the first-responders who helped save the four has started a college scholarship drive for them, had the destroyed bus rebuilt from its ruins, and is staging a reunion in New York to celebrate them and their lives.  The story line, told mainly from Go's point of view, examines how each of the four survivors struggle with the torment of guilt, not only of surviving the attack when others didn't, but also of their common believe that each of them in their own way contributed to the disaster and are therefore unforgivable.  It is the ongoing interaction...much of it in conflict...between these four and others that sets the theme of the story.  And Go's new friend Vicky gives a classic lesson on how to be supportive of survivors in situations like this.  It's a timely tale, very appropriate in this sad time of public shootings in schools and workplaces, and addresses the all-too-often occurrence of suicide on the part of survivors.  A good read, I recommend it...

Tuesday's List: Mass Extinction Events Over the Eras

I was recently discussing astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson with my son Will and noted that he is going into production for another Cosmos television series, which will be aired in 2019.  Can't wait! I mentioned that my favorite episode of Tyson's 2014 series...which was based on the late Carl Sagan's 1980 Cosmos series and updated it...was the episode about the Permian Extinction, which wiped out 96% of all species of Earth.  It got me thinking of looking on the Internet for a good list of the major mass extinction events that have occurred over time.  On worldatlas.com, I found a good list, which you can access through this link: [link]. To this list I added another event: "Snowball Earth", which occurred around 650 million years ago.  And now here's that list of mass extinction events, going from earliest to latest...

SNOWBALL EARTH (650 million years ago)
All life at this time was unicellular and ocean dwelling...the extinction rate thought to be high, but how high is unknown.  The causes of Snowball Earth...scientifically termed "global glaciation"...are in dispute as well as its duration and the extent of the ice covering.  But it was most likely ended through volcanic activity that sent carbon dioxide upward to heat and melt the ice...

ORDIVICIAN-SILURIAN (439 million years ago)
According to the article, 86% of life was obliterated.  The suspected cause of the extinctions was glaciation and falling sea levels.

LATE DEVONIAN (364 million years ago)
75% of life lost.  Occurred possibly over thousands of years as land-based plants released nutrients into ocean, depleting oxygen through resulting algae.

PERMIAN-TRIASSIC  (251 million years ago)
96% of species made extinct when a network of large Siberian supervolcanoes erupted, starting a chain reaction of carbon dioxide...and then methane...release into the atmosphere, overheating it and poisoning the oceans.  Not a good time to be on Earth...

TRIASSIC-JURASSIC (199-214 million years ago)
Various reason, including a possible asteroid collision, are given for this change that occurred over a relatively long stretch of time.  It paved the way for the advent of the dinosaurs...

CRETACEOUS-PALEOGENE (65 million years ago)
You've probably seen the scene portrayed on TV where the Tyrannosaurus Rex suddenly looks up and sees a fiery asteroid plummeting and striking the Earth.  This is the famous event that rendered the large dinosaurs extinct and opened up the Earth's ecosystems for the evolution of mammals.  Thank you, asteroid.  But about 76% of life was destroyed during this extinction...

HOLOCENE (now)
Through human activity and its resulting climate change, the extinction rate has sharply increased.  It's bound to get worse...

Texas Church Massacre Just Five Weeks After Las Vegas Massacre

A young Texas man, dishonorably discharged from the U.S. Air Force and with a history of domestic battery, opened fire Sunday morning at a small town church that was holding its weekly services, killing 26 and injuring 20 more...before apparently taking his own life after a high-speed chase by two brave heroes.  The immediate verdict I'm hearing about the perpetrator of this massacre of the congregation at the First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs is that he was mentally ill, deranged as President Trump put it.  Oh, I didn't know Donald Trump was qualified in diagnosing mental illness...

When you consider somebody like the Las Vegas shooter or the Sutherland Springs creep, it's easy to take the mental illness route of explanation...after all, how could anyone in their right mind commit such terrible atrocities?  I'm afraid that this argument, however, has two counterproductive consequences.  One, it paints a picture of those suffering from mental illness as being more violent and a danger to society, when in fact they are much more likely to be the victims of others.  Two, it ignores the concept of evil as it infests the souls of people throughout their lives.  These two men, whose names are beneath mentioning, made a deal with that evil and deliberately killed and injured scores of innocent people.  They were not only evil, but also cowards...this last one dressed up in military costume and gunned down a baby, children, women, and old people.  I get where the mental illness arguments are coming from, but in the end when do you stop going down that road and start to hold people responsible for their own actions?

Last Night's Las Vegas Concert Massacre

A little before one late last night (Gainesville time) I turned off the TV and went to bed...a short time before the breaking news story that is dominating the airwaves today: a lone gunman massacred at least 58 people and injured more than 500 during the last day of an open-air country music concert in Las Vegas.  The alleged perpetrator, who stationed himself in a 32nd floor suite at the Mandalay Bay hotel overlooking the event and then shot himself dead as the police approached his room, is identified as Stephen Paddock, a 64-year old resident of Mesquite on the outskirts of Las Vegas.  As of this writing, no motives have yet been determined.  It looks as if Paddock, who had rented out his hotel room since Thursday, gradually smuggled in one automatic weapon after another until he finally had a considerable arsenal...and then knocked out two different windows as he began shooting while country music star Jason Aldean was performing.  At first, many of the reported 23,000 there thought the gun sounds were fireworks...but as the carnage became apparent and Aldean and his entourage fled the stage, a general panic ensued as the endangered spectators tried to escape the fire...

My heart and prayers go out to all those directly affected by this tragedy, as well as their families and friends.  It looks once again as if the first responders...especially the police and firemen...were heroes as they bravely exposed themselves to hostile fire and put their own lives on the line to help people find shelter from the deadly barrage...

Hurricane Irma Poised to Strike Florida

Tomorrow and Monday are set as the main impact days for Florida as major hurricane Irma now begins to move away from the Cuban coast and head through the Florida Straits.  Over the last couple of days, the computer projections have shifted Irma's trajectory from the eastern part of the state to its western side...and now the Gulf coast from the Keys on northward is in peril of bearing the brunt of this dangerous storm.  Although the maximum sustained winds, once at 185 mph, have been recently reduced to 125 mph after its interaction with land on Cuba, Irma is expected to reintensify as it approaches Florida.  Gainesville will in all likelihood suffer hurricane-force winds when the worst part of it passes us Monday morning...that is, if Irma goes where the computers think it will. But tropical storm force winds will be already affecting us here for much of Sunday.  My hope is that it will travel quickly through and be gone as soon as possible.  Doubtless there will be widespread property damage and some loss of electricity and water...as well as localized flooding...

Right behind Irma and following close to its path is Hurricane Jose, now a strong Category 4 storm, which is now passing slightly to the north of the same Leeward Islands that Irma just devastated.  But one monster hurricane at a time, please...

Hurricane Irma Ominously Heads Toward Florida

In the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey, which inundated Houston and surrounding areas to an unprecedented degree, another monster storm has been brewing in the eastern Atlantic and is now approaching the West Indies.  Hurricane Irma, currently with 120 mph sustained winds, is now predicted to strike the Leeward Islands and then continue in a generally west-northwest direction as it strikes glancing blows at Puerto Rico, Hispaniola, and Cuba.  These three major Caribbean islands, while probably being spared the wrath of this storm's most powerful winds...now predicted to reach as high as 145 mph...will still undoubtedly suffer great damage and, regrettably, casualties as it heads for a showdown with my home state of Florida.  The projected computer models as they now stand all seem to have Irma reaching the eastern Florida Straits between south Florida and Cuba sometime next Saturday...and then they diverge from each other.  Some models have it then turning abruptly northward just east of the Florida peninsular and some show it entering the Gulf of Mexico before coming at Florida from the west...but most of them seem to have Irma directly striking Florida with Monroe, Dade, and Broward Counties being the most in peril.  I live in Alachua County, in the northern part of the state, inland to the west of St. Augustine and northeast of Cedar Key.  We've been fortunate so far here in Gainesville with hurricanes over the years, but my fear is that one of the strong ones will enter the Gulf and hit Gainesville via Cedar Key: Irma ominously is showing the potential to do this.  But it's still early and I've seen these predictions of hurricanes and their projected paths stray far and wide from what eventually happens.  Still, it's best to be prepared for the worst...

Tuesday's List: Hurricanes Striking Florida Since 1960

In light of the ongoing disaster in coastal Texas because of Hurricane Harvey, I thought I'd be a little reflective and list the hurricanes striking Florida since I began to "follow" them. 

Oh, I suppose I could have made the following list more comprehensive and list all of the Atlantic hurricanes and/or tropical storms hitting land in the United States...or in any other country for that matter...as well as going back further in time.  But this happens to be a personal blog and so I decided to list those hurricanes that struck somewhere in my home state of Florida since 1960, when I was three years old and experienced my first hurricane while living with my family in Opa-Locka, a suburb of Miami.  And I left out tropical storms as well...let's face it, they're just nowhere near as memorable as hurricanes.  On the list I capitalized the names of the hurricanes that directly affected me where I lived at the time (1960-76: South Florida, 1977-Present: Gainesville).  As for my Gainesville encounters with these storms, none of them were technically hurricane "experiences", but they affected us here anyway...even if they only, like David, Elena, Charley, and Matthew, at times seemed to have us directly in their "sights"...

Which of the below affected me the most?  I'd have to say it was Cleo in 1964: the eye passed directly over us in West Hollywood and the winds nearly blew in our front door...pretty scary stuff, especially when you're just seven years old...

1960 DONNA...only a toddler when it hit, I just remember a big storm with others worried
1964 CLEO...house boarded up, door almost lost, eye passed over us
1964 Dora...much damage in Jacksonville and Lake City
1964 ISBELL...not a direct hit, but plenty of wind and rain
1965 BETSY...fortunately turned south of us and hit mainly in southern Dade county
1966 Alma...passed in Gulf parallel to coast, caused damage upstate, hit Apalachicola
1966 INEZ...threatened us from SW but just grazed south Florida
1968 Gladys...hit from Gulf north of Tampa, passed through Ocala
1972 Agnes...didn't directly hit us but merging with front caused much rain, hit Panhandle
1975 Eloise...Category 3 impact at Panama City
1979 DAVID...looked like it would hit on the NE Fla coast, but steered by us
1985 ELENA...was poised to come inland at G'ville from Cedar Key, but did an about-face
1985 Juan...although it technically hit Louisiana, spin-off bands soaked us for days
1985 Kate...rare well-organized November hurricane hit around Pensacola
1987 Floyd...grazed south Florida from SW
1992 Andrew...this Category 4 storm spared my parents' Hollywood home when it veered to south Dade
1995 Erin...crossed state from Vero Beach, then hit west Panhandle
1995 Opal...Category 4 impact near Pensacola
1998 Earl...hit Panama City from SW
1998 Georges...passed through Keys, extensive flooding in Panhandle
1999 Floyd...mass evacuations, but eye stayed off NE Fla coast, bands hit inland
1999 Irene....hit Keys, then south Florida
2004 CHARLIE...originally projected to hit Gainesville, missed us but devastated Punta Gorda
2004 FRANCES...lots of wind and rain, we escaped widespread power outages
2004 Ivan...hit hard in Mobile, Ala/Pensacola area
2004 JEANNE...we lost power for 3 hrs, tropical storm winds tore off trim on side of house
2005 Dennis...June storm hit Pensacola/Mobile, Ala area
2005 Katrina...passed though S. Florida on way to New Orleans and Mississippi
2005 Rita...passed through Fla. Keys on way to eastern Texas, western Louisiana
2005 Wilma...slammed into south Florida with high winds from SW, moved fast
2016 HERMINE...hit just north of us from Gulf but feeder bands caused widespread damage in state
2016 MATTHEW...flirted with hitting northern Fla before passing east in Atlantic

This list isn't truly complete without me mentioning the terrible Storm of the Century that hit the eastern United States on March 12, 1993. Although technically a winter cyclone and not a hurricane, it had the same devastating effects and caused a lot of damage in Gainesville...including essentially finishing off our privacy fence...

Some of these storms, like Katrina and Rita, made their biggest impact elsewhere in the country while others devastated the Caribbean area, causing many casualties and much damage before approaching Florida.  And considering what is going on right now in eastern coastal Texas, I feel that we have been extremely fortunate and blessed over the years to have escaped such disaster...

Weekly Short Story...Nerves by Lester Del Rey

In 1942 it was the middle of World War II and the top-secret Manhattan Project was underway to outrace the Germans in the desperate struggle to be the first to successfully design and construct an atomic bomb.  It wouldn't be until three years later when the United States finally successfully detonated one, and then used two more on Japan to end the war...changing the world forever.  1942 was also thirteen years before the first operational nuclear reactor and 37 and 44 years before the nuclear reactor meltdowns at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, respectively.  Yet it was in 1942 when Lester Del Rey, a popular science fiction author of that era, wrote Nerves...which was about a nuclear reactor's meltdown...

Nerves is a pretty long "short" story (74 pages), appearing in the retrospective anthology Isaac Asimov Presents the Great SF Stories 4 (1942) (DAW Books, 1980).  Del Rey wrote "hard" science fiction, meaning that he possessed a considerable amount of scientific knowledge and understanding beyond what most people had...and inserted it into his stories.  Of course, in Nerves he used different words to describe what he had envisioned: "atomics" and "converter" were used in place of our "nuclear" and "reactor"...but they were in essence the same.  True, the author had the common sense to put his "converters" on Callisto, a moon of Jupiter...safely far away from Earth.  But as I read through this tale of systems failures in the presence of extremely volatile radioactive substances, I kept having to remind myself that this story was a chilling prophecy of what was to come on our home planet; even with his more advanced scientific knowledge, how could Lester Del Rey have known?

Other than the amazing feature of a nuclear meltdown written from pre-atomic times, Nerves is a pretty standard pulp fiction tale of characters testing themselves against each other and overcoming personal hang-ups.  The protagonists are two physicians, the elderly Ferrel and the young, inexperienced Jenkins, assigned to the atomics plant.  As the casualties start to come in from the developing disaster, there is a lot of desperate, quick thinking and action as they all try to stem what is already a serious accident from becoming a conflagration.  What happens...well, naturally you'll have to read it for yourself to find out...

I recently read that Lester Del Rey later expanded this short story into a novel, probably to make more money in that more lucrative market.  To me, though, Nerves was already too long...there were too many subplots in this provocative tale that distracted from the main flow.  Well, that's just my opinion...I'd be interested in hearing other viewpoints...

Quote of the Week...from Elie Wiesel

I write to understand as much as to be understood.    ---Elie Wiesel.



Elie Wiesel, who died last year on July 2 at the age of 87, was probably the world's best known survivor of the Jewish Holocaust in World War II, having devoted the remainder of his life to educating the public about it and why it came about...and how to prevent it from ever happening again.  In 1960 he came out with his book Night, which revealed his experiences as a teenager in the Auschwitz and Buchenwald Nazi concentration camps where he lost his sister and both of his parents...before finally being liberated at Buchenwald by the Americans on April 11, 1945.  Unfortunately, there have been efforts from some quarters to deny that the Holocaust, responsible for the deaths of some six million European Jews, never happened.  And there have tragically been other holocausts since then: in Cambodia, Rwanda, and Bosnia, to name just three.  Wiesel is no longer with us, but we do have this day in history to continue to remind us of the Holocaust: since 2005, the United Nations has designated January 27, the date in 1945 when the Soviet Red Army liberated Auschwitz, as International Holocaust Remembrance Day...

I chose the above quote of Elie Wiesel because it resonates so strongly with me.  Many times I sit down to write and initially feel a sense of inadequacy about what I plan to express, as if I don't know what I'm writing about.  But in a way, this can impart a sense of freshness to my writing as I work out, both in my mind and by doing research, those areas about which I am lacking in knowledge and understanding.  I think it was Stephen King who wrote something about how important it is to write about things you don't know.  How many of us would rather stay quiet instead of risking others thinking that we were ignorant about something?

Keeping Perspective with Calamities

From time to time I watch science TV series like Wormhole, Cosmos, or the The Universe.  Inevitably, the topic of cataclysmic catastrophes will come up, something that I tend to be interested in. You may already know about the asteroid collision with Earth that is generally believed to have caused the extinction of the dinosaurs around 65 million years ago.   Or even lesser known, the much more devastating Permian extinction  250 million years ago when almost all life on Earth was nearly snuffed out from a chain of disasters originating from a massive, drawn-out super-volcano eruption in what is now Siberia.  But the scale of a disaster can be much smaller, and yet in our world today seem almost incomprehensible in its toll on lives and property...take a look at Nepal and what has recently happened there with those two massive earthquakes.  And if you happened to be in the middle of it, yesterday's horrible passenger train derailment in Philadelphia most likely seemed cosmic in its devastation.  But a  cataclysm can be very personal as well.  A few years ago I lost a friend of mine, a co-worker, to an auto accident not of his own fault on the Interstate when traffic slowed to a stop and a truck obliviously plowed in behind him, causing the fatal collision.  Two other friends have recently been diagnosed with cancer and have had their lives turned upside-down with it. Given our own personal fragile existence on this Earth, it then becomes preposterous to watch those same science shows and hear supposedly learned people express concern that our sun, in a few more billion years, will die out...but before doing so, will devour Earth as it greatly expands in size.  Oh yeah, right, I want to start worrying about that...

Where I Was On 9/11

Although I have slackened off a bit from the practice in recent years, I used to regularly sign the "overtime-desired list" at my job, which for the most of my 27-year tenure at the post office, has been spent working the late night, early morning "graveyard" shift.  Usually I have gotten off from work around 7:30 to 8 AM...just in time to combat heavy morning rush hour and school traffic...groan.  But one morning 13 years ago, I was spared this fate when, to my immediate chagrin (although I ultimately WANTED the extra work and pay) I was told to stay a couple of hours longer in the morning to process some mail, along with the next shift's work crew, on the flat-sorting machine.  Oh, well, I was tired but I HAD signed that overtime-list, I said to myself, as I went on my allotted break into what my post office humorously calls a "cafeteria" (tables and seats and a few vending machines...and a television).  I got myself a much-needed coffee and plopped into one of the hard plastic seats in the back of the room to drink it and shut my eyes for a few minutes.  But as I sat there, I noticed that the few others in the room were riveted to the TV, which was showing a skyscraper with a big, gaping and smoking hole near its top.  I asked around and, apparently, a small plane had just accidentally collided with one of the World Trade Center towers, resulting in the incredible picture. I finished my break and returned to work, remarking to my colleague Tim Thrasher what had happened.  He then suddenly raced off to see for himself...and returned momentarily with new, very sobering news: a second plane, a jet airliner, had hit the other tower.  Instantly, we all knew that this was a terrorist attack.  Tom Metz, another "flat-sorter", asked me who I thought was responsible, and I replied with the immediately obvious: Bin Laden.

I finished my overtime shift that morning and was about to leave when somebody came running in to announce that the Pentagon had been hit.  Then I knew that it was time to quickly get my ass home and watch the TV...which I did in time to see the North Tower collapse (the South Tower had already done so by this time). While all this was going on, nobody except the perpetrators (and probably only a few of them) knew of the scope of these attacks against the United States by Al-Qaeda on September 11, 2001.  So there was a lot of fear and anxiety regarding what would happen next.  But as the day wore on, it became more clear that there were four passenger jets hijacked that morning, as it was later revealed, by Arab Muslim-extremist terrorists, chiefly from Saudi Arabia and Egypt, with the intention of hitting prominent (and symbolic) American structures.  The attack that failed, the fabled "Let's Roll" Flight 93, had been meant to hit either the US Capitol building or the White House itself, but had reportedly been thwarted by its passengers who, through their cell phones, had learned that other planes had been flown into buildings and that this wasn't a simple hijacking to patiently sit through, endure, and be eventually released...so they staged a bold uprising against the hijackers.  That flight ended in a crash in an open field in western Pennsylvania...

I appreciate how MSNBC continues, each year on 9/11, to show NBC's coverage of the admittedly horrible events as they happened, with announcers Matt Lauer, Katie Couric, and others weighing in on it all. Now, in the evening on 9/11/14, the news stations are talking about the 9/11 attacks. But unfortunately, other than the History Channel, I saw very little else on TV this morning (other than some short segments) to mark the attacks...which should never be forgotten...   

My Take on Downed Malaysian Jet in Eastern Ukraine

The understatement of the year may be that there is a lot of bad feeling going around concerning the recently shot-down Malaysia Flight MH17 over eastern Ukraine, causing the deaths of nearly 300 passengers and crew, among them many Dutch.  I'm convinced that Russian separatist rebels, armed with anti-aircraft missiles from Putin's Russia, shot it down mistaking it for Ukrainian fighters that were actively engaging them in warfare.  It is a terrible tragedy, but in the context of war, it is also an accident.  Clearly no one was trying to shoot down a passenger jet.  The U.S. and most every other nation under wartime conditions have committed their own share of accidents with innocent deaths resulting from them.  The corridor of the flight, which apparently was heavily used (but no more, obviously), took it directly over the combat zone.  Many critics in the West are pointing an accusatory finger at President Putin for arming the rebels with missiles sophisticated enough to target and hit such high flying planes, and I think he is definitely operating in a warmongering, land-grabbing mode.  But I believe that you can't go about business like usual in your own little peaceful bubble and intrude into war zones without expecting some potentially catastrophic results to arise.  The main problem I'm having with Putin and the Russian rebels is the cover-up and denial they seem to be engaged in following the fact, which they should have admitted as an obvious mistake and assumed responsibility and apologized for while cooperating with the crash investigators and recovery team.

The Russians living in eastern Ukraine, before the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991 into its constituent republics, had always considered themselves as being part of Russia even though Krushchev in the 1950s had redrawn their area into the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.  But back then it was all one big country, and they didn't have to submit as a minority within another country to that country's majority political direction.  The same goes for the Crimean region that Russia just annexed through force a few weeks ago.  Seeing for years within Ukraine that there was a deep division between the regions populated chiefly by ethnic Russians and the majority Ukrainian areas that caused serious crises in previous elections, the leaders in Ukraine should have been wise enough to allow referendums in the affected areas for the people to democratically determine their destiny, be it remaining with Ukraine, becoming independent, or rejoining Russia.  This way that Putin has of crisis-by-armed-crisis confrontational behavior destroys any trust or good will toward Russia that had been built up after the fall of the USSR and is only going to serve to militarize the rest of Europe in fear that he will seek further territorial gains elsewhere...

NYC Marathon Just Cancelled

Last night, while I was at work, New York City's mayor Michael Bloomberg finally came to his senses and cancelled the New York City Marathon that was going to take place this Sunday. It would have been a strange sight, with many locals cut off with no transportation and needing food and water...while thousands of runners pour in to the town, accompanied by volunteers helping them (not the people living around in dire need).  I guess they couldn't just postpone the event to another day, but to cancel or postpone it was obviously the way to go.  Why it took this long for the mayor to "get it" is beyond me.

They are still holding pro basketball and football games in the area.  I question this as well, but that doesn't make the marathon a good idea at this time...

NYC Marathon a Go in the Middle of Storm Recovery Efforts

I am a running enthusiast, a fact you should know if you've gotten anything from this blog.  And the New York City Marathon is an event that I would like to participate in some day, although the special circumstances of my health prohibit this in the immediate future.  Still, I share in the excitement others feel about preparing and running in this race, which goes through several of the boroughs in NYC for 26.2 miles. This year's marathon is scheduled for this coming Sunday, and I don't have to tell you that currently the effects of Hurricane Sandy are being felt in the Big Apple in a devastating way, with power still out in much of the city, widespread flooding, an inoperative subway system, a backlog of cancelled flights, and worst of all, thousands of residents stuck where they are without access to food and water.  Not a pretty picture.  Yet I understand that come hell or high water, the New York City Marathon WILL be held anyway in two days, dammit.

If this had been a terrorist attack on the order of 9/11 instead of a natural disaster, do you think anyone would think twice about postponing this race? Yet a hurricane of record monstrosity that directly and physically affected the entire northeastern section of the country is apparently nothing more than an inconvenience, as far as those organizing and promoting the marathon are concerned.  I have a two-part concern here.  One, how can a race participant run down streets in a city past buildings where people are suffering the effects of this storm?  And two, if I were a resident, even one who has had basic services restored and hadn't suffered personal loss, how could I look upon these runners as they pass by with anything less than scorn?

I don't understand New York's Mayor Bloomberg, who didn't even want the President to visit there "post-Sandy" because his presence might well interfere with recovery operations, if only unwittingly.  Yet he gives the go-ahead to this event, which will tie up already scarce resources and distract from efforts to help residents return to more normal, sustaining lives.

I just don't get it.

Tragic Accidents on I-75 in Fog, Fire, Darkness

There was a terrible highway disaster this morning a few miles south of Gainesville on I-75 as it crossed Paynes Prairie, a grassland area suffering a brush fire during a very foggy morning. Combined with the early morning darkness, driving visibility along this stretch was suddenly nonexistent, causing a series of collisions and explosions. At last report, there were ten fatalities from this calamity. Photos from later today revealed a nightmare scene full of burnt out fragments of vehicles, some piled on others. Here is the CNN story about it.

I first heard of this as I was taking my family to lunch at the Cracker Barrel off Archer Road. The Interstate overpass was clearly visible: nothing but a long stream of standstill traffic. I-75 was closed following the accidents and at this late time may still not be open. The very slow-moving vehicles we saw through the restaurant's dining room window facing the overpass were probably eventually forced off at the next and last exit before the closure.

To compound things, it was reported that this treacherous stretch of I-75 running through Paynes Prairie had been closed by the Florida Highway Patrol earlier in the night due to the very same problem of hindered visibility from the fire, fog, and night conditions. However, somebody with authority made an early morning decision to re-open the road. Soon thereafter the accidents occurred. I would not like to be in that person's shoes...

Two Recommended Programs About 9/11

Seeing that it is now just past one week after the heavily covered 9/11 commemoration, I notice that practically nothing remains in the broadcast or printed media which discusses this terribly important subject. So let me refresh the attention-span-challenged public's historical memory by discussing it here.

On September 11, 2001, 19 guests from other nations, in direct contradiction to the principles of the great Islamic faith and its traditions, betrayed the hospitality and good will that another land had bestowed upon them and committed horrendous acts of mass murder of its innocent people and wanton destruction. All in the name of the same religion whose values they so blatantly violated. Of course, the land I'm referring to is the United States and the terrorists from the Middle East, mainly Egypt and Saudi Arabia, and under the direction of the terrorist organization Al-Qaeda, hijacked four passenger planes and flew two of them into the World Trade Center twin towers, with the third plane hitting the Pentagon and the fourth forced into a crash in a western Pennsylvania field when the passengers, aware of the other hijackings, rose up against the hijackers.

I noticed that most of the coverage that occurred on 9/11 this year concentrated on the victims and was light on the actual perpetrators. This gave a false impression that what happened that day was more an act of fate than an act of deliberate mass murder. Having said that, I will say as well that I was impressed with what two television channels did to remind us of this infamous day in history.

MSNBC simply replayed its coverage of the September 11, 2001 events as they had unfolded, complete with the often inaccurate information and speculation from announcers and correspondents that typified this day. The cameras were generally trained on the burning WTC towers, apparently from the Jersey side of the Hudson River. Well, they were, that is, until the South and then the North Towers came tumbling down in a catastrophic toxic cloud of rubble, metal, and ash, with the thick smoke and haze obscuring the skyline. I found sitting through this coverage mesmerizing.

The History Channel showed a collection of videos, in chronological order, made from various people who happened to be in the general vicinity of the World Trade Center as the events unfolded. Titled 102 Minutes, this is an incredible account of the mass tragedy from up close, showing the horrified, confused, panicky, angry, and even disbelieving reactions of residents, workers, and visitors as they witnessed the events in person.

No, I don't think we should wait for another entire year to remember the 9/11 attacks. I can understand it if MSNBC doesn't show its program except on September 11, but the History Channel program is something that should be aired much more often...