Had Fun Putting Together Jigsaw Puzzle

I recently bought a new jigsaw puzzle titled October Skies, a 300-piece painting by Alan Giana in the Memory Lane series.  It was pleasant to take an hour or so and put it together...I'll probably be back soon at Joann Fabrics off Archer Road to get another one, maybe with more pieces.  They have quite a collection there. This one is put out by Master Pieces, the perfect name for a jigsaw puzzle business...

Quote of the Week...from Barbara Streisand

People who need people are the luckiest people in the world.    ---Barbara Streisand

Although renowned singer/actress Barbara Streisand sang these words from the sixties' hit Funny Girl musical's song People, it was Bob Merrill who wrote these lyrics.  On the surface, it's all a kind of feel-good statement...yeah, it's good to have a positive opinion of people, I guess.  And I strongly appreciate the presence of certain, specific people in my life...that is irrefutable.  But to sashay around in life relishing being around folks in general not only isn't a need of mine, but the experiences are usually frustrating if not outright distasteful.  All these social gatherings apparently designed with the lucky "people-needers" in mind, to me are just assembling individuals with their own walls and sometimes aggressive agendas toward others.  We just got a little puppy dog a few months ago and it sees us as its pack, with training largely having to do with making it feel secure in its assigned place (at the pack's bottom, of course).  But those people...of which I admit to being one...have the same kind of continually ongoing struggles about who is dominant and who is supposed to be submissive.  This intrigue for status in imaginary hierarchies plagues interpersonal relationships and ruins the social experience for me.  Sometimes I think people want to get together in concerts or mass rallies or similar settings...or even just sit in a coffee shop...just to be around others without the immediate necessity to work out this pecking order crap.  And yet, as we've seen with Covid-19 recently, the desire to just be in crowds isn't always such a hot idea, either.  Besides, when you're in one of them...these running races I occasionally enter come to mind...the people aren't really "together": they're all divided into their little subgroups, engaging in clannish behavior while regarding the strangers around them with guarded formality. When I see other people, I feel a strong sense of empathy toward them as fellow travelers through life, with many of them going through experiences similar to my own. Plus, we all need each other in that we provide important goods and services in our economy and society...my medical issues last year certainly bear that out.  And our close interpersonal relationships like family and close friends are likewise very meaningful.  But the notion that solitude is bad and it's important to seek immersion around others for its own sake has never caught on with me. No, there's got to be a good reason for me to hang out with others...guess I'm just unlucky that way...

More Jigsaw Puzzles

 

At the Alachua County Friends of the Library book sale recently I bought a couple of 300-piece jigsaw puzzles...there they are above, I just finished them.  I enjoy the process of putting together these pictures, with each piece a challenge as to color shade and shapes that interact with each other to form the composite scene.  Three prerequisites to me doing a jigsaw puzzle: (1) no large sections...such as a clear sky...in which there are little to no variations on the picture from piece to piece, (2) the pieces cannot be so similar in shape that the wrong piece fits in the wrong place, and (3) the puzzle has to be a simple picture: no special gimmicks such as a puzzle within a puzzle.  The best ones are the 300–500-piece puzzles I can lay out on the tabletop and assemble in an hour or two, like the above.  Now that I'm through, I'm thinking that maybe I should have hung around that sale longer and bought some more puzzles...

My Reactions to Yesterday's Super Bowl

Interested in how people reacted to yesterday evening's Super Bowl between the Los Angeles Rams and the New England Patriots to determine the 2018 National Football League season champion, I watched a little TV today and surfed a little Web ...the prevailing view seems to be that the game wasn't all that great but the halftime show was pretty good...even spectacular to some.  I beg to differ...

I don't know where it came to be that low-scoring games...in whatever sport one's discussing...are somehow of a lower quality that those where the scores shoot through the roof.  I found the tenacious defense in yesterday's Super Bowl, as practiced by both teams, to be absolutely extraordinary!  In play after play not only was the pass rush strong enough to harass the quarterback, be it Jared Goff or Tom Brady, to throw hurried passes, but the coverage was amazing as defenders repeatedly reached in at the last second to bat down passes or knock them from the receivers' arms.  The low score, 13-3 with the Patriots finally prevailing, was indicative of this defensive domination...I'm glad that Brian Flores, the winners' defensive playcaller, will become my Miami Dolphins head coach starting next year.  The one thing I didn't understand was how little the Rams used their franchise running back Todd Gurley.  When he did run, he usually did quite well...but he spent most of the time on the sidelines while his offense was on the field.  Gurley had been recovering from a knee injury but the team kept repeating that he was healthy to go...so what gives?  His presence most likely would have been a major game-changer...

As for the halftime show, I have become totally numbed by all the light shows and pyrotechnics in concerts nowadays...so I wasn't at all impressed by the excess I saw in this regard.  The headlining act, Maroon 5, sounded all right but I didn't get the semi-strip-tease performance of their lead singer, who seems to regard himself as irresistible to women, at least onstage.  I'm not into the rap/hip-hop scene musically, but the performers who shared the stage with Maroon 5 were more entertaining...although I couldn't understand a word they were saying (probably for the best, anyway). Maybe the best feature of the show was the televised overlaying of an old SpongeBob SquarePants episode where Squidward leads the band to the Super Bowl: that was funny.  I think my main problem with the show was that it was seemed too frantic and rushed, but maybe that's because (1) they had a lot to fit into a short time and (2) a lot of folks nowadays seem devoid of anything resembling an attention span...

I'm not happy with the Super Bowl's outcome, with New England winning its sixth Super Bowl title. But they deserved it, and it was a very good game, others' assessments to the contrary notwithstanding...

Tuesday's List: Old Drive-In Theaters and Dog Tracks in South Florida

When I was growing up in south Florida...specifically Hollywood...during the 1960s and early 70s, there were two prominent features that no longer figure into the equation in today's world: drive-in movies and greyhound racing.  When my family went out to see a movie, it was always to the drive-in: we never went to indoor theaters.  And although I never wagered at a dog track, my father became quite an enthusiastic, studying the races and visiting the different locations...and he would fill my ears discussing his betting strategies, to my consternation.  Still, I have a soft spot in my heart for these old times, and although its probably a good idea to eliminate pari-mutuel dog race betting (Amendment 13 is on the ballot in November to this effect) due to the abuse of the greyhounds involved in it, it's still yet another relic of my youth fading into obscurity.  As for drive-ins, though, we had to contend with the heat, humidity, scratchy sound from the speakers, annoying people in other cars, mosquitos, and noisy planes passing overhead...it was great!!!  There are movies I sometimes come across that I remember first seeing in a drive-in, films like A Hard Day's Night, The Ipcress File, Modesty Blaise, Psycho, and others.  Well, I no longer live in south Florida and both drive-ins and dog racing have largely sunk into the past.  Here are a couple of very short lists of the drive-in theaters and dog tracks that made an impact on me during my young years...

DRIVE-IN THEATERS
ARROW DRIVE-IN....North 441, Hollywood...probably went here the most often
GOLDEN GLADES DRIVE-IN...near Palmetto Expressway in Miami Shores, twin screens
HI-WAY DRIVE-IN...US 1 in Dania...I actually worked here at the concessions stand in 1969-70
THUNDERBIRD DRIVE-IN...Sunrise Blvd in Ft. Lauderdale...my dad once was part-time manager of both the HI-WAY and THUNDERBIRD: the latter still exists with 14 screens

DOG TRACKS
MIAMI BEACH KENNEL CLUB...I could be wrong, but I think this closed with the area's renovation, I never went there
FLAGLER KENNEL CLUB...closest to downtown Miami, ran its final race a few months ago
BISCAYNE KENNEL CLUB...in Miami Shores, I went there with my dad a few times, but not to bet
HOLLYWOOD KENNEL CLUB...in Hallandale, I went there a couple of times...

Casinos have taken over organized gambling in south Florida...Flagler and Hollywood dog tracks became only parts of Big Easy Casino and Magic City Casino, respectively.  I never did care for gambling on dog races...like my mother, I just enjoyed watching them chase the "bunny" around the track.  As for drive-in theaters, I think I've become completely spoiled by the lush comfort nowadays in indoor theaters, with their reclining, cushiony seats and all...

Quote of the Week...from Robert Heinlein

The United States has become a place where entertainers and professional athletes are mistaken for people of importance.                          ---Robert Heinlein.

Robert Heinlein, who died in 1988, was a renowned American science fiction writer, responsible for such works as Stranger in a Strange Land, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, and Starship Troopers...all books that I have read and recommend.  It's been thirty years since he left us...his above quote is much more significant and true today than it ever was.  When he composed it he was referring to the notion that too many of us hold that our celebrities have some kind of special wisdom...which got them to their level of fame and success in their respective specialties...that they can extend to issues, philosophy, and politics, giving their opinions more weight than those of people who are actually more knowledgeable and skilled in these areas. I have three reactions to this...

First, I'm fine with entertainers and athletes giving their opinions on what's going on around us...they have as much a right to do this as you or I.  The problem is how the public at large treat them: instead of learning something new from our celebrities, we tend to use them to prop up our worldviews, not from persuasive argumentation but rather by serving as living banners or symbols supporting our preconceived beliefs.  Second, our media with its soundbites and commercial breaks, along with over-politicized late night talk shows, wants limited arguments about issues and, with social media taking off the way it has, embraces overgeneralizing and simplicity over analysis and objectivity: it's easier to take a known name and run with their opinion than come up with a much more obscure, real expert who would more likely than not provide a nuanced and more lengthy response.  And third, I have a great problem with the tendency of the last few decades...greatly magnified in the last few years...of the formation of social-political movements, most of them protests in nature, that promote various innately biased narratives labeling in a sweeping manner certain groups of people as "victims" and other groups as villainous '"aggressors".  Entertainers and professional athletes seem to be especially attracted to this kind of political correctness and make any legitimate attempt at mitigating the arguments of the "protesters" more difficult...

Yes, I bet Robert Heinlein would have plenty to say about what's going down today...

Quote of the Week...from Tony Robbins

We aren't in an information age, we are in an entertainment age.               ---Tony Robbins

Anthony Robbins is a well-known self-improvement guru who has been around for decades.  I read one of his books back in the 1990s, but haven't kept up with him...hope he's doing well.  Back then, Robbins had taken ideas he had heard from other sources and assembled them into a program to help people to be more proactive and take personal responsibility for their own lives.  That's great, I'm all on board with that...but things like the coal-walking ceremony at the end of his seminars?  Well, that's not so "hot"...

I don't know the context of the above quote of Robbins, but I can certainly understand its meaning anyway.  We are living in an age of information explosion, with the Internet making just about any kind of learning available with a few clicks of a mouse.  Yet folks in general seem more interested in using it for entertainment than enlightenment.  When you're out in public and you see someone just staring at their cell phone, they're probably watching sports or a video on YouTube or Facebook...or just scrolling down the latter for provocative posts.  But even if you get offline and just watch television, there are relatively very few channels that are devoted for teaching or information, the overwhelming majority of them being designed to lull the viewer into a complacent state of mental lethargy.  I think it's telling that, concurrent with the just-recent ability to access so much information, there has been an explosion in the popularity of mindless "reality" shows...and one such host even got himself elected president, even with all that has been made public about him.  But human nature being what it is, why should I be surprised that people will opt for entertaining themselves over learning?  I for one like my soccer matches and old reruns...but I also like to watch science and history shows...

I think that the media nowadays goes out of its way to assume that their users have attention deficit disorder and will zone out after a few seconds on a channel or website if they don't somehow get stimulated.  I write relatively short articles on my blog here, but even with their brevity very few seem to have the small amount of concentration needed to get through them.  So if you've made it this far, you're one of the special few left on this planet with anything resembling an attention span...congratulations!
 

Enjoying Putting Together a Good Jigsaw Puzzle

This weekend I began "work" on a new 1500-piece jigsaw puzzle my son Will gave me for Christmas.  It is a picture of several beautiful specimens of shells, starfish, and other "bottom feeders", full of different colors and assorted shapes.  I'm accustomed to do the 300-500 piece puzzles, largely because I simply don't have the large flat surface available to do the larger varieties.  With this one, I've broken down the process to two medium surfaces and some boxes into which I presort the pieces by color.  It looks now like I'm about two thirds of the way to completion, but there are still a lot more pieces to fit together. 

Putting together jigsaw puzzles is a fun activity I've enjoyed doing ever since I can remember...back when I was a little kid we would do some monster-size puzzles by spreading out the pieces on the floor (out of the way of foot traffic, of course) and it would be there for days, if not weeks, at a time...with anyone passing by welcome to work on it.  Naturally, being much closer to the ground at the time than anyone else, I had a decided advantage over everyone in my family except my sister Anita, who is four years my senior.  I especially remember one such puzzle that featured a battle in space between death-ray-firing combatants: except for the bottom left corner, which looked like the moon, almost the entire puzzle was midnight blue with little points of white as stars...nearly impossible to do!

Almost eight years ago, back in March 2008, I wrote another blog article about jigsaw puzzles...here is a link to it [link]...

A Good Radio App for Smartphones

Along with the advancement of our digital age in technology has arisen a whole slew of words like "cyberpunk" , "cyberespionage", "cybercrime", "cyberterrorism" ,"cyberbullying", etc...I'd like to add a new one to describe myself: cyberklutz.  In my family I am almost always the last...usually by far...to pick up on the latest improvements out there in the...uh...cybersphere.  This is especially true when it comes to the different smartphone apps available.  But I did manage to find one that has proven to be very useful (and free): TuneIn Radio...

With TuneIn Radio, I have been able to daily listen to current news broadcasts in the languages I'm studying, helping me to gradually attune myself to being able to distinguish the words being spoken.  I can also listen to just about any radio station out there, including local ones in my Gainesville vicinity.  A much greater choice of music types is offered here: I've mentioned before that I love old, traditional Christian hymns...well, there's a station here that provides these great old songs.  TuneIn Radio also provides replay broadcasts from different radio and television talk/news shows.  I think that humorist Phil Hendrie is an extraordinary talent as he manipulates his voice to create many different characters as well as the impression that they are all together talking with each other on the air...now I can hear his recent shows.  And the two diametrically opposite political commentators whom I have chosen to follow, the liberal Rachel Maddow and the conservative Mark Levin, can also be heard on TuneIn Radio if I happen to miss one or more of their shows...

The only drawback to this app is that it is a drain on my cell phone's power.  I've heard a radio ad recently for a different free app that is supposed to pick up radio stations without doing this.  I'd like to try it out, but I wonder whether it will provide the great diversity of programming that TuneIn Radio does...

Attended the 2013 Alachua County Fair Thursday Evening

Yesterday evening I did something special to my home town of Gainesville that I could have done during each of the last 36 years but never did: I went to the Alachua County Fair, taking my son and daughter along for the experience.  It was a good opportunity to visit this event, held northeast of town just south of the airport: the autumn cool had finally set in and temperatures were in the comfortable fifties, with no mosquito in sight. The parking was only $3, admission per person was $5, and the rides and refreshments were quite reasonably priced.

Upon entering the grounds, we found ourselves facing a building. We found that it housed assorted vehicles on display and a line of tables promoting various causes.  We finally made our way through it and were back outside, walking toward the main part of the fair.  On the right was a little arena for a show we would later attend featuring two baboons, a baby monkey wearing a diaper, a dollar-snatching bird, a dog trained as a mailman, the able host trainer, and his trainer wife, whose English could barely be understood behind her incredibly thick Russian accent.  Good little show.  Further down from this was an alligator-wrestling show that we missed and an ongoing karaoke contest.  We passed them by and went deeper into the park.  As we walked further, we saw booths all over the place selling different kinds of refreshment.  One type that particularly stood out was the one that sold deep-fried foods of seemingly any kind: deep-fried Oreos, Milky Ways, other candy bars, apples, pickles, butter...even Pepsi was available in this weird form.  Later the three of us would sample some of the deep-fried Oreos, to a wide range of reaction (I didn't care for them).  We also got a funnel cake which I thought was scrumptious.  But the eating actually came at the end of our visit.  The main thing there was the rides. 

I expected a Ferris Wheel, which there was (and we all rode together).  I didn't know what more to expect in the area of rides and was quite surprised to see so many quality ones there.  There was the typical swinging boat ride, a straight-up-and-down pole ride, some that played with your sense of gravity, an O-shaped looping ride, some peewee rollercoasters, and some rides that were very similar to those I had encountered at the Wild Adventures theme park in Valdosta, Georgia.  They even had a small version of that park's "Yo-Yo" swinging ride...unfortunately down for repairs.  But I guess I was ultimately the most disappointed in the broken down state of my favorite ride, Power Surge, which was there!  So close, and yet so far...

I ended up going on just a couple of rides, while my "kids" (ages 18 and 23 now) went on several more.  I had a lot of fun watching them have fun on their rides, though.  Maybe next time I go to a county fair I'll try out some more (and maybe Power Surge will be there, actually functioning).

Oh, and what would a county fair be without the farm animals? There was, on this evening, a small section devoted to them.  Cows, goats, and ducks abounded.  I saw one horse, and one pen contained the following strange assortment of animals, all of which seemed to be getting along quite well together: one mother cow, one calf she was nursing, one calf that was sleeping, one white duck off in the far corner, one cute little black pot-bellied pig incessantly sniffing and wagging its tail, and one big ol' turkey that seemed intent on having a staring contest with me up close.  The animals were fun to look at, although I think the main animal contests and displays which typify county fairs must have been scheduled for a different date...

I felt that the people working at this fair were friendly and contributed to the festive atmosphere.  We went on a Thursday evening, and although there were a few families with little children sprinkled in along with seniors, most of those attending seemed to be high school students.  Most also seemed to be having a pretty good time!    Here are a few pics (one showing a view from atop the Ferris Wheel)...