Fresh New Day Lies Ahead, Possibility for new Routines

 I fell asleep on the narrow living room couch last night and woke up around 1 AM, feeling itchy and irritated.  By after three I was procrastinating getting up, but just before four I finally arose, and after running in place on the rug for 8 minutes, here I am on this chilly morning! Yesterday I had a pretty eventless chemotherapy infusion session at the UF Health Davis Cancer Pavilion, taking care now to avoid excessive eating. Spending a lot of money to do Dunin' Donut mobile app order seems to be taken off the table, too. We're expecting some good company to visit  us tomorrow.  I'll see if I can't put in a solid block of reading Khan's monstrosity novel Shadow Magic for today, March 18th.  Maybe all the unlikable characters (and I don't like any of them) will get wiped out and I'll be spared the anxiety of a suspenseful plot development.  Averaging about 20 pages of reading per day should keep me on pace to finish the book by month's end, and that is very possible considering how quickly I tore through the first four Harry Potter books at Books-a-Million 25 years ago.  And how about all those Stephen King/Richard Bachman novels? Of course, I tended to like those stories, and King has always been a master at character development.  Melissa has expressed expectation of me finlly getting my updated voter registration card in the mail today (or soon)...let's see if this can happen without me having to come out of retirement.  Yes, I'm tired of Trump on any level, and may the Iran ordeal settle down.  Our president seems to be content settling into Netanyahu's errand boy role, and the USA might get sucked into an expanded conflict against Hezbollah on "Bibi's" behalf.  Well, let's just see what today will bring: hopefully more and better sleep...

Day Progresses into Decline

Today, after my early morning rising and activity, progressed more or less into a span of rest and inactivity, me spending much of it in bed or on the living room couch.  I still ran in place for a few more minutes before leveling off.  Tomorrow morning they're staging another Depot Parkrun 5K.  I want to show up there and do at least one lap, with Melissa doing the valuable driving.  We're sitting right now in the dining room while AI Alexa is playing the piano version of It Came Upon a Midnight Clear...very pretty. Equally NOT very pretty is this overbearing missile war happening right now between USA, Iran and Israel...enough of that on the news! I suspect that the president dictator others elected will turn against his own people once he impatiently declares victory and moves on to new perceived enemies that challenge his egomania...he'll use his own handpicked cronies as proxies. I still think that people...especially some of the more creepy ones from Utah...have lost their minds with their violent  rampages against each other. And I include Florida's Dixie and Marion counties in that indictment. Not a nice picture at all.  Now for me to digest my last food of the day.  Either I'll get up tomorrow morning at a good, early time or we'll just put off the next Parkrun until another time...

Early Morning, Looking at World

 Hi, here is another early morning for me.  This would be starting off another 9th grade school week, along with the accrued homework and test preparation.  Instead of sitting in my 1141 dining room with instant coffee,here comes day number three of US armed forces raining down missiles on areas the Blusterer-in-Chief deems to be enemy territory, that it, areas not under his personal control. I am tired of hitting up on channels that seem obsessed with this ongoing military adventure.  I'd like for things to start clearing up and people get back to their more normal existence, if the dramatists seeking absolute power can manage to cooperate.  We're now in March...it's Monday, the 2nd.  I can still study foreign languages and read my problematic fantasy book.  And maybe a trudge around the block is in order.  And maybe I'll try out some brief neighborhood driving of the white Camry.  Grateful for Anita and Jim's visit, and that they got back to Austin okay.  Speaking of the Texas capital city, I don't know what to think about how people in different places, near and far, who seem to have lost their minds and have yielded to their ownknee-jerk, violent tendencies. I am so, so tired of seeing ugly mug shots slapped across my TV-20 News screen. A little more pause for kindness, please...just quietly walking away can be an acceptable option, too.  I did some seven minutes of ipf so far today...

Will Trump Follow in Neville Chamberlain's Footsteps over Ukraine?

So it looks as if our current president will soon be meeting with his Russian counterpart in Alaska to present proposals for peace in Ukraine and try to come back with some hope for the future.  Having studied some history myself, I know that Great Britain's prime minister Neville Chamberlain met with Germany's dictator Adolf Hitler in 1938 to resolve the latter's instigated "crisis" as he threatened neighboring Czechoslovakia under the guise of protecting ethnic Germans in the Sudetenland part of that peaceful country's territory.  And Chamberlain came away from that encounter waving a signed piece of paper, declaring "Peace in our time".  It was nothing more than a capitulation to the Nazi warmonger and sped the international community toward eventual world war as Germany only accelerated its military aggression.  I have a suspicion that something similar will arise from this "summit" between a dictator masquerading as a democratically-elected president and a democratically-elected president masquerading as a dictator.  Only when it comes to strength and integrity, "my" leader, I'm afraid, is an ignorant, weak puppet for Russia's government...but I already knew that for nine years.  Get ready for Ukraine to be sold down the river while Trump proudly waves his own paper in the air and makes like he stood up to Putin...

About the US Raid on Iranian Nuclear Facilities

The news has just been announced yesterday evening that American forces bombed three Iranian nuclear facilities with deep-penetrating, powerful missiles, taking place early this morning Iran time. Trump used some misdirection, feigning that he would wait a few days...up to two weeks is what I think he said...before deciding whether to use the American military to aid Israel in their mutual bombing exchange with Iran.  According to Trump...who is unfortunately prone to extreme exaggeration with his rhetoric...the facilities were destroyed.  It also looks like all American planes and personnel safely returned from their "outing".  Now it remains to be seen how the Iranians will respond...and you know they will, most likely through terrorism directed at civilians or military personnel. I don't agree with a lot of the Democrats who say that as president, Trump had to consult with Congress in advance...Clinton invading Haiti and bombing Afghanistan, and Obama disposing of Osama bin Laden would render that argument to be selectively partisan.  The problems I have with Trump's decision are that (1) his own Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, had concluded that Iran was far from being able to develop nuclear weaponry, and (2) I think our president, in making the decision to attack, was doing the bidding of another foreign leader, that is, of Israel's prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. And I prefer that our national leaders act according to our own national interests over those of others, even our own allies. In this I find myself in an uncomfortable, rare agreement with far-right Republican representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, who quickly criticized Trump's raid on behalf of his Middle East ally and its leader...

Enjoying Watching This Year's US Open Tennis Tourney

I enjoyed watching the US Open this weekend, with the round of 16 taking place on both the women and men's sides of this major tennis tournament, held in Queens, New York in Flushing Meadows.  I got to see some really good matches, although it seemed to me that for the men they were too drawn out with their best-of-five sets per match, as opposed to the women's more reasonable best-of-three.  My favorites so far have advanced...Iga Swiatek and Daniil Medvedev...and I like some of the upcoming matchups as they head into the quarterfinals.  Tennis is one of those special sports that are a combination of exceptional coordination, strength, mobility, endurance, and a chess-like sense of strategy...too bad I didn't get past the beginner stage.  Still, it's fun to watch although I found it a little sad to see people like Nick Kyrgios, whom I followed in years past, relegated to the broadcast analysis role on the sidelines after injuries to his knee.  Although I don't dig hyped-up nationalism in international sports...the recent Olympics is a case in point...it still disappointed me that the Russian and Belarus players are there without any noted national reference, as if we're going to make a difference in those governments' ongoing military actions by simply pretending they don't exist.  The world is full of nasty little despotic, belligerent regimes and their athletes are still welcome on the world stage with open arms, along with their countries' banners.  Sure, express your displeasure with the war over there but let's cut it with the double standards, okay?

My Own Take on Ukraine, for What It's Worth

Just a brief piece here on the war in Ukraine, a full-blown invasion by Putin's Russia (with the help of Lukaschenko's Belarus) since February of last year.  I get the Russian leadership's problem with a large, instrumental part of the previous Soviet Union...broken up in 1991 after a failed military coup...now an independent nation outside the realm of its control.  A very large component of the former USSR's economy was in Ukraine, both agriculture and industry...as well as many Russians themselves. The political landscape there was evenly divided between pro-Russian parties and those favoring closer ties to western Europe to the point that Putin felt he could try to manipulate outcomes of elections.  When that ultimately failed, he invaded Crimea...initially a part of Russia proper until Soviet boss Khrushchev assigned it to Ukraine in the 1950s...and instigated armed revolts in the country's eastern sections.  It is those areas that Russia has succeeded in occupying and holding on to, already annexing them and insisting that they regard any recovery of land there by Ukraine as an invasion...talk about the pot calling the kettle black!  Russia to me...and I am only referring to the autocratic government behind the invasion of Ukraine, not Russia or Russians in general...is completely responsible for this war in which their military has targeted civilian sites like apartments, hospitals and schools.  Still, the two countries will always be neighbors and I want them to arrive at a cease-fire arrangement that will allow their people to resume a peaceful and civil life.  Right now, whenever I read that someone or some country has proposed a plan to end the conflict, almost immediately they receive a torrent of criticism from different sources.  As for me, I think that blessed are the peacemakers, but often it's the ones trying to break up the fight who end up with no appreciation for their efforts.  The only viable outcome for this, in my opinion (and you're free to disagree, but that's your opinion) will be an accord that ultimately neither side is very happy with, folks on both ends afterwards rising up to claim that it is a betrayal of their own side's interests...

Some Wimbledon Comments as End Nears

Although my eyes aren't glued to the television, I've been generally keeping up with this year's edition of the Wimbledon tennis tournament taking place in England.  It's easy to do, since their afternoons are our mornings and, wouldn't you know it, my mornings happen to be free! It's reached the finals for the women's singles and the semis for the men's.  After the big stink made after the Azarenka-Svitolina match when both of them avoided the customary good-spirited interaction at the net, I bet a lot of folks were banking on a repeat of this scenario if Elina Svitolina, from Ukraine, faced up against Aryna Sabalenka, who is from Belarus, one of the aggressor countries against Svitolina's homeland.  As it turned out, both Svitolina and Sabalenka lost out in their respective semifinal matches against Marketa Vondrousova and Ons Jabeur, who will play for the title on Saturday.  The men's semifinals tomorrow pit Novak Djokovic against Jannik Sinner, and Daniil Medvedev against Carlos Alcaraz.  I had written a few days ago that I wasn't faulting Svitolina for saying in advance she wouldn't be speaking to anyone from Belarus or Russia, but while I sympathize with her, I believe that if each of us is an ambassador of our own countries, then we have a choice to make.  Either we can say it's war and march in lock step with our national leadership or we can choose, at least on a personal level, to promote peace and mutual respect.  In times of war, though, peacemakers are often severely criticized as sabotaging their country's resolve...even sometimes branded as traitors.  As for Sabalenka's loss earlier today, I'm a bit sad although I do like Jabeur, too...she's got to be the favorite in the next match.  I feel similarly about Daniil Medvedev...he's from Russia but, along with Sabalenka, never seemed to garner much fan support even before dictator Putin decided to invade and devastate a peaceful nation for territorial gain.  I think it's because they're both introverts, very intense with their game but not exactly the most outgoing of folks and pretty expressive when they get frustrated...I can relate to that!  Well, I can't root for Sabalenka anymore, but Medvedev is still alive and kicking.  It's gonna be fun watching it all unfold tomorrow morning on ESPN...

Wimbledon Net Snub Set in Advance, Wrong Player Blamed

Victoria Azarenka is from Belarus, and her opponent this past Sunday in the Wimbledon's women singles tournament was Elina Svitolina, from Ukraine.  After their match, which Svitolina won, Azarenka did not walk up to the net to congratulate the winner...and the crowd booed her, reacting as if her actions were politically motivated because of the ongoing war being Russia and her country on one side, and Svitolina's on the other.  Of course, Belarus, is the ally of invading Russia, and Ukraine is the land and people being ravaged in an old-style imperial land-grab, the likes of which haven't been seen since Saddam Hussein's Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990 and the horrible conflicts in former Yugoslavia during the following decade. Svitolina, as Azarenka later pointed out in her own defense, had already announced that she would refuse to socially interact with any players from the two aggressor nations, even if they had given up their national affiliation as the Wimbledon authorities had demanded as a precondition of them returning to play after last year's ban.  I cannot judge Svitolina...what would I have done in her place...but neither can I criticize Azarenka, who is in a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" position.  On some level, these three countries will always neighbor one another, so I would prefer that individual citizens from them display a higher level of mutual compassion and respect for each other, even if their politicians...and I'm speaking mainly about the Belarus and Russian autocrats...don't.  Just the other day I wrote that EVERY match ended with the two sides, winner and loser, meeting at the net with friendliness, congratulations and encouragement.  Oh well, so much for that...

Planning on Watching Men's World Cup Soccer Tourney Despite Nationalism

The 2022 FIFA Men's World Cup of soccer...a sport that is called "football" in nearly every other country of the world...is underway with matches in the group stage.  It's held every four years, the even-numbered years not divisible by four is how I like to remember it (or during the Winter Olympic year).  This time around, the little Persian Gulf country of Qatar is the selected site, and the United States...unlike with the previous World Cup...qualified for it.  Not that I'm especially rooting for my country...I probably have more "viewership roots" in soccer with the Mexican national team since I've been a regular follower of that country's premier league since 2014, more than with our homegrown Major League Soccer.  Truth be told, though, I have long been sick and tired of the excessive nationalism in international sports and if you've read past articles on this blog about soccer, tennis, golf, or other sports, you might notice that I have consistently downplayed the national origins of various players or the teams they represent...and I objected to this year's banning at Wimbledon of Russian and Belarusian players because of a war that they had no personal role in.  For this World Cup I have yet to watch a match, but as time grinds on I'm sure I'll enjoy a few...it's going on up to the finale on December 18th.  It's a lot easier following a televised drawn-out sports event like the U.S. Open in tennis or the Olympics when I'm off from work on vacation, or last year, when I was recovering from surgery.  My opposition to excessive nationalism doesn't mean that I won't pick a side of a World Cup match I'm watching to pull for...and yes, I suppose the USA and Mexico are going to naturally be among my favorites although I don't plan on being nutty about it...

About the Divided World of Professional Golf

The professional golf world has been split apart by a new league, LIV, whose name represents the Roman numeral for "54", which is the score if every hole on an 18-hole golf course is birdied and is also the number of holes played in the new league's tournaments.  It is funded by the Saudi government and has lured many big-name golfers by giving them millions of dollars up front, just to sign up.  The established Professional Golfers Association is openly opposing this new rival league by banning "rebel" golfers from participating in their own tournaments.  Where do I stand on all this?  My entire life experience playing golf is on the miniature level, if you call it "golf" when you always hit the ball at close range with a putter and regard ricocheting it against walls and obstacles to be a standard element of the game.  I am not at all into the sport's culture and the different traditions and rules.  Nor am I into automatically condemning by association people and organizations who work on different levels with countries accused of human rights abuses as Saudi Arabia has been.  For example, I think it was wrong in tennis for Wimbledon to have banned players from their tournament this year if they were from Russia or Belarus. And I think that sometimes established leagues (I'm thinking of the NFL in particular) can unfairly squelch fair competition in the interests of keeping their own product expensive enough for higher profits and practicing control over their own players.  So, although I don't necessarily plan on watching any LIV tournaments (should they ever be shown on TV) I also don't have a problem with players jumping over to it...that's their free choice.  Sure, I would like countries to behave themselves more compassionately toward their own people and other countries with whom they have disputes, but this banning and boycotting isn't going to make them nicer, in my opinion.  I want different nations to invest in the welfare and prosperity of other nations and make the world more interrelated and interdependent. Still, you're going to have corrupt and autocratic figures running some, if not most of these countries.  It doesn't take diplomacy to get along with your buddies, it's the jerks of the world you need those skills for.  And I don't dig a wealthy monopolistic sports organization playing the human rights card as a smokescreen to conceal their real motive, which is to preserve their tight hold on a sport.  I am no fan of the Saudi government...it's brutal toward dissenters among its own population, is starving out a neighboring weaker Arab country in a siege war and is one of those American "allies"...like Pakistan...that seem to be the spawning ground for international terrorism.  The fact that they are behind this new pro golfing league to me weighs against its eventual public acceptance.  But the PGA can take their monopoly over professional golf, along with their high-sounding pronouncements and punitive actions, and ...

Wimbledon Tournament Begins with, You Guessed It, Controversy

The 2022 Wimbledon tennis tournament began yesterday with the first round of play. It's one of four Grand Slam tournaments in professional tennis...Rafael Nadal won the men's singles in the Australian and French Opens earlier this year while Ashleigh Barty (now retired) won the women's Australian Open and Iga Swiatek the French.  Although Nadal is still in the running for a Grand Slams sweep, he has chronic foot pain and Novak Djokovic is in the Wimbledon tournament, having dominated it in recent years.  Djokovic was banned from the Australian Open earlier this year because he refused to get a Covid-19 vaccine.  Now the controversy at Wimbledon lies with players from Russia and Belarus, mainly Daniil Medvedev and Aryna Sabalenka, banned from participation due to those countries' brutal invasion of Ukraine.  As for me, I'd just like to see the best players out there playing each other in their best physical form without regard to their national origins...not gonna happen, though.  Yesterday I enjoyed watching Djokovic play and defeat Kwon Swon-woo in the first round.  Roger Federer is still out recovering from his knee injury, but Serena Williams is in it with a match today...hooray!  ESPN and ABC are covering Wimbledon...which should be a marked improvement in television coverage after NBC relegated most of the French Open action last month to its premium Peacock channel: what a rip-off that was!  I don't plan to spend my time 24/7 watching tennis, but I do tend to have my mornings open and that's when a lot of the live play is going on. Should be fun...

Russia, Authoritarianism and the Populist Rabble

If you're wondering why I haven't been writing about the Russian military buildup along their border with Ukraine and the imminent possibility of a full-scale invasion, there's a reason for that. I am figuratively holding my breath to see which direction my own country, America, takes during the next two major election cycles.  Will we return to our often fractious and quarrelsome, but ultimately peaceful political debate that acknowledges and respects election results or will we move toward a fascist, authoritarian system typified by an increasing number of regimes in the world where the leader panders to a certain element of his constituency?  This element is found in large numbers just about anywhere...composed of people, whom I term as the "rabble", who are essentially xenophobic and imperialistic as they believe that the only true leader is an aggressive strongman and that his political opponents are by definition traitors who should be punished accordingly.  Before the 2020 U.S. presidential election and its immediate aftermath, a lot of us here thought that the United States was immune to this sort of thing...but events since then have proved otherwise.  In our nation's past history it was manifested in populist movements that came and went, but in some other countries the rabble component of the population is much larger than ours, setting up a kind of ironic political situation: authoritarian regimes that won't allow free and fair elections that would most probably reflect the general approval of their population.  Until corrected with evidence to the contrary, that's where I believe countries like Russia, China, Turkey, the Philippines and Venezuela...among many...stand today.  It's not just secret police or restrictive laws propping up their governments...a huge bloc of their own people stands solidly behind them as well.  As does a substantial bloc of our own people behind efforts to transform our democratically represented republic into one in name only.  I hope nothing violent comes out of the Russian troop buildup, but I think that in spite of that country's leadership making it out as an external matter between them and the West, it's most likely rooted in inner political struggles that have been submerged by that great nation's abandonment of free and fair elections in favor of authoritarianism...

Great Old TV Episodes...from Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown

I was dismayed three years ago when I found out that internationally renowned chef Anthony Bourdain had committed suicide in France while filming a new episode for his acclaimed CNN series Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown.  The episode I'm discussing today, PUNJAB, is from the series' third season, originally aired in April, 2014. Bourdain examined the northwest Indian state's cuisine...which he said is what most the West think of when considering "Indian food"...by eating from street-side stands (Bourdain loved these wherever in the world he traveled) as well as restaurant food and "high dining".  He went into geography, politics, history and religion: the area is predominantly of the Sikh faith and borders on Pakistan, which was artificially divided from India in 1947 to reduce mass casualties...which happened anyway when mass migrations of Muslims and Hindus across the new border drawn by a British official produced essentially the civil war that they wanted to avert when Britain granted independence. The border between the two fiercely belligerent neighbors is tight and strict...yet farm-owners on the Indian side are allowed to work their fields on the Pakistani side! After showing the Punjab's capital city of Amritsar, he took a train eastward (and upward) to the base of the Himalayas, ending in the old British colonial outpost of Shimla, where the buildings look more as if they belonged in England than India.  Bourdain also showed that dancing is a very big deal in India...there was plenty of that, too, in this episode. And other than the dinner he ate at Shimla when he tried their mutton and a chicken meal at an Amritsar restaurant, all the food in this episode was vegetarian...Bourdain, more a meat-eater, nevertheless stated that were Western vegetarian menus like that he which experienced in Punjab, he would be much more conducive to it.  Every single episode of this Parts Unknown series was interesting to me, although at times I felt Bourdain got a little too political with his emphasis (as, for example, in the Russia episode).  Still, it was a personal journey, and to each his own, I say.  I'm still sad over Bourdain's death, which apparently was due to long-standing recurring bouts of severe depression... 

Quote of the Week...from Fictional Character John Mallory

Where there's confusion the man who knows what he wants stands a good chance of getting it.    

                                                                            ---John Mallory

The above quote is from the classic 1971 Sergio Leone "spaghetti western" movie A Fistful of Dynamite (alternate title Duck You Sucker), with James Coburn playing the Irish revolutionary explosives expert John Mallory, who made the above comment to his sidekick, Mexican bandit Juan Miranda (played by Rod Steiger).  Today the quote applies to how public opinion can be manipulated through both social and mass media with "alternative facts" and conspiracy theories, and how foreign adversaries like Russia are planting confusion and division within our society in this manner.  After all, if America is at war with itself over the simple notion of what is real, how effectively can it stand up to other countries who choose to challenge it?  It used to be that the political and social differences and disagreements among our population could be discussed between anyone, with a commonly-agreed-to set of facts forming the reality basis for the argument.  Nowadays, this side has its special facts and the other has theirs...I think one of the main problems is that many people have abandoned the traditional sources of information (the newspaper, the evening news) in favor of specialized Internet sites, Facebook and Twitter feeds, clearly agenda-driven "news" channels, and hearsay to get their information.  The sad truth is...and always has been...that those traditional news shows and newspapers have always had embedded bias within them. But one of the reasons we went to school is so that we could discern that bias and filter out the truth value of what others were expressing. Instead of recognizing this fact, though, and continuing to rely on these sources for their primary information, I see an increasing segment of our population abandoning this basic functioning of mature adulthood and instead latching onto media idols, automatically accepting whatever they say, no matter how ridiculous, and demonizing whomever they choose to demonize. I used to think that social media sites like Facebook and Twitter would provide effective forums for people to exchange their views with me on what I have posted on them. Well, I'm older and wiser now...the overwhelming majority of those old classmates...as well as contemporaries...never chose to interact with me on Facebook and I've become pretty intolerant (and correctly so) of those users who voluntarily allow themselves to be deluded by questionable information sources. This voluntary succumbing to disinformation, by the way, isn't just confined to those with conservative leanings.  Many on the political left stubbornly insist on their own narratives about the way things are, selectively including anecdotal events affirming them while rejecting or ignoring anything contradictory.  It's interesting in this time of very effective and...unlike in most of the world...universally-available and free COVID vaccines, both ends of the spectrum are engaged in wacko conspiracy theories that masses are following in refusing to get their vaccines...at least on the left (in general) those choosing against vaccination are still wearing masks to protect themselves... 

A Fistful of Dynamite is one of my all-favorite movies.  Being as self-indulgent as I am on this blog for listing my "favorites" of this and that, I'm working on a new weekly feature in which I review a movie that meant a lot to me...stay tuned...

Just Finished Reading Tangerine by Catherine Mangan

I just finished reading Catherine Mangan's 2018 psychological thriller novel Tangerine.  Set in the 1950s, it's about the relationship between two young women...Alice Shipley from England and American Lucy Mason...who first meet as roommates at a Vermont women's college, bond closely as inseparable friends, and then abruptly part following a terrible accident there, revealed later in the story.  While the chapters alternate between first person narratives by Alice and Lucy, the time frames also fluctuate between the present time and their college days.  And the present time has Alice, recently married to an Englishman named John, newly arrived with him in Tangier, Morocco.  She is shy and fearful about leaving their apartment but her husband is ebullient about this very beautiful-but-strange locale.  Lucy, desperate to recover their close friendship, seeks out Alice's whereabouts and follows her across the ocean.  What ensues is a psychologically gripping war of will and manipulation between Lucy, Alice, and John...who has incurred Lucy's wrath after she spies him with another woman.  But even more than this, Tangerine is about someone who is a psychopath, who sees hers entire moral world only as it relates to her own self and pride and who is incapable of feeling true love...which is self-sacrificial in nature...and substitutes obsession for it.  And to her credit, Mangan realistically portrays how people are regularly taken in by psychopaths with their apparent emotional honesty concealing their lies, their unwillingness to ever admit defeat, their charm...and their skill at assassinating the character of anyone for whom they bear a grudge: remind any of you of a prominent American political figure during the last five or six years?  I checked out Goodreads after finishing Tangerine to see how other readers reacted to it and their reviews are all over the map, but I noticed that with a few of the negative ones the criticisms seemed misplaced: because Catherine Mangan used the first-person narrative form for her story, that narrative in itself is deliberately inefficient and the characters typically ethnocentric as white, visiting foreigners of the '50s in their view of the Moroccans...don't judge her writing skills or social outlook for that.  Additionally, just about everyone missed the point of what a psychopath is and how one must deal with them completely differently than how they interact with "normal" people who possess a social conscience.  See for yourself and read the book, it's not very long...

China, Russia, and the USA: It's Complicated

Although I was a history major in college, I make no claim to be an expert in that area...or in the highly complicated field of international relations.  But it should be clear to anyone that for the United States, China and Russia represent serious challenges.  Both are vast autocratic nations with great military power and highly developed intelligence services, designed both to steal business and government secrets as well as unduly manipulating American public opinion through false plants in social media.  Both nations have demonstrated aggression in their foreign policy...one might claim that we in America have as well...and to an extent the argument can be made that as great nations they are asserting themselves within their respective spheres of influence.  But as I see it, both Russia and China are much, much more sensitive to American and Western criticism of their treatment of their own people than of their foreign policy.  I think the reason is clear: neither nation sees much of a military threat from others, but their respective regimes depend on suppressing any dissent within their borders from catching on and growing into a movement that challenges their hold on power. Trump never called Russia on its internal human rights abuses, but after Biden became president relations between the two countries have cooled considerably...our President, as Head of State, should have been more reserved with his comment about Russian president Putin.  China brokers no criticism whatsoever of their reported policies toward Hong Kong, the Uyghurs in Xinjiang, and their role in the COVID-19 outbreak, often invoking charges of racism in regard to their critics.  Since last year the United States have seen a sharp increase in assaults and intimidation of Americans of Asian descent, the main reason seeming to be that they are somehow to blame for the coronavirus pandemic as scapegoats.  Equating the actions of a foreign country or organization with its primary ethnic composition and acting in a hostile, racist way isn't new: following 9/11 nearly twenty years ago, Americans appearing to be Middle Eastern...even Sikhs...were exposed to attack and harassment, as if any of them had anything remotely to do with the events in the news.  President Trump kept calling COVID-19 the "China Virus", but his sloppy criticism was always directed at the communist Chinese state and what he saw as its mishandling of the initial outbreak in Wuhan along with suppressed and misleading reporting henceforth.  And here's an interesting problem: if people criticize the Russian government and policies, nobody says they are racist or are inciting people to attack Americans of Russian ancestry...after all, most of them are white and blend into the background population.  But critics of China's policies often find themselves wrongly accused of prejudice against Chinese people, an idea which that government itself promotes.  Russia and China clearly have adversarial relationships with America, but we also have productive, positive relationships in different areas.  In space exploration, Russia and the USA have cooperated throughout the bumpy roads the two countries have gone through over the years, and with China we do an incredible amount of business (like both Trump and Biden, I think some of the ground rules need reform, though).  And that's the way it should be, if great, rival nations like these three are to live together in peace with each other.  Should I ever find myself privileged to visit Russia or China, it will not be my role while there to criticize their political systems or leaders but rather to comply within the parameters of what it means to be a guest in a different culture while under its authority during the course of my stay.  Do I wish they had more democratic political systems and greater individual liberties? Sure, but I also know that this is my country and they have theirs.  As an American I reserve my right to give my opinion about any government and its leaders...especially my own.  But that commentary does not necessarily imply condemnation...on the contrary, I like both Russia and China and their people, to the extent where I have extensively studied both the Russian and Chinese languages: they are great societies with absorbing histories and much to offer the rest of the world...

Just Finished Reading Mexico by James Michener

I've read a few of the late James A. Michener's historical novels before, and had always come away from the experience with a better feeling of other cultures and their history...although when it comes to specific people, location, and events, I'm often left unsure as to which ones were fictional and which really existed.  In his 1992 Mexico, it seemed that the author went a little overboard on the fictional side as he concentrated on an imagined bullfighting festival featured two fictional famous matadors facing off in a fictional city with a fictional American/Mexican reporter visiting his family's fictional roots, along with a recount of the fictional Indian nation and their fictional pyramid and customs from the past...as well as the protagonist's encounter as a child with a violent, fictional Mexican revolutionary general.  So in a way it was easier for me to avoid confusion and pretty much discard everything I read as products of Michener's fertile imagination.  I doubt that veracity wasn't exactly the prime motivating factor for him writing this book, anyway: the overwhelming focus here was the sport/art/atrocity of bullfighting, which to me ranks right down there with cockfighting and dogfighting with its abuse of animals for human entertainment.  But I could tell that Michener felt differently and was fascinated and enthusiastic with it...and maybe he was thinking he could be like Hemingway when that writer wrote extensively about bullfighting, albeit the Spanish version, in the novel As the Sun Rises.  So no, this novel was definitely not one of my favorites of Michener...and furthermore I felt that with these characters he was promoting stale, negative stereotypes of both Mexicans and Americans.  Maybe you'll like it more than I did, though, and I haven't given up on other works of his.  I thought his Space, Centennial, Alaska, Poland, and The Source were all excellent and look forward to reading another along similar lines...

Quote of the Week...from Barry Farber

There is no reward in life without risk.                   ---Barry Farber

Barry Farber...not the motivational expert but rather the older radio talk show host...died Wednesday at the age of 90...reminding me of the passing of Don Shula at the same age just days before.  In the early-to-mid 1970s I used to listen to his shows, which originated on New York City's WOR and were replayed later on Miami Beach's WKAT/1360 "The Talk of Miami", along with Jean Shepherd's monologue program from WOR.  Farber was an independent-thinking conservative who was well-versed in international affairs and history and staunchly anti-communist.  Since his youth he had a strong interest in foreign languages, teaching himself several to varying degrees of proficiency...reminds me a little of myself in that regard.  Barry stood out with his distinctly North Carolinian southern accent and, unlike the talk show hosts of today, about whom he complained of using the forum to extend their own egos, preferred to place himself in the background and allow his guests to express themselves openly. He didn't stack up his show only with people in alignment with his own political views, either...Farber loved rigorous on-the-air debate.  As for the above quote, I happen to agree with it but since Farber's heyday in the business was before the digital age, I'm afraid much of what he had to say has gone by the wayside, so to speak...otherwise I might have a greater selection of quotes to choose from.  As for learning foreign languages, I know it takes a great amount of humility to try to communicate with others when you already know you're probably going to sound pretty silly as you make one mistake after another...that's a sort of risk as well, to your own ego.  But Barry Farber knew that the reward was worth it, and he always came across to me as a class act, respectful of others but at the same time confident enough to assert himself when needed.  And he loved studying history and languages, just like me...

About Social Distancing and the Coronavirus

As businesses, schools, churches, libraries, sporting and entertainment events, theme parks and other public places marked by gatherings of people shut down for the remainder of March...and possibly beyond...I am taking my own steps to flatten the exponential curve of coronavirus (specifically COVID-19) transmission in this country, staying at home when it isn't necessary to go out and avoiding my usual haunts at Starbucks and Dunkin' Donuts.  We've been shopping for reserve items that could help tide us over for a few days should we find ourselves quarantined or the stores themselves completely close their doors...either a distinct possibility.  The irony of this is that yesterday at Publix there were so many people packed into that small space that the shopping carts were nearly depleted and they had run out of the sanitizer wipes they provided at the entrance.  Well, I'm done with all that and, as far as being with other people for the next few days is concerned, other than voting this Tuesday I am quite content with either staying at home with my family or going back and forth to work.  Speaking of work, Friday they gathered us all together in a little room to watch our Postmaster General advise us on TV to avoid large gatherings...this social distancing concept is very counterintuitive to many of us who have come to believe that bringing people together in community is a crucial step for making the world a better place.  The epidemiologists, however, are more concerned about the growth rate of the disease among the general population and our nation's capacity to care for those many cases that will require hospitalization should that exponential curve continue, especially those more severely affected who will need ventilators to breathe.  Italy, just a few days ahead of us, is already deciding which patients are beyond saving.  And Spain and France have completely locked themselves down as well...

I'm not sure about the Florida Primary on this coming Tuesday.  They had early voting all last week at my nearby Millhopper Library, and that is a place where people get in close proximity to one another.  Voting is the one brief outing I intend to do...my polling place is the Senior Recreation Center just down the road in northern Gainesville: if they keep it there for Tuesday's voting I hope they're wise enough to have the Center closed for seniors normally using the facility and who would be hardest hit from infection as the general public traipses on through its doors to cast their ballots.  Yes, the measures taken to create social distancing and reduce the coronavirus infection rate to a more manageable level are draconian, as I mentioned in Friday's article here.  But so far we have not seen the heavy hand of governmental decrees...as has been the case in other countries earlier affected...to force the general population into complying with what they deem necessary to limit the disease's spread: this might be on the way as well.  I'm wondering what the criteria for social distancing will be in a few weeks...the numbers of those afflicted and deaths are certain to continue rising even if this season of shutdown "flattens the curve"...sooner or later places will begin to open again while the virus is still an active presence: what then?  I also mentioned before that I felt that the coronavirus is already freely circulating among us...we're going to encounter it on a mass scale eventually, let's not let the current social distancing delude us about that...