Quote of the Week...from Paul McCartney

One of my biggest thrills for me still is sitting down with a guitar or piano and just out of nowhere trying to make a good song happen.                                ---Paul McCartney

I don't know when Paul McCartney...now 82...made the above quote.  That exemplifies the tremendous stability of the personality and beliefs of this remarkable individual, an outstanding musical artist with whom we've been blessed to live during the same years.  From time to time I've flirted with the notion of learning to play musical instruments...some time in the past in my early fifties I took some private piano lessons.  But unlike Bill Murray's Groundhog Day character Phil Connors, who had a seemingly endless progression of the same day ahead of him as he went through his own piano lessons, I experienced back then the progression of brand new, very different days and their accompanying demands and distractions.  So although I picked up some slight keyboard skills and actually somehow got through a piano recital performing an excerpt from a Beethoven composition, I ended up abandoning the piano project. But in the back of my mind I've always wanted to be able to pick out any tune and transfer either its main melody or accompaniment to the keyboard...or guitar, for that matter.  Will and Rebecca studied piano and applied themselves better to learning it than did I.  I understand that when the Beatles were starting out, none of them could read music, but rather developed and honed their musical skills by endlessly practicing their instruments, and their songwriting was a matter of dreaming stuff up and quickly transferring it to guitar, piano, drum and voice, with each other serving as critics and contributors. Melissa recently gave me a nice electronic keyboard for Christmas, and I have a different strategy for playing it than before, one that I think the Beatles great with his above quote would heartily approve of. But my aims are a bit more modest than those of Sir Paul McCartney:  I just want to play the music that I already know and love...and he wrote his share of it...

Quote of the Week...from Bilbo Baggins

I think I'm quite ready for another adventure.          ---Bilbo Baggins 

I'm not sure whether J.R.R. Tolkien's beloved elder hobbit, chief protagonist of his novel The Hobbit and a bit player in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, speaks the above quote in the latter series.  But in the final Lord of the Rings movie, The Return of the King, he utters it as his old friend Gandalf invites him on the boat that will take them to the fabled Grey Havens at the end of the saga.  And like Bilbo, I, too, am ready for another adventure...a string of them, in fact.  But let's start with what is immediately before me.  On Sunday I plan to speed-walk my first half-marathon race...I've run the previous 17 since 2010.  It's the Tom Walker Half-Marathon, which I've run 5 time before, including the last two years.  It runs along the Hawthorne Trail, leaving and returning to Boulware Springs Park off SE 15 Street in Gainesville.  I've been wanting to see how fast I could speed-walk this kind of distance and how my energy level would flow during longer races.  Well, here goes.  As for more adventures, let's just say that I'm looking forward to my retirement which begins after my final scheduled workday on November 29th...

Quote of the Week...from Groucho Marx

Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.                                                    ---Groucho Marx

Sounds like Groucho, doesn't it...of course, he was the cynical, talkative member of the renowned comedy group of brothers that produced a string of very funny movies during the first couple of decades in the talking movie era.  Yes, the quote is funny, but it's also so, so true.  Yet, I think in today's world of widespread gaslighting...outright lying about reality to trash one's opponent...Groucho, if he were around today, might consider extending it with another witty barb.  Here in Florida we're closing out our second week of early voting for the 2024 general election, and next Tuesday is the official Election Day...all before the losers start crying foul.  I voted a few days ago and, for me, that's it.  Done. I have my own life to live, and if anyone else wants to rant and rave and riot and march and whatever, then they can be my guest...just (with a nod to the late Chris Cornell of Soundgarden) keep it off my wave...

Quote of the Week...from Rob Dial

Environmental psychology shows that physical spaces influence the way that you think, the way that you feel, and the way you behave.  And so here's how you want to do it: you want to create a deep work environment.  Find a quiet place, a comfortable place, a place that you can be undisturbed.  

     ---Rob Dial

This quote is from Rob Dial's personal development podcast The Mindset Mentor...today's episode dealt with enhancing one's mental focus on tasks.  He brought up this point to underscore the importance of one's surroundings in effectively focusing on work. You don't sit down to work in a place that is in the middle of a traffic lane that invites distractions from others, nor do you allow distractions like the TV or your phone to be readily available for interruption or temptation.  Besides finding a relatively isolated location to do your focused work, it's important to respectfully notify others there that for the stated period of time you're going to be concentrating on your task and to please hold their thoughts...unless of course there's an emergency.  Sounds good to me, now onward to finding such a place...

Quote of the Week...from Simone Biles

If you ever have a mistake, you try to just kind of forget about it because if you carry that with you for the rest of the routine, then the rest of your routine might not go as planned.  So you just kind of shake it off, and you continue your routine like you didn't fall.                              ---Simone Biles

Yesterday I wrote about the Paris Olympics and that I tended to avoid sports like gymnastics in which judges subjectively awarded scores to the competitors.  One exception: when American Simone Biles competed for the all-around women's gold medal.  During the whole time the NBC commentators would point out this mistake or that one, as if they themselves could even perform on the same floor as this group of the world's best.  Biles for her part made some "mistakes" but as the above quote of hers points out, you just have to shake it off and keep performing as if nothing happened.  That, along with other quotes of hers pointing to how simply having fun doing something challenging can massively enhance your life as well as performance, impressed me about her wisdom, far beyond her age.  Yes, I got a little tired of all the Google Gemini and pharmaceutical commercials, but that doesn't detract from my appreciation of Simone Biles...

Quote of the Week...from Ron Desantis

I think the country's on the wrong track.                  Ron Desantis

And I think that regardless of which major political party you're looking at, the most popular figures within are bound to be tagged with the label "divisive" by their opponents, and our Florida governor Ron Desantis certainly fits the bill there.  When he successfully ran for that office in 2018 and reelection in 2022, I voted against him both times.  The last was primarily as a reaction to what I considered his failure to adequately protect the population of this state, which has a heavy demographic tilt toward susceptible elderly people, from the COVID pandemic that ravaged the state.  Yet I haven't always agreed with the opinions and actions of the politicians I've supported over the years, and I believe that Desantis is a decent, intelligent man who has a kind of integrity and character to his personality that would better suit him as his party's presidential standard bearer than the jerk currently running the show over there.  Also, he is very good at getting his points across lucidly...in contrast to our also decent...but declining...president.  This isn't a campaign ad for Ron Desantis, and if Donald Trump inexplicably picks him as his vice-president running mate for 2024 I'll be voting against him for the third time.  But if Desantis were the one residing in the Oval Office, I'd feel the country would be on a better track than it would be with the Orange dude in there....

Quote of the Week...from Mark Twain

Golf is a good walk spoiled.                ---Mark Twain

I've quoted Mark Twain on this blog several times before...I don't think I've used the above one yet.  I have never played golf, not in the pure sense: I don't count miniature golf, which I think I'm reasonably good at (at least against others in my family). But I'd like to learn to play the big game...seems like it would be fun, as long as the players following me on the course have a lot of patience with me taking a lot of shots and time.  But I get what Twain wrote about golf...and walking, for that matter.  When I watch these major PGA golf tournaments on TV, most of the golfers seem way too intense and exhibit the utmost suffering when they miss a shot.  I'm getting to where I'm supporting the ones (like Scottie Scheffler) who just smile and shake their heads when their shots miss the hole or go flying into the water...it's just a game, dudes! As for walking, I can do that just fine...it's WHERE and WHEN I can go on a nice, long walk that I'm a little hung up on.  I still get a lot of cumulative steps in over the course of a day, but that's because my job and general lifestyle tend to be more active and ambulatory.  But just briskly walking somewhere...I'll never tire of that...

Quote of the Week...from Katrina Mayer

 Books were my friends when no friends were around.                ---Katrina Mayer

On my Facebook page often appear certain sites that were provided for my viewing without me directly requesting them...I always assumed that the AI running the show over at FB thought I'd like them.  One of these is "Goodwill Librarian", which is spot-on in nailing my affection for books and reading.  Wednesday morning, they posted the above quote by Katrina Mayer, an author who conducts "positivity" workshops.  Checking out her website, she immediately won me over by this other quote: "I'm an avid fan of solitude, peaceful surroundings and simplicity." I am a big fan of books and reading, almost always in the middle of two or three at a time, both in fiction and nonfiction as well as novels and short story collections.  During some of the most negative periods of my youth, reading provided a solace and a sense of rational foundation that no doubt saved me from treading down more pernicious and self-destructive paths. I was blessed to have parents and an older sister who were avid readers, and I often secretly raided their storehouse of books.  My dad was particularly keen on science fiction, and through him I was introduced to old-time science fiction greats like Frederic Brown and Clifford Simak.  I was also partial to the inexpensive books I could buy after saving up my meager allowance, especially the Herbert S. Zim Golden Guides to science and nature...the one about stars has to be my all-time favorite.  The ironic thing about my reading is that, with a small number of notable exceptions, most of my reading assignments in high school were negative experiences...I'm convinced that my teachers and the educational system they worked under...at least back then...were clueless and that they saw me an annoyance they had to get past to get through their days, not as a valuable individual with future potential.  But back to the books: when I could choose them, I loved them...and still do.  Now, though, I'm putting more and more of them on my Kindle as well as reading a ton of audiobooks...but they're still books and they are friends...

Quote of the Week...from Lenny Kravitz

We're getting so pulled in by computers and technology, and our kids have their face in computers all day. The human relationship is being diminished by this.                 ---Lenny Kravitz

Lenny Kravitz is an American solo rock artist who I've always considered as one of the most musically talented in the profession.  His singles hit Fly Away was my personal top favorite song for the year 1998, and he shined portraying Katniss' stylist Cinna in the movies The Hunger Games and Catching Fire.  Although I like his music and acting, I'd like to focus on Lenny's above quote.  Sixty-six years old now, I grew up and spent my early adult years free of the then-fledgling digital revolution, whereas it's the only thing that younger generations know of in life.  Fifty years ago, people would be astonished at a picture of a typical city street of today with half the people quizzically staring down at their hands as if in a trance.  When I went with my then-eighteen-year-old son Will to his college in Jacksonville fifteen years ago, we went to see what the main library looked like...the tables were full of students, without books, eyes glued in on their laptop computers.  Whatever happened to that "cognitive reverie" of hanging out at the stacks there, surrounded by books, which is what I used to do as a student?  And the video games...don't get me going with that.  Of course, I, too, have my head in computers all day as well...especially considering my "smart" phone.  And it's not all bad, don't get me wrong: I'm taking advantage of this wonderful opportunity to write this free blog for anyone (in a free country) in the world to read!  Kids do get outside and play and interact...at least some of them.  But computers have this instant feedback and reinforcement trait that can be addicting.  In generations past, children had their heads in books...with mine it was television all the time...and now with the young it's computers.  I wonder what the snare will be a couple of generations from now.  There is one glaring difference between computers and TV/books: people...not just young...find their personal validation through social media and the Internet, and that makes it much more likely that they can be manipulated by the ones pulling the strings on the other side, often hidden...

Quote of the Week...from Alan Watts

 You're under no obligation to be the same person you were five minutes ago.

               ---Alan Watts

Alan Watts was a twentieth century English philosopher, with a multitude of relevant quotes that we can use for ourselves in our daily lives. I think each of us has a personal responsibility for conducting how we live.  That having been said, the time of childhood and adolescence, a long span in which much of our eventual place in the adult world is determined...either through family life, economic level, or school performance...is marked by a scientifically recognized immaturity in our brain growth, interfering with our ability to form sound judgments and act on them accordingly.  Yet we are unfairly judged anyway...no matter.  What has happened before is gone...maybe the effects of the past linger, but I can make my own decisions...not just today, but at this very moment.  But I've also heard that relationships are supposed to be so very crucial to one's happiness and fulfillment.  Some of those who are the most familiar with me and think they "know" me, I believe, are the most resistant to accepting any change I consciously make in my life, even for the better.  It reminds me of the Joni Mitchell song Both Sides Now, which Judy Collins made into a big hit "But now old friends, they're acting strange. They shake their heads, they say I've changed.  Well, something's lost but something's gained in living every day." As for me, I find the idea of changing myself wholesale in a matter of minutes akin to jumping to the top of a tall building...and I'm no Superman.  No problem: I can change little habits without abandoning whatever virtues I've built up over the years.  Besides, once folks get over the notion that I'm going to change anyway, they can them accustom themselves to me as "The Changer"...

Quote of the Week...from Gardner Dozois

When I was a boy in Salem, Mass., in the 1950s, if you wanted to buy a book, you had to take a train to Boston.  And when you got there, to a bookstore, there was no such thing as a science-fiction section.

                                                                  ---Gardner Dozois

Gardner Dozois (1947-2018) is probably best-known for his anthology series The Year's Best Science Fiction...which I'm currently reading and reviewing (I'm up to the year 1989), as well as being the editor of the acclaimed Asimov's Science Fiction magazine.  He's also written science fiction in both novel and short story form, but his fame has been as the role of a collector and editor of quality stories written by others.  His above quote places him a decade ahead me, but I couldn't tell you very much about bookstores even during the sixties, other than the book and supply store at my public school.  Then again, I tended to go more for libraries in my early youth, and liked those old children's series they sold at my nearby G.C. Murphy like Power Boys and Bobbsey Twins (I read all my sister's Trixie Beldon and Donna Parker books, too).  But sure, once bookstores, both new and used, began sprouting in full force during the seventies, I caught the bug and began buying paperbacks, mostly nonfiction. I picked the above quote because nowadays bookstores sadly seem to be in a state of retreat, both new and used. And for those that are still around, it's funny that now the science fiction section is often the biggest one.  I'm not bemoaning the advancement of digitalized books like Kindle or audiobooks, mind you...I make liberal use of both forms. But I also know that for some reason book publishing...unlike with music or movies/TV...lags far behind in the availability of bygone and out-of-print works for digital reading, while much is unavailable in libraries as well.  Which means you go to a used bookstore to find them...assuming there are any used bookstores.  Gainesville's number has steeply declined in recent years, but we still have a couple of them, along with a crazy used book sale that happens every (pandemic-free) year in April and October.  I'd say take a train to Jacksonville, but you can't do that from Gainesville anymore, either...

Quote of the Week...from Ludwig van Beethoven

The true artist is not proud: he unfortunately sees that art has no limits; he feels darkly about how far he is from the goal, and though he may be admired by others, he is sad not to have reached that point to which his better genius appears as a distant, guiding sun.                      ---Ludwig van Beethoven

No one is exactly sure...other than Charles Schulz's piano plunking little Schroeder from Peanuts...exactly which day the great classical composer Ludwig van Beethoven's birth falls on.  Heck, they're not even sure which year he was born in! But for the sake of this article, I'll bow to fictional Schroeder's high opinion of his idol and say it's today.  I rummaged through some of Beethoven's more famous quotes and found that they were a mixture of extreme narcissism and pride for his own greatness with times of self-doubt and recrimination.  The above one is actually right in the middle, and pretty profound at that.  I doubt there are few of us who were so specialized and extensively skilled and accomplished in our chosen life endeavors as he, so here's someone who knows what he's talking about.  The more skillful and productive you get in an area, the more knowledgeable you are about it and how painfully much you lack in ability to fully master it.  A little baby who finally learns how to walk may suddenly feel he or she can do anything, but artists, athletes, scientists, or anyone else or who have dedicated themselves to their special field can feel a deep personal lacking and feeling of shortcoming that others may be confounded at, seeing only how they excel.  Not that I am remotely as accomplished in any of these areas as, say, a Beethoven...I am horribly spread out over many areas and with my skills and works in any one of them much lower than if I had decided to concentrate my efforts. But it's true: pick up a beginning foreign language book and after the first two chapters you'll think you can speak the language... a couple of years later you may think you never will.  As for Schroeder and the rest of his Peanuts buddies like good ol' Charlie Brown, Lucy, Linus and Snoopy, they were always on the front of my Sunday newspaper comic section as a kid, but I really got into the strip when I bought a couple of paperbacks featuring nothing but the oldest Peanuts comics going back to the 1950s.  I'm grateful both for Schulz and Beethoven...and others whose dedication to their crafts have enhanced my life's enjoyment over the years...

Quote of the Week...from Mark Twain

Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please.              ---Mark Twain

It's getting nearly impossible these days to find news sources in which they don't offer commentators to follow up on the selected news stories with their own biased interpretations, or "spin".  The three major so-called "news" networks are guilty of this...FoxNews is the worst offender.  Not only is the commentary one-sided, but the actual topics selected are slanted as well as whomever they might choose as guests to interview.  In reaction we're getting other channels touting themselves as "just the news", but wouldn't you know it, even they can't resist the temptation to hire their own (biased) commentators...just in case you're too stupid to come to your own conclusions about the news you just heard and can't form your own opinions without someone else spoon-feeding theirs to you.  I suppose it's just a part of human nature to take fragments of incoming information and try to create whole narratives from them...or, better yet, fashion them to fit one's own by emphasizing the elements that fit and discarding those that don't.  And if you can't do that for yourself, then help is on the way anywhere you look on the TV dial.  And radio...what a sick joke...

Quote of the Week...from George Santayana

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.     ---George Santayana

There is a corollary to this quote by the famous Spanish-American philosopher George Santayana (1863-1952): "A country without a memory is a country of madmen".  I first encountered his writing during my senior high school English class in late 1973...I had just turned 17.  It was an assigned book containing short essays from different intellectuals of the past.  Santayana's contribution was dry and pretentious...and I said as much on my subsequent written report, for which I received a grade of "9" (that school's equivalent of "A+").  But Santayana's legacy rests not so much in essays or books as it does in aphorisms, which is a fancy way of saying short, profound quotes.  With these he was right on target, as the above two illustrate.  My experience with politics and the rise of authoritarianism in some countries tells me that not only can we point back to world history of times like the early twentieth century, but also, we can see trends in our present mimicking those that led to the loss of freedom and democracy in different countries. The problem as I understand it is that within most nations exists a substantial core population of people who I conveniently term the "rabble".  They tend to view intellectuals as alternately weak and manipulative, while viewing strongarm leaders as effective and worthy of their devotion, at the same time tending to scapegoat various segments of the population as causing their own problems as they embrace tailor-made conspiracy theories to support their own prejudices...sound familiar?  The ominous revival of fascism here in America is also going on in other parts of the world...and I think this process is cyclical with that core potential in the population to keep stirring things up.  I'd hate to think we're getting another Hitler, but as Santayana said, those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it...and yes, a country without a memory is a country of madmen.  As for the philosopher's other writing, age has mellowed my earlier negative reaction to it.  When you're a novelist, you are writing with the general reader in mind, tailoring your language and narrative to their level and perspective.  When you're an academic, your papers will come out in a language that covers your thesis and arguments as completely as possible...this can result in that dry, almost unreadable text that students have long suffered with their assigned math textbooks.  Still, I'm partial to Santayana's aphorisms...

Quote of the Week...from Neil deGrasse Tyson

Democracy...of the people, by the people, and for the people...is so fragile that you can vote it out of existence.  Just select candidates who will only accept the election results if they win.

                                                           ---Neil deGrasse Tyson

It's now coming up on three days since the midterm elections that were supposed to determine which parties control the Senate and House of Representatives...and it still is inconclusive, although in all likelihood the Republicans will regain control of the House after just four years of being in the minority.  Supposedly, the tedious time-consuming mail-in ballot counting is continuing across the country, with Nevada and Arizona standing out among the close Senate races and numerous House races still undetermined.  As for me, throughout my adult lifetime I've seen swings between the two major parties and easily accept how voters can run on emotion and ignorance when casting their ballots...I've been known to regret some of my own votes as well.  But implicit in all this cyclic give-and-take of partisan political power is the confidence we have that the losers of elections will accept the results and allow for the peaceful transfer of power.  Ever since the Bush-Gore election debacle in 2000 I've seen an increased amount of election denial on the part of both politicians and people at large, and this is unhealthful for a representative democratic republic as we have.  It reached a head in 2020 when an actual sitting president refused to accept his electoral defeat...and now within one of our parties a large number only accept elections if they win.  So, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, the narrator of the great Cosmos series...and someone I follow on Twitter...is absolutely right in his assessment, which he made just before the election.  By the way, in fledgling democracies elsewhere in the world, the same thing has happened and is happening...the people elect someone as leader who uses the system once he is in power to change the laws to ensure that he will remain in power: not cool at all here in the good old U.S.A....

Quote of the Week...from José Altuve

 I feel proud to be able to play every day.  That's what makes me really happy.      ---José Altuve

José Altuve is perhaps the most talented and accomplished hitter in baseball today when it comes to pure batting.  He has played for his major league career on the Houston Astros, a team that has won the Amercian League pennant four out of the past six seasons and the World Series in 2017.  It was in that year of 2017, however, that the franchise...and players like Altuve...have received much negative attention for its team scandal in which, during home games in their stadium, opposing teams' catchers' signals to their pitchers were secretly filmed and conveyed to Astro batters to give them an unfair advantage, a clear violation of the rules that has tainted them in subsequent years...even up to today as Houston plays Philadelphia in this year's Series.  This sort of cheating scandal isn't new to sports, and instead of going more deeply into it I'd like to discuss what it does to players like Altuve who get stuck in it.  José Altuve is the last player who needs an unfair advantage to prop up his already spectacular batting, and he reportedly was angry whenever the others tried to give him stolen signals.  But whenever there is a conspiracy within an organized group to transgress the rules or law, be it a sports team, the police, a political group, family, just about any workplace, or even an informal social clique, the "Code" comes into play which compels the members to silence in the face of the violations...this doesn't just happen in The Godfather and Goodfellas.  The result is such members find themselves as victims of a no-win situation that they had little-to-no influence in creating.  Either they come clean and report the violations outside the group and be shunned as violating the Code, or they stay true to the Code and get vilified by the outside...such is the situation Altuve and other Astros players like pitching ace Justin Verlander find themselves in.  I am personally very much aware of this disgusting aspect of human social interaction and have many memories going back all the way to my childhood of this type of group abuse of individuals.  It's gotten to the point where I have a strong sense of when something untoward is going on around me, causing me to instinctively withdraw as much as possible from contact with those I believe are centrally involved.  And I can tell among a group that certain of them are up to no good...even when I am not privy to any specific information.  People-lovers will say I'm paranoid...no, I'm just experienced and wary.  As for Mr. Altuve, I say don't worry, my friend, be happy and play...

Quote of the Week...from Elon Musk

 the bird is freed                                                      ---Elon Musk

I thought I'd keep the language sloppiness to this Twitter submission by the richest man in the world, who just bought Twitter and made it his own private company to do with as he pleases.  As is the case with business innovators and tycoons, I have a degree of admiration for Elon Musk and his vision for the future.  This is especially true with his SpaceX plans to travel to and eventually settle the planet Mars, and his Falcon 9 rockets kick major ass, to put it crudely.  One problem that seems to infect people of this stature, though, is that because they have shown themselves to excel in a few things, then that means they are geniuses in everything...which clearly isn't the case.  Musk says he wants Twitter to return to the old days during the Trump presidency when anyone could put out any disinformation on this social media platform with no accountability other than that of dissenting comments.  The only problem I see in this is that it's already been established that foreign governments hostile to the U.S. have used venues such as Twitter and Facebook to plant false narratives under fake identities in order to unduly shape public opinion and influence elections in favor of candidates more to their liking...I've heard no acknowledgement of this problem from Musk, though.  Well, although I tend to avoid making "tweets", I've been on Twitter before Trump, and stayed there during what I regard as a fascist demagogue's reign as our 45th president. I will continue to be there as well after Elon Musk's takeover, but I wish the dude would focus his attention more on his companies' wonderful accomplishments and plans in future technology and not be so full of himself...which I recognize is probably a complete waste of my wishing efforts... 

Quote of the Week...from Ursula K. Le Guin

The unread story is not a story; it is little black marks on wood pulp.  The reader, reading it, makes it live: a live thing, a story.                                                      ---Ursula K. Le Guin

Ursula K. Le Guin is a renowned science fiction writer who passed away in 2018...today she would have turned 93.  I've read her Earthsea fantasy series as well as her acclaimed novel The Left Hand of Darkness...not to mention a number of short stories.  Le Guin's above quote reminded me of the time in my eleventh grade English class when a poet paid a visit.  He said that although he may have been thinking along a certain thread when writing a poem, it's always what the reader or listener gets from it that makes it all legitimate.  I think that goes for music and lyrics as well...once the creator releases his or her product for others to share, it becomes a property of the world to interact with.  Her opening words "The unread story is not a story" bother me: how many books are out of print and have never been digitalized...or ever will be available for others to read?  Yet with music I can get digitalized copies of some of the most obscure, out-of-print recordings...why are books lagging so far behind in this?  It's true that we do have the mega-corporation Amazon and some other sites to dig up hard copies of some long-gone novels and collections, but their prices are often inflated if they are available at all...

If you've read this blog for any length of time, you know that I like to read.  I go at it with Ursula K. Le Guin's philosophy that my reaction and take from a story is just as essential as the writer's original intent was.  I also write this blog with the presumption that whoever reads it will naturally apply their own background and interpretation to it... that's what makes it all interesting and worthwhile, after all... 

Quote of the Week...from M in the Movie Dr. No

Miss Moneypenny, forget the usual repartee.  007's in a hurry.                  ---M, Dr. No

For a long-standing movie series' first installment, the James Bond spy series got a lot of things right from the get-go with Dr. No, from 1962.  Then again, you can see some unworthy, dated stereotypes as well.  But I've always enjoyed the brief interplay from movie to movie between Bond and Miss Moneypenny, M's secretary in the supersecret British spy agency M16.  M, in the early movies played excellently by Bernard Lee, is Agent 007's immediate superior and has a very quick, acerbic wit...he's probably the only character in the series to which Bond displays a respectful subservience.  In an early scene from Dr. No, Bond, played here by Sean Connery, goes to M's office for his assignment and naturally encounters Moneypenny (played by Lois Maxwell), where they engage in their typical light, flirtatious banter.  Then Bond goes in to see his boss.  As he is leaving, M presses his speaker and delivers the above quote to Moneypenny...and 007 promptly leaves, giving her the empty box from his new gun.  I recognized the brilliance and humor of inserting this exchange in the movie, but I see a deeper significance.  I can't begin to count the times of annoyance when I would be watching the news on TV or listening to a radio talk show or podcast and the people on it would waste time just gibbering around with one another on no topic in particular.  This naturally doesn't occur when there's just one person present.  I'm guessing that part of this is to make the audience identify with them as regular folks, and part is to fill in some dead airtime between the actual features that they're really there for.  But sometimes they just go on and on as if they are in on some private joke apart from the audience and even snicker and giggle...that really sets me off: it's one of several reasons I refuse to watch the Greg Gutfeld show.  As for podcasting, I have written regularly about one series I enjoy listening to: Rob Dial's Mindset Mentor, in which he gives some ideas about living better in a conversational but disciplined manner.  I thought that since I like running, I might find a podcast that addresses that activity and found one featuring a couple who seem to feel that doing the old "Sonny and Cher" verge-of-argument routine is a great way to present a show.  After trying them out more than once, I came to the conclusion that although they did get around to eventually addressing the subject for which they had the podcast, it was too frustrating plowing through all that "repartee", as M termed it.  If I'm watching or listening to anything, I can tell you flat-out that this kind of prolonged banter is a big turnoff.  However, real life is different, and I think that light, inconsequential conversation is the stuff that greatly helps to hold us together in families, workplaces, stores, schools, and anywhere else people find themselves to keep from going to war with one another.  A little of that in movies, TV shows, radio, and podcasts...like Bond and Moneypenny in their flicks...adds some welcome flavor to the experience, but as with spices added to a recipe, too much can ruin everything...

Quote of the Week...from Queen Elizabeth II

Football's a difficult business and aren't they prima donnas.  But it's a wonderful game.

                                                                    ---Queen Elizabeth II

Queen Elizabeth II of England passed away at her family's Scotland home yesterday at the age of 96, having one of the longest realms in the history of nobility at seventy years.  It was interesting reading and hearing of the outpouring of emotional tributes coming from some sources you might not automatically think of, like for example the Rolling Stones' Mick Jagger.  But most reasonable and mature people understand that she was born into ceremony and royal duty and had precious little actual political power...her life was one largely preprogrammed for her.  She still made the most of it with a lot of class and some refreshing candid humor, as the above quote about her country's (and most of the world's) chief sport of soccer.  I think the same about other sports, too...with the U.S. Open going on now, tennis comes to mind as player after prima donna player pitches fits on the court, breaking their rackets, bawling their eyes out and screaming epithets at the judges and spectators.  TV analyst John McEnroe has provided more humor by publicly castigating their excesses, although he himself was one of the worst offenders when he played...

I had the television on yesterday morning when the Weather Channel mentioned the Queen's deteriorating health and I switched to the three main cable news channels.  CNN and MSNBC had concentrated coverage of the gathering of her family and different aspects of her life and career, but FoxNews was completely ignoring this momentous story, instead focusing on key political races that "their" party, the Republicans, needed to win in November.  Apparently, boss Rupert Murdoch had given the order to snub her, but why? Well, maybe a clue is in another quote of hers, from nine years ago: "I don't like to badmouth people.  but I'm the head of a monarchy that began in the ninth century, and I'm apparently more modern than Chris Christie.  Look, I know he has to appeal to the crazy right-wingers in his party, but the fact is, he's not as forward-thinking as an eighty-seven-year-old lady who wears a crown on her head.  It's pathetic." Melissa later told me that Fox did finally start to cover Queen Elizabeth II's death, but their decisions yesterday morning were telling: "fair and balanced" my ass...

So now it's King Charles III in charge of things...I remember my mother telling me about him in the late 1960s and it's been a long wait, for sure.  I've never been one to care about the news within the English royal family or any others...dang it, didn't we shed all that when we declared independence in 1776?  Still, I always liked Elizabeth and, like many others, will miss her presence and often incisive and straight-forward humor...