Some Perspective About My Past in 1971

 It's Friday morning on what used to be a typical weekday.  55 years ago I would have been showing up in the ninth grade at Nova in Davie as the weather outside was transitioning to a stench of chronic Everglades fire smog.  Lobo's debut hit Me and You and a Dog Named Boo was getting its radio overplay...soon I would tire of hearing it.  I was fourteen and a half, thoroughly tired of having to go to school for  a year. After school I temporarily stood up to a bully leaving the bus one afternoon and go t a little beat down in a fist fight)The esxperience taught me what contemptible ghouls the unwelcome onlookers were who were staring at me in a circle.  The next morning I received some sympathy from busstop classmates for what I went through, and that creep Arnone laid off me, never to be a friend. Later that summer during the early 10th grade I would return to school more serious in my studies.  On prime time sitcom television, some new series like All in the Family and Mary Tyler Moore were starting their runs...my family became good fans.That fall "my" Miami Dolphins, coached by Don Shula, were good enough to make it to the Super Bowl...which they convincingly lost to Dallas. Overall, I was not a happy camper and tended to slip into daydreaming for much of my high school class time.  At home, my father would overdose me with talk of his dog racing betting strategies and philosophies. Still, I appreciated his efforts at weightlifting to the point of getting good at the bench press, pull-up, and standing press (I could lift up my own weight from the ground).   Growing up during this period was a confirmation of me not having an easy life. In my home neighborhood, my neighbors were raucous and out of control, loudly playing music deep into the night.  

A Day in My Life Before the Onset of Chemo/Radiation

Sometimes with this blog of my I pick out a specific topic to write about, while on other days I relate what has been going on in my life, and how I feel about it all.  Today it's all about the latter: what's up with me as I approach Day One in my cancer chemotherapy and radiation cycles?  I'm not looking forward to it as it promises to be a monumentally unpleasant experience, yet I'm a bit curious to see how it all turns out.  I haven't been sleeping much at night, although I admit to falling asleep evenings on my living room couch in front of the TV (set on sports).  I tend to arise early in the morning, before sunrise around 4.  Then I brew some coffee and exercise while listening to foreign language radio shows and podcasts.  My favorite stations are Radio France International in French and Chinese and RBB Inforradio, a 24-hour news station in German operating from Berlin.  With podcasts, it's hands-down SBS from Australia, the initials standing for "Special Broadcasting Service".  I get my daily Spanish, Russian and Japanese listening from this great resource.  Then there some self-help podcasts that I watch/listen to on YouTube, getting subtitles of the ongoing program in Russian.  The last couple of days I watched a very slow (but expertly filmed) virtual video on YouTube of "Peter's" first (and possibly final) marathon run, done on the inimitable New York City course through the city's five boroughs.  Then Melissa gets up and, following a little breakfast, I go back to bed to sleep a little more (usually successfully).  Although I tend to tire as the day grinds on, the two of us usually find some time before sunset to walk around our neighborhood block (like today).  It's now a little past six in the evening and I am not at all hungry, although a kind friend of ours arranged to have dinner delivered to our home.  I already told Melissa that I may find myself pushing food away following the start of chemotherapy, and that for those times it would be a good idea to have some good liquid nourishment like Ensure that I could down instead of trying to chew and swallow unappetizing food.  But now is now, and so now I'm going to post this article, shut down the computer and sit back down on the couch for a while.  Good Night!

My Songs of the Month for March 2025

March, by all accounts, should have been a month in which I listened a lot to music.  After all, I had my prostate cancer surgery on the 6th and, for the most part, have been taking it easy at home recovering from it.  But it's not as simple as it used to be when I was younger and we had a number of radio stations to easily tune in to for the current hits.  Let's see, back in 1973 my songs of the month for January, February and March were You're So Vain (by Carly Simon), Love and Happiness (by Al Green) and Hummingbird (by Seals and Crofts).  In this digital information era it should be easier to find good rotations of current hits...but other than Gainesville's local pop music station WYKS ("Kiss 105"), which plays a lot of (in my opinion) insipid, uninteresting music, there is no alternative rock station playing today's songs...and I'm just not attuned to country or hip-hop...although I kind of dig songs that fuse them with rock.  True, 100.5 WHHZ plays alternative rock, but they're focused more on past hits, as are other local classic rock and oldies stations.  Instead, I have been relying on channels on my Amazon Music account.  Here's my list of favorites for March '25, overlapping quite a lot with the ones from the previous two months:

1 UNDER THE RUG by Arcy Drive

2 STARBURSTER by Fontaines DC

3 ZERO SUM by the Smile

4 BESTIES by Black Country, New Road

5 EVERYONE OUT by Diiv

Under the Rug has a magnetic, old-time rock sound to it...nice to hear that hasn't completely fallen by the wayside.  But if I were to pick a "song of the year" for 2025 so far, it would have to be Starburster...

Weekly Short Stories: 1999 Science Fiction, Part 3

This past week I only managed to read one short story in editor Gardner Dozois' anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction, Seventeenth Annual Collection, and which features his picks published in the year 1999.  Back then I was working at the Gainesville postal processing facility, sorting out mail on their flat-sorting machine while doing the graveyard shift.  That meant I was awake all night and could listen to late-night talk radio, most notably Art Bell's kooky, quirky Coast-to-Coast AM show that explored the paranormal, UFOs and conspiracy theories, to name a few topic categories.  But back to the Dozois anthology... 

GALACTIC NORTH by Alastair Reynolds

This is a tale of three people, very much in the future when humanity has not only spread out and settled the cosmos but has also mastered biology and medical science to the point that heads can be severed...and preserved, to be later reattached to the body.  Yes, it's pretty scary and gross, but the real horror to this true horror/science fiction story is the unintended consequence of the development of terraforming technology that is unleashed into the wild reaches of space, to develop on its own beyond anyone's control.  A woman is committed to protecting the thousands of "sleepers" on board her ship, but must land it on an asteroid as a ferocious, sadistic pirate seeks her cargo and forces her partner to betray her.  The rest of the story relates her very-long quest for revenge against both of them, and against the backdrop of a nameless doom destroying all known life in the galaxy.  Pretty heady stuff...normally I'd say that stories like this leave me cold, but somehow this time it all clicked together...

Next week: more from 1999...

Struggling to Keep Up with Current Alternative/Indie Hit Songs

I've probably written similar opinions on earlier posts, but I have to reiterate that the popular music scene for me has drastically deteriorated over the past few years.  It used to be that I could turn on my radio and current, ongoing hit songs in different genres would be in the regular playing rotation.  Now the only way I see to get that would be to subscribe to a paid online service...broadcast radio as far as I can see only rotates current hits in country & western and the insipid "Hot 100" songs that I generally cannot tolerate.  Hard rock and alternative music are only available on stations promoting a "classic rock" format...focusing on bygone music...and the one station, WHHZ/100.5, that I've enjoyed (at times) listening to over the past twenty-plus years, has reverted to earlier hard rock hits...nothing in the present to look forward to.  So I'm still exploring ways to generate a rotation of ongoing alternative/indie song hits, so far to little avail...then again, I could delve further into my Amazon Music app...yeah, that's probably the way to go.  My "top songs" of 2024 are a tiny group of three...I'll present them a few days from now... 

Dutch is My Improbable Third Language, In a Manner of Speaking

As we were finishing our cruise from last week, Melissa and I explored other cruise destinations available from our line, Royal Caribbean.  One course takes the ship to the southern Caribbean Sea, off the coast of Venezuela with visits to the "ABC" islands, formerly colonies of the Netherlands: Aruba, Bonaire and Curaçao.  Together with Sint Maarten and two other islands in the eastern Caribbean, they comprise the Netherlands Antilles, which was dissolved in 2010.  Now in 2024, Curaçao and Sint Maarten are autonomous territories of the Netherlands, Bonaire is under that country's direct administration...and Aruba is an independent nation...correct me if I got that wrong. Anyway, back in 1967 when I was eleven and listening to the radio at night, I picked up on AM-800 kHz the powerful station PJB2, which broadcast out of Bonaire with 500,000 watts, a staggering amount of power (U.S. clear channel AM stations are limited to only 50,000 watts).  About mid-evening the station, which called itself Trans World Radio, featured English-language evangelistic Christian programming, Back to the Bible, Unshackled and the TWR-produced Music and You being the shows I regularly listened to. Earlier in the evening the station served as a relay for Radio Nederland's evening programming from Hilversum, Holland, which included the English-language Happy Station Program as well as news in Dutch.  With English being my first language and Spanish lessons starting in my fourth grade (1965), in retrospect it was this funny-sounding national language of the Netherlands that was my third language, although I didn't understand any of it and hardly ever studied it in the ensuing decades of my life.  Yet Dutch is supposedly the closest distinct language to English if you discount the Frisian tongue that very few speak.  I wonder how many in the former Netherlands Antilles speak it...the prominent language spoken on the ABC islands is Papiamento, a creole based on Portuguese. I'd like to visit Aruba, Curaçao and Bonaire...most probably on a cruise...

Quote of the Week...from Scut Farkus

What, you're gonna cry now?  Come on, crybaby! Cry for me, come on! CRY!     ---Scut Farkus

Scut Farkus was the big bad bully character in Jean Shepherd's immortal 1983 movie A Christmas Story, for which he compiled a number of already published short stories and wrapped them together within a holiday theme.  It's become a TV staple, with a couple of channels running nonstop marathons at Christmas.  I already knew Jean Shepherd in the mid-1970s for his late-night humorous monologue shows on my local talk radio station in Miami Beach, WKAT/1360, shows that originated from the mighty WOR/710, (50,000-watt clear channel) in New York City.  I also had read the short story he wrote to which the above quote pertains.  Little Ralphie, around eight I guess, is all excited as Christmas approaches...he desperately wants a Red Rider toy air rifle, but his mother says no, "You'll shoot your eye out".  And now his own teacher has just written the same thing on a homework assignment he wrote about it...and Ralphie is trudging home in the snow, tears falling from his eyes.  Suddenly Scut Farkus, the school bully...accompanied by his little, stocky toady Grover Dill...jumps in Ralphie's way, confronting him and ridiculing his crying.  And then our hero does something unexpected: he charges his adversary, pushing him to the ground, proceeding to beat him up.  The scene didn't look realistic to me and, besides, I knew from Shepherd's earlier short story that it was the more manageable Dill that Ralphie fought, not impossible Farkus.  I also had a problem with the bully in this story being a social outcast among the kids...where I grew up in South Florida during the sixties and seventies, it was the bully who was the popular kid on the block or at the bus stop.  I could take the above quote of an imaginary figure in different directions, but since I always remember this jeering taunt of Scut's, I decided to turn it on its head and make something sweet about it.  You see, we have a year-old mixed breed puppy dog named Daisy, and when Melissa ("Mommy" as far as Daisy is concerned) ever goes into another room in the house with the door closed, Daisy sidles up to the door and begins to whimper just like she did when she was very young and temporarily separated from her litter.  And every now and then when she does this, I go straight into my Scut Farkus routine, repeating almost verbatim the above quote...but with some good-natured affection thrown in...                                                                            

Weekly Short Stories: 1990 Science Fiction, Part 6

Here are my reviews of four more stories from the year 1990 as they appeared in Gardner Dozois' anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction, Eighth Annual Collection. In last week's article I mentioned my two favorite songs from that year, but late that summer Led Zeppelin's first box set came out and one of Gainesville's radio stations, WRUF/Rock 104 (now airing country and western) played it in its entirety, introducing me to a lot of extraordinary music I hadn't yet heard from this great rock bank, defunct since 1980.  The next two years for me would be dominated musically by Plant, Page, Jones and Bonham's catalog of songs.  But for now, back to those four stories...

CIBOLA by Connie Willis

A Colorado-based newspaper reporter gets a touchy assignment: interviewing a local woman claiming to know where Coronado's fabled Seven Cities of Cibola are.  Apparently in the past, the myth of Cibola had led explorers to the American southwest, but this woman claims it to be right smack in the middle of Colorado...although it's only visible at certain times.  A very funny tale this is, with a surprising...well, not all THAT surprising, ending...

WALKING THE MOONS by Jonathan Lethem

Another funny story, this one about a grown disabled man who is engrossed in planet-hopping, at least vicariously through the use of his virtual reality apparatus, as his mother attends to his physical/medical needs.  Yet again, here comes a journalist to get his scoop.  This story is prescient...written in 1990 but here I am 33 years later "virtually" running marathons while watching recordings of real ones on my widescreen TV...

RAINMAKER COMETH by Ian McDonald

In a part of the American west marked by seven years of drought, a man comes into town carrying an assortment of peculiar gadgets, claiming to be able to bring the "rainmakers".  Exactly who the rainmakers are is beyond anyone's ability to believe...a thoroughly brilliant, creative concept you'll want to read this story to discover for yourself...

HOT SKY by Robert Silverberg

In another prescient story...this time much more ominous...about global warming gone wild written years before Al Gore popularized the subject, a ship is out to capture a giant rogue iceberg in the open Pacific Ocean to haul back to water-starved San Francisco.  But at the berg's site they receive a distress signal from a boat already there.  A great story about the conflicting ethics a captain can face in an emergency, with people's real lives in the balance no matter what his decision is...

Next week I conclude my look at short science fiction from the year 1990...

My #5 All-Time Favorite Album: Superunknown by Soundgarden

In the early 1990s the debate was on about which band was the best in the grunge subgenre of hard rock...was it Nirvana or Pearl Jam? By 1995 the answer was clear to me: neither, it was another Seattle-area band: SOUNDGARDEN, featuring one of the greatest singers ever in rock, Chris Cornell, along with lead guitarist Kim Thayil, drummer Matt Cameron and bassist Ben Shepherd.  In 1994 they released their hallmark SUPERUNKNOWN, now my all-time #5 favorite album. I didn't know it at the time, though, being gradually treated to radio and video releases from it like Spoonman, My Wave, Fell on Black Days and Black Hole Sun.  Spoonman may have been the coolest video ever, My Wave was my "song of the year" for 1995 with its defiant message to meddlers everywhere, and Black Hole Sun...curiously played on radio as an adult contemporary song although it was probably the darkest on the album with a very scary accompanying video...contained the catchy (to me) line "Hang my head, drown my fear, till you all just disappear".  But I was still unaware of the album itself until visiting my sister Anita in 1994 and noting that my musically inclined nephew Greg owned a copy.  But even then, I wouldn't have heard it except for a quirky twist of fate: a couple of years later, while listening to one of Gainesville's more obscure AM radio stations (on 1390 kHz) play a succession of Doors albums in their entirety, suddenly they started playing Superunknown instead.  Buying the album, I took to it quickly...especially the first eight tracks...and have never looked back.  Superunknown is definitely Soundgarden's best work, combining a generally connected musical thread of their instrumental and singing styles along with some really complex arrangements to form something that they could never hope to match again.  But that's all right: the band came through with this one!  Along with the others are two deep tracks that resonated with me: Mailman and Fresh Tendrils...definitely NOT adult contemporary material.  The original album contained fifteen tracks...some later editions added another song, She Likes Surprises, at the end although I don't think it fit the album.  Superunknown bluntly discusses topics like death, depression, drug abuse and social disaffection, so it may seem a little over the top or disturbing to you...make your own choices, I say. Below are my rankings of Superunknown's original tracks according to my liking...

1 MY WAVE

2 MAILMAN

3 FRESH TENDRILS

4 SUPERUNKNOWN

5 HEAD DOWN

6 LET ME DROWN

7 BLACK HOLE SUN

8 SPOONMAN

9 FELL ON BLACK DAYS

10 THE DAY I TRIED TO LIVE

11 KICKSTAND

12 4TH OF JULY

13 HALF

14 LIKE SUICIDE

15 LIMO WRECK

Next week: a completely different-sounding album as my #4 all-time favorite...

My #12 All-Time Favorite Album: In Search of the Lost Chord by the Moody Blues

IN SEARCH OF THE LOST CHORD, from 1968, is the Moody Blues' follow-up to their highly acclaimed Days of Future Passed and is my #12 all-time favorite album.  Yet it wouldn't be until the 1990s when I finally got around to hearing it in its entirety, although I was vaguely familiar with two of its tracks, Ride My See-Saw and Legend of a Mind, from album rock radio in years gone by.  That first song I mentioned, coupled with the preceding track Departure, would become a common bumper music feature of the late Art Bell's wildly popular late-night paranormal talk radio show, but it stands well on its own.  In Search of the Lost Chord is very thematic, focused on Eastern philosophy and religion, particularly that of India. That's cool with me since I tend to be a sucker for mystical stuff...just lay off the dogmatism, please. And all five band members not only had strong creative roles in the different songs, but they also sang (or spoke) on them. Here are my takes on the tracks as they appear on the record...

DEPARTURE--drummer Graeme Edge composed several spoken pieces for the Moodies...this one muses on the possibility of transcending our usual senses to perceive reality on all its levels... 

RIDE MY SEE-SAW--John Lodge's song expanding on Edge's prose poem, very enthusiastic and a rocker as well...

DR. LIVINGSTONE, I PRESUME--Ray Thomas, my favorite from this group, sings about the idea that we're all searching for something...not just the famous discoverers from the past...

HOUSE OF FOUR DOORS--I interpret this four-part composition by Justin Haywood as doors leading to various stages of personal enlightenment...leading into one of the trippiest songs ever recorded...

LEGEND OF A MIND--you may know this one from its lyrics "Timothy Leary's dead" but Ray Thomas...this is his song...assures the listener the promoter of LSD was alive and well, at least back then.  A profound instrumental rabbit role experience in the song's middle with flute, guitar and mellotron is not to be missed.  I have mixed feelings about this masterpiece because of its pro-drugs stance...

VOICES IN THE SKY--a slow, sweet song by Justin Haywood...just the same, I'm not sure I want to hear "voices in the sky"...

THINKING IS THE BEST WAY TO TRAVEL--keyboardist Mike Pinder's song title sounds cool, but it also seems like he's promoting drugs as the way to go faster than light: not cool as far as I'm concerned...

VISIONS OF PARADISE--Lodge and Thomas collaborated on this somber piece with a lot of Eastern sounding instrumental background...

THE ACTOR--Haywood's best song on the album, in my opinion...he's introspective here about a lost relationship, very emotional and heartfelt...

THE WORD/OM--Edge wrote the spoken preamble The Word, Pinder provided the vocals both for it and his song Om, which is about the Hindu sacred word...a little too religiously dogmatic for my tastes, thank you...

Next week: my all-time #11 favorite album...

Radio, Vinyl, Cassette, CD & Streaming Forms for Music

The forms through which I have listened to music over the decades of my life have greatly changed.  Part of this has to do with my money-making ability, nonexistent in my childhood and easy to come by later on, that enabled me to purchase albums and singles...the other part concerns the changing forms themselves.  In the beginning, during the 1960s, I got most of my music straight from the radio, initially a portable family model that was usually tuned in to either WQAM/560 for music and WIOD/610 for talk.  Then in the Christmas of 1964...I was eight...my sister and I each received our own little transistor radios, and I was inseparable from mine, that is when I wasn't at school.  My parents liked to buy albums back then, all in the traditional vinyl format of course, and were partial to the Beatles...later they bought stuff from the Bee Gees, Byrds and the Mamas and Papas, among other favorites of theirs.  When eight-track cartridges came out none of us used them...we skipped straight over to the innovation of cassette tapes: I bought quite a few of these in the 1980s and 90s and often recorded my favorite songs straight from the radio for my personal listening.  Back in the 1990s I decided to explore the complete works of some of my favorite acts, and so I went through period of buying vinyl used albums (one of these I'm discussing tomorrow).  For years they've all been lined up on a high shelf in one of our closets, never being played anymore although I don't have the heart to get rid of them.  I guess in a way that's hoarding, which I intend to make a topic for a future article. It took me a while to adapt to compact discs when they began to be used, but to this day I prefer them to MP3s and streaming audio whenever I have access.  Nowadays, though, it is easier to search my favorite albums and artists on YouTube and endure the necessary ads between each track...but when I find an album to my liking, I'll either go over to Amazon and purchase the CD or check it out when available from my local public library.  Listening to CDs for me is completely tied in with driving...sometimes it takes a few listens to an album to really know which songs resonate with me. This summer I've discovered a number of good CDs that current acts have released and having been listening to them in my car...makes commuting with the never-ending construction and distracted/aggressive/impaired drivers easier to endure.  I'm aware that there will always be newer ways for music to be conveyed...I'd just like to retain the choice as to which ones I get to use...

Weekly Short Stories: 1976 Science Fiction, Part 4

Today I finish looking at science fiction short stories from the year 1976 as they appeared in the book Donald A. Wollheim Presents The 1977 Annual World's Best SF, presenting the editor's choices from the previous year.  '76 marked the last full year I would listen regularly to talk radio (until 1997, that is, more about that another day), which hadn't yet been taken over and ruined by the likes of Rush Limbaugh and his imitators.  Personalities like Jean Shepherd (who wrote A Christmas Story), Barry Farber (a more traditional conservative), and Long John Nebel (a forerunner of Art Bell and George Noory's radio show dealing with off-beat topics) were on the air then, and I would listen to them for hours each week.  As for movies, the one that stands out in my memory was the TV drama Sybil, in which a struggling young woman (Sally Field) discovers through the aid of  her therapist (Joanne Woodward) that she has some fifteen different personalities.  It revived Field's acting career and introduced Brad Davis, who would star two years later in the excellent film Midnight Express.  And now, here are my reactions to those final three stories...

MY BOAT by Joanna Russ

Racial injustice and prejudice are underlying tones in this tale of a shy 15-year-old girl, Cecelia, who is the first black student in 1952 at a Long Island school.  The narrator, Jim, reminisces about his friendship with her, along with another boy, Alan, who was socially isolated in his own way.  But Cecelia has a special hidden talent to go to another world, and she's trying to decide whom to invite with her.  Reminded me a little of the Twilight Zone episode The Bewitching Pool...

HOUSTON, HOUSTON, DO YOU READ? by James Tiptree, Jr. 

An exploratory three-man crew traveling in their cramped little spaceship around the sun in our general era (late twentieth century, that is) finds itself disabled after damage from a solar flare.  But miraculously another ship is out there, ready to rescue them.  The question is, can they be trusted to be who they say they are?  The rescuers seem to be almost all women, and their ship is way beyond the men's time in technology...turns out the solar explorers had slipped into the future.  But how far, and how has humanity progressed after a terrible pandemic had decimated the population by interfering with human reproduction?  What happens to the men...and why...give a chilling lesson on human nature, both about the rescued and the rescuers...

I SEE YOU by Damon Knight

An inventor has constructed a portable "viewer" that allows the user not only to see anywhere he or she desires...in the house across the street or another planet...but also select the time of observation, from anytime in the past up to the present moment.  The implications of such a device universally in people's hands gets a vigorous examination in this tale that, to me, partially portends the advancement of microcomputer technology and the Internet, fused together in the ubiquitous smartphones of today.  Much food for thought here, especially the question of what happens when people realize that nothing they ever say and do (or said and did) is private and that everything is open to public scrutiny...

Next week I begin looking at the year 1977 in the realm of short science fiction...

After Yesterday's Opening Round Play in the NCCA Men's Hoops Tourney

As apparent by all the upsets occurring in yesterday's opening round of the NCAA men's basketball tournament, my bracket strategy of going with all the higher-seeded teams fell apart...as I knew it would since, as I said, upsets do happen.  That still doesn't mean that I wasn't going with the best probability for success, considering that it's next to impossible to determine which games will be upsets.  Besides, on Thursday with the four "First Four" games, the teams facing off each had the same seedings: my strategy couldn't apply to them and I would have needed to delve into each team's rankings to predict their outcomes (which I didn't do).  Friday afternoon, fortunately for us Gator alumni and fans, the University of Florida, seeded 7th in their region, managed somehow to defeat Virginia Tech, 10th, in overtime 75-70 to advance against one of those upset winners, Oral Roberts, seeded 15th, who stunned 2nd seed Ohio State 75-72.  UF should...I said should...get past them Sunday to make it to yet another Sweet 16 round.  Although after getting home from work I watched some of the games on TV...they're spread out over multiple channels (at least for this round) like CBS, TNT, TBS, and TrueTV (which I don't get), while at work I got to listen on my Android to the game of my choice using the excellent TuneIn Radio app.  There's more action for today...let's see if Florida State can't advance as well: they're playing UN-Greensboro this afternoon.  This is a "bubble" tournament, with all the games in various sites in central Indiana and the players and staff sequestered...you'd think Purdue would do well here, but they, a 4th seed, were knocked off yesterday by North Texas, 13th.  After Monday it should clear out considerably, with the remaining schools trimmed from 68 to 16 teams...

A Belated Happy 250th Birthday, Beethoven

On either the 15th or 16th of December, 1770, Ludwig van Beethoven, one of the greatest classical composers of all time, was born.  I listened the other evening on my phone to New York's classical music station WQXR as they were appropriately devoting their programming to his life and legacy during this celebration of his 250th birthday.  Beethoven's gradual loss of hearing, culminating in deafness, has always floored me: how could anyone like this compose something as complex and beautiful as his Ninth Symphony, along with the other late works of his career?  I've always loved that symphony, especially its second movement...which used to be played during the closing credits of the Huntley/Brinkley national news report on NBC during the 1960s when I was growing up.  I love listening to classical music, but at the same time usually feel a bit intimidated: I have no special musical training other then a brief period a few years ago when I took beginning piano.  There's a highly technical side of it all that completely escapes me...what I'm left with as a lay listener is the way the instruments interact during the particular piece's flow to impart feeling. Sometimes it's easy to "get" a classical work, as was the case with Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, Bach's 140th Cantata, Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, and Debussy's Nocturnes...other times it's harder, as has been the case for me with some of the symphonies of Mozart, Haydn, and Mahler...and even some of Beethoven's.  In any event, I usually have my car radio on Gainesville's classical music station on 102.7...if you're in town why not give it a listen?   

Trying to Obtain Use from Basically Useless Resources

Like squeezing water from a rock, some of the media resources surrounding me offer little hope of positive, constructive use...yet in almost all of them there can be opportunities for enlightenment and application if I just apply myself and face the challenge of plowing through mostly meaningless...and often downright dishonest...drivel.  Take conservative talk radio, for example.  Shows like Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin and Michael Savage depend on listeners plugging their brains into them for two to three hours daily and putting their own independent thinking to sleep as they voluntarily submit themselves to the hosts' brainwashing...but I don't have to go down that path: I can be a discerning listener, noticing when the host is being demagogic or dishonest and when he or she is expressing a reasonable opinion worth considering.  In almost every opinion show on radio or TV, be they from a conservative or liberal perspective, there is something worthwhile...even if it only is to figure out why certain individuals around me are believing the weird things they believe.  Still, with this I wouldn't rely on any of them as my primary source for news. As for other areas, I am regularly receiving company and union periodicals in the mail...I survey each of them and quickly dispose of them: maybe a little more intensive examination might reveal a useful tidbit of information I could use.  As for politicians, it's always a useful intellect and character-building exercise to take the ones I support and look for things to criticize while taking those I oppose and looking for something to praise.  Such an exercise doesn't create uncertainty within me, but rather strengthens my arguments pro and con about the issues and those espousing their positions on them.  In browsing through old newspapers online from years gone by, I have noticed that not only do editorial page columns provide insights into the time period being investigated, but also how regular articles are written, as well as advice columns, advertisements, the classifieds, entertainment section...and even the comic strips.  In a world in which the different political and self-identification factions of the population are bubbling themselves off into insulated spheres of feedback loops, each with their own "alternative facts" and subjective realities, I think it would be healthy for each of us to take at least one day every week or two (or month) and just immerse ourselves...as honestly and empathetically as possible...in the "opposition" bubble.  And also try to find some educational or useful experience in everything we encounter, even if it's generally regarded as junk... 

Fauci, Nicknames, and Washington

I was at work Thursday evening when, just before the 2020 Major League Baseball televised debut game between the New York Yankees and the Nationals in Washington, DC, pandemic guru Dr. Anthony Fauci threw out the ceremonial first pitch.  I did hear the funny reactions on sports talk radio, prompting me to later check it out.  The good doctor strode up confidently to the mound...and then proceeded to hurl a zinger about 10-15 feet to the left of the waiting catcher.  Not as bad as the radio jocks sounded...I was impressed that Fauci could even throw that far, to be perfectly honest.  Once I had a much worse throw...I was standing nearby a softball game one afternoon while in the sixth grade at Nova Elementary and a stray ball came rolling my way. I scooped it up and then helpfully heaved it back with all my might...only the ball didn't go back, but rather at a 90 degree angle to the left, straight at the school building: it was a very embarrassing run for me to retrieve it, sigh...

Speaking of Washington and sports, the report is out now that the city's National Football League franchise, after finally dumping its moniker "Redskins" following years of harsh criticism, will be moving forward this season as "The Washington Football Team".  And why not, since in soccer you already have teams like "Los Angeles Football Club" and "New York City Football Club".  Personally, I searched myself to come up with appropriate nickname replacements, producing results like "Big Fat Buildings", "Mall", "Museums", "Metro", "Bureaucrats", "Tourists", "Lobbyists"...you see, I visited there a couple of years ago.  But after giving it all due thought, my final suggestion has to be the Washington Jelly Beans, in honor of our late former president Ronald Reagan's penchant for the candy...that should help to soothe all the conservatives miffed at the dumping of "Redskins".  And besides, everybody likes jelly beans, right?  Okay I get it, never gonna happen...

Sports Talk Radio and Television Continue to Ignore Actual Sports

It's been fun the last few days to once again being able to watch live, American major league sports games that matter...I'm referring, of course to Major League Soccer and its group stage of matches in this improvised 2020 pandemic season.  Of course, were you listening to sports talk radio or TV you may not even be aware of the fact of soccer's resumption since they tend to obsess about football and basketball...with just a pinch of baseball thrown in.  And the media sports blabbers aren't really into these sports per se, but rather analyzing with an often overbearing attitude of political correctness what various players, owners and members of management are Tweeting or saying and focusing on their respective conflicts and offenses.  The complete repudiation of professional soccer as a topic of discussion is most likely based on the various announcers' ignorance and lack of interest in it, but you would think that a network like ESPN, which is actually broadcasting MLS matches live, would encourage its own people to bring it up on theirs shows...if only briefly.  Today Major League Baseball will open its own curtailed season and I still expect, in the midst of it all, my local sports radio talk stations to continue their obsession with besieged National Football League Washington Redskins owner Dan Snyder, as if this were the only "sports" topic worth discussing besides what messages different players will be "sporting" on their jerseys.  In a few days basketball and hockey will resume as well...forget about the latter ever getting any sort of mention.  At least they're actually going to be showing the soccer, hockey and baseball, regardless of the amount of attention they will be receiving from the so-called sports talk "professionals" who are supposed to be knowledgeable about them and who, one might think, would have a vested interest in promoting public enthusiasm about these sports...

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...

TV's Music Choice Offers Better Options than Broadcast Radio

I've spent so much time with this blog project of mine listing and reviewing my 500 all-time favorite songs that I just realized that I can't think of any definitively-2020 song that I've heard, much less like.  I've been disappointed that the only broadcast radio station in my area that purports to play alternative rock, WHHZ/100.5/"The Buzz", seem to either play hits from years gone by or pick for its current rotation of songs acts that sound more like they should be on Top Forty radio...if I want to listen to that kind of music I'll tune in to WYKS/"Kiss-105", which I don't.  I did notice, though, the other night while surfing around the Music Choice channels, which my cable TV service provides, that the "Indie" and "Alternative" channels were playing some really good, up-to-date music that wasn't getting any radio play.  I'm thinking of devoting a little time each day to listening to my television set for my music...a sad commentary on the sorry-ass state of radio programming nowadays in Gainesville.  Also, I might as well check out some online music channels...eventually I should come up with some future "memories" to add to my all-time favorites list...

Quote of the Week...from Isaac Marion

My favorite songs change every year.                     ---Isaac Marion

Not exactly a tremendously profound quote this week with important ramifications about life and reality...but the American zombie romance writer Isaac Marion's quote (he's not a zombie, but writes zombie romances) does provide me a convenient transition to what I really wanted to discuss today: my favorite songs of 2019.  I've been following popular music pretty much from the time I was seven, usually focused on a particular genre for each era, and as such have come up with my own "Song of the Year" as I have lived through each of them, from 1964 up to now.  Sometimes those favorites decline in my estimation over the years while other songs that I either disliked at the time or may not even have been aware of have surpassed my yearly "best" in my appreciation.  2019 began with me enjoying Paul McCartney's latest album Egypt Station, while Beck came through a little later with Saw Lightning, a single from his later-released Hyperspace album that he largely collaborated on with Pharell Williams.  I listened to it and wasn't very impressed with most of the songs, though.  Also, while progressively reviewing my 500 all-time favorite songs on this blog, I once again heard the German techno band Kraftwerk's extraordinary 22-minute piece Autobahn...for the past month or so I've listened to it several times...can't get enough of it.  As for songs from the radio last year, other than Saw Lightning, I was disappointed not only with the general pop music out there, but also the alternative/indie releases as well.  So 2019's favorite songs list for me is necessarily short...here it is:

1 SAW LIGHTNING...Beck
2 CAESAR ROCK...Paul McCartney
3 AUTOBAHN...Kraftwerk (from 1974)
4 HAPPY WITH YOU...Paul McCartney
5 I DON'T KNOW...Paul McCartney

Although I didn't listen much to pop or alternative music on the radio in 2019, I did get into the habit of listening more to classical music, usually either from WUFT/Classical/102.7 in Gainesville or New York's WQXR on my Android...Mendelssohn's 4th "Italian" Symphony and Mahler's 2nd "Resurrection" Symphony are "new" favorites of mine.  Maybe that's why I got so taken with Autobahn...in some ways it belongs more to the classical genre...