My August 2025 Running, Walking, Swimming and Health Report

In August I continued to walk, run, and swim regularly, not really growing in fitness or athletic ability but instead practicing the discipline of showing up, often under stress to do other things and under adverse weather conditions.  It was a typically hot and muggy month in summer, and it wasn't at all fun.  No, it's still August as I write this and I am not having fun.  Sometimes I feel that I am acting in defiance of my loved ones when I carve out time in my supposed "retirement" to actively pay attention to my own fitness instead of being a limp, passive excuse for a being.  I'm frankly fed up with the frustration of feeling that I am being set up to be a kind of scapegoat.  Still, I think I did reasonably well getting through this past month.  I walk and run around my neighborhood regularly and I do exercises mimicking running in the house.  I do push-ups and calisthenics as well daily.  My swimming didn't happen as often as I would have liked...maybe this coming month will see an improvement in that activity.  In August I participated in three posted races...all Parkrun 5K's.  My finishing times have declined, and it's frustrating.  I wish I didn't feel pressured to stuff myself with food...that's not a healthful habit at all.   My weight has been creeping upward into the low 160's, and I'd much rather be twenty pounds lighter.   Along with my fitness routines I find myself deep into the medical rotations of tests and doctor visits following my March prostatectomy, with subsequent blood tests and pet-scan held to ascertain whether the cancer diagnosed last December is returning on any discernible level.  Maybe next month I'll have to undergo radiation treatment since my PSA level has crept up a bit. Am I healthy? Who knows, but I do know that I am continuing to be physically active.  I suppose that an element of health is having a social network of friends and family who express an interest in me and what I'm up to, and who want to hear what I think about things.  Unfortunately, although many seem to be benevolently inclined toward me, I don't see any of that extended into a level of interest.  So philosophically I guess I'm in a funk of social pessimism, with diminishing expectations of others and, if anything, a desire to be left alone without surrounding drama.  And the POS occupying the White House isn't helping anything with his antics, nor are those people who put him back into power...

Watched the Movie Conclave Tonight

Since Melissa and I are Amazon Prime subscribers, we had the opportunity to watch the suddenly-timely movie Conclave on their channel.  I have to admit to being a bit resistant to sitting there through this fictional account of the selection of a new Bishop of Rome, i.e. the Pope, after the death of the incumbent pontiff.  But I thought, why not, especially after reading up on it that it received high critical reviews and starred one of my favorite current actors, Ralph Fiennes.  Fiennes plays Cardinal Lawrence, tasked as the manager of the Conclave.  The College of Cardinals, all with their red beanies, are shut off in a well-staffed and well-supplied building in the Vatican, and have to take repeated ballots to finally come up with their selection for the new leader of the Roman Catholic Church.  Since Pope Francis just passed away recently, this Conclave process is coming up soon, at the beginning of May.  The deliberations and negotiations behind doors will last as long as it takes until someone is finally elected.  As for the movie itself, I found sticking through it all rather tedious, with men representing different predictable factions vying for an edge against each other.  Scandal, tenuous alliances, megalomania and betrayal abound here...these "holy men" would fit in quite well with the Nazgul of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings for their coveting of power.  I'm not Catholic and I don't harbor any delusions that their situation is any worse than anyone else's...the urge to lord oneself over others is a human foible, largely male, as I have suffered from this desire on the part of would-be alpha-male "leaders" to make me subservient to them, going all the way back to childhood and continuing through school, work and even into old-age retirement.  I don't boss others around, nor do I want to: if you see yourself as my leader, then you ARE deluded and need to stay away.  Conclave's depiction of humans in conflict...albeit peaceful conflict...may enhance a story's dramatic appeal to many, but it left me flat and drained.  Who cares who they finally picked, and sadly, who cares in the real world how "our" Cardinals will  decide...

Quote of the Week...from Max Ehrmann

Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even to the dull and the ignorant; they too have their story.                                 ---Max Ehrmann

Max Ehrmann's prose poem Desiderata has always been a favorite of mine since I first heard it on the Les Crane singles hit played on the radio more than fifty years ago.  Ehrmann wrote it in 1927, and I've quote lines from it in past articles...including last Friday's.  As for the above excerpt, I have been reflecting on different types of positive, effective dialogue and have broken it all down to four: 

1: I speak about what I want to the other party.

2: The other party speaks about what they want to me.

3: They talk to me about what I want them to.

4: I talk to them about what they want me to.

Note that none of the above necessarily implies that the two of us in dialogue will agree on the content of what is said, but rather that it's the choice of subject matter...spoken with tact and discretion...that can, in my opinion, lead to successful dialogues.  Now the best of dialogues will combine all four elements, but I don't think that's always called for.  Yet over the course of a relationship all four elements need their proper expression and a sense of respectful balance...what do you think?

Quote of the Week...from Tom Hagen (Robert Duvall) in The Godfather

He never asks a second favor when he's been refused the first, understood?   

                                                                   Tom Hagen (played by Robert Duvall) from The Godfather

Tom Hagen is the adopted son and attorney of Don Vito Corleone...aka the Godfather in the famed movie series.  After being sent out to Hollywood to secure a sensitive favor from a belligerent movie producer, Hagen finds himself a guest at the dinner table as "Mr. Woltz" refuses the Godfather's request while indicating that he'd be only too happy to comply with any others.  Both parties know that the requested favor is only a superficial nicety to cover up what is essentially an extortion demand...do this or else.  That Vito Corleone thrived in a criminal environment of circumventing the law never kept him from enunciating and practicing his own "principles"...the above "one-and-done" refused favor being one of these.  Crime, extortion, violence...not at all for me, thank you.  Yet I can see the Don's point of view from my own life experiences of dealing with obnoxious people whose paper authority in certain settings goes to their heads as they try to remind me of our relative positions on their cherished, pathetic pecking orders.  I will ask such an individual for something once and if they make a grand show of resistance to my proposal based on their "superior" status, then that's the absolutely final time they will ever hear from me about any request...and they'd just better forget about me ever covering for their eventual mistakes as well.  The Godfather...I'm speaking about the original movie...is a masterpiece of psychological and social relationships, exposing the corruption beneath practically...if not all...institutions (including business, law, government and religion).  Corruption, I might add, enforced by its own extra-legal system of justice devoid of due process.  We like to pretend we live in a free society, but I strongly disagree for the above reason...

Quote of the Week...from Charles Herman

So what's your story? You the poor kid who never got to go to Exeter or Andover?     ---Charles Herman from the movie A Beautiful Mind

Maybe when you saw who said today's quote, you scratched your head...maybe not, if you saw the movie A Beautiful Mind, starring Russell Crowe as troubled mathematical genius John Nash and featuring Paul Bettany portraying his college roommate Charles Herman.  His above quote happens after their initial meeting, in which Nash rudely dismisses Herman for interfering with his studies.  Charles, in response, suggests that the two go "break the ice" with his flask of liquor.  So, on the rooftop, the conversation begins with the invitation for Nash to tell his own story...which warms him up considerably to his new (and rare) friend.  Never mind who Charles Herman really turns out to be, just consider two points in this brief sequence.  People tend to get dismissive of others who they think are crossing the line into their own territory or are unduly intruding or distracting them.  Conversely, those so dismissed often take offense as they feel themselves disrespected...I've been on both sides of this.  Yet Charles takes the high road and gives his roommate what he wanted all along: a chance to tell his own story to someone interested in hearing it...the diametric opposite of being dismissive.  I wonder how many enduring friendships have begun with that open invitation to tell one's story, and how many grudges and resentments have festered with memories of how someone was basically told to get lost?  Food for thought... 

Quote of the Week...from Robert Heinlein

One of the sanest, surest, and most generous joys of life comes from being happy over the good fortune of others.                                                         ---Robert Heinlein

Robert Heinlein, along with Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke, were the "Big Three" in science fiction writing during the mid-to-late twentieth century.  Heinlein, renowned for novels such as Stranger in a Strange Land and The Moon is a Harsh Mistress (click on the titles to read my 2014 reviews) was also an ardent libertarian...but more principled about it than the phony politicians and rabble claiming that identity these days (but only when it is personally convenient for them).  Heinlein was a strong believer in personal responsibility for one's own life...to him anything less was self-victimization and servitude to others' agendas.  Do I agree with everything he's said or written? No way, yet the above quote of his is quite profound.  I've discovered that folks who put down others for achieving a success that perhaps they wanted for themselves have a tendency to be of this "woe-is-me, I'm a victim" mentality, and jealousy often crops up: here's another Heinlein quote to that effect: "A competent and self-confident person is incapable of jealousy in anything.  Jealousy is invariably a symptom of neurotic insecurity". Part of being a mature adult is displaying a dignified spirit of good sportsmanship, and not just when your own side wins.  Sore losers are perennial victims, glorifying in their own imagined martyrdom and seeing themselves as the center of everything...know of anyone in the news the past few years who fits this description? I've been watching the Wimbledon tennis tournament for the last few mornings and noticed something: in EVERY match, no matter how hard-fought, after they were over, the loser congratulated the winner and the winner in turn graciously consoled the loser.  Too bad some of our political "leaders" can't behave like that...

Quote of the Week...from Clint Eastwood

Baxters over there, Rojos there...me right smack in the middle.  

                                                      ---Clint Eastwood, from the movie A Fistful of Dollars

Akira Kurosawa's 1961 Japanese movie Yojimbo, where a roaming samurai serves as the nameless character Clint Eastwood portrays and the plots of both movies tend to intertwine, culminated in a successful lawsuit by the Japanese filmmaker...but 1964's A Fistful of Dollars is much more widely known and launched Eastwood into superstardom.  Eastwood's unnamed character, a roamer as well, rides into a small western border area town bedeviled by two rival crime families: the liquor traders Rojos and the gun merchants Baxters.  Standing between the two families' houses, out on the balcony with the local bar owner Silvanito (played by José Calvo), Eastwood makes the above remark gesturing first toward the left and then to the right, anticipating what he will do to take advantage of the conflict between the two gangs as he manipulates them to violence against each other.  As for me, I'm not bent on messing with anyone...much less organized criminals...but sometimes I, too, feel as if I am "right smack in the middle" between two polarized groups of people.  Take running, for example.  Ever since I could run as a little kid, I discovered that I could usually do it faster than almost anyone else...for short sprints. I really wanted to be able to sustain that speed in longer runs, but as I went through high school, I discovered that my abilities in that department plateaued at a relatively uncompetitive level on varsity teams.  But distance running as an open social activity began to explode in popularity during the 1970s...still, from 1976 up to 2008 I avoided racing.  Since then, I've participated in about 100 events ranging from 5K (3.1) miles to marathon (26.2 miles) and usually in a pretty decent shape of training and fitness, putting me "right smack in the middle" as good ol' Clint would say, gesturing toward the left at the elite athletes and toward the right at the bottom-finishers (instead of the cinematic Baxters and Rojos). I can further extend this "right smack in the middle" notion to interaction with a number of families either obviously wealthier than me or much poorer. I don't know whether it is me or them with our respective attitudes, but although I am pretty much in the middle, average as far as my material wealth is concerned, I'm either perceived as being poor or rich to these others...with a resulting slant in how I'm seen and judged: but I'm just me, the same person!   I'm a materialist, too, but beyond a certain point with it I've grown to see that ostentatiously flaunting "stuff" and wealth...or, on the other extreme, deploring the material state I'm in and getting defiant and bitter about it...as exercises in futility.  Fortunately, I also know some people, with whom I've had the pleasure to spend time with recently, who either have substantially more material wealth than I or substantially less, and they...God bless them...don't make an issue of the disparity as if I've done anything wrong.  I don't tie my sense of self-worth in with my economic status (and I lived a spartan, monk-like existence for a number of years in my young adult life) and don't appreciate others trying to impose their judgements on me. But maybe that's just me setting my own identity as well "in the middle": move over, Clint...

Quote of the Week...from Abraham Maslow

If you only have a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.       --Abraham Maslow.

Abraham Maslow was a twentieth century American psychologist who devised the "Pyramid of Needs" model to account for human motivation.  I used a different quote of his earlier this year...click HERE to read that article.  There are varying degrees to read his above quote, but all interpretations lead to the same general principle: how one tackles problems depends inextricably on that person's own mental and physical makeup.  Kids toward their parents, students toward their teachers, employees toward their bosses...all eventually learn to discern their superiors' innate traits and abilities and tailor their behavior toward them in order to secure a reasonable environment.  Well, that's probably how it's supposed to go although what I think happens is that the subordinate in question mixes up leader #1 with leader #2 and gets frustrated with a completely different reaction to their input.  Poor Mary Richards: an earlier supervisor liked her spunk, but Lou Grant hates it!  In my own long, checkered history from toddlerhood on to the present moment, I've dealt with authority figures of different kinds.  And it's tough when one of them sees everything about me as a nail to be hammered back into place...I've come to recognize them early on, though, and tend to quickly get myself out of their line of attention as much as possible.  Fortunately for me, it's been a few years since I've had to deal with anyone of this sort head on...I've been blessed with some pretty wonderful people around me.  Yet in other locales, I've heard from others about their own disheartening experiences with authority figures. So, if you're the one in charge, the last thing you want to be seen as is someone who is springing around trying to catch others misbehaving or only resting for a moment in order to "hammer" them back in place. You'll end up creating an alternative, hidden world among whoever your subordinates happen to be, with them doing everything they can manage behind your back, instead of them feeling secure in presenting their selves, along with their mistakes, candidly before you.  Not a good way to go about things...it reminds me of that great old sixties spy/science fiction TV series The Prisoner and one episode in particular: Hammer into Anvil....

Quote of the Week...from Albert Camus

Don't walk behind me; I may not lead.  Don't walk in front of me; I may not follow.  Just walk beside me and be my friend.                                                 ---Albert Camus

Albert Camus was a twentieth century French philosopher; his quotes are prolific.  The above is one presented on my Music Choice television Soundscapes channel.  It speaks to the hierarchical instinct some people seem to have.  Some have set themselves up in a personal narrative that has them the supreme authority on any subject and are more knowledgeable about the ways of the world than others, expecting as habit to be accorded the final word on whatever is being discussed.  Others have submerged their own identity and individuality to follow massively flawed figures in personality cults or have made the calculation at some point in their existence that meekly toadying up to bullies and adopting their often cruel and bigoted treatment of others is the way to go.  I know that in different social settings throughout my life I have encountered both types.  Nobody knows everything and neither do I.  I quickly discern when someone not only is incapable of saying "I don't know" but also pretends that my opinion is, by default, irrelevant and beneath their consideration.  And I also get a very creepy feeling when an individual goes to great lengths of outward obeisance and fawning toward me...what is their real game?  No, how about simple friendship and mutual respect, each of us recognizing that in some areas I'm superior and in others you are...hey, maybe we can even learn from one another!

Quote of the Week...from Jim Carrey

Your need for acceptance can make you invisible in this world. Don't let anything stand in the way of the light that shines through this form. Risk being seen in all of your glory.            ---Jim Carrey

I've noticed that comedic actor Jim Carrey has become something of an armchair philosopher, and I find myself in agreement with a lot of what he has to say.  The above quote of his struck me in particular since for much of my life my unconscious strategy to get by was to make myself as invisible to others as possible...not so much because I craved acceptance from them, but rather so that they would stay away and not bother me.  In being like this I missed out on an important principle: like people attract like people, and for the things that mean the most to me, loudly broadcasting them to others...while possibly generating opposition and even persecution, also lets those with the same outlook and interests as me know that I'm one of them.  Eventually I would find myself in a circle of like-minded souls...no longer any need to be "invisible".  That's not exactly what I think Carrey meant...his message is that if people don't risk standing out before others, then their lives diminish as a consequence, invisible to others and, worse, invisible to themselves.  But old habits are hard to break...fortunately I think I have some keys to breaking this one, one "atomic habit" at a time...

About Marginalization

The other day I wrote a long blog article about feeling marginalized...and refrained from posting it.  After reading it a couple of times, I had felt it had a kind of whiny sound to it...as if I were bemoaning being a kind of victim.  Well, I guess that factors into it all a little, but truth be told I don't particularly enjoy being the center of attention with the spotlight trained on me...better to be a little off to the side of the picture...while still being in it.  And if that inclination of mine communicates to others that marginalization is their best option in dealing with me then I suppose I bear some responsibility in that.  But in situations where no one knows me, or over long periods of time in the same place, there should be a least some kind of acknowledgement of my existence if not participation.  Let me give a couple of personal examples regarding photographs.  If you've read this blog over its existence, you'll know that I'm into distance running...going back to 2007 when I resurrected this activity after a hiatus of 31 years. I've engaged in many races over that period, my finishing times unspectacular-but-fulfilling experiences.  Since we now live in the Internet age, almost all of the races I've run in have had websites with posted results...and some of them show pictures taken during the race of the different runners.  In all the years I've engaged in these races, I have seen myself in only two pictures, both as an unrecognizable figure among many others, one with me partially hidden and the other showing my back from a distance.  Yet over and over again, while running different races, I see folks who I know are volunteers or officials standing there snapping photo after photo of runners passing by, including of me...yet my picture is consistently rejected when it comes to posting it with the others online.  Now go back much further in time, to the six-year period when I attended my junior/senior high school.  Each year they came out with a yearbook, featuring the perfunctory individual studio shots for each class year, arranged in alphabetical order.  But sprinkled throughout each yearbook's pages are also assorted cameo shots of different students.  You'd think that the law of averages alone would dictate that I'd be in at least a handful of them, considering the many photos displayed over a six-year span.  But of course, you probably already guessed it...no photos of me anywhere, even though like with the running races I would see yearbook staff from time to time taking pictures that I knew I'd be in. It all seems a bit whiny of me, doesn't it?  Oh well, we all have areas in our lives to complain about and in the grand scheme of things, griping about being marginalized around others is probably a relatively minor issue, especially considering that I'm an introvert to begin with.  On the other hand, I'm often pressed upon to engage in community relationships with others, but when in those situations, discover that they don't particularly want to engage in community relationships with me...

Before writing this article, I checked the Internet to see if others were like me in feeling unduly marginalized, only to discover that the term "marginalized" had been coopted by the PC/Woke crowd to designate people belonging to demographic groups from which I am excluded...great, even the marginalized marginalize me!

Quote of the Week...from William Arthur Ward

 It is wise to direct your anger at problems, not people...to focus your energies on answers, not excuses.

                                                                             ---William Arthur Ward

I picked up the above quote off my Music Choice Soundscapes channel, provided by my cable TV company and which features positive and philosophical quotes to accompany their ambient music.  William Arthur Ward, whom I've quoted before on this blog, was a twentieth century Christian leader within the Methodist movement whose self-improvement maxims were widely published in newspapers and magazines of the time, most notably Reader's Digest.  I'm discussing it here because I agree with it, but as usual I feel the need to tweak it a little.  For after all, many people nowadays equate their problems with certain people, either in their personal lives or on the national stage in politics or the media. For me, sometimes those politicians in charge are the ones I voted for, sometimes not...that's the way it has always gone in this republic where people vote for their leaders: wait a few years and try it again...maybe "my" guy or gal will win next time if they didn't the last.  On the personal level I think a lot of us...myself included...have fallen into the trap of sitting back and judging those around us without taking into account that our own willful interactions (or non-interactions) with them play a big role in their own attitudes and behavior toward us.  For myself, it's important that with each situation I find myself in that I determine what I'm trying to get out of it and focus on getting my goals accomplished...this helps keep me from that nasty habit of "sideways thinking", i.e. devoting my attention to what others are up to and whether they're being treated better than me or getting away with something they shouldn't.  There's a way to address problems with others...like Ward said, focusing on the problem and not the person while, I would add, communicating during most of any interaction about how much I value that individual. Although it's fair and even recommended to honestly recognize the harm that certain people may have done to me when I was but a child and not to sugarcoat those times...I still have to take responsibility for my own life now. To make excuses or play the blame game when things don't go my way isn't just counterproductive...it also tends to create more problems...

Just Finished Reading A Separate Peace by John Knowles

When I recently bought John Knowles' novel A Separate Peace (for 25 cents) at a local used book sale, I didn't recall that I had actually read it before. But as I went through it, the text seemed more and more familiar...making me conclude that it was probably one of those high school English class reading assignments that I had stashed away in the deep, dark recesses of my memory.  It's a story about two boys attending a private prep school in New Hampshire in 1942 as World War II raged in the news and shortages and restrictions made themselves more and more felt around them, and with military service looming ahead of them upon graduation.  Gene, the first-person narrator, is the more introverted and cautious while "Finny" (from Phineas) is extroverted and impulsive.  The story quickly evolves as an examination of their friendship and its nature: Gene finds himself a follower of Finny's exploits, eventually feeling resentment at the latter's apparent view of him as being little more than just an extension of his own dominating personality.  The rift between the two is kept hidden and unexpressed until...well, here's where I let you, the potential reader of this novel, find out for yourself what happens...

It is that determination that some have to dominate and submerge others in their relationships...and the other party's unhappy and irrational acquiescence to such an inequitable and demeaning arrangement, that impressed me the most with A Separate Peace.  All throughout my life I have experienced people who, like Finny, seem to think that there's only one narrative to display interest in: their own, and that it is supposedly up to me to simply lay down my own sense of identity, interests, and values and follow them in everything they say and do.  To which I say: screw that!  If you haven't read this 1959 book by John Knowles, I recommend it to you. But why not save the quarter I spent on it and just check it out for free from the library?  One warning, though: although it is a short novel, it is also pretty disturbing...

Quote of the Week...from Marilyn vos Savant

Be able to cite three good qualities of every relative or acquaintance that you dislike.
                                                               ---Marilyn vos Savant

Marilyn vos Savant is probably most known for her weekly quiz/advice column in Parade magazine, inserted in numerous Sunday newspapers.  She's credited as having an extremely high IQ, for what that's worth, and doesn't mince words about her opinions on a wide range of subjects...some of these I'm not terribly in agreement with, to put it diplomatically.  Yet she does have a lot of wise quotes, and I picked the one above because it goes counter to popular sentiment today.  Whether it's politics, reality TV, social media, school, the workplace, or any other venue, people tend to vent negatively about others in their lives or the news without couching their criticisms with some praise and understanding.  Trying to see things from the other guy's viewpoint...which is empathy...is crucial to maintaining a balanced view of others, especially those we dislike.  We're all mixed bags with good and bad...Marilyn's advice rings true to me: instead of harping on how bad someone else is, why not put your time to better use and see them for their positive traits?  Some folks in my life are disagreeable because they don't like me either, and can probably list all sorts of reasons for this.  I can't make everyone like me, and I don't want to anyway.  And I can't always like others, either.  But everyone's got something to appreciate and recognizing that fact can potentially point to improved relationships between us...

Just Finished Reading Humboldt's Gift by Saul Bellow

After having recently read Chicago-area literary great Saul Bellow's The Adventures of Augie March, I thought I'd continue right along and read another of his works.  To this end I checked out the 1975 novel Humboldt's Gift...and just finished reading it.  The characters are all different, of course...yet I sensed that once again Bellow has put much of his own personality and life into his main character and first-person narrator, in this case Charlie Citrine, a famous writer out of Chicago.  The "Humboldt" is a once-esteemed poet, Von Humboldt Fleisher, whom Charlie idolizes and befriends early in his own career as a writer.  The two, once close, have an acrimonious falling-out: just before Humbolt's death Charlie sees him living in poverty in Manhattan...but regrettably flees the opportunity for reconciliation...

Although Humboldt is the title character, Humboldt's Gift is about Charlie Citrine and how he is trying to come to grips with his life as he approaches 60...he has writer's block and has fallen behind with his commitments to publishers.  His ex-wife continues to take him to court to extract more and more money as his own funds dwindle.  A pseudo-gangster named Rinaldo Cantabile relentlessly hounds him, first to claim payment on a spurious gambling debt and then to get Charlie to help his wife with her literary thesis.  Charlie's girlfriend Renata wants to be his wife, but his cynicism about marriage stands in his way in spite of his clear affection for her.  And then there is Humboldt: it seems that the late poet had left some papers behind for Charlie: his "gift"...

Humboldt's Gift is not exactly driven by its plot, but rather by the various different situations and people that Charlie finds himself stumbling into.  People almost without exception are telling him to his face what's wrong with his thinking and behavior and giving him unsolicited advice as to how to change for the better.  Through it all, Charlie reacts with grace and equanimity...except for that ornery Cantabile, whom he treats with deserved contempt.  Charlie Citrine loves people and their company, but really wants to have peace in his personal life to develop his "higher thoughts".  He has been on a long-term, unfulfilled project to explore the concept of "boredom" and its effect on modern Western society.  And he is starting to come around to a faddish new philosophy dealing in metaphysics that others belittle him for...as well as for his continued interest in Humboldt...

I liked Humboldt's Gift because it deeply explored the thoughts and motivations of the protagonist...and by inference Saul Bellow himself.  As in The Adventures of Augie March, there is an overbearing and very materialistic older brother who disparages and openly criticizes the main character, in this case Charlie...Bellow had such a sibling in his life.  And as I discovered after finishing the book, Humboldt Fleisher was also based on a real poet whom the author knew.  But I also got a great kick out of Rinaldo Cantabile...what a character!  And there was a lot of good material here about philosophy, society, and relationships.  So Humboldt's Gift was another book of Saul Bellow's that I enjoyed...and recommend...

Just Finished Reading The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow

When I was recently writing about another book I just read, Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow, I discovered a listing of what a couple of literary critics from Time Magazine deemed as the best American novels since 1923, the year of that publication's founding.  The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow was on it, and since I had already read another of his books, Herzog, I decided to check out this one, too.  I'm glad I did...

The character of Augie March narrates his own life story as he traces his relationship from childhood through his adolescence and young adult years. The setting is the 1920s through the 40s as Augie recounts his Chicago upbringing in a Jewish family, largely by "Grandma", an unrelated elderly fellow tenant who dominates his abandoned, simple-minded mother, himself, his older brother Simon, and his younger brother George, also intellectually challenged.  As Augie matures, he finds his life a string of passages from one set of circumstances and relationships to another, both in regard to career, friendships, and romance.  It seems that he is constantly running into situations in which he is acting in subservience to another's agenda...and begins to develop his own philosophy of life: one in which he is the driving force and not others.  But can Augie escape his life's pattern of relationships?  I guess that is something that we all have to ask ourselves: whether fate will steer us unobligingly in its own direction or whether we can change it ourselves...

The Adventures of Augie March, while presenting a very sympathetic character, also vividly portrayed what life in urban Chicago must have been like back in the early-to-mid twentieth century...including the Great Depression and World War II years.  This book is loaded to the hilt with humor, and I found myself chuckling at different points.  Saul Bellow, I imagine, wrote a lot of his own life into Augie's story...including his own sometimes tempestuous relationship with his older brother.  He breathed depth and life into all of the characters...even minor ones...and gave them a sense of real existence that few authors have been able to accomplish.  But we are speaking about Saul Bellow, of course: a great American author...

And now I'm starting on my third Saul Bellow book: Humboldt's Gift...

3/26 Sermon on Prodigals, Part 2

The sermon series at The Family Church here in Gainesville about prodigals, based on Luke 15:11-32 in the Bible's New Testament (click on this Bible Gateway link to access it), continued this past Sunday as Pastor Philip Griffin discussed the role of the father in this story from Jesus.  The father felt great love for his rebellious son, who took his share of the inheritance, abandoned his family, and squandered everything while living in sin abroad.  And how did the father express his love?

As Pastor Philip explained, the father expressed his love for his son in a number of ways.  First, he did not try to restrain or rescue him.  And when the son repented and returned, he accepted, not rejected, him and fully welcomed him back into the family.  As for "rescuing", our pastor listed seven ways that we sometimes enable...as codependents...the prodigals in our lives for their behavior: protecting them from the consequences of that behavior, keeping their behavior secret, making excuses for them, bailing them out of trouble, blaming others for their behavior, making threats without following through, and doing for others what they should be doing for themselves.  He also pointed out that the person we love but whose behavior we hate has a greater need than a relationship with us: their wholeness and maturity...which is God's goal for them.  And that maturity may well necessitate them going through hardships.  As for not rejecting them when they return, a good dose of grace and forgiveness can set all of us free...

So the returning son received his father's love in the end, but there was another son, too. Pastor Philip mentioned the other, dutiful son who didn't abandon his father but rather stayed behind and toiled for him.  He did not have that God-given grace to forgive his brother and harshly judged his father for his celebration instead of joining him.  It is this prodigal of a different kind...prideful and self-righteous...who will be the topic for next week's message...

If you're interested in viewing Pastor Philip Griffin's message I've just summarized...or maybe others from weeks earlier...you can do so through the following link to the church's YouTube video website: [link].  The Family Church, located at 2022 SW 122nd Street, holds its Sunday morning services at 9:30 and 11.  Besides the thought-provoking messages, there is uplifting praise music as well as an opportunity join discipleship groups.  I've particularly enjoyed this current series on prodigals and think that next week's talk on the "other" prodigal son is certain to speak to my heart as well as...hopefully...many others...

Four Types of Listeners

Seeing how I've lived as long as I have already and therefore feel somewhat confident that I can makes some comments about human nature, I've come up, from my own personal experiences with talking to others, with four different types of listeners.  Now, people can be any combination of these, and can also change from one type to another...but generally speaking, they usually display one of these types as their own particular personal way of listening...at least when it concerns listening to me.  The four types are, as I have coined them: sympathetic listeners, critical listeners, attention-deficit listeners, and narcissistic listeners.  Let's explore these, one-by-one...

The type of listener most valued by yours truly...as well as being the rarest of the four, is the sympathetic listener.  They will hear me out and try to discover and understand the full scope of what I am trying to impart to them...and then make a point of even remembering it!  This does not necessarily mean that they are emotionally attached to me or even like me...I see examples of sympathetic listeners on TV and radio...Larry King on his CNN interview show was of this type (at least with his guests...not the callers), as well as is late-night radio's George Noory.  If you want to people to open up to you, then you need to let them say what they want to say...and that involves giving them some time to express their thoughts while putting your judgments on at least temporary hold.  As I said, this is rare...

The critical listener is another type, one that I sadly run into far too often.  They will let me speak...at least that much is true...but then they act as if their greatest mission in life is to find holes in my rhetoric that they can expose, or that they are doing me a great favor by jumping in to offer counterarguments or worst-case scenarios.  Also, critical listeners may want to me to talk about topics other than the one I chose to discuss, and they have no problem interrupting me in mid-sentence to change the subject to the one they want to dissect.  There are too many of these types of TV and radio: three of the worst are MSNBC's Chris Matthews and Fox's Bill O'Reilly and Chris Wallace...

In spite of the fact that critical listeners annoy me to no end, at least I know they're paying attention to me...and as such I feel that, on at least some level they respect me as a fellow human being.  Besides, like it or not, it can be helpful for someone be pick apart your thoughts every now and then.  But regarding the attention-deficit listener, trying to communicate a connected thought with them that lasts more than a couple of sentences can be an exercise in futility.  And being the rather touchy, sensitive individual I have been for most of my life, I can recall many times when I renounced to myself friendship to others who had suddenly cut me off or just turned away while I was in the middle of trying to say something to them.  This type, as rude as they are, is oblivious to the disrespect they send out.  The idea with them seems to be that I am only being heard for their entertainment, and if what I'm saying doesn't immediately excite their attention, then it's time for them to immediately direct their thoughts elsewhere.  There is some similarity here with critical listeners, but whereas the former has a tendency to interrupt my train of thought, this attention-deficit type is the master of zoning out, and I have absolutely no use for them in my life.  They do worse then interrupt: they turn away...

The final type of listener is the narcissistic listener, and they are only slightly better the attention-deficit type.  Have you ever begun relating something about your own life to someone...or perhaps it was just an opinion you might have held about something, and the person you were talking to breaks in to relate how something similar to your topic tied into their personal life...and then took over the talking to make it all about themselves?  If you haven't had this experience, you are blessed, my friend...but sadly I cannot the same about myself.  I have known someone, no longer with us, with whom I spent much, much time in "conversation" over the years but realized that he never really valued anything I had to say about my own life, feelings, and thoughts...but rather that the world revolved around himself: his own vast life, with his own opinions and experiences automatically supplanting mine whenever I managed to bring up a subject on my own.  I realized after a while that my role was not to speak independently, but rather to just sit there and give the appropriate affirmation-sounds (like "uh-huh", "yes", and "you're right").  Over the span of decades, in countless conversations, I could not bring up any kind of subject without being interrupted and the talk shifting back his own monumentally important life and thoughts....implicitly relegating me to insignificance.  Sad. By the way, if you are looking for this type of listener in the media, just tune in on the radio to Michael Savage and see how often he interrupts a caller to go off on a tangent about his personal life and opinions...

If you know me, then you also know that I don't talk very much...I have let myself be wounded too many times by critical, attention-deficit, and narcissistic listeners.  Notice also that by writing my thoughts out and posting them, I can bypass these types...while anyone interested in actually knowing what I have to say can read them: ahh...finally, some communication!

Went to Retreat in Ocklawaha with Melissa This Weekend

This weekend I joined Melissa at a retreat held at a Lake Weir resort in Ocklawaha, Florida (a few miles southeast of Ocala) for some students and alumni of Asbury Theological Seminary, which she attends.  Melissa went down there Thursday, but as I couldn't get time off from work, I had to wait until Saturday morning to join her there.  The focus of the retreat was marriage and leadership, with different people making presentations on various topics.  The atmosphere was relaxed and informal with about 16 in attendance. They provided us with breakfast, lunch and dinner Saturday and breakfast on Sunday morning before the final presentation, which was how to foster creativity. I enjoyed the whole experience as well as the facilities, which provided (as you can see from the pictures) a grand view of the lake...which I had never visited before. Saturday evening I also enjoyed an after-dinner table discussion with some new friends when we discovered a mutual affinity for books...especially stuff in the science fiction/fantasy realm. Everyone was not only friendly but showed a warmth and acceptance that I had not experienced to such a degree with events of this type.  Melissa and I are both grateful for having been able to go there...  

On This Special Day

Each year this special day of February 14th comes around, meaning for most people St. Valentine's Day and a time for celebrating romantic relationships. That's true for me and my beautiful, wonderful wife Melissa as well... but we also have our own special reason for celebrating today. And this particular year...a third!

Happy Valentine's Day, Melissa...and Happy Everything Else as well!