My Reading Update: 8/16

Lately, my reading hasn’t been with the same fervor as it had previously. I finished the Stephen King Dark Tower series, and like its author, I’m glad to have it behind me! This seven-volume science fiction/fantasy series was good, but not among my favorites of his. I then began reading another ultimately disappointing King work titled Rose Madder. What bothered me the most concerning this novel about a battered wife who decides one morning to leave her abusive husband and strike out on her own is the way I could predict what would happen. And that is not the Stephen King I’ve come to know! After finishing Rose Madder, I began reading his more recent thriller (at least I hope it’s a thriller) Cell. So far, it’s starting out like a story reminiscent of his epic The Stand. At least it’s more interesting and unpredictable than Rose Madder (to me).

I read one of H.P. Lovecraft’s short stories titled The Picture in the House. Lovecraft’s descriptive language is very intricate though macabre. I just recently read Jo’s (another blogger) short fictional account of a similar wandering to an old house titled Summer Episodes. But with this tale, the very descriptive language conjured up feelings of wonder and joy, not fear and revulsion. I like reading both types, but they are vastly different from each other in their affect. Both differ from more standard prose fiction in that they implicitly invite the reader to slow down, take each phrase one at a time, and exercise his or her imagination to create mental visions.

I need to step up my reading, but seeing that my day has a built in time limit to it, and I must spend a good portion of it either working or unconscious, the remaining time needs to be allocated wisely. And that means that my family gets a large section of my time, as well as various home projects and some self-improvement activities (like running, writing, foreign languages, and piano). I’m thinking of just wearing one of those fanny packs that I can carry a paperback in, so that I will be able to create reading opportunities during times (like standing in lines) when I normally wouldn’t be reading. And I will be increasing my short story reading as well.

I’ve always done a lot of what I call casual reading (such as newspapers or magazine articles), and have dramatically increased this type of reading with my excursions into the blogosphere. There are some pretty good writers out there, and their interests span a wide range of topics. I’m especially impressed at the number of scientists, engineers, and mathematicians who use blogs to help educate the general public and spur interest in their sometimes very technical fields.

Tiptoeing Through the Internet

When I first got connected with the Internet a few years ago, I was simultaneously in awe about the scope of this transformative innovation as well as painfully aware of its limitations. I used to perform searches on Alta Vista and would come up with results that usually numbered well into the thousands (sometimes millions). Of course, as I scrolled through them, I’d find that there just wasn’t a whole lot of stuff pertaining to what I was looking for. And too often, I would get links to obscene websites and what I term “scamsites” from perfectly innocent searches.

Nowadays, I’m more savvy about how I phrase my searches. And the available material to choose from search results is often staggering! The future regarding the amount and quality of available Internet material out there just keeps looking better and better.

But speaking of the future, there is another side to the Internet. Along with the enhanced ability to view and copy material from the Web is the enhanced ability of others to detect viewing and copying, and then using the information to persecute and prosecute users. And, with other areas of our legal system, although it may take being a lawyer to figure out what the law is (and even they can’t seem to agree with one another on it), the justice system still places the burden of compliance with the law on the ordinary, legally-untrained lay user.

If I were to truly take advantage of what is available on the Internet, I could have access to music, television, movies, pictures, and literature that I could copy. Then, I could either transform what I copied to a more portable form for personal use away from my computer and the Net or I could load up my blog with all sorts of flashy features making it attractive and attention-holding. Regarding the latter, I’ve browsed through many blogs, and I can’t help but wonder whether some of them haven’t overstepped copyright statutes and similar legal provisions restricting use of others’ creative products. Naturally, I don’t want to commit a violation against someone else’s intellectual or artistic property. But realistically speaking, the pervasive nature of this technology is such that putting such material on the Internet automatically makes it susceptible for copying. There’s probably a line drawn in the “ethereal” sand that separates reasonable use of material from “going too far”. But I don’t know what’s reasonable and what’s an infringement.

Let’s take the embedding of videos as an example. I haven’t embedded videos on this blog largely because this is primarily a writing blog. But sometimes I’ll run across something in the news or arts that I want to write about. And then wonder about the legal ramifications of letting the blog viewer access the material directly from my blog. Better safe than sorry, I say, and thus I’ve been reticent about video embedding so far, even with the news services like MSNBC, Fox, and CBS, who put out gobs of material for embedding. With YouTube, I’m especially concerned about this. But if an artist or their recording company deliberately puts out a video on You Tube with their blessings, I don’t see any problem with at least putting out a link to it. But even with that, I’m not sure if there might not be some trouble down the road.

As Nirvana’s late Kurt Cobain once sang in a song of his, “Just because you’re paranoid don’t mean they’re not after you.” Oops, did I violate someone’s precious rights by printing that, too? And will Tiny Tim’s estate give me a hard time for this article’s title?

Favorite Songs of 2007 & 2008 (So Far)

When I began my weekly year-by-year recaps of my favorite songs (as I lived through each year), it was 2007. Throughout that year, my primary source of popular music was 100.5/WHHZ “The Buzz”. Unfortunately, as 2008 began, this station altered its format to mimic its higher-powered competitor 103.7/WRUF. The result has been that the great independent/alternative bands that I had come to follow were completely cut off from broadcast radio in Gainesville. Fortunately, I was able to replace WHHZ with my Cox Communications digital radio, which they broadcast on my television (and which has three independent/alternative stations). Also, I discovered a great albeit faint Orlando station, 104.1/WTKS “Real Radio”, that I can play over the computer (when I actually have access to it). Still, it’s harder to hear my favorites from recent years.

Looking back on 2007, Muse’s beautiful, mysterious love song Star Light continued to be my favorite song of that year. They also came out with a more funky-sounding tune, Supermassive Black Hole. Green Day’s cover of John Lennon’s brutally true Working Class Hero was faithful and compelling. Depeche Mode, one of those enduring bands that keeps making comebacks, continued their latest with the catchy (and typically dreary) Suffer Well. Speaking of catchy, Beck, the master of pop hooks, had a winner in his Think I’m In Love. The Shins cryptically sang about a Phantom Limb, while Lili Allen just wanted to Smile. The Silversun Pickups had their breakthrough hit with Lazy Eye. The Plain White T’s crossed over into the mainstream charts with their sweet exhortation of love: Hey There Delilah. Toward year’s end, Linkin Park came out with another of their screaming and pounding forays into fit-pitching and self-examination (but I somehow love it): Bleed It Out, my favorite of theirs since 2003’s Faint and my #2 favorite of 2007. And my #3 top song of that year was the sinister-sounding Black Mirror by Arcade Fire.

2008 saw me undergoing something that happens to me from time to time: I “discovered” an act that I had previously considered unworthy of listening to. This time it was the White Stripes, creatively driven by Jack White (also the creative force in the band the Raconteurs). And the song that sparked this personal about-face was the outrageously played and sung Icky Thump, a tune that’s bound to become a long-time classic. Now I’m picking up stuff in White’s other works that I like as well. I could still pick up some good songs off of top-40 radio and the harder rock stations like Psycho by Puddle of Mudd, Love Song by Sara Bareilles, Ladies and Gentlemen by Saliva, Let It Die by the Foo Fighters, and Viva La Vida by Coldplay. And I managed to hear a few good indy/alternative artists as well. Beck continued cranking out likable, original songs with the relentless Timebomb. The band Rogue Wave’s Lake Michigan was one of the last good alternative songs I heard played on WHHZ before they abandoned good taste. Death Cab For Cutie’s I Will Possess Your Heart is very long and repetitive (both musically and lyrically), but its effect is not to bore but rather to entrance. And the emerging group MGMT had the significant and very disturbing song Time to Pretend. Here’s a list of my personal rankings so far in 2008:

1. Time to Pretend (MGMT)
2. Icky Thump (White Stripes)
3. Timebomb (Beck)
4. I Will Possess Your Heart (Death Cab for Cutie)
5. Psycho (Puddle of Mudd)

The Good Lie

Self-improvement guru Anthony Robbins, in one of his old books (the title eludes me), once extolled the value of “lying”. And by that, he meant that there are some ideas that may or may not be true, but acting as if they were true could be beneficial. For example, the notion that “I control my own reality” may be a scientific overreach (putting it mildly). But for the purpose of fighting a sense of helplessness about life and transforming it into a feeling of control and personal responsibility, this “lie” can work. Another “lie” is that it doesn’t matter what happens to me; it’s what I do regarding what happens to me that matters. Of course, all sorts of very crucial things can happen to me (including a meteorite landing on my head), but the gist of this “lie” once again is to put me in the driver’s seat of my own life.

As a matter of fact, any change that I am going to want to make is by necessity predicated on “lies” like these. I may not yet be the person that I want to change into, but I still need to adopt the mindset and habit patterns of one who has changed.

As I wrote a few days ago in an article on my “discomfort” zones, sometimes it is necessary to allow myself to get into situations about which I am unfamiliar and lacking in confidence. Then, the philosophy of “winging it”, based on another “lie” (do it, and if you don’t know how to do it, act as if you do) kicks in. With the caveat, of course, that I will reach out and accept with humility and gratitude corrective advice from those around me when I “screw up”!

In religious circles, there may be something to this idea of “lies” as well. One type of prayer that helps the one doing the praying to take responsibility for his or her life is the prayer of affirmation. This type of prayer is based on the “lie” that what is being prayed for has already been granted. By doing this, the one who is praying is automatically put into the position of having to analyze the reasonableness of the prayer, as well as possible unintended negative consequences if it really were to come to reality. If what is being sought is truly reasonable, then the act of praying fervently like this can empower the person to work to create the sought-after solution.

A counterargument can be made to the effect that it would be harmful if someone with, say, cancer were simply to invent the lie that it no longer existed. Especially if this caused them to forgo needed medical treatment. I believe that there are some fringe religious groups that actually believe in this type of “healing”. But as long as the one doing the “lying” understands the nature of the “lie” as only a tool for personal empowerment, then instead of passively waiting for things to work out like magic, that person will develop successful strategies and carry them out.

The Incredible Shrinking Attention Span

There was once a kid I went to elementary school with. He was in the fifth grade while I was in the sixth, but the way our school was arranged, we often had classes together. One day I found myself conversing with this friendly-enough student. I don’t even remember what it was that I was saying, but I was talking directly at him and looking at him. And he was listening to me, looking back at me. I was right in the middle of what I was saying, though, when his face suddenly drew a blank and he simply turned away, no longer paying attention to me. He didn’t intend to slight me, I’m sure, but I was so miffed by this apparent rebuff to one of my rare friendly communication attempts that I never did try to talk with him about anything again. And later, after going over “across the field” to another school and the seventh grade, I never saw him again.

It is easy to take it personally when encountering someone suffering from a deficient attention span. As I went through life and kept encountering examples similar to what I experienced in school that day forty years ago, it dawned on me that one of two things must be true. Either a lot of people had incredibly short attention spans, or I was gifted with an incredibly long one. After reading the late, renowned science fiction writer Robert Heinlein’s critical opinion about the state of education, I am tempted to side with the former possibility over the latter.

In one of his notes, published posthumously, Heinlein claimed that it used to be commonplace for math students to be able to express products of two two-digit numbers by simple mental calculation, without the aid of pencil and paper. Although I could do this as well, I also knew that very few around me could. Whenever I would perform this “trick” for others, people would react as if I were either a genius or a magician. But the technique for doing this is painfully simple. All you have to be able to do mentally is be able to store a four digit number temporarily in memory and then add it to the sum of two four-digit numbers.

For example, take a “difficult” problem:

What is 93 x 67?

By simply breaking down the “paper” multiplication procedures most everyone already knows (using distribution), a quick mental shortcut can be devised:
--------------------------------------------------------------------
A) Multiply the tens together and the units together, then adding them to each other by “merging” them in a 4-digit number:

9x6=54
3x7=21
5421

B) Store “5421” in temporary memory (in your brain, not a calculator). Now reverse the units in the two numbers being multiplied, multiply the digits in each number, add them and then add a zero:

93x67
97, 63
9x7=63, 6x3=18
63+18=81
810

C) Now recall from your memory “5421” and add

5421+810=6231
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The instructions seem much more complicated then the actual procedure which, if drilled anywhere near to the extent that written multiplication is drilled in school, would quickly become much more automatic.

I recently mentioned in a comment to a mathematics educator on his blog what Heinlein wrote and that folks commonly used to have this type of skill, which has been allowed to slide over the years until it now seems like a big mystery. His reply was of skepticism and that a feat like this required a rare ability. But multiplying two two-digits mentally only requires knowing the procedure, a little practice, and something resembling an attention span!

It takes an attention span to be able to listen to another, be it in a speech or in a simple conversation. It takes an attention span to be able to read a novel (or even a short story) and store the story’s pertinent information long enough to be able to recall later in reading without having to flip pages back. And it takes an attention span to be a responsible citizen participating in a representative democracy, in order to not allow last-minute flashy or inflammatory, demagogic media spots to play a decisive factor in one’s voting.

Our educational system needs to recognize the need for exercising and developing students’ abilities to focus on different topics, hold them in concentration for a sufficient time, and then be able to recall salient facts from what they have been thinking about. Without using paper, calculators or computers as crutches. And with our ever-increasing emphasis on obtaining close-to-instant results with our nifty 21st century “thought-saving” gadgets, the trend seems to be going in the wrong direction.

Monday Newsbreak: 8/11

--The country of Georgia, under its president Mikhail Saakashvili, decided to invade its secessionist province of South Ossetia, prompting a Russian counterattack and offensive against Georgia. The volatile Saakashvili apparently instigated this outbreak of hostilities with South Ossetia, but now the danger is in his small nation being overrun. Georgia has been one of the United States’ biggest allies in the region, even having sent soldiers to Iraq. But their president is unstable and provocative. The population of South Ossetia is more pro-Russian and favorable to the idea of union with its neighboring giant. This war is very dangerous and could ignite into a broader conflict. Will cooler heads prevail? Georgia has announced that it has withdrawn its forces from South Ossetia and is proposing a cease-fire. Now it remains to be seen how restrained the Russians will be in their response. So far, they seem intent on crushing their small neighbor.

--Tragedy has marred the Beijing Summer Olympics, with a Chinese man stabbing the parents of the U.S. volleyball coach at a historic tower before jumping to his death. The father died while the mother is in critical condition. The attack seemed to be completely random and unprovoked.

--It’s not fashionable to say this, but I believe that the Chinese and the Russians have a great deal more to fear from terrorism than does the United States. Although seen as dangerous rivals by some, even enemies, American leaders need to express their willingness to support these two nations as they try to legitimately protect their own people. I read something recently about how stringent China’s Olympic security measures were. But they weren’t any more severe than those taken by Greece for their Olympics four years earlier. But then again, China is way too touchy with its sensitivity to criticism by others (noting their refusal to admit an American former Olympic athlete for supporting Darfur human rights).

--Ellen Nakashima reports for the Washington Post that a vast database of Americans’ prescriptions records has led to the formation of “health credit reports” that determine how much health and life insurance companies charge prospective customers. The two biggest health “big brother” data collecting companies are Ingenix and Milliman. This is completely outrageous! How much more abuse by the health care and insurance industries are we going to put up with before we dump this horrendous system in favor of publicly-funded universal health care?

--The Miami Dolphins began their preseason schedule by losing to Tampa Bay 17-6. Touted as a new-look team, rebuilding from last year’s pathetic 1-15 version, the Dolphins’ one bright spot was the performance of veteran running back, marijuana enthusiast, and former retiree Ricky Williams. When I read that Williams played, I was astonished. I thought the Dolphins had gotten rid of him a long time ago!

Believe Not Vs. Not Believe

There are some words that are not even remotely offensive or profane; but just the same, people tend to avoid using them because they feel that it makes them seem stupid or ignorant. One of these is the simple statement “I don’t know.” It seems to be more more acceptable for people to arbitrarily “vote” their beliefs or denials rather than just come clean and say that they’re clueless, or at least uncertain! And it’s this concept of “belief” that I’d like to examine a little.

To me, believing something is basically arriving at a conclusion, from observation and reflection, that whatever I have observed and reflected upon is valid and has truth value. Thus I generally believe people who have established a track record with me for honesty. I believe in science and math, the concepts from which are borne out in their technological applications and in their descriptions and predictions of things and events, respectively, in the known universe. I believe in the arts, which are true in that they successfully evoke reactions of pleasure and other emotions from me; and my own existence, from the continuity of my memory and my ongoing experiences. I believe in exercise and a healthful diet because they cause me to feel better. In none of these examples that I mentioned is belief or disbelief a matter of virtue or vice.

And yet when it comes to religion, that is exactly how belief is often framed (especially with Christianity and Islam). In those religions, if you believe in the precepts that they express about the deity, than you are “good” or “saved” and have the hope of eternal life in heaven. But if you make the cognitive decision that a particular faith is not believable, than according to them, you are an “non-believer” and an “infidel”, basically evil and doomed to eternal damnation at death. And I’ve always had a serious problem with the “belief is virtue” dogma that underlies these faiths.

On the opposite end are those who claim non-belief in a god, or atheism. But is that really not believing or is it really just another form of belief, which is that there is not a god? If you say that you believe there is no god since science does not indicate the existence of one, I would just reply that science does not indicate the existence of you either, as a subjective entity who refers to yourself as “I” and is rooted in the here and now. And yet belief in our own existence, as apart from everything else, is firmly planted within each of us!

To me, those who claim that science does not indicate the existence of a god and hence believe there is no god may also be reacting in a human way to the disturbing “belief as virtue” doctrine I pointed out before. To say one believes that there is no god, though, is a positive belief statement that has made (in my opinion) a radical leap of faith based upon something that isn’t even remotely complete (our body of scientific knowledge). Better to say one does not believe in a god, which indicates an absence of belief and does not indicate a leap of faith (to the negative conclusion). But to some, that might come too close to the scary words “I don’t know”!

There’s nothing wrong with making an occasional leap of faith. We do it all the time in our daily lives. For example, I have faith that when I’m on the road, a driver in the oncoming lane won’t drift over and smash into me head on. Or that when I put on my brakes, the driver behind won’t plow into me. Or that the food I buy at my grocery is reasonably safe to eat (apart from the sugar and fat, that is). If you’re a confirmed atheist who absolutely believes that no god exists, then that’s all right with me, too. But don’t fool yourself regarding leaps of faith: like true believers in religions and gods, you’re jumping, too! But, y’know, you really don’t need to! It’s also all right stand on this side of the chasm of uncertainty and say “I don’t know”, and let it go at that.

My Writing Fiction Update: 8/9

I finally made the plunge and began writing fiction as a regular activity (though not yet to the degree that I want to). I started slow and made a goal of writing at least one short story or one chapter-length part of a larger story each weekend. Starting two weeks ago, I’ve kept up with this goal, successfully writing two short stories (titled Capper and Two Homes). I’ve revised the former to a great degree while keeping the original version on file. The latter has some flaws that I need to resolve as well. But I did it! Are these two stories worthy of being published and paid for? Probably not in their current state, but with a little tender loving refinement I may, at some time in the future, send them off to a publisher to see what happens. In the meantime, I have some more fiction to concoct this weekend.

Writing a story is a completely different process from putting down my opinions on a blog. When blogging, all I need to do is dip into my memory and beliefs (or some external source like a newspaper or TV), drawing up enough material to “splash” on a page. With fiction, I’m still drawing on resources, both internal and external, but I also have to create a different world, populated by make-believe people, that the reader can imagine as being real. The story needs to reveal a progression of events with a consistency and continuity that makes it seem believable. I also must decide to what degree I will use descriptive language for the story’s settings and characters.

Writing fiction requires me (at this stage, at least) to get myself more into a setting where I can focus more completely on the task at hand and not suffer distractions. Also, a part of me seems to be telling myself that it’s somehow “not good” to be engaging in fantasies and thinking up make-believe stories. While this “Walter Mitty” tendency of mine to daydream has done me disservice through much of my life, though, writing stories is one place that I should welcome it!

Losing Time

Many years ago, when I used to work the graveyard shift, I would often listen to Art Bell’s nationwide Coast-to-Coast late night talk radio show. Usually straying from the political blather that plagues the talk radio scene, Bell instead concentrated on creating the picture of a world full of paranormal phenomena and unexplained mysteries. One of the recurring subjects was that of alien abductions. And one of the recurring features of that subject was the loss of time on the part of the "abducted".

Somebody would typically be hiking out in some God-forsaken part of some remote woods (in the night, of course) when they would awaken to find themselves either there or someplace else, a few hours to a few days later. With no recollection about their “lost time”. Others would commonly just go to bed at night and wake up much later, experiencing sporadic "flashbacks" of a traumatic experience involving aliens.

The idea that we can have blackouts in our memories that may hold sinister secrets has a certain appeal for those inclined to the mysterious. But in the real world (I don’t subscribe to the idea of alien abductions) people “lose time” often, without actually losing consciousness or memory. Only it isn’t some outside party like “grey” aliens with big eyes kidnapping them to a spaceship for biological experimentation. No, it’s people themselves who allow time to slip away from them. And I’m one of the biggest offenders! So, what am I going to do about this?

I’ve looked over my daily life a little and noticed a few things:

--I tend to stay up too late at night, when I am both physically and mental tired to really accomplish anything worthwhile. And then get up too late the next morning to accomplish the things I want to do before having to go to work in the afternoon.

--I have found myself sitting in front of my TV surfing channels when I already know that there isn’t anything good to watch.

--While cleaning up an area such as my garage, I often run across items that distract me from my task.

--Although going back and forth to the kitchen to get snacks to eat is often placed in the “dieting” category, it is also an example of losing time as well.

--Sometimes I will let myself get too distracted with puzzle-solving (like kakuro) instead of tackling less-pleasant-but-necessary tasks.

So there are a few examples (off the top of my head) of me letting time slip away. Why, this very morning I got up way too late, which is what brought this subject up for me to write about. I have too many things going on in my life and in that of my family for me to be careless about how I use my time. I’ve written about this problem of mine a while back on this blog, but it seems to be pretty deeply entrenched in the area of “bad habits”.

I believe that the key to minimizing my own time loss is not to make some fuzzy, general resolution to “try harder”, but rather to look at each specific example and create alternative choices for my behaviors. So that’s a personal project for me whose “time” has come!

Apocalypto

Recently I had the opportunity to watch Mel Gibson’s 2006 movie (as director) Apocalypto, uncut and uninterrupted. I had seen earlier promotion trailers for this film when it first came out in the theaters. Those short clips did little, though, to prepare me for the intense spectacle that awaited me with the full-length movie.

Apparently set in late 15th/early 16th century southern Mexico/northern Central America (Apocalypto’s ending fixes this time and place), a Mayan people still live on from generation to generation, long after their advanced civilization came to an abrupt and mysterious end centuries before. The movie’s protagonist, a young man named Jaguar Paw, lives with his wife and son in a close-knit jungle village. One day Jaguar Paw, his father, and some other men are out in the jungle when they run across a group of ragged refugees, fleeing some type of calamity that is pursuing them. Shaken by this experience, Jaguar Paw’s father admonishes him to not live his life by fear. But that night, the marauders responsible for those refugees’ plight invade the village, killing many and taking Jaguar Paw, his closest friends, and others into captivity and forcing them on an agonizing march to the ancient capital city. It is here that I stop with the movie’s narrative, just in case someone chooses to watch it for the first time. Needless to say, though, this dismal situation is just the beginning of Jaguar Paw’s ordeals and adventures.

Apocalypto is very graphic in its depiction of violence and brutality. I think that Gibson did this deliberately to make a legitimate point. Often nowadays there is a widely accepted historical narrative that the indigenous Americans were a peace-loving, civilized people who were more advanced in many ways than their contemporary European counterparts across the Atlantic. The narrative goes on to claim that, when European explorers and settlers encountered these native populations, they went about deliberately exterminating their cultures and subjugating them. And, of course, the diseases that the Europeans carried, especially smallpox, wiped out the great majority of the indigenous population in the “New” World.

Apocalypto makes no claims denying the European culpability within this narrative (and neither do I). Rather, it puts forth, through its engrossing story, the conjecture that, rather than framing things as “good natives vs. bad Europeans”, the circumstances are most accurately described as “humans with technology and civilized “trappings” vs. humans without technology and civilized “trappings”. For those who conquered and subjugated Jaguar Paw’s people were not Europeans but rather fellow Mayans who regarded themselves as more civilized. It is the universality of human behavior, in terms of both individual and group behavior, that Apocalypto proclaims. And it gives the viewer pause to reflect on whether our contemporary society, with its "shock and awe" and Daisy Cutters, is really more civilized and compassionate than the brutal aggressors in Gibson’s film.

Besides the allegorical messages from this movie, I was thoroughly taken by the detail given to language and setting. The acting was phenomenal as well, with me becoming emotionally connected to Jaguar Paw and his plight (as well as that of his family). Apocalypto was a great (albeit gruesome) balance of adventure story, compelling characters, and social message. I recommend that you watch it (unless you are a minor or prone to nightmares).

Go Figure

Late in 1964, the Beatles released their single I Feel Fine after the band, according to John Lennon, spent much creative energy and hard work crafting this soon-to-be big hit of theirs. For the B-side of the single, Paul McCartney threw together a very simple, spur-of-the-moment song titled She’s a Woman, and the Beatles recorded it in a rush with very little fanfare (because it was on the B-side, after all). But when the record came out, radio stations across the country discovered that many fans liked She’s a Woman more than the polished I Feel Fine (including me). So She’s a Woman ended up getting co-billing with I Feel Fine in the charts, even though relatively little effort had been put into it.

Although I’m nowhere near the artistic level of the Beatles, I think I’m beginning to understand how John Lennon felt when, in a later interview, he expressed a little consternation at how the two songs were publicly received. I just recently published two blog articles on successive days. The first, titled Time to Pretend, was on a topic that I felt deeply about. I put a great deal of thought (and emotion) into this personally-relevant piece. The next day, I happened to be headed over to my local Publix grocery to pick up some items when I thought, hey, I’ve got my sturdy little portable AlphaSmart word processor with me, why don’t I just stop over first at the Starbucks a few stores down and “set a spell”? So I bought a coffee and sat down, with no preconceived notion as to what I would write. I was thinking about what an interesting, inclusive program Chris Matthew’s show Hardball was on MSNBC, and how “exclusive” Keith Olbermann’s show Countdown was (regarding the selection of guests), to its detriment. So I whipped up a few words, threw them together, and put it all out on my blog for the next day. I got no discernible reaction for the important (to me) Time to Pretend article, but for the Olbermann article there was an comparatively enormous reaction. The reason? An anti-Olbermann website had picked up my article over the Net and placed a link on their site to it. That was O.K. by me, but still it gripes me a little that what I cared the least about was what the “public” seemed to care about the most. I suppose, though, that if I am really serious about publishing my writings, be they fiction or non-fiction, I should come to expect this sort of frustrating type of reaction from readers. I’ll bet it happens to Stephen King all the time. Go figure.

Ormond Beach Weekend

My family and I spent the past Friday, Saturday, and Sunday at Ormond Beach. We stayed at a old, reliable (and inexpensive) hotel there, with a fourth-floor room and balcony facing the ocean. Everyone got to do pretty much what they had wanted to do at the beach. And there were different things to do: go out into the ocean water (which was very calm throughout our stay), use the hotel’s pool (much more suitable than the too-shallow Hard Rock Hotel pool at Universal in Orlando), get in the hot tub, go running along the beach (I ran 2.35 miles on Saturday), or just sit on the balcony enjoying the scenery, pleasant conversation, or just one’s own thoughts.

We experienced only one storm during the stay, and even that turned out in our favor (although a palm branch was blown off a tree, crashing onto a lounge chair that a woman had been lying on only a few minutes before). The storm’s aftermath left a relatively cool beach for me to do my run down as well as making the sand a better running surface. Being able to see the Daytona Beach pier from my hotel, I originally had entertained thoughts of running there and back, but discovered that it was a little further away than I had thought (four miles). I haven’t yet attained my 1975 running level of eight-mile runs (although I have such a course in Gainesville already mapped out).

Nighttime beach walking has become more pleasant on the Ormond/Daytona Beach area in recent years. One reason for this is that, in order to protect hatching sea turtles on the beach at night, hotels that used to drown the coastline in their lights now have to turn them off or turn them away from the beach. I loved to just stand there facing the ocean, taking in the sounds, wind, stars, and night ambiance.

We also ate out a couple of times, did some shopping, and even bowled three games (none of us are avid bowlers, and it showed Saturday night). I did note, by watching other bowlers, that how fast or slow one rolled the ball seemed to make very little difference regarding the number of pins being knocked down. My daughter once got a strike by simply aiming well while rolling the ball at a very slow speed!

All said, our trip to Ormond Beach was a very pleasant experience. I would like to express my gratitude for the cooperation of the weather while we were there. And the hotel staff and management were helpful and courteous.

Monday Newsbreak: 8/4

--The presidential campaign is now going on full bore, with both major party candidates beginning to irritate me. John McCain seems to be going out of his way to publicly pander to all of the conservative hot-button special interest issue groups, while Barack Obama’s annoying tendency to use stuttering as a rhetorical device (à la Andy Griffith) is beginning to interfere with his message. I know that the candidates need to select their running mates. But beyond that, what is there really left to do? After all this time and all this campaign’s media supersaturation, are there still people left in this country who are planning to vote and still don’t know these candidates? Why should anyone be better prepared to make a choice in early November than now in early August? Although part of me wants to keep up with the campaign, another part wants me to completely turn my back on it, knowing from past experience the terrible mudslinging that is about to envelop this contest. And don’t get me started on the upcoming conventions. Ugh!

--The 2008 Summer Olympics are officially beginning this coming week in China, although qualifying events for different sports are already taking place in different locations in that country. I know there is a lot of controversy in some circles about how people concerned about China’s questionable human rights record should regard the Olympics this go around. I’ve been an advocate of more openness in societies like this one, and believe that more interaction with the rest of the world is a good thing for China. In the long run, I think it will help the people in that country to have experienced the Olympics on their soil. I remember the time when human rights were reportedly the worst there, when China shunned the Olympics while maintaining its isolation from the world. My focus during the Olympics won’t be China itself, but the actual events that I am interested in. And I don’t plan to automatically root like a programmed robot for the U.S.A. all the time, either. I’ll leave that for others to do, as I am sure some will.

--Exxon/Mobil announced record profits for this past year, exceeding any annual profits for any firm in known history. Yet they are complaining that their profits weren’t high enough! Well, better luck next year, Exxon/Mobil, sorry you didn’t meet your expectations! Does this sound a bit sarcastic on my part? Well, it is, a little. On the other hand, though, just because a company makes a big profit, that doesn’t mean that this money is buried somewhere in a deep hole, lost forever. No, that money circulates right back into the economy. The relatively static statistic of a corporation’s annual profits does little to shed light on what is really going on with the oil industry. I’m more concerned about where these businesses choose to direct their profits than I am about how much they make.

What Goes Around Comes Around

In 2005, the U.S. Senate went through a crisis of sorts: the Republicans, under Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, expressed frustration that some of President Bush’s nominees to Federal Court judgeship positions were being filibustered by the Democrats. Although this handful of nominees only represented a tiny fraction of the “Bush” judges that the Democrats actually helped to confirm (and previously, the Republicans had blocked a much larger number of President Clinton’s nominees), the GOP wanted ALL of them confirmed. To get their way, Majority Leader Frist threatened to manipulate Senate rules and adopt what came to be known as the “Nuclear Option” for confirming presidential nominees. With it in place, it would take a simple majority vote on the Senate floor, instead of the sixty-vote supermajority, to end debate and send the confirmation vote for any nominee to the Senate floor for a final up-down vote. Just before it looked as if Frist was going to take this “Nuclear Option”, fourteen Senate colleagues (split evenly between the two parties), dubbed the “Gang of Fourteen”, agreed among themselves to (1) reject the Nuclear Option and (2) agree on their own to send all nominees to final confirmation vote unless there was something extraordinarily astray with the candidate. So by this, the Nuclear Option was averted and, as such, it was regarded as a big defeat for Frist (even though all of the nominees in question ended up being confirmed). But I thought back then and still do even more so, that Frist was foolish to suggest the Nuclear Option in the first place.

If the Nuclear Option had been enacted, then the Republicans stood to gain, as I had stated before, a small handful of confirmations. It may be argued that it was for the upcoming vacancies in the U.S. Supreme Court that this whole controversy swirled around. But in that case, the political pressure would have been very heavily in favor of forcing the Democrats to allow a floor confirmation vote (and then rejecting the candidate) if the individual selected to fill the vacancy seemed too objectionable. On the other hand, had the Nuclear Option been enacted, it would have given the Democrats the benefit of having it should they gain the Presidency and maintain control of the Senate (both very viable possibilities at the present). There are several sitting Supreme Court justices who may just be waiting for the outcome of the 2008 election before deciding to retire. Should Obama win, justices like John Paul Stevens, David Souter, and Ruth Bader Ginsberg may all opt for retirement (Stevens will probably retire anyway). Then the new Democratic President’s choices for their replacements would come under Senate scrutiny. And because of the flack raised by Frist and his colleagues demanding floor votes for every nominee, it will be that much more difficult to block any Obama pick. Of course, if the Nuclear Option had been enacted, it would have been next to impossible! It’s funny how political parties in power tend to act with such expediency, never seeming to understand that sooner or later their run as the “big shots” will end and the opposing party will be calling the shots. And enjoying the advantage of whatever new rules the previous “rulers” had passed for their own advantage. What goes around comes around! And, supposing a Democratic Senate Majority Leader under a future Democratic president gets frustrated with Republican filibusters of his/her nominees, the Democrats could turn the table and pull the very same Nuclear Option that Frist paved the way for.

My Discomfort Zones Update: 8/2

It recently occurred to me that many events responsible for some of my greatest memories took place during times when I stepped out of my comfort zone and just did what I felt I needed to do, even if it were unpleasant, stressful, or even frightening. Performing for an audience in my piano recital this past February is one such example. Attending social events always challenges my sensibilities, but sometimes they're unavoidable (and even ultimately rewarding). Doing something for the first time that seems scary (like getting on a thrill ride) fits the bill as well (in the "frightening" department). It can be very uncomfortable while consciously working to eliminate bad habits and replace them with good ones. And so on...

I've come to the conclusion that it is necessary for me to periodically allow myself to be challenged to "step out of the comfort zone" and try new directions and strategies. And sometimes this involves a special behavior and ability that, for want of a better name, I will bestow the time-honored term "winging it". By "winging it", I mean being in very uncertain situations, where I'm not sure about everything I'm doing or about what will happen, but still functioning in a confident manner and working those situations out by examining the important things to do and acting on them. Sound too general? Well, that's the point of this particular update: I will list specific opportunities that arise for living out of my comfort zone, and then how I faced up to the challenges. And publish my results on this blog the next "discomfort zones" time around. Ought to be fun!

Congratulations, Sweetheart

It is with great pride, appreciation, and pleasure that I can announce my wife Melissa’s graduation tomorrow. She is receiving her BSN (Bachelor of Science in Nursing) from the University of Central Florida, having taken advantage of the remote/Internet classes they offered to students living at a distance from its Orlando campus.

Already working in a position of management involving health care as an RN (Registered Nurse), Melissa looks to enhance her career prospects with this hard-earned degree. There may also be graduate school in the works at some time in the future. She has been a wonderful example and inspiration for me and our children. And with our son Will going off to college, Melissa is now the family computer expert (although our daughter is showing herself to be a whiz in this area)!

It is so gratifying for me to see, as we travel through this long journey of life, that there seem to be few limits to the opportunities available to those who are willing to take advantage of them. But it takes a personal commitment to see some of these opportunities through, as well as support from others. I appreciate Melissa’s steadfastness with her many (and sometimes difficult) assignments, as well as her generosity, grace, and caring for us, even while having to work under periods of heavy stress.

Well done, sweetheart!

Orienting Oneself As A Game

I’ve found that life can be a long more bearable to travel through if I can make games out of stressful or tedious situations. And one game that I am working on these days (or should I say "playing") is that of keeping my bearings in unfamiliar locations, be they indoors or outdoors.

When outside at night (as long as the city lights aren't too strong and the sky is at least partially clear), it is no difficult task for me to look up at the sky and figure out the directions by the stars and their associated constellations. In the day, the Sun gives away the directions (unless it is very overcast, which can make things interesting). Driving down roads (or even riding as a passenger) can present a greater challenge with a partially obstructed view of the sky, although I usually seem to have a pretty good knack for knowing about which roads I'm on and where they lead. Inside buildings, though, it can be more formidable, especially if I am winding through hallways and turning several corners to reach my destination. So, sometimes, just for the fun of it, when I am walking through a building which is like this, I’ll continually keep tabs on which cardinal direction I am facing, as well as how I have been winding my way through it. Of course, this is really more than just fun: it’s good mental exercise and strengthens the memory! Try it sometimes, if this sort of thing is your “cup of tea”. To me, it is similar to going through a maze. Wild Adventures theme park in Valdosta, Georgia has a maze, and I plan to try it out the next time we go there. The process with a maze is the same as keeping track of where you are in a building: you need to not only know which direction you’re facing, but also have a good memory of where you have been. And relying on a compass, GPS, map, building blueprint, or your own ongoing notes with this type of game is most definitely cheating!

Bobbing-Head Journalism

To me, MSNBC’s Countdown, hosted by Keith Olbermann, is one of those shows that I tend to gravitate toward watching. Not because I’m going to get an even-handed account of things in the world: It’s precisely because of the fact that this show is so unapologetically liberal in its outlook that I enjoy watching it! I’m not at all against watching shows (or listening to them on the radio) that have a conservative bent. It’s just that the overwhelming majority of the opinion-based programming is conservative! And I’d like to see, from time to time, the other side of the arguments.

Having said that, it bears noting that I have never seen a Countdown where Olbermann (or his capable stand-in Rachel Maddow) has ever had a guest who wasn’t philosophically completely in-sync with him (or her). What usually results is Olbermann ranting on about something with his guests appearing in an inset on the right-side of the screen, smugly smiling and continually bobbing their heads in agreement. This isn’t real journalism, of course; rather, it’s more an act of huddling with one’s “own” while piling on those “others” (who are nowhere to be seen)!

Now conservative hosts such as Glen Beck and Sean Hannity tend to have, as guests, those who tow their political line as well. But they aren’t averse to having real, meaningful discussions with their ideological opponents on the air, either.
So Keith Olbermann, who I believe could easily hold his own in a debate with conservatives, is unintentionally creating the impression that he regards his views as being so above those of conservatives that they don’t even merit sharing the same forum with him. And this feeds into the oft-spoken complaint from those on the right that the left is afflicted with an attitude of intellectual elitism toward them and their perspectives on the issues. If Olbermann truly wants to change the political landscape of this nation, simply preaching to the choir of already-true believers isn’t going to accomplish the trick. He’s going to have to roll up his sleeves and engage in direct debate with conservatives! And in live-time on the air, like his colleagues on MSNBC as well as his competitors on other channels, some of whom he likes to periodically tag with the title of “Worst Person in the World”.

Time To Pretend

The alternative/independent group MGMT, headed by young Brooklynites Ben Goldwasser and Andrew VanWyngarden, is gaining in popularity with an eclectic mix of music, the diversity of which brings to my mind the Beatles (I’m not saying they’re as good as them, they just remind me of them). They’re very good at promoting themselves, having already made a couple of appearances on late-night network television shows, putting out their own videos on YouTube, playing to large crowds, and sporting an interesting official website. One of their songs, Time to Pretend, along with its video, has captured my attention as well as my imagination. Its lyrics ridicule the all-too-often trend of rags-to-riches popular musicians who, having finally made the “big time”, lose control over their own destinies and allow their lives to disintegrate into a progression of shallow marriages & breakups, chemical abuse, and ultimately, their tragic deaths. The video expresses a slightly different theme, though, that correlates better with the song’s title. It shows how some young people abandon their real, down-to-earth lives (which include their families and friends), to embark on aimless journeys of self-indulgence and fantasy. I’ve read some glowing comments about this song on the YouTube site, one stating that this was her generation‘s anthem, another going on about how beautiful the song was. Well, to those, I would just say that they need to really listen to and understand the words before calling Time to Pretend an anthem or oh-so-beautiful. I think it is much more significant than that. And hearing (and seeing) it reminds me of an experience I had back in 1971.

When I was in my early teens, Rod Serling had his Night Gallery series on prime time evening television. One evening, my mother and I were sitting watching it and, as these things are known to happen, we were completely unaware that perhaps the most disturbing episode in the history of television was about to be shown (O.K., maybe I'm exaggerating a little). The title of the piece was Silent Snow Secret Snow, and it was closely based on the acclaimed Conrad Aiken short story published decades earlier. Orson Welles flawlessly narrated this compelling and tragic story of a boy whose inner fantasies (chiefly involving the mysterious presence of snow) became so strong that he ultimately shut out the real world to completely dwell within them. After this singularly significant episode of this often trite series was over, my mother turned to me and told me that this was what she had been afraid was happening to me: that during the previous few years, I had become more inwardly drawn and controlled by daydreams and fantasies of nonexistent places and situations. I was shaken up enough just from watching this very unsettling story without having to hear that from my own mother! Perhaps this was a time that helped me turn myself back into the direction of growth and constructive interaction with the world, based on its own terms and not on inventions of my own imagination.

What directly connects the Time to Pretend video with Silent Snow Secret Snow is a brief segment (at the 2:24 mark) showing the singer in darkness, with snow falling down on him. Very eerie! If you run across either MGMT's Time to Pretend video or Night Gallery’s Silent Snow Secret Snow episode, I highly recommend you watch it, either for yourself or for the sake of a loved one you may be concerned about (one word of warning: Time to Pretend in its unedited form briefly uses some explicit language near the beginning).

Monday Newsbreak: 7/28

--A couple of Associated Press writers, Robert Burns and Robert H. Reid, have pronounced that the U.S. is winning the Iraq War. By that, they mean that overt combat with insurgents and terrorists has greatly diminished, and everything on the surface appears to be more peaceful. But I ask, what does “winning the Iraq War” mean? After all, we did technically already win it within weeks of the invasion when the Hussein regime fell (wasn’t “regime change” the object of going in?). Ever since, all we’ve been doing is trying to snuff out one hot spot after another in this highly divided land. Now we’ve made the picture look real pretty, haven’t we? So after the troops leave (assuming they ever will), what is keeping another Saddam Hussein from staging a coup d’état and starting the vicious cycle all over again? What has the Iraqi government done since the surge began to bring reconciliation, trust, and a true sense of participation on the part of the feuding factions regarding the building of a free, inclusive, and democratic Iraq?

--My local city commission here in Gainesville is undergoing a controversy regarding many citizens opposed to its recently-enacted ordinance protecting transgenders from public discrimination, including the use of restrooms. The “restroom” part of the ordinance is what its opponents are so concerned about. They believe that any man could just walk into a woman’s bathroom with the convenient cover story that he “felt as if he were a woman inside”. On the pro-ordinance side some, including city commissioner Craig Lowe, have accused opponents of bigotry against transgenders and gays. I don’t see what good this sort of vilification does anybody. Certainly, the public has the right to believe that their government is working to protect them from crime. If they are misinformed about the ramifications of this ordinance, then those promoting it should calmly sit down with the leaders of the ordinance opposition, listen to them, and respectfully explain how their concerns are unfounded. But skip the insults, please! And why not see, during the process, if some mutual interests can be recognized and a compromise reached? Or have I just crossed over into a taboo area by mentioning the “c” word?

--University of Florida football coach Urban Meyer apparently still hasn’t gotten over the tactic that his rival coach Mark Richt of the University of Georgia used during their game last year. Immediately after the Bulldogs scored their first touchdown, the bench emptied and the entire Georgia team rushed the field in wild celebration. Although Richt has apologized for instigating the incident (for which he claims he didn't mean to involve his entire team), Meyer is still using it (as I see it) to get his players worked up to exact revenge when they play each other again this year (Georgia defeated Florida 42-30 last year)..... I also see politicians putting on this phony “hurt” act of pretending to be offended at something somebody said (usually from the opposing party). I see this particularly on the Senate floor, with Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid (Nevada) and three Republicans, Ted Stevens (Alaska), Orrin Hatch (Utah), and Judd Gregg (New Hampshire) being the worst offenders. On the other end of the scale are those who look as if they are heavily under sedation, with nothing seeming to rankle them! What a circus! I wish former South Dakota Senator Tom Daschle were there running things as Majority Leader in his calm, even-handed and gracious manner as he did in 2001-2002. His razor-thin defeat for reelection in 2004 was a big disappointment to me.

Super-Sized Request

The other day, I was watching a feature on CNN featuring their ace international correspondent Christiane Amanpour. She visited North Korea extensively, even touring one of their controversial nuclear facilities. In the middle of the report, pictures of starving North Korean children from the terrible famine there a few years ago were shown. And then they broke for a commercial. Which showed a young woman preparing a exquisite, mouth-watering plateful of food in her own home. She then put it down for her fluffy white cat, it being gourmet cat food! It was a perfect picture to me of the incredibly insulated state that so many of us here in America live in.

Of course, since the recovery from the Great Depression, concern about where the next meal is coming from is not prevalent among the vast majority of Americans (although there are pockets of very, very poor, malnourished people, to be sure). In fact, the prevailing problem with food here is the high level of obesity, especially among the low-income population. With many, food is not just a source of nutrition or even a pleasant treat: it is a salve that they can pop into their mouth (like a baby with its pacifier) to relieve emotional stress.

We Americans feel so aggrieved at the way the fuel costs here are skyrocketing. But even with all of the negative economic factors considered, including the sinking value of the dollar, prosperous West European countries are paying twice the rate for their gas as we are! It is only in those oil-producing nations whose governments exert control over their oil and its distribution that gas prices are cheap (Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait). Our problem here is that we’ve done very little since the wake-up call induced by the Arab Oil Embargo of the early seventies to make our machines either use oil more efficiently or use other sources of energy.

The big growth industry in the U.S. is without a doubt entertainment. And why is that? Because so many people here have so much free time to do what they want and money to spend on it! How can people go around complaining like they do about the terrible economy while expending this amount of effort amusing themselves? Because at heart, some of us are spoiled rotten children! And now we’re really ticked off because the rest of the world would like to make a little request to us: can we just cut back a little from the over-consumption and hedonism, just a little to save the planet from overheating? Pretty-please with a cherry on top (don‘t forget to super-size it)?!

My Piano Update: 7/26

As I sit here pondering on the level of progress I’ve made with my piano studies, I naturally have some positive and negative insights. On the positive side, I find that I am, at least gradually, becoming more comfortable playing while reading the printed music. In doing so, I am beginning to look ahead on the page while I play to see how to reposition my fingering for upcoming notes. I also seem to have better concentration and results when performing during my weekly class time with my piano teacher. But there are also many areas that I need to work on to meet my own standards as to where I want to be with piano. For one, I want to master playing (while reading the music) in ANY key, not just with C, G, F, D, and A (major keys, along with their corresponding minors) as I do so far. Also, I am simply not putting in anything close to the hands-on practice time I need in order to come to regard the keyboard as “second nature”. Third, I have done very little in the area of “playing from memory”, where I could tap into the vast treasure of musical memories I have and adapt them to piano. I want to adopt a policy of learning pieces by heart so that, when presented with future opportunities to play for others, I’ll have a repertoire to draw upon. And, as piano teacher Dan Starr has suggested on his blog, I need to learn to feel more comfortable looking down at the keyboard as little as possible during my playing. Finally, I need to practice playing faster and more boldly if I ever want to be able to play at a level that people want to listen to.

I’ve seen, by laying out more of a structured schedule for my running a week ago and then publishing it, that I actually adhered to it faithfully. So I’m going to do the same with piano practice and see what happens. Except that my piano study is a seven-day per week process! On Mondays, the day of my piano class, I will devote my homework to studying theory and deepening my knowledge of musical notation, keys, and chords. Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays, and Sundays I will devote to practicing and memorizing my class assignments. And on Wednesdays and Fridays I will “struggle” to painstakingly generate melodies on the keyboard from my mental song archives. Should be challenging and fun!

Multiple Takes

I have to admit that golf is one of the most boring sports to watch on TV (probably even more so in person). Half the time, I can’t keep up with what’s going on, with the coverage hopping around from one hole to another. But sometimes I’ll still manage to find something to amuse me. Like whenever I used to watch Jack Nicklaus walk up to putt the ball. He’d line his feet up, level his putter, look at the hole, take little mini-steps up and down with his feet, level his putter, look at the hole, take little mini-steps up and down with his feet, level……you get the picture. Sooner or later, after what seemed like forever, the golfing great would finally get around to hitting the ball. And usually with success! But seeing him standing there like that, doing multiple takes at the hole and continually repositioning himself, cracked me up. But I think it was a lot more than a nervous habit on the part of Nicklaus. He most likely had long before learned that you can’t assimilate everything with one visual sweep; taking a mental picture of something and then looking back can bring to light important things that might have otherwise gone unnoticed, as well as enhance your concentration.

And the most glaring example of this need to perform multiple takes in my life is when I’m out in traffic driving. It used to be, when the light turned green, that I prided myself on having the quickest reflexes around, immediately hitting the gas pedal and surging ahead. No more! Do to the ever-increasing recklessness of some of my fellow drivers, I now habitually pause to check whether there are any fools disposed to stretch the light the other way (even though it’s already red for them). And lately, I’m not just doing my multiple takes looking around the intersection; I’m also looking down the road to see if there isn’t some driver who might be so distracted that they hadn’t noticed the light had changed for their direction. And for pulling out of a side street onto a road, multiple takes have always been a necessity, both to notice motorcycles, bicycles, and pedestrians, as well as to account for the fact that my car, like others, has certain blind spots that may conceal something at first glance.

There is also a more subtle, longer-range kind of multiple take when one wants to gage what is going on around in the world. But this time the take is not done through space, but rather through time, through the use of history. We may look around us, and at first glance, things may seem normal in our political, social, and economic surroundings. But armed with a sound knowledge of history, we can then keep reexamining our world and discern patterns in the present that fit historical patterns indicating trends in one direction or another. The better of a historical background we possess (like the skill of the golfer or driver), the more effective our multiple takes on our contemporary society will be, and the better able we will be to communicate our observations and conclusions to others.

Favorite Songs of 1964

My intense interest in popular music was born in early 1964 when the Beatles made their historic first appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show. After that, my family all became avid Beatles fans, buying up their albums (and some singles) as they came out. Miami’s two competing popular music radio stations, 560-WQAM and 790-WFUN, both battled to see who could play the next release first. By listening for Beatles songs, I became more aware of other quality artists. The Beatles’ popularity brought in other acts from Britain such as the Rolling Stones and the Animals. At this time, the Rolling Stones had a definite blues flavor to their music and were at their very best (to me) with tunes like the Bo Diddley-inspired Not Fade Away, Time is on My Side, and It’s All Over Now. For their part, the Animals had two great follow-ups to their blockbuster hit House of the Rising Sun: Baby Let Me Take You Home and I’m Crying. As the year wore on, I found myself comparing this keyboard/blues/rock band favorably to the Beatles. But they ultimately had a problem with creating their own original songs over the years and there was too much conflict between the band members. Other British acts hitting the big time were Billy Jay Kramer and the Dakotas (Little Children), the Dave Clark Five (Glad All Over and Bits and Pieces), Gerry and the Pacemakers (Don’t Let the Sun Catch You Crying), Peter and Gordon (Nobody I Know), and Chad and Jeremy (originally introduced as Stuart and Clyde). Chad and Jeremy had two songs I especially cherished, both evoking strong feelings of nostalgia for my (seven-year-old) life back then: Summer Song and Yesterday’s Gone. Herman’s Hermits began their string of American hits, most of which I could take or leave. But I did like their ‘64 tune I’m Into Something Good. The late Dusty Springfield made her debut in America with her deep, soulful voice and hits like I Only Want to Be With You and Wishin’ and Hopin’.

Established acts still put out some outstanding records in 1964. Elvis Presley’s Viva Las Vegas was one of his best, while Gene Pitney’s It Hurts to Be in Love was pounding in its intensity. Betty Everett and Jerry Butler covered Let It Be Me with great emotion. Terry Stafford sounded like Elvis (I think that was the idea) with Suspicion. By confusing its words, I misinterpreted White on White, a sad tune by Danny Williams about a man losing his true love to another in marriage, as a song about Astronomy (“lace on satin” sounds a little like “rings on Saturn” to a seven-year old’s ears). Roy Orbison’s comeback hit Oh Pretty Woman also turned out to be his biggest ever, dominating the late summer of ‘64.

American groups arose with their own special sound to compete with the British imports. The Supremes’ first hit, Where Did Our Love Go, was also my favorite of theirs. Martha and the Vandellas had everyone Dancing in the Street. Dionne Warwick made her debut into stardom in 1964 (with her elegance and beautiful voice), one of her songs being the inviting Reach Out For Me. On the surf-side, Jan and Dean and the Beach Boys each had a stand-out hit (to me, at least) with the ominous Dead Man’s Curve and the cocky and confident I Get Around, respectively.

So what were my top favorites as I lived through 1964? Number #5 was the Beatles' screamer Slow Down, off of their Something New album. It was only a minor hit, so I couldn’t hear it enough (and my parents unfortunately chose to buy the A Hard Days Night soundtrack album instead of Something New). From the Beatles' soundtrack album to their movie A Hard Days Night (a great comedy that we naturally all went together to see that summer) was George Harrison’s innocent-enough sounding Happy Just to Dance With You, my #4 favorite song of the year. The aforementioned upbeat love song Baby Let Me Take You Home by the Animals takes #3 for ‘64. The Honeycombs, a group that, reflecting back on it now, sounded a little like Buddy Holly, had their one hit (but a great one) with my #2 song from 1964: Have I the Right?. And my top favorite from this tremendous year in popular music? None other than the Beatles’ exceptional cover of the old Isley Brothers hit Twist and Shout, with John Lennon at his screaming best! Here are some other songs from 1964 that I liked as well:

BY THE BEATLES:
I Saw Her Standing There
It Won’t Be Long
Devil in Her Heart
Thank You Girl
Money
You Can’t Do That
I’ll Cry Instead
And I Love Her
Do You Want to Know a Secret
PS I Love You
Rock and Roll Music
I’ll Follow the Sun
She’s a Woman
Boys

BY OTHERS:
Dominique (The Singing Nun) (carry-over from late ‘63)
Come See About Me (Supremes)
Baby Love (Supremes)
In the Misty Moonlight (Jerry Wallace)
California Sun (Rivieras)
Louie Louie (The Kingsmen)
Bread and Butter (The Newbeats)
We’ll Sing in the Sunshine (Gale Garnett)
My Boy Lollipop (Millie Small)
Shoop Shoop Song (Betty Everett)
Chapel of Love (Dixie Cups)
Just Like Romeo and Juliet (The Reflections)
Leader of the Pack (The Shangri-Las)

And now we come to the point where my recap of my favorites each year in music must end. For I based this ongoing review on my favorites as I lived through each year, and I didn’t start following “the scene” in popular music until early 1964. Not that there weren't some wonderful songs from earlier (such as Tommy Edwards's It's All In the Game, Jim Lowe's The Green Door, and Gogi Grant's The Wayward Wind); I just didn't get to know these until 1964 or later.

Personal Snippets: 7/23

....I recently saw a Gainesville codes enforcement car pulling out of my subdivision, no doubt investigating the complaint of some vindictive, snitching neighbor against another for excessive grass height and weeds. Meanwhile, the city refuses to keep grass cut on its own land, encouraging snakes and creating worse eyesores to the area than any individual property owner could cause.

....I successfully ran my first cross-country “jog” in a very long time, a 2-mile circuit very close to my home; only drawback was a long stretch of overgrown grass and weeds that my dearly beloved city refuses to properly maintain.

....After years of benign neglect, my Alachua County library system has decided to begin using a collection agency to try to collect overdue material. Good, I think that they need to do something besides just sending people overdue notices. I’ve been known to have overdue books, and this will help me be more responsible and return them on time.

....My workplace permits, under certain conditions, workers to listen to the radio using headsets. But lately, I’ve found the quality of radio programming here to be so poor that, except for 89.1-WUFT (Public Radio), I just keep it off.

....I really should be more proficient when it comes to availing myself of all I see on my computer. For example, I want to be able to write articles in Chinese and Russian on my blog (in order to give fluent readers of those languages something to laugh at), but don’t know how to get the necessary fonts for their distinctive scripts (with the keyboard templates). Blogger has a language-choice option, but it doesn’t enable me to compose anything in another script. I did find two different virtual-script sites that will allow me to compose text in Russian and Chinese, but I don't have the flexibility to edit my writing that I want. The ultimate aim is to write freely on my own. For the time being I'll painstakingly use the virtual script sites, along with my dictionaries and grammars.

....Monday night is now my fun-TV-watching time; it is my “weeknight” night off, so I can watch MSNBC’s Hardball and Countdown--also, the Sci-Fi Channel has been showing 3 hours of Star Trek: The Next Generation. And I dig other shows, like SpongeBob SquarePants, the Science Channel shows, WNBA games, and occasional good movies; it’s a time when I like to settle down in my comfy recliner and soak it all in!.

....The current Atlantic hurricane season has already seen four named storms, pretty high for three weeks into July, but they’ve all been “behaving” so far (veering away from Florida).

....My wife and kids went and saw the blockbuster movie sensation The Dark Knight and all liked it (my son thinks it’s the best movie ever). I’ll wait for the dvd release, but I did see Batman Begins and thought that movie was exceptionally well done (especially Michael Caine’s hilarious butler portrayal).

....School’s approaching, my daughter is entering eighth grade, & I am planning to keep up with things enough to help her with her homework, especially with Logic, Algebra and Latin.

....We’re planning to make another stab at going to the beach in a couple of weeks, this time to Ormond Beach. Hurricanes, take notice and veer!

Мой Первый Русский Блог Статья

Это моя первая попытка использовать русский скрипт на моем блоге. Я в 1976 году начинал учиться русскому языку. Сначала мне очень нравился изучать скрипт и грамматику. Но никогда не достигнул уровень компетентно сказать и писать по-русский. Теперь, благодаря интернет, есть бозможность достигать успех с этим. Может быть будут читалели, которые хотели бы писать комментарии. Я знаю, что часто пишу ошибки, но желаю что ради этом методе буду постепенно уличшаться.

我學中文

這是我笰一次用中文寫博客. 很久以前我工作在一個中國飯館當廚子. 在那裹有機會跟中國人談話...........這樣寫中文太慢!!!

Monday Newsbreak: 7/21

--Only six months before his long run as U.S. president ends, George W. Bush has changed his direction in dealing with Iraq and Iran, at least on the surface. Bush has acquiesced to the idea of a “time horizon” (love that language) for American troops to leave Iraq, while the U.S. is now sending a negotiator to directly talk with the Iranian government over its nuclear enrichment program and is also setting up an “interests” section in Tehran to officially represent the U.S. there. Critics of the Bush policy in Iraq had long maintained that the Iraqis would not move seriously toward the reconciliation of its feuding political and religious groups until the Americans left them to solve their problems on their own. Nouri al-Maliki, the prime minister of their democratically-elected government, wants the U.S. troops out, and we’re supposed to be there in support of Iraq’s democracy and sovereignty. So why do we keep acting as if we owned the place? As for Iran, there had been a great deal of fear in 1979 that the U.S. would seek to reinstall the Shah in power there (as it had already done in 1953, overthrowing the democratically-elected prime minister Mohammed Mossadegh). When the Shah was allowed to enter the U.S. for medical treatment, the fears culminated in the desperate taking of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, and the rest is history. Those circumstances don’t exist today, and it’s no use for each successive administration in Washington to shun Tehran as they have been doing. We don’t have to agree with the Iranians' policies and ideology, but we should be talking with them just the same.

--Barack Obama, along with two other U.S. senators, is on his announced trip to Afghanistan and the Middle East. Republican opponent John McCain can only keep criticizing Obama for making a policy address before actually visiting the area. But why should visiting these places change his policies? You know he’s going to be heavily protected and surrounded by U.S. troops. None of the Afghanis, Iraqis, Israelis, and Palestinians that he does come in contact with are going to change anything. I don’t really see the necessity of this trip, as far as Obama becoming more enlightened regarding our foreign policy in this area is concerned. But it does serve the political purpose of showing him in a foreign policy role and that he is listening to the various parties involved and will make reasoned, informed decisions as president.

--My local newspaper The Gainesville Sun had an article about the eight University of Florida buildings that have been added to the National Register of Historic Places. One of them is Weil Hall (for computer science and engineering), an utterly ancient and foreboding place (next to their nuclear reactor) where I suffered in 1977 through a thoroughly frustrating computer class featuring key-punch machines (a torture device of sorts) and feeding in stacks of punched cards repeatedly (sometimes for hours on end) while continually getting error message printouts. I also took a Polish language class in spring 1978 that was held in Weil’s basement (UF was known for putting classes in strange places). Held in the first class period of the morning, the classroom was right next to a small lounge, where some kindly soul would leave some boxes of glazed doughnuts each morning. There was a small basket placed next to them for anyone who wanted a doughnut to throw some money in (honor system). I rapidly became a doughnut junkie, but I paid for every one. I noticed over the days, though, that most of those taking the doughnuts wouldn’t deposit any money, but would instead just throw in slips of paper saying “IOU” (without identifying themselves, of course). Kind of reminds me how our government works on the national level!

He She They He/She

There is a bit of a problem I’m having with my writing. And that is what to do with the third person singular pronoun when applied to people in general, without regard to gender. I can’t very well use “it” as the pronoun. “He” has traditionally been the default pronoun, but some believe that it unfairly excludes the feminine side of the human race. I’ve read other writers who will just alternate between “he” and “she” in this context. When writing about a person in the general sense, I will often use “they”, even though that pronoun is technically in the plural form. I’ve seen some grammar guides that endorse “they” when used with indefinite pronouns (such as “someone”, “one”, or “anyone”). And that is the sense (a person, not necessarily of one gender or another) that I use “they”. I’ve also just used “he/she” sometimes, but that can get awfully old in a big hurry.

I probably should be more consistent about how I write the third person singular pronoun to refer to a person-in-general, but right now I seem to be all over the map about “he”,"she”, "they” and "he/she”! (And, of course, “his”, "her", "their”, "his/her" plus “him”,"her”, "them”, and "him/her” as well.)

My Running Update: 7/19

Previously on this blog, I have had a feature appearing with the tag “Eights”, where I would report, every eight weeks, on an area that I am trying to improve in. The idea was something that I heard once from Tony Robbins: publicly announce your goals in order to give yourself a sense of accountability in reaching them. And it’s worked, with some mixed success. One problem I’ve had with this “eight weeks apart” format is that I have trouble keeping up with which date I am supposed to write about a particular area of self-improvement. So, to make things radically simpler, I am getting rid of the “Eights” tag in future articles of this type and will simply write personal endeavor updates for different area each Saturday. Starting with today!

As I had written in an earlier entry recently, I had suffered some aches in my left foot, preventing me from running. Or so it seemed. One day, though, I just got tired of not running and ran anyway, pain or no pain. And, surprisingly, there was no pain during the run! In the following days, the occasional twinges I felt diminished until I went on as before with my running. For a while, I was running a little outside around my YMCA field (distance unknown); in the listing below, I refer to those runs as Y-laps. I missed the July 4 road race I was going to run in, but there are two planned in Gainesville for September, and I’d like to make one of them. I need to get off the treadmill sometimes and run outside on the ground/road/track. Lately, I’ve reserved my Sundays for yard work, so I take that day off from running. My plan for the immediate future is to continue treadmill-running on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays while running on a nearby track on Thursdays and doing long, slow cross-country runs on Tuesdays and Saturdays. Here is my training record since the last time I published it (except for the YMCA field, I did my running on the treadmill in the Y’s training room):

DATE...MILES...TIME(min)
4-29..... 1.75........ 2:33
4-30..... 2.5........ 16:49
5-01...... 2.0....... 13:24
5-05..... 2.0........ 14:23
5-06..... 1.0.......... 6:31
5-07..... 1.0.......... 7:45
5-08..... 1.5.......... 9:39
5-09..... 1.0......... 6:20
5-10..... 1.0......... 6:32
5-12..... 2.5........ 17:39
5-13..... 2.0........ 12:46 (6:14 mile included)
5-14..... 2.5........ 16:29 [1 y-lap @ 1:23]
5-15......0.7......... 4:38
5-15......1.0.......... 7:10
5-19..... 1.0......... 6:32
5-20.... 2.5....... 17:38
5-22.... 2.0....... 13:19 [1 y-lap @ 1:23]
5-23..... 1.5....... 10:14
5-24..... 1.6...... 10:46 [1 y-lap @ 1:15]
5-26...... ----------...... [6 y-laps @ 9:15]
5-27..... 1.0....... 6:46 [2 y-laps @ 2:50]
5-28..... 1.7....... 11:18 [2 y-laps @ 3:06]
5-29......0.8....... 5:16 [1 y-lap @ 1:15]
5-30..... 2.0...... 13:37 [1 y-lap @ 1:16]
6-02..... 2.0...... 14:15
6-04..... 2.0...... 13:37 [2 y-laps @ 3:05]
6-05..... 1.0........ 6:31 [1 y-lap @ 1:15]
6-09..... 1.6....... 10:59
6-10..... 0.5........ 3:52
6-11...... 1.5........ 11:02
6-12..... 2.0....... 13:36
6-13...... 1.0........ 6:39
6-14...... 3.34..... 25:00
6-17...... 2.0....... 13:57 (left foot hurt)
6-25..... 1.6........ 11:56
6-26..... 2.0....... 14:25
6-27..... 2.0....... 14:04
6-30.....0.5.......... 3:29
7-02 .....2.6....... 17:40
7-03..... 2.5....... 18:30
7-05..... 3.0....... 20:42
7-07..... 3.11...... 21:16
7-08..... 2.0....... 13:48
7-09..... 3.0....... 20:37
7-10..... 2.0........ 13:43
7-14..... 1.5......... 11:08
7-15..... 2.5........ 18:37
7-16..... 1.0......... 6:39
7-17..... 2.5........ 18:41

Show and Tell, and Blogging

When I was in the first grade, our class (like so many others) had a time called “Show and Tell” when individual students could voluntarily choose to go to the front of the class and talk about whatever they felt like talking about. Most of the class, to varying degrees, availed themselves of this golden opportunity for hamming it up (like Gary, who spent most of his time up there just grinning, giggling, and telling jokes). I was on the “rare appearances only” end of the spectrum, only going up when something really extraordinary happened (like the time that my family and I visited the Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami Beach). On the opposite end was Carrie, a precocious, bubbly little girl who used Show and Tell to relate everything that went on in her life the previous day, from the moment she woke up all the way through to the time her head hit the pillow at night!

And it’s Carrie’s use of this childhood forum that reminds me of some of the personally-themed blogs that I sometimes run across. I like to read this type of blog because I am naturally working at getting through my day and can relate to how others are working at getting through their’s. And it gives me a better perspective of what people in general think and how they act. I’m not interested in the identity of those writing this type of blog; I would also feel very awkward submitting a comment to someone about something personal that is going on in their life. But if the blog was deliberately made public, I think that it is totally appropriate to read it regularly.

One theme that pervades some personal blogs is an issue that the writer is using the blog to work out in his/her mind. It could be about health, work, relationships, money, or just about anything of a personal nature. Such a blog often gives the impression that the writer is obsessed with the issue being written about. But I don’t think that this is usually the case. Sometimes it helps to put feelings and facts down on paper (or type out on a blog) in order to sort them out better. As a matter of fact, people who are around those who dwell on certain problems in their blogs may not even be aware that any problem exists; it can only be expressed clearly by working it out on “paper”.

My blog is a messy mix of the personal and various topics of interest. There are a number of personal self-improvement projects I am working on, and I write about my progress (or lack thereof) on this blog to give me a sense of public accountability. I am not the “Carrie” type of person who thinks that everyone is waiting with baited breath to know all the goings-on in my life, no matter how trivial. But it’s still fun (and illuminating) when I run across a blog written this way! And sometimes I'll write one of these types of articles (see the one for this past Wednesday). I also have a hunch that, in the far distant future, those “excavating” ancient blogs (if possible) to find out what it was like in the 21st century will likely find this type to be of the greatest value. See, I’m thousands of years ahead of my time!

Favorite Songs of 1965

For Christmas in 1964, my sister and I received matching transistor radios. It was one of my most remembered presents, for I was heavily into popular music at the time and with this device (I-Pod's spiritual ancestor), I could carry my music around with me, scratchy-sounding and all!. The big radio station in South Florida at the time was Miami’s 560-WQAM “Tiger Radio”. I remembered DJs Rick Shaw and Jim Dunlop, but had forgotten the others. Imagine my pleasant surprise to discover that there is a tribute website to this great station of the 60’s called 560.c0m.

Television also presented a forum in 1965 through which different acts could gain publicity and popularity: CBS's Ed Sullivan Show, ABC's Shindig, and NBC's Hullabaloo.

Everyone in my family was an ardent Beatles fan, and my parents were buying up Beatles albums as soon as they came out. 1965 saw Beatles VI, Help!, and Rubber Soul (Beatles ’65 actually came out in late 1964). My list of favorites of theirs would be so long that just looking at a listing of their album tracks would suffice! So I’ll just mention the best of the best: Words of Love, What You’re Doing, Every Little Thing, The Night Before, You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away, Ticket to Ride, I’ve Just Seen a Face, and Michelle.

There were other artists on the planet besides the Beatles in 1965, and they produced plenty of quality songs. The Kinks, the true progenitors of hard rock (at least the first time I heard it was from them), dazzled listeners with their brash, frenzied guitar playing on songs like You Really Got Me and All Day and All of the Night. My favorite of theirs, though, was the more subdued Tired of Waiting. I’ve always been a lukewarm fan of the Beach Boys, but they made a more sophisticated turn in their music with their riveting Help Me Rhonda. Concrete and Clay, by Unit 4 + 2, would have been a great dance song (if I danced, that is). Barry McGuire warned of impending doom in his angry and moralistic Eve of Destruction; with the Vietnam War kicking in on all cylinders this year, that forecast was literally true for hundreds of thousands of young Americans, who would be sent into the jungles of southeast Asia in the ensuing years to draw enemy fire and somehow try to survive. Another consciousness-raising song, Jackie DeShannon’s What the World Needs Now (Is Love Sweet Love) helped to set the stage for the counterculture movement of the late sixties. One of my favorite sixties groups, the Animals, had a string of hits this year, highlighted by two songs that have grown on me through the years: It’s My Life and the often-applicable We Gotta Get Out of This Place. The McCoys had a fun, catchy tune in Hang On Sloopy. Dobie Gray reveled at being in The In-Crowd, while the Beau Brummels reveled at having the Last Laugh. The Byrds burst into the big time with their folk-to-rock adaptations of Mr. Tambourine Man and Turn Turn Turn. Bob Dylan also got into the rock picture and reinvented himself in the process with Like a Rolling Stone. In the “silliest song” category, Shirley Ellis wins hands-down for her unfathomable Name Game. Horst Jankowsky played a mean piano with his beautiful instrumental A Walk in the Black Forest. The New York-based band the Knickerbockers sounded just like the Beatles with their one hit Lies. For a little while in ’65, I was fanatical about Gary and the Mindbenders’ Game of Love. And then I got tired of it and still am, 43 years later. The Wee Five charmed me with their sweet, romantic exercise in harmony: You Were On My Mind. Look Though Any Window, by the British band the Hollies, was their first American singles hit. The energetic Dave Clark Five continued to entertain with their “happy-go-loud” sound, “rat-a-tat” drumming, and two hits: Catch Us If You Can and Over and Over Again. Ferry Cross the Mersey, by Gerry and the Pacemakers was my favorite from this band: it was an imaginative, vivid picture of one’s wistful nostalgia for his youth and childhood home.

Simon and Garfunkel, another great “harmony” act, had my #3 favorite song of 1965: their debut oxymoronic masterpiece Sounds of Silence. For #2, I go back to the Beatles and their stunning hit Ticket to Ride. My top favorite tune of 1965 (as I lived through it) was head and shoulders above all the others. When I first heard I Can’t Explain on the radio, I thought that the Beatles had released their greatest song ever. Man, I thought, George Harrison has got to be the best guitar player of all time! Then I discovered that it wasn’t them, but rather a new British band called The Who! Actually a rather short song, I Can’t Explain is self-defining: “I can’t explain” why this song didn’t even penetrate the top-40 nationwide while a (to me) substandard song like the Rolling Stones’ Satisfaction became the most popular song of the year. There’s no accounting for taste, I suppose. To each his own!