Just Finished Reading Franz Kafka's Short Story Metamorphosis

The German-Bohemian early twentieth-century writer Franz Kafka wrote a short story, published in 1915, titled Metamorphosis, and which I just read.  Its overt theme is preposterous: a young man wakes up one morning to discover that he has suddenly and completely transformed into a huge, human-sized bug.  His parents and sister, with whom he is living and whom he has been supporting through his employment, are more disgusted and horrified at his transformation than surprised...which is a clue leading the reader to assume that this is an analogy to something else the author wants to discuss. This unfortunate young man, Gregor Samsa, is still fully in possession of his reasoning faculties, but his efforts to communicate his thoughts to others around him fall on deaf ears: all they can hear are his insect sounds.  Gregor soon finds himself locked in his room, with only his sister showing the compassion to care for his needs.  But eventually even she tires of dealing with him, and he ends up wasting away by himself while his family stigmatizes and hates him.  So what is the analogy, anyway?

Some believe that this all has something to do with the persecution that Jews experienced in Europe, persecution that led to concentration camps and the Holocaust in later years. The sudden change in the story, this way, relates to the change in which Jews were suddenly viewed in society. I tend to disagree with this interpretation because the analogy breaks down too much.  Gregor has actually changed, not just others' interpretation of his status, and recognizes it himself.  Instead, as I see it, this tale has a two-fold meaning...

The first aspect I see is that the people one is closest to and most familiar with in life tend to be almost reactionary in their resistance to personal change...and if that change comes suddenly then a breakdown in communication can lead to shunning and a break in the relationship.  So if someone suddenly changes their religious belief system (or completely renounces religion) or succumbs to a form of mental illness such as schizophrenia, they may (at least to themselves) still remain in full possession of their faculties.  But the unwelcome rift caused by the draconian change will impede their ability to communicate effectively.  The fact that Gregor's transformation is so massive makes me believe that this may be an allegory for the descent into severe mental illness...and the prejudice against those so afflicted that ran so rampant through society back then (and even now, to a lesser extent).  Remember that just twenty years after the publication of this story, Hitler's Holocaust would begin with the rooting out and extermination of Germany's mentally ill, along with the physically and mentally handicapped.

A second aspect to Metamorphosis, as I see it, is how, once someone like Gregor, who has been holding his family together with his work supporting them, is taken out of the picture, the other members will adapt, grow, and become stronger and more self-reliant.  So this may also have been an early study on the phenomenon of co-dependence.

That's my own reaction to Kafka's Metamorphosis.  But as many writers will tell you, their own intentions behind their stories are not carved in granite and that what each reader takes away from the material carries its own validity...

My Two Cents Worth About the Upcoming Super Bowl

I'd better put in my two cents worth about the approaching Super Bowl game between the Seattle Seahawks and the New England Patriots before I forget.  First of all, I like Seattle but am not at all happy to see New England in there.  Being a Miami Dolphins fan and remembering the infamous "snow plow" incident that cost them a game against the Patriots, long before the most recent scandals tagged to this franchise, I have never viewed them as a team that plays fairly.  So this "Deflategate" story doesn't surprise me a bit.  But now I'm hearing that the New England players are so angry about the accusations flying around and the negative media attention they are getting that they may be extra-motivated against the Seahawks and end up beating them badly.  This sounds to me a lot like the way the Seattle players went around last year with a chip on their shoulders, acting as if they weren't getting enough respect in comparison to their then-opponent, the Denver Broncos.  And they pulverized their Super Bowl opponent, 43-8.  Now I have a problem with this...

If you and your team suddenly find yourselves "motivated" due to a perceived slight and proceed to play at a high level in a particular game, doesn't that in turn imply, in more normal circumstances, that you are holding back your efforts and NOT playing at an optimal level?  Furthermore, these NFL players are professionals and are reaping in the money at a rate most people would find difficult to imagine.  Yet they behave as if the quality of their performance isn't due to their own ingrained character, talent, and training but rather is something somewhat whimsical, dependent on outside factors.  This makes me wonder whether any of these teams are worth rooting for, and after discovering during the Deflategate scandal what monumental prima donnas NFL quarterbacks are about "their" footballs, my doubts about their worthiness have only increased...

Just Finished Reading Tad Williams' Shadowrise

As I find myself increasingly suffering from fantasy fiction overload, I continue to make progress plodding through the remaining series I'm still reading...after which I plan to take a vacation from the genre.  One of these is the tetralogy by Tad Williams titled Shadowmarch (also the name of its first book).  I just finished reading part three, titled Shadowrise.  Only one more book left to go!  That's good, because the characters in this series all seem to be undergoing extreme, chronic suffering...that is, except the bad guys (who I suppose will receive their comeuppance at the end of the last book).  This is especially true for protagonist Prince Barrick Eddon of Southmarch to the point that whenever the book channels off into his story line, I automatically start groaning to myself...anticipating my own suffering as a reader alongside the young prince's unceasing ordeals.  It's almost comical, the relentless and almost universal suffering in this series. Also, Williams has so many loose threads going on with the plot and diverse characters that I anticipate much of the final book will be an effort on his part to explain it all.  Good luck with that...I already plan to go into book four with the idea that, at least at its conclusion, everyone will finally be put out of their misery.  I know I'll be...

My Running Back in Swing, 15K Gainesville Race This Saturday

Although I didn't run as planned in last Sunday's Ocala Half-Marathon because I felt horrendous the previous night, it looks as if another race has made itself available to me...one which is much closer and less expensive.  This coming Saturday morning, a few miles east of Gainesville, will be the Newnan's Lake 15K (9.3 miles).  I have never run it before since its scheduled time usually conflicts with the Ocala race.  But I'm feeling much better now...as a matter of fact, this morning I had a 10.2 mile run and have amassed, over the day, a total of 14.4 miles.  Still, I think I'll wait until raceday morning before I sign up, just to be on the safe side.  It should be fun to run this event, which seems to be very popular with Gainesville's running community...

Saw The Imitation Game Recently

The Imitation Game, starring rising actor Benedict Cumberbatch as English mathematician Alan Turing, is a great historical/biographical drama focusing on a period during World War II when Germany had the upper hand over the Allies...in particular Great Britain...and the latter was desperately trying to crack the German Enigma code that the Third Reich universally used in its naval transmissions.  Turing, as he was portrayed, was a difficult, socially incompetent individual who was nevertheless one of the foremost mathematical minds of his time.  He was able, along with the help of the team assigned to him, to construct a prototype computer, called the Turing Machine, that was able to finally crack the code.  The struggles between great minds under great stress, with deadlines, the struggle to obtain needed resources, and conflicts with the base's military commander, to invent what seemed to be an impossible solution out of thin air made The Imitation Game a masterpiece of suspense...even when we know in advance the outcome of the project.

During the project, as the movie depicts it, Turing goes out and selects two people to add to his team.  One of them is Joan Clarke, whom others around her belittle because of her sex but whose brilliance Turing totally recognizes as they work out many of the assignment's problems together.  Their relationship becomes rather personal, although it is known between them that Turing was homosexual...which at the time was a crime in Britain.  Later it was implied that, years after the war when the police investigated a burglary at Turing's home and his homosexuality was revealed, leading to a choice between incarceration and chemical castration, the great mathematician and savior of the Allies during World War II committed suicide not long after undergoing the latter.  It was important that the film covered this, if only to show the brutal persecution that gays have suffered, even (or especially) in recent history.

Because of the top-secret nature of his code-breaking project, it wasn't until decades after Alan Turing's death that the scope of his accomplishments were revealed, both in terms of his contribution to the defeat of the Nazi empire and the foundation of the computer era.  What an major, indispensable figure in history he turned out to be!  I don't know whether or not the Oscar-nominated movie The Imitation Game is the best picture of last year, since I haven't seen all of the others, but I highly recommend it as it is well acted and directed and provides an eye-opening perspective on a crucial aspect of modern history that had been hidden from us for so long...

Skipped Planned Ocala Half-Marathon This Morning

This morning I passed up on running my planned Ocala Half-Marathon due to either a severe food allergy reaction or a viral attack yesterday...most likely the former.  The problem with either of these is that they cause general inflammation throughout my body, and I have been advised by my physician to be on guard with this sort of thing when considering stressing out my body on long runs.  It is disappointing that I missed this race, which I had been looking forward to for a while.  Still, I'd rather err on the side of caution and not be foolhardy with my actions. This morning, as it turned out, I felt much better and have already run 3.5 miles.  I'll still have the opportunity to run in Gainesville's FivePoints Half-Marathon next month...but I think I'm going to delay my registration until the last possible moment...these races aren't cheap to enter!

Oh, by the way, my prediction (in an earlier article) of a downward spike in temperature was borne out, with it getting down to around 35 this morning at race time...

Worst NFL Teams Shouldn't Be Rewarded in Draft

In professional sports such as football and basketball, much attention is given to the annual draft of new talent into the league, and which teams have the top picks.  For the purpose of advancing parity, the policy is to reward the teams having the worst records with the best picks, something that I feel takes away from the integrity of the sport, especially in football (in pro basketball, a weighted lottery decides the final order of draft selection).  This past season's worst team in the National Football League, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, will get the top pick.  But poor play should not be rewarded, and knowing that your team is in the running for that top draft pick is a disincentive to play your hardest to win in late season games that might have an important bearing on where other teams end up placing in the playoff picture.  Well, there is, in my opinion, a reasonable solution to this problem...and it comes from international soccer.

In many soccer-avid countries like England, Mexico, France,  Germany, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, and  Italy, to just name some of the most prominent, the teams that finish the worst each year aren't rewarded for that...no, instead  they are demoted to the next lower league!  Conversely, the same number of teams from that next lower league who have the most successful seasons get to be promoted to the next higher league.  The number of teams that yearly rise and fall varies for  each league (in Mexico it's just one team, in England it's three).  But the result is that, for the teams that find themselves near the bottom of the standings as the season progresses, there is a great incentive to continue playing competitively in order to avoid the humiliation and financial setback associated with demotion (or "relegation", as it is officially called).  So how would the NFL look under such a system?

Since American football is structured differently here with its well-developed system of college football, we don't have the multitude of professional leagues that could use promotion and relegation.  So what I propose is to create a second-tier league under the regular NFL, with ten-to-twelve expansion teams distributed among cities with promising pro football markets (including, of course, Los Angeles).  They would play their regular season parallel to the regular league.  At the end, the champion of this "junior" league would be promoted to the NFL AND get the top draft pick, while the NFL's worst finishing team would be demoted (relegated) to this second-tier league.  Or, the number of teams promoted and relegated could be increased to two or three.  Other than the promoted team(s) getting the top draft picks, the order of the rest of the draft could be randomized into a lottery unweighted by order of finish.  This would finish the prospect of any hint of a team writing off the season midway through it in order to enhance the following year's lineup through a higher draft position...

Getting the Victim and Aggressor Backward with Political Correctness

One of the big sticking points causing a lot of griping in the conservative media, be it talk radio, FoxNews Channel, the Internet, or print, is that whenever a terrorist attack happens anywhere in the world, be it in America, India, the Philippines, Nigeria, Iraq, France, Great Britain, Russia, Israel, Belgium, Libya, Spain, Pakistan, Canada...whew, I have to catch my breath...let's just say anywhere there's a country, and the violent act that takes innocent lives is openly described by the perpetrator(s) as being inspired by their interpretation of Islam, then our government simply will refuse to say the word "Islamic" or "Muslim" to describe the terrorists.  The chief guilty party in this is President Obama himself.  Instead, the population at-large is treated to a condescending lesson about how WE are not supposed to be prejudiced against other groups...including of course Islam...as if WE were the bad guys and were hell-bent on retaliating or discriminating against them...instead of the true haters, which are the terrorists and those within their faith (not the faith as a whole) who support them.  In fact, behind this "politically correct" self-censoring on the part of some of our political leadership is their own prejudicial assumption, which is that we the people are just a bunch of ignorant, emotionally immature and bigoted yahoos who have to be restrained and "taught".  I, for one, feel a bit insulted by all this when I can see what is going on before my very eyes.  No, Islam as a whole isn't responsible for terrorism that certain violent adherents within it perpetrate...but without certain doctrines and tenets of that faith that are being interpreted and acted on in an extreme and violent way, we would not have the overwhelming number of cases of terrorist attacks in the news that we have been sadly witnessing in recent times.  Sure, there are other extremist groups as well as lone-wolf nutcases and you hear about them from time to time in news.  But with them, it's apparently OK to dwell on the causes and possible belief systems underpinning THEIR deplorable actions...

President Obama Gives State of the Union Speech

Yesterday President Obama laid out his vision for the rest of his term in office in his State of the Union address, given before a joint session of Congress.  I did not watch it, but caught most of it from the radio. It was a good speech, as this president is so adept at when presenting prepared material to a group.  Although the President covered many topics, his salient points, as I saw it, were (1) the economic recovery is going full swing, but that it is important that the middle class and poor be able to enjoy the benefits as well as the rich (meaning raise taxes on the higher-income brackets), (2) our foreign policy should be carefully crafted so that we explore and implement a variety of approaches when dealing with our enemies abroad...so that we don't allow ourselves to get mired down in wars, and (3) we should invest in education and infrastructure to keep America at the forefront of the world.  With regard to the last point, he alluded to his recent proposal of granting free community college education (I wonder if that includes soon-to-be old-timers like me who want to do something new as retirement approaches...no, I'm probably excluded) as well as diminishing the significance of the important Keystone XL Pipeline issue now before Congress by stating that the various needed infrastructure construction and repair projects for the country would generate thirty times more jobs than "one pipeline".  And he pushed all of the required liberal social issue buttons, including more than once supporting gay rights and same-sex marriage (which he opposed back in 2008 when that stance was more politically feasible for him).

I don't have a problem with a lot of President Obama's speech, but I do have a major one with this tendency of him to smugly dismiss issues that others consider to be important.  For example, in 2009, after single-handedly forcing NASA to abandon its worthy and ambitious project to establish a base on the moon (after he had promised during the 2008 campaign not to do this), he brushed away any criticism with the flippant comment "We've already been there".  That offended me somehow.  Now it's just this "one pipeline"... just a drop in the bucket, right?  But it is the number one item for consideration for the new Republican congressional majority in both houses and, regardless whether you're for or against the pipeline (I happen to be for it), his casual brushoff of the issue does not bode well for his relationship with either the Senate or the House in the next two years.  No, sadly, I see this speech, which might have been more constructive and conciliatory, to have been little more than oratorical posturing for the primary purpose of shoring up the Democratic Party base for the next election, in other words, the same old "stuff".  Perhaps the saddest thing of all, though, is that regarding this president, whom I have supported through two elections (though not wholeheartedly in the last one), he would still get my vote were he eligible to run again as I look at the sorry list of Republicans (especially Mr. Romney, the perennial candidate) who currently have their power-hungry eyes fixed on his job...

Today is Martin Luther King Jr. Day

Today is Martin Luther King Jr. Day, a national holiday.  It's January 19, although the late civil rights leader's birthday is on the 15th.  I'm off from work today, or should I say I WAS off for earlier this morning (I work on one of those problematic late night "graveyard" shifts). To many, I suppose, these "Monday" holidays can be seen as some extra free time.  But I think that the intent with the establishment of these special days on our calendar is for each of us to step back and reflect, at least a little, on their meaning and whom they are honoring...

Into the 1960s, even after the United States Supreme Court had, in 1954, unanimously nullified the "separate-but-equal" policy enacted after the ill-advised Plessy v. Ferguson decision of 1896 that officially legalized and institutionalized racial segregation (and consequently, racial discrimination) in America, blacks were being prevented from sharing the same rights as citizens that whites had, especially in the Deep South.  Dr. King's struggle on behalf of blacks...and ultimately, us all...started in 1955 when he organized a boycott of Montgomery, Alabama's bus system after Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus to a white passenger and was arrested for it.  For the next several years, King and others marched and pushed for integration and equal rights for all.  He was a strong voice in favor of peaceful protest, and during the 1960s when others were promoting a more violent agenda for revolution, he played the role of peacemaker.  Martin Luther King, Jr. was also very clear in his denunciation of the U.S. military involvement in Vietnam from its outset, and this refusal on his part to compromise his own principles cost him much popularity at the time with those who had supported his civil rights activism but also supported the war effort.  At the end of his bitterly short life (assassinated at age 39), he was working hard to expose the poverty conditions of millions in this country and improve them.  Never fully understood and respected during his lifetime, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., by no means a perfect person (as none of us can honestly claim to be, either), has shown himself to have been a visionary whose compassion and stances on behalf of the downtrodden will go down through history...

Signed Up to Run Next Sunday's Ocala Half-Marathon

Get ready for a downward spike in temperatures next Sunday morning here in the Gainesville-Ocala area, for once again I am running in Ocala's distance running event then...and it ALWAYS is super-cold (i.e. below freezing) whenever I run one of these races in Gainesville or Ocala, for some perverse reason.  Just once I'd like the temperature at race time to be around 45 degrees or so... still somewhat cold...but pleasantly so.  But maybe, just maybe, this time around it will be a little bit warmer.

I had a good ten-mile run yesterday and have a lot of confidence in running this upcoming race, especially after doing better than I expected in December's Palm Coast Starlight Half-Marathon.  I've run this course twice before, in 2011 and 2013...and 2011's race was a full 26.2-mile marathon (in which I suffered an IT band injury under my right knee and had to walk the last seven miles).  I would have preferred to be a regular marathon runner, but the training for this long distance seems to predispose me to injury.  It's too bad they instead don't have 20-mile races, or even 30K races (18.6 miles)...I think I could regularly handle those distances.  Still, I'd like to run another marathon, even considering the upcoming Gainesville FivePoints event in February for this.  But it will depend greatly on how I feel as I approach the online registration deadline and have to decide whether to run the full marathon or the half-marathon (which I've done here in 2010 and 2014)...

NFL Playoffs Down to Four Teams

The National Football League playoffs are now down to the final four teams, with the conference championship games taking place tomorrow afternoon and evening.  The first contest will be for the NFC championship, with the Green Bay Packers visiting the defending Super Bowl champion Seattle Seahawks.  The second one has the New England Patriots hosting the Indianapolis Colts for the AFC title.  My preferences for these games lie with favorite Seattle and underdog Indianapolis.  With these four teams my best possible scenario would be for the Seahawks to repeat as Super Bowl Champs and the worst for the Dolphins' divisional nemesis Patriots to win it all. I'm a little bit concerned about New England because, regarding the two teams that have beaten them in the playoffs during recent years, Baltimore and the New York Giants, the Ravens were beaten by the Pats in last week's game...and the Giants never did manage to make the playoffs.  So somebody else will have to step up and perform the necessary deed.

And why to I like Seattle? This is a complete team whose members "get it" regarding working together as a unit...and those who don't are gone.  Their head coach, Pete Carroll, imparts a very infectious enthusiasm while maintaining a high level of team discipline, something that "players' coaches" like Rex Ryan (or my own Florida Gators former coaches Ron Zook and Will Muschamp) couldn't.  Not that the Seahawks players don't like their head coach: there's nothing like monumental success to breed affection.  I find that balance in Carroll's coaching philosophy to be fascinating...he could be the best head coach out there right now...

US Senate Offering Vigorous Debate, For a Change

The other day I found myself watching a TV channel that I used to regularly follow but had in recent years become accustomed to avoiding due to lack of stated content: C-Span2 (channel 81 on my local Cox cable lineup), which broadcasts live the floor proceedings of the United States Senate. Throughout the previous decade during the Bush administration, I enjoyed watching the debates on the various issues.  Sometimes the Democratic Party controlled the Senate and sometimes it was the Republicans, but things there seemed to hum along pretty smoothly, especially considering the partisan vitriol outside in the media.  However, ever since Obama was elected President, both sides have taken a strongly negative and, in my opinion, indecorous attitude toward each other in this body of Congress that has a longtime reputation for being polite and amicable in the midst of political disagreement.  Part of this problem rests with the Republicans' stated goal of bringing down Obama's legislative agenda by massively slowing down the Senate proceedings through technical objections... and part rests with the Democrats and their choice of contentious senator Harry Reid as majority leader.  So for the most part, whenever I did tune in to C-Span2 I would either see that the Senate had adjourned, had never met for that day, or was being indefinitely held up due to procedural wrangles.  This year, though, there seems, at least at the start, a change in how business is conducted that corresponds to a change in party control.  Now the Republican Party, under the leadership of formerly obstructionist Mitch McConnell, are running the show and, for now at least, have once again opened the floor for open debate with amendments for the various legislation.  Yes, I think it is a bit hypocritical for them to be touting their own openness now that THEY are in power...but I still welcome the change.  As a member of the voting public who actually consistently participates in this democracy during elections and is interested in the issues before us, watching such debates is both educational and fascinating.  For example, the first bill up for consideration this term is for the approval of the proposed Keystone XL [oil] Pipeline to extend through the country from the Canada-Montana border down to Port Arthur, Texas.  Hearing the two sides in this debate has helped me to come to my own conclusion on this issue.

Let's hope that the US Senate will continue to offer open debate on the various issues facing us.  One thing I noticed was that many of the senators I had been following before have either passed on, retired, resigned for various reasons, or been defeated in elections.  So there are many new faces for me to get to know and match with their names and states. Moreover, whichever senator happens to be sitting up front, presiding with the gavel as designated "president", is usually among the most junior,  newly elected senators of the majority party, and they are never identified on CSpan2.  No problem, Wikipedia offers a comprehensive list of the current senators, complete with all of the necessary information about each (including the crucial identifying pictures)...

Recently Saw The Theory of Everything

I don't know who directed or produced it, nor do I know almost all of the actors (one noted exception is the dude who played Professor Lupin in the Harry Potter movies), but I thought that movie The Theory of Everything, focusing on the life story of Stephen Hawking, was quite interesting. Hawking, as you may already know, is a renown theoretical physicist whose specialty has been cosmology...in particular, black holes.  He has expressed a strong desire to unify Einstein's General Theory Relativity with Quantum Mechanics to formulate a "theory of everything": hence the movie's title.  You may also be aware that during his early adulthood, while a graduate student at Cambridge, he became afflicted with ALS (also known as Lou Gehrig's Disease), which almost completely incapacitated him and left him with a poor prognosis for survival.  But over the years he has endured and is a worldwide symbol of courage, determination, and scientific genius.

As for this movie, it didn't delve into the content of Hawking's scientific endeavors as much as it did his relationship with Jane Wilde, from their initial courtship through the traumatic diagnosis...and into their marriage.  She is portrayed as having sacrificed a lot in her devotion to him...yet they had three healthy children together and seemed to be doing well.  However, after Hawking's enormous success and celebrity following the publication of his best-selling book A Brief History of Time, he left her for another woman, with a divorce ensuing.  He and his ex-wife both remarried (others).

For those like me who had expected a personal angle given to Stephen Hawking's life but wanted more attention to his scientific exploits, there is bound to be a sense of letdown with this film, which in large part turns out more to be the story of his wife, from her perspective, as she goes through her trials with him and his illness. Still, I recommend The Theory of Everything, which did not sugarcoat his personal life but which did overlook some of the controversies surrounding him within the scientific community...

Some Thoughts on Football

At this moment I am right between what has just happened in the National Football League divisional playoffs this past weekend and tonight's college football championship game between Oregon and Ohio State.  With the NFL playoffs, I was generally pleased, especially in the National Conference with Seattle and Green Bay winning over Carolina and Dallas, respectively.  I was disappointed, though, that Baltimore couldn't hang on against New England.  And for once I was rooting for Denver, whose offense sputtered against Indianapolis in their loss.  However, between the Broncos and Colts I want the stronger team to go up against the Patriots...and Andrew Luck & Co. seem to be the outfit best suited for this.  Next week's matchups will see me rooting for Seattle against Green Bay and Indianapolis against New England.  Best ultimate outcome? Seahawks win the Super Bowl.  Worst? Pats!

In the college championship contest, which I'll miss completely because I now have to report to work an hour and a half earlier on my shift, I will be pulling for Urban Meyer's Ohio State team against Oregon.  I'm happy that Meyer, who brought two national championships to Gainesville while at Florida, is enjoying his success with the Buckeyes and don't at all begrudge him the opportunity to continue on in Columbus.  And as for the Ducks, I don't especially like that hurry-up offense of theirs: if anyone should be able to figure out a way to shut it down, Meyer's the man...

Melissa Off to India

India definitely ranks as one of the most important countries in the world.  Close to China in population, it is now also booming economically...although the benefits of that upsurge have yet to touch upon the population at-large enough to eliminate its problems of poverty and disease.  My wife Melissa is going there today for a two-week class with her seminary.  Being the first time for her out of the country, this is sure to be a great adventure for her...beginning with the multi-stage airplane flights hopping from one location to the next halfway around the world.  My hopes and prayers are with her, along with her teachers and fellow students.

Just Finished Reading Sue Grafton's "I" is for Innocent

For a long time I have been a fan of mystery writer Sue Grafton's "alphabet" series of novels featuring Californian private detective Kinsey Millhone.  starting with "A" is for Alibi and proceeding down the alphabet. Grafton is approaching the end: I thinks she's gotten past "V" at last check.  And I haven't read most of them.  The problem, though, is that I have trouble remembering which books I've already read and which ones I haven't.  This is especially true with the titles at the head of the alphabet.  I checked out "I" is for Innocent because I thought it was an unfamiliar title...turns out I was right, so I proceeded to enjoy a fresh mystery story.  Grafton's heroine Millhone is a very compelling protagonist with whom I feel no difficulty establishing strong empathy...there are definitely some personality similarities here between her and me (I'm probably closer to where she's at than you know, even if you think that you know me).  This story I just finished was one of those whodunnit murder mysteries with various characters presented at stages as possible suspects.  The "innocent" angle concerns a man, David Barney,who received a not-guilty verdict after being accused of murdering his wife...a verdict that many around him believe was erroneous.  Now, much like what happened with O.J. Simpson in the mid-1990's, he is having to undergo a wrongful death civil lawsuit trial. The plaintiff is the victim's earlier husband...as well as Kinsey Millhone's client.  The story develops as doubts about her case against Barney keep piling up and others start to look awfully suspicious.  Grafton's story, looking back on it, is pretty complicated.  But she is masterful at telling it (always in the first person from Millhone's point of view) in such a way as not to overburden me, the reader, with information overload.

Now I just have to remember that I read Sue Grafton's "I" book.  I'm thinking, though, of going back to "A" and reading each book in order...even if I already read it before.  It certainly wouldn't be the first time I reread well-written fiction.  Besides, there is, from book to book, a development of Kinsey Millhone's character with changes in her personal life and relationships...changes that make more sense if they are read in chronological (i.e. "alphabetic") order...

Just Finished Reading Stephen King's Revival

I just finished reading Stephen King's latest novel, titled Revival.  Opening with a short excerpt from classic horror fiction writer H.P. Lovecraft, this book definitely goes down the same path he went in so many of his stories.  This, however, isn't so obvious at the beginning...Jamie Morton, a six-year old boy living in Maine (ah, another Stephen King novel set there) who just so happens to be my age, is in the first grade around the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis (I remember what I was doing then, too...although I wasn't aware of why we were led out of our South Florida classroom by our teacher one afternoon to line up crouched against the hallway wall with our heads down and our hands covering them).  A new young pastor, Charles Jacobs, has just started work at the family's church and strikes up a friendship with the boy...a friendship that will transform itself in the ensuing years into a curious relationship combining enmity and salvation.  Jacobs is also an amateur tinkerer in electricity, in fact an Edison-like genius in the field, and has discovered a "secret" form of it that has miraculous healing properties...as one of the Jamie's older brothers discovers when he loses his voice from an accident and is taken to him.  But is there a price to be paid for this kind of healing, and where does it lead?  Well, if you've been paying attention, you know that this novel has a lot in common with Lovecraft's horror stories, so you just might guess that there's something or someone "behind the door" and that this isn't going to remain a sentimental, nostalgic tale for very long.  Still, the full impact isn't realized until the end of the novel, an impact that can hit the reader with its force and brutality.  So I guess I'm saying that if you are faint of heart or tend to have nightmares after reading scary stories (and this eventually turns into a very, very scary story), then please avoid Revival.  Still, it is masterfully written and, to me, is one of King's best works...probably his best since his 11/22/63 story a few years ago.  But if you do happen to pick up a copy and start to read it, don't say I didn't warn you...

Ran at the Gym This Morning, Upcoming Races

This morning I went with Melissa to my local gym, which is Gainesville Health and Fitness (the facility at the 4800 block of Newberry Road).  It had been a while since I've gone there...all the way back to October 23rd last year, as a matter of fact.  But this morning, Melissa was going to one of the water aerobics classes there (the eight o'clock one) and I decided to come along and run on the treadmill while she worked out.  I was curious how I would handle running on the treadmill after avoiding it for so many weeks.  It was no problem finding one of the more preferable treadmills on the second floor: the University of Florida is still "off" for the holidays (but not for long) and many of the students who usually would be using the gym were still out of town.  Anyway, I set the machine at my usual 6.7 mph pace and started it up.  To my horror I felt it very difficult to keep up with it and could tell, after running for a little while, that it would be quite a chore to run much longer.  Could there be that much difference between the treadmill and running on the ground/road that a few weeks away from it would cause that effect?  Then it hit me: the incline setting was at "3"...once I lowered it I suddenly felt as if I were running downhill!  The rest of the run went flawlessly while I listened to music on my MP3 player.  I did have to stop after 7.5 miles, though...I ran out of time and didn't want to keep Melissa waiting!  My running for the day continues, though...so far I've amassed a total of 12 miles, with more to come...

The next race for me will be the Ocala Half-Marathon later this month on Sunday, the 25th.  Then in February, depending on how how things go for me and my running in the next few weeks, I'll either do the half-marathon or take a stab at the 26.2 mile marathon in the Five Points races here in Gainesville...

Just Finished Reading Robert Jordan's A Crown of Swords

A few days ago, I ranked the various fantasy series I have read over the years (or am still in process of reading).  Robert Jordan's extremely long The Wheel of Time series was my least favorite, not only because of its length (fourteen volumes), but also for the overly complicated story lines that have developed.  I simply cannot keep up with each character, always seemingly on a trip from one city to another for various arcane reasons...and the cities keep changing hands with their leaders.  I just finished his seventh book, titled A Crown of Swords, and the confusion continues unabated. However...

With The Wheel of Time, I am beginning to learn how to better like this series by not getting myself overwrought about trying to perform the near-impossible task of keeping abreast of everything going on.  Instead, I just sit back and enjoy how each character, with his or her special personality and outlook, experiences and reacts to the proceedings.  This ability for deeply developed characterization is, to me, Jordan's strong point with his writing.  I especially like following the character of Mat Cauthon, one of the main protagonist Rand al'Thor's best friends and someone who isn't caught up with how important he sees himself (unlike many of the other characters).  Since A Crown of Swords features him a lot, that contributed greatly to my enjoyment of the book.

There is a Wheel of Time Wikia on the Internet, but if you haven't yet completed the series, you are susceptible to plot spoilers should you frequent it.  That happened to me when I got on it and did a search on one of the characters...and then suddenly found out about her demise  in a later book and at whose hands...

Three Big College Football Bowl Games Today

There are three college football games that interest me on this New Year's Day, 2015.  One is the Birmingham Bowl featuring Florida against East Carolina.  The other two are obviously the championship playoff games: the Rose Bowl between Oregon and Florida State and the Sugar Bowl between Alabama and Ohio State.  The action begins with the Gators at 1 PM and continues on into the evening with the Sugar Bowl closing it.  I'm sure there are other games as well, but these three actually mean something (at least to me).  Not that I'm going to be sitting in front of the TV transfixed by football all day, mind you...I've got other things to do with my life as well today...

It would be sweet to see the Gators go out on a winning note and finish with a winning 7-5 record.  East Carolina has an incredibly explosive offense, though, and it should be interesting to see how they match up against Florida's good defense.  I'm finally done rooting against FSU this year, meaning that they'll probably lose this game against Oregon!  They just keep winning their games and extending their winning streak and the bigshot talking heads in the sports media keep degrading them and placing them below other teams.  I think their quarterback Jameis Winston has a professional's look about him when he stands behind the center before the snap and scans the defense...reminds me a bit of the Patriot's Tom Brady.  As for the Sugar Bowl game, I instinctively root against Nick Saban, the Alabama coach, anyway, and Ohio State's coach Urban Meyer is coaching the other side.  I'm siding with Meyer and his Buckeyes, largely out of appreciation for what he did when he was at Florida (two national championships)...

CORRECTION: OOOPS, the Birmingham Bowl is set for Saturday, not today...but except for that, the article stands...

My Personal December 2014 Running Report

In December I continued with more extensive running, amassing a total for the month of 315 miles.  My longest single run was the 13.1 miles I covered in the Starlight Half-Marathon in Palm Coast on the evening of December 20...half of it in total darkness (only aided by a flashlight).  Unlike the previous two months, I tended to be consistent from day to day with my daily running mileage, so my one-day high mileage, spread out over several runs, was only 14.4 miles.  I ran on every day of the month.

I feel that my endurance level has markedly improved over the past few months, and I had energy to spare at the end of the half-marathon race.  That's good news, for next month will be the time for the Ocala Half-Marathon on the 25th.  I'm not sure I'll be running in any other races in January, but I definitely want to return to the rolling hills south of Ocala's Paddock Mall for the third time in five years...

Personal Top Ten Favorite Songs of 2014

Well, another year has gone by and it's time for me to review my favorite songs of 2014.  Being an enthusiast for alternative rock music, it came as a very pleasant surprise a few months ago to discover that two local stations, Gainesville's WHHZ/100. 5 ("The Buzz") and Jacksonville's WXXJ/102.9 have changed their programming format to feature "my" kind of music.  Since then I've been accumulating a few personal favorites that they play periodically.  Most of these are current hits, but a few, like Florence + the Machine's Dog Days Are Over, have been around a few years.  But you'll notice that this song is still on my list of favorites from 2014.  Earlier this year I purchased Beck's latest CD Morning Phase and discovered a track, titled Blackbird Chain, which I regarded as my favorite song of 2014 for the first half of the year.  But when those two radio stations kicked in, a flood of other songs joined it on the "list".  Ultimately, it came down to five songs I liked the most...each of which has a distinctive sound, style and message from the others.  After giving it all due consideration, though, I have to pick the Foo Fighters' new hit Something From Nothing as my "song of the year" for 2014.  It reminds me a lot of the style of my favorite grunge band, Soundgarden, while at the same time gradually builds up in intensity and complexity much the same way that Led Zeppelin's Stairway to Heaven did.  But the other tunes on the list are great, too.

Here's my list of personal favorite songs of 2014, with the artist mentioned in brackets:

1 Something From Nothing..... [Foo Fighters]
2 Dog Days are Over..... [Florence + the Machine]
3 Take Me to Church...... [Hozier]
4 I Will Wait...... [Mumford and Sons]
5 Come With Me Now...... [The Kongos]
6 Dangerous..... [Big Data]
7 Train Wreck 1979...... [Death From Above 1979]
8 Come a Little Bit Closer..... [Cage the Elephant]
9 Blackbird Chain..... [Beck]
10 The Walker..... [Fitz and the Tantrums]

Narratives, Police, Michael Brown, Eric Garner

It's hard to contest the testimony of many African-American men who claim to be repeatedly profiled by the police because of the color of their skin...I tend to believe these accounts.  The problem with proving this is that, in the justice system, things are done on a case-by-case basis and each specific case can be depicted by law enforcement in some way to exonerate officers even when they do profile blacks.  Another contention is that police are more brutal and use more deadly force in their interactions with black suspects...once again when investigations follow the result is often a flood of mitigating evidence letting the officers off the hook (hence recent grand jury refusals to prosecute police).  But the police are there to protect people and have to go into areas when called to respond to crimes and complaints.  In such cases, the officer may be white and the suspect may be black,...that isn't profiling, the cop is just doing his or her job.  In the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson this past August, that is what happened when a response to a call about a convenience store robbery and the suspect's subsequent stroll down the center of a street led to a police-suspect confrontation that culminated in the suspect being shot down dead.  Many witnesses were there, and depending on which version you might choose to fit your own narrative about the police, Michael Brown was shot either while attacking or rushing the policeman or he had his hands up and was moving away when killed.  I have a couple of questions, though, for those subscribing to the two diametrically-opposed narratives about this tragic incident...

For those, like Al Sharpton, who have made this crime-response case a matter of race and Michael Brown some kind of civil rights hero, quick to insert this case into their narrative that blacks can't get a fair shake in the justice system,  I would like to ask why do this when the situation does not indicate profiling, but rather an officer doing his duty to protect the public from crime and criminals.  As for those who seem to think that the police are grand, unimpeachable  heroes themselves and subscribe to the narrative that they, like combat soldiers in occupied lands, are under continual attack and have to respond in self-defense, my response to this narrative is that yes, if the police see themselves like that, I can see how they would respond with larger than necessary force.  But they are NOT soldiers in enemy land.  This is America, and at last report, we're not a police state or occupied territory. I ask myself why is it so many times, with all of the arms training that the police are supposed to possess, that I keeping seeing reports of policemen gunning down suspects to death when they should have been perfectly capable of incapacitating them by shooting them in less vital areas?  There is another case recently of a boy playing with a harmless cap gun shot to death like this...

Lending more credence to the profiling narrative is the case of Eric Garner, a black man who was approached by a group of police in Staten Island, New York while standing unarmed in front of a shop on the sidewalk.  Accused of selling tax-free cigarettes, not exactly a felony, when he asked the police to leave him alone they jumped him, pulled him down to the ground by his neck and sat on his chest...he died soon thereafter of a heart attack.  This case tends to support another negative narrative about the police, which is that they tend to be more confrontational and treat civilians with more brutality when in groups than when alone.  That old video of the Rodney King beatings comes to mind. It seems that aggression begets more aggression.

We all have our own experiences dealing with the police.  For the most part, they have done well by me, although I believe I was treated unfairly in a couple of cases...one a speed trap situation and the other a setup by several police to ensnare drivers who didn't subscribe to their strict (and to me, extreme) interpretation of a recently-enacted state law about moving over a lane to accommodate roadside emergency vehicles.  But I realize, quite unlike a large segment of the population, that it pays to be polite and cooperative with them, even in situations where I feel persecuted.  There seems, in my opinion, to be a serious gulf between civilians and police, both in how civilians expect the police to act toward them and in how the police expect civilians to act toward them.  Both sides need a crash course in decorum, politeness, and restraint...on a mass scale.

I have seen few issues like this in which opinions are so polarized and impassioned.  Not being black myself, I am not free to agree or disagree with the claim of police profiling from personal experience.  But my personal concerns about the police are real, too.  Although I do appreciate their valor and the important role they play in protecting us, especially from criminals, at the same time I tend to be very wary of them, even when I'm around them in Starbucks (where they gather for the free coffee) and I need to oh-so slowly reach down into my pocket for something like a pen or cellphone...

At Least the Ravens and Seahawks Made the NFL Playoffs This Year

After the failure of the teams I usually root for in the National Football League (Miami, New York Giants, Tampa Bay, and Jacksonville) to make the playoffs this year, I was left with Seattle and Baltimore to cheer on.  Since the Seahawks had already made the playoffs and are playing for a good playoff position this weekend, this left the Ravens as the uncertain playoff possibility.  They had to beat Cleveland today, which they finally managed to do, coming from behind to win 20-10.  But the Ravens still depended on Kansas City beating San Diego, a game I watched this afternoon and which the Chiefs won 19-7.  So Baltimore is in as a wild-card team and Seattle, depending on how they do in their final regular season game, can run the range from home field throughout the playoffs to a wild card team playing an extra game, with all of them on the road.

As for the pitiful Dolphins, I predicted they would blow one of their last two games and finish another non-winning season at 8-8.  Sure enough, even playing at home against the cellar-dwelling Jets, Miami just couldn't hold on to a 24-14 lead and folded up (or choked, depending on what vocabulary you want to use), giving New York the last 23 points en route to a 37-24 drubbing.  Makes it awfully hard to want to follow a team lacking spirit like this year after year...

The News and Subjective Narratives

I've been a little remiss on this blog lately when it comes to commenting on the ongoing news stories.  Since I'm going to weigh in with my own opinion about each of them (but not today), most likely some of my readers will have a different point of view.  Some of the differences will be due to either my own ignorance regarding the objective facts or to that of the reader, but I imagine that most of the disagreement in analysis will come down to the differences in subjective narratives between us. So what exactly is a subjective narrative, anyway?

Before I get into subjective narratives, let's look at some of the ongoing news stories before us;

The police killing unarmed black people in Ferguson, Missouri and New York...and then getting exonerated by grand juries.

Sony hacked ostensibly for the current comedy film The Interview, apparently because it offended the North Korean leader.

The Democratic-controlled US Senate releases revealing documents about "enhanced" interrogation methods used on suspected terrorists.

The now-discredited story about rape at a University of Virginia fraternity.

Another fallen celebrity, this time Bill Cosby, and public reaction.

In each of the above examples, it is possible to take the "facts" revealed by the news outlets and selectively insert them into one's own narratives about an "umbrella" principle.

I have my own opinions and "narratives" about the above topics, and plan to lay them out in future blog entries.  The important thing to remember, though, is that as members of the public at-large, we are limited by the amount of accurate knowledge available to us concerning the above stories.  Instead, it is a much easier burden on our thinking to latch on to a narrative that we hear on TV or radio, or from a friend, co-worker, or family member.  As humans with a social nature built within us, it can be quite exhilarating to be united in a cause revolving around a narrative that tends to be passionate in its appeal and expression.  Sometimes, such narratives are justified when the underlying pertinent facts eventually come out.  But often, the opposite happens as well and there is something of a letdown, with many left with a "rush-to-judgment" feeling.  I'm not a news junkie who is glued to news sources and opinion pages.  Still, it's not difficult to come away with definite opinions about the stories before us.  And maybe, just maybe, some of these opinions of mine won't square with your own narratives.  A subjective narrative incorporates within it any "possible", even dubious, information that supports it while ignoring or dismissing any facts that would diminish or contradict it.  Let's see how this works regarding the current news. Stay tuned...

Gainesville's Tom Walker Memorial Half-Marathon Proves Elusive

After my adventure in Palm Coast's Starlight Half-Marathon this past Saturday, I was looking forward to another edition of Gainesville's Tom Walker Memorial Half-Marathon, which had been scheduled (on the Florida Track Club website) for January 1, 2015.  Usually this race had been held in November, and I ran it in 2010 and 2011.  I liked the fact that in this race (and unlike much of the Starlight race) it would be in the daylight and I would be able to see where I'm going...and the paved Hawthorne Trail on which it is run stretches for miles in the woods southeast of Gainesville, far away from any traffic.  Tonight I was planning to register for it online, but unfortunately this race was removed from the Florida Track Club calendar.  I saw elsewhere that it had been scheduled for January 15, 2015 (as well as another site that had it scheduled for October 25, two months ago)...but when it came to discovering any solid information about the race, all I got was a brief mention in the FTC December newsletter exhorting us to look forward to this race "in the fall"...implying, it seems, that for this year we can just forget about it.  That's sad...but I can still run on my own and train for the next half-marathon, which for me is the Ocala Half-Marathon, scheduled for Sunday, January 25...

Christmas Greetings and Movies

Merry Christmas to everyone!  Last night we sat, after returning home from the Christmas Eve service at our church, and watched one of Melissa's favorite Christmas movies, the funny and sweet Elf. As for my own favorite Christmas movie, it's The Polar Express and although there have been a few showings already on TV, I've only managed to get in a few glimpses so far this season.  But they usually keep showing it from time to time in the days following Christmas, so I'm sure that I'll get to watch it again all the way through at some time.  And of course, there is A Christmas Story, being shown repeatedly on two stations this year: TNT and TBS.  As well as gazillions of other Christmas movies on many channels...

There are the movies about Christmas, and there are the movies that are released on Christmas, not necessarily with any other connection to the holiday season.  This year I see two standouts: The Imitation Game and Unbroken.  The Imitation Game concerns the breaking of the German Enigma code during World War II with the crucial help of mathematician AlanTuring, played by Benedict Cumberbatch. Unbroken is a biographical account of American athlete and war hero Louis Zamperini, who after appearing in the Olympics endured brutal treatment as a prisoner of war under the Japanese following an ordeal of several weeks floating adrift in the Pacific after his plane was shot down, again during World War II.  I'd like to see both of these, especially The Imitation Game...

Ran Palm Coast's Starlight Half-Marathon Yesterday

Yesterday (Saturday) Melissa and I traveled eastward a few miles to Palm Coast to participate in our respective races...I ran the half-marathon and she walked the 5K event.  Anticipating a downtown setting with cheering onlookers, I was surprised by the race location, which was in an isolated area south of the main city by several miles.  Other than a movie theater and an adjacent Christmas park display (much like the duck pond at Gainesville's NFR Hospital), there were just open fields and many walkways...not exactly civilization as I was expecting it.  For the races, which were started five minutes apart, the website had originally stated that the half-marathon runners would go first, followed by the 5K five minutes later.  But the event organizers abruptly reversed the order before the race, causing a lot of confusion among the runner/walkers, including Melissa and me.  But the races got off all right in the end, and we were on our way...

The starting times were at 6 and 6:05 PM, and we were already cautioned to carry flashlights or headlights with us to light up the nighttime paths...which they warned had "spots" of darkness.  That had to be the understatement of the century, for fully half of my half-marathon race was spent in pitch blackness on an isolated paved trail with only my flashlight providing any visual aid.  On top of that, the humidity was awful (temperature was moderate in the 60's) with it starting to rain at various times in the race.  My throat/esophagus had been irritating me of late, and unfortunately whenever I downed some water or Gatorade it would send me into fits of coughing...so I dispensed with any rehydration for most of the run.  Also, at about the 4-mile mark I began to experience a light stomach ache...but fortunately, that let up after about a mile.  Then, toward the end of my journey through darkness, around the 9-mile mark, the arch in my left foot began to ache...making me wonder whether I'd even be able to finish the race.  However, after about a couple of miles of this, once I was back out "in the light" and could see where I was going, I was able to speed up and run like I was accustomed.  This made the foot-ache completely disappear and I haven't felt any pain since.  A little past the 12-mile mark, I had a big scare when I misjudged the distance between the curb I was running off of and the pavement, causing me to go several strides in a near-horizontal position while I desperately floundered with my arms to maintain my balance and avoid a bad fall.  When I was finally able to straighten back up, I marveled at my own sense of balance through the ordeal and finished the race without further mishap.

My final time for the 13.1 mile run was 2 hours, 3 minutes, and 30 seconds.  I finished 4th out of 8 in my age group (55-59).  Melissa also completed her walk and made me proud!   After it all, they provided some food and drink for all us participants.  Overall, it was a good experience...but I still think the organizers misled us about how overwhelmingly dark conditions would be as well as the fact that the race was far, far away from the business area of Palm Coast (we were actually running through a swamp at one point).  As for my own running, I was astonished with my time at the end, although I had finished several half-marathons in the past with better times. The reason I thought I had run slower than I did was that I had to be very careful with my footing for about half the race because of the darkness...I'm sure I would have broken 2 hours had I been able to better see where I was going...

Just Finished Reading Shadowplay by Tad Williams

Continuing along with Tad Williams' four-part fantasy series Shadowmarch, I just finished reading book #2, titled Shadowplay.  It continues the various narratives of its characters, focusing on twin teenage nobles Prince Barrick and Princess Briony as they struggle to survive and deal with their own personal trials.  The background story, that of a war between the gods reminiscent of Greek or Hindu mythology with accompanying conflicts between various races of people in the world, is gradually revealed through cryptic chapter-heading "quotes" from old religious scriptures.  With this Williams presents a two-fold mystery: one, what actually happens to the protagonists as the story unfolds, and, two, the ultimate explanation of all the weird manifestations plaguing the world and poor Barrick, who miserably suffers from terrible nightmares and seems to have had a mysterious quest implanted in his mind from the enemy Qar leader.  The author also widely spreads out the narrative, and there are many story lines going on at the same time...a little hard to keep up with them all, sad to say.

Shadowplay, unlike a lot of other books within series, has no noticeable ending and as such is hard for me to regard as a separate entity.  Instead, all of the various subplots just trail off, presumably to be resumed at the start of the third book.  By contrast, take a series like Harry Potter that, while moving to an eventual resolution that happens at the end of book #7, still has distinct stories for each memorable book.  Not with Shadowplay, though.  I think this works against the reader being able to remember the story when they finally do get around to starting the next book in the series.  Also, all of this arcane mythology from chapter to chapter doesn't help things, either.  Still, since one of the saving graces of this series is that it comprises only four books, I've already reached the halfway point and expect the author to begin to work to tie everything back together in the last two volumes...he has quite a task ahead of him if he wishes to be successful!

Signed Up to Run Saturday's Half-Marathon in Palm Coast

Well, I finally got around to registering for another half-marathon running race, this one for the Starlight Half-Marathon in Palm Coast, Florida (between St. Augustine and Daytona Beach).  Both this race and the accompanying 5K walk/run, in which Melissa will be participating, are to take place at 6 in the evening.  So it will all happen after sunset...but then again, I'm informed that Palm Coast will be very decorated for Christmas and that the course will be pretty interesting.  Still, since it will be nighttime, we as entrants are each required to carry either a headlight or flashlight...no problem.

I feel very confident about finishing this upcoming race, which with Melissa along reminds me a bit of that cool Orange Blossom Classic dual race we did in Tavares back in March, 2013.  Should be a great adventure...

Miami Dolphins Let Me Down Once Again With Year-End Choke

In the NFL, with today's 41-13 blowout loss to divisional rival New England, the Miami Dolphins, which I had been following and rooting for since 1968 (their third year in existence), have once again demonstrated that when the chips are down late in the season, they consistently opt for mediocrity.  Two weeks ago they were in the driver's seat for a wild card slot in the playoffs, but let themselves get beaten badly by Baltimore at home.  Now, with just two games left in the regular season, I'm seeing them again finishing at 8-8...certain that they'll blow at least one more game against their final two opponents Minnesota and the Jets.  Late in the 2013 regular season, the Dolphins were also in a a very advantageous position for the playoffs at 8-6, with them only having to win one out of their last two games (against inferior teams) to make the playoffs.  But they choked then, too, being beaten resoundingly in both games.  These past two years were supposed to be the start of a new, winning era in Miami Dolphins football, with them breaking through and making the playoffs...even possibly challenging to go to the Super Bowl.  Well, guess what?  They're not going anywhere for a while.  I probably should come to grips with the fact that this franchise simply does not have a winner's attitude and that I'm wasting my support for them...but most likely I'll foolishly go back to cheering them on next year in an unfounded hope for their improbable success.

Now that Miami is "out" for all practical purposes, I can go back to what I do around this time every year, which is look for other teams in the league to follow into the playoffs.  Let's see, the other two Florida teams are awful and the New York Giants are having a miserable season.  So of the teams who are in the playoff hunt right now, I'll probably stick with Seattle in the National Conference and pull for Baltimore in the American...

Fantasy Series I've Been Reading Over the Last Few Years

Here is a list of the fantasy series I've been reading over the past few years, with them ranked in order from my top favorite to least favorite.  And...yes, although I'm in my fifties (late fifties now), I do occasionally like to pick up a "young adult" series and read it.  Sometimes I find them better written and more profound than the more "mature" series. Following each title is the author [in brackets], followed by my reading progress with each series.  Also, I deliberately left out The Hunger Games (by Suzanne Collins), Divergent (by Veronica Roth), and Otherland (by Tad Williams) because I felt that these very worthy series belonged better in the science fiction genre...

1 The Magicians [Lev Grossman] finished trilogy recently
2 The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings [J.R.R. Tolkien] finished both long ago
3 Harry Potter [J.K. Rowling] finished series long ago
4 Mistborn [Brandon Sanderson] 1 trilogy finished, 1 book finished in 2nd trilogy, awaiting next installment
5 His Dark Materials [Philip Pullman] finished trilogy
6 The Dark Tower [Stephen King] finished 7-part series long ago
7 The Chronicles of Narnia [C.S. Lewis] finished 7-part series long ago
8 A Song of Ice and Fire [George R.R. Martin] 5 books finished, awaiting next installment
9 The Dagger and the Coin [Daniel Abraham] 1 book finished, 3 more already published, ongoing series
10 Shadowmarch [Tad Williams] 1 book finished, 1 currently being read in 4-part series (tetralogy)
11 The Sword of Truth [Terry Goodkind] 11 books finished, 0 to go (but author has started new series with same characters)
12 Bartimaeus [Jonathan Stroud] finished trilogy, but now fourth book out
13 Twilight [Stephanie Meyer] finished 4-part series long ago
14 Percy Jackson and the Olympians [Rick Riordan] finished 5-part series long ago
15 Inheritance [Christopher Paolini] finished 4-part series
16 The Wheel of Time [Robert Jordan/Brandon Sanderson] 6 books finished, 8 to go

I've written reviews on this blog for the great majority of these series, which you're welcome to read.  Just copy and paste the title of the series you're interested in to the search window present in the upper left corner on my blog page...

Soccer: Mexican Finale Correction and the Offside Penalty

I'd like to make a correction to my posting this past Monday about the Mexican Liga MX soccer playoff finals for the Apertura split season.  At the article's end, I had speculated that the Tigres of UANL could conceivably win the championship without a victory in a single game (they've advanced to the finals after four straight ties), but the format in the finals is different from the earlier rounds, something of which I was unaware.  True, there are two games involved between the finalists América and Tigres (game #1 tonight and game #2 on Sunday), with the aggregate goal total for both determining the champion.  But should a tie in total goals result at the end of regular play in the second game, there will be overtime and then a possible penalty kick shootout, much like it is in the knockout rounds of the World Cup.  So Tigres will definitely have to win at least ONE game to become champion!

That's one rule I think I've got right, finally.  Another one is the offside rule in soccer: many times I would see an attacking player close to the goal receive a pass from behind, apparently in an offside position, and go on to score a goal.  Later I found out that it is that player's position at the moment when the pass is kicked, not when he (or she) receives it, that determines whether the attacker is offside or not.  So the receiver of the pass in those instances that were actually legal were in the proper position as the pass was released to them...and then they ran ahead of the other defenders as they received it...

Now I'm trying to understand ice hockey's version of the offside penalty (as well as icing).  I think I have it down to the requirement, when an attacker skates across the blue line with the puck into the opponent's defensive zone, that there can't be any teammates already there.  Now that I intellectually know the rule, though, I'd like to see it applied in action...meaning I'll just have to sit down and try to follow a hockey game (good luck with that)...

By the way, you can see the Liga MX Aperatura season finals tonight and Sunday on TV by watching Univision Deportes (in Gainesville it's on Cox Cable Channel 410)...

Just Finished Reading JD Robb's Thankless in Death

Back in October a few weeks ago, my home county of Alachua, Florida held its twice-a-year Friends of the Library book sale here in Gainesville.  Sometimes I go to this event and sometimes I don't.  I went there this time around, looking for cheap paperback novels that weren't all tied into a series.  Among the books, I discovered one by J.D. Robb titled Thankless in Death.  Reading the cover, it didn't give a sign that this was part of a multi-volume series, so I paid the fifty cents and bought it.  Later, though, when I opened it and began to read, I discovered that, although the story in itself didn't directly hinge on earlier ones, it was still part of a very long (more than forty books) string of books featuring the same lead characters...the "in Death" series.  In this regard it reminded me of Sue Grafton's "A,B,C, etc. is For" series, where the protagonists stay the same from book to book but their lives and relationships develop.

With the "in Death" series of Robb, incidentally a pseudonym for Nora Roberts, the real author, the setting is a future (year 2060) New York City (Manhattan) and the main characters are police captain Eve Dallas, her immediate co-workers, and her husband Roarke, an Irish orphaned genius who became a super-wealthy builder in America.  Being set in the future a few decades, the vocabulary of speech has changed a little and it sometimes took me a little bit of effort to figure what they were talking about.  Also, there are innovations like servant robots (that can go out in town and buy stuff and bring it back) and a universal food/beverage device/system called "Autochef".  But besides this, what this series is about, as exemplified by the novel I read, is a police detective working hard to catch really very nasty, bad people....and you can infer from the series title that it focuses on the crime of murder.  Also, the employment climate of the future is one of great opportunity for women, for many of them figure heavily in the police force and story.

Thankless in Death is a crime novel in a series of crime novels...in retrospect it might have been better to start with the first book in order to better follow the character development from book to book.  Then again, I can't see myself following this series through more than forty books.  It's a pretty standard "catch the bad guy" detective story, once you factor out the futuristic gimmickry. Not that I particularly disliked it, mind you, but I was left feeling that there was little in what protagonist Eve Dallas did that distinguished her as a memorable character...and that's an important consideration for me as a potentially repeat reader...

Mexican Soccer: Tigres Advance in Playoffs Without Any Wins in Four Games

The premier Mexican professional soccer league, Liga MX, has finished the first half (the "Apertura") of its split 2014-15 regular season and the playoffs ("Liguilla") has already undergone two rounds with the initial eight teams whittled down to just two: América (based in Mexico City) and Tigres of UANL, one of the two Monterrey teams in the league.  América, the top-seeded team from the regualar season, has advanced in the playoffs the traditional way, mainly by winning.  This may sound like an obvious fact: how else would a team advance past its opponents?  Fancy you should ask that, for the Tigres represent an interesting case.

The UANL Tigres were seeded at #2, just behind América...so for the first two rounds, they were seeded higher than each of their opponents, Pachuca and Toluca.  This is crucial, because in the Liguilla, each round consists of two games between the same teams, with each game played at the other's stadium.  Whoever wins the aggregate goal total for the two games advances, which is pretty self-evident.  It gets a little strange, however, when the total is tied.  The first "tiebreaker" in such a case gives the team that scored the most "away" goals the series.  But if the total is still the same, then tiebreaker #2 kicks in: the higher-seeded team advances.  In the first round, each game saw Pachuca and Tigres drawing at 1-1, so Tigres advanced solely on the basis of their higher seeding.  In the next, semifinal round, Tigres played Toluca...and both games were scoreless.  Once again, Tigres advanced just because they were seeded higher.  And now, having played in these playoffs with ZERO victories to their credit so far in the first four games, Tigres has reached the finals!  But now they'd better get serious and score some goals, for they'll probably have to win at least one game to beat higher-seeded América.  Still, should both games end in draws and Tigres scores more "away" goals, they could conceivably win the Liguilla, and thus the Apertura championship, with not even one victory throughout the entire playoffs!

Football Playoff Committee Picks Best Four Teams, But Process Flawed

The college football playoff selection committee, composed of thirteen supposed "experts" in the sport, have made their decision on which teams are in...and which are out...for this year's inaugural major college football national championship playoffs.  As it incredibly turns out, the four teams I thought merited inclusion got in...but the process leading to this outcome was dismaying.  For one, I don't for the life of me understand why somebody with no football background like Condoleezza Rice was put on this committee other than that it was a cynical political choice.  If they had wanted a woman to be on it, there are many, many women out there much more knowledgeable and qualified in the sport.  That being what it was, though, I don't know how Ms. Rice voted; for all I know, she and I saw things eye-to-eye.  But what really bothered me about this committee was the whimsical, lackadaisical way in which they would elevate and demote teams over the weeks leading up to this final selection...in particular regarding Florida State (FSU) and Texas Christian University (TCU).  Even though FSU went the entire year undefeated and is the defending national champion, this committee, just the week before today's final vote, had lowered them to 4th in the rankings and placed TCU, which had already lost (to Baylor) this year, ahead of them.  Then this past Saturday, the Seminoles squeaked by 37-35 in their conference championship game and the Horned Frogs (of TCU) clobbered their conference opponent Iowa State 55-3.  In the meantime, Ohio State, which had been #5 the week before, demonstrated their worth to be in the playoffs by annihilating ranked Wisconsin 59-0 in their conference championship game...and with only their third-string quarterback, a truly impressive performance.  So Texas Christian once again fell behind Florida State, and also Ohio State, leaving them out of the playoffs.  But wait, Baylor jumped ahead of them, too!  So as far as TCU is concerned, they're in one week at #3, win their scheduled conference regular season game in a big rout, and then find themselves knocked down to #6!  Well, from my point of view, TCU never should have been ranked that high to begin with (and should have also always been behind Baylor, who had beaten them)...and letting them jump ahead of FSU was pure nonsense!  I actually was beginning to wonder to myself whether this committee wasn't going to exclude the undefeated national champions from the playoffs as well.  They may have come up with the correct final lineup, but the weekly committee-generated rankings leading up to this result have left me feeling very little confidence in the committee format.  I was left with the impression, right or wrong, that the committee members were full of themselves and their "power". Instead, I would have preferred that college football had retained the previous BCS ranking system and simply extended it from two to four teams for the playoffs.  Now we're going to have to wonder every year who's playing favorites or promoting special agendas...

Just Finished Reading Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice

If Emily Brontë's 1847 novel Wuthering Heights shows the dark side of the lives of rural landed English families in the late 18th century, then Jane Austen's 1813 novel Pride and Prejudice, which I just read, represents the light. Austen also injects a great deal of humor into this story, especially coming from its chief protagonist Elizabeth "Lizzy" Bennet.  Lizzy is the second oldest of five sisters in a family having no male heirs...a problem in that the archaic laws of that time "entail" an estate in such a case to the ownership of a more distant male relative upon the father's death (the mother has no inheritance rights, apparently).  Mrs. Bennet, the mother, is continually trying, with a marked lack of subtlety (to the constant consternation and embarrassment of Lizzy), to marry them off to suitably wealthy young men.  However, one young man, Mr. Darcy, who is the friend of a Mr. Bingley (who likes the eldest sister Jane) quickly incurs the wrath of both Mrs. Bennet and Lizzy through his prideful, arrogant behavior before them.  Because of this and other "information" about him that Lizzy picks up from others, she forms what turns out to be a prejudicial judgment against his character.  The story, in general, concerns how the two...Darcy with his pride and Elizabeth with her prejudice (hence the novel's title), are able to eventually remove the obstructing filters from themselves and finally see each other for what they really are.  Without trying to give away the ending, I suppose from this you might easily surmise the outcome.  After all, I've already said that this is no "dark" story!

The developing relationship between Elizabeth and Darcy dominates Pride and Prejudice, but what happens with the rest of the sisters figures into the story as well.  Still, it all comes back to the two main characters.

Having been made into movie and serial TV shows, I was tempted to first "watch" Pride and Prejudice before reading it.  But now that I have read it, I'm looking forward to seeing how it is depicted on the screen.  For one thing, I like to notice the discrepancies between book and film.  For another, I like to see how much (or little) my imagination painted a picture of the settings and characters in my own mind just from reading the book.  Still another thing I like to see is how the tone of the screen presentation resembles the book's...or is it vastly different...

Gators' New Coach Jim McElwain Looks Like a Good Fit

It looks as if the University of Florida, through their athletic director Jeremy Foley, has made a good decision in the selection and hiring of their next head football coach: Jim McElwain.  McElwain was offensive coordinator in Alabama under Nick Saban during their earlier two national championship seasons in 2009 and 2011 (including when he broke Tim Tebow's heart by beating the then-undefeated, #1 ranked Gators in 2009's SEC championship game).  Having played in college himself as quarterback, he reminds me a little of a former UF coaching great: Steve Spurrier (although the latter achieved much more renown for his passing abilities).  And McElwain, unlike his relatively unsuccessful predecessors Ron Zook and Will Muschamp...and like his resoundingly successful predecessors Spurrier and Urban Meyer, has amassed experience as the head coach of a college team, in his case at Colorado State.  He also was very successful in his short tenure there, turning around a habitually losing team into a winner.

I've heard it said that with Zook and Muschamp, they were considered "players'" coaches who were beloved by the team.  In fact, I believe at least a couple of the Florida underclassmen players under Muschamp have expressed their decision to leave the team were Muschamp fired...even before they knew of his replacement.  As a fan, I would rather have the Gators with a coach who emphasizes discipline and holds accountable the kind of sloppy play, with the fumbles, missed blocks and tackles, dropped passes, and very untimely, foolish penalties that epitomized Florida during the Zook and Muschamp eras.  I doubt that this school will have any trouble attracting top talent during the recruiting season, but they will need someone who is able and willing to mold them together into a winning unit.  And McElwain, I believe, seems like a good fit...

Good Eleven Mile Run Today

Today I had a solid run of eleven miles, which I ended at that distance not because I was too tired to go on, but rather because I had other things to do.  Still, this represents my longest single run since my Orange Blossom Half-Marathon in Tavares back in March, 2013...just before plantar fasciitis in my right foot "kicked" in.  Well, my feet now seem to be "hanging" in there O.K. so far, so I suppose I'll continue to press the mileage back up to a level that I feel reflects better on my identity as a runner.

In spite of my increasing mileage, I have not returned to my old pattern of running around designated courses on my neighborhood streets (and in nearby locations on longer runs).  Instead, I have marked off a running path in my rather sizable backyard and spend my longer runs there.  It's certainly not as interesting as road running, but at the same time I have quick access to the conveniences of home and can still listen to my MP3 player while running.  If there's rain in the forecast or it's already begun to drizzle, I can still go running until the rainfall gets too strong...and then step back into the house.  Also, in my backyard I feel much safer about running in the nighttime, something that I never felt at ease doing on the streets...for a couple of reasons: drivers tend not to see runners (or pedestrians in general, for that matter) and differences in the terrain may be harder to spot at night.  Still, I think that it would be a good idea to go back out on my old neighborhood courses every now and then...in the daytime in good weather, of course...

Just Finished Reading George Orwell's 1984

Nineteen Eighty-Four. which I just finished reading, was probably English writer George Orwell's most well-known novel, with many of its concepts and sayings in common use today ("Big brother is watching you", "Thought police", "War is peace", etc.).  It was first published in 1948, just a couple of years before its author's death.  Orwell was strongly aware of his era's rise of totalitarian governments and studied the tactics of political control used over the people in Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Soviet Union.   And much of the material in the book, about the future totalitarian society of the mega-nation Oceania, appears to come straight out of these regimes' policies...as expressed through the words and actions of the "Party" that dominate every aspect of life.  But Nineteen Eighty-Four goes much further to display a society that has refined its totalitarianism to the point that even facial expressions are captured and analyzed through pervasive surveillance, even in people's homes.  People who diverge from the Party line in any way are subject to arrest, disappearance, and then any vestige of them ever having existed erased from the records. And those who personally knew anyone so eliminated must also speak and act as well as if they had never existed, lest they themselves be subject to "discipline".

Nineteen Eighty-Four's protagonist is Winston Smith, a low-level Party functionary employed in the Ministry of Truth, which like many other departments performs work in direct contradiction to its title.  His job is to take whatever the Party position currently is on any matter, be it war, economics...or the "disappeared", and revise all historical records and books to reflect that change...retroactively.  So Oceania, which had recently been allied with mega-nation Eurasia, is suddenly at war against it and Winston has to work feverishly with his colleagues to revise all records to show that Oceania has ALWAYS been at war with Eurasia.  For to reveal any change in policy would mean that the Party was fallible, and that wouldn't do.

Nineteen Eighty-Four introduces several concepts pertaining to the Party's all-oppressive control of society, including Newspeak, doublethink, and thoughtcrime.  The language is continually being revised in order to reduce the number of words needed for expression...along with any usage that could express criminalized concepts like "liberty", "equality", or "democracy".   Winston's journey through this story is based on his doubts about the society he lives in and his desire to find others sharing his skepticism who are willing to oppose it.  To this end he meets and forms a romantic relationship with a young woman named Julia and comes under the leadership of a higher Party member named O'Brien.  It is the interplay between these three characters that drives the book's story to its rather sobering end...

There are many elements to Nineteen Eighty-Four that I could discuss: a couple of them, the rewriting of history to suit the Party's current position and the selective framing of narratives, accepting only the information that supports their policies and eliminating any that runs against them, demonstrate the Party line that truth is not objective, based on facts, but rather subjective, originating in the mind...and that the only valid truth is in the Party's mind.  Today we don't live here in a totalitarian society, but it struck me as I was reading Nineteen Eighty-Four that in the past few decades, many people have freely come to embrace this subjective outlook on reality...especially when you see the different social, political and religious camps out there, each with their own "facts" and histories. Unlike with Nineteen Eighty-Four, you're free to join up with whichever group you choose, but once you're in you're expected to embrace their "reality"...

Miami Dolphins Thick in Playoff Hunt

Well, there are only four games left in the National Football League sixteen-game regular season and, incredibly, the Miami Dolphins are thick in the playoff hunt with a 7-5 record.  Were the season to end today, they would actually be in the playoffs, winning the tiebreakers with the several other 7-5 teams in the American Conference.  This is a team that, if anything, should have a better record...with them losing three close games late in the fourth quarter this year against playoff-caliber teams (Green Bay, Detroit, and Denver).  And they've already beaten New England in their first contest! However, the return match with the Patriots will be a road game.  Still, there is a scenario here that, should New England lose this week's road game against the very capable San Diego Chargers and Miami win their final four games, the Dolphins would be AFC East Division champions, with even a shot at a first round bye in the playoffs.  Well, I can dream, can't I?

Miami's remaining games are against Baltimore, New England, Minnesota, and New York (Jets).  All are important, but this coming weekend's game against the Ravens is crucial, seeing that both teams have identical 7-5 records.  Fortunately, the Dolphins will be playing them at home, where they will also be when they face the Vikings and Jets...

My November 2014 Running Report

November marked a continuation from October with my dramatic rise in running mileage.  I amassed a total of 313 miles run, as I would often run several times over the course of a day.  My longest single run of the month was 10.3 miles, on Saturday the 15th.  This was also the date of my greatest ever total of miles run over the course of a single day: 31 miles.  Also, I ran on every day of the month...although taking a break every now and then is probably advisable.

As for public running races, I  skipped the St. Augustine Half-Marathon on the 16th I had been considering entering and instead ran the 10K Gainesville Turkey Trot race on Thanksgiving morning, the 27th.  I finished 5th out of 13 in my age group with a time of 56:56, a slower time by more than three minutes than my effort in the same race a couple of years earlier but understandable due largely to the marshy and muddy grounds at the race site (there was very heavy rainfall the previous day).

Next month I wish to continue my running as I have done in November, and try out at least one half-marathon race.  The most likely candidate for this is an early Saturday evening race being held in Palm Coast, Florida on the 20th...

Soccer: Mexico's Liga MX "Liguilla" Playoffs Underway

As I mentioned on this blog the other day, North American sports leagues seem to have this predilection for post-season playoffs to determine their champions, as opposed to other places which just let the regular season champions reign supreme.  Mexican soccer is no exception, and even goes one step further...their premier league, Liga MX, divides the year up into two split seasons: the Apertura in the fall and the Clausura in winter/spring.  The regular season for the Apertura is over...so here come the playoffs!

The eight highest finishing teams in the regular season standings (out of a total of 18 league teams) make the playoffs.  Each round has the paired off teams playing each other twice (at each other's home field) with the one amassing the highest two-game cumulative goal total advancing to the next round.  The quarterfinals began a couple of days ago, with their second games starting today.  So far, the first four games have all been very close, with two decided by one goal and two ending up in draws.  The big surprise so far has been with "superlider" regular season champion América losing 1-0 to its Mexico City cross-town rival UNAM "Pumas", seeded 8th.  But with the concluding games of this round, it's all up in the air as to which teams will advance...the regular season champ is clearly still in the running.  I've been following the talk on the Spanish-language television sports channel Univision Deportes and there's a lot of excitement in the air.  América, as I said before, is playing Pumas.  Also, it's Toluca vs. Chiapas "Jaguares", UANL "Tigres" vs. Pachuca, and Atlas vs. Monterrey.  I'm rooting for Pachuca in the championship series, but fear that they won't get past Tigres in this weekend's game (they drew 1-1 in the first game)...my gut feeling also tells me that Tigres, based in Nuevo Leon, will eventually win the Apertura championship this year...

Just Finished Reading Tad Williams' Shadowmarch

I was already familiar with the writing of Tad Williams, as a few years ago I read his four-part science fiction series Otherland (here is a link to my 2007 review of Otherland).  Having thoroughly enjoyed it, as I now consider it an important look into our our future, I decided to try out one of his fantasy series.  As Shadowmarch, the first of the also four-part Shadowmarch series, was available, I dove into it.  Not as fun to read as Otherland (I think this shows I'm more of a sci-fi enthusiast), it was nevertheless worth the effort as Williams is a master at character development, something on which I judge books heavily.  He actually has several characters whose stories he is concurrently telling from their viewpoints (much like George R.R. Martin has been doing in his ongoing A Song of Ice and Fire series).  The chief protagonists are offspring of abducted King Olin Eddon: teenage twins Princess Briony and Prince Barrick.  Of the two, Briony is the focus of Williams' attention, which reminds me of how another fantasy writer, Brandon Sanderson, used another teenage girl, Vin, for his protagonist in the Mistborn series.  There are typical fantasy genre elements in this series: a completely different world with its own continents and difficult-to-follow map, an aboriginal, mystical people (the Qar) who were overrun centuries before by humans but still present a challenge from the north, a strange emerging religion with evil connotations invading from the south, an established history with all sorts of arcane "facts" that I (as I usually do) have difficulty filtering out the relevant from the irrelevant, rival noble families competing for territory through marriage and war similar to Martin's Game of Thrones, and much revealed through usually very disturbing dreams.  Oh, and there is the wise "wizard" type in the physician Chaven, the soldier/guard hero type Ferras Vansen (besotted with Briony), an innocent and brave commoner (the diminutive Chert), and what I call the "wild-card" character of the boy "Flint", whose ultimate effect on the story, be it positive or negative, is a mystery...

As saturated as I am with fantasy literature, I have to admit that Tad Williams' Shadowmarch series is a winner so far, and knowing that it won't drag on for 11 or 14 volumes as did Terry Goodkind's The Sword of Truth and Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time, respectively, gives me added impetus to read on to the end...

Finished Running Gainesville's 10K Turkey Trot Race at Tacachale

This morning the annual Thanksgiving Turkey Trot 10K (6.2 miles) running race was held here in Gainesville on the woody grounds of Tacachale, a residential institution for the developmentally disabled.  Having just recently performed, without any extra exertion, a 10.3 mile training run, I felt that this would be a good "short-distance" race to prepare me for running in a public setting as I consider which half-marathons to enter in the near future.  A very rainy, stormy cold front had just swept through northern Florida the day before and the grounds were saturated.  Plus, the temperature overnight had plummeted down to around 40 as I left the house to drive the short distance to the race.  Although I knew I would be uncomfortable in the few minutes standing outside before the beginning of the race, I decided to stick to my time-tested formula of wearing a short-sleeved tee-shirt with shorts...and a very old, expendable pair of running shoes.  As I gathered with the many (it seemed like several hundred) other runners behind the starting line, I couldn't help chuckling to myself as I saw many wearing jackets and long pants: they'd be dying in those clothes before they got past the first mile!  Anyway, by the race's start the temperature had climbed up into the upper forties...it would be in the mid-fifties by race's end.  As for my shoes, I wisely foresaw the possibility of encountering some marshy areas on the race course, and sure enough, we were all warned about their existence before the race began.  But even with that, I was unprepared for the poor footing and many, many areas of standing water that we would need to slosh through...or look for a detour around.  This, I'm sure, ended up slowing down my final time, as well as the fact that I began the race toward the back of the pack and spent the first mile or two repeatedly being boxed in by slow runners and having to squeeze around them.  That all having been said, I enjoyed the race...although I was disappointed at the finish line when there was no clock showing the time as the runners passed though it.  Not having timed myself on my watch like I usually do, I'll just have to wait for the results to be posted online.  When they ARE finally posted, I'll put a link to them here.  There was an awards ceremony scheduled, but I decided to go on back home...from past experience and results, I don't think I had finished anywhere near the top three in my age group (55-59)...

Later...the final results have been posted. I finished 5th in my age group out of 13 runners with a time of 56:56.  It was a bit slower than my 2012 Turkey Trot time of 53:18, but as I wrote earlier, I had expected it.  Here is the link to the race results.