Just Finished Reading A Memory of Light by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson

A Memory of Light, which was published in 2013, is the fourteenth and concluding book in Robert Jordan's fantasy series The Wheel of Time.  This last book, as well as the two preceding it, were written by Brandon Sanderson after Jordan's death...with careful attention given to the original author's vision and extensive notes.  In such a finale, I was naturally concerned at what was going to happen to all of the various characters introduced in the series...I instinctively knew that not all of them would survive.  Well, I found out...but don't worry...I'm not giving anything away.  And, of course, how the main struggle between the Dragon Reborn and the Dark One turned out is resolved as well...and in a curiously satisfactory way, too.  Yes, although plowing through these fourteen books amounted to a sometimes tedious, drawn-out project, I feel vindicated for my efforts by how it ended...

Now that I have finished reading the Wheel of Time series, I can go onto the Wiki website exclusively devoted to it.  A few months ago I had gone on it to collect a little background information about one of the characters and inadvertently read premature information about her demise.  Now, though, I'm done with the series and can go back to the Wheel of Time Wiki to fill in gaps in my memory of people, places, nations, and events...

If you're someone who likes reading involved, lengthy fantasy series with compelling characters (and the characters are what won me over), then by all means treat yourself to The Wheel of Time.  But it will take you a while to get through it, and there is an awful lot of information to absorb and try to keep up with.  Still, it easily beats just sitting for hours on-end channel-surfing the TV.  Engage your mind, I say...The Wheel of Time most definitely will accomplish that!

Theme Park Rides: My Personal Favorites

As I mentioned in yesterday's article about theme parks, I have my own personal list of favorite thrill rides, including a few on a more subdued level.  Some of them are roller coasters, some aren't, and some are water park rides.  I haven't exactly been a theme park junkie like some people who travel across the country and even abroad to visit and compare the various parks and rides.  My experience is confined to a few parks within driving range of Gainesville, Dolly Parton's Dollywood in eastern Tennessee, and that one roller coaster in Dania, near Fort Lauderdale. First, I'll rank the parks I've been to (including water parks):

1 Busch Gardens-Tampa
2 Universal Islands of Adventure-Orlando
3 Wild Adventures-Valdosta
4 Disney World Magic Kingdom-Orlando
5 Disney World Epcot Center-Orlando
6 Wild Waters-Silver Springs
7 Dollywood-Pigeon Forge, Tennessee
8 Cypress Gardens (now closed down)-Winter Haven, Florida
9 Universal Studios-Orlando
10 Disney MGM Studios-Orlando
11 Blizzard Beach (Disney World)-Orlando
                                                         
Actually, I've enjoyed all of the above theme parks and have my favorite rides in each of them.  Now, here are my eight all-time favorite rides I've been on:

1 POWER SURGE (Wild Adventures)
This ride superficially resembles a Ferris wheel, but the passengers, securely strapped and fastened in their seats, soon find themselves hurled up and spinning and toppling in different directions as the world around them becomes a chaotic blur.  This has to be one of the more terrifying rides to behold from the ground...it took me a while to muster up the courage to ride it.  And as no two rides are exactly alike, I've never gotten so accustomed to it that riding it hasn't disturbed me at least a little...perfect! Only one problem: since Wild Adventures switched its ownership, Power Surge was removed.  Sometimes it appears at county fairs...it was at the Alachua County Fair two years ago, but was out of service and unavailable.  I also rode it back in 2005 at Cypress Gardens, which has since closed down...

2-MONTU (Busch Gardens Tampa)
Montu is what I call the "Cadillac" of roller coasters, providing an extremely smooth, comfortable riding experience.  But like Power Surge, it can appear pretty imposing from the ground level.  Montu is a hanging steel coaster that undergoes several loops, which for me is a good thing.  When dealing with the "G's" that thrill rides place on passengers, inverting loops can alleviate the effects...I'm not supposed to ride anything that puts an overload of them on me. So Montu and Power Surge work quite well in that regard...

3-KUMBA (Busch Gardens Tampa)
Kumba is another looping steel coaster at Busch Gardens, this one where the passengers' feet are firmly resting on the floor within their compartments and not hanging out loosely.  To me, it has a great initial climb...and that dive soon after the apex is epic!  Visually, I prefer Kumba's lush green surroundings to Montu's sand...it is a bit more jolting, though.  Still, it has always been one of the two absolute requirements for me during a Busch Gardens visit....although I prefer Montu by far...

4-DUELING DRAGONS:FIRE (Islands of Adventure-Orlando)
Now known as Dragon Challenge and renamed for dragons appearing in the Harry Potter book The Goblet of Fire, Dueling Dragons features two separate coasters, Fire and Ice, dispatched simultaneously and often hurling themselves at each other like, well, dueling dragons! In one of these high-flying encounters, Fire would momentarily hover over Ice as the latter passed close underneath...giving a sensation of floating weightlessness that Ice didn't have.  I loved this coaster and always sought it out when visiting.  Unfortunately, it's buried at the back of the park and requires a trek to reach.

5-TORNADO (Wild Waters)
I'm not sure whether or not Wild Waters will remain in existence after its adjacent park of Silver Springs became a state park.  In any event, it has been several years since I've been there...it is the closest park to Gainesville that features "rides" and you can't beat the price.  My favorite water ride is here: the tubular Tornado, a ride that requires the participant to cross their hands over the chest and cross ankles...and remain lying still as they steeply slide down into the black tube's opening at the top.  The tube convolutes to where you're actually inverted at one point while blindly sliding within it before being twisted back around at the landing.  Wild Adventures has a similar ride at its own water park (or at least it did a few years ago).

6 AVIATOR (Wild Adventures)
I believe Aviator is still at Wild Adventures, and it is one of the first thrill rides I rode on to any extent. It is more of a panoramic-view ride, with passengers seated at spokes from the center and rising up high from the ground while rotating at a brisk speed in a counterclockwise direction.  I loved sitting high up there in the sky (hence the name "Aviator"), going around like that with such a view of everything beneath...I remarked that I could easily stay up there for hours with a good book in hand and a coffee, only coming back down for refills and bathroom breaks.  But alas, that's not how they run things in these theme parks!

7 SPACESHIP EARTH (Epcot Center)
I like a lot of things about Walt Disney World.  One thing that I DON'T like, though, is having to wait in endless lines to go on any of their rides...often even when I've made an advance "appointment" using their express system.  There is one important exception to this repeated frustration: Spaceship Earth, which is the "entrance" ride to Epcot Center, right underneath the giant golf ball.  You may be standing in a line at the start, but it is constantly loading with its conveyor belt system.  Soon enough, you're on a visual educational tour through the history of humanity's progress in the area of communications...and in the process you get to sit for several minutes in air-conditioned splendor (this can be important during the dog days of summer in central Florida). Spaceship Earth is not exactly a "thrill ride" per se, but it is one that anyone could ride...and as such everyone in your party can experience it and share their reactions...

8-THUNDERHEAD (Dollywood)
Thunderhead is the best wooden roller coaster I've ever been on.  No other has come as close to it for its smoothness...but I still have to place it on my list with an important caveat: I'll probably not ride it again due to the factor of the gravity pressure that rides of this genre inevitably place on the passenger, especially during the tight winding at the end.  But it was by far the best ride in the park (that Tennessee Tornado steel coaster was brutally harsh)...

Well, I think I'll just leave this list at "eight" and move on.  Truth be told, I don't feel any particular urge to go rushing out to any of these theme parks and relive my old experiences...my memory serves me pretty well. I also noticed that, with some of the more well-known rides, you can get on You-Tube and vicariously experience them through the cameras of other riders...                           

Theme Parks...and Me

A tragic event happened at the Cedar Point theme park near Sandusky, Ohio (on Lake Erie) yesterday: a man was struck and killed at the site of one of their roller coasters after his cellphone spilled out while riding it and he scaled a fence afterward and went into the underlying restricted area to find and retrieve it.   A lot of people lose stuff on theme park rides, usually coming out of their pockets.  I have always been careful when attending them to wear a fanny pack and stuff anything I didn't want to lose in it.  But going into an area where the coaster is going to be diving at high speed? Not very wise...

I used to be very averse to riding theme park rides of any kind...well, I WAS brave enough to ride Dumbo, It's a Small World, and If You Had Wings at Disney World back in 1973...and the Congo River Rapids at Busch Gardens in '86.  But I avoided the more serious ones until my own children were of age to ride them (which they boldly began to do)...and so I decided to "face the fear", as my son Will then liked to put it.  We started, in late 2002, going to Wild Adventures just southwest of Valdosta, Georgia, and in the next few years also visited Busch Gardens, Universal Studios of Orlando (both parks contained within), Walt Disney World (Epcot, Magic Kingdom, MGM Studios, and Blizzard Beach...we never got around to Animal Kingdom), Dollywood (in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee), and Wild Waters (a water park feeding from Silver Springs).   Will, Rebecca, and I would go on the more challenging rides while Melissa would gamely ride on those a little more subdued (like Ant Farm at Wild Adventures, ET Adventure at Universal, and Big Thunder Mountain Railroad at Disney).  I got over my fears of inversion, extreme heights, and sudden changes in gravity during this time...and built up a list of personal favorite rides (maybe I'll write about them in some future post).  When I went down to visit my father in Hollywood, I stopped on a couple of occasions in Dania and rode South Florida's then only roller coaster: the wooden Dania Beach Hurricane off Stirling Road next to I-95 (it's since been dismantled and moved to another part of the country).  From 2002 through 2006, my family together regularly attended theme parks and I went on most of the rides...some many times (e.g. I've ridden Busch Garden's Montu 26 times and Kumba 22).  But since that time, the kids have grown up and Melissa isn't really a "thrill rides" kind of person...understandable: before 2002 I was downright phobic about them.  So I haven't been to any theme parks in the past few years.  Still, Melissa and I could still go to places like Universal and Disney that have lots to offer visitors besides the rides...

There are also a couple of factors that have diminished the quality of our theme park experiences.  One is the travel to and from the park site, usually on the Interstate and for around two hours on the average in each direction.  That can get to be tedious whether you're a driver or a passenger.  The other is the problem these parks have with long lines for their rides.  For a two-to-three minute roller coaster experience, it simply is not worth the aggravation to have to wait upwards to an hour or more to have the opportunity.  Once we stayed at one of Universal Studio's hotels for our vacation (July 2003) and as a side benefit each of us received an express pass for the many rides.  Now THAT was great, almost running through the express lines and getting to ride our favorites many times!  But that experience was also a bit more expensive, too...

I'd like to attend some of the better theme parks again with a more balanced approach: don't just concentrate on the rides, but take in all of what they have to offer.  Still, there are some rides I'm sure I couldn't resist going on again...unless of course that entails having to wait 1-2 hours in line beforehand...

Perusing Past Election Result Maps on Wikipedia

This morning I've been using Wikipedia to go over presidential election results from the past 70+ years, concentrating on the nationwide maps showing the general election results, broken down by individual counties.  I was surprised that my current home county of Alachua, home to the University of Florida and a supposed "blue" Democratic area in northern Florida surrounded by a sea of "red" Republican counties, went for George (H.W.) Bush in 1988 over Michael Dukakis.  And in the extremely close election between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon in 1960, it was the Republican Nixon who won Alachua while surrounding counties went for JFK.  But then again, that 1960 election was the last one that consistently had the South pretty much run by very conservative Democrats (the "Boll Weevils").  For example, if you look at the map showing where the biggest support for Franklin Roosevelt was in his 1944 election against Thomas Dewey, it was in the southern states.  But in 1964, the South underwent a realignment that would only be interrupted when favorite son candidates Jimmy Carter (Georgia) and Bill Clinton (Arkansas) successfully ran for the high office.  Conservative wing Republican Barry Goldwater won the Deep South in '64 and, four years later, independent candidate George Wallace would split it with Nixon.  Nixon swept the area (and almost the rest of the country) from George McGovern in 1972, and the shift of conservative southern Democrats to the Republican Party had begun. Still, there are pockets of strong Democratic regions in states like Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina in spite of their states' now consistently Republican orientation.  However, there are other states in the country whose shifts are a bit more puzzling...

Until the past few elections, for example, Kentucky was one of those states that could go either way.  The Democratic strong areas were always in its far western area near the Mississippi River and in its far eastern area near West Virginia.  Now those areas seem to have gone over to the Republicans.  Speaking of West Virginia, it used to be strongly Democratic...but has undergone a flip-flop of its own.  Another state that has drastically changed its political orientation is Oklahoma, which used to have a large Democratic base in its southeastern section but which now seems to be uniformly Republican...

Being someone who loves to pore over maps, I could spend hours upon hours looking at the ones Wikipedia provides.  I trust their data, although I know that there are areas that Wikipedia's articles might just be suspect for their objectivity.  But when it comes to data like this, they are a great source.  They're also useful for keeping up with sports standings, too!

The Books I'm Currently Reading

Right now I'm in the process of reading three different books...and each one is part of a series.  I'm about three fourths of the way through Stephen King's latest novel Finders Keepers, which is book #2 in his ongoing trilogy...Mr. Mercedes was the first one.  I'm liking the second book more, which introduces new characters and a new story while integrating them with the heroes of the previous book...and has hinted at what the third and final book may entail.  I'm also a little more than halfway past A Memory of Light, the final, fourteenth book in the Wheel of Time fantasy saga by Robert Jordan, with Brandon Sanderson writing out this volume (as well as the previous two) following the original author's untimely death (not that deaths are ever "timely" in nature).  Naturally, as you might expect at this stage of the game, the events are leading toward a crescendo with the forces of light and darkness facing off on many different fronts.  And the third book I'm reading is Isaac Asimov's Foundation, the first of seven books in his science fiction Foundation series.  He wrote the first three in the 1950s and then waited nearly thirty years before producing the last two...and then tacked on two prequel novels.  I've just begun my rereading of Foundation...

I also plan to read mystery writer Sue Grafton's "P" is for Peril after finishing A Memory of Light.  So I have plenty of reading to occupy myself with for a while...

Went to Retreat in Ocklawaha with Melissa This Weekend

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

Yesterday's Republican Presidential Debates on Fox News

Yesterday all seventeen major Republican candidates for president faced off in two debates.  The ten making the "cut" were onstage at 9 PM on Fox News, while the other seven held their pee wee debate earlier at 5.  The idea of having such debates this early in the campaign season makes little sense...until you realize what may be the main force driving it: big money campaign donors.  And why not, with no restrictions on political contributions anymore after the U.S. Supreme Court, in its Citizens United decision a few years ago, equated spending with protected "free speech".  If you happen to be a politically active tycoon, you are going to wait until the field of candidates gets whittled down to the point where the more viable candidates who represent your interests are left...no point in figuratively flushing your money down the proverbial toilet, after all...

This morning the folks on Fox News were all giddy about their debates, and discussed who did well and who didn't.  The consensus view seems to be that Marco Rubio came across better in the prime time debate while Carly Fiorina stood out in the other.  As for the others, somebody said that Jeb Bush seemed to struggle a bit with his answers while another regarded Rand Paul as looking too "sour".  As for me, I find this spectacle to be a bit on the hilarious side...both the debate and the analysis.  Not only is it way too early in the campaign to hold debates like this, but with our cyber-technology in 2015 anyone can get access to information about the candidates just by punching in a search on their computer or cellphone.  Not that they would, mind you...most folks are terribly apathetic about politics, even when we're talking about the presidential race.  After all, when 40% of registered voters sit out a tight presidential election, the idea of trying to lure their interest fifteen months before the next one with debates between seventeen contenders approaches the ludicrous...unless, as I already pointed out, you're someone looking for a promising candidate to fund with your fatcat money...

Tomorrow Marks 70th Anniversary of Atomic Bomb Drop Over Hiroshima

Tomorrow, August 6, 2015, will mark the 70th anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb over Hiroshima, Japan by the United States in its quest to quickly end World War II and avoid its remaining stated option of invading the island nation.  Such an invasion would doubtless have cost many, many more lives....not just of Americans, but also of the Japanese, both soldiers and civilians...and would have completely devastated that country.  Three months earlier, the Allies accepted the unconditional surrender of Germany after its leader, Adolf Hitler, had committed suicide and the country was already invaded and militarily conquered.  In early August of 1945, neither condition was applicable to Japan...its military rulers not only were still firmly entrenched in power with the nation essentially intact (although badly scarred from Allied bombing), but it still occupied the bulk of populated China and Indo-China (including Vietnam) at that time.  The Japanese did not practice surrender, instead fighting to the death even when their situation was hopeless and choosing suicide over surrendering in battle after battle on the Pacific Islands over which they fought the Americans.  With this scenario facing the United States, its leaders opted for the nuclear strike in hopes of convincing the Japanese militarists that their chances for remaining in power were fruitless.  But even after seeing the horrible effects of the atomic bomb on one of their cities, they still refused.  Three days later, Nagasaki was hit by the second, and hopefully last ever, atomic bomb dropped on a populated area.  Finally, they surrendered almost unconditionally: their emperor, who reportedly had pushed for the surrender in the end to save his people, was allowed to remain as such, at least in a titular, ceremonial role...

The development of the atomic bomb in the United States during World War II came after Albert Einstein, a Jewish emigre from Hitler's Germany and his anti-semitic policies, wrote a letter to President Roosevelt warning him that the Germans had already split the atom and were very possibly engaged in an effort of their own to develop such a weapon from this process.  The irony is that it was Japan that ultimately was hit, not Germany.  Another twist in all this was the gross underestimation of the devastating effects that the radiation from the bomb had on the population surviving the initial impact, especially that from the fallout that descended from the skies for days after the explosion.  Even after all this, the American military, when they dropped a demonstration A-bomb on the Bikini Atoll in the Pacific the following year, did not realize that the ships they had placed in proximity to the bomb would be hopelessly contaminated with radiation...the Naval authorities in charge of this explosion had wanted to put sailors back on them and guide them back into American ports to show that ships could withstand nuclear attacks. It was very sobering to see the level of contamination the bomb had produced.

In spite of all the rhetoric these days about how countries like Iran want to get the "bomb" in order to attack others...like Israel...it is obvious to me that self-defense from invasion is the primary goal.  Ukraine had the atomic bomb, left in their control when the Soviet Union disintegrated in 1991...but they voluntarily gave it up...and now, they've had to suffer an invasion indirectly instigated by their neighbor, Russia.  Name me one country that, after developing nuclear warfare technology, has been invaded by another.  You can't, I bet.  Now look at a place like Iran, which was brutally invaded in 1980 by Saddam Hussein's Iraq.  Then they watched as the U.S. and its allies invaded Iraq in 1991 following its 1990 invasion of Kuwait.  And then after 9/11, the invasion and long occupation on either side of Iran...Iraq on the west and Afghanistan on the east.  Speaking of the latter, of course the USSR was earlier engaged in a protracted, fruitless occupation and struggle in that country after invading it in 1980.  So if you're the Iranian leader and see all of this going on around you, wouldn't you, too, want to protect yourself and your people against invasion?  And that's the problem I see nowadays with nuclear proliferation.  We can rant and rave all we want about how evil the nuclear bomb is, but we are still creating conditions that motivate others to get it for themselves...

Just Finished Reading Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett

The satirical novel Good Omens, a collaboration by Neil Gaiman (I recently read his novel Neverwhere) and Terry Pratchett, pokes some fun at the convoluted narrative some Christians like to spin (and, for a few, obsess) about the "Last Days".  This farcical adventure through the apocalypse turns down a different path than the standard tribulation horrors that feature the charismatic and evil Antichrist character.  Instead, the newborn son of Satan gets accidentally switched with another baby at an English hospital...and gets brought up instead in a normal, loving family environment in an English town with the name Adam Young (the boy, not the town).  Meanwhile, the supposed Antichrist, sent (in parody of the Omen movie series) to the American diplomat's household, gets the focus of the fanatical nanny sent to guide him, along with an eventual trip to the Plain of Megiddo in anticipation of the Great Battle. Sensing that something went awry with plans, demon Crowley and angel Aziraphale, mutual friends working on different sides who both have become unduly accustomed to their assignment on Earth among humans, set out to discover where the real Antichrist is and try to get rid of him before he wreaks havoc across the world...

There are several subplots and minor characters in Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch (its long title).  For example, it is revealed that any audio cassette left for more than 48 hours in a car transforms itself into The Best of Queen...so there are plenty of references to their songs (some of which I really like).  There are the Four Horsepersons of the Apocalypse (the one representing War is a woman, hence the change), which has Pollution replacing Pestilence.  There is the legacy of Agnes Nutter, a 17th Century witch whose book of prophecies are always true to the last detail and whose descendant Anethema carries the last remaining copy.  And there is the Witchfinder Army, a group led by a hilarious, cantankerous old man named Sgt. Shadwell (my favorite character in the novel) and which includes a technologically inept young man named Newton Pulsifer...

Good Omens is loaded with funny little pieces scattered here and there...there is hardly a spot in it devoid of humor.  But if you have a religious orientation in the Judeo-Christian tradition, you may disagree with the theological assumptions expressed within it.  Just keep in mind that this story is not to be taken literally and analyzed for its flaws.  It is deliberately a farce, understand?  That being said, I can't imagine a similar satire being published about a certain other world religion, one in which some of its adherents go rioting and some on rampages of murderous violence whenever they judge its scripture or prophet to be "insulted"...

One word keeps getting a lot of attention in Good Omens: ineffability.  It is used by Aziraphale to explain away the often confusing decisions God makes...after all, the term refers to anything that is so grand and complex in scope that it is beyond understanding, not to mention the unpronounceable true name of The Lord.  It is the "ultimate" explanation for everything, I suppose...a real discussion-ender... 

Watched German and English Pro Soccer Matches This Afternoon

I just saw what might be called the first German professional soccer match of this season...or the final one of last season, depending on your point of view.  The Bundesliga and the other German leagues begin their regular season in a couple of weeks, and I'll be able to watch some of the matches on Fox Sports 1 (Channel 62 here in Gainesville on Cox Cable).  But on Sunday, they played what they called the "DFL Supercup" match pitting 2014-15 Bundesliga Champion Bayern Munich against the DFB-Pokal tournament winner for that year.  This time around, it was Bayern-Munich against Wolfsburg, and the latter won on penalty kicks after a 1-1 draw in regulation.  It gave me an opportunity to acquaint myself with German soccer as I plan to watch plenty of it in the months to come.  I haven't as yet picked out a favorite team...I'll just have to watch and see.  The broadcast I just watched was a replay of Sunday's match...

Right now, as I am getting myself ready to walk out the door and go to work, Fox Sports 1 is showing a replay of a preseason match between English Premier League rivals Chelsea and Arsenal, both based in London.  I'm rooting for Arsenal this season...they finished a distant third to Chelsea last year, but they had a very strong second half of the season.  Still, I consider Chelsea to be the clear favorite to win the title again...

Heavy Rainy Season Beginning to Annoy Me

Living as I have for decades here in Florida, I am accustomed to stretches of rainy weather. But this summer of 2015 seems to be one of the most extreme...and I not just being subjective about it.  My front and back lawns for weeks have been slushy and muddy...the ground is supersaturated with water. And for the past few days, a cyclone centered in the eastern Gulf of Mexico just off the coast has been stationary, churning band after band of rainy, stormy weather at us.  Don't get me wrong...I like a moderate amount of rainfall, especially as it helps to work against the possibility of forest fires that have afflicted the area during the last twenty years.  But this current pattern is interfering with my outdoor running plan as I want to train my distance up to a race-ready level.  And I don't want to get soaked every time I go out there, not to mention be subjected to the high humidity level associated with this weather. The irony of it all is that this is happening during a hurricane season that was forecast to be very light.  Yet that storm system out in the Gulf looks an awful lot like a tropical storm on radar to me!

Sooner or later this low pressure cyclone will move on...hopefully sooner than later.  You know, come to think about it, I just wrote a blog article a little more than a couple of weeks ago lamenting the horrible weather then!  So I'm not just now "beginning" to be annoyed at it after all, as one storm system just seems to give way to another...

My July 2015 Running Report

In July I ran a total of 316.7 miles, spreading this mileage out through several different shorter runs each day.  My longest single run was 6.2 miles.  And I ran on all but one of July's 31 days...

In August, I will try to maintain my overall mileage while attempting longer runs and making myself more accustomed to outdoor weather and terrain.  I'll be doing this using marathon guru Jeff Galloway's technique of running for set blocks of time, interspersed with short walking breaks.  For me, the "run 6 minutes, walk 1 minute" formula has worked best in the past and I plan to use it again to increase my distance on single runs.  The aim is to be ready should I decide to go ahead and participate in a long-distance race in October, either the Bay Marathon in Apalachicola or the Alachua Lake Half-Marathon just southeast of my hometown of Gainesville...

Just Finished Reading the Book Mystery by Jonathan Kellerman

Jonathan Kellerman is a psychologist who also has written several books, including a slew of mystery novels featuring Los Angeles-based psychologist Alex Delaware as he teams up with police detective Milo Sturgis. I finally just got around to reading one them, titled Mystery...reportedly the 26th in this series.  Who knows how many Kellerman has written by now or even plans to write.  I do know that his psychological approach doesn't exactly gel with me.  Here, let me lie back on my coach and explain how I feel about it, doc...

As for the actual narrative, story, and characters (all which involve the investigation of the shooting death of a mysterious beautiful woman...appropriately nicknamed "Mystery"...after a party held at the closing of a famous old L.A. hotel), Mystery ranks right up there with the best of the genre, although the ending reminded me of those Perry Mason courtroom dramas where the guilty party suddenly breaks down and profusely confesses to the crime just before the final commercial break.  On the other hand, as I unfortunately see it, there is a great amount of what I call psychological coddling in this novel as Delaware plies his trade by poking around into others' psyches and manipulating them by turning the psychologically effective catch phrases and pushing the right buttons to get  the responses he wants.  A master manipulator, indeed.  Plus, he is continually making a big deal about his profession's ethics and how he can't say this or help with that. I don't think I would get along well with this guy, and that can be a fatal judgment when talking about reading through a long series.  In contrast, I quite empathize with Sue Grafton's protagonist Kinsey Millhone in her alphabet mystery series.  And, to illustrate my point, I've gone through 15 books in it so far.  So I don't know how many more Alex Delaware mystery stories I'm going to read...I do have another that I picked up dirt cheap at that Friends of the Library book sale last April here in Gainesville, so I'll most likely give Kellerman another chance...

Fox Sports Channels to Show Bundesliga Soccer Starting Next Month

I was happy to hear just now that several Bundesliga games for the 2015-16 season will be shown on Fox Sports 1 (Gainesville's Cox Channel 62), beginning in mid-August.  The Bundesliga is Germany's premier professional soccer league, and it is right up there with Spain's La Liga and England's Barclay's Premier League in stature as one of the world's most competitive and talent-filled leagues.  If I carried on my cable TV Fox Sports 2 and/or a couple of Fox's other sports channels (which I don't), I'd be able to see more Bundesliga...but then again, I have other things to do besides sitting there watching soccer on TV for hours on end.  And besides, now I'll be able now to regularly follow soccer in four leagues: MLS (Major League Soccer), Mexico's Liga MX, Barclay's Premier League, and now, Bundesliga.

Other than the defending champions Bayern Munich, I'm not very familiar with the teams in the Bundesliga.  But that's about to dramatically change...

Looking at Upcoming Running Races

It's close to the end of July this year and I feel it's also time for me to consider what I am going to do about the upcoming long-distance running races: which ones I should enter and how I should go about training for them.  The most immediate race coming up in my general area is the Alachua Lake Half-Marathon, which is a run down the Hawthorne Trail just southeast of Gainesville, something I've done twice before in the Tom Walker Memorial Half-Marathon.  This race will take place on Sunday, October 11.  Then there is the Bay Marathon/Half-Marathon in Apalachicola, which is on the Florida Gulf Coast in the panhandle.  I'd been looking at this one ever since 2010, but I never felt ready enough to participate in it.  It will be held this year on October 18...by that time I sincerely hope the weather here will have cooled down a bit.  I probably should make a decision soon about either this race or Alachua Lake (but not both) and whether I want to go for the marathon or half-marathon distance should I go for the Apalachicola one (which frankly sounds more interesting).  I need to recondition my body to running on asphalt again as well as under adverse weather conditions...I think my general endurance level is pretty good.  However, in spite of the mileage I've been accumulating, my weight could stand lowering by about 20 lbs...so wiser eating is a must if I don't want to be hauling extra luggage with me on every step.

Aside from the Alachua Lake and Apalachicola races, that Tom Walker Half-Marathon will be held on November 14.  And there are my two favorites to consider: the Ocala Marathon/Half-Marathon in January and Gainesville's Five Points Marathon/Half-Marathon in February.   Besides these there are various events planned for surrounding areas, most notably in Jacksonville and other cities on the north Florida Atlantic Coast...

Just Finished Reading Sue Grafton's "O" is for Outlaw

As I continue going in chronological order reading Sue Grafton's alphabet mystery series, I have just begun going through a string of books that I haven't read before.  "O" is for Outlaw, which is the first of these and which I just finished, is definitely a first-time read, and it delves not only into main protagonist (and first-person narrator) Kinsey Millhone's past and her first marriage, but also into our country's past with its military involvement in Vietnam.  Kinsey discovers relics from her school years as one of those storage locker profiteers calls her up and sells her a box containing them: apparently, her ex-hubby Mickey Macgruder, also an ex-cop, lost his storage space, along with the contents, due to lack of payment.  Knowing that it wasn't like him to default on his debts, she investigates and finds that he has just been shot near his apartment in Los Angeles (a few miles down the road from Kinsey's mythical hometown of Santa Teresa) and is now deep into a coma with little hope of recovery.  As she investigates his case, she draws first suspicion and then cooperation from a couple of LAPD detectives...and then gets drawn back into her brief bygone marriage to Mickey and the circumstances of their split.  It all revolves around the death back then of a Benny Quintero, a Vietnam veteran who was wounded at a major battle there in 1965.  Mickey is suspected of the murder although he never was charged...but he resigned from the police because of it and Kinsey suspected his guilt...leading to her leaving him then.  Now everything is up in the air as other characters and details from the past filter their way into the story.  Kinsey's goal is to exonerate her husband, who she now believes was innocent, and to discover who shot him and why...

Naturally, I'll leave what happens for you to find out.  I felt that this story was significant in that it touched more upon Kinsey's past life than the others.  And, of course, the Vietnam War angle was very interesting as well...

Some 1965-66 Nova Elementary School Memories, Part 6

Well, it's time once again for me to explore some of my memories of my fourth grade experiences at Nova Elementary School in Davie, Florida during 1965-66.  And it will also be my last entry in this series, which for many of you has to feel like an exercise in irrelevance.  Nevertheless, here I go again, this time discussing a few of the "social" trends taking place then within the student body.  Remember, we're talking about 9-10 year-olds...

--There seemed to be an ongoing competition among the boys as to who could play the drum beat to the song "Wipeout" with their hands on their desks the fastest.  It was a very common occurrence to be sitting in a classroom and hear some kid performing a session.  I even tried it myself with poor results...

--Also, mainly a "boy" activity, was the game of "Split", where the two opponents would face off standing close opposite each other on a grassy or dirt surface.  They would then take turns throwing a pencil into the ground on one side or the other.  If it stuck, the other player would have to move whatever foot the pencil fell closest to alongside the pencil and pick it up...and then take his turn throwing it.  Whoever was first to either make a throw that didn't stick or couldn't stretch enough to reach the other's throw lost the round.  This game was an obsession with many for a while that year...

--"Cat's Cradle" was an activity that both girls and boys seemed to enjoy.  There would be a pattern in a closed string that the players would take turns transferring, preserving it and then enhancing it.  I played it a little, too...a strange game...

--Among the girls, I saw many playing "Patty-Cake", a mutual hand-clapping activity that thoroughly intimidated me.  I never did see how they could remember how to synchronize their hands to meet each other for such long stretches of time...

--Among some of the boys developed an voluntary, informal "fight club" that reminded me a little of the same-titled movie (although without the blood).  I participated in it for a while, but due to my scrawniness then I had to bow out after a while for the sake of survival...

--That year, the Batman TV series would come on ABC Tuesdays and Thursdays ("same bat-time, same bat-channel").  Along with it came Batman comic books and trading cards.  I was heavily into both, and idolized Catwoman (played then by Julie Newmar of My Favorite Doll fame).  Often I'd go to school and hear the highlights of the previous evening's show...

--Toward the end of the school year, some of the boys discovered that by rubbing a smooth-edged coin like a nickel on their forearm for a minute or two, they would temporarily get a pleasant sensation before the pain kicked in.  Totally boneheaded.  One of the dumber of this group came into class one day with his arm bandaged and in a sling: he had bloodied it up and needed  to go to the nurse's station after using a dime instead!  Unbelievable...

--I don't rightly know why, but among some of us it was a status symbol to have possession of blocks of wax.  Maybe some of the kids ate it for all I know (most likely the ones rubbing coins on their arms).  The way to get some wax was to go to the Practical Arts Room down the hallway and ask Mr. Mielock for some wax.  Apparently, he would always hand some over to anyone who requested it, no questions asked.  I even went there and procured some myself, just to get into the experience...which ultimately made no sense whatsoever to me...

--I'm not much for the gossip of those times...let's see...Paige and Doug were an item, Hope hated the Beatles, Terry once made Mr. Johnston cry.  Sorry, that's the best I could do...

Well, I enjoyed going down memory lane and touching upon some of the things that stuck with me over the decades about the first year I spent in the Nova School system.  I wish I could remember other years as well as this one...

Pro Soccer: 2015-16 Mexican Liga MX Season Begins

The Apertura (first split-season) of Mexico's Premier League in professional soccer, also known as Liga MX, started the other day with Veracruz beating Guadalajara 2-0.  This evening, one of the Spanish-language TV stations will be showing the match between Cruz Azul, a team based in Mexico City, and Morelia, which is in danger of being relegated (demoted) to the next lower league if it doesn't dramatically change its recently losing ways.  I usually tend to root for Cruz Azul unless they happen to be playing my favorite team, the Tigres of UANL (based in Monterrey). And it should be interesting to see how much effort has been put into making Morelia's Monarcas more competitive...

Speaking of relegation, although Morelia was clearly the worst team in the league last year, the decision to relegate is placed on a cumulative three-year ratio of points earned per games played.  In soccer, a team gets three points for a win, one for a draw, and nothing for a loss.  In 2014-15, the Leones Negros ("Black Lions") of the Universidad de Guadalajara, just promoted after winning the lower league's (Ascenso) championship in 2013-14, were relegated back after losing a close season-ending struggle with Puebla to see which team would suffer this indignity.  The new team promoted up into Liga MX this year is Dorados de Sinaloa, which won the Ascenso championship playoff a few months ago...

Although I enjoy watching Mexican soccer, along with listening to the exuberant Spanish-speaking TV announcers, I don't like the Liga MX format of split-seasons with two champions per year (last year they were America, also based in Mexico City, and Santos Laguna).  And I really don't like their playoff system, which includes too many teams (eight) and punishes those who performed well in the regular season.  In my book, Tigres should have won the overall championship since they had the league's best record over the course of the year.  After all, regular season records are how they determine the champions in the English (Barclay's) Premier League and in other leagues across Europe...

Speaking of the English Premier League, they open their season the second week of August.  Now that's my favorite soccer to watch.  Hopefully, NBC Sports will continue to carry the games. Go Arsenal!   

Just Finished Reading Towers of Midnight by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson

The late Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time fantasy series is very long, fourteen volumes in total.  Jordan died after having written the first eleven books, and fantasy writer colleague Brandon Sanderson took up the project of completing the series with the final three books.  I just finished reading Towers of Midnight, which means that I now have only one more book to get through before I'm finally finished with this long, drawn-out saga.  The main characters of Rand al'Thor, Mat Cauthon, Perrin Aybara, Egwene, and Elayne, to name the most prominent, are all still in there fighting for their cause, "The Light", against the Dark Lord...and the Last Battle looms ahead.  Other than the prophecies that seem to paint a picture of peril, if not outright tragedy, for some of the protagonists, I'm keeping mum about what happened in Towers of Midnight...not wanting to give away the story to prospective readers (or to anyone currently involved in reading this series).

The author(s) of The Wheel of Time series had one advantage over another fantasy series author, George R.R. Martin of A Song of Ice and Fire renown.  His HBO series adaptation, Game of Thrones, has diverged from his books, which creates a bit of an issue in that he has still at least a couple more books of the series in the works.  Will Martin change the books to fit the TV series?  That would be lamentable if he did.  At the very least, I believe that his involvement in Game of Thrones on HBO has to be distracting him terribly from getting on with his writing of the next book, which I am impatient to get started reading.  At least Jordan and Sanderson (and their readers) never had to deal with that when composing The Wheel of Time...

Most Likable Candidate Most "Likely" Will Be Elected President

Lately on TV, public opinion polls have come out that should be disturbing to Hillary Clinton as she campaigns to be elected as the next U.S. president in 2016.  They tend to reveal that people in general don't find her to be very likable.  Now whether one candidate or another has a more genial or compelling personality has not influenced my own choice for president since I began voting in 1976, but the past several elections show a trend of the more likable candidates, regardless of party affiliation, winning the elections.  In the past two, Barack Obama has shown to be more likable than either John McCain or Mitt Romney.  George W. Bush's homespun, plain way of presenting himself was much more amenable to people than the stuffy Al Gore and John Kerry from 2000 and 2004, respectively.  Bill Clinton's outgoing and positive demeanor won over many people as he beat George H.W. Bush and Bob Dole in '92 and '96.  That same George H.W. Bush...of course, simply known in 1988 as George Bush...had a clear personality edge over the stiff Michael Dukakis in that year's contest.  Probably the most obvious example of all this is how Ronald Reagan charmed the nation in 1980 and 1984 while stomping over Jimmy Carter and  Walter Mondale.  And that same Jimmy Carter, who had transformed himself into a morose and preachy president by 1980, had won enough votes with his almost constant smile and encouraging words to squeak by Gerald Ford (also considered to be a "nice" guy) in 1976.  Now I realize that other people may disagree as to who was more or less likable in various of these elections...I'm just going on my own gut feelings about all this.  And I went against the "likability" trend when I went to the polls in 1984, 1988, 1996, and 2004...

There's obviously much more to the job of president than being able to win a popularity contest.  Unfortunately, the cynical side of me feels that it is exactly how millions of American voters make their decisions about this very crucial office...and they tend to be the ones that tilt the election to one candidate over the other...

Controversial Penalty Call in Mexico's Advance Through Gold Cup (Soccer) Tourney

The 2015 CONCACAF Gold Cup in soccer, which consists of the nations comprising the northern part of the Western Hemisphere, is now down to four teams.  Today the United States will play Jamaica and Mexico will play Panama.  The winners will face off in the final match.  I have been rooting for both the American and Mexican teams, but with the latter I have a little problem after seeing their last match in the quarterfinal round against Costa Rica...

I didn't see that Mexico-Costa Rica match, which was played last Saturday night, in its entirety.  As a matter of fact, I would have completely missed it had it not gone two overtimes.  Soccer matches traditionally last 90 minutes...plus "stoppage time" tacked on to the end based on accumulated game interruption time.  In elimination games (which this was), two overtime periods are allowed to see if either side can win it.  Then, after 120 minutes (plus that stoppage time) if the score is still tied there is a penalty kick shoot-out, the last resort to resolving these contests.  Well, when I discovered this match was going on, 110 minutes had elapsed and the score was still 0-0.  It looked more and more like Mexico and Costa Rica were headed for a penalty kick shoot-out.  The 120 minute mark passed, and 3 minutes of stoppage time was allotted.  After 122 minutes, just seconds before the end of the final overtime period, A Mexican player desperately kicked the ball high into the penalty zone of Costa Rica's.  Another Mexican player lunged at the ball to make a goal-scoring header, but he missed and fell to the ground.  A nearby Costa Rican defender was then called for a penalty foul when he clearly was shown in replays to not be responsible for it.  With seconds to go in this two-hour contest, Mexico then kicked in the penalty shot to win the game, 1-0.  Although I was rooting for Mexico, I was very disappointed in how it all ended...

Mexico's coach, Miguel Herrera, is a very colorful and fiery character who was very outspoken when his 2014 World Cup team was eliminated by the Netherlands in another very controversial penalty call...this one against his own team.  He claimed afterward that his opponent's players had taken several dives, faking fouls, and that the final call was clearly one such dive.  One problem with that, though, as I see it...I've watched Herrera's Mexican team over the course of several games and his players have been "diving" all over the field.  And that last penalty Saturday night looked a bit like a dive to me as well...

 All of that notwithstanding, I'll still be rooting for a USA-Mexico final match final...

Spent Past Weekend at Ormond Beach

This past weekend, Melissa and I went to the Atlantic coast to spend a couple of days at Ormond Beach, at a popular locally-owned hotel we'd gone to several times in the past three decades...there were a lot of old memories stored in that place.  We spent much of the time out at the pool and I read a lot and watched the beach, which was particularly crowded on this very hot and eventually very sunny weekend in July.  When we drove down there, the weather was very stormy.  It didn't let up until early evening, and on Sunday and Monday while we were there, the area was clear of storms...apparently resuming once we had left the area.  We ate dinner Saturday afternoon at the Charley Horse restaurant just down the road on A1A, but for the rest of the stay we ate food we bought at the nearby Publix or had carried with us.  Breakfast was provided "free" at the hotel (it never is really free), albeit a very modest one...nothing like the kind we were used to at the Hampton.  Still, we enjoyed our stay there.  Sunday evening, as we sat there by the pool looking eastward at the ocean, the area darkened due to the ban on beach lighting on account of the sea turtles.  The stars gradually began to appear in the sky, starting with the brighter ones like Vega, Altair, Deneb, and Arcturus.  Still, you had to know where to look to see them at this point in order to make them out of the dark blue background.  As the darkness of the night increased, more stars appeared, and I looked over my shoulder southward to see the constellation of Scorpius, with the planet Saturn positioned just to its west...

Over the last few days, I've been seeing all kinds of news stories on TV about shark attacks on bathers off the coast, as well as the stranding of one on a North Carolina beach.  At Ormond, we saw what we thought were shark fins many times breaking the water's surface, and they were often very close to the shore where there were people out in the water.  While walking along the beach, we also saw a multitude of small jellyfish lying in the sand.  I don't think I would have enjoyed going out in the water under these circumstances...

Just Finished Reading Letters to a Young Mathematician by Ian Stewart

Ian Stewart is an English Professor of Mathematics at the University of Warwick. In the last several years, he has written a number of books popularizing the study of mathematics...a subject I fear needs a heavy dose of popularizing.  The book of his that I just read, Letters to a Young Mathematician, gradually walks a hypothetical aspiring mathematician all the way from high school through college, graduate school, and then through the stages of her ensuing professional career in the field in the form of letters he imagines he would have written her. Along the way, he shows the importance of mathematics in our lives, how mathematicians think, how to learn mathematics, how proofs...the bedrock of mathematics...are very similar to stories in their structure, and some important career tips.  The book is short, only 203 pages, and I read it very quickly.  I left it feeling encouraged about mathematics, although I personally am not at all in the same position that the imaginary "Meg" or Ian Stewart are: their paths through this field were rather conventional, spanning the greater parts of their lives and going through the standard educational and career stages at certain chronological ages, whereas I am sitting here at age 58 looking at it from a slightly different perspective.  Still, I don't think it would hurt me to delve back into this field a little...I've just begun studying linear algebra and am practicing matrix operations.  They're actually quite fun, very much like Sudoku or Kakuro...only here I actually do need the "answer key" to tell if I got the right answer.  From time to time I'll report on the progress I've been making with my mathematical adventures...

Letters to a Young Mathematician is just one of a number of mentoring books out there which perform the twofold purpose of popularizing a particular field of endeavor for everyone to better understand while at the same time encouraging interested people among them to enter it...even if it is at a more modest level than that attained by the books' writers.  I can think of a couple more books like this: Ultramarathon Man by Dean Karanazes and On Writing by Stephen King.  As with mathematics, there are many people who would never take up running or writing because they fear they would look stupid to others...but with anything, you're going to stumble a bit in the beginning, so a little bit of humility is a needed ingredient in any such undertaking.  I happen to do all three to various degrees of success: running, writing, and once again after many years, mathematics.  I'll always find people around me better in them, but that's not the point: pursuing these fields is fulfilling in itself...

Heavy Rainfall of Late Where I Live

I suppose I should be grateful that we're getting plenty of rainfall...after all, the folks out in California are suffering through a painfully harsh drought.  And for a while this summer, it seemed, we had settled here in northern Florida into a pattern of sunny mornings and early afternoons, with late afternoon and evening thunderstorms and showers.  I liked that since the humidity would go down during the day just as the temperature climbed up into the 90s...and then it would all get cooler with the rain.  But now it seems that the humidity is staying high around the clock, and the storms are starting to hit us in the morning, too...

All of this rain is turning my lawn into a swamp, and the grass seems to be growing twice as fast as usual.  Our poor ten-year-old dog Freckles, who was already traumatized by the booming and crackling Fourth of July fireworks various neighbors of mine were setting off from several days before the holiday (and a few afterward),  now has to suffer through the often continual thunder bellowing around us.  As for me, I don't mind the thunder, but the humidity, along with the hopelessly wet surface conditions,  has made running outdoors unfeasible.  Also, no one I know, including myself, likes to get out on the road driving under these conditions...

New Horizons Space Probe Flies By Pluto

I have to admit to being taken a little off guard the other day when my son Will told me about the close-up pictures of Pluto that were being released and shown on television.  Had one of our scientific space exploration missions actually reached that remote spot?  Apparently, yes...

New Horizons is an American space probe, aimed at exploring Pluto, its moons, and the Kuiper Belt of which it is a part.  It was designed and constructed through a collaboration between Southwest Research Institute and the Applied Physics Laboratory of Johns Hopkins University.  NASA managed the mission itself, which began with a January, 2006 launch, a mid-course fly-by with Jupiter, and...finally, this year, its arrival at Pluto just a couple of days ago.  The photo of Pluto pictured above is from July 14.  New Horizons made its closest approach to what I still tend to call our "ninth planet" (although officially it's been demoted to the status of "dwarf planet") yesterday, taking surprisingly detailed pictures of its surface...which indicates that Pluto is geologically active and possibly could have an interior of water.  You can get access to more New Horizons Pluto pictures through this link: NASA Pluto Mission Website.  The probe also took an incredible picture of Pluto's largest of its known five moons, named Charon, which you can also view on NASA's website...

The Kuiper Belt, which rings our Solar System beyond Neptune's orbit with myriad objects including comets and dwarf planets, may well contain life.  Pluto has turned out to be far from the dormant ball of ice it has been portrayed as over the years, although I've heard that, should it leave its orbit and head toward the sun, it would most likely form a tail like that of a comet.  I heard this watching Public Television's Nova program about the New Horizons Pluto mission, which was shown last night...

When I was a kid, my dad bought me a comic book that contained, along with other tidbits, the stories of the vision and construction of the Mount Palomar Observatory in Southern California and the discovery of Pluto by Clyde Tombaugh in 1930 (at Lowell Observatory in Arizona).  There was a lot of national pride because "we" discovered the ninth planet, although the subsequent discovery decades later of the Kuiper Belt, in which Pluto resides,  may prove to be much more significant...

The New Horizons probe will now continue beyond Pluto and further into the Kuiper Belt.  I'm not sure exactly how useful it will be beyond this point, but I wouldn't dare to underestimate the ingenuity and imagination of the scientists and engineers who have been behind this project...

Just Finished Reading Lyn Hamilton's The Celtic Riddle

Back in April, as reported on this blog, I went to the Alachua Friends of the Library book sale here in Gainesville.  They had a lot of used books selling for pennies on the dollar...one such book I bought was a paperback mystery novel by Lyn Hamilton titled The Celtic Riddle, for which I dished out 50 cents.  Hamilton, who sadly died of cancer in 2009, has authored an intriguing series of eleven "archaeological" mysteries, to which the book I purchased belongs.  Lara McClintoch, a Toronto-based antiques store owner, is the protagonist and tells the story in the first person.  Each book goes to a different location on the planet and examines its culture and relics in the context of a suspenseful mystery.  With The Celtic Riddle, the place of interest is Ireland.  Lara accompanies her friend Alex to the Dingle in far southwestern Ireland for the reading of a will following the death of a wealthy Irish businessmen...and discovers that aside from the assignment of that wealth to different family members, employees, and friends, there is a special hidden treasure that he has given clues to the divided family and others to find.  His intention was for everyone to get back to working together, but Lara finds that there is too much animosity and distrust between these often very disagreeable people.  And the fact that some of them are being murdered, one-by-one, doesn't exactly help with the trust issue...

As far as mysteries are concerned, I enjoyed The Celtic Riddle...although the villain committing the murders was someone I had come to suspect rather early in the story.  But I think my success in sleuthing this out was primarily due to the fact that I'm just getting good at figuring out mysteries...especially after reading so many Sue Grafton novels.  I also enjoyed Lara McClintoch's agreeable but realistic character...this is someone that I would enjoy following in subsequent books of the series.  There is only one issue I had with this story...

The clues to the treasure, based somehow on an old Irish poem, don't make any sense to me...although Lara doesn't seem to have any trouble "connecting the dots".  The initial clues point to further clues found across the country in buildings, boats, and monuments.  The treasure hunters never seem to have much trouble finding them, which I think would be much more difficult in real life.  But having said that, I did enjoy the old Irish legends that the author introduced into the story.  As to the implausibility of it being so easy to pick up the clues in the treasure hunt...well, that isn't the ultimate mystery of The Celtic Riddle, anyway...

I checked my public library system's catalog for books by Lyn Hamilton.  I was amazed to discover that they had no books of hers, yet were quite happy to rid themselves of this quality novel so cheaply at their book sale! I think I'll fill out a purchase suggestion to them for Hamilton's books...

Some 1965-66 Nova Elementary School Memories, Part 5

Yes, it's time again for another installment of my personal recollections of my fourth grade experiences at Nova Blanche Forman Elementary School, in Davie, Florida (near where the Miami Dolphins currently have their training camp) in the mid sixties.  Once again, I'll list them in no particular order of importance or chronology...

--For social studies, our "suite" of five classrooms that comprised fourth and fifth graders had areas that the students could elect to study according to their interests...Mrs. Hernandez had the Seminole Indians, Mrs. Jenkins had jobs, Mr. Drew had government, Mr. Johnston had climatology (social studies ???), and Miss Kidder...I can't for the life of me remember what her class was about.  By far the most popular of the groups was the Seminole Indians...I picked jobs under Jenkins, a decision I soon regretted.  In retrospect, government or weather would have been a better fit for me.  I spent most of my time with this class in Room 9 either daydreaming or intensely studying the large, detailed map of Broward County posted on the wall to the left of the blackboard...I got to know just about every community in the county and exactly where they were located...

--Later in the school year, I was in a class devoted to the study of the state of Florida, including its history and geography.  We were issued a textbook on the topic and told to work the questions at the end of each chapter in our notebooks...at our own pace on our own...Jenkins, who had a nasty, short temper, was again my so-called "teacher".  I took advantage of this class to often just get up, walk out, and wander around the school, with the great library they had being my favorite haunt...

--There was a series of interesting science movies out in schools, made by the Bell Telephone Company in the late 1950s as a Cold War response to the Soviet bloc's science achievements (like Sputnik), .  They were hosted by a genial, paternal bald man with glasses by the name of Dr. Frank Baxter.  The movies, which according to the available technology of the time, we watched using rolling film projectors (which often jammed up) and screens, ranged in subjects covering the weather (Unchained Goddess), the sun (Our Mr. Sun), astrophysics (The Strange Case of the Cosmic Ray), language (The Alphabet Conspiracy), genetics (The Thread of Life), the circulatory system (Hemo the Magnificent), the five senses (Gateways to the Mind), and time (About Time).  I loved them all, with the one about cosmic rays being my favorite (I still have a soft spot in my heart for mu and pi mesons). I watched every movie, some several times, over the course of my three years at Nova Elementary.  I enjoyed them so much, as a matter of fact, that I would sneak out of my class and hide in the back of another if I found out they were showing a Bell Science film.  In the fourth grade, I saw the films about the sun and the weather. A few years ago I was able to check out a couple of the Bell Science movies from my public library and watch them again.  Needless to say, they weren't exactly cutting-edge science anymore...

--Late during the school year, we read a book that had a chapter on secret codes.  Suddenly, there sprung up a war of espionage among groups of classmates (including myself) that involved us devising intricate codes and trying to crack those of the "enemy"...

--Also late in the school year, the faculty created a "table of honor" during lunchtime for the well-behaved model students.  Starting at one table, the "table of honor" gradually increased in number to where it comprised more than two-thirds of the cafeteria (or "multi-purpose room" as they called it).  I had been selected for it, but got kicked off one day when a teacher/monitor saw me clowning around at the table with a friend.  As I sat there shame-faced in the section that lacked honor, a whole group of my friends suddenly came over, also just unceremoniously evicted from their exalted table.  Apparently, good-natured, harmless fun is a dishonorable activity...

Well, I think I've filled up enough on this page about my 1965-66 Nova Elementary School memories.  More to come...

Major League Baseball at the All-Star Break

The Major League Baseball All-Star Game takes place tomorrow evening, and although I'll be off from work and able to watch it, I think I'll just pass.  I like to follow actual teams, with their games counting either in the standings or playoffs.  And I don't like the idea of important players exposing themselves to injuries when they are the crucial elements of their respective teams.  I remember back in the 1970s watching one all-star game, which was tied at the end.  Pete Rose was on base and Ray Fosse was catching.  There was a play giving Rose the chance to try to score.  The throw came in time to Fosse, but Rose came at him full force at the plate, bowling him over and scoring, giving his National League the win that year.  But Fosse suffered a season-ending injury on the play and never was the same player again.  Ever since then, I've been cool to this game...just get me back to the regular season that actually matters...

My Florida teams of Tampa Bay and Miami have been competitive during the first part of the 2015 season, but that doesn't seem to be reflected in the standings.  Both have had to struggle around injuries...but I suppose most other teams have had to do the same.  But the Marlins, struggling with a 38-51 record in fourth place in their division, have been decimated.  Their ace pitcher Jose Fernandez just came back from an injury he suffered last year, and slugger Giancarlo Stanton, who had been well out in front of the home run race, is out for a few weeks.  And now Dee Gordon, one of the best hitters and fielders in the league, is injured.  I can only say, "OUCH!".  As for the Rays, until they recently went into a slump, Tampa Bay had been maintaining a small lead in their division.  After their stumble, they managed to regroup and currently have a 46-45 record at the break...still within striking distance of the division-leading Yankees...

Right now, as I see it, no team has a lock on their division, although Kansas City is comfortably ahead in theirs and St. Louis and Pittsburgh, although reasonably close in the standings, both are in an excellent position to make the playoffs.  But some teams, like the Athletics, Phillies, Marlins, and Brewers, are too far behind...which at this time of the season means that they may soon be trading away some of their talented players to contending teams.  I don't see the Rays, still contenders themselves, dealing away their best (which is what they did last year when they traded their pitching ace David Price to the Tigers), although they may try to acquire a star or two from one of those aforementioned clubs...

Finished With Reading Sue Grafton's L, M, and N Novels

The very first of mystery writer Sue Grafton's "alphabet" series that I ever read was "L" is for Lawless, several years ago.  I had completely forgotten what happened in it, though, and welcomed a reread.  In it, California-based private detective Kinsey Millhone finds herself sucked into a no-win scenario after her benevolent landlord, octogenarian Henry Pitts, asks her to look after a  small matter concerning a recently deceased neighbor.  Originally a simple investigation to get his burial and grave site taken care of by the Veteran's Administration for his service in World War II, Kinsey eventually finds herself an unwitting party to a father and daughter's attempts to recover long-hidden loot from a decades-old bank heist while avoiding pursuit by a murderous man bent on reaching the prize first...and killing them all in the process.  This story was interesting in that it shows how people can gradually find themselves over their heads in matters not of their concern if they're not careful...

As for "M" is for Malice, I read that one a couple of years ago and wrote about it on this blog, so I skipped it this go-around on my alphabetical journey through Grafton's series.  Here is a link to that article... 

The last Sue Grafton book I've read, "N" is for Noose, was a fresh story for me.  In it, Kinsey is, for the most part, in Carson City, Nevada, taking care of her friend, fellow private eye Robert Dietz, as he recovers from leg surgery.  As in "L" is for Lawless, she finds herself in an unwinnable situation after Dietz asks her to look into the concerns of Selma, a widow of Tom, a police officer there who had died of a heart attack after weeks of appearing disturbed about something.  Kinsey's task is to find out what that "something" was...once again things get out of control as she discovers the connection between two murders-by-hanging out in the nearby desert, spaced five years apart, and Tom's scribbling of a noose with a numerical code written within it.  What do the numbers mean?  Of course, Kinsey is going to discover the answer...although in retrospect she isn't sure that it might have just been better had she simply walked away from the case...

I haven't yet read a single Sue Grafton novel that I didn't enjoy.  One reason for this is the first-person narrative by a truly sympathetic character, Kinsey Millhone.  Kinsey has her weak moments, to be sure, but she also possesses a degree of self-confidence and assertiveness...along with a tight grip on reality...that I admire.  Let's see...Grafton just got through the letter "X" with her writing, so at this stage I have ten more of these books to read before I "catch up" to her...

Soccer's CONCACAF Gold Cup in Group Stage, US-Haiti Match Tonight

CONCACAF, which is an incredibly long acronym standing for Confederation of North, Central America, and Caribbean Association Football, is the group comprising both national and league soccer teams in the northern part of the western hemisphere.  They've already held their league tournament and are now playing their odd-year national teams tournament, called the CONCACAF Gold Cup, and which is now in the group stage.  There are twelve teams in three groups...after each team in a group finishes playing the other three, the top two in each group advance along with the two third-place finishers with the best records.  In other words, the group stage only reduces the number down to eight, which then begin the "knockout" rounds.  The final will be held on July 26.  The United States, which has tended to dominate this tournament in recent years, will once again be the primary host nation, with Canada also providing sites for some matches...

The games in the Gold Cup are being shown on TV, on Fox Sports 1 (Gainesville's Cox Channel 62) and Fox Sports 2 (Channel 267).  Tonight, the U.S. will play Haiti starting at 8:30.  This match will be shown on Fox Sports 1, but I'll miss it since I'm working at that time...

I expect the United States to encounter the most opposition from Mexico and Costa Rica, each of which is currently in a different group.  Personally, I'd rather watch league play...at this time of year it's pretty much Major League Soccer, based in the U.S. and Canada.  Still, if a Gold Cup game happens to be going on and I'm at home, I might just watch it, regardless whether the American team is involved...

Wimbledon Women's Semifinals This Morning

In the 1970s, tennis took off as a major sport as stars like Billy Jean King, Chris Evert, and Jimmy Connors rose to the forefront.  It's attracted a large following ever since, although I believe the mass popularity of the sport has diminished somewhat...along with disco dancing, I remember that playing tennis was a big fad in college.  I never was very good at the sport...then again, I just enjoyed volleying the ball back and forth across the net with someone of similar inability, with the two of us seeing how long we could sustain the volleys...not exactly tennis as it is ferociously played in the professional setting.  My parents both were avid TV tennis fans...they both kept up with the different ongoing tournaments and the star players.  After my mother died in 2002, my father continued following it...our phone conversations were often a little awkward when he would go off rambling about this tournament or that star, while I was totally ignorant of it all.  He, too, passed away two years ago...now whenever a major tournament is going on or one of those players he liked to discuss is on TV, I remember him and his enthusiasm for tennis.  Which brings me to the Wimbledon tournament, which is going on right now and is into the singles semifinals...

The women's stages at Wimbledon are a day or two ahead of the men's.  Their first semifinal match featured two overachievers: 20th-seed Garbine Muguruza won a close match against #13 Agnieszka Radwanska to reach the finals.  She will play the winner of the match going on at this moment (shown on ESPN) between Serena Williams, the #1 seed, and 4th seed Maria Sharapova.  Williams, who had lost the Wimbledon final to Sharapova in 2004, has now won 16 straight matches between the two.  Whoever wins this match, most likely Serena, will be the overwhelming favorite in the final, to be played Saturday.

The men's singles semifinals, which will be shown tomorrow morning, features three "regulars" and one underdog.  Roger Federer (#2) will face Britain's favorite son Andy Murray (3) while upstart Richard Gasquet (#21) plays top-seeded Novak Djokovic.  The men's final match will take place Sunday.  The reason we see the tennis in the morning is the time zone difference between England and the U.S....their matches are played in the afternoon, local time...

I don't have any preferences in the tournament, although nationalist readers would probably urge me to root for Serena, the one American left among the "elite eight".  Maybe I'll end up doing just that, but not because of her nationality.  My main focus in watching Wimbledon right now is to get a better sense of what the game is about, the players' strategies, and the game's flow.  Maybe it's still not to late to develop an interest in this sport...after all, who knew I'd ever enjoy watching soccer!

Just Finished Reading George Orwell's Animal Farm

George Orwell's short novel Animal Farm is one of those stories that I've heard so much about over the years that I never felt any pressing need to read it...yet, I did just that the other day. Set on a farm in England, the animals in it decide to rebel against the cruel rule of Farmer Jones and set up a self-governing farm...renamed Animal Farm from its original title of Manor Farm...using the principles of "animalism".  The pigs have set themselves up as the intellectual force behind the movement and, led by Snowball and Napoleon, have come up with a list of seven rules for the animals that they have put up on the barn wall.  As the story goes on, there is a power struggle between the two porcine leaders and one, using a forged alliance with the dogs, emerges as an autocratic ruler over the animals.  One by one, the rules are amended as the pigs gradually assume the very roles of the humans they had displaced.  Finally, at the end, the other animals find themselves even worse off under the pigs, who have even thrown away the rules, along with the name Animal Farm.

Animal Farm is obviously an allegory to communism and the rule of Josef Stalin over the Soviet Union.  Originally promoted as a worker's revolution to give them the rights they deserved, the clique running the communists made themselves "more equal" than the masses they were supposedly there to serve...eventually the people were even more severely subjugated than they were under autocratic czar rule.

Although intended to frame Stalinism in satirical terms, Animal Farm can apply to any social/political/religious movement with benign stated intentions but whose leaders and organizers set themselves apart from those for whose causes they claim to be fighting...while in reality manipulating and taking advantage of them.  Since I seem to have an innate suspicion of people setting themselves up as authorities with the power of command, this story deeply resonates with me...

Iranian Nuclear Negotiations Looking Like an Exercise in Futility

The ongoing negotiations between Iran and Western countries, including the United States, to come to an agreement whereby Iran limits its nuclear development and allows independent inspections of its facilities, are due to end on July 10, with, at this point of time, little to indicate that the talks, reportedly at a standoff, will succeed before that date.  To me, I'm not quite sure what good any negotiated "deal" will accomplish...Iran's de facto dictator, Ayatollah Khamenei, has been the supreme authority of that country with the power to arbitrarily interpret, validate or reject any laws while being at the same time the commander-in-chief of its armed forces.  And Khamenei, who has ruled that country since 1989, has already flatly stated that he would never allow international inspectors at Iran's military facilities.  So U.S. Secretary of State Kerry, his fellow Western negotiators, and the polite and amiable Iranian negotiators can agree on whatever they want...it doesn't matter...because in the end, only what Ayatollah Khamenei says about it is what Iran's policy will be...

I was around in 1980 during the Iranian hostage crisis, when President Carter sought out authoritative Iranian representatives to negotiate the release of the 50+ American hostages being held there...and the then-Ayatollah Khomeini would repeatedly frustrate and contradict any progress that the Iranian-American negotiations were making.  I see nothing different...their current "supreme" leader feels no sense of honor or duty to live by international agreements...instead, he insists on his own exalted authority to change or interpret them as he sees fit.  So the way I see it, these negotiations are an exercise in futility...

Getting "Good" at Math vs. Kindling a Passion For It

I was just listening on my car radio to a PBS show featuring an interview with a young man who, as the result of a street mugging that left him with a concussion, suddenly began to discover that he was inclined to view his reality in mathematical terms, focused on geometry.  I don't know how his story ended, because at the time a squall line was about to strike, with me racing into my Magnolia Parke Starbucks parking lot to get inside before all hell broke loose...so I left the program unfinished and rushed indoors to escape the deluge.  Now that I'm inside having taken the last available table...with that hell now breaking loose outside...I'm reflecting a bit on what it takes to be "good" in mathematics...

I'm not being arrogant or prideful when I state that I have always registered extremely high in mathematical ability on aptitude tests (e.g. my SAT math score was the maximum 800).  However, that aptitude never translated well to the classroom, where I consistently underachieved.  Why?  I have always felt turned off by the combined hyper-competitive and moralistic tone of most math classes.  By this I mean that the focus was rarely on the fascinating field of mathematics itself, but rather on the performance of the math students.  We were supposedly in some kind of de facto competition with each other to see who was "best", and failure to answer questions correctly always seemed to have a moral sense of condemnation.  The irony is that whenever I undertake the study of something for its own sake, free of competitive pressures, then I naturally tend to float to a higher level than others.  The young  mathematics scholar on the radio program had independently developed his own high level of competence in the field, relatively free of the aforementioned distractions and obstacles imposed in formal math instruction.  He envisioned mathematics ultimately in its geometric form, according to how his brain's functioning had changed following the assault...

I don't believe I need a bop on my head in order to get good at mathematics, but then again, that young man wasn't necessarily trying to "get good" at it, either.  No, he was able to kindle a passion for mathematics based on the mental equipment he was furnished according to his circumstances.  I see no reason why I couldn't follow the same principle, albeit with the particular gifts toward the field that I have been provided...

Some 1965-66 Nova Elementary School Memories, Part 4

Here are some more memories, in no particular order, that I've somehow kept of my fourth grade experiences at Nova Blanche Forman Elementary School in 1965-66, the first year of its existence...

--Individualized study was the norm at Nova, at least in the five-classroom section called "Suite C".  They had SRA (Science Research Associates) study lab kits that we were all supposed to be engaged with...there were Reading Lab, Spelling Lab, and Math Lab, if memory serves me correctly.  I tended to avoid SRA, though, which although a required activity, never got me into trouble with my teachers...convincing me that the faculty was detached from the students they were entrusted with teaching.  But later in the school year, I undertook to do another, more advanced SRA program, called Study Skills, which, unlike the other SRA kits, required library visits to do and which involved reading essays and stories...and then answering comprehension questions following them.  I did all of Study Skills, which had quite a few lessons and was a feat that very few students accomplished, and then turned in my folder to my teacher showing my completion.  I never got acknowledgement for my efforts and found my folder a few weeks later lying on a counter without any teacher's notes on it...as if no one had even bothered to look at it...

--We did have field trips that year.  One was a combination trip to Port Everglades and the Broward County Courthouse.  I think the teachers conducting it had in mind all of us boarding a ship as part of the excursion, but weren't able to swing it.  My highlight with the courthouse visit was standing on the high roof overlooking downtown Fort Lauderdale and seeing how close to the edge I would dare myself to stand. I think we also may have, at another time, visited the Seminole Indian Village on US 441 in Dania, but if we did my memory eludes me...

--In preparation for our school-wide Christmas assembly, each suite came up with a show.  Suites, A, B, and D each had skits they performed.  Our suite, though did something I thought was pretty cool: a Mexican dance, completely choreographed with partners, kicking and swirling, on an enormous scale.  I was paired with Eleanor, another student who would complete the Nova program all the way through senior graduation.  That dance, which the whole suite had practiced and practiced to a numbing degree, easily stole the show...

--Speaking of Christmas, many students at Nova Elementary were Jewish and celebrated Hanukkah in December.  Students were encouraged to bring in items pertaining to how they celebrated  the holidays, and I heard Jewish holiday songs and became acquainted with the dreidel, a top with the sides inscribed with Hebrew letters.   Another totally cool experience...

--I have some memory of Spanish being taught in the context of the story Goldilocks.  I also remember Marjorie getting the role of Goldilocks in the subsequent performance because of her ability to ham it up...

--Speaking of acting, later in that year we assembled in the cafeteria (officially called the "Multi-Purpose Room") to watch some other skits, one of which featured Paige, a classmate whose stage presence even at that early age indicated a promising future in entertainment, as confirmed by her role many years later as the voice of Belle in Disney's Beauty and the Beast...

More memories to come...

Just Finished Reading The Gathering Storm by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson

Robert Jordan, author of the extensive and expansive The Wheel of Time fantasy series, was working on his very lengthy concluding book when, in 2007, he passed away.  Fellow fantasy writer Brandon Sanderson was enlisted to finish the series, with the aid of Jordan's outlines and notes.  He decided to break that last super-long book that Jordan had envisioned into three volumes...I just finished reading the first of these, titled The Gathering Storm...the 12th book in the series.  I was very pleased with the result...

Brandon Sanderson had a monumental task before him, which was to stay true to Robert Jordan's vision and intentions for the series ending while reconciling the many subplots and characters that the original author had introduced and then just left hanging.  While staying true to the main characters with their distinct personalities (a strength of Jordan's writing), Sanderson managed the seemingly impossible task of significantly advancing the story (a  weakness of Jordan). In this book, the focus is on two main characters, Rand al'Thor and Egwene al'Vere.  Rand, generally known to most others living in his fantasy world as "The Dragon Reborn", struggles with his emotions, his mounting distrust of others, his belief that he is imprisoned by prophecy and fated to die, and the feeling that he is going insane.  Egwene has her own struggle to unite the White Tower of the Aes Sedai under her leadership.  First, she has to endure beatings and imprisonment while her access to channeling has been blocked...all under the direction of the false leader Elaida.  Egwene also knows of an impending attack on the White Tower by an imposing enemy called the Seanchan, but her warnings to Elaida fall on deaf ears.  With both Rand and Egwene, the suspense builds throughout the book until each undergoes a climactic ordeal, and the book concludes with a sense of resolution for both...

I expect the action to dramatically pick up in the next book of this series.  The characters Mat (my favorite in the series), Perrin, and Elayne also have very important parts to play, and I expect more coverage of their own stories to get greater focus.  I'm sad that Robert Jordan died, and that he didn't have the opportunity to finish The Wheel of Time as he would have liked.  But Brandon Sanderson has stepped in to provide some hope for us readers who have already put in so much time going through these books...

Venus-Jupiter Conjunction Tonight...Look Westward After Sunset

Yesterday evening at 9:30 while at work, I went out on my "lunch" break to my car.  As I looked in the sky toward the west-northwest, a little above the horizon, I saw two bright star-like objects very close to each other.  These "stars" are nothing less than the two planets Venus and Jupiter, with Venus being the brighter of the two.  This closeness of our celestial neighbors from the perspective of Earth, in astronomical terms called a "conjunction", will be visible tonight as well, weather cooperating.  If I'm not mistaken, they are positioned in the faint constellation Cancer.  And should you want to add another planet, Saturn, to your sky-gazing experience, look southward toward the constellation Scorpius (representing a scorpion).  Just west of the "claw" lies the ringed planet...or, should I say, one of the ringed planets, now that astronomers have discovered them around Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune as well.  By the way, the brightest star in that constellation, Antares, is a red giant that would engulf the Earth were it in our Sun's position...