9/25 Sermon on James, Part 1

I regularly attend The Family Church,  which is a non-denominational Christian church situated off Parker Road west of Gainesville.  The pastors here have always given pretty incisive and interesting Sunday morning sermons, based on the Bible.  They emphasize the importance of Jesus Christ as Savior and the need to accept him as such and depend upon him in our daily walk through life.  Our current head pastor, Philip Griffin, has just finished a series on the Seven Churches of the book of Revelation and last Sunday began a new one on the book of James...found toward the back of the New Testament.  I have to admit that getting wisdom out of the previous reading was akin to squeezing water from a rock, but James, although a short book, is loaded with sagacious exhortations...I myself refer to it as the "Proverbs" of the New Testament...

Sunday's sermon appropriately focused on the very beginning of James, covering the first chapter, verses 1-12.  In it the author, who naturally calls himself James, greets the twelve tribes scattered abroad and calls on them to persevere with joy through the trials they are experiencing.  For in those trials they will be made stronger and provided the wisdom God intends for them.  Comfort, while pleasant, is much less important than maturity...and that can only come about by going through, and learning from, difficult times.   And, as the pastor pointed out, while those difficult times may be unavoidable, they can also be useful in shaping character and faith.  He also stressed that "life isn't fair, but God is".  And regarding the attainment of material wealth, it is considered, from the perspective of James, to be more an impediment to becoming wise and mature than by experiencing a life marked with hardship and poverty. 

From my own perspective, I feel that the times in my life when I had to undergo difficult circumstances and then came out of them stronger and more understanding in retrospect were often the most meaningful and memorable. However, I have known of people...and you most likely do as well...who have taken their perceived negative life experiences and constructed a cynical narrative for themselves, along with a overly critical view of humanity in general and loads of specific examples to support that outlook.  Hey, y'know, I've fallen into this trap a number of times! So with that innate tendency to be reactive to bad times and hardships comes the need to seek divine guidance and empowerment in order to instead put things in their proper perspective and cultivate wisdom and maturity...and that, I believe, was the intention of James with the opening passages of this book...

By the way, you can watch any of The Family Church (of Gainesville, Florida) sermons on its YouTube site...

And here are those first twelve verses of James, in the NIV courtesy of Bible Gateway:

1 James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ,

To the twelve tribes scattered among the nations:

Greetings. ² Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters,^[a] whenever you face trials of many kinds, ³ because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. ⁴ Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. ⁵ If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you. ⁶ But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. ⁷ That person should not expect to receive anything from the Lord. ⁸ Such a person is double-minded and unstable in all they do.

⁹ Believers in humble circumstances ought to take pride in their high position. ¹⁰ But the rich should take pride in their humiliation—since they will pass away like a wild flower. ¹¹ For the sun rises with scorching heat and withers the plant; its blossom falls and its beauty is destroyed. In the same way, the rich will fade away even while they go about their business.
¹² Blessed is the one who perseveres under trial because, having stood the test, that person will receive the crown of life that the Lord has promised to those who love him.

Tropical Storm Matthew Entering the Caribbean

Newly-named Tropical Storm Matthew, formerly Invest 97-L, is speeding westward at a 21 mph pace as it approaches the West Indies, focusing on the Martinique vicinity.  According to the Weather Channel report I just saw, its maximum sustained winds are at 60 mph and it is expected to continue strengthening as it enters the warm waters of the Caribbean Sea.  Matthew should continue its westward course through the central/southern Caribbean, largely missing Puerto Rico and Hispaniola, until the steering currents that determine its path force it abruptly into a northward direction.  The sooner this "turn" happens, the better for us in Florida, since this dangerous storm would then more likely pass through eastern Cuba and then the Bahamas, avoiding our state.  But should Matthew tarry along its westward course and make its northward shift later, we could be threatened.  The predicted timetable for Matthew, at least for now, is for it to strengthen into a minimal hurricane by Friday morning, start making its shift in direction on Saturday morning...and by Monday morning be a much more dangerous hurricane with 105 mph maximum sustained winds and located in the Jamaica/eastern Cuba area.  But as we all know, these forecasts are liable to change, and possibly drastically.  Still, the various computer models currently seem to be in unusual agreement that Matthew will veer off to the east of Florida and eventually merge with a front sweeping down from the northwest.  I don't know about you, but I'm quite content with missing out on this storm...assuming it follows the "prescribed" trajectory.  I'm certainly going to keep an eye on the weather reports for the next few days...

Soccer: English Premier League in 2016-17 Season So Far

I am following English Premier League soccer now for the third year, having witnessed Chelsea, managed by Jose Mourinho, run away with the championship two years ago and upstart Leicester City, on the brink of relegation (demotion to the next lower league) the year before, surprising everyone last year by coming away with the title.  As the different teams retooled themselves for the new 2016-17 season, there was a lot of speculation as to which one would be favored to win it this year, which has now played through six of the scheduled thirty-eight matches for each of the league's twenty teams.  Could Chelsea recover their old greatness or Leicester City repeat their miracle season?  Or would one of the more traditional powers like Manchester City, Manchester United, or Arsenal take their place on the top of the standings?  Well, so far it's been the latter as Manchester City is solidly in first place, having won all six of their games.  Tottenham, which challenged Leicester City during the second half of last season before slumping at the end, is also undefeated but with two draws, giving them second place.  Then it's Arsenal, Liverpool, Everton, and Manchester United in that order.  United, by the way, hired Mourinho and has spent a lot of money in the off-season to sign top European players, making them a team with high expectations.  As for Chelsea and Leicester City, the former is doing moderately well, at number eight in the standings (or "table" as they call it across the ocean), but the latter is mired with a losing record in the twelve-spot, a shadow of last year's glory.  Stuck in the three-team relegation zone at the bottom of the standings are West Ham, Stoke City, and Sunderland: I get Sunderland being there, but the other two...especially West Ham, which was strong last year...just don't seem to belong there...

I guess the surprises for me, besides Leicester City and West Ham being so disappointing at this stage of the 2016-17 season, is how well both Liverpool and Everton...also based in the city of Liverpool...are doing.  Everton had a reputation for fielding a quality team that has been absent for the last couple of years and Liverpool, while almost winning the championship three years ago, has also been a disappointment to its demanding fans.  I think it would be great to see these two teams continue to excel this year...

By the way, if you're interesting in watching English Premier League soccer action on TV, NBCSports broadcasts live matches on Saturday and Sunday mornings.  In Gainesville this is on Cox Cable channel 33...

Just Finished Reading Ursula K. Le Guin's The Farthest Shore

Actually, I "just finished" reading The Farthest Shore, the third novel in Ursula K. Le Guin's young readers' fantasy series Earthsea, a few days ago but chose to first write about the other two books I had just read (Ruth Rendell's From Doon with Death and Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre).  With the first Earthsea book, titled A Wizard of Earthsea, the author had initially intended it to be a singular work, but later decided to expand it into a trilogy.  Now, with the addition of other books as well, I suppose the final book in the series will be the last one written before her death...hopefully not to come anytime soon.  The Farthest Shore jumps years ahead in time and focuses on the series' unifying protagonist, the wizard Ged, as he tries to discover the source of the ongoing drain of magic in the world.  To this end, Arren, a young prince in a northern island kingdom, arrives on Archmage Ged's island of Roke to give more disturbing news and offer his services in the quest to save the world.  The two set out in Ged's boat and travel the seas, going first south and then to the "farthest shore" in the west on the island of Selidor.  Along the way they encounter numerous adventures, strange cultures, dragons, and news, both derived from others' accounts and via their own dreams, of a sinister wizard in the west who has conquered death and offers immortality to those who join him...

The Farthest Shore reminded me a bit of C.S. Lewis in his Chronicles of Narnia book Voyage of the Dawn Treader...albeit with an more Eastern philosophical flavor instead of the overtly Christian allegories of Lewis.  The idea that death is necessary for life and that there needs to be a balance and separation between the two sounds Taoist or Zen to me, given my admittedly relative ignorance of these belief systems.  So yes, it is natural for one to want to avoid dying and to stay alive...but it is unnatural not to see death as inevitable.  The contrast between the idea of thriving in the present and pursuing a life of meaning and virtue while looking and acting outwardly from oneself, and that of striving to ensure one's own perpetual existence only for the sake of that existence, is rigorously examined, skillfully interwoven throughout this interesting story's narrative.  Ged has matured and understands things on a deep level, to the point where he can be a mentor to the young prince Arren.  This book was my favorite of the series so far, but I recommend you first read books one and two (A Wizard of Earthsea and The Tombs of Atuan, respectively) before tackling it...

Sampan Off the Port Bow

If you've been anywhere near a TV set during the last few days and happened to hit upon one of those cable news channels, you've no doubt encountered the extensive coverage of the prolonged protests in Charlotte, North Carolina against the fatal police shooting of a young black man there.  At the same time, there is a parallel story going on in Oklahoma where a young white female cop is being charged with manslaughter after shooting to death a black man on a highway there.  As a matter of fact, these types of fatal encounters have been accumulating and have gotten quite beyond old...they are reprehensible.  Not just because some people got shot, or necessarily because the most highly publicized incidents involved black victims...I wonder if those in other demographic groups who have been killed in this fashion by law enforcement are being filtered out of media coverage because they don't fit the protesters' narrative.  No, the truly reprehensible...and frightening...aspect to all of this is the attitude that the police take to citizens under their jurisdiction when they decide that they are suspects: suddenly the lives of the very people they were supposed to be protecting...but whom they're now suspecting...no longer seem to matter very much...

Off and on for the last 52 years, the United States military, while avoiding officially declared wars, has instead been engaged in what our government has termed "police action", especially regarding the adventures in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq.  The missions in these places have been to protect their populations against the "bad guys" (like communists and terrorists) and give the people there the chance to enjoy freedom and prosperity.  The problem with all this is that, once the troops were there occupying the land that others called their own, the soldiers often could not distinguish among those who were friends and who were foes.  So in a sense the locals collectively became the "suspects", and that tended to cheapen their lives.  You may have heard of the terrible My Lai Massacre in South Vietnam, which is an illustration of this point, as well as seeing on the evening news back then the burning down of villages in order to "save" them.  The movie Apocalypse Now, which depicted the overwhelming suspicion that a sizable segment of the American troops had of the native population, has a scene in which the Navy boat transporting upriver the movie's protagonist, played by Martin Sheen, encounters a Vietnamese junk boat, also referred to as a "sampan".  Someone yells out "Sampan off the port bow!" and, despite Sheen's protestations, the Navy boat's chief insists on stopping it and investigating.  The Vietnamese on it dutifully provide the necessary papers, but no, they are now "suspects" and so the boat has to be searched for contraband.  While this is going on, a woman in the boat suddenly lurches toward the back and the entire Navy boat goes berserk with gunfire, killing all of the Vietnamese on the sampan.  These were supposed to be the people that were being protected in this "police action" most of the world called the Vietnam War, but instead they were always going to be suspects from the soldiers' viewpoint and suffer the resulting peril...

I brought up the above illustration, admittedly in itself a work of fiction, to point out what I believe to be the main problem. Whether one is a policeman on patrol duty in this country or a soldier on "police action" duty in an occupied country, they should be respected and applauded for their brave service and sacrifices.  But the behavior of some of these courageous public servants seems to "go south" toward any individual once he or she gets put into the "suspect" category...and the value of that suspect's life becomes diminished as a result.  It is not for the police to administer justice or decide who is guilty.  I cannot understand how the only available option for subduing uncooperative suspects is to shoot them with deadly force.  As far as the racism angle being charged by protesters and movements like Black Lives Matter is concerned, I feel that there may be a tendency for some of those within the police forces to discriminately, even if done unconsciously, move African-Americans they encounter in the line of duty out of the category of the "protected" and into that of the "suspected".  And once you're a suspect, life can get very, very scary: make the wrong move and you're history, whether you are a Vietnamese running in a sampan or an American reaching into your pocket or your car...

Just Finished Reading Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre

Charlotte Brontë is one of three English sisters...the others are Emily and Anne...who wrote fiction in the early-to-mid 1800s.  I already read Emily's Wuthering Heights...here is a link to my 2014 article about it [link].  Jane Eyre was written in the first person from the vantage point of the title protagonist, an orphaned girl, growing up and encountering romance and moral/ethical quandaries in the setting of rural England around the beginning of the nineteenth century, complete with a rigid, entrenched class-based society.  A very sympathetic character, Jane has to endure unfair treatment in childhood at the home of her aunt, who heaps abuse on her while spoiling her own three children.  Eventually, Jane is sent to Lowood, a charity school primarily for poor orphaned girls.  There she grows into a young woman and then sets out to earn her own independent living.  She is hired as a little girl's governess and encounters the estate's enigmatic owner Mr. Rochester, along with an ongoing dark secret hidden in the third story of the mansion.  Will Jane find romance, and what or who is that mystery that from time to time manifests itself in violence?  And at this point, as is usually the case when I'm discussing what I just read, here is where I tell you, the reader, to just go find out the rest for yourself...I'm not gonna spoil the book!

I have a special affinity for stories written in the first person, and Jane Eyre is a very good story.  It may be hard to find a more likable character than the persevering, sensitive, generous, compassionate, intelligent...and above all, assertive Jane.  The irony of this tale, which for its time was very pro-women, is that the author felt the need to publish it under a man's pseudonym, Currer Bell, instead of her own name, due to the perceived prejudicial attitudes then about women writers.  Of course, Charlotte Brontë is now a great name in English literature, and Jane Eyre is the primary reason.  I felt, as I was reading it, that Brontë was making a comparison study in religion and ethics, and how structured, organized religion often failed to live up to the compassion and morality that it sought to impose on the general population, while "true religion", as Jane Eyre herself practiced it, was very personal and beautiful.  I liked that about this book, which I strongly encourage you to read...

2016 Baseball Wild Card Races

With only nine or ten games remaining in the 2016 Major League Baseball season, the teams are scrambling for the wild card positions in the playoffs.  Each league offers two slots, but the competition is close for them.  In the American League, while Boston, Cleveland, and Texas appear headed to become their respective divisions' champions, the wild card race is wide open (teams are followed by their win-loss records):

Toronto      83-69
Detroit        82-70
Baltimore   81-70
Houston     81-72
Seattle        80-72

With only three games separating these five teams, who knows how it will end up.  The National League likewise has solid division leaders in Washington, Chicago (Cubs), and Los Angeles...either already champions or close to clinching the division.  The wild card race here is also very tight, although more restricted:

New York Mets  81-72
San Francisco     81-72
St. Louis             80-72

There's no telling which one of these will end up the odd team out...I'm hoping the Cardinals finally miss the playoffs for a change.  I tend to root for San Francisco, but I'd be content to see the Mets get back to the World Series.  As for the American League, I'd like to see Houston or Seattle get in as wild cards...but I like Boston in the playoffs.  Now who do I think will actually make it to this year's World Series?  The Chicago Cubs and Texas Rangers...

Just Finished Reading Ruth Rendell's From Doon with Death

Within the span of only a few hours I happened to finish reading three different (very different) books last night and this morning.  I'll discuss them all in time, but today I'm focusing on the Ruth Rendell mystery novel From Doon with Death, her 1964 debut book and the first of the long-running Inspector Wexford series...

Having already been won over to Ruth Rendell's writing from her books Portobello and The Crocodile Bird, I was anxious to see what this Inspector Wexford series would be like.  The locale is a small English town named Kingsmarkham and Reginald Wexford is the Chief Inspector for the police there, accompanied by Inspector Mike Burden on their cases.  In this first book, they have a murder to solve, that of a seemingly ordinary housewife with no apparent enemies or history to speak of.  What were Margaret Parson's routines, who knew her, what was the state of her marriage with her husband, and what was her past like? Wexford and Burden tackle these issues in detail and...guess what?  They solve the crime, of course...the culprit, while in 1964 probably caught the bulk of readers totally by surprise, in this year of 2016 would raise hardly an eyebrow.  So being as I am now a temporal resident of 2016 and no longer of 1964, I had pretty much figured it all out before the good inspector delivered his speech at the end revealing the murder mystery's solution...

I'm hoping that further books in this series are a little more difficult to solve and that the personality of the lead character of Inspector Wexford will be better developed.  He came across to me as a cranky, judgmental sort...not exactly someone that I would care to follow through a series.  On the other hand, Inspector Burden was more thoughtful and compassionate.  But it's not his series, is it?  Still, I intend to plod on through the books, hoping for better.  I will say this: Ruth Rendell's The Crocodile Bird and Portobello were much more meaningful and enjoyable for me than From Doon with Death.  Having said that, it must be recognized that the latter was her first book, and with first books it's a good idea to be light on the criticism.  The next Ruth Rendell book I'll be reading is a 1990 story credited to Barbara Vine, a pseudonym of Rendell's...

Watching the Clouds and Moon Last Night

Last night after work, I came home, got a bite to eat, and then went outside to my backyard seat to look at the night sky.  It was around one in the morning, and the sky had shifted slightly from the previous time I had sat out there, with Pegasus directly overhead and the star Deneb Kaitos higher and more southern in the sky.  But with the exceptions of Capella and Aldeberan lying low above the horizon, that was pretty much all of the stars that I saw, for clouds...those with a small, patchy cotton-like appearance, covered much of the east, where I faced.  And near the bottom of the formation was the moon, very bright in almost a last quarter phase.  Clouds were flying over and around it, and I began to notice the visual interaction.  The closest clouds to the moon, as they generally approached it, did not seem to be going in a straight path, but rather in an unnatural, jerky sort of manner, as if some power were manipulating them.  I thought this most peculiar and turned my vision upward to the bulk of the cloud mass.  In it there appeared what looked like a face...no, two faces, one emerging at an angle from the other.  Then I looked back down at a torrent of low-flying darker clouds as they raced upward from the eastern horizon, passed directly over the moon, and then disappeared in the night sky...

Now you may want to take what I have just written, which is an honest account of what I experienced, and try to draw some sort of conclusion about it.  Those inclined to believing more in the paranormal and supernatural may pick up some meaning behind the connections I made with the cloud movements and the faces.  Or perhaps, some may decide that I am being unduly influenced by forces that I should leave well enough alone.  But the truth is that I just took a few minutes to exercise my faculties of observation and imagination, walking away from it with the pleasant feeling of having experienced something special.  So it's not necessary to delve "beyond reality", as a new radio talk show that deals with the paranormal and related topics is named, in order to see meaning in the world around us; learning to observe and imagine...and being able to recognize our imagination simply for what it is...can enrich one's life without going over to the "other side"...

The Pets of My Life

My life has been marked by the presence of pets, and these have been of the most familiar types to us here in America: cats and dogs.  In my early childhood, not long after my parents moved us into a house in  late 1960, they brought home a relatively old, gentle grey cat they named Tom.  Tom was the family pet until his death around 1963 or so.  Not long thereafter they took me and my sister to the humane society and we got two kittens, the grey/white-striped Tiger and the completely black Panther.  Although Tiger seemed to adjust well to life with us, Panther was a bit on the wild side...that one was eventually brought back.  Somewhere along the line, we picked up a giant of a cat we called Smoky...one day that cat just wandered off and never came back.  Tiger remained as our house pet through '64 and '65, but as we let our cats come and go as they pleased, Tiger became more and more estranged from us until we had given up on it coming back home.  In February 1966, my father brought home a cockapoo puppy we named Michelle, after the Beatles song that had been so popular the year before.  I think after that Tiger showed up once or twice more...and then never again.  Michelle began the era of pets we kept either indoors, in the fenced-in back yard, or on a leash.  She gradually became blind until the affliction was total.  But we all loved Michelle and she lived a long, happy life, born in 1965 and passing away in 1981...

It wasn't until after I was married a year when Melissa and I got our first pet together, a miniature poodle we named Taffy...after its color.  Taffy lived long, from 1987 to 2007, and it was sad at the end when she was finally put to sleep.  Cuddles, a dachshund/whatever mix, came along a little puppy in 1997 and also lived to 2007.  And then it was Freckles, another mixed-breed with some Australian shepherd in her, whom we got as a little puppy in 2005 and is still plodding along quite well.  Oh, I might as well also mention that our grown daughter has taken under her wings her own puppy...

In spite of the fact that I've had several pets in conjunction with the childhood and adult families I've been a part of, I have never decided, on my own initiative, that I myself needed or particularly wanted any of them.  It has always been others who seem to have desired the pets, and I was either a child without a say in the matter (although I liked the pets we got) or an adult who was accommodating others' feelings. That doesn't mean that I didn't bond to each cat or dog: I did, and loved them as members of the family, past and present.  But during those eight years when I was completely on my own as a single, I never once had the remotest desire to get a pet.  To me, they're nice to have in the context of a family, but I'm fine without them, too...

Second Frog

I've grown accustomed lately to sitting out in the middle of my back yard around midnight and looking out at the sky.  Because there is a lot of overhead tree growth facing the west, my direction tends to be toward the east, particularly the southeast.  And this time of the year at my latitude, the southeastern night sky isn't very much to behold.  As a matter of fact, under the city lights I have to endure with my star-gazing, there is only one isolated star out in that part of the sky to view: Deneb Kaitos, or Beta Ceti, the brightest star in the constellation Cetus...

In Greek mythology, Cetus represents the whale, or sea-monster...I don't suppose the ancients made much of a distinction between the two...that was attacking the fair Andromeda when the hero Perseus, flying in on the winged horse Pegasus, rescued her...while Queen Cassiopeia, Andromeda's mother, looked on with fear.  All five of these characters are constellations in the autumn evening sky, with Cetus being the southernmost.  While I sit there looking at the sky, Cetus stretches across it from just above the eastern horizon to the southeast.  It has some discernibly visible stars, but overall is still a relatively faint constellation.  As for the name Deneb Kaitos...

Deneb Kaitos, the more traditional name given to Beta Ceti, means "tail of the whale".  But just last year at a meeting of astronomers who apparently didn't have anything better to do, its official designation was changed to Diphda, which in Arabic means "second frog".  Diphda had been around for centuries as well and had been in a kind of competition with Deneb Kaitos for the star's name.  I grew up calling it Deneb Kaitos, but I'll keep Diphda handy in case that I hear or read someone discussing it that way.  As for "first frog", which star is that? The bright Fomalhaut of the constellation Piscis Austrinus, which just precedes it along approximately the same latitude in the sky.  Ah, now I see it: two frogs hopping endlessly across the heavens, one after the other...

Diphda, or Deneb Kaitos, or Beta Ceti, or Second Frog is an orange giant, much larger than our sun, cooler, and with a considerably shorter life span.  It is 96 light-years away and there haven't as yet been any planets discovered orbiting it (info provided by Wikipedia).   That's a bit different from "first frog" Fomalhaut, a triple-star system which is much closer at 25 light-years, the largest star not being a giant and recently discovered to possess a planetary system.   Sometimes while just sitting there gazing at the sky it's easy to just see the stars as dots...looking up facts about each of them can enhance the viewing experience...

Explosive Growth of Internet Information and Educational Resources

It seems that I am constantly in a state of "catch-up" when it comes to the Internet and the explosion of innovations in this exciting digital age of ours.  Being someone who likes history, languages, and reading, the amount of material now available over the World Wide Web is astounding, to say the least.  If you want to know what land Florida's counties covered in 1845, 1855, 1902, or later...all you have to do is perform a search and presto, there they are...I was surprised to see a sizeable town called Newnansville, where Gainesville would have been, on the 1845 map that also showed Alachua County extending to cover much of the Gulf of Mexico coastline.  You can now learn just about anything on YouTube...all that is needed is your time and attention. Just pick any college course and somebody's probably teaching it somewhere on this site.  There is so much language learning material available now on the Internet that it is mind-boggling.  And then you can translate anything you see on your screen into just about any language you want.  Amazing!  And what about the Wiki network that provides so much information and direction on just about any subject conceivable?  Today I accidentally stumbled upon one such site: Wikisources...

Wikisources offers a staggering amount of public domain literature, free of charge.  I like the fiction, but there are also works about science, history, law, religion, philosophy...just check out their categories for yourself!  And what's even cooler is that they has a mobile app called "Wikisurf" that enables me to read any of this material on my cell phone!

Maybe you're chuckling to yourself as I reveal all of these revelations that you might well have known about for some time...I wouldn't be at all surprised, being a bit behind the times in this area.  With this revolution of instant availability of information and educational resources, I'm going to have to sit back and consider revising my personal goals as I take into account the ever-expanding possibilities for growth in so many different areas...

Just Finished Reading Ursula K. Le Guin's The Tombs of Atuan

Three days ago I wrote about science fiction & fantasy writer Ursula K. Le Guin's book A Wizard of Earthsea, the first in her Earthsea Cycle series.  Now I've just finished reading the second volume, titled The Tombs of Atuan.  The setting is the Earthsea Archipelago on our fantasy make-believe planet, on the northeastern island of Atuan, controlled and populated by the vicious Kargish...analogous to our Vikings.  A young girl is taken from her family according to the traditionally held belief that when the Priestess of the Tombs dies, she is reincarnated into the body of another female.  And the Priestess has just died and an investigation ensues across the land to find another born at the moment of her death.  It is poor Tenar who is chosen to live her life among the dark and foreboding tombs in the middle of the desert...

The Tombs of Atuan continues on with Tenar after a few years...she is now called "nameless" or "Arha"...a seeming contradiction of terms.  She learns of the secret underground in the tombs, including a long and tricky labyrinth that contains a treasure room somewhere within.  And in that treasure room is half of the Ring of Atuan, which generations earlier a hero fighting the Kargish lost there.  The other half's fate is unknown, but legend tells that a family in the area may be hiding it.  Why is this important?  In the first book, A Wizard of Earthsea, it is told that protagonist wizard Ged would successfully get the ring and return it to its people.  Predictably, Ged does make his appearance in this second book, although under inauspicious circumstances.  And that's where I'll leave you, the potential reader of this series, to go see for yourself what happens...

In the realm of fantasy literature, there aren't too many female protagonists.  Tenar is a compelling character worth following.  Unlike with Ged in the first book, hers is a life of physical hardship and restrictions with little or no opportunity given for growth or glory.  Her spirit fights against these limitations...while Ged, in the face of his opportunities, had foolishly spurned them...

So now I've read two books in this series, and each one has its own main protagonist.  I wonder what Ursula K. Le Guin...who incidentally lives in Portland, Oregon...has to offer us in the third one.  Guess I'll just have to read it and find out...

Three 5K Races in Area This Saturday

Last Friday I was considering running in a local 5K race, to take place at Cofrin Nature Park off Newberry Road the next morning.  But I was tired that night when I got off from work at midnight and decided to defer my racing to another day.  Now it's the following Thursday and I'm looking at three 5K events, all scheduled for Saturday morning.  One is the Gainesville Youth Chorus Run/Walk & Fun Run at St. Francis Academy on NW 39th Avenue, one is the Sam Strong Run 2 End Duchenne (a form of muscular dystrophy) in Newberry, and the other is the Hunting for a Cure 5K (to cure sarcoma, a type of cancer) in Williston.  I can't run in them all, and if I feel like I did last week, I won't run in any of them.  But I also know that nobody around here is going to schedule any 5K races on a Sunday or Monday morning, when I've had plenty of rest.  So maybe I'll just have to tough it out and get up and run in one of these events Saturday morning...that Youth Chorus race should be the easiest to get to...although that area can be pretty hilly.  The course is described as cross-country/trail, and the race is set to begin at 9 am.  The Newberry race starts at 8:30 and might be easier to handle.  I guess I'll just have to wait and see how I feel about it all when I get off from work again tomorrow night...

Tropical Storm Julia Forms Over Florida Land

I was surprised last night while watching the eleven o'clock local news during my final break at work to discover that a new tropical storm, named Julia, had formed and was in the Jacksonville vicinity.  But I wasn't aware until a few minutes ago that Julia had developed into a tropical storm while its center of circulation was over land...about five miles west of Jacksonville.  This is the first recorded instance of a tropical depression intensifying into a named tropical storm while centered over Florida land, although Beryl likewise intensified while over Louisiana in 1988.  Normally, someone like me living in Gainesville would be concerned about so near a storm as Julia, but almost all of its bad weather lies to its east, over the ocean.  After passing through Jacksonville without much concern other than winds of around 40 mph and strong rip currents along the beaches, it has maintained its minimal tropical storm strength and drifted on northward, at this writing centered in the vicinity of Savannah, Georgia.  There are no steering currents to send Julia on any discernible trajectory, and the various computer models are all over the map regarding where it will eventually go...

It's funny how, with some tropical storms...such was the case with Hermine...we'll go on for days and days noting its position, the prospects for it strengthening, and wondering what direction it will take.  And then there's a storm like Julia that seems to have formed out of nowhere and is suddenly right on us.  And along the lines of storms involving days of anticipation, it's just been announced that there is a new, strong tropical depression that just came off the coast of Africa...

Just Finished Reading Ursula K. Le Guin's A Wizard of Earthsea

A Wizard of Earthsea, written by Ursula K. Le Guin and first published in 1968, is the first book in the Earthsea Cycle, a fantasy series for younger readers.  Being a glutton for punishment, I suppose, I decided to begin reading yet another fantasy series...will I ever learn?  Once again, here we go with the wizards, dragons, secret words and names, arcane histories, wizardry school, bronze age technology, special rules for magic, wise old masters of the craft, and so on.  Oh, and of course this all happens in a make-believe place, this one being the Earthsea Archipelago, basically on a world covered by ocean where the entire human population lives spread out on numerous islands...or so it seems.  The protagonist is a young wizard (or mage) named Ged, also called Sparrowhawk, who grows up on the island of Gont, the homeland of many in the magical trade.  Called to the "profession", Ged has an issue with personal pride and is always trying to impress others with his magical abilities.  At first I was tired of feeling that I was expected to root for this rather shallow character, but then the story took a turn and he became more of a tragic hero, evoking my sympathies...

A Wizard of Earthsea is a short book, but it is full of esoteric details and place names that can tax the reader's memory.  This aspect of fantasy literature I've grown to expect, though.  There is a lot of adventure here, but the story's ultimate messages evolve into themes of self-discovery and balance with the world.  So the story turns out at the end to be a bit deeper than it hinted at the start.  Because of the setting, the narrative has a strong maritime emphasis, giving it a special uniqueness in the fantasy genre.  And Le Guin departed from the stereotypical white-Nordic type of fantasy heroes by making hers dark-skinned...good for her!  I give A Wizard of Earthsea a "thumbs up" and am currently about halfway through the second book in the series, titled The Tombs of Atuan...

NFL Shows Double Standard with "Free Speech"

The National Football League's double standard concerning the issue of free speech as it pertains to player protests during the national anthem and one team's attempt to honor its slain law enforcement officers is too much for me to bear.  Following the refusal of the league to allow Dallas Cowboys players to display a small memorial to the recent murdered policemen from their city on their helmets, the same organization is bending over backwards to appease players who refuse to honor our national anthem, either by remaining seated, kneeling, or pumping their fists in the air.  Now if you are going to side with the players who protested in this manner before yesterday's games because you agree with their agenda but oppose what the Dallas players want to do, then perhaps you are one who believes in freedom of speech only as long as whoever is speaking "freely" agrees with you.  On the other hand, you may agree with some of the reasons for the protests...as I do and am also concerned about civil rights violations of minorities by police...but think that this form of expression is unacceptable.  I know that our Constitution's First Amendment, which protects us from being persecuted or censored by our government for what we say or express, does not extend to private employees who are expected by their employers to abide by a certain standard of demeanor for the sake of the company's public image...or go seek employment elsewhere.  No doubt this also includes playing for professional sports teams as well.  And the National Football League is quick to apply free speech restrictions in the case of the Dallas Cowboys players wanting to honor their fallen police heroes.  But they then turn around and say it is these other players' "rights" to openly show their contempt for this country while publicly on the field, wearing their teams' uniforms, and getting paid their millions.  Something is seriously amiss here.  I followed the first weekend of the 2016 regular season to see what would come of all this after second-rate 49er quarterback Colin Kaepernick started it all by refusing to stand for the anthem before an exhibition game. Sad to say, I am very disappointed at the outcome and plan to boycott the National Football League henceforth...

Since 9/11

The horrendous coordinated terrorist attacks against the United States on September 11, 2001 were done in the name of Islam by Al-Qaeda, using nineteen mass-murderers to hijack four passenger jet planes and bring down the two World Trade Center towers, hit the Pentagon, and unsuccessfully attempt to hit either the White House or Capitol building.  Some 3,000 people died from this abominable perversion of a great world religion by a few. And a few of us here in America may sometimes come to the erroneous conclusion that we brought it on as retaliation for something we had done, like supporting Israel or stationing troops in Saudi Arabia in order to drive Saddam Hussein's Iraq out of Kuwait in the Persian Gulf War.  Or maybe they just didn't like our liberal society with social freedoms of which they disapprove with their distorted view of the way things should be.  But before some of us go too far with this self-assessment...and before any of us condemns the entire religion of Islam for the actions of some who seem to be demonically-possessed and who commit their atrocities in that name, let's just take a look at the list of countries since that infamous day in 2001 who have likewise been victimized by Islamic extremist terrorism, whether by Al-Qaeda, ISIS (or Daesh, as Muslims derogatorily call it), Boko Haram, other terrorist organizations, or lone-wolf attackers (the list comes courtesy of Wikipedia):

India, Israel, Pakistan, Tunisia, Philippines, Indonesia, Russia, Kenya, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Turkey, Spain, Iraq, Bangladesh, Egypt, Netherlands, Lebanon, United Kingdom, Jordan, Yemen, Somalia, Uganda, Iran, Sweden, Germany, China, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Nigeria, France, Bulgaria, Libya, Algeria, Niger, Afghanistan, Syria, Australia, Canada, United Arab Emirates, Cameroon, Denmark, Mali, Chad, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Belgium,...and of course, the United States...

These terrorist attacks over the span of the last fifteen years have happened on five continents and in at least forty-six countries, of which twenty-two...nearly half of the total...have majority Muslim populations.  So, you see, it isn't just us in the U.S.A. they're fighting...don't you think it's about high time the world came together to firmly stand up against this perversion...and openly recognize it for what it is?

Just Finished Reading Ruth Rendell's The Crocodile Bird

A few days ago I read my first Ruth Rendell book, the novel Portobello.  I enjoyed it enough to want to investigate other writings of hers, including her celebrated Inspector Wexford series.  But first I decided to read another standalone Rendell novel, this one titled The Crocodile Bird.  Once again, the setting and culture is distinctly English...but whereas in Portobello the focus was mainly on three different men living in London, this story is about a mother and her daughter living in the secluded English countryside...

Ruth Rendell has been described as a psychological mystery writer.  I think I now understand that assessment: it isn't necessarily so much that her narrative immerses the reader in a whodunit-type mystery as much as unravelling the underlying background and motives of the characters and their actions.  Eve is the mother and Liza her daughter, and they live alone together throughout the girl's childhood in the gatehouse to an estate called Shrove.  Eve, already well-educated in the classical sense, keeps her daughter out of school and teaches her at home.   Eve is obsessed with Shrove and wants to live the rest of her life there while insulating Liza from the rest of the world, which Eve loathes as a terrible place.  The problem here is that Eve doesn't own Shrove...it is another, Jonathan Tobias, an absentee-but-benevolent man about Eve's age, who controls the property she covets and lets her reside there in the role of estate manager.  The entangled, long-running relationship between Eve and Jonathan, the overly protective manner of mother bringing up daughter, and Liza's little acts of rebellion along the way are all significant parts of the story.  Of course, we want to know the roots of all this as well, and that is gradually revealed in the book.  If this were all there was to The Crocodile Bird, it might be interesting on some level...but Liza knows the dark secrets of her mother regarding the disappearances of men on the property.  She loves her mother and is protective of her while herself not subscribing to the latter's cynical view of the world.  And why should she, being brought up ignorant of things others take for granted...like television and shopping, for example...

I guess that's about as far as I can go discussing the plot of The Crocodile Bird without giving away important elements and spoiling it for the reader.  And this is a very good book, a worthwhile investment of your reading time.  One thing I got out of it was something that I had long known from personal experience.  As a child, you can grow to discern the faults of your parents and become reconciled to them, intellectually separating yourself from their undesirable traits while still loving and respecting them.  But there can still be a strong, unconscious imprint of the parents' personalities on the child, the result of which often is displayed throughout that individual's lifetime, for better or for worse.  Can we as adults rise above what we've unwittingly picked up as children and chart our own courses without that imprint negatively affecting us?  The Crocodile Bird is ultimately an examination of this important question...

McDonald's Beats Starbucks with Coffee, Prices, Seating Space

I'm sitting here about an hour before I have to go in to work, which is close by. "Here" is the McDonald's at SW 34th Street and Williston Road at the southern fringe of Gainesville, where I am enjoying their rather generous promotion of iced coffee, any size going for $1.39.  You can get it in different flavors: I prefer hazelnut.  The coffee goes down faster, but I enjoy it more than the hot version.  I can sit just about anywhere I want and, of course, get free Wi-Fi here...so why go to Starbucks when there is more than an even chance that I won't be able to find a place to sit while paying through the nose for less coffee?

McDonald's is more of a blue-collar place to visit as opposed to Starbucks' somewhat snobby, gentrified appeal.  But who am I kidding?  I'm a blue-collar kind of guy anyway...and besides, I know a good deal when I see it.  Also, this seems to one place in town where students haven't taken over, staking out tables for hours with their laptops.  This particular McDonald's is interesting because it is situated at the southernmost I-75 exit in Gainesville and is a frequent stop for travelers.  When I walk out of here, it's less than five minutes to my workplace.  So why do I even bother stopping off at another place before work? 

Just Finished Reading James Patterson's The 6th Target

So far I understand there have been fifteen books published in James Patterson's Women's Murder Club crime series.  I'm reading them in numerical order, having just finished The 6th Target.  This is another Patterson novel in which he shares writing credits with another, the collaborator again being Maxine Paetro.  As is the general pattern in this series, main protagonist Lindsay Boxer, a San Francisco police homicide officer, is embroiled in trying to catch a seriously deranged killer. This time one of her best friends, a fellow member of the informal group called Women's Murder Club, has been shot and seriously wounded.  And there are two other ongoing mysteries as well: abductions of precocious children of wealthy families...along with their nannies, and a series of nasty crimes committed at the apartment complex where Cindy, another "Club" member, resides.  As I read on into the novel, I kept expecting these three distinctly separate story lines to come together at the end, but no...Patterson/Paetro apparently decided to take what could have been three different short stories and combine them into the format of a single novel, adding assorted subplots involving the personal and professional life of Boxer.  I wasn't very surprised, since the same sort of thing happened with the previous book in the series, The 5th Horseman...

These Patterson crime novels are pretty short and simple to read, and I have no problem getting hold of them.  But there is something disturbing about the attitudes of the "good guys", i.e. the police, in these stories.  They tend to be insulting and unnecessarily rough with suspects, something that is easy enough for the reader to support since he or she enjoys the advantage of already knowing their guilt.  But in real life, being picked up and interrogated and/or arrested for a crime is all on the side of our system of justice known as "presumed innocent".  However, the cops in Lindsay Boxer's SF Police Department seem to go on the presumption "guilty until proven innocent".  I've seen this kind of attitude in numerous movies...Clint Eastwood's Harry Callahan series is a prime example...and several television police series.  Maybe the notion promoted in many of these shows that the police should be the arbiters of justice instead of the courts is why I have a sense of aversion to them.  It certainly doesn't help me to get through this Women's Murder Club series...

Happy 30th Anniversary, My Sweet Melissa

Wow, today I've been married thirty years.  It could only have happened with such a wonderful, precious woman like my sweet Melissa...I love you so much, honey!  I'm eagerly looking forward to the next thirty!

Fun and Interesting Labor Day Weekend for Me and Family

This won't be a long entry...I have to get on to work soon.  I had a wonderful, interesting Labor Day weekend with my wife and family.  Melissa, Will, Rebecca, and I attended the University of Florida's season opening football game, experiencing the crush of the crowd as well as the heightening anxiety as to whether or not the Gators were actually going to be able to beat their small college opponent.  It was a rainy night and we got to know the UF campus...at least part of it...quite well on our walks to and from the parking garage...

Then from Sunday afternoon through this morning, Melissa and I went to stay at a hotel we like on Daytona Beach.  That was a fantastic, memorable outing...too bad I have to go back to work now....

The Beach, The Who, and Politically Correct Self-Censorship

Right now I'm sitting here on my fifth-floor hotel balcony in Daytona Beach, looking out on the high tide coming in on the beach and the very windy conditions, thinking that, although this is the time of day that I typically do my outdoor run, I think I might just wait until I have a little more beach to run on.  On the other hand, it's already rained a bit this morning and the outlook for the afternoon just increases the probability of storms.  Oh well, maybe I'll just end up using the treadmill in the exercise room... 

When I'm at the beach like this, listening to the waves and sea gulls, sometimes I think of the great British rock band The Who.  Why? The answer lies on their masterpiece album Quadrophenia, which I bought in 1997 but was originally released in 1973, and contains a number of tracks that vividly put the listener on the beach.  One is Sea and Sand, which I moderately liked...I liked just about everything on this great album...and another is Bell Boy,  which I consider to be one of The Who's all-time greatest songs.  Bell Boy has two lead singers on it, Roger Daltrey and Keith Moon.  I wasn't aware of Moon's vocal contribution until recently, having thought all these years that Daltrey was just altering his voice in a comical way.  But on MTV/Live (Cox Channel 1098 in Gainesville) there was a documentary show about the making of Quadrophenia that spotlighted Moon's special role in the song.  And it was this very show that disturbed me concerning possible self-censorship for the sake of political correctness...

The documentary, titled The Who: Quadrophenia--Can You See the Real Me? went in chronological order to how the different tracks were finally arranged on the album.  It was toward the end, and they had just discussed the recording of Bell Boy and I was anticipating them reviewing how they made the beautiful...and sinister...next track, Doctor Jimmy, which in my opinion was the crowning achievement of Quadrophenia.  But they didn't discuss Doctor Jimmy...no, they just skipped right over it to the final song, Love, Reign O'er Me.  Although that last track was full of sexual overtones, Doctor Jimmy may have been considered too politically dangerous to discuss, with the themes of jealousy, violent revenge, and sexual conquest and aggression dominating its lyrics.  But it was not promoting any of these negative and undesirable feelings and behaviors: it was revealing something about the inner darkness of one of the story's characters (Quadrophenia is structured around a story, much as The Who's Tommy was three years earlier).  Surely they could have said something to this effect and still talked about the song on the show.  And who knows, maybe Pete Townshend, who nearly single-handedly created, wrote, and produced Quadrophenia, just didn't think it was significant enough to cover in the documentary.  But Doctor Jimmy was a big staple on album rock radio and any show about Quadrophenia that omits it has to be questionable, for whatever motives...

Hermine's Aftermath Brings Dreary Weather

In the aftermath of Hurricane Hermine, which only dealt the Gainesville area a glancing blow with minimal damage...although tragically a homeless man in the county to our south was killed when a tree fell on him and the Gulf coast town of Cedar Key suffered devastating storm surge damage...the rest of the Atlantic Seaboard is now in a state of alert with the storm predicted to stick to a meandering, aimless path for the next few days, causing intermittent bad weather, high winds, and severe rip current along their beaches.  Right now I'm sitting at my usual spot at Magnolia Parke Starbucks, having managed to procure the end seat at the window counter after trying sitting outdoors...that is until little raindrops started to fall on my laptop.  The skies have been pretty much uniformly overcast and dreary today with periods of rain.  I like the dreariness...at least in the daytime, but can do without the rain that often accompanies it.  It's best later on in the year when dry cold fronts sweep through us from the northwest, bringing the welcome cloud cover as well as pleasant coolness.  But now I'm happy just to have the clouds...but please, enough rain, already...

The other day a friend of ours gave Melissa four tickets to the University of Florida opening day football game tonight against the University of Massachusetts in whatever they're now calling the Gators' home stadium (they change its name every few years)...so the whole family will be venturing out there this evening.  Aside from finding a parking spot, I'm a little concerned about the weather and how much, if any, it will be raining...especially while we're making our way to and from the stadium (I've been told that our tickets are for seats with an overhang...we'll see).  Maybe a few ponchos will alleviate those concerns...

Although I like the clouds during the day, I feel the opposite about it all after the sun sets.  I love clear nighttime skies, full of stars, planets, and occasionally, the moon.  I have some autumn projects planned with my star-gazing, in particular concerning the fainter and more obscure constellations like Pisces, Lacerta, Grus, Aquarius, Capricornus, Camelopardalis, Sculptor, Phoenix, and Indus...well, Indus may be too far south for my Gainesville latitude.  I just wish I had an available location more out in the unlit country where I could go to see the stars in their full glory...

Just Finished Reading Ruth Rendell's Portobello

Ruth Rendell was a renown British mystery novelist, best known for her long-running Inspector Wexford series.  However, this writer, who sadly died just last year, is not as well-known here in America as she is in her home country.  I hadn't heard of her until just recently and decided to read a standalone novel of hers to get acquainted with her works.  The book was Portobello, published in 2008...

Portobello is a road in London, and various people of different socioeconomic groups live in its vicinity.  Although not so clear at the story's beginning, Portobello develops more as a character study of people as their vastly disparate lives touch upon each other and they deal with their own individual crises.  There is the middle-class bourgeois gallery shop owner Eugene, his girl-friend/fiancée Ella, a pathetic young man named Joel who suffers a heart attack and then claims to have someone from the other side in his mind, Lance, a ne'er-do-well, slow, socially naïve young man, and his reformed criminal-turned-religious fanatic uncle Gib.  While Ella, the most reasonable and "normal" of the characters, serves to connect the others together within the narrative, it is Eugene, Joel, and Lance on whom the novel focuses...

Lance, chronically unemployed and perpetually on the government dole, engages in petty burglaries to supplement his meager income.  At his core, though, he is very immature and even childlike: during one of his break-ins, he is completely distracted by a tasty cake made by the tenant, to the point where he eats most of it right there, strewing crumbs all over the floor and taking the rest of it with him when he leaves.  Joel is a tragic figure of sorts: his very wealthy father completely supports him financially but refuses to talk to him, years after Joel's sister died in an accident for which his father holds him responsible by neglect.  Now his health is poor and he retreats into darkness...with his "companion" increasingly taking hold of his mind.  And Eugene?  This is where Ruth Rendell makes a great contrast.  Eugene has no outstanding difficulties...at least as far as anyone else might be able to discern.  But he is a secretive man, and he has an increasingly obsessive habit of eating sugar-free candies called "Choc-orange".  Surreptitiously procuring and then hiding bags of this stuff from Ella eventually consumes his thoughts...the contrast between Eugene's ridiculous and trivial obsession and the ordeals facing Joel and Lance points to a message I think that Rendell was trying to make to the reader: what really is going on in our lives and our subjective judgments about what is going on are two entirely different matters.  And that, whether or not things are going smoothly in an objective sense, it is our own biased appraisals that will ultimately prevail as to whether we're O.K. or not. But then again, maybe that's not what she was trying to say at all.  I guess it's too late now to ask her...

Portobello is a good story that weaves together the lives of different folks who live under very different circumstances, but close to one another.  The ending is great, and if you like extensive character development in your fiction, you can't beat it.  I'm definitely not through with Ruth Rendell's books...maybe I'll start next on that Inspector Wexford series...

Hermine About to Strike North Florida Gulf Coast

I wrote about what is now called Tropical Storm Hermine last week in an article (here is a link to it [link]).  Back then it was a low pressure disturbance termed "Invest 99-7L".  At that time the meteorologists were giving it as much as an 80% chance of development as it made its way through the Bahamas, posing a threat to South Florida.  Those predictions never materialized, and Invest 99-7L drifted on through the Florida Straits into the Gulf of Mexico, causing little more than some stormy weather in the Florida Keys.  But the area slowly began to develop and eventually was given "Tropical Depression 9" status.  It wasn't until yesterday, though, that its maximum sustained winds reached the point where it was named Tropical Storm Hermine.  And since then it has been rapidly organizing, strengthening, and enlarging, while my worst-case scenario from that earlier article of a tropical system switching directions in the Gulf and hitting Florida around Cedar Key has come true...

To be sure, the projected path of Hermine has shifted a bit to the north, with its center set to hit the Florida Gulf coast south of Tallahassee.  Still, this storm is assymetrical, with its worst weather...including strong thunderstorms, winds as high as 60 mph, heavy rains, and tornado threats...lying to its center's east.  And guess what?  That's exactly where we in Gainesville are!

By noon, Hermine had already strengthened to a powerful tropical storm with maximum sustained winds of 70 mph.  It is expected to be upgraded to Category 1 hurricane status by the time it makes landfall later today.  Since I don't live by the Gulf, I don't have to be concerned with storm surge, which by all accounts is going to be very dangerous...and is already making its effects felt there.  But the strong winds, heavy rain, and chance of tornados are going to be matters that we in the Gainesville area will have to deal with during the next 24 hours, in spite of apparently having "dodged the bullet" of a direct hurricane hit...

My August 2016 Running Report

Running for me in the month of August was more or less a matter of daily routine, with me running mainly around the noontime hour.  I ran a lot more outside in the summer heat, although not to excess...I believe that it helped me with my training.  I amassed a total of 113 miles for the month, running for all but three of the days.  My longest single run was for 4.5 miles.  The problem I had been experiencing with my right foot seemed to diminish, a good sign...

There were no local races in August, but next month I see a couple of 5K races being offered here in Alachua County.  I plan to continue to train my distances upward as I want to get in at least one half-marathon race before 2016 is through...

Voted This Morning at the Senior Rec Center

This morning I slept in a little longer than usual...maybe it's just that I was more tired than usual, or maybe I'm just getting a little older and the ol' body just doesn't jump to my commands as before.  But I remembered that I had some things to do, including going down to my assigned precinct, which is the Senior Recreation Center on NW 34th Boulevard, to vote in today's statewide primary election.  So I dragged myself out of bed and over there.  I voted on the issues and races presented me...which wasn't a lot...slid my ballot into the slot, and walked out of the polling room and down the hallway to the exit, once again not having to wait even one second in line to get my ballot.  While walking, I noticed many elderly people in different rooms enjoying different activities: there was a yoga class, a woman appeared to be telling a story to a ring of enthralled listeners, some folks were on the Internet in the computer room, a couple was sitting in comfy chairs reading, and a man was playing pool. When I was about to walk out of the building, I looked over at the Senior Recreation Center's welcome counter and spied a calendar of events and a brochure of programs they offered.  Snatching them up, I made my way to my car, drove the three minutes back home, and quickly put on some coffee to brew...

This was the last election that I will just be walking through the Senior Recreation Center to vote.  No, I'm not turning cynical on democracy and elections: I'll be turning 60 in early October and, when the general election comes around on November 8, I'll be a registered member of this fun group, finally having met the age requirements.  The Senior Recreation Center is free to participate in: you just have to be 60.  It runs on a nine-to-five, Monday through Friday basis...which means that with my present work schedule, I can only participate in morning and early afternoon activities.  They have chess, bridge, tai chi, yoga, and a monthly book club, as well as a slew of activities that hold little interest for me.  But you don't have to go there for a meeting or scheduled program: you can just sit there and read...or use their computers...or play pool...or who knows what else.  They even have a seniors sports competition, the winners of which get to compete statewide.  When I think of this place, I think of my late parents: my father probably wouldn't like being here, but I think my mother would have loved it.  Whether I end up using the Senior Recreation Center much or not, I'd glad it's here, providing a welcome environment for our senior community...

Viacom Forces MTV Awards Show on Its Many Channels

I don't suppose that, in the grand scheme of things, it really matters all that much to me as a TV viewer...but it does give me some pause when a major media corporation decides to flex its muscles and demonstrate the control it has over my television dial.  Last night I happened to be toggling my remote back and forth between MLS soccer and the NFL preseason game between the Jaguars and Bengals.  I checked out the lineup for the different channels and noted that MTV was holding its annual Video Music Awards program.  Good for them, I said to myself...I had long given up on MTV after it had abandoned showing music videos in favor of those horrible "reality" TV shows that continue to this day.  But hey, they're still giving out awards for music videos...they must be showing them on another channel.  But back to what I was saying...

I was perusing the schedule and began to notice that not just MTV was showing the VMAs...so was VH1, VH1 Classics, CMT, and BET.  Okay, I said to myself, these channels tend to be music-oriented and the company running MTV probably also runs them as well.  But still, I wondered: why prevent these other stations from offering viewers a choice in their programming when MTV is almost universally available anyway?  But then it got worse...

It wasn't just the aforementioned channels showing the MTV Video Music Awards...it was also Spike, Comedy Central, and...of all channels...TVLand!  People go to watch TVLand for the expressed purpose of avoiding crap like MTV!  But I'm not finished...there used to be a channel called Palladia that featured live musical performances.  Last year it was changed to MTV-Live, but the programming seemed to remain unchanged.  I checked that channel: it wasn't showing the VMA show...it wasn't showing anything! Not until the MTV awards show was over did it go back to its regular programming.  So what gives here?

Viacom Media Groups is the umbrella commercial organization controlling MTV, VH1, BET, Spike, Comedy Central, CMT, and TVLand.  They essentially pulled a power play on the American viewer last night, dictating that we could watch their lousy awards program (and it is very, very lousy) or else.  Well, I chose "else".  But today I read that this overhyped ceremony, dominated by clique-insider acts who always seem to win the awards despite their substandard music, never once paid tribute to either Prince or David Bowie.  These two artists, both of whom passed away a few months ago this year, were giants in the industry.  Both of them made appearances in the past on the MTV VMAs shows and won awards for their videos.  But they were spurned this year.  I am resisting a strong urge to say something really profane here...

You may think that you have a great diversity of television programming to choose from, but events like last night's should remind all of us of the concentrated power that a small number of corporate entities have to dictate what we actually get to see.  No wonder so many people are choosing to reject cable television programming in favor of alternatives...

Just Finished Reading Harry Potter and the Cursed Child

Normally when I write one of these articles about books I've just finished reading, I'll take care to include the author's name within the title as a matter of extending proper credit.  With Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, which just came out less than a couple of months ago, this would have been a bit too unwieldy.  For although J.K. Rowling, the creator and author of the seven-volume Harry Potter series, is one of those credited with this new book's authorship, so is John Tiffany and Jack Thorne.  And it is ultimately Jack Thorne who is given full credit for having written this story in rehearsal script form...for that's what the book Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is: the rehearsal script for a play.  Already knowing that and having read some Shakespeare as well as Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman, I decided to go ahead and plunge into it despite its departure in structure from Rowling's original narrative: after all, plays are literature, too...

The setting for Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is again England and Scotland, as it is nineteen years (and beyond) after the climactic end to the original series, at the close of the seventh book Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.  At that book's very end, a glimpse is given of Potter's "future" life and his family as he sends his worried son Albus off to Hogwarts Academy for the very first time.  The new story picks up where that railway station scene leaves off.  Albus, whose life is constantly submerged under the greatness accorded his father while being unfairly compared to him, finds himself sinking into despair and cynicism at Hogwarts...with his only friend in the world coming from the unlikeliest of families.  And that is where I will leave you, the reader, to go find out for yourself "the rest of the story", as radio icon Paul Harvey used to say on his show...

Without wanting to spoil the story for anyone, I will say, however, that much...in my opinion, far too much...of the narrative in The Cursed Child is derivative, not original, in nature, drawing heavily upon previous Harry Potter stories.  And there is a certain literary device commonly used in science fiction stories...as well as in the third Harry Potter book...that is grossly overused here.  Once you get a little ways into the story, you'll know what I'm talking about.  However, having gone into reading Harry Potter and the Cursed Child with subdued expectations, I've come out of the experience recommending it to others, albeit without the accolades I might have extended to a work entirely of Rowling's.  As a matter of fact, the story is so derivative of her earlier works that I wonder how much writing, if any, "J.K." herself actually contributed to this tale that, at least partially, bears her name in the credits...

2016 UF Football Season Begins Next Saturday

Next Saturday evening, September 3rd, will be the opening of the University of Florida's 2016 football season as they play at home against the smaller college University of Massachusetts.  Although the Gators are predicted to easily win this game, the Gator Nation is very interested in seeing just what kind of team second year head coach Jim McElwain will be putting on the field.  After all, many of us are still scratching our heads trying to figure out what happened to Florida in 2015...

When Coach McElwain took over the team last year, hopes were high for the Gators, but most fans did not anticipate them shooting straight to the top and were willing to give them time to develop under the new leadership.  But Florida was impressive, winning ten out of its first eleven games and at one point rising to number eight in the national rankings.  Then in November, even though they continued to win against weaker opponents, Florida's offense began to sputter severely.  By the time they played Florida State in the regular season closer, it had pretty much conked out.  Was this really the same team that rallied late in the game to upset touted Tennessee 28-27, scored 28 points against LSU in a close loss, and annihilated Mississippi and Georgia 38-10 and 27-3 in their respective contests?  When November came around, Florida only managed to barely squeak by Vanderbilt 9-7, won against fading South Carolina in a lackluster game 24-14, and then had to go to overtime to defeat Florida Atlantic 20-14.  Yes, hooray, the Gators won the Southeastern Conference East Division for the first time in several years...but they decisively lost their last three games of the year: to FSU 27-2, to Alabama in the SEC championship game 29-15 (it wasn't as close as the score might indicate), and then a thorough clobbering at the hands of Michigan in their bowl game, 41-7...

I'm no expert on football, but it was clear that once their promising quarterback Will Grier was suspended for the season because he tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs, then it was going to be difficult for them to keep their offensive production at the level they were enjoying. Still, had Florida sported a stronger offensive line, they would have done much better.  And now, we've had the off-season with all the recruiting and training: what will be the results of those efforts? Grier has transferred to West Virginia and at least for now, McElwain has given redshirt sophomore Luke Del Rio the starting quarterback job.  I for one can't wait to see the new 2016 team, especially regarding the new offense.  But I doubt that we'll really be able to tell for sure how good they are until Florida faces a more challenging opponent.  For now, though, UMass will just have to do...

Reviewing R.E.M's Thirty-Year Span of Music

After going through the late, great David Bowie's career collection of studio albums...and thoroughly enjoying it...I have decided to take on an act that I have long respected and liked...the alternative rock band R.E.M., based in my birth-state of Georgia.  R.E.M., which broke up in 2011 in the most amicable fashion imaginable, was composed of front man Michael Stipe, lead guitarist Peter Buck, bassist Mike Mills, and drummer (until 1997) Bill Berry.  I've liked them since early 1984 after watching the video to their haunting song South Central Rain (I'm Sorry), but really began to seriously follow them with the 1989 release of their album Green, the first of a long string of masterpiece LPs, in my humble opinion.  They dipped a bit in quality after Berry left the group due to medical problems and they began to use drum machines, programs and computers more to record their music...probably the low point was their 2004 album Around the Sun.  But they got back on track and recorded two more good albums...and then called it quits while on top...

Eight years ago, on this blog, I listed my twelve favorite R.E.M. songs.  Here is the link to that August 21, 2008 article [link].  This time around, I plan to listen to all of their studio albums and make a more comprehensive list, updating my favorites as well.  Should be another labor of love...

Emerging Tropical Disturbance May Hit Florida

There is a broad area of low pressure sitting over the Atlantic Ocean, just north of the island of Hispaniola (comprising Haiti and the Dominican Republic), that is causing some concern among meteorologists.  Due to wind shearing from its north side, it does not yet have the structure or circulation to be deemed as a tropical depression.  So it is now "simply" referred to as Invest 99-L.  At its center of low pressure, there are few if any clouds, but further south there are heavy rains soaking southern Hispaniola.  The various computer models find this system moving in a west-northwesterly direction toward the Bahamas, developing eventually into a tropical depression, tropical storm...or even possibly a hurricane.  Should it reach tropical storm status, it will be named Hermine.  Also, the various models have this disturbance heading toward south Florida...and then they tend to diverge, ranging from it continuing on into the Gulf of Mexico to traveling upstate in peninsular Florida's interior.  For us living here in Gainesville, that last scenario may end up being the best, for this way the storm may have weakened considerably by the time it reaches us.  On the other hand, should it go into the Gulf and further strengthen, there could arise the possibility of it shifting its direction and reentering Florida...and should that happen around Cedar Key, we could be in for some trouble here. But perhaps I'm going down the road a little too far with my speculation...

After all, this disturbance carries its significance only in computer models and predictions: it isn't much of anything right now.  But in a couple of days, we may be seeing a vastly different...and possibly more threatening...situation...

Tamil Script

தமிழ் அரிச்சுவடி is how you would translate and write out the above title in the Tamil language.  Tamil is one of the national languages of India and is the chief one used at the southeastern tip of that country's peninsula in the state of Tamil Nadu (capital Chennai, formerly Madras).  It is also the second language spoken on the nearby island nation of Sri Lanka...there has been an ongoing conflict there between the majority Sinhalese and the minority Tamil, some of whom have staged a guerilla war for independence.  But back to the language and its script...

If you've ever explored the world of Indian languages, you've probably, as I have, become intrigued by the multiplicity of writing systems...even among similar languages.  As you go further south, the scripts can get downright strange and even beautiful.  That was the impression that the Tamil script made on me when I first beheld it while reading a book on world languages back in the 1970s.  At one point I even memorized its "alphabet", although I never undertook a serious study of the language.  And I still haven't, to this date.  After all, the only real connection I have with Tamil is our family physician for many years back in the 1990s, who is a Tamil...

Omniglot is an excellent language learning site on the World Wide Web.  It has a very user-friendly introduction to Tamil script which, when you scroll down the page I'm supplying the link to [link], you'll see can get to be pretty complicated.  Still, just look at the different letters and tell me whether or not you agree that some of them are beautiful...especially the Tamil letter for "short i":

                                    இ

Tamil belongs to the Dravidian family of Indian languages, primarily, but not exclusively, concentrated in the country's southern peninsula.  The Dravidians are the people who inhabited what is now called India/Pakistan/Bangladesh until the Indo-Europeans invaded/settled the area and either drove them out or assimilated them into their own societies.  Languages like Hindi, Punjabi, Bengali, and Sri Lanka's majority tongue Sinhalese are all in the Indic group of the Indo-European family of languages...to which English, French, German, Latin, Greek, Russian, and Persian also belong.  Tamil, along with Malayalam, Telugu, and Kannada, are the four major Dravidian languages, each with its own distinctive script (although Telugu and Kannada are rather similar).  I'm thinking of relearning the Tamil script and, now with the learning opportunities available via the Internet, beginning a rudimentary study of Tamil's basic vocabulary and sentence structure...

Just Finished Reading Stephen King's End of Watch

End of Watch is the final book in Stephen King's Bill Hodges Trilogy, published earlier this year.  The first book was Mr. Mercedes, the second was Finders Keepers...and here we are at last with the ending.  When I first read Mr. Mercedes a couple of years ago (this series was written and published in rapid order), I did not know whether or not the protagonist Bill Hodges, a retired detective with assorted serious medical issues, would survive it.  Afterwards, though, the name "Bill Hodges Trilogy" kind of gave that away, and then I knew that it wouldn't be until the final volume when his life would truly be endangered.  And to be sure, he is in grave peril in End of Watch, and on more than one front...

The problem with reviewing a book further along in a series is that, by discussing the plot and characters to any appreciable extent, I am unwittingly giving away some of what happens in earlier books.  I'd like folks who read this blog and who feel like reading Mr. Mercedes or Finders Keepers not to be dissuaded from doing so because I spoiled it all for them.  But the ending of Mr. Mercedes directly ties into the narrative and characters of End of Watch...the two are inextricably intertwined.  So let me instead speak in more general terms...

End of Watch deals with a number of topics woven into the story, probably the chief of them being the suggestibility of suicide and the possibility of mass hypnosis via the Internet.  With suicide, I think a lot of people would just as soon not talk about it for the fear that by doing so, they are putting its possibility into others' minds.  Stephen King obviously does not agree: he starkly presents the problem center-stage and challenges the reader to face up to it.  Subliminal Internet hypnosis is also something that we don't quite understand as of yet...King has put forth the notion that it might be implemented through video games.  I've seen some ads for some of them pop up on my cellphone while I'm trying to play Solitaire on it and I have to admit that a few of them, as primitive as they appear on the surface, are visually very intense with strobe-like effects...

There, I don't think I gave anything away...but if you're game enough to plow through this series to this final book, maybe you can provide your own reaction to it and what you feel Stephen King was trying to convey.  It's a good story, but not for the faint of heart...

Few Know Their Local, State, and Congressional Districts

Yesterday I wrote about my sample ballot for the upcoming primary election on August 30...mine is for Democratic-registered voters.  I mentioned a tough primary contest going on in the Florida House of Representatives District 21, which is very close to the subdivision I live in...but I actually live in District 20, less than a quarter mile from the boundary line between the two.  My district is represented by Clovis Watson, a Democrat...and I just discovered that he is running unopposed by any Republicans in the general election.  But almost literally just across the street, Republicans are furiously slinging mud at each other for the seat being vacated by Keith Perry, who is running for the State Senate District 8 seat this election against Democrat Rod Smith.  The main GOP contenders in District 21 are Chuck Clemons, a familiar name in Gainesville politics, and Wenda Lewis, a political neophyte whose family business is oil.  The two have been accusing each other of bad things...like that Clemons used to be one of those nasty Democrats and that Lewis's company was cited in the past for some transgression.  Both are claiming to be the conservative's conservative, each brandishing "A" grades from the NRA...and Clemons is boasting  tea party congressman Ted Yoho's support.  Besides these two, there is a third candidate in this district for the Republicans, Tim Rogers, who doesn't appear to be interested in jumping into the mud pit with them.  Whoever wins the primary will face Democrat Maryhelen Wheeler in the general election...

Watching the ads of Clemons and Lewis on TV constantly probably gives a lot of folks living in Gainesville the idea that they should be deciding which one to vote for.  Of course, if you're not a Republican, then you don't get to play.  And if you can, then you just might want to consider that third candidate, Rogers, before you make up your mind.  But this election is only for the western half of Gainesville...and points beyond...and not for the eastern side.  But I think folks are still confused about that: I saw a Tim Rogers sign in my own neighborhood...maybe that homeowner supports him, but he or she cannot vote in Tim's primary election, which is in the adjacent district.  For my part, I erroneously wrote in my blog a few days ago that Keith Perry was currently my state representative, but I'm in District 20 and it's Clovis, not Keith...

Maybe what I'm trying to get at here is that it isn't very easy for citizen voters to be able to tell which districts they live in, and watching all these television ads can be confusing.  Has it ever happened to you that you thought long and seriously about a race and then went to the polling station only to  discover that it was in another district from where you live?  Well, it's happened to me and I think, in our information age, more serious efforts need to be taken to inform voters which city, state House, state Senate, and U.S. House districts they live in.  All one should need is a search engine on the Internet whereby they enter their address and the information about their particular national, state, and local districts is made instantly available.  Sounds like something that the Supervisor of Elections should be responsible for implementing...

Looking at My August 30 Primary Election Sample Ballot

With early voting already underway here in Florida, I'm looking at my own Alachua County sample ballot for the upcoming primary election scheduled for August 30.  Not all of the races that will be decided in November are on this ballot, since some of the races for my registered party (Democratic) are unopposed.  Therefore, for my Florida State Senate (District 8) and State House of Representatives (District 20), I'll have to wait until the general election on November 8 to cast my ballot.  However, in the adjacent State House District 21 race on the Republican side, the media campaign has turned into a mudslinging festival among the two leading contenders.  And in the Senate race (remember, this is the Florida State Senate) Republican Keith Perry and Democrat Rod Smith have been going at each other hot and heavy a long time already.  Nor will I have a vote on my U.S. House District 3 seat, currently occupied by Republican Ted Yoho, who is apparently running unopposed within his own party...until November.  But I will be able to vote on the Democratic side of the U.S. Senate contest this year for the position now taken by Marco Rubio, who has decided to run for reelection after all...although not without some competition within his own party.  Also on the ballot for me are primary races for county sheriff, supervisor of elections and two county commissioner seats. Additionally, there are votes for one school board seat and a state constitutional amendment proposal that would exempt, for a twenty-year period, enhanced personal property values derived from solar or renewal energy improvements from being considered when assessing property taxes.  I am interested in the county commission seats because the two incumbents rule the commission like they own it, and one of them has been in office already for 16 years...time to turn over the reins to someone else, I say...

Just Finished Reading Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card

Somewhere buried in the deep recesses of my garage is my copy of a collection of short stories by contemporary science fiction writer Orson Scott Card.  It includes a short story, titled Ender's Game.  I never got around to reading it, and now I'm glad: Card later expanded it into a full-length novel, which I've just finished reading...

In Ender's Game, it is in the future as humanity, by this time very adept in space travel, has had to fight off two invasions of a bug-like alien civilization (hence their name "buggers") into our solar system.  And as a third invasion is envisioned, the military and civilian leaders of planet Earth have to come up with a plan to finally win decisively and permanently over the enemy.  They test and train young children in order to make them military commanders in this final conflict.  One of these children is Andrew "Ender" Wiggin, and this book is basically his story.  The narrative goes from the final hours with his family through his ordeals in the space military schools...and beyond.  Along the way, he is heavily subjected to bullying by his peers which his teachers not only allow but actually encourage.  Part of the training is in computer games and part is in elaborate simulations of battle scenarios where the students are divided into different armies and pitted against each other.  The authorities have high expectations of Ender and have to walk a tight-rope between pushing him too hard and not giving him adequate training and preparation for the impending war...

When I read about Ender undergoing bullying, it reminded me a bit of my own childhood.  No, I wasn't a constant target for bullies, but I did have a very slight build and a gentle nature, which gave some others the notion that I was weak and an easy target.  I suppose that happens today as well, but back then adults seemed to be of the philosophy that it was the victim's responsibility to handle bullying, instead of today's general attitude that focuses on the bully as the one with the problem.  Ender's Game was like my youth when grown-ups turned a blind eye to the abuse clearly going on around them...

Ender's Game is a very well-written novel that develops some vivid and hard-to-forget characters.  It has an unexpected climax, and the story's ending not only ties up its loose ends very well, but also leaves room for sequels...which Card has obliged us by writing.  I haven't seen the movie adaptation that came out about five years ago and starred Asa Butterfield...known for his title role in Martin Scorsese's wonderful movie Hugo...as Ender Wiggin, with Harrison Ford and Ben Kingsley in supporting roles.  Guess I'll now have to go check it out...

Ready to Investigate Another Musical Artist's Collected Recordings

I had a great time over the last few weeks investigating the career musical recording production of the late David Bowie, discovering many, many songs that I would never have heard had this extraordinary artist not died this past January.  Don't get me wrong: I'm sad that he passed on, but it was that passing, in conjunction with the release of his final album Blackstar, that prompted my interest.  He recorded 27 studio albums, so listening to all of them was time-consuming, to say the least.  But now I'm done with this project, albeit with a long list now of my favorite Bowie tracks.  And now I want to do the same with another recording artist.  Should I attempt to examine the collected works of Prince, who also died not too long ago?  Or should I choose a different musician or group?

I'm already pretty familiar with the collected recordings of acts like the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, the Doors, Nirvana, the Moody Blues, the Who, Regina Spektor, Beck, Radiohead, Kasabian, Spoon, Gorillaz, Arcade Fire, and Sufjan Stevens...some of these are renown in the world of classic rock, some are famous in the alternative genre...and some aren't all that generally well-known.  I think it might be interesting to take an act famous for their singles hits and then listen to some of their complete albums in order to see what I can find of value.  Besides Prince, the great Canadian band Guess Who, Madonna, Marvin Gaye, Elton John, Stevie Wonder, and the Rolling Stones may be the leading contenders.  I'm going to listen to three of Madonna's albums in a few days...Ray of Light, Music, and Madonna (her debut release)...and see whether listening to further recordings will be a worthwhile venture.  I picked those three albums out of her thirteen studio works because I already know that they feature some of my favorite songs of hers.  I've always felt that Madonna had great musical talent and could have had her fame and success without going overboard with the videos, role-playing, and celebrity hoopla.  On the other hand, David Bowie also did those things in his own way...maybe that's why I had erroneously disregarded his music for so long...