Major League Soccer Officiating is the Pits

Yesterday I was watching a Major League Soccer match between Orlando City and the Chicago Fire, held in Orlando's new soccer stadium and shown on FoxSports.  It was a tough game to get through, not because "our" Golden Lions lost...no, they drew 0-0...nor because it was so hot and humid there that I thought some of the players were close to passing out.  No, the big...and I mean MAJOR big...problem I had with this contest was the officiating.  And it's not just this game, it's a big recurring problem across a league that is struggling to gain prestige and status in the world...

In soccer, most fouls are called on the spot and the ball goes over to the other team with play quickly resuming.  Some fouls are more flagrant, though, and the referee will assign a "yellow" card to the offending player...get a second yellow and he's kicked out of the game, leaving his team short one player for the duration of the game.  But there's also the "red card" option in case a foul is extremely flagrant...in this case the player is ejected at once and the team once again has to play at a numerical disadvantage.  In yesterday's Orlando-Chicago game, Orlando players were twice given red cards and ejected, putting the team at a two-player shortage for much of the game.  The problem is that the fouls, according to what I could see as well as the TV announcers' reactions, weren't even remotely close to being flagrant...even giving out yellow cards would have been debatable.  But this is nothing new: I've seen this problem with the officials overreacting and awarding red cards ever since I began following this league three years ago and there seems to be no sign of it letting up...

It's true that the caliber of play in Major League Soccer, the premier professional league for the United States and Canada, is much lower than those top leagues in Europe like the English Premier League, Germany's Bundesliga, or Spain's La Liga.  It's even lower than its chief North American competitor, Mexico's Liga MX.  But as inferior to the other leagues that our play may be, it pales in comparison to how bad the officiating is here.  I'm getting sick of watching MLS games, to be perfectly candid, and for one reason: there is a high probability that at some time during the game officials will blow a crucial call and unfairly hand it over to one team over the other.  That Orlando was able to pull out a draw in their match yesterday made me proud, but they were cheated out of a probable victory because of lousy officiating.  When is the league going to do something about this? If they don't Major League Soccer will continue to be just a second-rate league...

Just Finished Reading Louisa May Alcott's Little Women

There was a copy of Louisa May Alcott's book Little Women in my home when I was growing up...but being a boy I wasn't about to read it...although come to think of it I did end up reading all of my sister's Donna Parker, Trixie Beldon, and Lennon Sisters books...but Little Women was old.  Well, more than fifty years later it's that much older, but I've aged as well and finally decided to delve into it.  I'm glad I did...

The setting at the start of Little Women is the early 1860s during the American Civil War as the family of a mother and her four adolescent daughters living somewhere (unnamed) in the northeastern U.S. copes with economic hardships while the father is away serving as a Union army chaplain.  The girls, in descending order of age, are Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy...each with her own distinct personality and interests. Meg is the most domestically inclined, Jo is the tomboy with a flair for writing, Beth is a shy, mercifully-inclined lover of music, and Amy, the "baby", is more self-centered and materialistic than the others and loves art.  The story concerns itself with how these girls, in their own individual ways, grow up as they help (and often challenge) each other...while their mother "Marmee" dispenses her own brand of loving wisdom throughout.  Not all is so rosy, though, and tragedies threaten and sadly strike this sweet-spirited family as well.  I wouldn't recommend Little Women for its plot and narrative as much as for its philosophical tone and unforgettable characters, and not just Meg/Jo/Beth/Amy.  The lessons contained in it for better living are not just applicable to young women: demonstrating grace, patience, forgiveness, and generosity, especially during times of hardship, are virtues sourly lacking across the demographic spectrum in today's dog-eat-dog world. Why not check out this great old American classic novel and learn a little for yourself?  Can't hurt...I came out of the experience wanting to read the sequel Little Men, which I understand also features the spunky and outspoken Jo, by far my favorite character in Little Women...

Assorted Meanderings on a Saturday Afternoon

This is one of those articles that I haven't planned...I'm just sitting here in "my" Magnolia Parke Starbucks in northern Gainesville waiting for my iced coffee...excuse me a moment, there it is.  So, where was I...oh, yes, this is more of an impromptu writing, so forgive me if I meander a bit.  Let's see, it's supposed to rain a lot up here this weekend, but it's late afternoon and so far we haven't had any rain...but the clouds are threatening.  I love overcast skies...but only when it doesn't rain.  It's also my favorite condition for going running, something I'm bent on doing more of as I try to build my endurance back up for future half-marathons...

I left for Starbucks right in the middle of professional soccer's UEFA (European) Champions League finale between Real Madrid and Juventus.  When I turned it off, the game was in the second half and tied 1-1.  And it was very exciting and obviously featured two of the best teams in the entire world...as well as possibly the greatest player,  Real Madrid's Cristiano Ronaldo.  But I've never been all that interested in these tournaments, instead focusing on the different leagues...and except for "our" Major League Soccer, all the rest have just finished their seasons.  And yes, I intend to watch an MLS match later this evening on ESPN [correction: it's tomorrow when ESPN shows the game]...

Politically, I feel like I am making myself into something of an outcast to both sides of the ongoing Trump melodrama, wanting the man to succeed at being president but also suspicious of his weird affections for Russia's authoritarian Putin regime.  I don't think he should have decided to pull the U.S. out of the Paris Accords on climate change, but he was right about criticizing how different nations were being treated differently.  That being said, I have been frustrated looking at Facebook from time to time and seeing post after post either excoriating Trump in the most vicious terms or praising him to high heaven as America's savior.  To those pursuing their respective political agendas here, it's all personal...each "side" treats everything as if the fate of the world hangs in the balance: either stop Trump or else it's all over or stop those trying to stop Trump or else it's all over...sorry, folks, you're welcome to take me off your political message list as I'm tired of seeing all this crap.  Our president, whom I did not support in the election last year, is still our president and I respect his office and the process that elected him there.  Just because I think he's a jerk doesn't change that and I will root for him to do good things in office as well as continuing to criticize him when he flubs up...and will most likely (but not definitely) vote for someone else in the next election...but let's please get away from the apocalyptic doomsaying, okay?  Oops, sorry again, I probably offended some of you by saying that...

When I get home from work, my shift ending at midnight, I often watch Rod Serling's old Twilight Zone series, shown at 12:30 on MeTV (Cox Channel 115 in Gainesville).  But right after that program ends, they show Alfred Hitchcock Presents, a series older than Twilight Zone that goes back to the 1950s.  I hadn't seen these shows but the other night watched an episode titled "Breakdown", which starred Joseph Cotton as a man paralyzed in a car accident trying to convince others that he isn't really dead...as they wheel him into the morgue to perform an autopsy...scary stuff!  I may be finding myself looking a bit more into this series that I've managed somehow to ignore all my life...

Speaking of TV series, I've heard they're working on the next (and final?) season to Game of Thrones, based on the George R.R. Martin fantasy book series A Song of Ice and Fire.  Unfortunately for Martin's loyal readers, he has reneged on his duties as an author and lapsed with writing the next book, The Winds of Winter.  So the television series has actually gone ahead of the written series, something I find hard to forgive.  If Martin doesn't want to take up the task of concluding his series, then he should hand the work off to someone else...someone like Brandon Sanderson.  Sanderson is a very good fantasy author in his own right and finished the interminable Wheel of Time series after the original author, Robert Jordan, passed away after putting out eleven books with no end in sight and numerous subplots and new characters muddling everything beyond comprehension...which is what Martin's series is beginning to look like...

Quote of the Week...from Kevin Durant

I learned how to pass when I was real young. That's one thing I always knew how to do was find the open man.                                            ---Kevin Durant.

Actually, I have two quotes from one of the greatest basketball players of our time, Golden State Warriors forward Kevin Durant...who last night dominated the opening championship series game against Cleveland with his 38 points and deft ball handling, passing, rebounding, and defense.  Let me focus on the above quote for now: passing in basketball has been an underrated skill as I experienced the sport, but it is crucial to employ it in order for an offense to penetrate the defense around the basket.  When I used to watch my son...and later, my daughter, play as kids in local basketball leagues, the coaches were all very good at teaching their young players how to play defense.  But offense? It was often near-impossible to score...I remember one game that went 2-0.  The reasons are fourfold: one, children don't as yet possess the arm strength to effectively throw the ball hard and fast enough to a teammate without someone on defense catching on and intercepting it.  Two, in order for an offense to be consistently effective, all five players need to be in on passing and positioning themselves...usually in these "little" leagues there are maybe two or three who are strong players and the rest tag along, mostly ineffective.  Three, effective passing in basketball involves a well-drilled appreciation of the sport's dynamism: you pass where your teammate will be, not necessarily where he or she is right now. And four, there is a tendency...more in youth sports...for those more aggressive (and admittedly often very talented) players to hog the ball and completely forego passing, instead just bulling their way through the defense and to the basket.  The problem with all this is the false notion that to pass the ball to another is a tacit admission that they are somehow better players than oneself and can handle the ball better...when in fact it's the opposite that is probably true.  Kudos to Durant for recognizing at a very early age that there is more to basketball than fancy dribbling...any coach's son can be trained to do that...

And now for Kevin Durant's second quote: When people are used to you doing something, they want you to stay in that lane.  This statement of his carries a much broader life meaning than just basketball, and I couldn't agree with it more.  People tend to feel uncomfortable being around another who is undergoing major changes in his or her life and would prefer the old...even less mature and more selfish...version that they are used to dealing with.  What was that line in the Judy Collins song Both Sides Now?  Oh yeah, "But now old friends are acting strange, they shake their heads, they say I've changed. But something's lost but something's gained in living every day."  Growth is a very crucial aspect of a healthy life, and it is manifested in change that will cause resistance and opposition on the part of others, even if that change is for the better...

5/28 Sermon on 1 John, Part 7

Let There Be Light is the name of Pastor Philip Griffin's ongoing Sunday morning message series here at Gainesville's Family Church, based on the New Testament book of 1 John.  The most recent installment, form May 28th, is titled Relate and is based on Chapter 3, Verses 16-24: you can read the scripture passage via Bible Gateway through this link: [link]...

Pastor Philip's focus in this sermon is how real faith is reflected in our relationships, both with others and with God.  The emphasis is on placing others before ourselves, both in regard to our generosity and love as well as our expectations...especially when it comes to who needs to be "Jesus" and assume the higher role.  And that love and generosity doesn't just apply to family and friends: enemies and strangers should be recipients as well...although I'd like to add a caveat that this doesn't mean to deny reality and forego prudence and protection.  As far as our relationship with our heavenly father is concerned, by living in God's presence...as our pastor stressed...he exposes our flaws and enables us to overcome them...and empowers us to go against our more selfish inclinations and love our family, friends, and even strangers and enemies, as ourselves...

If you'd like to see this message yourself, you can click on the following link to the church's YouTube video website: [link]. The Family Church, at 2022 SW 122nd Street, holds its Sunday morning services at 9:30 and 11. Along with the pastor's sermon is exciting praise music, welcoming people, and good coffee.  A nice place to spend your Sunday morning...

My May 2017 Running Report

For all of May this year I have had to deal with recurring arm pain, missing work at the beginning of this month and laying off of the running as well for a few days.  As my situation improved, I was able to pick it back up and even ran in a race: the May 20 May Day Glow Run, held early in the evening in Tioga.  Although I'm still dealing with the arm pain, I am now fully functional and there seems to be little correlation with the pain and my activities...I have an instinctive feeling that exercise actually helps.  Anyway, my monthly total mileage was 64, and my longest single run was for that race...at 3.1 miles...

Now we're entering the hot months of June, July, and August, with very few races offered here during this span in the Gainesville area.  That's okay since my main goal this coming month is to reestablish a regular daily routine of running the 3.3-mile course I designed through my neighborhood, with travel coming up during the final week.  If there are any half-marathons in my future, they will have to wait: first things first...

Weeky Short Story Review: The Wall Around the World by Theodore Cogswell

Theodore Cogswell, who lived from 1918 to 1987, wasn't a very prolific writer, but he hit one right on the mark in 1953 with his science fiction short story The Wall Around the World, published in the anthology Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories: 15 (1953) (DAW Books, 1986).  If you started reading this brief tale but left before the ending, you might prefer to instead place it in the fantasy genre of fiction...but then you'd be missing its entire point...

A boy lives a Harry Potter-kind of life, flying on broomsticks, making incantations, and learning all sorts of magic in his magically-based society...but there are no muggles here, everyone is a wizard.  And this place he lives in is surrounded by an unsurmountable high smooth wall, with the "other" side forbidden with dire consequences of punishment.  But curious Porgie, realizing that no magic will get him over the wall to see what is beyond, begins to experiment with scientific ways to accomplish this feat...in spite of warnings from his teacher.  To see what happens, I recommend you read the story yourself, although you might find some difficulty in obtaining it...

As I see it, The Wall Around the World is a prescient analogy to what is going on now in the world around us: the contrasts between intuition and science when it comes to increasing our knowledge and enlightenment...and the gulf between the two approaches has become only wider since this story's release in 1953.  We've had the 1960s counterculture, the New Age movement, renewed interest in witchcraft and the paranormal, and different religions experiencing rebirths in popularity through fundamentalism...none of them based on science.  Yet we enjoy the fruits of scientific accomplishment as well, while at the same time some of us criticize technological development as being out of harmony with life.  People get bored watching real moon landings on TV and change the channel to watch Star Trek reruns, and then flock by the hundreds of millions to movie theaters to watch fantasy or science fiction movies.  I can understand this pushback on science to an extent when I look back on the twentieth century, the early part thoroughly dominated by a strong push for scientific and technological development...as well as two world wars, discredited political ideologies like Communism and Nazism claiming scientific justification and causing mass subjugation and millions of deaths, and the racist "scientific" field of eugenics, incorporated by the Nazis, that further damaged the image of science in the eyes of many.  And the environmental movement was also in some ways an indictment of how technology had been applied in a shortsighted manner, leading some people to mistakenly reject it in its entirely as a means of progress...

Of course, in The Wall Around the World, as well as with Harry Potter, the magic is real...whether or not there is anything of this sort happening in our world is a matter not of objective analysis but rather subjective personal conclusions.  And that, I think, is a major reason why science doesn't seem all that attractive to many while these more intuitive areas do...for in the latter we get to create our own personal "realities" and "truths" that can be neither objectively proven nor disproven...

Tuesday's List: My Favorite Star Trek (Original Series) Episodes

Like Twilight Zone, the original series version of Star Trek endures as one of my all-time favorite television series.  It originally ran on NBC from 1966 to 1969 with three seasons and 78 episodes.  Originally slotted in at 8 pm Thursdays, I would regularly miss the first half of each episode since my parents, who were autocratic when it came to TV shows they preferred, were big Bewitched fans...and that ABC comedy lasted to 8:30...keep in mind that we lived in more primitive times with only one television set.  So I came to know the endings of a lot of episodes, only later discovering how they started out.  A few years after the series was cancelled, Star Trek reruns became a favorite item on my local stations' schedules and I got to know each one well, often speaking the lines before the characters did.  For this article, I have listed my 30 favorite episodes in order of liking.  The titles are in capitals and I wrote something brief next to each so that you might be able to identify which episode I'm referring to.  By the way, what are your favorite Star Trek episodes?

And here's my list...

1 THE DOOMSDAY MACHINE ...enormous cone-shaped weapon eats planets
2 THE CORBOMITE MANEUVER ...Enterprise threatened in space...or tested?
3 THE SQUIRE OF GOTHOS ...bratty Jack Cassidy kidnaps crew to his private planet
4 THE IMMUNITY SYNDROME ...giant one-celled organism in space
5 THE MENAGERIE, PARTS 1 & ...with series pilot flashback of Captain Pike
6 THE RETURN OF THE ARCHONS ...mindless platitudes dominate a planet's people
7 THE CITY OF THE EDGE OF FOREVER ...back to the '30s, with Joan Collins
8 THE GALILEO SEVEN ...Spock logically chooses desperation in decaying orbit
9 THE CHANGELING ...Nomad destroys everything imperfect
10 MIRROR, MIRROR ...alternate universe, Spock with beard
11 WINK OF AN EYE ...people living in accelerated time take over ship
12 WOLF IN THE FOLD ...Jack the Ripper endures
13 ERRAND OF MERCY...planet's pacifists ruin war between Kirk and Klingons
14 CHARLIE X ...rescued teen orphan with angst and powers
15 OPERATION: ANNIHILATE! ...Spock hit with pain-causing blob
16 SHORE LEAVE ...events on planet respond to crew's words
17 A TASTE OF ARMEGGEDON ...virtual war between planets
18 WHERE NO MAN HAS GONE BEFORE ...two of the crew grow godlike
19 THE CLOUD MINDERS ...city in the sky subjugates miners on surface
20 ALL OUR YESTERDAYS ...doomed planet finds its own past
21 A PIECE OF THE ACTION ...takeoff on gangland era
22 MIRI ...children left on planet fight the "grups"
23 THE NAKED TIME ...crew infected, change personalities
24 THE DEADLY YEARS ...Kirk and others age rapidly
25 OBSESSION ...Kirk pursues old nemesis: a deadly living cloud
26 THE TROUBLE WITH TRIBBLES ...tribbles vs. the Klingons
27 THE ALTERNATIVE FACTOR ...man fights his anti-universe counterpart
28 BALANCE OF TERROR ...wily Kirk battles Romulans and cloaking device
29 THE MAN TRAP ...salt-eating creature takes on familiar forms
30 THE DEVIL IN THE DARK ...miners face vicious monster

John F. Kennedy's 100th Birthday and Memorial Day

John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the first president in my memory (although I was born during Dwight Eisenhower's tenure), would be 100 years old today had he survived his assassination more than 53 years ago.  That he might have lived to today is problematic, for according to Kennedy historian Robert Dallek he suffered from numerous health problems, including the serious Addison's Disease as well as severe pain from osteoporosis of the lower back.  On the other hand, his mother Rose lived to the age of 104.  JFK only served in the White House a little less than three years, but made an enormous, positive impact on both our country and the world at large.  He not only faced down the Soviet Union during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, but also began the process of peace between the cold war rivals with the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty the following year.  Many of Kennedy's social proposals, such as civil rights legislation and medical care for the elderly that would be eventually known as Medicare, were held up in Congress and wouldn't be passed until his successor, Lyndon Johnson, an experienced arm-twister with legislators, aggressively pushed the bills through.  And John F. Kennedy gave this nation two great worldwide images: one was the Peace Corps with American volunteers going abroad to help others...the other was the goal of landing people on the moon and returning safely...within ten years.  It was a terrible tragedy when he was murdered on that Friday afternoon in Dallas on November 22nd, 1963...I heard about it back then right after coming back to my second-grade classroom after lunch.  In my estimation, John Fitzgerald Kennedy has been the greatest president during my lifetime and I doubt that there will be one greater than him in the future...

Today was John F. Kennedy's birthday, but this year May 29th lands on a Monday, so it is also Memorial Day.  Thus we also pay our respects to the many brave and most honorable men and women who made the ultimate sacrifice...with their very lives...in order that we may enjoy living in freedom, both to express ourselves and to pursue our own dreams and beliefs.  I saw President Trump on TV earlier at Arlington National Cemetery, presenting the wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier...he displayed the solemnity and respect that the ceremony entailed, an admirable job...

I for one am sorry that the tendency has been in the last few decades to diminish the practice of pledging allegiance to our American flag on different public occasions and standing in a respectful, attentive manner at the playing of the National Anthem.  Our national symbols stand for the values that those brave soldiers who died for the United States of America in combat fought to protect...for us and for future generations...

Trump, Russia, Investigations

When I was much younger...back in the early 1970s...I was frustrated by what seemed on the part of many liberal politicians and media figures then to be a double standard when it came to judging the behavior of communist nations vs. those of the rest of the world.  If Chile or another Latin American country fell to a military coup and began a right-wing autocracy, the liberals would scream bloody murder about how terrible it was...but they seemed content with brutal, totalitarian leftist societies like Mao's China, Cuba, and the Soviet Union.  With the latter, of course, the Russians were the dominant national group.  Nowadays, though, the tables seem to have turned diametrically in the opposite direction, with the politically more conservative Putin regime there encountering criticism from liberals in the West while many conservatives here and abroad are giving them a free pass, making excuses for every aggressive action they take...that is, when they aren't completely denying everything.  So now it's frustrating to have to hear conservative opinion-makers in the media refusing to accept that there is any kind of threat from Russia...and this trend seems to mostly stem from our current president, Donald Trump, and his repeated praise of Putin and strange overfriendliness with him and his cronies.  Ever since it was disclosed...before the 2016 election...that Russia had interfered on Trump's behalf and hacked Democratic Party computers and turned over embarrassing documents for release on WikiLeaks, there has been a level of suspicion of an ongoing connection between our Russian adversaries and the Trump campaign...but no proof of this has been made public.  Now there are numerous investigations going on, including one by independent counsel and former FBI chief Robert Mueller.  From time to time a leak will happen and some information about the behavior of Trump surrogates, be they current Attorney General Jeff Sessions, former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, or, lately, close advisor and son-in-law Jared Kushner, will make it into the news.  When this happens, the right-wing deniers like President Trump, media talking heads like Fox's Judge Jeanine and Sean Hannity (who is pushing a defamatory narrative that Hillary put a hit on a former campaign worker), and others like talk radio's Mark Levin only want to criticize the leaks themselves, completely dismissing the Russian angle.  But the way I see it, were it not for that trickle of information, incomplete as it is, the American public...which should be properly informed...would not be able to recognize that there was even a problem...

The press has an important role in holding our government accountable for its actions.  We currently have a national government that sees one party controlling both the executive and legislative branches.  Referring again back to those early 1970s, the Watergate scandal might never have been uncovered had Woodward and Bernstein...without the aid of their insider "Deep Throat" leaking information...not been able to unearth the cover-up going on.   And the government then was split with the Democrats at least in control of Congress.  So now it is even more imperative that people can get an idea about what is going on, although I doubt that the Republican-led Congress will ever even consider lifting a finger to impeach a president from their own party.  And even if the Democrats take back the House of Representatives in 2018 and win every single Senate election that year, they'll still only have a 56-44 advantage in the Senate...and 67 votes are required to remove a president from office.  So all this impeachment talk being made by Trump's opposition should be taken for what it is: to weaken the Republicans and strengthen the Democrats in the next election...

I don't see any proof that Trump and his political pals have conspired with the Russian government, but I now suspect some collusion nevertheless.  What has just been revealed about Jared Kushner, a month after the election, secretly contacting the Russian ambassador in hopes of establishing a clandestine communications link between that regime and the future president...with everything said between the two parties to be available to Russian intelligence but deliberately cut off from American intelligence...sounds so sinister that I have to shake my head in disbelief when I hear apologists for Trump get on TV and try to explain it away.  Maybe they can make themselves and Trump's unquestioning fan base think it's all innocent, but it sounds treasonous to me.   And if you remember the previous article I wrote on this subject, it should be clear that I'm not quite as defensive of our sitting president on this subject as before.  Sure, the American people elected him and I recognize that, but I don't want someone in this most powerful position turning over our national secrets to the enemy while turning a blind eye to their aggression.  In other words, I'm losing trust in Donald J. Trump and now wonder about his loyalties.  And it's a shame about Kushner: I had always kind of admired him as a thoughtful, responsible voice of reason within the administration...a counter to some of his father-in-law's more objectionable behavior and outbursts.  If he leaves due to this revelation, what's going to happen to Trump's inner circle of confidants and how will it affect his actions? But maybe I'm getting way ahead of myself...after all, didn't Trump once openly brag that he could step out in the street and shoot someone and still keep his support...and then went on to win the election in spite of that inflammatory comment??!!

Attended Agatha Christie's The Mousetrap at Gainesville Community Playhouse

This afternoon Melissa and I went to see the Gainesville Community Playhouse's production of Agatha Christie's whodunit murder mystery The Mousetrap, which you can see from the above promotional picture has been going on for more than two weeks...with tonight's showing at eight and tomorrow afternoon's at two being the last ones scheduled before it closes.  It's the first time I've been to the Van York Theater, which is located in the northwestern part of Gainesville adjacent to the Millhopper Post Office on NW 16th Boulevard.  I don't think I've been to a play since my daughter's in high school a few years ago...this is the first professional production I saw since South Pacific at the Lincoln Center in NYC back in 2010...

The stage setting for The Mousetrap is simple enough: the living room area of a guesthouse, on its grand opening day.  There are eight characters, each one playing an important part in the proceedings: the young couple who have bought and opened the guesthouse, five guests, and a police detective.  And no, I'm not about to go any further than this with my descriptions...why not experience The Mousetrap for yourself, if not this time around with time quickly running out, then the next time it comes to this town or to another you happen to find yourself in...

Sitting in the second row from the stage, everything in the play seemed close-up and immediate to me.  Since the setting is England, that pesky British accent (most) of the characters assumed was at times a little challenging for me to keep up with...but that's my fault, not the excellent actors'.  And watching a live play was different than with a movie or television production...or even reading a book...in that with the latter forms, the audience/reader's attention is focused on the characters directly involved in the action or dialogue while with plays while the actors still present within the scene still have to perform within their respective characters...even when the spotlight is on someone else.  The performers in this play were very good in all aspects.  I hope to see some of them in future presentations.  And regarding upcoming productions of Gainesville Community Playhouse at the Van York Theater, Legally Blonde: The Musical with be July 7-30, Fiddler on the Roof September 23-October 16, and Little Women (which I am almost finished reading) will run November 25-December 18...

Quote of the Week...from George S. Patton

Don't tell people how to do things, tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results.
                                                               ---George S. Patton

George Smith Patton, Jr. was a famous general during World War II, commanding the Third Army through north Africa and the invasion of Sicily and the Seventh during the invasion of France and Germany.  He has always been known as a tough, demanding leader strong on discipline and personal responsibility...and of acting decisively in a timely manner.  To Patton, too many leaders plan too much when perhaps less perfect preparation and more prompt implementation would have produced better results.  To this end he depended on the resourcefulness of his officers and the soldiers under them to solve problems as the situations arose on the battlefield.  It isn't always possible to be able to pull out a manual that explains in detail how to do things, and those in leadership positions can't always explain their orders step-by-step.  So it is necessary to place some trust in those of subordinate positions to use their own abilities to come up with solutions.  This not only applies to combat situations in war, but also within the workplace and carries an important application to life in general...

With the above quote comes the implied assumption that those told to do things have been already judged to be competent at those tasks...whether a surgeon, repairperson, soldier,  or anyone else with a specialty, they obviously need much detailed training before reaching the point where the General's statement applies.  But sometimes within the managerial structure of an organization, folks forget that their subordinates have already been vested as to their competency and intelligence...and are quite able to come up with methods and solutions without someone up the authority ladder continually hovering over them and dictating each step and how to do it.  The analogy carries further, too, to how we manage ourselves in our personal lives: when faced with a challenge that involves variables and a bit of on-the-spot decision making, it won't do to beforehand sit down and try to plan out every contingency before even beginning.  In other words, much of the time you just have to wing it...

5/21 Sermon on 1 John, Part 6

This past Sunday at The Family Church, Pastor Philip Griffin continued his message series on the New Testament book of 1 John, this sermon titled The Truth About Anger.  The text of focus was Chapter 3, Verses 11-16...shown here in the New International Version, courtesy of Bible Gateway:

¹¹ For this is the message you heard from the beginning: We should love one another. ¹² Do not be like Cain, who belonged to the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own actions were evil and his brother’s were righteous. ¹³ Do not be surprised, my brothers and sisters, if the world hates you. ¹⁴ We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love each other. Anyone who does not love remains in death. ¹⁵ Anyone who hates a brother or sister is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life residing in him.
¹⁶ This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters.

Note that the author made reference to Cain, Adam's son from the book of Genesis.  As Pastor Philip pointed out, Cain was angry about God's rejection of his sacrifice in favor of his brother Abel.  This anger he fostered and built into a hateful rage, culminating in Cain's murder of Abel.  So while initial anger in itself is normal, what leads to sin and hate is the harboring of it...the ultimate target of vented wrath that has been stored up through time is often someone completely unrelated to...or at least innocent of...the initially perceived transgression.  And the violence contained within that rage is not only expressed in our actions, but also in what we say.  But while, as Philip further stated, murder starts in our hearts, we have a hope to overcome the devastation that harbored anger can lead to: Jesus, who bore punishment for our sins so that we can overcome hate and, like him, truly love...

I think you'll enjoy watching Philip's message, in which he gives a striking analogy using the story of a bomb buried in the ground under a Ukrainian woman's bed for 41 years.  You can see it through the church's YouTube video channel...here's the link to this message: [link]. The Family Church is located at 2022 SW 122nd Street and holds its Sunday morning services at 9:30 and 11, with friendly people, good coffee, and lively praise music included...

Weekly Short Story Review: Huddling Place by Clifford Simak

Clifford Simak was one of my favorite science fiction writers.  He was also a favorite of Isaac Asimov, who was a few years his junior and was so impressed by Simak's writing style that he claimed to have emulated it.  One of the first science fiction stories I ever read was when I was a little kid and got hold of one of my father's old sci-fi paperbacks.  Within it was a short story by Simak titled The Big Front Yard and I never forgot it.  Since then I've read a few more from this fantastic author...Huddling Place, which is one of the stories from Isaac Asimov Presents: The Great SF Stories 6 (1944) (DAW Books), is definitely the one that has had the greatest impact on me...

Huddling Place, a relatively brief short story about the future, is about a middle age physician, renown as an expert in neurology, not just on Earth but also on Mars, where the intelligent species there has a long history.  He has retreated, however, to his home estate where robots wait on him and he can interface with others in a virtual way (this story, from 1944, was way ahead of its time, at least in this regard ).  Consequently, he develops a phobia common to many in his age: he must stay at home and avoid any travel in order to avoid the dreaded open spaces: he has agoraphobia.  But as you might have guessed, the story presents a start challenge to him and his fear...

I'm not a great advocate for "traveling gone wild", i.e. having a compulsion to be in a near-constant state of travel and to continually develop excuses for jetting around the country (and world) as a couple of folks I know do.  On the other hand, it isn't healthy, either, to be permanently entrenched in one's own home, avoiding opportunities for growth that involve stepping out and evenly possibly getting on a plane.  I tend to be more like that person who stays at home...fortunately I am blessed with Melissa, who is much more balanced about this and helps me to resist this tendency.  Also, I regularly and deliberately...against my inclinations...go out in public just to put myself into my discomfort zone...sitting at a Starbucks may seem like paradise to some, but it bothers me being there...and helps me focus my thinking on my projects. And, of course, having a job to go to that involves me getting out of my house is a big help.  So I can see how the scenario of Clifford Simak's excellent Huddling Place can come true...especially as the Internet keeps growing and virtual reality and robotics are developed... 

I think it's about time I started looking for a collection of Clifford Simak's best fiction.  Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find Huddling Place on the Internet as I had with the short stories I discussed the previous two weeks...

Tuesday's List: I Rank the Moody Blues Studio Albums

If you've heard the songs Go Now!, Nights in White Satin, Tuesday Afternoon, Question, Just a Singer in a Rock and Roll Band, The Voice, or Your Wildest Dreams, then you're already aware of the Moody Blues, a British rock band from the sixties that has endured to this day...although it's going on eighteen years since their last non-Christmas studio album.  When they started out, Denny Laine...later in Paul McCartney's group Wings...was the lead singer and they focused on covering others' rhythm and blues songs.  But the band stagnated in popularity when their first album went nowhere on the charts in 1965, Laine and some others left, and Justin Hayward and John Lodge joined and changed to a more orchestral/electronic/progressive orientation. From 1967 through 1972 they produced seven albums of this type...subsequent works tended to have a much more pop music flavor to them.  If you look at this list of mine, you'll clearly see where my preferences are!  My favorite composer/singer in the group has always been Ray Thomas, who was in the original lineup and retired in 2003...he's responsible for my all-time favorite song of theirs, For My Lady, off Seventh Sojourn. And now, without further ado, my list of favorite-to-worst Moody Blues albums (in capitals), with my three favorite tracks from each one listed under the title:

1 IN SEARCH OF THE LOST CHORD (1968)
     Legend of a Mind
     Departure/Ride My Seesaw
     Voices in the Sky
2 ON THE THRESHOLD OF A DREAM (1969)
     Lazy Day
     Are You Sitting Comfortably
     Never Comes the Day
3 TO OUR CHILDREN'S CHILDREN'S CHILDREN (1969)
     Eyes of a Child/Floating
     Out and In
     Candle of Life
4 SEVENTH SOJOURN (1972)
     For My Lady
     Isn't Life Strange
     Just a Singer in a Rock and Roll Band
5 DAYS OF FUTURE PASSED (1967)
     Nights in White Satin
     Peak Hour
     Tuesday Afternoon
6 A QUESTION OF BALANCE (1970)
     Question
     Minstrel Song
     And the Tide Rushes In
7 EVERY GOOD BOY DESERVES FAVOUR (1971)
     Nice to Be Here
     After You Came
     The Story in Your Eyes
8 THE PRESENT (1983)     
     Meet Me Halfway
     Sitting At the Wheel
     Running Water
 9 OCTAVE (1978)
     One Step Into the Light
     The Day We Meet Again
     Steppin' in a Slide Zone    
10 LOST DISTANCE VOYAGER (1981)
     Gemini Dream
     The Voice
     Talking Out of Turn
11 KEYS OF THE KINGDOM (1991)
     Celtic Sonant
     Lean on Me Tonight
     Say It With Love   
12 THE OTHER SIDE OF LIFE (1986)
     Your Wildest Dreams
     Talking Talking
     The Other Side of Life
13 STRANGE TIMES (1999)
     The Swallow
     My Little Lovely
     English Sunset
14 THE MAGNIFICENT MOODIES (1965)     
     Go Now!
     True Story
     I'll Go Crazy
15 SUR LA MER (1988)
     I Know You're Out There Somewhere
     Miracle
     River of Endless Love

Just Finished Reading Elizabeth Berg's Tapestry of Fortunes

Elizabeth Berg is an established author of several novels...Tapestry of Fortunes is one of her latest, from 2013.  She tends to write stories about women and their relationships, not exactly the genre of literature I'm accustomed to reading.  But hey, I'm also stepping out of my habitual patterns by reading a historical romance novel right now, so why not try out this book, which incidentally cost me nary a penny since I checked it out from my local public library.  It turned out to be a different kind of fiction than I'm used to...

In order to fully grasp with a sense of sympathy, if not with a fully empathetic understanding (since I'm not a woman), it seemed necessary for me to read Tapestry of Fortunes with the mindset that women think and value things differently from men...especially in how they see their own lives more in terms of their relationships with others.  Now this might seem to be an overgeneralized assumption on my part, and I firmly believe that individual people should not be put into a box based on gender.  But this story's presentation is nevertheless all about how some women view life from their own perspectives...

The main protagonist, as well as the first-person narrator, is a middle-age woman named Cecelia who had lost her best friend Penny to ovarian cancer just a few months earlier.  Cece, as she is nicknamed, makes a living giving motivational speeches and writing self-help books.  She decides one day to step out and follow Penny's advice to make a difference in others' lives, first moving into a house with three other women, each with very distinct personalities and outlooks, and then doing volunteer work.  Cece has one man from her past, Dennis, with whom she wants to reestablish contact...and the other three women each come up with something that they want to rectify in their respective personal lives.  To this end the four go on a long road trip of self-discovery, from their home state of Minnesota eastward toward Ohio.  And I'm afraid I probably went a little too far in telling the story, although the details and outcomes of everything I've still left as a mystery to you, the potential reader of this tale...

It's tough as a reader if you undertake a novel like this and cannot hit it off with the main protagonist.  But I never could get into Cece's personality and came away with the impression that her value system was pretty shallow.  And it irritated me to no end that she was totally into the New Age movement, continually pulling out her deck of Tarot cards in order to direct her in what to do...and to give her friends similar advice.  O.K., I said it: call me close-minded, but although I love New Age music and like some limited aspects of that belief system...such as the value of quiet meditation, respect for the environment and diverse peoples, healthy eating, and the rejection of material accumulation for its own sake, I'm not at all into other more dubious features (at least as I see them) such as Tarot, crystals, channeling, psychic readings, or past lives...frankly, I thought the paranormal side to it had all peaked in popularity back in the 1990s.  So Cece's addiction to the Tarot got in the way of my enjoyment of this book...I wonder whether the author is herself a New Age aficionado and if this theme is in her other books...

All that aside, I'm glad I read Tapestry of Fortunes.  One big reason is that it portrayed characters who were passing through middle age, reexamining their own lives and whether they should change their priorities.  Now that is something I can latch onto...

Ran Yesterday's 5K May Day Glow Run in Tioga

This is the second straight year that I've run in the 5K (3.1-mile) May Day Glow Run, held in the small town of Tioga a few miles west of Gainesville.  It's called "glow" run because it takes place during the transition from twilight to early evening darkness...the event's volunteers pass out colorful glowsticks that can be worn twisted into loops like one pictured above.  Most 5K races take place Saturday mornings just after sunrise...an inauspicious time for me considering that I get off from work at midnight Friday night and couldn't think just then of many things I'd rather do less than get up so early the next morning to run a race.  But afternoon and evening races? No problem, even with the heat...that's good since Saturday afternoon's high here reached 95 degrees. By race time at 8:15, though, it had dropped to 85 with a 53% humidity...still, it seemed a lot muggier than that...

For me to even have considered running this race was a longshot after the troubles I have been suffering with my arm pain and nervous system woes since late April.  However, I was able to eventually return to light running after a brief layoff and thought that I would try this race out as a very slow training run...and see how my body responded afterwards.  As it turned out, I'm glad I didn't set out to run a fast time since I didn't register until less than an hour before the race and they had already issued all of their timing chips...meaning that I could get my tee-shirt and run with the others, but my time wouldn't "count".  No problem, I ran the entire time of the race...which is a lot more than I could say for too many of the other participants who seemed thoroughly pooped through much of it...and finished with a time of approximately 33 minutes, easily my slowest ever 5K race time.  But I feel good and my coughing woes from the past never surfaced...

This May Day Glow Run is a fundraiser for Newberry Community Christian school.  Everyone volunteering in it was very friendly and helpful, and their positive attitude definitely rubbed off on those running in it...it certainly did for me.  I'd like to make a tradition of running this special springtime evening race each year, as long as they keep holding it and my health holds up, too.  But maybe next year I'll sign up in advance to make sure my final time is recorded and posted...

Foundational Documents, Their Interpretation, and the Living-Out, Part 1

Back in the late 1980s when I began to work for the post office, whose employees work under separate collective bargaining agreements between management and four different unions, my own union gave each member a copy of the then-current collective bargaining agreement...a compact, easy-to-tote paperback volume.  As I was reading through it one day I noticed what seemed to me to be a rule that was being flagrantly violated as it pertained to certain individuals being eligible to bid by seniority on posted job assignments.  I brought this up to my reluctant union steward, who dissuaded me from pressing the issue and introduced me to the concept of "letters of understanding".  In many sections of the agreement, whenever a dispute occurs over a passage's meaning and application, a process has to be taken whereby the passage is more precisely interpreted and delineated as to how it applies in the real world of management-employee relations.  So going around waving the collective bargaining agreement in people's faces...as if one thoroughly understood the process...is pointless.  Because the collective body of precedent and refinement contained within the massive amount of those letters of understanding...along with laws and regulations that can supersede elements of the agreement...make it all much more cumbersome to deal with: that little paperback book turned out to be only the starting place...

I bring up my old collective bargaining agreement as just one example of a foundational document that, while important as creating a structure of rules and/or knowledge in a particular area, is also in itself incomplete...needing much interpretation as those trying to implement it live it out in the real world.  Our society is full of these documents...our Constitution is a prime example, as are the scriptures on which different faiths are based.  And to be perfectly frank, although these often tend to be treated as original in nature, in fact they have their own precedents from which they were derived.  So a televangelist may casually wave the Bible around onstage or a Senator may thrust out his pocket-sized copy of the Constitution during a floor speech...as if that's the be-all and end-all to everything...but there's a lot more to these works, what they represent, and where they came from... 

I'm not sure whether I'll make this discussion of foundational documents a weekly topic or whether I'll just write about it from time to time...in any event, there's more to come...

Quote of the Week...from Louis Pasteur

Let me tell you the secret that has led me to my goal. My strength lies solely in my tenacity.
                                                                              ---Louis Pasteur.

France's Louis Pasteur was one of the giants of the nineteenth-century explosion of scientific discovery in the field of microbiology, developing the science of vaccination and the process of Pasteurization among many other achievements.  But you don't need to be someone of Pasteur's fame and respect to recognize the great truth behind the above quote of his: tenacity...or perseverance or endurance, if you will...is a very crucial factor for succeeding in any sort of goal-directed endeavor.  But in order to fully appreciate what I believe Pasteur meant by tenacity, I think it's important to stress that it involves not just sticking with an endeavor through time and against adversities, but also to continually pursue that endeavor in a concentrated, focused way that others may regard as being a bit on the fanatical side.  And here is where I have a problem: social resistance to one's development of excellence...

One can be wholeheartedly committed to an endeavor and have everything in place to employ that tenacity of consistent, concentrated effort that Louis Pasteur referred to, but if the surrounding people are continually calling them to task for that very arduousness that is so necessary for success...using arguments that they've changed for the worse, aren't paying enough attention to this thing or that, need to spend more time doing other things, or that their life needs more balance...then eventually they're going to give up just through sheer frustration.  I think there's a good rationale behind the idea of young people, after having built up their social relationships throughout their childhood and adolescence in their home towns, then going away to a fresh environment at a more distant college to pursue their degrees...of course, they'll still have their everyday distractions there as well as having to contend with folks who object to their serious task-orientation, but at least they won't have their entire being called into question for devoting the prolonged, focused attention they need to employ in order to achieve their academic goals.  For myself, my problem isn't with the people in my life, who have been supportive, but rather with an inner sense of inertia that keeps me from boldly striking out in new directions...

5/14 Sermon on 1 John, Part 5

This past Sunday at The Family Church in far western Gainesville...2022 SW 122nd Street...senior pastor Philip Griffin continued his thoughtful series focusing on the book of 1 John, found near the end of the Bible in the New Testament.  The passage on this day was Chapter 2, Verse 29 through Chapter 3, Verse 10...here is a link to it via Bible Gateway so that you can read it, too: [link].  The title of the message, Born of God, refers directly to that opening verse...

In laying out the framework for this message, Pastor Philip stressed that faith comes first...then good works...not the opposite.  Then what are the effects and expectations when I become born of God through faith?  Well, there are four: I am in his family, have a glorious future, will be pursuing holiness, and am empowered to live a holy life.  As for family, Philip gave the analogy of someone, when adopted into a new family, having his or her name changed to conform to that of their new father...in this case it's the heavenly father.  With the future, having the confidence that we belong to Jesus, who will appear and with whom we will live forever...plus knowing him as he really is, is in stark contrast to what our pastor said about others: "People who don't know what they ultimately will be don't know how to live now".  With holiness, the message went a little down the road of theological details...as far as I see it, at least...by explaining that Jesus purifies us through justification and we ourselves through sanctification: dual purification.  Finally, as the discussion went to living a holy life, Pastor Philip contrasted the tendencies of many to either live with truth and no love (legalism, judgmentalism) or love and no truth (permissivism, no consequences).  He gave as an example of the Gospel of John story of the woman condemned for adultery.  Jesus showed both love and truth when he rescued her from stoning while at the same time telling her to go and sin no more...

I think the point of all this goes back to the beginning of the message: first comes faith and then flow the good works.  But the author of 1 John was speaking to fellow Christians when he was in effect exhorting them to good works and not to sin.  And many people who are not Christians live virtuous lives full of good works.  But maybe here we're assigning our own designations to exactly who is in God's family and who isn't.  After all, there is the truth and then there is "our" version of the truth: our heavenly father, who exists in the past, present, and future, knows who is in his family...are we really better informed than him?

The Sunday morning sermons at our fellowship can be viewed on YouTube through the Family Church channel there...here's a link to this day's: [link].  The services are held at 9:30 and 11, with inspiring praise music before each message.  And the church offers family groups along with discipling and leadership training...and there's that precious coffee they offer as well...along with some pretty friendly folks...

Weekly Short Story Review: The Game of Rat and Dragon by Cordwainer Smith

Paul Linebarger was one of those writers who used a pseudonym for his fiction...in his case it was "Cordwainer Smith".  His stories in the realm of science fiction, written in the mid-twentieth century, were all interconnected with his own imagined universe and timeline for future human history...and that imagination conjured up some very interesting and strange scenarios.  A great example is his short story The Game of Rat and Dragon, appearing in the collection Isaac Asimov Presents: The Great SF Stories #17 (1955) (DAW Books, 1988).  In it humanity is in full extraterrestrial exploratory mode, settling the far reaches of space after Earth has become unsustainable.  But once spaceships passed out of our solar system and into deep space, they discovered horrible psychic predatory monsters waiting in the darkness...only disposed of through bombardment with intense light.  A scheme was devised using telepathic partnership between people and cats...with the humans directing the missions and the felines, with their super-quick reflexes, attacking the enemy by setting off the light bombs.  This foe, lurking in the remote darkness, was envisioned by people as dragons and as giant rats by the cats.  So there's your scenario for this provocative tale...and what makes it provocative?

What intrigued me about it all, and might for you as well...especially if you're a cat-lover...is how the author explored the thought patterns of cats...and how they were translated to their human partners through the connecting "pin-sets".  It's really quite a brief story and I can't recall reading any other of this nature...and it's also very, very funny!

And here's some good news...you can read this story right now, through the following site from Project Gutenberg: [link].  Enjoy!

Tuesday's List: My Top 100 Twilight Zones Episodes

The original Twilight Zone, which aired from the fall of 1959 through the spring of 1964 on CBS, is one of my all-time favorite television series.  Rod Serling, the cigarette-smoking-and-gesturing host, also wrote many of the episodes and was instrumental a few years later with the similar Night Gallery.  The Twilight Zone is also fixed in its time: two of my favorite episodes, And When the Sky Was Opened and Where is Everybody?, came out in 1959, after the Soviet and American space programs began but before any human was launched into space: these episodes speculated on the consequences of such ventures.  The Bewitching Pool was the first Twilight Zone episode I ever saw, back in the early 60s when I was little: shown past my bedtime, I sneaked into the hallway and surreptitiously watched it with my parents, who sat around the corner in the living room unaware of my presence.  Well, here's the list of my top 100 episodes out of the 156 made.  And just because an episode appears low on the list doesn't mean I didn't like it: I deliberately cut it off at 100 to exclude those shows I disliked.  Most of the episodes were thirty minutes long; those few from the fourth season that lasted an hour I've marked with an asterisk (*).  Here's a link to the Wikipedia article about this series: [link].  If you'd like to read about a particular episode, you can copy and paste the title from below onto Wikipedia's search engine...all Twilight Zone episodes have individual Wikipedia articles...

1 And When the Sky Was Opened
2 Little Girl Lost
3 Mirror Image
4 The Odyssey of Flight 33
5 The Purple Testament
6 The Mind and the Matter
7 The Hitch-Hiker
8 Death Ship*
9 Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up ?
10 Twenty Two
11 Time Enough at Last
12 The Masks
13 Hocus Pocus and Frisby
14 The Prime Mover
15 A Stop at Willoughby
16 A Piano in the House
17 The After Hours
18 Elegy
19 What You Need
20 Passage on the Lady Anne*
21 A Game of Pool
22 The Last Flight
23 The Trouble with Templeton
24 Miniature*
25 The Quality of Mercy
26 Nightmare at 20,000 Feet
27 Midnight Sun
28 A Hundred Yards Over the Rim
29 The Old Man in the Cave
30 A World of Difference
31 Shadow Play
32 Death's Head Revisited
33 Changing of the Guard
34 Mr. Denton on Doomsday
35 The Mighty Casey
36 Four O'clock
37 Nick of Time
38 The Hunt
39 The Bewitching Pool
40 Where is Everybody?
41 Garrity and the Graves
42 Stopover in a Quiet Town
43 A Kind of Stopwatch
44 A Penny for Your Thoughts
45 The Little People
46 To Serve Man
47 On Thursday We Leave for Home*
48 Mr. Bevis
49 The Fugitive
50 Spur of the Moment
51 A Most Unusual Camera
52 The Invaders
53 The Jeopardy Room
54 A World of His Own
55 Of Late I Think of Cliffordville*
56 The Chaser
57 Kick the Can
58 The Jungle
59 The Thirty-Fathom Grave*
60 Nervous Man in a Four-Dollar Room
61 The Fear
62 Walking Distance
63 Printer's Devil*
64 Long Live Walter Jameson
65 A Thing About Machines
66 The Valley of the Shadow*
67 You Drive
68 Person or Persons Unknown
69 Perchance to Dream
70 An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge
71 The Howling
72 I Sing the Body Electric
73 He's Alive*
74 The Fever
75 Showdown with Rance McGrew
76 The Living Doll
77 The 7th is Made Up of Phantoms
78 Five Characters in Search of an Exit
79 A Nice Place to Visit
80 Once Upon a Time
81 People Are Alike All Over
82 Eye of the Beholder
83 The Whole Truth
84 One More Pallbearer
85 Black Leather Jackets
86 It's a Good Life
87 Third from the Sun
88 The Obsolete Man
89 Nightmare as a Child
90 Nothing in the Dark
91 The Incredible World of Horace Ford*
92 The Lonely
93 Uncle Simon
94 Man in the Bottle
95 Mr. Dingle the Strong
96 Dust
97 Dead Man's Shoes
98 The Rip Van Winkle Caper
99 Escape Clause
100 From Agnes with Love

Some Talk About Trump

So the Federal Bureau of Investigation is conducting a probe into the alleged interference by Russian president dictator Vladimir Putin in the 2016 U.S. presidential election against Hillary Clinton and on behalf of Donald Trump.  And the House of Representatives is also conducting a very similar investigation...as is the Senate...and the Justice Department...along with CIA, NSA, and Treasury Department investigations. On top of all this, the Democrats are calling for an independent special prosecutor to conduct what I tally up to be an eighth investigation of the same thing.  But it was well-reported and readily available to the American public, well before the election, that Paul Manafort, Donald Trump's onetime campaign manager, and retired general Michael Flynn, a strong Trump supporter and campaigner, had strong ties to the Kremlin.  And suspicions that Russia was behind the hacking that led to the WikiLeaks release of sensitive and politically damaging Democratic Party emails were also broadcast and were common public knowledge before the election.  But folks still went to the polls and voted for Trump in spite of this, putting him on top in the crucial swing states of Pennsylvania, Florida, and Michigan...and electing him as our legitimate 45th president.  And now, more than half a year after the election, we're still going on with the allegations and controversy...but where's the proof that Trump's campaign was actively colluding with the Russians?

If you have read this blog over the course of the last election campaign, you already know that I don't care for Donald Trump: I'd still vote for his opponent, be it Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders, were the election held today...I'd even happily choose Ted Cruz, a man of much greater personal integrity than Donald Trump, over him were it just between those two.  But I'm not buying wholesale into all of the conspiracy theories and calls for impeachment that some of my Democratic friends are enthusiastically putting out there.  Donald Trump may not be "their" president as far as they are concerned, but he is mine.  I want him to be successful and strong...and to do what is right and good for the American people.  To the extent that he has gone back on his word during the campaign, I have no problem criticizing him...for example, his rush to support the House Republicans' health care bill that essentially nullified affordable coverage for many of those with preexisting conditions was reprehensible and a violation of his own stated principle in his book The Art of the Deal whereby it's sometimes important to walk away from the negotiating table if the outcome isn't something you want.  Trump criticized Obama as being too eager for the Iran nuclear deal, but he showed that he himself was too eager to get a health care bill...any bill...passed by the House.  There are other things I disagree with our current president on...but I agree with some of what Trump is doing, too...maybe I'll expand on this in a future article.  But now back to this Russian affair...

The notion that one country...or the leadership of that country...would try to affect the outcome of another country's free elections sounds insidious and wrong, right?  Then why didn't I hear cries of protest when President Obama unsuccessfully pushed for Benjamin Netanyahu's defeat in the last Israeli elections...and for British voters to reject leaving the European Union (which they did anyway)?  And although he is no longer president, didn't Obama also very publicly endorse one candidate over the other in the recent French presidential election?  My own concern about the Russians was focused on whether they might have hacked into the vote tabulation process...but that was looked into and dismissed.  Ultimately, it is the American voter who needs to process the information they receive and make rational choices at the polling place.  There are many voters who had good, well-thought-out reasons to support their candidate in 2016, be it Trump or Clinton.  My problem, however, has always been the wishy-washy, irrational last-minute deciders who wait until the very end to make up their minds and allow spurious and emotionally-laden news stories to unduly influence their vote.  Sometimes this goes in favor of the Democrats (like in 2012) and sometimes it works for the Republicans (like in 2016).  And the Russians aside, if you are going to blame someone for Hillary's defeat, I think ex-FBI chief James Comey is much more culpable with his phony October surprise about more emails resurfacing.  That instantly deflated the strong momentum she had built up following her impressive debate performances against Trump and her surge in the polls disappeared.  And no, I don't think it's scandalous or impeachable that the president just fired Comey...this guy was way too much of a political showboat for the position he held...his ignoble exit has been long overdue...

So let the investigations continue, and I surely have no problem with an independent prosecutor looking into Russian attempts to influence the last election.  And if something tangible comes out of any of these many investigations that directly links our president with Russian subterfuge, then I'll take it seriously.  But only if that happens...

Just Finished Reading Gamble by Felix Francis

Felix Francis is the son of the late Dick Francis, a British mystery writer who centered his works around the theme of horseracing in England.  After his father's death, Felix continued writing the short novels while giving the general credit as "Dick Francis's _____".  Hence the full name of the book I just read: Dick Francis's Gamble by Felix Francis.  Not having read any of the senior Francis's books, I'm in no condition to compare father with son.  But this book was a good, worthwhile venture into mystery reading, with an interesting angle, it being all related to horseracing...

Nicholas "Foxy" Foxton, in his early thirties, is still a young man...but has for more than ten years already retired from his first love, as a horserace jockey, due to an accident leaving him with a broken neck and a precarious potential outcome on any subsequent mishaps.  So he switches careers and becomes a financial advisor for Lyall and Black, a small London firm.  Many of his old racing colleagues become clients of his and he maintains, through them, a connection to the racing scene.  One day he is attending the races in a crowded stadium with a fellow financial advisor when his coworker is gunned down dead in front of everyone.  The killer disappears into the crowd and the mystery is on as to who did it and why.  The plot twists and turns this way and that with various angles thrown in, such as a jockey immediately needing a hundred grand in cash or a spurious land development venture going down in Bulgaria.  Foxton eventually finds himself to be a hunted man, both by the police and the unknown criminal mastermind who murdered his cohort...

When writing a novel in this genre, it's necessary to have a likable, sympathetic protagonist, have him or her in a state of peril, gradually solve little mysteries as the story progresses, and then at the end come up with a big surprise.  Gamble fulfills all of these conditions and also gives a glimpse into the often different way of life across the sea in England...reminding me a little of Ruth Rendell, another England-based mystery author.  Although as far as I know, Gamble is a standalone novel, I can easily see Felix Francis expanding it into a longer series, with "Foxy" Foxton solving more mysteries.  But regardless whether Dick Francis was a great writer or not, his son should write any future books solely under his own name...he has that right in his one life to be recognized for his own writing, as much as he may revere his father's legacy...

Enjoying Watching Mexican Pro Soccer Playoffs

The Mexican Liga MX (premier professional soccer league) Liguilla championship playoffs for the Clausura 2017 season are underway, with eight teams playing each other in two-match series.  My favorite UANL Tigres...from the Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León, located in a city in greater Monterrey...are predictably back in the hunt after winning the Apertura Liguilla tournament back in December.  Their manager, Ricardo Ferretti, is a consistent winner, regardless who is playing for him...he reminds me a lot of football's Bill Belichick and basketball's Gregg Popovich...and he's been managing Tigres for seven years now, a long term for professional league soccer.  Tigres won their opening match against crosstown rival Monterrey 4-1 and are now playing the second leg, leading at halftime 1-0.  The goals for the two contests afterwards are added together and the team with the highest total advances to the next round...

Tigres spent most of the 2017 Clausura regular season low in the standings and only qualified for the playoffs through a late-season surge...which seems so far to be continuing into the playoffs.  Tijuana, which finished the regular season in first place, also had the aggregate best record for the combined 2016-17 Apertura/Clausura seasons: were this a European league like the English Premier League, Spain's La Liga, or Germany's Bundesliga, Tijuana would have won the title outright since these leagues don't stage postseason playoffs and give the trophy to the high regular season finisher.  On a different note, the Monarchs (Monarcos) de Morelia were slated to finish to be relegated to the lower Ascenso league, but a last-second goal on the last day of the season kept them in the top league...and also qualified them for the Liguilla.  And they won their first game against Tijuana 1-0...talk about a dramatic change of fortunes!  The other teams in the championship tournament are Atlas vs. Guadalajara and Toluca vs. Santos Laguna...

I don't know whether Tigres will win the championship this time around, but I love to watch their disciplined and defensive play.  Now let's see if they can hold on against Monterrey in the second half.  Univision is showing the game I'm watching...if you also have the UnivisionDeportes channel (which I don't), you'll be able to see Toluca/Santos Laguna later on tonight...

Quote of the Week...from Thom Yorke

Being in a band turns you into a child and keeps you there.           ---Thom Yorke.

And exactly who is this Thom Yorke, you might ask...the quote gives a telling hint.  He is the lead singer of the British alternative rock band Radiohead, a group that has been around for decades but which I only began to follow in earnest seven years ago.  You may know them from their early 1990s debut hit Creep, but there is a lot more to Radiohead than that one song...which I incidentally didn't care for all that much.  They're still together and have made nine studio albums...someday I plan to list my favorites from those recordings in much the same way I did for R.E.M.'s discography just this past Tuesday.  And I'll always associate this band with my training in late 2010 and early 2011 for the marathon...just about all of my long runs featured me listening to a shuffled mix of their albums on mp3...

Radiohead is a band whose members delight in musical experimentation and innovation, not at all afraid of failure.  They all clearly have a childlike enthusiasm for their craft and doubtless feed off each other's efforts.  As adults we need to have learned how to live a mature, responsible life...but that does not mean forgetting or demeaning the joys of our childhood.  Nor does it exclude us from returning to that sweet state of exuberance when we allow ourselves to plunge into an exciting field of endeavor.  Music has been that for Thom Yorke, keeping him essentially young at heart.  But with each of us it could be something different...we need to explore and discover what brings out our inner child and cultivate it.  That doesn't mean we're being childish and immature...on the contrary, it makes us more complete and presents us as a positive, attractive light to the rest of the world...