Ran the 2019 Tom Walker Memorial Half-Marathon This Morning

I had been determined to run in a half-marathon race sometime in 2019, but I had missed some opportunities at the beginning of the year (and really wasn't in good enough shape anyway) and knew that this Tom Walker Memorial Half-Marathon, which I had run a couple of times a few years ago, would be available for me come November.  It's very conveniently held here in Gainesville with Boulware Springs Park off SE 15th Street as the base for operations and is organized by the Florida Track Club.  You park your car, cross the small park to the back...and there is the Hawthorne Trail stretching off in both directions.  The entire half-marathon takes place on this very popular rails-to-trails project, a there-and-back course with the midpoint turnaround just before you get to the County Road 234 crossing...so there's no actual motorized traffic to contend with, although the bicycle traffic can be a major nuisance on the trail with their darting in and out among the runners...

I got there early this morning in order to register...I'm not a fan of paying in advance for races when I can avoid it.  The temperature was a perfect 46 degrees, a little chilly at the race's start but warming up to the 60s by the end, with relatively low humidity.  In recent years the event's organizers added a 5K race to coincide with the half-marathon...much of the crowd was there for this shorter race.  Upon reaching the trail before the start at 8:00, I made my way to the back of the racing throng, knowing in advance that I wouldn't be setting any speed records today.  My strategy was clear: go out slow, run slow, keep running slow, and finish slow...with the main word in this sentence being "finish".  As a matter of fact, at the race's start I was running so slow that I was going barely faster than a gentleman clearly several years older than me who was walking the race. I also was prepared to take periodic walking breaks as I do during my training runs, but although I noticed many other participants employing this run/walk method to get through the race I felt comfortable just running it on through from beginning to end.  My finishing time was 2 hours 35 minutes and 20 seconds...easily the slowest finishing time of the twelve half-marathons I've run since 2010.  But I hadn't run one since February of 2018 and that race was marked by severe leg cramps near its end while in 2017's half marathon I suffered deep coughing attacks...neither of these happened today.  And unlike my 13.3 mile training run three weeks ago, I never ran into a "wall" and kept a high energy level throughout it all.  So no, I didn't run a very fast race, but finishing it well gives me hope at age 63 for future races...and a possible venture into longer distances...

Here's a link to the race results: [Start 2 Finish Race Management]...

Comparing Access in Russia and China to Social Media and Blogsites

Before Facebook came along and provincialized and insulated social media, the blogosphere was a worldwide, developing phenomenon that promised to bring millions of people of diverse backgrounds, countries, and perspectives together.  I set up my own personal blog in 2007, using the Google Blogger free blogging site...and I have been regularly writing articles ever since, totaling now over 4,100 (and you can read every one of them if you wish).  Before Facebook I had a more cosmopolitan reading audience but ever since that site took over the world's social media the formerly-explosive development of personal blogging receded in favor of this convenient, albeit much more insulated and restrictive, form of Internet communication.  I finally saw the writing on the wall in early 2013 and began to post links on my Facebook page to my daily blog articles while still hoping that international readers...or others at-large from the good old U.S.A....would hit upon it as well, not just my Facebook friends and family.  Then I realized that other countries, to varying degrees and for different reasons, were blocking access to social media and blogging sites...the biggest reason I imagined being to stem the flow of any dissident material against their respective regimes.  Since Russia and China are often mentioned in the same sentence as being nations highly restrictive of the free flow of communications, I thought I'd compare how they deal with the most popular Western social media and blogging sites...

Right up front, pure and simple, China totally blocks Google, YouTube, GoogleMaps, Instagram, Facebook, Tik Tok (although it is a Chinese company's product), Twitter, and Wikipedia.  WordPress.com-hosted blogs are also blocked there, but WordPress.org-generated blogs are not.  LinkedIn technically isn't blocked, but the Chinese version reportedly carries greater restrictions.  In Russia, among the above sites only LinkedIn is blocked, and that is reportedly because it violates a Russian law prohibiting individual Russians' user information being stored outside the country.  And some Wikipedia articles have been blacklisted in Russia.  Yet I have read ongoing Twitter live on-the-spot reports by a Russian journalist during recent Moscow protests...no problem picking it up along with commentary and video.  And he would agree with me that although Russia isn't as free and open a society as America with our dearly-held First Amendment, it is still a much freer place for its people regarding the Internet than is mainland China.  Russian folks can read my blog...Chinese cannot, and that about expresses it as far as I'm concerned.  Now it's true that the Russian authorities over the years have placed restrictions on certain matters of content...particularly with YouTube...but bloggers and social media users still really do have a good amount of freedom between the U.S. and Russia.  China? Forget it...

Quote of the Week...from Billy Joel

Though we choose between reality and madness it's either sadness or euphoria.    ---Billy Joel

The above quote is a line from Billy Joel's 1976 Summer, Highland Falls, a track from his 1976 Turnstiles album.  This song's lyrics are a cognitive reverie in philosophy...I encourage you to listen it, which I just posted this past Monday as #393 on my all-time favorites list.  Before I go into what this quote meant for me, let me share that once in my eleventh-grade English class back in late 1972 we had a guest speaker, a poet of renown, to sit in on the class and discuss his craft.  I remember him stating that oftentimes he would get feedback from people who credited him with all sorts of revelations in his poems that enlightened them...but that he himself hadn't been thinking at all along those lines when composing them.  And then he said that the work stands on its own once it's out there and that even unintended interpretations are legitimate, as far as he was concerned.  So with that in mind I acknowledge that I may or may not be in total sync with Billy Joel's intended message here, but I'll give my own "feedback" anyway, for what it's worth...

If there's one word that I believe adequately describes these times we live in and the social attitudes epitomizing it, it is "narrative".  Art Linkletter may have said that "kids say the darndest things", but people in general believe the darndest things as long as they fit within their own personal adopted narratives about the nature of the world around them and their own perceived lives.  These narratives, which include past personal history, religion, politics, socioeconomic class, identity categories, economic status, consumption patterns (including that of drugs), and entertainment preferences, tend to reinforce themselves in their holders' minds through supporting input...be it true or false...while they tend to reject any contradictory information regardless of its truth value...to believe something patently false just because it fits your narrative to me is a feature of madness.  And behind each person's personally and tenaciously held narrative...each with its peculiar mixture of reality and fantasy...is the unrecognized cause for it: the narrative makes them feel better...

One thing that social media like Facebook and Twitter do very well is to reveal and encourage people's personally held narratives.  These forums feed into narrative bias by giving users access to just about any opinion source that supplies catchy slogans or "news" items propping them up.  I believe folks in general want to have a sense of order about their lives and what's going on around them, and since it comforts them more they will be willing to throw away any objective, respectful and skeptical treatment of the news or the diversity of viewpoints about a particular point and instead boil it all down to the good guys (who possess all of the truth) versus the bad guys (born liars, all of them).  It's frustrating for me to see this in others, along with their tendency to only reference the news sources that resonate with their narratives, yet in all honesty as a human being here along with the rest of us I'm also plodding along through my own life with my own tightly-held, cherished narrative...after all, it's either sadness or euphoria.  But I've noticed one thing ever since I began this blog more than twelve years ago: when I write about a particular subject I often finding myself taking on both its pros and cons and on a number of occasions end up with a message that I hadn't previously intended...and I watch and read all kinds of perspectives on what's going around us.  Why don't you start your own writing blog and share your views with the world as well?  I'd be interested in reading it, plus it may benefit you as it has done me by helping you to sort out your own narratives. Wordpress or Google's Blogger (which I use) are good places to start...

Just Finished Reading The High Mountains of Portugal by Yann Martel

Yann Martel is best known for his 2001 novel of Life of Pi...here is a link to my earlier review of it on this blog: [Life of Pi]. His 2016 work the The High Mountains of Portugal conveys a very different mood while continuing with the themes of animals, religion, cross-cultural encounters, mortality and grief...all present in that earlier work. It is divided into three separate tales, set in 1904, 1939, and 1981 with unifying elements of family, religious symbolism, and a small village in "mountainous" east Portugal (where the author points out that there are no true mountains). This book was much more difficult for me to get through than Life of Pi, especially that very confusing second story...but this is how Martel wrote it and I accept it, without necessarily liking it...

The first tale concerns grief-stricken young Tomás, whose beloved wife and their young son had recently died of illness, reacting by only walking backwards while becoming engrossed in a 17th century diary of an obscure Portuguese priest assigned to Angola and Sao Tome in Africa. Tomás embarks on a quest to find that priest's special, mysterious crucifix, hidden somewhere in an unknown rural eastern Portugal church.  The second story involves a Portuguese pathologist, his wife, and a visit from an elderly woman in grief.  And the third is about a burned-out Canadian politician who abandons his office to return to his ancestral roots in Portugal...with a very special companion...

It's often difficult for me to write a review without giving away too much...let me just say in the case of  The High Mountains of Portugal that I've read some of the reactions to it on the Goodreads website and discovered that readers usually either loved it or despised it.  That stands to reason as this novel of Yann Martel is in places difficult to follow as a literal, reality-based narrative and is full of all sorts of symbolism and allegory...seems like the kind of book that high school English teachers like to assign to their hapless students.  I also think a lot of readers were hoping for another story along the lines of Life of Pi and were put off by the descent into weirdness in the 1939 story, but as I had previously noted, the two works do have several overlapping themes.  I'm glad I read it, but I much, much preferred Life of Pi...

Weekly Short Stories: 1953 Science Fiction, Part 2

I continue my look back at 1953 science fiction, reviewing more selections from the anthology Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 15 (1953).  Here are the next five from the book...

SAUCER OF LONELINESS by Theodore Sturgeon
On their 1979 Regatta de Blanc album, the Police have a very popular track titled Message in a Bottle...its culminating line resonates strongly with the message in this story of a woman, who while taking a walk through Central Park one day, gets hit in the head by a small flying saucer with its own message to convey.  She discovers that loneliness and being alone are two entirely separate things as she is harassed and subjected to interrogations and universal notoriety and scrutiny as a result of her experience...

THE LIBERATION OF EARTH by William Tenn
I reviewed this story in an earlier article...click on the following link to read it: [Link].  This is a tale that has almost universal allegorical application: Earth is just minding its own business when one day a far-more technologically advanced alien race lands and informs "us" that they are embroiled in a serious galactic war with another race of beings...and that they are "liberating" Earth from its influence (which was never felt in the first place).  The battles between the warring parties ensue with our dear home world further damaged and its population decimated with each succeeding encounter.  To apply the allegory, think of all the situations on different levels when people just want to be left alone to mind their own business and some other more dominant party decides, according to its own values and self-interests, to interfere and ultimately subjugate and harm them while at the same time claiming that it is working to help or "liberate" them...

LOT by Ward Moore
Another story that has allegorical value, Los Angeles has just been struck in a nuclear exchange and the city is in a near-panicked state of mass evacuation.  Mr. Jimmons has foreseen this development and has already meticulously planned his escape plans, including his destination, escape route and strategy, and what to take and what to leave behind...unlike his wife and three children, each with their own shortsightedness, petty concerns and unwillingness to see the changed reality in their situation for what it is.  The narrative describes their journey along the highway and the revealing ongoing conversation in the car between them, as well as Jimmons' unspoken thoughts that explain and justify his actions.  And the title Lot is in itself an analogy...from the Old Testament of the Bible...

THE NINE BILLION NAMES OF GOD by Arthur C. Clarke
According to this story, there is a sect of monks off across the Himalayas believing that when God's nine billion names are compiled, his task in the universe will be complete...whatever that's supposed to mean.  The monks hire a western tech company to send them a computer, along with two technicians, to print out all reasonable combinations of letters that would eventually encompass those nine billion names.  This is one of those typically brief short stories of Clarke that has a knockout, memorable final line.  As for the computer, remember that this story was written in 1953!

WARM by Robert Sheckley
This story depends on the notion that what we perceive as humans is conceptualized by trying to form "wholes", or Gestalts, out of those perceptions.  Sheckley, through his protagonist who is about to leave his apartment to pick up his date to a party, describes in progressive fashion what would happen if one abandoned his humanity and began to perceive reality on its own terms and not through our own evolved filters of conceptualizing. This is a pretty doggone deep story and kind of makes you wonder about it all...

Next week: more sci-fi short stories from 1953...

Giving Miami Dolphins a "Mulligan" After Beating Jets

Usually in professional sports a franchise's management won't deliberately come out before the season even begins and make it clear that they plan to "tank" their team by (1) finishing poorly in order to garner top draft picks and (2) trading away any current players of any value for future draft picks.  When done this way, like with the baseball Miami Marlins in 2018 or the football Dolphins this year, the effect is like team management giving the finger to its fans while expecting them to continue shelling out the big bucks for tickets, TV subscriptions and merchandise.  At first it looked as if the Dolphins were going to deliberately let themselves be humiliated in their quest to be absolutely the worst NFL team ever to hit the field.  But over the past few weeks, although they continued to lose, Miami under their first year head coach Brian Flores showed a lot of spunk in games against Washington, Buffalo, and Pittsburgh, nearly winning the first and leading late in the other two. In spite of their management's tactics the coaches and players WANT to win.  And last Sunday at home they beat the New York Jets, a team that had hired for its head coach Adam Gase, whom the Dolphins had fired last year and despite its initial high hopes for the 2019 season now find themselves sharing a 1-7 record with Miami...and in last place in the division for having lost to them.  But if I were Dolphins management I wouldn't start panicking yet...there are at least three top quarterback prospects that will be entering the upcoming draft, enough to spread among the very worst teams in the league. What they don't seem to get, though, is that along with raw talent it is very crucial that a franchise establish a tradition and reputation for a disciplined, tough, and winning approach to the game...that's worth a couple of places in the draft hierarchy, in my opinion.  So, using a term from the sport of golf whereby a player gets a free swing after "muffing" one, I'm giving the Miami Dolphins a Mulligan...may they use it well as I continue to root for them.  Meanwhile, it looks like we'll be seeing other teams like the Jets and the Cincinnati Bengals joining Miami's management...but not its players and coaches...in the tanking strategy now that their seasons have been torn to tatters.  By the way, the Cleveland Browns, a recent repeat tank act, were supposedly going to set their division on fire this year with their top pick at quarterback and other acquisitions...they're now at 2-6 with only one more win than Miami: how's that strategy worked for them?

One other thing: the Baltimore Ravens, which humiliated Miami 59-10 in the season's opening game, knocked the New England Patriots...43-0 winners over the Dolphins in the second week...out of the undefeated ranks by beating them 37-20 Sunday evening.  That leaves the San Francisco 49ers as the last remaining undefeated team in the NFL this year.  May the Seattle Seahawks perform the needed task of defeating them next week so that the 1972 Miami Dolphins, the only team that went through an entire season and playoffs with a perfect record, once again will be able to celebrate their unique status in pro football history and break out that champagne...

My 500 All-Time Favorite Songs: #400-391

Today I start on the next hundred in my weekly countdown of my own 500 all-time favorite songs...so without any more intervening jabbering, here are the next ten and my comments...

400 TWILIGHT OMENS...Franz Ferdinand
Franz Ferdinand is a Scottish alternative/indie rock band that came out with a couple of hit singles in 2004: Take Me Out and This Fire.  On the their 2009 Tonight album is the deep track Twilight Omens, pretty short at 2:29 but it has a very riveting introductory (and recurring) musical theme...I listened to it a few times and the song continued playing itself in my mind, almost spellbinding...

399 SCOFF...Nirvana
Off Nirvana's 1989 Bleach album is Scoff, another of composer/singer/lead guitarist Kurt Cobain's tributes to teenage angst as he takes on the role of someone facing adult authority and judgment, rejecting that authority and judgment...well, that's what I got out of it.  Oh, and he wants them to give him back his alcohol...repeatedly.  The lyrics are deranged and defiant and the music is loud, stomping, and in your face...another one of those cathartic tracks telling listeners that they're not alone: they have fellow travelers in their anguish...

398 JUST LIKE ROMEO AND JULIET...the Reflections
When I hear such a spot-on, well-produced song like this one from the Reflections in 1964, I wonder to myself why this group didn't come out with a string of great hits...there are lots of artists over the years I feel this way about.  Still, I'm grateful for this exuberant song with a very catchy beat and wonderful harmonizing and vocal range, another tune I liked hearing off the radio even back when I was but seven years old...

397 CASTLES IN THE AIR...Don McLean
Don McLean, best known for his cryptic anthem American Pie in 1971, ten years later released the single Castles in the Air...demonstrating that he still had the "magic".  Only one problem with that conclusion: McLean had written this song back in 1970 and released it as a single before American Pie...the 1981 version he modified and rerecorded.  It's a bittersweet song Glen Campbell could have successfully recorded back in his Galveston and Wichita Lineman years as it expresses the singer's longing for the country life (and a country wife)...

396 TOO MANY PEOPLE...Paul McCartney
In 1971 I enthusiastically bought Paul McCartney's second solo album, Ram, and played it over and over.  Ever since that time I thought the opening track Too Many People was one of the few standouts on it...I've often thought there were "too many people" and that they seemed determined to make a misery out of my unassuming little life. But McCartney, I think, who at the time was in the midst of a nasty lawsuit against his former bandmates from the Beatles and their manager Allen Klein, was directing his invective...in a backhanded manner...at them, not people in general. What I grew to like most about this song was McCartney's lengthy instrumental jam session at the end...

395 I TURN MY CAMERA ON...Spoon
Speaking of songs with catchy beats, this alternative hit from 2005 pretty much introduced this Austin, Texas-based act to the rest of the world.  Gritty-voiced singer Britt Daniel is also one of the main creative forces with Spoon and pretty much produced I Turn My Camera On himself...his take on the lyrics is that it described someone who hid behind his camera from the reality he was shooting...interesting, and a song that definitely makes you want to snap your fingers as Daniel goes into falsetto mode...

394 SUKIYAKI...Kyu Sakamoto
Sukiyaki is a nonsense title given to Japanese artist Kyu Sakamoto's 1961 hit, originally titled Ue o Muite Arukou…I can see why they changed it to something more memorable: after all, the song is completely in Japanese.  By the way, that earlier title, which is also the opening line, means "I look up as I walk".  Why after this monster hit we didn't hear anything else by Sakamoto, a very expressive singer, is beyond me...I'm sure he produced a lot of good music for his Japanese fans...

393 SUMMER, HIGHLAND FALLS...Billy Joel
This track from Billy Joel's 1976 Turnstiles album should have been titled "Sadness or Euphoria" for those recurring words as he combines philosophical introspection with poetic lyrics and piano virtuosity. There's not an unquotable line in the song...maybe I should examine some of these lyrics sometime in my Friday "Quote of the Week" focus on this blog. The essence of this song as I see it is that people tend to complicate things in life when they're really making simple choices as they go along.  And no, I have no idea what "Summer, Highland Falls" has to do with any of this...

392 THE WAY...Fastball
The subject matter for this 1998 song, which sounds like the group was emulating the style of the Beatles back in '64-66, is pretty dark as it describes a couple who one day decide to suddenly abandon all their responsibilities...including their own children...and run away to a new life abroad.  I think this might be based on a real news story of such a couple being discovered and arrested for child neglect.  I say hey, if your life isn't going the way you wanted, go ahead and change it to something better but please don't victimize or betray others in the process.  Having said that, I loved this song 21 years ago and once again can't understand why this group didn't produce any more hit records afterwards...

391 THAT GIRL COULD SING...Jackson Browne
It was in the fall-winter of 1980 when this song was popular on the radio...I associate it with cold weather, apparently that was a cold winter in Gainesville.  I taped it off the radio and played it over and over again back then...it's my second favorite song by Browne. This very talented artist, however, tended to go overboard with promoting whatever left-wing political causes were in vogue at the time...and this bugged me, not that some of those causes weren't just, but rather that he seemed so patronizing about how "right" he was about it all.  That Girl Could Sing is a love song of sorts...but the singer has to come to grips with the fact that his love, as he sang it, "could have turned out to be almost anyone...almost anyone...with the possible exception of who I wanted her to be"...

Next Monday: #390-381...

Just Finished Reading Slade House by David Mitchell

Slade House, a 2015 novel by David Mitchell which I just finished reading, is my third from this author, the first two being Cloud Atlas (which I was intrigued into reading from its movie promos) and The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet...you can read my past reviews of them by clicking on their titles. In Slade House I encounter once again the concept of "psychic vampire", which Stephen King wrote about in his novel Doctor Sleep and which one of the sci-fi Scanners movies also delved into.  It's always been interesting to me that, once the author has introduced paranormal or supernatural powers into his or her story, then it becomes necessary to impose special limiting rules on those powers...like, for example, the existence within the Superman series of kryptonite as a counter to his otherwise unlimited powers.  In Slade House, the "vampires" have to replenish their power at a specific place in London (hence the book's title) every nine years by drawing to them unsuspecting victims who they know possess the psychic component they must feed upon. This way the novel divides itself into essentially separate short stories, jumping from 1979 to 1988 to 1997 to 2006 and finally 2015...

The theme of reincarnation, which was evident in the earlier Cloud Atlas, is here as well in Slade House.  But then I discovered that this book has a predecessor, The Bone Clocks, which I should have read first since some of those "rules" I referred to were first laid out in it while one of its characters makes an important appearance at the end of Slade House.  It seems that David Mitchell is like other authors such as Isaac Asimov and Stephen King, creating his own fictional universe with recurring characters and paradigms that crop up from time to time within his supposedly "independent" novels...it would have been more accurate to describe them as all being a part of the same series. In 2006 Mitchell reportedly wrote a book, titled From Me Flows What You Call Time, that he has put off its release until the year 2114: I can hardly wait, let's see, I'll be turning 158 that year...

Slade House was a good story in the gothic horror tradition.  My only problem with it was that the author didn't make it a complete story in itself but tried to integrate it with his earlier works...I've read Stephen King's novels Hearts in Atlantis and Insomnia and had the same problem with these two works' tie-ins with his Dark Tower series: if you haven't read it then you're lost to some extent with these two books.  But David Mitchell's writing is what it is and I plan to read his other novels, including The Bone Clocks...

Thinking of Teaching Self a Musical Instrument (or Two)

My father was an excellent country-style guitar player and also played clarinet earlier in his life...his singing sounded a lot like that of Hank Williams.  My mother was also adept at guitar to the point of mastering the basic chords necessary to accompany folk songs that as children me and my sister Anita, a very good singer, would sing along with her while she played.  My son Will became a very good piano player and my daughter Rebecca has a talent for hearing tunes and readily transferring them to instrument as well as for her beautiful singing voice. And my wife Melissa played flute in her high school band.  Me?  I'm very good at listening to music and not much more.  I took some private piano lessons a few years ago but didn't progress very far, although I managed to survive a recital playing a short classical piece.  Musical ability for most of us is something that works best when we start it very early in life...a lot of classical composers started out learning music and playing instruments as toddlers and Mozart wrote most of his officially-credited symphonies by the age at which I graduated from high school.  So in stating that I'd be interested in my later years taking on learning a musical instrument may sound like a lost cause...but I think I'll try it anyway, focusing on  teaching myself basic guitar and reviewing and surpassing my previous instruction level on the keyboard.  There are even apps that help with this sort of thing and I plan to make full use of them.  Should be interesting, everybody plug your ears...

Quote of the Week...from Jeff Galloway

Being an athlete is a state of mind not bound by age, performance or place in the running pack.
                                                                  ---Jeff Galloway

One thing that you probably noticed upon reading the above quote by Jeff Galloway, himself a longtime runner who has achieved personal success in marathon races and who encourages and teaches others from the general population who want to complete a 26.2 mile race for themselves, is that his definition of "athlete" is confined to the sport of competitive running.  I'm sure, though, that Galloway, many of whose precepts about running I follow and who seems like a thoughtful, reasonable sort, would normally expand "athlete" to encompass the world of sport in general...although when ESPN shows poker games I draw a sharp line there.  Some people who otherwise could physically and medically participate in athletic sports are prevented from running...sometimes they have issues with their knees or feet, or example.  These can transfer Galloway's statement to another activity, be it swimming, biking, or maybe something more team-oriented.  Although I do not enter running races with the primary goal of beating others, even my finishing time is increasingly secondary to actually covering the distance successfully.  And maybe it's ironic that I'm like that, since in the last two races I finished this past spring I won awards for best finisher in my male/age category...then again I was the ONLY finisher in the category for each race!  I consider myself to be an athlete, not only with running but also with walking.  That's also good, since as I age (I'm 63 now), barring medical developments to the contrary, I intend to continue running and walking as long as I can do so.  On November 10th I plan to run the Tom Walker Memorial Half-Marathon to be held at 8 AM at Boulware Springs Park in southeastern Gainesville...

As long as I'm writing about running and this is the first day of November, here is my running report for the previous month.  In October I ran for a total of 139 miles, with 13.3 miles being my longest single run.  I missed running for two days in the month, and during that time I was walking considerably, including a hike along a Georgia mountain trail with Melissa.  All considered, a pretty good month for my running/walking.  Looking forward to see what happens this coming month...

Just Finished Reading Centennial by James A. Michener

In the summer of 1976 I had signed up to take a summer college course in general American history...the young instructor in his opening lecture told the students that he wasn't that concerned about facts per se, but rather that we picked up on the trends being taught in the course.  I promptly dropped the class and switched to the same course but by a different instructor, a crotchety old man who taught from a scrapbook of different newspaper and magazine clippings he had assembled over the years.  And he covered facts, boy did he ever...as well as laying out his own admittedly biased worldview.  But I liked Mr. Theriault's way of teaching anyway...if you're not solidly based in historical facts then you're susceptible to any cockamamie idea floating around...and there are quite a few a these nowadays.  I say all this because James A. Michener's 1974 historical novel Centennial, set in a fictional Colorado county on the Wyoming border north of Denver, mixes the two approaches in a disconcerting way.  After reading it I feel I understand the trends and eras leading up to the present (the author's 1974, that is) while at the same time I became very uncomfortable with all of the "facts": the characters, locales, and events, while very similar to real historical people, locations, and events, are nonetheless fictional.  So now I have this very-well researched and described fictional mental picture that is in all likelihood a very faithful representation of what the area around Centennial, a made-up town along the real Platte River, was really like.  But that's the way it is with historical fiction, and I have to admit to greatly admiring Michener's attention to detail as well as his compassion and discernment in presenting all sides, good and bad, of his characters and the way societies and movements developed and declined there over the years...

Centennial is in essence a fictional history researcher's account of his commissioned area in northern Colorado, and he goes all the way back to the Earth's formation and the area's geological origins...then on to presenting life from the viewpoints of different animals populating the same region, including the dinosaur diplodocus, an early horse, a bison named "Rufus", a mother beaver, and a battle between a rattlesnake and eagle.  How this fictional researcher came across these experiences strikes me as being a bit dubious, but he presents them all as fact...as well as the stories of a Clovis spear-maker from nearly 10,000 BC and Lame Beaver, an Arapaho Indian warrior.  Don't get me wrong: I loved all of these little stories...and the book itself is by and large a collection of short stories bound in chronological order by the narrative connecting them all to the same geography.  I already greatly admired Michener's writing after reading his 1982 novel Space, which I recently reviewed.  I intend to embark on another Michener book in the near future, but I don't know which of his 40 novels it will be.  So if you're interested in getting a good sense of what it was like in the American west...more specifically northern Colorado just east of the Rockies, you'll get a lot of input from Centennial about geology, dinosaurs, mammoths, horses, beavers, rattlesnakes, eagles, Arapaho-Shoshone-Pawnee-Cheyenne-Comanche Indians, French traders, the Army out west, outlaws and the gun culture, the gold and silver rushes, white prejudice against Indians and Mexicans, German, Russian, and Japanese settlers, the Mexicans and their revolution, cattle drives, ranching, religious attitudes of the time, the tactics of land acquisition and control, farming beets and then wheat, the Dust Bowl, and the effects of urban development on the environment...just to name a few items...then I say go for it!

Weekly Short Stories: 1953 Science Fiction, Part 1

When I recently picked up my own copy of Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 15 (1953), it struck me that I've owned that particular book in the series longer than most of the others, having read several of its stories a number of times.  Today I'm covering the first three of the selected science fiction short stories from 1953: all three are set off in the future on other planets, the first two of which happen to be Mars...

THE BIG HOLIDAY by Fritz Leiber
This story reads like something that Ray Bradbury would have written about the good ol' days growing up in a small midwestern town, but the people here are living on a future terraformed Mars...and seem to have gotten their priorities straight, celebrating the "Big Holiday" by laying down their work and engaging in good-natured community games, feasts and parties...along with the rest of the now-enlightened collective population of Earth and Mars.  It's a story of hope, that somewhere along the line the things that should really matter to us will finally become the determining priorities for humanity's future instead of destructive warfare, fear, and hate...

CRUCIFIXUS ETIAM  by William M. Miller, Jr.
A young man from Peru, enticed by the good pay for laboring on Mars, signs up for a five-year stint there.  He is fully aware that eventually he will probably lose his ability to breathe on his own and become permanently dependent on oxygen directly supplied by a machine to his bloodstream, but he struggles in vain against what increasingly seems inevitable.  And why are all of them working so hard anyway to dig up the strange substance from deep under the planet's surface?  Another Mars tale with an ultimately optimistic ending...but in this case to get to heaven you must first go through hell...

FOUR IN ONE by Damon Knight
One of my all-time favorite sci-fi stories, Four In One takes place far into a future when the entire human-settled galaxy is locked in the throes of a civil war between two implacable factions. On a hasty project to claim an previously unexplored-but-strategic planet for one side in the conflict, a biologist and three others in his team accidently fall into a mass of strange protoplasm...which proceeds to digest their bodies, leaving only their brains, eyes, and nervous systems intact within the mottled mass.  How protagonist George Meister assesses and adapts to his unique situation and how he deals with the others sharing his predicament form the flow of this fascinating and singular tale.  And the ending definitely provides food for thought...

Next week: more reviews of good 1953 sci-fi short stories...

A Little Rant About Introverts and Extroverts

I have more than once heard it stated that people more oriented to introverted personalities are fundamentally different from their extroverted counterparts in one very significant way: while an extrovert will feel emotionally and spiritually energized from social interactions and deliberately seek them out...the more people and the louder the better...it is precisely this type of situation that drains introverts, who relish solitude to replenish themselves.  Being such an introvert, I really don't need around me any extroverts who think it is part of their mission in life to change me into a more "social" creature and impose their view of social interaction on me: I've seen extroverts in action and oftentimes it isn't very pretty, what with all of the backbiting, gossip, grandstanding, verbal aggression and manipulation I hear...

Speaking from my own experience...and not necessarily yours...it is complicated enough for my feeble mind to figure out where someone else is coming from in simple one-on-one conversations, much less to sit at a table or in a room where most of the people there are simultaneously assessing and judging each other while in conversation and spewing out stuff about others who are not present.  I remember even back to the first grade when the teacher would simply walk out of the classroom for a couple of minutes and the entire class would erupt into spontaneous, loud chatter...I would just sit there overcome and immobilized by it all.  But school is where extroverts get the automatic upper hand over introverts and the latter are often psychologically beaten down over the years to the point where...well, it all seems pointless.  Introverts are not incomplete or insecure people who need to be brought out of their "shells"...Lord knows, I've encountered some extroverts who have to rank among the most insulated and insecure I've experienced...

Most of us are mixes of introverted and extroverted personalities, seeking a kind of balance whenever we're either too isolated or too crowded.  Although without a doubt pretty far down the introverted scale, I still enjoy my family and associating with others, as well as being interested in what goes on around me...I just don't want to be swept off into oblivion by the masses...or even a small group...

My 500 All-Time Favorite Songs: #410-401

Here we go with my reactions to ten more songs on my 500 all-time favorites list.  And with it go the first hundred songs...after this only 400 to go...

410 SIMPLE LIFE...Elton John
I liked of lot of Elton John's songs from the early-to-mid 1970s...and then suddenly just when it seemed he was at his peak stardom, I didn't like his output.  Since then he came out with some four songs that I really like, among them this long 1992 single that got a lot of airplay on adult contemporary radio.  Although Elton is more of a piano man, it is the harmonica on Simple Life that makes it special...

409 LORDS OF THE BOARDS...Guano Apes
A German rock band singing about snowboarding?  An unlikely combination to make the airwaves, yet Rock 104 in Gainesville played this song in their regular rotation during 2000.  Female lead vocal, heavy guitar riffs, and over-the-top screaming made this one ultimately my favorite song of the year...and no, I never snowboarded and probably never will...

408 TICKET TO RIDE...the Beatles
Before he bought the band's Help! album containing Ticket to Ride, my father, in 1965 decidedly a Beatles fan, recorded this song off the radio on his big tape deck and then played it and replayed it over and over.  I thought...and still do...that it was one of their very best songs, but I heard it so much back then that I tired of it, not recovering until relatively recently...

407 SOMETHING IN THE AIR...Thunderclap Newman
This is a late sixties song marked by a high-pitched male lead singer, lush accompanying strings, and a unique ragtime piano instrumental break in its middle..."we've got to get together sooner or later, because the revolution's here and you know it's right."  A piece that sounds like it was promoting itself as the anthem of those counterculture times. The Who's Pete Townshend was the creative force in both forming the band and intricately producing the record...

406 ORINOCO FLOW...Enya
Orinoco Flow, referring to a long South American river, gives that place a sense of mystery and anticipation, and Enya's singing is wonderful. Plus, I think the video she made for it will greatly enhance your enjoyment of this 1988 hit as it did for me. Very dreamy, just let it all go and fall back into this musical and lyrical adventure...

405 WICHITA LINEMAN...Glen Campbell
I used to hear this a lot on the radio during my DXing hobby phase in the late 1960s: this consisted of trying to pick up as many different AM radio stations from across the country as I could...I ended up with a little more than 500 from 31 different states plus several other countries using an ordinary cheap radio we picked up from Walgreens.  The song is what I call "thoughtful country", an introspective look from a man missing his love and whose job at times makes him feel a bit alienated and cut off...

404 POLICY OF TRUTH...Depeche Mode
Michael Corleone would definitely dig the lyrics of this song off Depeche Mode's 1989 Violator album, which in my opinion was easily their finest work.  Great dance tune and wicked synthesizer licks, along with lines like "Things could be so different now, it used to be so civilized, you will always wonder how it would have been if you'd only lied".   There's a cynical kind of wisdom here that I find lacking elsewhere, which makes Policy of Truth stand out to me...

403 ONE WAY OR ANOTHER...Blondie
Back in the early 1980s, New York-based Blondie was the premier New Wave band with a female lead singer...followed closely by Missing Persons from Los Angeles.  Deborah Harry sang so expressively and put a lot of humor into her craft...this song is a case in point.  Such personality and presence...too bad they didn't last longer than they did after one of their founding members fell chronically ill and Harry left the business to care for him...

402 RASPBERRY BERET...Prince
Prince was one of those confounding musical artists who was so talented and creative, but tended to choose musical styles that steered me away from him instead of following him.  In 1985, though, he seemed to be turning in a different, more listenable direction...but didn't go there in the end.  Still, I always have his singles hit Raspberry Beret, in a style more reminiscent of the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper era than of his own catalogue of recordings...

401 MAKE ME BAD...Korn
This is a peculiar example of a wild and crazy hard/metal rock song packaged in such a slick way that at moments it seems like a lounge act.  I heard it for a couple of years around the turn of the century on the radio until they finally told me who did it...of course, it had to be Korn, with Jonathan Davis screeching his demented heart out...one of the catchiest songs of that time while hard-hitting and not a little bit bizarre...

Next week: #400-391...

Trump's Idolizers and Haters

The phenomenon-turned-president known as Donald Trump has certainly by far been the headline news item going on now for more than four years, with most of the country's voting-age population pitted against each other, steeped either in irrational adulation or hatred for the man.  No doubt Trump himself has greatly instigated this stoked-up passion about himself since he has to be one of the most narcissistic egomaniacs I've ever seen...no matter what the story, it always has to be about him, in his private Trump-centered universe.  I never did like him ever since the role he played as a big-spending team owner in the demise of the United States Football League, a pro league in the mid-eighties I then had high hopes for.  Then, after Obama was elected president, Trump latched on to the birther movement claiming that this president wasn't really born in the U.S. and as such wasn't legally the president after all.  I watched live on TV when he declared his own candidacy for the high office and was impressed with his oratorical skills...and apparently so did a lot of others since the Republicans made him their nominee in 2016 and he ultimately won the general election later that year...

So right up front I'll state it...I dislike Donald Trump, yet he still has some positive aspects to his personality...including his lifelong personal example against drug abuse...and takes positions on some issues that I support.  I thought the Republicans made a mistake in 2016 rejecting stalwart conservative candidate Ted Cruz, one of the smartest senators in my opinion, and that Cruz could have also beaten Hillary Clinton in the election.  But whereas I found many of Trump's comments and Tweets to be offensive and insulting...especially the name-calling and derision he heaped on any perceived opponent or critic, including "Lyin' Ted"...I noticed that his haters were often calling him racist on a number of things that were clearly taken out of context and distorted.  And through all these years and up to the present, I find myself taken aback at some of Trump's actions and words while at the same time rejecting a lot of the criticism coming from the never-Trumpers...I could list specific examples but I don't really need anyone from either camp barraging me with links and emotion-laden reactions...

I tend to form my judgments about the politicians I see and hear on TV and radio from my own impressions, and not from the highly-spun interpretations that pass for news analysis these days.  But for those irrational folks who either think Trump can do no right or no wrong, they tend to insulate themselves within their own feedback loop bubbles of TV channels, radio talk shows, and Internet sites that promote and reinforce their own preconceptions and do not entertain the notion that you can support (or oppose) someone while at times finding things about them that you disagree (or agree) with.  That Donald Trump never admits to making a mistake and is always doubling down against any criticism of him doesn't mean that you or I have to engage in the same intellectually dishonest folly.  After all, we the people are supposed to be the bosses, aren't we...not the politicians and not the often biased and lazy media talking heads trying to convince us that up is down, war is peace, liberty is bigotry, prosperity is privilege, compromise is betrayal, and so on.  In discussing politics with others I've gotten into the habit, once I discover someone supports a particular politician, of asking them to share with me something...anything...that they dislike about the politician or his or her stance on some issue.  And if they can't find even one thing, then I tend to suspect that they are idolizers, not independent thinkers...and it's fruitless trying to discuss anything with such types. In every presidential election I voted in since 1976 I saw good and bad in both major candidates and had to thoughtfully weigh which one would make a better president before I made my decision...and that includes the last election.  Why not join me and do the same this time around and leave the idolizers and haters to wallow in their own comfortable self-imposed bubbles...

Our Visit to Pine Mountain, Georgia

The Pine Mountain/Warm Springs area of west-central Georgia is probably best known for where President Franklin D. Roosevelt spent much of his presidency in the Little White House at Warm Springs, where the spring water there seemed to help him with the aftermath of his polio affliction that immobilized him in his later years.  Melissa and I visited here last week for a couple of days, lodging at a place about halfway between Pine Mountain (on the west) and Warm Springs (on the east)...Picture #1 shows a field on the property where they hold outdoor weddings.  It is very hilly here...mountainous, especially by Florida's standards...and the scenery is beautiful.  Although the spot had great historical significance due to FDR's legacy we focused on just relaxing, partaking of the area's shops and eateries, and hiking on the Pine Mountain Trail...which snakes through the woods, across streams, and up and down hills through several miles.  Thursday morning we entered the Trail at its start, situated next to a TV tower on the west side of ALT-US 27 just north of SR 190...see the map, Picture #2.  On the trail Melissa fashioned her own walking stick from a branch lying nearby and we trudged down (and up) the very uneven path, with large roots, stones, and abrupt drops and rises forcing us to look down while we walked.  We met several different parties of hikers along the way...this Pine Mountain Trail is very popular, and some hardy souls chose to pack up and camp more deeply along the trail.  We eventually decided to turn back in order to get out before dusk set in...Pictures #3 and #4 show the trail, with the latter displaying a stream crossing on unstable rocks...

In Warm Springs we ate at the Bulloch House, a famous restaurant where Roosevelt ate and which showed many historic pictures, one of the President smilingly about to cut into a large roast turkey and my favorite showing him actually standing up, on the rear car of a train at the Warm Springs station.  They still have a railway there...albeit probably now just freight...while in Pine Mountain to the west they got rid of theirs in favor of a walking-biking trail.  We shopped and ate in Warm Springs on Thursday, supping at Mac's Barbeque behind Bulloch and did the same the next day in Pine Mountain, breakfasting at Eddie Mae's Country Kitchen and trying out UniquExpressions Coffee Shop...Melissa's in Picture #5 in front on one of their Main Street shops.  Then we headed on back homeward.  I recommend this part of Georgia to those, especially from Florida, who just want to get away for a little while but don't feel like having to navigate through and past Atlanta to get to the northern Georgia mountains...that last picture was taken off the side of SR 190 where they offered a place to pull off the road to see the scenic view.  There wasn't a person we met anywhere there who wasn't overly friendly and helpful...can't beat that!  I'd like to return someday and extensively check out the Little White House and the nearby Callaway Gardens.  Still, it's good to be back home again...

Quote of the Week...from William Arthur Ward

Three enemies of personal peace: regret over yesterday's mistakes, anxiety over tomorrow's problems, and ingratitude for today's blessings.                       ---William Arthur Ward

William Arthur Ward was a Christian Wesleyan/Methodist leader in the last century who wrote many philosophical maxims about how one can live the most effectively.  I picked the above quote to discuss because its wisdom is so self-evident...yet how many of us ignore its clear message? For all of us, our lives take place in the "now", not the past or future, yet how much do we spend in terms of time and energy focusing our attention on anything but what's actually going on around us?  Sure, like just about everyone else I can harbor all kinds of second-guessing and resentment about things I should have (or not) done in the past or the way other people treated me...but while all that is going on in my head I'm letting my real life...happening right now...go by the wayside.  And about tomorrow...what I do while focused on what is going on now will take care of that abstraction of time as it slips into the present "today".  And Ward's last part, about the need to take notice of the many blessings in my present life, is the solution to the problem of dwelling too much in the past or future: after all, if my temporal home in the present is so attractive with its many blessings, then why direct my attention "anytime" else?

John "Maddog" Wallace, Marathon Runner

When I was just getting into my middle-age fascination with distance running early in 2010, I happened across an interesting ongoing blog titled Maddog Marathon...click on the title link to access it.  It featured very detailed accounts of John "Maddog" Wallace, twelve years my senior, who had run hundreds of marathons and held the world record for most countries run in a marathon.  I always got a kick out of his often blunt and colorful writing, including his critiques of the events he ran in Gainesville and Ocala...especially describing those BAHs (bad-ass hills) on my hometown's stretch of NW16th Avenue between 34th and 13th Streets.  I might have even unknowingly seen him at the Ocala event, which I was also running that year but at the half-marathon distance.  Sadly, right after I began to follow Maddog's exploits he began to come down with one health problem after another and his running...along with his enjoyment of it...drastically suffered.  Two years ago he ran probably his final marathon, in the tiny Pacific country of Palau: Wallace ran a total of 383 marathons in 132 different countries.  After his retirement from marathons, he wrote a book about his experiences, titled Global Runner...here's a link to his webpage where you can read further [John Wallace]…

I suspect that John Wallace had more than just running marathons as a goal: it was a context in which he could extensively travel...and I'm sure that unlike most of us he had at his disposal deep financial resources that he could draw upon.  My goals are much more modest than Maddog's...but I like to think that some more running and traveling adventures are in store for me as well, albeit on a smaller scale, to be sure...

Weekly Short Stories: 1952 Science Fiction, Part 4

I conclude my look back at the year in quality science fiction short stories with my reactions to the final five entries from the anthology Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SG Stories 14 (1952). Here they are...

THE MARTIAN WAY by Isaac Asimov
Mars in in the early years of becoming settled and a demagogic politician on Earth uses its consumption of water to scapegoat it and rise in political prominence...Asimov meant the story as an analogy to Senator McCarthy's then-red baiting tactics against others to enhance his own national political stature.  The settlers come up with their own solution to Earth's embargo on water, and it involves a bold adventure...

THE IMPACTED MAN by Robert Sheckley
Super-entities are responsible...by working on awarded contracts...for designing the various elements of the cosmos, including our own galaxy.  Its designer accidentally leaves a glitch on one of its planets...naturally Earth...in which a man finds himself slipping into the past or future depending on whether he walks down or up.  This is a satirical look at how our government does its own business handing out contracts to various companies..

WHAT'S IT LIKE OUT THERE? by Edmond Hamilton
Whereas the first story in this group painted an optimistic picture of settling Mars, this one goes in the other direction describing the various horrors inflicted on the second expedition there, as a survivor finds himself back on Earth wearily visiting the bereaved families of his buddies who didn't make it and trying to comfort them without fully explaining what really happened there...

SAIL ON! SAIL ON! by Philip José Farmer
It seems like the 1492 Columbus expedition to the Americas, but the priest on board communicates by radio in code to his counterpart on the Canaries...and soon it becomes clear that this is an alternate universe where certain historical events went different ways than in our own, creating interesting scenarios.  And, it seems, there are a few other significant differences as evidenced by the story's ending...

COST OF LIVING by Robert Sheckley
The notion of endless and effortless credit, to be passed on from one generation to another, is the theme of this prescient tale as a man and woman at some time in the not-so-distant future cannot bring themselves to say "enough" and stop buying their costly and often unused labor-saving devices on credit. It's all in how one defines a "need" vs. a "want"...and if something is deemed a need, then is it really necessarily to always buy the more luxurious and expensive model?  This story accurately illustrates how easily-available credit can distort people from making realistic economic choices in their lives based on their priorities and ability to pay for them.  Both editors expressed a analogy between Cost of Living and how our government runs up its own debt, to be paid back with interest by future generations...

Next week I'll begin a look at the year 1953 in science fiction short stories...

My Sunday 13.3 Mile Training Run

This past Sunday afternoon...after slogging it out in the rain Friday night and most of Saturday...the skies over Gainesville miraculously cleared up, with moderately-warm temperatures and relatively low humidity.  After cancelling my planned long-distance Saturday training run because of the adverse weather, I found myself stepping out my front door to try an unplanned Sunday run...and my goal was no less than to cover a course of 13.3 miles, slightly longer than a half-marathon.  I figured it might be more challenging since I didn't prepare myself for a long-distance run the previous day as I customarily do through carb-loading (usually with pancakes, pizza, or pasta), but I was game anyway.  I continued to employ the strategy that marathon guru Jeff Galloway suggests, involving regular short walking breaks interspersed throughout the run.  This I did and easily surpassed my 10.0 and 10.6 mile runs accomplished September 28th and October 12th, respectively.  But as I approached the 12.5 mark near the very end, I hit the proverbial runner's wall when my energy level plummetted and I was struggling step-by-step to finish...which I somehow accomplished.  That's a marked improvement from last week's run when I ran out of steam after about 9 miles, though.  I kept a slow, regular pace as I listened to a mix of songs I like (many of them on my personal "top 500" list that I'm gradually unraveling on this blog each Monday) and carried a bottle of Zero-Sugar Powerade, which I sipped during those brief breaks.  My course took me up and down most of the residential streets of my Northwood Pines and the adjacent Northwood Oaks subdivisions up here in far northern Gainesville, along with a 3-mile stretch on the sloping NW 53rd Avenue walkway between NW 34th and 43rd Streets.  For a couple of hours following the run I experienced some painful cramping in my toes, feet, and calves...which gradually subsided into a general lower-body soreness.  Now a couple of days later I'm "good to go" and looking forward to the next weekend trek.  I'm planning to enter Gainesville's Tom Walker, Jr. Memorial Half-Marathon, to take place on Sunday morning, November 10 at Boulware Springs Park and the Hawthorne Trail southeast of Gainesville.  I've twice run that race before a few years ago, but at age 63 my strategy has been shifting away from fast finishing times toward that of successfully covering the distance...my fastest-ever half-marathon time, in March 2013, was 1:50:53 at the Orange Blossom Half-Marathon in Tavares.  My time on this 13.3-mile training run was considerably (and deliberately) slower at 2:40:00.  I'm wondering whether or not I should continue to ramp up the distance on my weekend training runs to possibly get myself into marathon territory, but at least for now I'll be focusing on getting through the next half-marathon, which will be my twelfth race at that distance since I began running them in 2010...

My 500 All-Time Favorite Songs: #420-411

Here is another segment of my top 500 favorite songs list that spans quite a long period of time: 1964 to 2016, 52 years.  And the musical selections' tempos and styles vary widely as well...there should be something here you like.  If you haven't heard some of the listed songs, why not give them a listen...I especially recommend Regina Spektor.  Anyway, here's what I have to say about #420-411...

420 I AM MINE...Pearl Jam
I am Mine, written and sung by Eddie Vedder and released in 2002, is one of those special songs celebrating individuality and the importance of meeting life on one's own terms...like Frank Sinatra's I Did It My Way and Sammy Davis, Jr.'s I Gotta Be Me, but for the 21st century.  Pearl Jam is one of those musical acts that had a breakthrough album establishing their fame and fortune but, after the first few years...although their product remained high-quality...didn't get the airplay they deserved for their newer songs and had to rely on their name and older hits on the concert trail...I am Mine should have been a much bigger hit...

419 ABRAHAM, MARTIN AND JOHN...Dion
This song was composed soon after the devastating assassination in early June, 1968 of Robert F. Kennedy while he was passing through the back of a hotel after his victory speech for winning the California presidential primary earlier that day.  I didn't hear about it until the next morning at school (Nova Blanche Forman Elementary in Davie, 6th Grade, Wednesday, June 5th sitting on the south side of Room 18 in Suite D).  Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Bobby's brother, John F. Kennedy, were also victims to assassins' bullets...what a different country we would be had they not fallen.  An appropriately very sad and unforgettable song...

418 STAY AWAY...Nirvana
A deep track from this Seattle grunge band's 1991 Nevermind album, it is full of their late frontman Kurt Cobain's rage at the outside world trying to typecast and crowd in on him...so why did he set out to achieve celebrity and fame, then?  I can never get why some people struggle and struggle to attain something after which they act like such big victims for being successful.  I like this song for a different reason: the words "stay away" as he screams them speak to my feelings during the times I feel overwhelmed in the middle of noisy crowds (like what is currently going on in this Starbucks), and hey, sometimes it's just fun to haul off and scream along with the half-crazed singer...

417 INFATUATION...Rod Stewart
Once I turned off the exploitative and asisine music video and considered this 1984 singles release by Rod Stewart on its own merits, I quickly grew to like and appreciate it, one of this British artist's best songs in my estimation.  It's a good rock song full of strong guitar riffs and keyboard support...Stewart's gruff, scratchy voice fits in perfectly here.  My only problem was the drawn-out ending, but I can always switch it off at that point anyway...

416 IT KEEPS YOU RUNNIN'...the Doobie Brothers
When Michael McDonald joined the Doobie Brothers, his deep, soulful singing and keyboards added a different dimension to this band, as exemplified by this slow and relentless 1976 classic from their Taking It to the Streets album.  Not that I don't appreciate original lead singer Tom Johnston, who is back with the band and touring with them...they're performing in St. Augustine next month.  I didn't get around to noticing It Keeps You Runnin' until 1980, when for some reason it seemed to be resurgent on the radio...

415 LET IT BE ME...Betty Everett and Jerry Butler
When I was a little kid back in 1964 I had first thought that the Everett/Butler version I had grown to like so much, even back then, was the original and that the Everly Brothers copied them. But not only did I have that backwards, but also the original song was a French hit (in French by somebody else) from 1955.  No matter, I still greatly prefer the beautiful heart-rending performance by Betty Everett and Jerry Butler...although the Everly Brothers did a pretty bang-up job with it as well...

414 THE VISIT...Regina Spektor
To me Regina Spektor is the greatest popular musical artist of this era...if anything I should have included more of her songs on this list.  The Visit is from her 2016 Remember Us to Life album.  The lyrics are about a visit to an old friend from the past: "And somewhere on the hill inside the past we hear the bells catching only parts of thoughts and fragments of ourselves".  Regina is a classically-trained pianist who records her own compositions and has already released several albums...

413 THE BIG TIME...Neil Young
Back in 1996 I became a member of one of those CD music clubs that offered a certain number of free CDs along with a minimum of purchases...had I not I might never have heard this wonderful opening song of Neil Young's Broken Arrow album, which he recorded and released that year with the backup band Crazy Horse and I picked as one of my CDs from the list.  A long piece, The Big Time refers in what seems to be an autobiographical sense to a long life well lived...and it's still not over, he's not finished yet.  I like both Neil's endearing lyrics and the instrumental breaks, not a single weak moment in this long track...

412 TIGHTROPE...Electric Light Orchestra
Tightrope is the opening track from ELO's 1976 album A New World Record, in my opinion (as well as many others) their best album...I remember going down to Peaches in Fort Lauderdale next to the library to buy it...every track is worth listening to, and this song is one of the best with a brooding opening leading into electric guitar riff-laden rock n' roll punctuated by sudden, dissonant strings...nothing like it...

411 PIGS (THREE DIFFERENT ONES)...Pink Floyd
In their succession of four blockbuster hit albums, released every two years from 1973 to 1979, Pink Floyd's 1977 Animals is the one generally least liked and most ignored.  The main reason I think for this are the abnormally long tracks dominating it, and Pigs (Three Different Ones) is a prime example, going on for more than 11 minutes with an exceedingly long mid-song instrumental break.  It's one that you probably have to develop a taste for, but the music is so well-crafted and produced and Roger Waters' flair for cynicism-in-song is on full display here, although some of the references appear to be England-based and not readily apparent to American listeners...especially that part about Mary Whitehouse.  A really spooky song that you need to set aside time for...

Next week: #410-401...

About Gators and Dolphins Football, Baseball Playoffs

Gators Football: In college football the Florda Gators bounced back from their LSU defeat last week by coming from behind on the read against a touch South Carolina team and winning on the road 38-27 yesterday afternoon.  Now they'll get a week off before their showdown against Georgia on November 2nd in Jacksonville.  Meanwhile, the other team challenging so far in the Southeastern Conference East Division, Missouri, lost to Vanderbilt this week and will face Kentucky the next...they may or may not have a good team this year, it's hard to say until they are tested against Georgia November 9 and the Gators a week later...and the Tigers are currently appealing an NCAA ruling that would keep them from playing for the conference championship anyway this year.  If Florida wins out it won't matter...but they have to win out...

Dolphins Football: The Dolphins showed signs of rebellion against the derision cast upon them across the country for their management-induced tanking season by nearly beating Washington last week before bowing after missing a late two-point conversion, 17-16. I've written before that I understand that teams have to rebuild from time to time...but deliberately trying to finish in last place in order to get higher draft picks is despicable and demeaning, especially to the fans as well as the players.  But it looks as if Coach Brian Flores and his players haven't accepted the tanking strategy concocted by Dolphins management: they're actually trying to win, bless them. It's got to be tough working against the wishes of your own bosses. In today's game against an improved Buffalo team on the road, Miami actually maintained a 14-9 lead through three quarters before the Bills took over in the last to win 31-21...

Baseball Playoffs: I was gratified to see the Washington Nationals handle St. Louis so well, sweeping them in four games, to make it to the first World Series in franchise history (they were originally the Montreal Expos) and the first time since the American League Senators in 1933 that a major league Washington team will play in that championship series.  Last night in the American League New York had a chance to force a game seven in their series at Houston, but although the Yankees outhit the Astros 10-6, the latter were able to pull off two incredible outfielder catches in the later innings, robbing NY of extra bases and the runs they desperately needed to come back.  Houston won the game and thus the series in the bottom of the ninth with a walk-off homer by Jose Altuve...so now its Houston vs. Washington in the 2019 World Series, to commence next Tuesday...

Nasty Nestor Rains on Gainesville

When I walked out the door last night at ten from work, I was dismayed at all the rainfall...but already knew where it was all coming from: Tropical Storm Nestor, its center far off to the west off the Florida panhandle coast just west of Apalachicola.  The Weather Channel says that it's "tropical" in name only since the worst of its associated weather by far has been blasting the Florida peninsula...even 400+ miles away in south Florida...with storms and heavy winds...and even reported tornadoes in the central part of the state.  Today around Gainesville they're predicting rain, rain, and more rain...I'm writing this as today's topic because in the past whenever I wrote about the bad weather it would suddenly clear up as if to spite me: maybe the strategy will work today! Still, the Walk to End Alzheimer's scheduled for this morning has already been postponed and I don't know what they're doing about the Tom Petty birthday celebration across town...the late rock n' roll legend grew up in Gainesville before hitting it big out west.  Nasty Nestor, as I like to call it, has very little precipitation around its center, currently with maximum sustained winds of 50 mph.  Its trajectory has it cutting across northern Florida through Tallahassee, where Florida A&M has already changed its home football game from today to tomorrow.  Then it's onward through far-southern Georgia and South Carolina...

I was planning on trying a long neighborhood run today but I'm not very acclimatized to running in the rain and on the slippery roads with their slimy fallen leaves, puddles, water-filled potholes, and oil spots I'd have to avoid...better to wait a couple of days, I guess.  This storm reminds me of Hurricane Juan, from October 1985.  It was much stronger than Nestor and sat on Louisiana for a number of days, thoroughly flooding the state.  But it also sent off distant feeder bands that struck Gainesville with some horrific stormy weather, hundreds of miles distant from its center.  At least Nestor should be out of our way before too long...

Quote of the Week...from Tom Daschle

Bipartisanship isn't an option anymore; it is a requirement. The American people have divided responsibility for leadership right down the middle.                       ---Tom Daschle

Tom Daschle, from South Dakota, was a Democratic senator representing his state and serving as both Senate Majority and Minority Leader during the early part of this century.  He hasn't always lived up to his above quote urging for bipartisanship, but his leadership in that regard easily surpassed what we've been witnessing on Capitol Hill for the past few years.  He is an example of a Democrat elected for office statewide in what are now solidly red, Republican states...and he's not the only one...

If you look at the electoral map nowadays its easy to see North and South Dakota, Arkansas, and West Virginia as solidly red...they all went overwhelmingly for Trump in the last election and only West Virginia...with John Manchin voting with the Republicans much of the time...has a sitting senator in the Democratic caucus.  Yet just a few years ago all of these states each had two Democratic senators...what happened?  There are two basic reasons as I see it...

One clear reason, as evidenced in North Dakota with past established Democratic senators Kent Conrad and Bryan Dorgan, in West Virginia with Jay Rockefeller, and in South Dakota with Tim Johnson, is that the sitting senators chose to retire and were replaced with Republicans.  But elsewhere another process was afoot: voters in these states, seeing how extremely partisanly-divided the politics had become in Washington, chose party over individual...and those individual Democrats like Blanche Lincoln and Mark Pryor in Arkansas and Daschle himself in South Dakota supported Senate control by a party that many of them opposed and were defeated for reelection by Republican candidates.  The fact that the party primary process favors more politically-extreme candidates for either party has scared incumbents from engaging in bipartisan engagement with the other side on their legislation and has resulted in a polarized Senate where more Democrats in more conservative states are marginalized when they try to tend to their constituents' interests there.  Yet most of the American people are centrist...not far right or far left...in their political orientation and feel disenfranchised by this deteriorating political trend.  If the Democrats want to regain red states they lost, their candidates and sitting politicians need to show that they are interested in the people living there and what their special concerns and priorities are...but that would necessitate making their tent a little bigger and more centrist, something that the left will not tolerate.  Democratic presidential candidates are in the same bind: in this stupidly-protracted primary season they have to show their leftist credentials time and time again to garner the nomination...and then go around during the general election talking differently...but it won't wash in Wabash...

And eliminating the electoral college won't wash either, since it would require changing the U.S. Constitution which would then require the approval of most of those small rural red states to greatly diminish their own electoral power...never will happen.  So instead of complaining about the electoral college why won't the Democrats just roll up their sleeves and get to work on the ground to win back their lost states in the time-honored American tradition? Now I was researching and discovered that twenty blue states have changed their laws to award their allotment of electoral votes to the presidential candidate winning the nationwide popular vote...originally I thought that this would put Democratic candidates at a decided disadvantage since none of the Republican-controlled red states are passing such laws.  But after initially railing against that action here (and having to revise this article), I discovered that the laws wouldn't take effect until the red states sign on as well and close that loophole...and here we have the same problem I mentioned before about the smaller states not being likely to voluntarily diminish their own national political power.  Maybe at some time a generation or two from now we'll get a consensus on this issue but until then the electoral college, voted on state-by-state, is going to be the way we elect presidents, like it or not...

Cornyn Raises Trump's 2016 Election Total in Senate Speech

Yesterday morning I was watching C-Span2 as the United States Senate was in session.  One of the speakers rising to take the floor was the Texas senior senator, Republican John Cornyn, who is known to be a strong defender of the Trump administration and who also is a skilled orator and debater...he's a senator whom I respect and take seriously.  He made an interesting point that the Democratic-controlled House, in its impeachment inquiry against Trump, was not according the President or the Republican side the kind of due process and consideration that the Republicans had displayed toward President Clinton and the Democrats back in 1998 when they were going down the same road.  That may be true, but Cornyn, in accusing the other side of trying to undo the 2016 presidential election, made the erroneous claim that Donald Trump received 65 million votes in that election...let's take a look at the real figures...

If you go to Wikipedia, they report that Trump got 62,984,828 votes and Clinton 65,853,514.  The Associated Press reported Trump at 62,985106 and Clinton at 65,853,625.  And the official tally from the Federal Election Commission has Trump with 62,984,825 votes and Clinton with 65,853,516.  Even with the figures rounded to the next million, Donald Trump received only 63 million votes while Hillary Clinton got 66 million.  Now 63 million votes is nothing to laugh about, but especially considering that his opponent received nearly 3 million more than him, I wouldn't be making such an issue about Trump's popular vote total as Senator Cornyn did.  Of course, Donald Trump has claimed without any substantiated proof that he really did win the popular vote over Hillary Clinton and that there was widespread voter fraud on her behalf.  And if you're one of his idolizers who see everything only through his filters just because he supports you on your pet issues...and I pity you if you do...you most assuredly agree with him on this and just about everything else he puts forth: good luck on convincing me, though. I voted twice for Obama but also criticized the hell out of him when I thought he was wrong on something...

I am a supporter of the electoral college system and despite Trump losing the popular vote total to Clinton, I have always held that he won the 2016 election fair and square through the Constitutionally-mandated electoral college after winning close contests in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Florida.  I remember before the 2000 election between Bush and Gore and polls were hinting that Bush might win the popular vote but lose the electoral college...but the reverse happened and Dubya was sworn in as the 43rd president.  No problem...ever since I was twelve years old and observed the 1968 election returns between Nixon, Humphrey, and Wallace, I knew that it was the electoral college that determined a presidential election's winner. But I wonder how many adults around me are totally clueless with regard to how presidents are legitimately elected to office and what they were being taught...if anything...in middle and high school...

Weekly Short Stories: 1952 Science Fiction, Part 3

I continued reading (again) through the anthology Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 14 (1952), with four more good science fiction tales to review.  Here they are...

DELAY IN TRANSIT by F.L. Wallace
Cassal, an agent in the distant future employed by a for-profit corporation seeking exclusive rights to produce and market an extremely important invention by a scientist living far away near the center of the galaxy...finds himself stranded on a planet on which he discovers many others in the same predicament as himself, not having the proper credentials to board their needed flights.  Cassal, aided by a hidden device providing him detailed data on his surroundings and those around him, discovers a company that offers to get him passage to his destination...at a steep price.  Ultimately, it is this company, not Cassal's mission or predicament, that I came away with as the main message of this story: some businesses will create the very problem that they then turn around and sell solutions for...

GAME FOR BLONDES by John D. MacDonald
A man, in the middle of an angry argument with his wife, has a terrible auto accident that kills her...later he finds himself deep in grief and guilt, staggering half-drunk through the streets when he notices three strangely-dressed and made-up blonde women are following him.  Their eventual meeting takes this brief story in a completely unexpected direction, as well as a remarkable ending...

THE ALTAR AT MIDNIGHT by Cyril Kornbluth
The narrator of this story frequents different bars in town and one evening notices a young man sitting at the end of one of them with extensive broken red veins scarring his entire face, causing a ghastly effect.  He reveals that the scars are from his job: he is a spacer, making a lot of money traveling through space between Venus, Earth, and Mars.  His disfigurement comes from the many flights he has taken in ships equipped with the innovative Bowman Drive...he had meant to "retire" before too much scarring had taken place but couldn't pass up on the money: now on Earth he is ostracized and bitter.  The Bowman Drive also enabled an atomic bomb installation on the moon that now threatens Earth: and just who is this Bowman who made all this possible?  Read on to the story's end...

COMMAND PERFORMANCE by Walter M. Miller, Jr.
A young affluent, married woman with three children has always felt a sense of emptiness within her...something intangible that was missing...in spite of all her material and social success in life.  One day the answer comes suddenly crashing down on her, but instead of being assured from it she retreats into fear and panic.  When I first read this story I thought her behavior was foolish, but after giving it a little thought I'd probably have reacted similarly.  What was the answer, you ask?  No, you'll have to read it for yourself, another story that would play well on Twilight Zone or Night Gallery...

Next I'll continue my look at science fiction short stories from the year 1952...

Just Finished Reading The Dreaming Jewels by Theodore Sturgeon

Theodore Sturgeon (1918-85) is widely known in the science fiction community as an excellent author of short stories...I've read a few of them myself and heartily agree.  The Dreaming Jewels, from 1950, was his first published novel and, having just finished reading it, I naturally have a few things to say about it.  The story concerns itself about Horton Bluett, nicknamed Horty, who at the age of eight has to deal as an orphan with a physically abusive, repulsive stepfather.  Soon after that awful "father" causes him to lose three of his fingers after slamming a closet door on them, Horty runs away and meets up with some members of a traveling carnival...they're all part of the special cast in its freak show, before the time that this sort of designation would be considered offensive and demeaning.  Beautiful Zena, called a "midget" (back in 1950 when it was PC-OK to use this term), takes in Horty and disguises him as a girl midget cast member.  But I must backtrack here: she only does so after she discovers his one treasured possession that he has always had: a broken, old jack-in-the-box, named "Junky", with a hideous looking head but with large, glowing jewels representing its eyes.  After she sees it and notices the effect it has on Horty, that changes everything...which is appropriate, considering the role it subsequently plays in the story's explanation and resolution.  One big problem with this carnival: its leader is a misanthropic, bitter-but-brilliant former doctor who lost his medical license after being falsely convicted of malpractice...now he wants his revenge on all of humanity.  And this man has his own secret, involving something he discovered in the forest...

At the beginning of The Dreaming Jewels, the story seemed more of a fantasy involving magic with Horty a special "Harry Potter" type of protagonist: a likable, spunky, and unpretentious little boy, abused by his custodians, who ultimately assumes the role as the indispensable character with special abilities and the implicit assignment of taking on the evil adversary.  Yet Sturgeon, true to his science fiction roots, transforms it all into a plausible tale within that genre and the fantasy and magic recede as the more intriguing explanations reveal themselves.  Reading through The Dreaming Jewels reminded me of a recent movie I've seen, The Greatest Showman, starring Hugh Jackman as a young P.T. Barnum and which also gave a sensitive portrayal to the special people in his circus.  And sensitive is one adjective that applies to just about everything Theodore Sturgeon writes, for while his stories are full of innovative and often strange notions, the ultimate humanity of his characters stands out boldly as their most compelling elements.  This debut novel of his is definitely worth looking into...

Some editions of The Dreaming Jewels came out with the alternate title The Synthetic Man...but it's the same story whichever name appears on the book's cover...