Constellation of the Month: Boötes (the Herdsman)

Boötes is one of the most prominent constellations in the spring evening sky of the northern celestial hemisphere, crossing the meridian around 10 during the month of June...hence I've selected it as my first "constellation of the month".  It's also one of the earliest I learned and observed during the spring of 1964 when my father introduced stargazing to me one evening.  There's obviously some story behind its designation as "herdsman", but to me it looks more like a kite than anything...once you connect the dots between the brightest stars, that is.  At the kite's base is the constellation's main attraction, the first-magnitude star Arcturus, clearly visible even in lighted city skies.  Since I live near latitude 30 degrees North and Arcturus's declination is about 19 degrees North, this red giant that is 36.7 light years away passes just a little south of the zenith (overhead) right about the time this month that I'm pulling in front of my house (I get off from work at 10).  Unfortunately, June this year where I live has been marked by predominantly overcast night skies...even when stars are visible there has been fog to obscure the sky.  One rule of thumb for locating Arcturus: take the stars of the Big Dipper's handle and project them southeastward: they roughly point to this fourth-brightest star in the night sky.  Of course, you can get much more background information on Arcturus and various aspects of Boötes simply by clicking on the Wikipedia article.  When I think of different constellations I tend to view them in relation to those surrounding them...with Boötes the immediate neighbors, starting at the north and going around clockwise, are Ursa Major (with the Big Dipper embedded), Canes Venatici, Coma Berenices, Virgo, Serpens Caput, and Corona Borealis.  When Boötes is high in the sky, look toward the southeast and you'll see the "front" end of Scorpius rising...that should clue you in to my "constellation of next month".  The above representation of Boötes is courtesy of astronomytrek.com...

Just Finished Reading Son by Lois Lowry

I've been reading Lois Lowry's four-part young adult science fiction/fantasy Giver series...I just finished reading the final book, titled Son, from 2012.  In it Claire, a young teenager in a rigid future society where the concept of "love" is unknown and babies are born to artificially-inseminated workers selected for carrying and bearing children, has her baby, which she is denied access to as its mother.  The rest of the story is devoted to her quest to reunite with Gabriel after she secretly finds out his identity but loses him after he is spirited away...the story of Gabriel's escape is told at the end of the first novel, titled The Giver.  In pursuit of her little boy, Claire undergoes her own adventures and trials...including meeting up with an evil entity called the Trademaster, introduced in the preceding book Messenger.  I thought the story was compelling and glad to see the author tying together the various lead characters from each of the series' books.  Jonas, Kira, Matt...and of course Claire and Gabe...figure into how the story develops and is resolved.  You may like it, too...one of the features I liked of each story is how different people discover their own special gifts and use them for bettering the lives of those around them...

Quote of the Week...from Malcolm X

The media's the most powerful entity on earth.  They have the power to make the innocent guilty and the guilty innocent, and that's power.  Because they control the minds of the masses.

                                                                      ---Malcolm X.

Malcolm X was a famous American civil rights activist, known for his forthright and clear language, who was assassinated in 1965 at the age of 39.  I picked the above quote of his because it is so pertinent...not only for back then but especially for today...I wander what Malcolm would say about what's going on in 2020...he would be 94 now had his life not been cut off so tragically.  We are in a presidential election year, and this particular race stands to be the most bitter one ever fought.  We are also in a year of pandemic when controversial measures have been taken to shut down the economy and then gradually reopen it, in the process throwing millions out of work, ruining many businesses, and keeping schools and churches from assembling.  And racial injustice, focusing on the recent murder in police custody of George Floyd in Minneapolis, has spawned mass demonstrations across the nation.  All of these factors...and more...contribute to a danger of media manipulation and we "of the masses" had better start protecting our own minds with some overdue critical analysis before we're all swept away.  I would warn my readers to stand guard against being manipulated by conspiracy theories, political correctness run amuck, hindsight analysis specifically designed to make one "side" look bad, comments taken out of context...and just shear emotional diatribes designed to inflame people's negative passions.  I'm already seeing all of these on television...just magnify it all by several degrees and you have what's going on in social media.  Readers and viewers beware...let's all step back for a moment, take a break from our cherished personal and political narratives, and start using our own minds for a change instead of letting others do it for us...

Starbucks Not Yet Ready for Me to Sit There

Yesterday before work I decided to try out my local Starbucks...visiting for the first time in nearly three months...to see what their new seating/distancing arrangements were and maybe in the process come up with a new topic for a blog article.  Also, I wanted to finally return to a sense of normality: sitting out in public in coffee shops has been something I've enjoyed doing for many, many years and I get a lot of studying and writing done there.  So I got on my phone and did a remote mobile order for my Venti iced coffee with cream, drove on down to the location on NW 43rd Street...and discovered that despite other businesses opening up around Gainesville, Starbucks (at least the one nearest my home) still does not seat people, only selling their products drive-through or take-out.  I did get my coffee at least...no money lost, I used my Starbucks "points" to order it.  I had been looking at the reopening of Starbucks as a bellwether to resuming life as before the coronavirus...not yet, and quite frankly we may be in for a rough road ahead with mass noncompliance of restrictions due to various factors that may be beginning to cause an uptake in cases reported.  Let's all hope and pray that doesn't grow into another spike in COVID-19.  Back in November 2017, long before the current strain of COVID made its entry into our world, I came down with a severe virus that caused painfully deep coughing fits for three days, along with a few more needed for full recovery...it was no flu, I could tell that much. But in retrospect I'm certain that it was something similar to the virus going on around the world today, another one of the coronaviruses on "steroids'". I totally get the trials that some people who are infected with COVID-19 have to go through and don't wish it on anyone, not even the deniers who proudly refuse to cover their faces or practice social distancing around me and my loved ones.  In the meantime, here I go again writing my blog articles at my home desktop computer, next to my Smithsonian Air and Space Museum mug of home-brewed hazelnut coffee...hey, that's not so bad, is it?

Weekly Short Stories: 1959 Science Fiction, Part 3

Here are my reactions to the next three science fiction short stories from the year 1959, as they appeared in the anthology Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 21 (1959).  The three authors Sheckley, Sturgeon and Simak are sci-fi greats, each one gifted with the ability to humanize what is often a very technical genre of writing...their stories tend to outlast by far the era in which they were written...

THE WORLD OF HEART'S DESIRE by Robert Sheckley
Post-apocalypse, different rates of time passage, and alternate reality are three themes dominating this story about a man on the outskirts of town who offers a special injection to his customers.  Beforehand, though, although the treatment will give them their "heart's desire" for a year of felt experiences it will take off ten years off their natural lives.  As a potential customer, Mr. Wayne knows the experience he wants but has his doubts about the "service"...the progression of this story was ingeniously unraveled...

THE MAN WHO LOST THE SEA by Theodore Sturgeon
There are many mysteries embedded in this tale of a man, fully dressed in a spacesuit, immobile and mostly buried in sand on a beach, who seems to encounter a little boy running around him with a toy helicopter.  It's more a stream of consciousness piece, something that you probably have to cultivate a taste for as a reader.  Beyond that, all I can say without giving it all away is you have to read it for yourself...

A DEATH IN THE HOUSE by Clifford Simak
An isolated, reclusive farmer encounters a completely alien being that appears to be dying...he takes it home and tries to nurture it, all to no avail.  This is a story about basic compassion and respect for the dignity of all life, no matter how frighteningly different it might be...and the subject of loneliness gets its due consideration here.  Old Moses, the farmer, reminded me greatly of Hiram, the protagonist in my favorite Simak story The Big Front Yard...

Next week I conclude my look back at 1959 science fiction short stories...

Just Finished Reading Messenger by Lois Lowry

Messenger is the third book in Lois Lowry's four-part The Giver young adult dystopian fantasy series...it came out in 2004.  It is a more direct follow-up to the previous book, Gathering Blue, in that one of that book's characters, a young boy named Matt, is now older and the main protagonist.  I might warn you that simply discussing the setting of Messenger would be something of a spoiler for the previous book if you haven't yet read it since the ending of one book leads to the start of the next...read on if that doesn't bother you.  Matt lives with a blind man, the father of Kira (the protagonist of Gathering Blue) in a different village.  It's all set on a far-off future Earth following a devastating planet-wide disaster called the Ruin.  Their home community provides refuge to the various physically handicapped and rejected people from the often brutally oppressive surrounding areas.  As in the first two novels of this series, the lead character has a special gifting revealed during the course of the story, which focuses on a mysterious kind of creeping social sickness infecting the community whereby people become less humane and more selfish...the surrounding woods likewise undergo a similar transformation.  Although Messenger is pretty short, it is loaded with suspense at the end: so far it is my favorite of the three books.  And now I'm about to start reading the final book in the series, titled Son...

My 500 All-Time Favorite Songs: #95-91

Two of the five songs I'm discussing below are by the Beatles and two more reminded me of songs of theirs...the other one stands in a category of its own.  They're all fantastic, though, and mean a lot to me...of course, that's obvious since they are high on my list of 500 all-time favorite songs.  Here they are...

95 ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE...the Beatles
I first heard this song...which I would deem as my "song of 1967"...in June of that year when the Beatles performed and recorded it live on the BBC-produced television special Our World that educational TV showed in America (in Miami on Channel 2).  Mick Jagger, who was one of the invited guests there, recently remarked that his Rolling Stones were more of a performing band than the Beatles...but the spot-on poise and musical discipline they showed with this presentation indicates otherwise.  It would become a Number One hit single, later appearing on their remarkable Magical Mystery Tour album: my favorite part was at the end with Paul adlibbing "She loves you yeah, yeah, yeah".  When I saw them perform it on Our World back then I also remember being gratified that John and Paul had shaved off those annoying moustaches they had been sporting...

94 FAUST ARP...Radiohead
This short track from the English alternative band's 2007 In Rainbows album would become one of my favorites of theirs three years later when I obtained the backlog of their works and put them on my MP3 player in shuffle mode to listen to on long distance training runs.  There is an uncanny resemblance between Faust Arp and the Beatles' White Album song Dear Prudence, at least regarding the background music.  Singer/lyricist Thom Yorke has a curiously appealing cynical edge to his singing, and this song is no exception...

93 LITTLE GREEN BAG...George Baker Selection
In the early spring of 1970 I was thirteen and in a pretty negative period in my life...at the time the radio was playing this song by George Baker Selection, one of three musical acts from the Netherlands (the Tee Set with Ma Belle Amie and Shocking Blue with Venus were the others) with ongoing singles hits.  Its beat, similar to the Beatles' 1964 She's a Woman, was mesmerizing and the lyrics, although generally cryptic about "looking back on the track for a little green bag" (or was it "little greenback"?), did clearly express themselves with the chorus line "looking for some happiness when there was only loneliness to find". Little Green Bag ended up as my "song of the year" for 1970...George Baker Selection would come out six years later with another good song but with a different mood to it: Paloma Blanca...

92 HAPPY JUST TO DANCE WITH YOU...the Beatles
This song was my favorite track from the Beatles 1964 movie A Hard Days Night.  George Harrison sings the lead with John Lennon and Paul McCartney, who co-wrote it, in the backup chorus.  It reminded me in tone and spirit of their breakthrough American hit just a few months earlier, I Want to Hold Your Hand.  I remember going with my mom, dad and sister to the drive-in theater that summer to see the movie and of course, we got the album as soon as it came out...

91 MY WAVE...Soundgarden
This is a stay-in-your-lane, mind-your-own-business kind of angry song with singer/lyricist Chris Cornell laying it on the line about how he feels about busybodies imposing their values on him unsolicited...I couldn't agree more.  It resonated with me in 1995, a year following its release on the Seattle grunge band's Superunknown, easily my all-time favorite grunge album and high on my list of all-time favorites from any genre.  My Wave was also my favorite song of '95 as I lived through it...

Next week: #90-86...

Cristobal Spinoff Rain Bands, Cloudy Skies Lately for Stargazing

Not that I was planning to go anywhere anyway today, but the spinoff bands of rain from Tropical Storm Cristobal, the center of which is about to go ashore in southeastern Louisiana a few hundred miles west of Gainesville, have thoroughly soaked my home town and most of Florida.  We've been fortunate here...further south around Orlando yesterday there were several reports of tornados and much stormier weather.  I had expected some of that here today, but besides sporadic heavy rainfall we've been pretty much spared...still, the local flooding watch is until 8 pm. There might yet be some storms in store for us...but as I said, I'm not going anywhere...

A few days ago I thought I might add a new monthly feature to this blog in which I would discuss an interesting constellation in the night sky that is prominent during the month in question.  Unfortunately, ever since I came up with this idea the night sky has usually been overcast or foggy, and I tend to enjoy just standing outside in my backyard stargazing.  When I was a kid I got used to thinking of constellations by their "month", that is the time of year in which they would cross the meridian separating east from west at about 9 pm standard time (or 10 savings time).  For June constellations filling this criterium are Boötes, Corona Borealis, Libra, Ursa Minor, Draco, and Serpens Caput...and several in the celestial southern hemisphere not as visible for me at my latitude.  I think I'll pick one of the aforementioned for this month and write about it around mid-month on a weekend even if the skies never clear up...should be fun since I can tackle the subject from a number of different angles...

Just Finished Reading Gathering Blue by Lois Lowry

After finishing reading The Giver, a short young adult dystopian fantasy/science fiction novel by Lois Lowry, I naturally decided to go on and read the rest of her same-titled, four-part series...I just completed the second book, titled Gathering Blue, from 2000.  It is set in the same time and place as The Giver, a far-off future on Earth following a planet-wide catastrophe called the Ruin where different small communities live in isolation from one another, each governed by its own peculiar rules and customs.  In Gathering Blue the protagonist is a girl named Kira, growing up in a brutal area in which the sick and deformed are taken to "the Field" where wild beasts are said to lurk in waiting to devour them.  Although Kira, born with a deformed leg and walking with a pronounced limp, has lost both her father and now her mother, she is allowed...thanks to the intervention of Jami-son, one of the community's elder rulers...to stay on due to her recognized talent in embroidery: her new project is to repair and improve upon the Singer's robe.  This article of clothing, which depicts in minute detail various aspects of humanity's history, adorns the official Singer, who annually in a community ceremony sings the song reflecting the robe's themes.  Kira discovers that there is something special in her talent that goes well beyond simple skill: at times she feels the fabric is creating itself as she works on it.  She also notices others in the town who have similar experiences, but in different areas of creative expression.  The story's title refers to the lack of the color blue in the available dyes, but Kira's feisty, much younger friend Matt discovers a source of the missing color and sets off on a dangerous quest to obtain it for her...in the process setting into motion a crisis that forces a profound decision on her part.  I liked Gathering Blue and felt that here, along with The Giver, are stories although written on an adventure and drama-filled narrative level with an appeal to younger readers, also carry within them deeper themes that examine how we often behave in our own "non-dystopian" society of today...and how we sometimes allow ourselves to be deceived by false narratives about the nature of reality.  I followed up on Gathering Blue with her 2004 third book in the series, titled Messenger: I'll review that one in a few days...

Quote of the Week...from Michael J. Fox

One's dignity may be assaulted, vandalized, and cruelly mocked, but it can never be taken away unless it is surrendered.                                             ...Michael J. Fox

Michael J. Fox, of course, is the talented actor who starred as teen prodigy Alex Keaton in the '80s hit  comedy sitcom Family Ties and later of Back to the Future fame, along with other film and television appearances.  In recent years he is more known as an advocate for those suffering from Parkinson's Disease, having become afflicted with it himself.  I lifted his above quote from a posting by Roy, a Facebook friend I knew way back in the eighth grade at Nova High in Davie, Florida the year before they switched to a middle school format...Roy is also a bold, articulate spokesman on behalf of those with Parkinson's, a real inspiration.  Fox's quote deals with dignity and how its retention is up to its possessor, not with other people.  That's true, and no one should measure their own sense of self-worth or esteem by how they are treated by others...especially by those who seek to destroy or demean them.  But I would add to the quote that while each of us has the power and authority to refuse to surrender our dignity to others, it is also important not to overly obsess about it.  I remember the old 90's movie Forrest Gump with Tom Hanks playing the title role.  In it people were continually putting down Forrest for his relatively low intelligence...but while he understood what was going on, he also disciplined himself from early on to focus outside his own self and toward others and the world instead of continually challenging those who would rob him of his dignity: the result was a life well-lived and full of love and great experiences.  An example I think I could stand to follow more in my own life, and one a few others around me might consider as well...

Cristobal Earliest Ever Third-Named Atlantic Tropical Storm

Tropical storm Cristobal is now the third named Atlantic tropical storm system in 2020, the all-time earliest in a hurricane season that this has happened.  This morning it is in the eastern Bay of Campeche in the far-southern Gulf of Mexico, making a foray into the Yucatan Peninsula, with maximum sustained winds of 40 mph and lots and lots of rain.  As much of it goes over land, the winds should keep declining somewhat...yesterday they were 60 mph...but the models have it projected to turn back northward into the open waters of the Gulf and restrengthen.  Fortunately at this time, although the waters of the southern Gulf of Mexico are pretty warm and conducive to tropical storm development, in the north along Cristobal's projected path they are cooler...so at least for now don't expect it to transform into a hurricane.  I'll be keeping my eye on the Weather Channel coverage to see any change in our direction of the models...right now almost all of them show the storm hitting somewhere in Louisiana at about 60 mph maximum strength with much precipitation.  But anything entering Florida from the Gulf of Mexico around Cedar Key is a threat to my Gainesville...I wonder if it's too early to start looking into getting sandbags...

Weekly Short Stories: 1959 Science Fiction, Part 2

These three science fiction stories I'm discussing today from the anthology Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 21 (1959) are all a bit disturbing...but each one, although a complete tale in itself, carries with it food for thought about life today.  Read on to see what I mean...

THE ALLEY MAN by Philip José Farmer
This story tries to describe what it might be like in current times (1959, that is) if a Neanderthal were still alive on Earth.  Farmer has him marginalized on the outskirts of society, a scavenger of back alleys and living on his wits and brawn.  A sociologist woman befriends Old Man Paley, as he calls himself, to study him and his claim of being the last surviving pure-blood "Real Folker"...as opposed to everyone else, who are "False Folkers".  There is a strong oral tradition to Paley's narrative and his own history of his people...but is he really Neanderthal?  This open question pervades the story and provokes similar questions about how some of us tend to personally identify ourselves...

DAY AT THE BEACH by Carol Emshwiller
Myra and her husband Ben...along with their peculiar little boy Littleboy...take a Saturday (or is it another day) trip to the beach a few years following a nuclear holocaust that has destroyed the nation's social fabric and created a dog-eat-dog world of trying to survive on limited food and supplies.  Their own bodies...along with hair loss...show the signs of exposure to radioactivity.   But simply laying out a blanket on the beach and running up and down the sand and into the ocean carries its own risks that before the conflagration would have been unthinkable.  Very, very scary: but I don't think you need a atomic war to accomplish the same social unraveling as I see what's starting to go down today around me...

THE MALTED MILK MONSTER by William Tenn
Back in 2017 I reviewed this tale, a favorite of mine...here's a link to my article then: [link].  Carter, a young big city ad executive, is courting Lee, a young teacher at a suburban school.  At an ice parlor in town, the two of them observe Dorothy, one of the teacher's students who is very obese and socially isolated from her classmates.  The girl is staring hard at Carter and after he leaves Lee off at her home he notices that she has followed them.  Not long thereafter he feels a sudden rip going through his mind and finds himself in an imaginary land of trees with popsicles and a river of chocolate: Dorothy has taken him captive within her own mind!  Now...how to escape?  I wonder how many of us have allowed someone else to figuratively hold ourselves captive within their own minds, denying our own individuality and hanging on the other's every thought and whim...

Next week I continue my look at standout science fiction short stories from 1959...

Just Finished Reading The Giver by Lois Lowry

The Giver, by Lois Lowry, is a 1993 young adult novel that delves into dystopia and the consequences of social engineering gone awry.  Jonas is a twelve-year old boy living in what on the surface seems like a close-knit, loving community far off into the future, many years following a worldwide calamity.  His family, like the others around him, encourages its members to openly express their emotions and be precise in their thoughts...sounds commendable, but the reasons reveal themselves to be less than benevolent as the story gradually unveils the horror beneath the surface equanimity and stability.  No one selects their own line of work...the Elders perform this function after carefully analyzing each child over the years.  Jonas gets picked to be the Receiver of Memory...and in the process has his eyes opened beyond his wildest expectations.  The community strives for "Sameness" among its members and anyone who deviates too far from that ideal is selected for "Release" into the "Elsewhere"...Jonas learns about what that really means, too.  I thought that the author wrote with a lot of character insight, and some of the story's facets...while sometimes dipping a bit into fantasy...to me seemed to have allegorical connections with our own world of today.  The Giver was made into a 2014 movie starring Jeff Bridges...after finishing the book I read about it: the ending in the film was altered in some ways, but most of it seems true to the original story.  I don't know whether Lois Lowry initially intended to follow up on this book, but eventually over the years she has written three more, all of which are loosely connected into a series.  I'm currently about halfway through book number two, Gathering Blue, which was published in 2000...

My 500 All-Time Favorite Songs: #100-96

Today I begin my "top 100" countdown within my greater list of 500 all-time favorite songs.  For the next few weeks I'll be taking on five at a time...toward the end I'll probably reduce that number further.  Here are this week's five...

100 MAN OF A THOUSAND FACES...Regina Spektor
From her Far album in 2009, this is a song about a person who takes his own path to personal enlightenment.  It's a sweet, mystical, melodic song that I quickly grew to like and regard as one of my favorites.  Silent screen actor Lon Chaney was dubbed the "man of a thousand faces" after the  same-titled 1957 biographical movie about him starring James Cagney, but Regina's song is on a different theme. I don't think anyone in the music business today is better than Regina Spektor for combining lyrical and melodic creativity, piano virtuosity and a wide-ranging vocal style in her music...

99 CANARY IN A COAL MINE...the Police
This to me was the Police's standout track on their 1981 Zenyatta Mondata album.  It's a very fast-paced, brief reggae-rock piece. You're bound to start hopping around upon listening to it...better tie yourself down first.  Once again, I lament the way-too early breaking up of this band in 1984 after only five studio albums...I'm not at all finished with them on this list of mine.  If they had only made Canary in a Coal Mine a couple of minutes longer...

98 OCEANS...Pearl Jam
I didn't hear this deep track from the Seattle band's 1992 debut Ten album until I picked it up some three years later...in my humble opinion it should have easily been one of the featured releases, a lot better to me than Black or Alive.  Just sit back and close your eyes to the beautiful instrumental arrangement with singer Eddie Vedder evoking images of a sea in the middle of a raging storm with the rising waves and darkening skies...along with the aftermath: Debussy wishes he'd written something like this...

97 BLUE SKY MINE...Midnight Oil
Midnight Oil was an Australian rock band that focused on their country's social problems...Blue Sky Mine apparently was one of these kinds of songs, criticizing the excesses of a large sugar company.  The passionate and unique voice of Peter Garrett, along with his unmatched virtuoso harmonica playing, elevated this song in my estimation to the point where I made it my favorite of the year 1990.  The group is better known for its single Beds are Burning, but to me Blue Sky Mine was their masterpiece.  And here I am speaking of them in the past: they're still together...

96 I CAN'T EXPLAIN...the Who
When I was eight in early 1965 and my local singles rock station in Miami, WQAM/560/"Tiger Radio" began playing this song, I immediately thought it was another Beatles hit and quite possibly their greatest song to date.  Eventually I found out that a different group, The Who, did it: no matter, I Can't Explain would be my favorite song of that year as I lived through it.  They made quite a few good albums during the sixties that didn't get the deserved airplay and respect in America that they received overseas...most of us know hits like My Generation, I Can See for Miles, and Magic Bus...but the deep tracks on the albums these songs came from were also consistently high-quality. I Can't Explain predated their first studio album by a couple of years...

Next week: #95-91...

My May 2020 Running Report

In May I continued running more than usual, training on every day of the month and attaining a total of 202 miles.  My longest single runs were 13.5 miles on the 3rd and 10 miles on the 17th.  I'm thinking of making a goal of at least one half marathon-distance (or higher) run per month and at least two double-digit-mile runs...speed isn't important, just covering the distance is what matters to me.  I like the idea of always being prepared to run any half-marathon (or shorter) race that happens to show up on the calendar...assuming they ever start holding them again.  Still, I enjoy running for its own sake...even in the hot summertime here in north-central Florida.  Looking forward to another good running month in June...

Second Try Today to Launch 1st U.S. Manned Space Flight Since 2011

After a weather-caused delay of last Wednesday afternoon's scheduled launch of the Crew Dragon mission to the International Space Station, another attempt is ongoing today, planned liftoff at 3:22 pm from Cape Canaveral, Florida.  Unfortunately, the first manned space launch from the United States since 2011 has for today a high possibility of being scrubbed as well, the meteorologists predicting stormy conditions at the site, Pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center.  Should the launch, carrying American astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken in the SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule and powered by the company's Falcon 9 rocket, be delayed once more it will take place on Sunday...weather conditions should be much improved by then.  I'm not sure which stations will carry the event other than C-Span and The Weather Channel...I've picked the latter since the weather is definitely the overriding factor determining a liftoff this afternoon.  C-Span's coverage will start at 11 this morning and The Weather Channel at 1 pm...CNN has an hour-long window scheduled at 3.  I think I'll check out C-Span when their programming kicks in and then switch over to The Weather Channel a couple hours later.  I've been able in the past to see nighttime Space Shuttle launches from here in Gainesville, but I'm not sure about the Falcon 9's visibility over such a large distance and during the day...still, I'll go outside and check it out whenever they do finally decide to give it the final countdown, assuming of course it's not storming here as well...

Quote of the Week...from Charles Swindoll

Life is 10 percent what happens to me and 90 percent of how I react to it.      ---Charles Swindoll.

Charles Swindoll, a well-known pastor and author of many inspirational books, is someone I greatly respect within the evangelical Christian community.  His above quote struck me early this morning as I see the escalating division, rage...and even hatred enveloping around me in a time of pandemic, politically motivated disinformation and scapegoating, violent racial injustice...and an electoral process, along with irresponsible leaders, gone completely awry.  I have come to the conclusion that no matter how I conduct my life, there will be somebody around to take offense at me and my decisions...even if what I do has no bearing whatsoever on their own lives.  I am thoroughly dismayed at the breakdown of rationality among so many people that I had befriended and thought to be level-headed and emotionally stable...what has happened to them?  All of the things going on around me are bigger than me, and I can only use what mind God has given me to determine how I should best live each day as it comes.  I can't change others' thinking...especially since there seems to be strong, deeply rooted elements of fear and denial involved there.  If there ever was a time to pray for the mental and spiritual health of our people, it is now.  And I will continue to seek God's guidance and comfort as I walk through an ever-darkening valley...

Two Named Tropical Storms Before Atlantic Hurricane Season Even Begins

Yesterday, just after being named as the second tropical storm before the 2020 Atlantic hurricane season even begins on June 1, Bertha slammed into South Carolina dumping lots of rain and then progressed into the heart of the eastern United States...this morning the remnants passed through the Cleveland, Ohio area.  So now in just a short span we've had Arthur and Bertha...and it's still May!  The meteorologists specializing in hurricane season forecasting have predicted a very active season this year...no El Niño effect that would normally restrain tropical development...with as many as 20 named storms and 10 hurricanes.  Now exactly where the storms will go is a good question...with they mostly run out their "lives" in the Atlantic ocean or will some or many of them hit land?  We'll have to see.  Usually when June 1 rolls around each year we still have a respite from threatening tropical storms for a few weeks...I have a creeping suspicion, though, that this might be a year for the record books...

Weekly Short Stories: 1959 Science Fiction, Part 1

Today I begin discussing science fiction short stories I read from the anthology Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 21 (1959).   They're all good, but I'm partial to the second and fourth ones below as they possess a special depth beyond the stories themselves...

MAKE A PRISON by Lawrence Block
This rather short tale is a case in point regarding the concept of "thinking outside the box" when attacking problems.  A prisoner, apparently from another world, had murdered several of the planet's inhabitants.  In line with their principles forbidding capital punishment, they have erected a very high tower, at the very top of which their prisoner will be sent via pneumatic tube to live the rest of his years, cared for with food and water but totally isolated from the rest of the world.  A real "duh" moment at the end...

THE WIND PEOPLE by Marion Zimmer Bradley
An exploratory ship with a coed crew is on a stopover for several months to find fuel on an idyllically green planet, apparently uninhabited by sentient life.  One of the women finds herself pregnant and gives birth to a boy...she remains behind on this world with her infant baby since the ship's takeoff would have killed him.  The two of them survive for years there...but the mother is in a complete state of denial about the translucent people around them, whispering like the wind.  This is a tragic tale about a number of things, possibly chief among them the tendency for people to deny that which is unknown and over which they have little or no control: a lesson for the times we live in...

NO, NO, NOT ROGOV! by Cordwainer Smith
1959 was a peak year in the Cold War between the West and the Soviet Bloc countries...this story goes back to the Stalin years as a Russian scientist and his wife have hit upon the ultimate weapon to defeat the capitalists by getting into their minds and manipulating them.  Rogov insists on having a crucial mind-control experiment performed on himself...which predictably goes haywire with some major unforeseen consequences...

WHAT ROUGH BEAST by Damon Knight
My favorite story of the bunch, it is about an unassuming man who has a gift...or maybe it's a curse...to reach into alternative universes and replace something in ours with something from one of the others.  In this way he works miracles around him, but must keep it all secret.  Unfortunately one day he gets careless, people discover his gifting, and it all starts snowballing downhill.  A searing commentary about base human nature and how people quickly adapt to unexpected blessings and make their continuation into entitlements instead of feeling and showing gratitude and contentment for what they had been given...

Next week I will continue my look back at the year 1959 in science fiction short stories...

Watching Old Sports Classics, Looking Forward to Resuming Play

I've been watching some of the old sports games on TV during this hiatus in ongoing competition caused by the COVID-19 pandemic...Monday night ESPN was showing a 2015 regular season contest between Pittsburgh and San Diego.  I like watching the old NBA and Major League Baseball games from years gone by as well, especially those classic decisive World Series games that were so tense in the late innings...that Game Six of the 1986 World Series between the New York Mets and Boston Red Sox was something I totally missed (as well as the rest of that series) the first time around back then.  In the process I have been brushing up on the year-by-year champions in the different leagues...it seems in retrospect that the last ten years have flown by too rapidly.  I also reflected on when I began to follow various sports during my childhood...

The earliest spectator sport I began to follow was baseball during the World Series of 1965 between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Minnesota Twins, one of the great classics...I was just turning nine at the time.  The next year, though, is a blank with me as far as baseball was concerned although in 1967 I resumed my interest as the Red Sox fought with the St. Louis Cardinals in another tight series.  But I didn't start following the sport's regular season until 1969, the year the New York Mets had their "miracle" season.  In football I started watching NFL games late in 1967 and college games the following year..."my" teams were the Baltimore Colts, Miami Dolphins, Florida State Seminoles, Miami Hurricanes and Florida Gators.  In professional basketball, the fledgling American Basketball Association began its second year of existence in 1968 when its Minnesota Muskies franchise moved to Miami to be renamed the Floridians.  They didn't broadcast any of their games on TV but I avidly followed the play-by-play all year long on a weak Miami AM radio station, WOCN/1450.  I didn't follow the NBA that season until the playoffs, when I rooted in vain against the Boston Celtics, eventual champions once again.  As for college basketball, when towering Artis Gilmore played for Jacksonville University and their seemingly unstoppable fast break dominated that sport in 1969-70 (until they played against UCLA for the national championship, that is), this is what first drew my attention to college hoops...

It's fun to follow the great old sports leagues...and since 2014 I have also been following some of the pro soccer leagues as well.  I've tried to cultivate an interest in the National Hockey League but it's only worked for me during the Stanley Cup Playoffs. I will be very happy when sports resume in whatever form they take...until then I guess I'll keep watching the old classics...

My 500 All-Time Favorite Songs: #110-101

I imagine you've probably heard most of the ten songs on this list if you've been around as long as me...I'm not so sure about # 105 and 106, though.  The songs span many years and diverse genres...a piece of music done well in any genre can become one of my favorites if it resonates with me.  I think next week, as I begin to go through my top 100 songs, I'll be discussing five songs at a time instead of ten...maybe I'll thus be able to drag out this enjoyable blog project of mine a little longer...

110 CAN YOU FEEL THE LOVE TONIGHT?...Elton John
This 1994 theme from the Disney animated movie The Lion King was, to me, the final great Elton John song of his career...may he continue to live long and prosper.  I never did care all that much for the movie, but was quickly swept away by this song, to me maybe his greatest single singing accomplishment.  Elton's got a couple more masterpieces higher up on my list...

109 GOOD NIGHT...the Beatles
After the nightmarish...but strangely compelling...chaos of the 1968 White Album's penultimate track Revolution 9 comes this mellow, very sweet closing piece, sung by Ringo as one of the greatest all-time rock n' roll lullabies. It wasn't until much later, though, when I heard it for the first time...in September 1972 along with the associated personal memories of what was going on in my life at the time...

108 THAT'S MY JOB...Conway Twitty
When I first got on at the Gainesville post office in 1987 as a letter-sorting machine clerk, they allowed us to bring headset radios for listening while we worked...my first one was a cheap brand that only picked up the very powerful local country station GC-101.  Hence for a few months I was strongly into the ongoing country and western scene, and they often played this hit song by Conway Twitty from that year.  It's about growing up and the bond between a father and his son...if this song doesn't make you shed a few tears, then you just ain't got no heart...

107 DAZED AND CONFUSED...Led Zeppelin
I remember hating this song for years whenever my local album rock radio station played it, and then in late 1990 everything changed and I began to listen to this classic British hard rock band through a different filter.  Eventually I would make Dazed and Confused my favorite song of 1992 as I lived through it...even though it's originally from 1968.  The entire song is great, one of Robert Plant's best singing performances, but my favorite section is the middle where it all breaks down into a psychedelic desolation and wild Jimmy Page guitar jam...

106 TO BINGE...Gorillaz
Plastic Beach, from 2010, was in my opinion the alternative act Gorillaz's best album, a great collaborative effort between songwriter and singer Damon Albarn and animator Jamie Hewlett, along with many contributing artists.  To Binge is a duet between Albarn and Yukimi Nagano as the two alternately bemoan a romance gone astray...it's sad but at the same time very catchy and danceable.  There was a period during the summer of 2011 when I focused on Gorillaz, listening to a shuffle of their tracks from their first four albums on my MP3 while on training runs around the neighborhood in the heat of day.  Try them out if you haven't yet...although you might find a lot to dislike you'll also get to know a few songs that work well for you...

105 ARE YOU SITTING COMFORTABLY?...the Moody Blues
The Moody Blues' 1969 On the Threshold of a Dream album is one of my favorites, especially Side Two on which the songs merge together...Are You Sitting Comfortably? is a wistful, mystical piece, a collaboration of singer John Lodge and flutist Ray Thomas, that harkens back to the mythical time of Camelot and Merlin and leads into the album's climactic finale.  This song stands well on its own but comes off better if you listen to the surrounding tracks together...

104 RUN LIKE HELL...Pink Floyd
Sounding a bit like a dystopian nightmare future, Run Like Hell was my favorite track off their 1979 The Wall double album.  While more of a "run from your pursuers" than a "run for self-fulfillment and exercise" kind of song, I still naturally tie it to my own running...although frankly, its ending sounds more like an indoor basketball game in progress.  Roger Waters wrote the lyrics and sang lead here while David Gilmour wrote the music and did backup vocals.  It's a scary-but-energizing song, always one of my favorites...

103 THE ONE THING...INXS
It was early 1983 when I first heard this debut hit from Australian rockers INXS...a strong recurring guitar riff, keyboards, saxophone, and the soulful singing of Michael Hutchence dominate this song that I regarded for months as my favorite for that year.  INXS was one of many acts felled by the death of one of its members, in this case Hutchence in 1997...such a recurring tragedy, be it by drug overdose, or, in the talented INXS singer/lyricist's case, suicide.  Makes part of me wish they had never achieved their fame and fortune...some people just can't handle it all, including the almost inevitable decline in mass popularity...

102 PLEASANT VALLEY SUNDAY...the Monkees
A big summer hit at the peak of "Monkeemania" here in the USA during the so-called Summer of Love in 1967, back then it was just one of many Monkees tunes I loved, being a big fan of their ongoing comedy television series and even a Monkees card collector (hey, I was just a kid at the time).  In subsequent years I grew to feel that Pleasant Valley Sunday may have been one of the underappreciated instigators of the Counterculture Movement with its rejection of rat race values prevalent in suburban America: "Creature comfort goals, they only numb my soul and make it hard for me to see".  Gerry Coffin and Carole King cowrote this iconic song that Mickey Dolenz nailed with his singing...

101 ANOTHER ONE BITES THE DUST...Queen
The story I heard is that the members of British rock group Queen in 1980 wanted to know which track from their new album The Game they should release and promote as the next single...Michael Jackson dropped by, listened to it, and picked Another One Bites the Dust.  And the rest is history, a great, funky, fun song that makes you want to get up and start moving when you hear it.  At that year's end I picked it as my "song of the year" over some other considerably high-quality songs.  I still love it...

Next week: #100-96...

On This Memorial Day Weekend, 2020

On this Memorial Day weekend in 2020 I'd like to express my deepest appreciation for those who, over the course of our country's history, paid the ultimate price in defending our freedoms and way of life.  In America we have our cherished rights and sometimes emphasize them far out of proportion to the concomitant responsibilities we bear as citizens of the greatest nation on Earth.  Those who have defended us in wartime are great heroes and of them, the ones who died in service deserve the highest honor possible.  Sometimes society makes demands on its free citizens as a necessary price for that freedom...in times of national emergency, be it war, natural disaster, or pandemic, the heroes rise to the top and do their part to save the day without whining about phantom rights being violated.  You don't necessarily have to give up your life, as did the many we honor on this solemn holiday, to be a hero...just do your own little part to help the others around you get through the crisis at hand...

Just Finished Reading The Gods Themselves by Isaac Asimov

I recently checked out the late science fiction writer Isaac Asimov's 1972 novel The Gods Themselves from my library online on audiobook...later I discovered that it can be read straight off the Web from a number of sites.  The title derives from a quote in a play by Friedrich Schiller, translated into English as "Against stupidity the Gods themselves contend in vain".  And stupidity, expressed here as denial of reality in favor of convenience and personal career advancement, does play a major role in the story's development.  It is the year 2100 and Hallam, a physicist, has built his career and worldwide reputation on the backs of the works of others...including entities from a parallel universe who have instituted something called the Electron Pump that provides free energy to our own universe while adjusting both universes' physical laws to an eventual equilibrium state far down the road.  But is it all really free and what is the "other" side up to?  Colleagues blacklisted by Hallam for opposing him are on to the Pump's dangers but are thwarted at every turn from stopping him...finally they turn to try to communicate surreptitiously with those in the "para-Universe" to urge them to break off their project, only to eventually come to a very unsettling conclusion about the other side's agenda. The second part of the novel presents life from the view of those others on a small planet, the "soft" ones able to permeate matter and divided into three forms...rational, emotional, and paternal...and the "hard" ones who, more like ourselves completely integrated personalities, seem to be running the show.  I thought Asimov displayed a lot of brilliant creativity here in presenting the various characters of the para-Universe and their alien society.  The book's final section takes place on the moon, where one of Hallam's professional enemies opposing the Electron Pump emigrates there, discovering...along with the various physical adjustments necessary for life there...a romance as well as intrigue concerning the inhabitants' desire to break away from Earth rule.  The story is clearly resolved at the end and the topic was interesting enough, but what I valued the most...and typically from most of Asimov's writings...is that he wrote in a plain narrative style and let his characters clearly reveal themselves through their dialog and...especially in the case of the "other" beings...their inner thoughts.  The Gods Themselves is not a part of Asimov's general universe of science fiction that includes the Foundation, Empire, and Robot series...but it raises some important issues that carry some relevance today, especially of the tension that exists between popular will for personal convenience and comfort versus science-originated warnings to change our direction and behavior.  There is a lot of physics discussed here, but don't worry...even Asimov, a scientist in his own right, later mentioned that with this novel he was writing over his head: just flow with the story and you'll be all right...

Quote of the Week...from Max Ehrmann

As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons.     Max Ehrmann, Desiderata

The above is the second line in American businessman Max Ehrmann's famous 1920s prose poem Desiderata, nothing less than a guide to living.  Line number one, which I've discussed three years ago on this blog, leads directly into it: "Go placidly amid the noise and the haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence."  In today's stressful and divided era of pandemic, economic crisis, social injustice and fractured electoral politics these opening lines are more relevant than ever.  I'm not here to preach them to others but instead bring them up primarily to remind myself where my priorities need to be.  It's easy for me to watch the news, gather the information and mentally process it all to come up with what I think are the correct solutions and reactions. However, other people behave and speak in ways that I find indicative of denial and false narrative...how could they be so selfish and foolish?!  Yet I stand in community with many of them and should, as Ehrmann stressed, work to maintain...without sacrificing my beliefs and personal responses...their good will in the face of stark differences between us.  I'm finding this increasingly difficult to do...it seems as if a creeping madness is settling over our society and that too many of us have decided to let a select few do our own reasoning for us...

Starting to Use Phone Apps to Study Nature Around Me

Being someone accustomed since I was seven to look up at the clear night sky and readily identify all the constellations and brighter stars, I noticed that there are smartphone apps that do the same thing for users.  Well, I'm challenged in a completely different area: plant identification...they all look pretty much the same to me.  But I've discovered that there are also free phone apps (usually with a premium option) in which I can take a photo of a plant and they'll come up with the identification...or at least a list of the most likely matches.  I downloaded one such app and it identified one of the weedy bushes in my yard.  Maybe I'll become a plant enthusiast the way I like to look at the stars...since they're all around me it seems like it might be fun to become an expert on identifying them.  Also, since insects are all around as well why not get one of those bug-identifying apps and expand my foray into nature study...after all, we're about to enter "beetle" season in Florida.  Oh, and I see that there's an app that identifies birds from their songs...my "birding" experience was strong as a kid in South Florida some fifty years ago, but there are some different species up here in Gainesville where I now live.  And I do regularly hear strange songs without being able to see who's producing them.  Plants, insects, birds...well, that's a starter...

Weekly Short Stories: 1958 Science Fiction, Part 3

As I kept reading through the "year's best" anthology Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 20 (1958), the quality of the entries continued to impress me.  The last four, which I will discuss below, are especially good...my favorite is the one by MacLean.  Here are my reactions to them...

THE BURNING OF THE BRAIN by Cordwainer Smith
In Cordwainer Smith's future universe of interconnected stories focusing on exploring and settling the cosmos, telepathy plays a big role as humanity struggles to conquer the deadly hazards encountered while in deep space travel.  One such ship is on a voyage and gets lost...while the ship's navigation charts are wiped out by accident, leaving only the patterns within the captain's own brain as a possible source for finding their location and avoiding a horrible death in the remotes of space.  But at what cost to telepathically retrieve the buried information?

THE YELLOW PILL by Rog Phillips
A psychiatrist has on his daily office schedule a special visit an by apparently delusional young man in police custody who has just shot and killed six people.  But to Gerald Bocek, Dr. Cedric Elton is no psychiatrist, but rather Gar Castle, his shipmate in the middle of a space voyage.  Elton wonders how to shake Bocek from his delusion, knowing that a certain yellow pill will do the job.  This brief tale twists in one direction that the reader might have anticipated...but not its ending, which I thought was brilliant...

UNHUMAN SACRIFICE by Katherine MacLean
The idea of imposing one's own culturally-biased religious beliefs on others in unknown, alien settings is the theme of this story about a mission on an unexplored planet with such a preacher determined to convert the population without any knowledge of their society or even biology.  The ending is a shocker and ultimately justifies what everyone in the visiting party, not just the preacher, regards as an inhumane practice upon the natives with its own...

THE IMMORTALS by James E. Gunn
The idea of achieved immortality being a privilege only available to the wealthy elite isn't a new idea in science fiction, but this story really gets under the surface of it all, exposing the ugliness of an economy dominated by organ harvesting and medical cannibalization of the weak and disadvantaged with the general society disintegrating all around.  One of the most glaring and disturbing dystopian stories I've ever read, and I've gone through a few.  The ending gives an unexpectedly new perspective on the title...

Next week I begin my look back at old science fiction short stories from the year 1959...

Just Finished Reading The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel

The Glass Hotel, by Emily St. John Mandel, just came out two months ago...I'm not sure how I came across it but I managed to check it out and have just finished reading it.  It uses the theme of the fraudulent Ponzi scheme that financier Bernie Madoff built to rip off his investors to the tune of billions of dollars, financially ruining them when it finally all crashed.  In this novel, the fictional culprit...caught at about the same time, 2008...is Jonathan Alkaitis.  But although it covers his experiences, the story jumps around in a helter-skelter fashion back and forward in time between a number of characters, chief among them half-siblings Paul and Vincent (a woman), young Canadians each with their own peculiar personalities and hangups.  The story brings the aforementioned three...along with a handful of other characters whose lives are featured...together one night at a remote, very fancy hotel owned by Alkaitis on a British Columbia island: the Caiette.  It is the threatening graffiti, brutally drawn with acid on the hotel lobby window, that ties the story and characters together...but it takes some patient reading to discover this.  If you're looking for a linear plot development and a clear resolution at the end, you're bound to be disappointed in The Glass Hotel.  But if character development and study of people's inner motivations and narratives attracts you in a story, then I think you'll be pleased.  At a certain point in the novel I realized that the latter would be the case here and I flowed with it, adjusting my expectations accordingly.  It's not for everyone, but it was intriguing enough for me...you might agree...

My 500 All-Time Favorite Songs: #120-111

When I first started out with this list of my personal top 500 favorite songs, it seemed like it would take forever to present it, ten songs per week.  Yet here we are nearing the point where I'll be discussing the top 100.  Here are the next ten on my list...

120 SKY PILOT...Eric Burdon and the Animals
In my listening experience the ultimate antiwar song, this was a very long, epic piece that unfortunately was severely cut to size as a singles release in 1968...but it's the lengthy middle part that stands out: it vividly depicts the intensity of a terrible battle, with the bagpipe at the end creating a chilling effect.  Burdon's heartfelt singing is heartbreaking throughout...but especially at the song's close...as he describes a day during the war of a "sky pilot", who is the chaplain to the troops that are about to go out and kill and die.  This was from the "Animals" group that Burdon reformulated around himself after the original band broke up...

119 SOUL MEETS BODY...Death Cab for Cutie
Back in 2005 I was at the peak of a rediscovered affection for alternative rock, and listened avidly to my local station that provided that format: 100.5/WHHZ "The Buzz".  Soul Meets Body was a big hit in the indie genre back then...its lyrics speak of commitment throughout life, which is a kind of voyage : "And I do believe it's true that there are roads left in both of our shoes, but if the silence takes you I hope it takes me too".  Death Cab for Cutie was the brain child of composer/singer Ben Gibbard...its name derives from the title of an old sixties song.  Back in 2005 I made Soul Meets Body my "song of the year"...

118 COME AS YOU ARE..Nirvana
When Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit first came out in 1991 I didn't like it and wondered what all the hullabaloo was about this grunge subgenre of rock originating from western Washington state.  But after subsequent songs from their album Nevermind like this one and Lithium began to get airplay, I realized there was much more depth to this band than I had realized.  Come As You Are has a sinister, foreboding aspect to it as Cobain sings his lyrics to a friend...or is it his enemy?

117 TEST  TRANSMISSION...Kasabian
Off this British alternative group's first, self-titled album from 2004, I didn't get around to hearing Test Transmission until I obtained their first four albums six years later and went on training runs with their tracks shuffled on my MP3.  I'm not sure exactly what the cryptic lyrics mean, but the overall mood of the song is positive, I loved the melody...especially that of the chorus section...and thought the ending was especially good, reminding me a little of the old-time Beatles songs...

116 TELL ME BABY...the Red Hot Chili Peppers
The LA-based rock band Red Hot Chili Peppers were/are masters at fusing different types of popular music all into one song...here they combine funk, hard rock, rap and melodic ballad without missing a beat: who else could pull this off?  Tell Me Baby was a singles release from their 2006 double album Stadium Arcadium...as far as I can tell they're still together and producing music that matters.  Who would have guessed it...I sure didn't after seeing their initial video True Men Don't Kill Coyotes way back in 1986...

115 LEAVE IT...Yes
When Yes supposedly reunited to record their successful comeback album 90125 in 1983, it was South African rock composer/singer/guitarist Trevor Rabin's band he was going to call Cinema, as well as this album.  They invited former Yes front man Jon Anderson to their studio and he contributed his vocals to the already-recorded tracks...eventually he became part of the band and they decided to run with the Yes label since other former Yes members were part of Rabin's group. Leave It is one of the tracks and is one of the best examples of perfect harmony in a song.. in 1984 it was my "song of the year"...

114 CAN'T GET IT OUT OF MY HEAD...Electric Light Orchestra
I first heard this breakthrough American hit from the British symphonic rock band ELO late in December, 1974 while working late at night as a clerk in a Miami Shores traffic management firm...WSHE/103.5 played it, I recorded it and listened many times.  That it has a Beatles Sgt. Pepper kind of sound to it was no accident...the band's front man Jeffrey Lynne was an open admirer of the Fab Four and years later would collaborate extensively with George Harrison...

113 NAKED EYE...Luscious Jackson
Naked Eye, from 1997, is another example of a song typified by extraordinary harmony (see Song #115)...as well as of a successful fusing of two genres within one song (see Song #114), this case being rap and alternative rock.  In Gainesville during that time we had an alternative rock station on 97.7...regrettably (for me, not others) the following spring it would shut down, change its frequency to 97.3, and become the standard conservative talk radio station for the area.  It wouldn't be another four years before I noticed a new station in Gainesville playing my kind of music.  Luscious Jackson, a female band of the nineties, had their one big hit in Naked Eye, which in '97 I picked as my "song of the year"...

112 ONCE IN A LIFETIME...Talking Heads
Back in the early eighties in Gainesville, our cable TV company was University City Cable, and on their "home" channel they would inexplicably keep playing this queer song...it took me years to discover the title and artist.  Later, Once in a Lifetime's strangeness would only be enhanced when I got around to seeing the video.  Yet it all clicked with me and I took the song as a commentary about how weird life really is...and how circumstances can sometimes snowball to the point where you openly wonder to yourself exactly how did you get to where you are today...

111 MOTORCADE...Beck
When I first obtained a copy of alternative artist Beck's 2006 The Information album I largely ignored this deep track on it...but it grew on me both musically and lyrically.  Now I think that if I ever came out with an album of my own, this is the kind of song I would like to lead it off with.  And those lyrics are beyond bizarre but possess a kind of poetic beauty: "Skyscraper standing in the desert alone, a helicopter searchlight is searching for no one".  I can tell Beck must have had a lot of fun in the studio putting this track together...

Next week: #110-101...

My Ten-Mile Muggy-Morning Fun Run

I'm not sure what to think lately about the weather forecasters in my area...for both yesterday and today they had pointed to showers in the afternoon but nothing materialized: it's 5 pm and the skies are clear and sunny.  Still, I decided to get in my weekend long training run in earlier, in spite of the extremely high humidity.  When I started out it was a moderate 74 degrees but a very, very muggy 87% humidity...by the time I finished my ten mile run it was 79 with a still pretty high 73% humidity.  Usually this high humidity is something I have little tolerance for with my running, but as it turned out I felt strong enough throughout that not only did I reduce my interspersed walking breaks, but I extended my planned run from 7.2 miles to 10 with no ill effects and plenty of energy left at the end.  After 10:30 am when I started out, the very unpleasantly muggy air might at least partially explain why I saw no one on my residential subdivision course, either on the street or in their yards, for most of the first hour.  Then, suddenly, as if they got some kind of signal, everyone seemed to come outside and I found myself repeatedly crossing the street in order to avoid other walkers and joggers  And the conditions did seem to get better, including a pleasant little breeze whenever I was running northward...

Right now it's 88 degrees and only 49% humidity, conditions that I prefer when running.  With today's run I was sweating profusely...I looked when I got back home as if I had just climbed out of someone's swimming pool.  So I was being a bit facetious with this article's title depicted it as a "fun" run: anything but.  Yet it was a confidence builder in that it demonstrated to me my growing ability to handle a wider variety of weather situations...in years gone by high humidity coupled with even only moderately warm temperatures affected me adversely with my running.  Looking forward to seeing what happens next weekend...

Miscellaneous Ramblings about the Weather, Comet and Beach

The last couple of Saturdays have seen the weather acting up in Gainesville after a week of generally clear skies...we're expecting some rain and storm later on while at this writing in the morning the sky is clouding up and it seems kind of muggy outside.  So I'm going to put off my "long run" in the neighborhood until tomorrow with hopes of improved weather...

This past Thursday morning I got up at 4:30 to see Comet Swan, which was located just east of Pisces and next to Aries, reportedly just barely visible to the naked eye at 5.5 magnitude...I had a pair of binoculars to aid me.  Unfortunately it was too low in the eastern sky for me to see, although the last quarter moon, along with two nearby planets, provided a visual spectacle.  So, I went back inside and, seeing that sunrise would be at 6:36, set my alarm for 6 thinking that the comet would then be high enough in the sky for observation.  But alas, when I went out then the sun hadn't yet risen but the sky had lightened enough anyway to blot out all the stars and planets, with the only the moon left visible.  I've seen comets before, the most spectacular one being Comet West, which streaked very brightly across the predawn sky early in 1976 while being virtually ignored by the press and people at large.  Usually, though, they've been very faint and sometimes I needed binoculars to see them.  Oh well, Swan is too close to the sun now...better luck with the next comet...

A couple of Saturdays ago Melissa and I drove over to St. Augustine Beach in the morning...specifically Vilano Beach...to walk up and down it and return home.  It wasn't overly crowded and I thought most everyone there was conscientious about distancing because of the coronavirus.  But at our stop in the nearby Publix, although the workers all wore masks as well as the two of us, most customers did not and did not practice distancing.  I know the false narrative and am tired of it: "it's my own body"...but in truth, what they are doing is messing with everyone else's bodies since anyone can be infected even without symptoms...

So maybe I'll go out and run tomorrow...looks like there's a tropical system offshore that might become Arthur, our first named storm of the year.  But it's veering away from us in Florida and headed toward the Carolinas...

---Later in the same afternoon: it never did rain up here in northern Gainesville, but the humidity has remained high...I'll see if maybe I can't get out to run some tomorrow...

 

Quote of the Week...from Stephen King

Talent is cheaper than table salt.  What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work.                                                ---Stephen King.

Since I reviewed Stephen King's latest book yesterday, I thought it would be natural to dig up one of his quotes and expand upon it.  And if there is anyone who understands the importance of hard work it's this terrific, durable and prolific writer.  I have a copy of King's book On Writing, in which he gives his knowledgeable input on what it takes to be successful in that craft.  First, he admits that a raw, innate talent is essential to becoming a great writer, but most of us can become good writers if we're willing to invest the needed time and properly-directed effort.  Like the late science fiction writer Isaac Asimov, King sets aside a daily time and place to write his stories and would "just do it", much like anyone punching in on a clock would set themselves in "work mode" for the duration of their shift.  On top of this, Stephen King deems extensive reading as essential to being a success in writing...so now we're talking "overtime".  Asimov for his part, even when he wasn't sitting in front of a typewriter, claimed to write in his head and was always on the alert for new ideas. Unfortunately, unlike the sci-fi great, when I get an idea I'd better quickly write it down lest I forget it...and even when I do, sometimes I later have forgotten the point of the idea in the first place...

Stephen King's quote about hard work applies to any endeavor requiring a kernel of talent: its successful development depends on tenaciously sweating it out and putting in the needed hours...there's no way around it...

Just Finished Reading If It Bleeds by Stephen King

I just finished reading Stephen King's latest book, a four-novella collection called If It Bleeds...which happens to be the title of one of its stories.  I like them all, some more than others...but why not examine each one along with me and see whether you might not want to pick up a copy for yourself...

MR. HARRIGAN'S PHONE
A ruthless elderly tycoon quietly retires to Stephen King's fictional small-town Maine where a local boy earns a little money by reading to him.  During special days like his birthday or Christmas, Mr. Harrigan gives him lottery tickets.  One time he wins thousands of dollars and decides to give the old man, digitally and Internet-ignorant,  a smartphone. After Harrigan's initial skepticism, he becomes fascinated and ultimately inseparable from the phone, claiming all sort of possibilities for it while bemoaning its adverse effects on society.  This story reminded me of a couple of Twilight Zone episodes where a phone provided an eerie sort of nexus...

LIFE OF CHUCKY
The most brilliant and original of this book's stories, Life of Chucky takes place in three acts, going backward in time covering parts of a young accountant's life...and the startling effect he has on others.  It's also a ghost story and delves into the philosophical idea of solipsism...look it up if you don't know what it means.  Also, King gets to weigh in on his love of dancing, reminding me a bit of his masterpiece novel 11/22/63...

IF IT BLEEDS
Shape-shifting and psychic vampire monsters have evidently been on Stephen King's mind, at least a couple of his more recent novels...Doctor Sleep and The Outsider.  Also he seems to enjoy continuing a series he began with Mister Mercedes as private investigator Holly Gibney, after her traumatic experience in The Outsider, suspects the existence of yet another shape-shifter who feeds on despair and suffering.  Since I like Holly and the other "good guys" in this series, I enjoyed it but also felt that it seemed to be little more than a sequel to that book.  Also, once it's established that an author wants to write a string of tales about a group of characters like Holly and Jerome Robinson, I get the feeling while reading them that these characters' lives are all protected no matter what dire peril they may find themselves in...

RAT
A teacher of creative writing himself has a severe writer's block when it comes to composing a novel.  One day he envisions the perfect story, though, and takes off for the family's remote cabin out in the woods to write it...much to his wife's skepticism and concern.  After picking up the flu from a careless, sick clerk at the local store he finds himself alternately fighting off his own illness and the major winter storm sweeping through the area.  Yes, a rat has something to do with this story, especially the writer's ability to complete his book...and the unacceptable price tag that goes with it.  My least favorite of the four stories...

So I enjoyed reading all four stories in If It Bleeds, but two were pretty derivative and one was simply a continuance in a previous series...leaving Life of Chucky as the standout.  You might have different impressions, though, should you find yourself checking it out...

Weekly Short Stories: 1958 Science Fiction, Part 2

I have to say that these four 1958 science fiction short stories I'm discussing today from the anthology Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 20 (1958) are all among the better ones ever written...especially that last one below which I regard as a masterpiece of the genre.  Here's what I thought about each of them...

THE PRIZE OF PERIL by Robert Sheckley
The idea of placing people in dangerous situations, even possibly fatal, for the entertainment of the masses has become more commonplace in literature, television and movies...The Running Man and The Hunger Games stand out in this subgenre of science fiction.  But it all may have started with this short story by Robert Sheckley in which, also in a dystopian future, contestants in a no-holds-barred game show try to buck the odds and survive a set number of hours out in the world while assassins close in for the kill.  I felt this was a pretty exciting story, and sadly on target as to the direction we're heading in...the vicarious attraction of watching violence and others' suffering has become an epidemic in our culture...

OR ALL THE SEAS WITH OYSTERS by Avram Davidson
This brief tale mixes together our mass production technology, the tendency for things like paperclips and clothes hangers to either be mysteriously misplaced or suddenly seem to be in too great a quantity, and the biological concept of mimicry as a survival form of camouflage.  Sounds strange? That's because it is strange, a quirky story that reminded me of Donald Wollheim's 1942 brilliant Mimic.  The notion of some kind of malevolent sentience being behind everyday items suddenly missing is probably more commonplace than many would like to admit...I sometimes even joke that the "elves" must be at work when I keep coming up short of socks...

TWO DOOMS by Cyril Kornbluth
This is one of the better alternative history stories out there.  An American scientist during World War II working in the Manhattan Project has just received the results of his assignment: an atomic bomb is scientifically possible.  But before he decides to relay this crucial information to his superior...knowing in advance all the lives that will probably be lost because of it...he goes out and visits an old Navaho friend who introduces him to a special mushroom concoction.  The resulting "trip" sends him 150 years into a future America dominated by the warlord Japanese and Nazi Germans...

THE BIG FRONT YARD by Clifford Simak
One of my all-time favorite short stories...close to novella length...I first read it as a kid going through some of my father's old paperback anthologies.  A practical, honest rural handyman discovers one day that his basement ceiling has been changed to an impermeable, glass-like barrier...and his dog seems to think there's something out the woods that needs scrutiny.  The upshot to all this is soon revealed when he opens his front door to another world.  To me as a kid...and still to this day...the notion of traveling vast distances by simply stepping through a door greatly intrigued me.  I was also totally sold on protagonist Hiram Taine's pragmatic and contented personality in the face of the commotion going on around him...

Next week I conclude my look at science fiction short stories from 1958...

Follow-Up on Friday's Barry Farber Article

This past Friday I quoted Barry Farber, New York City's great WOR Radio conservative talk show host...he just passed away and I wanted to honor him.  However, he shares his name with a younger man who has built a career on motivational self-help programs and I fear that it may have been one of his quotes that I used.  Never mind, it's still a good quote, regardless who said it: risk is indeed often an essential element involved in making progress.  I've also been thinking more about the elder Farber's fascination about learning foreign languages and his imploring to take advantage of every opportunity to practice them.  Since I live in a predominantly English-speaking country, I don't have the benefit of immersion to quickly attain fluency...and maybe I don't need to become fluent in another language, anyway.  The other day Melissa and I were delivering Mother's Day gifts for our church to different members at their homes...we found ourselves conversing with a family from Iran and I could have taken advantage of this opportunity to speak greetings to them in Persian...I do know this one sentence pretty well...but I didn't.  Then, later, we stopped over for a dinner takeout from a downtown Cambodian restaurant...once again I know the same greeting in that language and could have spoken it to the owner but refrained.  I'm not studying Persian or Cambodian (Khmer) right now, but since I know people from those backgrounds and I like to study foreign languages, it seems appropriate to take a little time aside and learn a few phrases and practice conversing with them.  Now I am (off and on) studying Chinese and Spanish and do have opportunities with talk with native speakers...but of course when I do I'm going to pronounce things wrong, use the wrong words and make grammatical mistakes left and right.  But you can't make progress learning new skills without exposing yourself to the risk of screwing up, right?  Back nearly forty years ago I used to work at a Chinese restaurant in town and had several Vietnamese immigrants as coworkers...they welcomed me learning and practicing their language with them, but it's been a while since I've ever spoken it with anyone.  Well, I'm not getting any younger and recent events have shown that there's no telling what will happen in the future, so why not enrich my life by reaching out and practice foreign languages with others...

My 500 All-Time Favorite Songs: #130-121

Here's another segment of my all-time 500 favorite songs list that spans several decades...most of the songs are pretty well known but a couple are hidden treasures on their respective albums.  I naturally think they're all fantastic and urge you to give them a listen.  And now, the next ten...

130 PRODIGAL SON...the Rolling Stones
Although the album Beggars Banquet, on which this track appeared, came out in 1968, I didn't hear it until the mid-nineties when I examined the Stones' collected works. Prodigal Son was originally composed by blues artist Reverend Richard Wilkins some forty-odd years earlier. It would be a great song to play on Christian radio stations, but I'm not holding my breath waiting for that to happen since the singer is, after all, Mick Jagger.  I loved Jagger's subdued, blues-soaked style here...my estimation of this song has only increased over the years...

129 SPACE ODDITY...David Bowie
To me, for most of David Bowie's career Space Oddity was his great, defining song with its cosmic overtones and sense of alienation and isolation...then I realized that I liked another of his early works more.  Although Space Oddity was first released in 1969 and I heard it while straining my ears one night to hear it played on a weak AM station that was fading in and out, for some reason it was rereleased as a single in early 1973 and my local station WQAM/560 played it in their regular rotation.  It's very loosely based, in my opinion, on the celebrated 1967 movie 2001: A Space Odyssey as astronaut David Bowman finds himself on his own special trip out in the cosmos, cut off from humanity...

128 LAZY EYE...Silversun Pickups
I liked this 2006 indie hit back then when it was played on my local Gainesville alternative rock station, but years later...in 2018...for some reason I really picked up on it and would make it my favorite song of that year.  Lead singer Brian Aubert sounds like he's trying to imitate the Smashing Pumpkins' front man Billy Corgan, and that can get to be a little irritating.  But he delivers a great performance here...and the guitar play is outstanding on a number of levels.  It's really quite a brilliant song...

127 SUICIDE BLONDE....INXS
This song by the Australian band came out in 1990 and was a moderate hit...to me this lead song from their X album was superior to any of the hits they had produced from their previous breakthrough album Kick.  This is a great, hard-rocking piece with a piercing riff and singer Michael Hutchence, one of the great voices of his age, more than able to keep up with the torrid guitar pace.  I was also pretty impressed with the video...

126 IMITATION OF LIFE...R.E.M.
From their 2001 surprisingly good Reveal album, Imitation of Life was its initial singles release.  It has a somber, yet whimsical mood to it as the band by this time has clearly moved away from guitar-based alternative rock to a more studio-arranged sound.  Michael Stipe's lyrics are typical of his nonsensical stream-of-consciousness style: "Charades pop skill, water hyacinth, named by a poet imitation of life" yet he sings it as if it were the most important message he could relate.  The verse section's melody is compelling...the chorus, which dominates the song's second half, has a children's sing-song aspect to it that bothered me a little at first, but I came to like it as well...

125 I WILL FOLLOW...U2
This song kicked off the Irish rock band's 1980 debut album Boy and is U2 at its best...sometimes that's the way it is: an act starts out with an artistic rawness to it that over the years gets compromised bit by little bit.  Lead guitarist The Edge dominates I Will Follow with his relentless trademark riff from the very beginning and Bono has maybe his best singing performance in a song full of spiritual overtones.  It didn't become known in America until 1983 when their hit song New Year's Day introduced this iconic band to the country...

124 GOING TO CALIFORNIA...Led Zeppelin
Possibly the greatest album side of all time...Led Zeppelin "IV" Side Two, when there actually used to be album sides...Going to California is Robert Plant's plaintive ballad about looking for a love that he can't find...and then realizes probably never ever existed.  Jimmy Page offers my favorite acoustic guitar accompaniment to a Led Zeppelin song, although Friends from their previous album was pretty awesome as well.  Every song on this album side is on my "top 500" list, two already covered and two more to go...

123 THE TWO OF US...the Beatles
The leadoff track on the Beatles' final studio album Let It Be, which was ironically described on its jacket as "a new phase Beatles album", The Two of Us was one of my favorites during my angst-ridden existence as a thirteen-year-old eighth-grader early in 1970.  A further irony is that this song features Paul and John in one of their greatest performing collaborations while in reality "the two of them" were bitterly feuding with each other over the band's management and musical direction.  I wish they'd come up with a few more like this folksy tune reminiscent of their earlier Rubber Soul period...

122 NIGHTS IN WHITE SATIN...the Moody Blues
This closing track from the revamped Moody Blues' 1967 Days of Future Passed album was unknown to me until album rock radio began playing it in conjunction with the release of their 1972 Seventh Sojourn album...it's a fitting close to an album guiding the listener through the various parts of the day.  The "night" here is gloomy and somber as the singer expresses his inner troubles...the concluding spoken poem, composed and read by drummer Graham Nash, is often cut from radio play but is the best part of the song, in my opinion: "Breathe deep the gathering gloom, watch lights fade from every room.  Bedsitter people look back and lament another day's useless energy spent".  It was a favorite of mine during a period of deep introspection I was going through at the time...

121 JACKSONVILLE...Sufjan Stevens
On his tremendous 2005 Illinois album, Stevens included this slow-moving ode to the Underground Railroad of the mid-1800s that aided blacks from the South escaping slavery to their eventual freedom in Canada...Jacksonville, Illinois was a "way station" in this secret network.  I loved the entire album, but Jacksonville stands out with Stevens' understated singing, banjo picking and strong presence of strings in the background orchestration.  It irks me that a great song like this one doesn't even rate a separate Wikipedia article...I'd like to read how the artist put everything together to come out with such a singular product.  Although it was released in '05 I didn't first hear it until four years later when I discovered Sufjan Stevens while listening to an online alternative music channel...

Next week: #120-111...

A Rainy Day Happy Mother's Day Wish

Today has been pretty rainy here in Gainesville...it seems to have abated at least for a while at this mid-afternoon writing.  Maybe next week will be a better time for one of my long neighborhood runs.  I'd like to take this moment to wish for all a Happy Mother's Day and that you all are safe.  Until tomorrow...

Ahmaud Arbery, a Young Black Man in America Just Going Out on a Jog

I like to jog, something that you already know if you've read this blog...or just skimmed over the article titles.  When I run, I use as my primary routes my own subdivision, along with the neighboring one, running past scores of houses...although when on extraordinarily long runs I've been known to extend them further out into other neighborhoods.  I prefer the residential streets because the traffic is much lighter than along a main thoroughfare...and quite frankly I'm not a big fan of running on sidewalks.  But while I am very familiar with my own neighborhood, I am still wary of ever going on nighttime runs, and for one reason alone: I'm not one hundred percent sure that there isn't among the residents one or more gun-owning crazy, paranoid persons who might be liable to shoot me, seeing me as a running person in the darkness fleeing a crime.  Maybe that sounds paranoid coming from an aging, frumpy-looking white dude as myself, but if you're a black man in this country...especially the South, that's a principal of personal survival.  But apparently now, it doesn't have to be in the night...in February Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year old black man, was simply jogging down a road in plain daylight in a suburb of Brunswick, Georgia, when he was pursued, stopped, struggled with...and then repeatedly shot to death by a white father and son, Gregory and Travis McMichael, who had noticed him while driving their pickup truck around.  The father was a retired county police officer, and this fact seemed to affect the case as the prosecutor felt the need to recuse herself...ultimately no charges were filed and the McMichaels' version, that they were looking into a number of burglaries in the area (apparently untrue), became essentially the police report.  But a few days ago a lawyer who knew the McMichaels released a video made of the incident...and the case exploded onto the national stage. Now the McMichaels are being charged with murder...a case that has "Trayvon Martin" and race-tinged vigilante violence stamped all over it. I'm sure as this case develops we'll learn more from it, but it grieves me to no end about the fact that in my country someone can't freely engage themselves in a public setting without being profiled, harassed, and becoming subjected to the violent whims of others, while the justice system seems to work against them at every turn.  And it's not just blacks suffering this treatment: look just recently at the public harassment of people from eastern Asian backgrounds as they become scapegoated for the coronavirus pandemic by ignorant, bigoted jerks...

Quote of the Week...from Barry Farber

There is no reward in life without risk.                   ---Barry Farber

Barry Farber...not the motivational expert but rather the older radio talk show host...died Wednesday at the age of 90...reminding me of the passing of Don Shula at the same age just days before.  In the early-to-mid 1970s I used to listen to his shows, which originated on New York City's WOR and were replayed later on Miami Beach's WKAT/1360 "The Talk of Miami", along with Jean Shepherd's monologue program from WOR.  Farber was an independent-thinking conservative who was well-versed in international affairs and history and staunchly anti-communist.  Since his youth he had a strong interest in foreign languages, teaching himself several to varying degrees of proficiency...reminds me a little of myself in that regard.  Barry stood out with his distinctly North Carolinian southern accent and, unlike the talk show hosts of today, about whom he complained of using the forum to extend their own egos, preferred to place himself in the background and allow his guests to express themselves openly. He didn't stack up his show only with people in alignment with his own political views, either...Farber loved rigorous on-the-air debate.  As for the above quote, I happen to agree with it but since Farber's heyday in the business was before the digital age, I'm afraid much of what he had to say has gone by the wayside, so to speak...otherwise I might have a greater selection of quotes to choose from.  As for learning foreign languages, I know it takes a great amount of humility to try to communicate with others when you already know you're probably going to sound pretty silly as you make one mistake after another...that's a sort of risk as well, to your own ego.  But Barry Farber knew that the reward was worth it, and he always came across to me as a class act, respectful of others but at the same time confident enough to assert himself when needed.  And he loved studying history and languages, just like me...