The Hierarchical Mindset: You Can't Take It With You

One morning about ten years ago I was sitting at the nearest Starbucks to my house, a small establishment at the end of a Publix strip mall...years later it would be relocated down the road in order to install a drive-through.  My table was at the front window just on the inside, putting me near customers standing in line.  At the time I was reviewing my old basic Vietnamese language vocabulary I had learned many years earlier while working at a local Chinese restaurant with several Vietnamese refugees when a church acquaintance whom I distantly knew walked into the store.  She turned, noticed me and my book, and asked me what I was studying...to which I replied.  Then, without missing a beat, she derisively asked "What are you going to do with it?"  Sounds on the surface like a reasonable question, but the fact that this was the one she chose to pose revealed something important about her personality makeup. She could have asked questions like how long I have been studying Vietnamese, what my background was with it, or more pertinently, what I thought about this east Asian language.  For some reason, though, when someone reveals they are pursuing any kind of academic endeavor they often get this "What's it for?" kind of response as if learning anything new must be justified in terms of material gain or climbing a social hierarchy...I call this type of person "hierarchical".  People who in their youth always had to be the star athlete or musician or have the teacher's favor and get straight A's or be at the top of a social circle grew up with a hierarchical attitude, a lot of it having to do with the fact that as humans we organize ourselves socially in packs like wolves, vying for who will be the "alpha" and continually sorting out our standing further down the line: this was especially prevalent at my bus stop with the biggest bully reigning as "top dog" and the most picked-upon and verbally abused kids stuck at the bottom. A few years ago, before the pandemic hit, I attended a monthly Saturday morning men's breakfast at my church, intending to establish a new, positive routine in my life and develop a little more sociability in my introverted existence.  It didn't take long for me to discover that too many of those attending were steeped in hierarchy, verbally jostling with one another about their academic, career and business credentials and accomplishments, all while comically feigning humility and spirituality...this was the single reason I finally gave up going to those meetings.  I am not hierarchical and as such find those deeply engrossed in the rat race and social standing to be tedious and boring to be around...but I also realize that each of them, too, has their own story and dignity, deserving respect and grace but instead too often expecting obeisance and servility, which ruins everything for me.  I study things because they are interesting to me...whose knows, maybe I'll find some material or social use for them later. But if you want to engage me in conversation about a project I'm pursuing then how about, at least temporarily, step down from your imaginary social ladder and ask me about the content of what I'm doing...or at least how I came about to it...instead of treating me like the low dog in a pack who has to justify himself.  No, I'm not judging people with a hierarchical mindset...I'm just sick and tired of them judging me.  The play You Can't Take It With You...I prefer the 1984 PBS Great Performances version starring Jason Robards...vividly illustrates what I've just been talking about...

About Rob Dial's 8 Things Successful People Do

Last Monday on this blog I referenced Rob Dial, a motivational podcaster whose almost daily 20-minute programs, titled Mindset Mentor, are very convenient to hear and insert into my daily routine. On one recent show he lists and discusses eight different things that successful people do:

1-Get up early and have an established morning routine.

2-Read regularly, preferably daily.

3-Exercise consistently.

4-Write goals down consistently.

5-Use mentors.

6-Engage in positive self-talk, avoid the negative.

7-Don't worry about failure, rather learn from it and move on.

8-Just don't ever stop...keep advancing.

Dial is a big advocate of reading, especially in one's field of endeavor, and is generous with crediting others before him for many of the ideas he promotes.  On some of his above suggestions for success I do pretty well, but others...not so much.  I get up mornings usually between 8 and 9...but that's largely due to the fact that my work shift ends at 10 pm...and I'm pretty faithful to my morning routines. I read quite a bit, although of late I've been starting a string of different books and then putting them down for various reasons. I did find one on mathematics that seems to hold my interest, though. I exercise daily, that's good. Sometimes I write down my goals, but probably not to the extent that Rob Dial wants.  I have never had mentors except for the distanced, impersonal kind in the media and on the Internet such as podcasts like this with no opportunity for dialogue.  I could use a lot more positive self-talk than I'm accustomed to, that's for sure.  And I'm definitely sensitive to failure, tending to use it to judge myself negatively instead of letting it instruct me toward better outcomes.  Not stopping, the final point, is something I do well in some areas and not so well in others. This most probably has a lot to do with a topic that Rob Dial presents in another podcast, and which I'll discuss next week...seems like Mondays on this blog are turning into "Rob Dial Podcast Discussion Day", at least for a while...

Starbucks, Running and Math

Today promises to be pretty dreary weatherwise here in Gainesville...I'm sitting here inside the Starbucks in northern Gainesville on 43rd Street for the first time since early in the year.  Some Starbucks have a more intimate, welcoming quality to them, but this one is more like a mall food court with noises amplified by the acoustics of the spacious room...that's all right, the other Starbucks I usually frequent was off-line for my order and I've had it with standing in line anymore.  Once again I'm sitting along one side facing the electric substation just south of Talbot Elementary School...connected by a walking path I would traverse during my marathon training phase back in 2010-11 while on one of my many long runs back then: ah, those were the days!  I'd like to return to that wonderful era, and yesterday's measured run around my house totaling 14.4 miles was a good step in that direction.  There is a specific type of lifestyle that I am seeking which mixes family, a small number of friends, learning, occasional travel, and running/walking into a pleasant-yet-challenging routine combining interaction, growth, and new memories.  Part of it I am already living...much more is yet to come.  I have been stepping out tentatively into the vast, wild ocean of mathematics by watching special programming and reading books on the subject...my goal is to be in deep waters by this spring and then see where it all takes me.  The book I'm currently reading, The Ten Equations That Rule the World, by mathematician David Sumpter, illustrates the conundrum I find myself in whenever such an expert in the field introduces various concepts.  It starts out quite clearly as he lays out the basics, but then suddenly it's as if he has taken off with his discussion and left me lost, standing on land while he is frolicking way out there, far offshore.  This also happens with the Great Courses DVD set The Joy of Mathematics as Arthur Benjamin takes on the role there as teacher.  I don't blame either Sumpter or Benjamin for me falling behind their respective narratives, but rather see this as a challenge that is similar to that which getting back to running imposed itself on me in the weeks following my July surgery: at first progress is slow and I can clearly see my own inadequacy in the area and where I want to go for improvement, anticipating a breakthrough down the line if only I just stick with my efforts.  For me, whether it's running or mathematics or any other area, this is fun stuff to pursue...

Yoko Ono: the Woman in the Room

As I continue to watch the Peter Jackson recompilation of the Beatles' Let It Be sessions from January 1969...which he renamed Get Back and is showing on the Disney+ channel...I am puzzled by the so-called controversy and division that Yoko Ono, then John Lennon's girlfriend and soon-to-be wife, was causing: she was supposedly breaking up the band if you believe the numerous accounts and analyses.  Yet I just see her quietly sitting next to John, being supportive of him as well as respectful of the other Beatles.  She's not making any kind of waves or acting like the kind of diva you would expect to see on any of these nauseating reality series that nowadays plague the TV dial.  Often she's just reading a book or magazine. I did see her pat John's back and smile at him, and being pleasant and encouraging toward his bandmates....OH MY GOD SHE'S BREAKING UP THE BEATLES! And even though the other Beatles have had their own girlfriends in the studio before, Yoko's presence there at John's behest has been regarded as violating some kind of sacred "men only" arbitrary protocol in the recording studio that the Beatles maintained (when it was convenient for them, that is).  I see nothing in any of this but extreme male chauvinism, and without going into details in order to protect another individual, I am personally keenly aware of the nasty, irrational and patronizing behavior that men can exhibit when their expected all-male group finds itself graced with the presence of just one woman...regardless of her demeanor or behavior. And, sadly, scapegoating her as being divisive instead of them taking responsibility for their own sorry-ass behavior toward each other is one of the results.  Yoko, you're not the only woman who has had to go through this, and I'm afraid it's just going to continue...

Quote of the Week...from Bob Dole

I just consider myself a Republican, none of this hyphenated stuff.  I was a mainstream conservative Republican, and most people are in that category.                    ---Robert Dole

Robert Dole, former U.S. Senate Majority Leader and a vice-presidential and presidential candidate, died this past Sunday at the age of 98 from lung cancer, having survived prostate cancer from thirty years earlier after undergoing surgery to remove it from his body.  Earlier on I was a skeptic about the Kansas senator, thinking he was a bit snide and derisive as President Gerald Ford's running mate during his 1976 campaign against Jimmy Carter and Walter Mondale.  But over the ensuing years I came to greatly respect this man, who was gravely injured during World War II for his bravery in combat in Italy.  By 1996, while Dole was leading the Senate during Bill Clinton's first term as president, his stature had risen to the point where he decided to run against the incumbent...and I supported him, very happy to vote for this decent and principled man.  Dole, sadly, lost...I wonder how American history would have unfolded had he won: no Bush vs. Gore, and the series of dynamics leading to 9/11 would most probably have drastically changed as well...but I acknowledge my hindsight reasoning here.  Bob Dole was an advocate for reaching across the aisle and making deals with the Democrats when he believed the country's better interests...and he was a patriot in the highest sense of the word...could be served this way.  And while at times he would take a stand and risk political gridlock, he didn't base his decisions primarily on how his party would gain or lose as the current Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell has repeatedly and cynically demonstrated.  It's a shame that Dole's legacy hasn't survived the Trump onslaught of recent years...to be a Republican as he described himself is no longer mainstream today, as his cherished party has devolved into one lamentably supporting fascism and a personality cult... 

James, My Friend and Brother, Has Passed On

It is with deep sadness that I mark the passing yesterday evening of a friend and brother: James, the husband of Melissa's sister Krista.  He passed away at their Kentucky home yesterday evening while recovering from a serious medical operation.  James was devoted to his wife and family and was full of good humor and grace.  He worked very hard all his life to provide for his loved ones, and the news of his sudden passing is devastating to all of us.  My prayers and thoughts go out to Krista, Amy, Tabitha, James's relatives, friends, coworkers, Melissa, Keith, Will and Rebecca...all who, as did I, experienced this wonderful man's presence and influence at different times of their lives.  I will miss him dearly...

Weekly Short Stories: 1979 Science Fiction, Part 3

Today I continue reviewing short science fiction from way back in the year 1979, as they appeared in the anthology The 1980 Annual World's Best SF, featuring editor Donald A. Wollheim's selections from the previous year.  I remember 1979 as a musically transitional year as a resoundingly hard rock song, My Sharona by the Knack, took over the top of the charts that summer and the disco era that had dominated popular music for years thankfully began to wane. The new wave, punk...and even rap... movements began to rise up, as well as the presence of music videos.  I had pretty much had it with all the dance music...even the Rolling Stones with their Miss You and Emotional Rescue hits were selling out to disco, as well as the Grateful Dead (Shakedown Street).  Whew, glad that's all over...wait, I haven't been consistently listening to pop music radio since the early 1990s so who knows what passes for music nowadays.  Anyway, here are my reactions to the next three stories in Wollheim's book...

DAISY, IN THE SUN by Connie Willis

Daisy is a girl who finds herself sometimes in her grandmother's house watching her put up kitchen curtains, with her brother on the floor reading a book...then the setting will suddenly shift and they'll be on a train, and then back again.  And who are all these apathetic-looking people milling around, anyway?  A teenage boy she doesn't like approaches her and eventually explains it all...along with introducing the notion that what comprises our sense of personal identity can continue within settings that would normally not be able to sustain life.  It all concerns our sun...and apocalypse...

THE LOCUSTS by Larry Niven and Steve Barnes

This is a profound tale about the fundamental parameters of what makes us human, told in the context of a new settlement on a habitable planet in a nearby star system.  Everything seems to be growing well on it, with their plants and animals thriving.  But then the settlers' new children are all born genetically changed to a human form going back millions of years in its evolution.  How do the grown settlers deal with their offspring other than see it all as a failure and that their line will now die out with them?  Only the settlement's doctor has a different perspective on the children and their humanity...this story's ending is brilliant, and it does tie in with the title and the nature of locusts...

THE THAW by Tanith Lee

Cryogenics, the freezing of bodies to prolong them into a future when medical advances can fix whatever problems they have, is the theme of this story, written from the vantage point in the late 22nd century by a young woman who witnesses the resuscitation of her grandmother of distant generations from the "deep sleep".  Only what comes back to life seems to be somebody with a completely different personality...with special, ominous abilities.  This tale reminded me of a line from David Bowie's masterpiece (and equally ominous) song Blackstar: "Something happened on the day he died, spirit rose a meter and stepped aside, somebody else took his place and bravely cried, 'I'm a Blackstar'"....need I say more about where this story is heading?  

Next week I conclude my examination of selected sci-fi short stories from 1979...

Eighty Years Ago Today: Pearl Harbor

On the morning of Sunday, December 7th, 1941...eighty years ago...the United States was openly attacked by Japanese bombers at their naval base in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.  The attack was intended to destroy the American fleet in advance of a Japanese strategy to forcibly take over much of the Pacific, but crucial American aircraft carriers and other boats were at sea when it happened and escaped to fight another day.  President Franklin D. Roosevelt promptly had Congress declare war on Japan, which was followed by both Japan and Germany in turn declaring war on the United States: American open participation in World War II combat had begun, more than two years and two months after hostilities began following Hitler's invasion of Poland on September 1st, 1939.  The number of people who remember the Pearl Harbor attack when it happened is dwindling rapidly as are those who served the country during the perilous years to follow, both as soldiers and civilians.  I salute the brave men and women who stood up for freedom and put their lives on the line for future generations...God bless them all!

New Endeavors Can be Slow and Arduous at Start

Rob Dial is a young man who has an ongoing podcast, titled Mindset Mentor, that he puts out several times a week and on which he discusses various topics concerning motivation and self-improvement.  I've been listening to him off and on for the past few weeks...sometimes he seems on-target with his message and sometimes he's a little off, in my opinion.  One of his messages I did resonate with was when he said that starting something new from scratch usually doesn't yield much significant fruit for some time...sometimes a few months will elapse before there are encouraging results.  To that I might add that often at the start of a new self-improvement project...losing weight, for example...there can be a false sense of great progress at the start followed by a more sobering degree of improvement if not stagnation for a while.  Being a runner, after my surgery this past July 15th I wanted to return to that activity, actually running in place a minute or two on August 18th.  Even though in the previous 11 years I had run 12 half-marathons and many more races of middle-to-long distance, starting again from zero has been a slow and arduous process...I wasn't able to simply run around my home neighborhood block (.7 mile) without needing to take walking breaks until October 20th, three months later.  But a little more than a month after that I accomplished a 10-mile slow training run and this past Saturday I finished my first race, a 5K event.  But those initial weeks were slow and often discouraging for me and I still have a long way to go.  I write this not so much about running per se, but about any endeavor that I or you or anyone else might be interested in, with the ultimate aim of achieving competency or even possibly excellence in it.  At the beginning the going can be rough and it might not seem like you're up to the task with any progress being slow and positive feedback in short supply.  But then a day will come when the hard work you have put into it for weeks or even months will result in a breakthrough...there aren't many things in life that beat that.  I have a new endeavor I'm tackling and expect the same slow, humbling initial apparent lack of progress...and also expect that breakthrough down the line in a few weeks.  The trick is in faithfully sticking with it during this challenging time...

An Upcoming Personal Project for 2022

I've been watching the Beatles' Get Back movie on Disney+, which depicts its members going through a series of grueling all-day sessions of song creation, rehearsing and jamming. My initial reaction was to question why anyone would subject themselves to this kind of regimen. Then it occurred to me that for Paul, John, George and Ringo this was their great love, where their skills and interests coincided and they were the most accomplished and recognized: that's why it worked for them (although they still quarreled).  The question I ask is for myself is what in my life is comparable to that which the Beatles experienced back in January, 1969 when they embarked on that project?  And I think I got the answer...

Engaging in cognitive reverie...which is what Russell Crowe's character, mathematician John Nash, often does in the movie A Beautiful Mind...is something I often find myself doing as well.  Sometimes it takes the form of regretful, retroactive daydreaming when I think of times in my distant past and wish that I had adopted different priorities and habits.  One of these areas involves my studying in high school...my attention to homework assignments was atrocious, especially with regard to mathematics.  This is lamentable since every standardized test I ever took showed an exceptional ability in the area...I even scored a perfect 800 in it on my SAT.  Well, they say folks shouldn't bury themselves in their pasts, and I agree...but with an important caveat.  If what I'm regretting can neither be resurrected or made relevant to the present, then I should let it go.  But if there is a way in which I can learn from my past experiences and apply those lessons to the current setting, then this kind of cognitive reverie can be useful and a positive force in my life, here and now.  To this extent I've decided to make the upcoming year 2022 as one themed with intense study of mathematics...I can definitely think of an application or two for the years to come. Much will be simple review and much will be a reexamination in greater depth of what I have earlier covered, but only shallowly.  I have to credit a birthday present I received a few weeks ago: The Great Courses DVD pack of The Joy of Mathematics, authored and presented by Arthur Benjamin...wish I'd had him as a teacher!  Of course, I'll keep all ya'll updated on my progress with my upcoming math adventures...to that end I think it's time to load up my computer with some basic mathematics software...

Ran Gainesville's Depot Parkrun 5K This Morning

When I stepped outside my front door around 6:30 this morning I already knew it would be foggy, but not to the extent that the fog was loud. The moisture was so thick that it was interacting with all the surrounding tree leaves to present the audio illusion of rain, yet I felt no drops falling on me.  Normally at this time of the morning...especially on Saturdays...I am safely tucked away in my bed sound asleep, but today I had somewhere to go.  In Gainesville we are blessed with a free weekly 5K racing opportunity on Saturdays at 7:30 am, the location always being Depot Park just south of downtown.  I had run the Depot Parkrun four times in the past starting in January 2019, the last time being on June 20th this year, four weeks before I underwent open heart surgery to replace a defective valve and repair an aortic aneurism.  Today's adventure was my first race since the operation, but going by my recent running training I was confident that I would be OK...the hardest part of it all was driving back and forth across town in the thick fog.  You couldn't ask for friendlier people among those volunteering to hold this event...if I make it a more regular activity, I'll be volunteering as well.  We were all cautioned just before the race that the fog (humidity 100% at 54 degrees) was causing the pathway to be a bit slick...good advice!  For about two thirds of the race I ran at a reasonably slow pace and then "put the pedal to the metal" the rest of the way, finishing with a time of 33:03, 3 seconds faster than my June race.  Over the years my speed has slowed (I'm 65 now), but I'm taking it all "in stride" and emphasizing covering the distance...hopefully in future years I'll continue to be fully mobile, with my running adventures eventually transforming into walking adventures (actually I'm already having a few of those).  Today's experience was very encouraging...

Quote of the Week...from Albert Camus

The modern mind is in complete disarray.  Knowledge has stretched itself to the point where neither the world nor our intelligence can find any foot-hold.  It is a fact that we are suffering from nihilism.

                                                          ---Albert Camus

Albert Camus, a renowned philosopher, essayist and novelist, passed away in 1960...long before the Internet, talk radio and slanted TV news networks fed into and bolstered people's belief systems based on their own presumptions and prejudices.  But today we've gone beyond formulating our diverse values and priorities according to the facts of the world.  Instead, it's our diverse values and priorities that seem to be formulating our own versions of the facts of the world around us: that is a nihilistic world view, which posits the notion that truth isn't absolute but rather relative to the purposes we have in using it.  Welcome to today's alternative facts, "fake news", bonkers conspiracy theories and knee-jerk accusations of "hoaxes" whenever someone presents a truth that someone else doesn't want to hear.  If the modern mind is a composite of how the masses today think and form their belief systems, then Albert Camus was spot-on in describing it as being in complete disarray...and it is only going to get worse, I suspect.  Well, I can at least take care of my own mental health by staying rooted in reality, which necessarily entails keeping those nihilistic thinkers around me at arm's length, both in person and in the social and mass media.  Go ahead and be conservative or liberal, I dig that...but as John Lennon once sang, "Gimme some truth"...

Following the Beatles' Get Back Documentary on Disney Plus

I have been pleasantly surprised by the Disney+ premium streaming channel since subscribing to it.  Being a stalwart Winnie the Pooh fan, I had missed the old movies as well as the television series The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, which aired in the 1990s and coincided with Will and Rebecca's early childhood...Disney+ carries it all.  The other day we sat down and watched the Broadway production of Hamilton on this channel...what an experience! And now Peter Jackson's project of Get Back, as he has reedited the material used for the 1970 movie Let It Be, has been on it since Thanksgiving...I've been watching just a few minutes at a time because of its intensity.  It's very strange seeing John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr, all still alive, young and sitting around together (with Yoko Ono naturally at John's side), joking, eating, jamming, and arguing as if it's all going on right now in the present.  And, knowing the eventual fate of these sessions, filmed and recorded in January 1969, that would ultimately produce their final album release, Let It Be, I find it intriguing as to how the four interacted with one another...I'm starting to form my own opinions. So far I've noticed that it wasn't all doom and gloom in the studio as I had been led to believe: there was a lot of positive musical energy here.  But the brief time I have watched it has also been typified by a frantic, chaotic procession of one song after another with no discernible direction or coherency.  Hopefully, Disney+ will keep Get Back on their lineup at least long enough for me to get through it all as I take in bite-sized portions on more or less a daily basis.  As for this blog, I plan to devote a day each week discussing it, along with other things Beatles: stay tuned...

Weekly Short Stories: 1979 Science Fiction, Part 2

Today I continue my look at science fiction short stories from 1979 as they appeared in the anthology The 1980 Annual World's Best SF, edited by Donald A. Wollheim and featuring his selections from the previous year. 1979 represented a special year in my life in which I decided to break away from the drifting college experience I was undergoing to just spend some time on my own supporting myself and living frugally within my means while working at a humble job.  To this purpose I was hired as a cook in a local Chinese restaurant, a position I would continue working at for a while as I sorted things out. In some ways '79 was a very difficult year to live through and in others it was a glorious time of personal growth and independence, depending on how you look at it. But I couldn't imagine how the rest of my life would how turned out if I hadn't lived through it as I did...most of the alternatives were decidedly negative. In the science fiction universe good stories abounded, and here are my comments about two from the book that weren't exactly my favorites...

UNACCOMPANIED SONATA by Orson Scott Card

In a future world claiming itself as a utopia allowing people to play the roles for which they are best suited, a young musical prodigy is selected as a "Maker" and as such subjected to abusive social isolation in order to enhance his senses for picking out music from the surrounding nature...and to avoid the unforgivable sin of derivation.  One day, though, a Listener traveling through hears his music and slips him a recording of Bach...the society's monitors, the Watchers, become aware of it and punish the Maker by removing him from his environment and forbidding him to create any more music.  The story spirals downward from there and I thought this was some hell of a utopia. The ending, which I guess was supposed to be happy, only left me puzzled...

THE STORY WRITER by Richard Wilson

This confusing story portrays a retired successful pulp fiction writer who discovers a second career in writing when he buys a second-hand typewriter at a rural northeastern flea market sale.  He uses it to write stories for the customers stopping by...including a peculiar soul who turns out to be an alien representing his race from another star system and which is planning to settle Earth, albeit primarily in another dimension.  The story gets further muddled when the writer, considered by the aliens to be a prophet whose writings always come true, finds himself in a copied world in the aliens' home dimension (but still on Earth): get lost yet?  The ending made little sense, either...the saving grace in this tale was the insertion of some elementary Polish language greetings and phrases, reminding me of that Polish class I took during the spring of 1978.  Yes, it's all very weird...

Next week: more from the year 1979 in short science fiction...

My November 2021 Running and Walking Report

In November I ran a total of 100 miles, with a slow and easy 10 mile run on the 23rd being my longest single run.  I missed running on 3 days due to feeling under the weather.  With walking, I covered 102 miles for the month, most of my mileage coming from walking back and forth at work. November has been a positive month for me with both running and walking, and my endurance has greatly strengthened.  Still, I recognize that my progress since the July 15th heart operation to replace a defective valve and repair and aneurism has not been linear, but rather an up-and-down curve over the weeks, with the net result being on the upside. With this in mind, my goals...both in terms of increasing my runs and in engaging in public running races...are contingent on where I happen to be on that fluctuating curve at any given time.  I had planned on running in Gainesville's weekly Depot Park 5K race this past Saturday, but when I woke up it was 36 degrees...maybe I'll wait a week or two and see what the weather's like then. The Florida Track Club has scheduled for late January 2022 its Newnan's Lake 15K, which I've enjoyed running a number of times in the past.  And in February we'll see a return in Gainesville of the Five Points of Life half-marathon...although they seem to have cut the full 26.2-mile marathon from this event.  In a perfect, linear world of constant, incremental improvement and fantastic weather I would run a couple of Depot Park races, the Newnan Lake 15K, and top it off with the Five Points half-marathon.  That's how I'm looking at it now at the close of November...let's see how it all materializes, though, in this somewhat less-than-perfect existence... 

Just Finished Reading An Abundance of Katherines by John Green

An Abundance of Katherines, from 2006, is yet another quirky young adult novel by John Green focused on adolescent self-discovery.  This time the protagonist is Colin Singleton, a very intelligent high school student obsessed with that intelligence...as well as the conundrum of why he has been repeatedly dumped by all his girlfriends: they are 19 in total and all named Katherine.  After Katherine the Nineteenth breaks up with him, Colin decides to develop a mathematical formula, based on his own experiences, for predicting how long a relationship will go...of course, this is preposterous.  Known as the nerdy smart geek in his class, he has but one friend, Hassan, who serves as a reality check for him as well as for those of us who tend to see young Muslims in a negative, even fearful, light. One day Colin and Hassan...with Colin's permissive parents' blessings...set off on a road trip from their hometown of Chicago into Tennessee, where they stop at a hole-in-the-wall town called Gutshot.  There they befriend Lindsey...whose boyfriend is also named Colin...and Lindsey's factory-owning mother Hollis, at whose house they stay.  They are hired by Hollis to interview the locals for an oral history of the area she is compiling.  Colin, assured of his prodigal intelligence, is nonetheless concerned that he will never attain the status of "genius", which in his definition involves producing something new, something that matters.  This reminded me of the movie A Beautiful Mind from four years earlier in which mathematical genius John Nash tells his Princeton roommate Charles essentially the same thing.  The story is funny and easy to follow, and I enjoyed the good-natured verbal sparring between the characters, especially Colin and Hassan.  However, I don't know that this story accurately portrayed the state of adolescence, at least as far my own recollection of this period of my life is concerned.  The kids all seem to be level-headed and reasonable, traits that I noticed were generally lacking in many of my classmates (and in retrospect myself as well)...these are all very strong, self-assured personalities.  Maybe Green deliberately wrote them that way to point out a positive direction for all his young insecure, awkward readers. He has done something like this with his other books I've read: Looking for Alaska and Turtles All the Way Down...click on the titles to read my earlier reviews.  I don't think you can go wrong with An Abundance of Katherines, but be prepared to read through some extreme silliness...

Omicron Covid Variant Reported

Surfing around the TV this morning I hit upon CNN...the big news story there is the Omicron Strain...no it's not a Michael Crichton novel or movie, but the latest mutant Covid-19 variant, apparently arising out of South Africa, where the vaccination rate is low because it's not widely available, unlike here where millions upon millions of people willfully perpetuate the virus by refusing it although the vaccine is convenient, free, safe and effective.  Omicron is definitely more contagious then the other Covid strains and has already spread throughout Europe and is expected to hit the U.S. soon.  But as it is newly discovered, not enough is yet known as to whether it is more virulent than its horrid predecessor, the  Delta variant.  Neither is there yet sufficient information about how effective the current vaccinations are against it: the major companies are engaged in testing as I write this and we should know in a couple of weeks.  In any event it's clear to me that Covid-19 is here to stay, both because of the worldwide vaccine production, distribution and inoculation logistics and because so many of us seem to have decided that they kind of like having this scourge around, as perverse as that may sound... 

Our Recent Visit to Asheville, North Carolina

 

Last month Melissa and I went on vacation to the Carolinas, first in Asheville, North Carolina for a few days and then on to Charleston in the South...I've written about the latter in recent articles.  As for Asheville, we stayed at a hotel on the city's east end, near the Billy Graham Training Center which we visited.  It was a pretty, pastoral setting perfect for retreats...I always felt a special respect for Christian evangelist Billy Graham, whose worldwide ministry rejected partisan and Cold War politics in favor of focusing on spreading the Gospel throughout America and the rest of the world.  He always avoided openly siding with one political party over the other, befriending a long succession of both Republican and Democratic presidents, and even sat with atheist authoritarian rulers like the Soviet Union's Nikita Krushchev and North Korea's Kim Il-sung.  Sadly, one of his sons, Franklin, has plunged himself deeply into fractious, divisive political partisanship, first publicly and repeatedly criticizing President Obama even to the extent of questioning his faith and then unquestioningly siding with Trump during his tenure, even going so far as questioning the 2020 election's outcome...very sad indeed.  But as for the retreat center, I loved it and recommend it for visitors, along with the tours they offer.  That visit we did the second day.  On the third we took the train ride on Great Smoky Mountain Railroads, which starts at Bryson City west of Asheville and goes through the surrounding country, stopping off for lunch at a little town called Dillsboro before returning...that was fun.  While in Asheville we ate a couple of times at an excellent locally-owned eatery on Tunnel Road called East Village Grille and did some grocery shopping at a nearby store called Ingles...I wish this chain were in Gainesville, too.  In our previous visit to this area in 2006 we toured the Biltmore estate south of town and also drove through the Smoky Mountain National Park on to Tennessee, stopping off for a few hours at Dollywood in Pigeon Forge before heading back... but not this time around. We did stop off at the Arts and Crafts Center on the Blue Ridge Parkway about a mile from our hotel, though...I got an excellent 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle there (see photo). I liked Asheville, although when walking around I quickly learned to keep a cautious eye on the ground since there were a lot of steep drop-offs everywhere, something that a flat-lander Floridian like myself isn't accustomed to dealing with...

Quote of the Week...from Sheryl Sandberg

Motivation comes from working on things we care about.                 ---Sheryl Sandberg

Sheryl Sandberg is a billionaire business executive, a key player in Facebook's dramatic rise within American society...you can take that as a compliment or criticism depending on your views about this pervasive company (to which I'm posting a link for this blog article that is hosted by Google...another pervasive company for which she also worked).  Sandberg's above statement at first glance seems so obviously self-evident that you might question why I even bothered to post it.  But in our daily lives there are a lot of different things tugging at our attention and most of them concern areas for which we personally hold little interest but still dutifully invest our time and efforts to deal with them.  I can always get around disinterest in a project by framing it in the context of another project: I don't like certain classes in school, but the "bigger" goal is getting good grades...or taking on tedious or stressful aspects of my job: a strong work ethic and consistency through all areas, interesting or not, are pillars of success.  Still, once I'm away from the classroom and workplace I can see Sandberg's point.  On the other hand, my interest in different things tends to fluctuate pretty dramatically over the course of even a single day, much less over longer spans of time.  So I guess the lesson I draw from this quote is that I need to find stuff I care about 24/7 in order to be motivated about it 24/7...

Happy Thanksgiving, Everybody

I wish you all a most happy Thanksgiving.  If you're working today I hope it's because you want to. For the many who traditionally spend it with family, best wishes that everyone shares positive, memorable moments together with lots of good stuff to eat, hopefully not in too much excess.  And if you're one of those who can't wait to go out on shopping sprees later today and tomorrow...well, I'm not quite sure what to say except to stay safe and that I never was into that Black Friday sort of thing.  As for me, my wonderful grown kids are having Thanksgiving dinner at my home with Melissa and me...that's definitely something I am most grateful for, along with the blessings of our health and positive outlook on life...

Weekly Short Stories: 1979 Science Fiction, Part 1

Today I begin looking at science fiction short stories from the year 1979, as they appeared in the anthology The 1980 Annual World's Best SF, edited by Donald A. Wollheim and featuring his picks from the previous year.  1979 was a big year in the news as Iran culminated its Islamic revolution early on and later took over the U.S. embassy in Tehran, precipitating an international hostage crisis that lasted until the end of the Jimmy Carter administration.  In the same year the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in order to sustain a friendly puppet government there it installed in a coup d'etat the previous year.  Meanwhile, science fiction did well with a number of good stories...here are my reactions to the first three from that book...

THE WAY OF CROSS AND DRAGON by George R.R. Martin

Martin obviously had a hang-up with organized religion, perhaps stemming from his childhood experiences,, for all I know.  In his ongoing fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire he has an intolerant fundamentalist group descend upon the capital city of King's Landing.  Here we have an interstellar group of inquisitors bent on upholding the orthodoxy of the brand of Christianity that has spread throughout the galaxy.  There is a planet that holds to the heresy of Judas being a savior/hero, and the story's inquisitor is assigned to rectify the situation.  He meets a man who revels in being a "Liar", that is he acknowledges the falseness of his Judas preaching as something he entirely made up...yet the revelation places further doubt in the mind of the inquisitor about his own beliefs....

THE THIRTEENTH UTOPIA by Somtow Sucharitcul 

Another (groan) tale about inquisitors and religious intolerance, here we see the enforcer of the orthodox faith with a new assignment regarding his specialty: the sabotage and destruction of societies across the cosmos that have claims to being utopias.  In this one, they seem to have conquered gravity and hold a special reverence toward their sun...the extent of this is revealed at story's end and also shows the author's own possible philosophy...that self-awareness and identity transcend biological life, a very heretical notion in the mind of this story's inquisitor.  But he gets sucked into what they call the "initiation", and is forever changed...

OPTIONS by John Varley 

Off into the future, this time solidly on Earth, gender identities are no longer as solidly differentiated as they were, with a "simple" medical procedure available for the masses that "only" involves creating a near-identical clone body of one's own...albeit in the opposite sex...and then having one's brain and nervous system transplanted into it.  I had to put down the book for a couple of minutes and laugh after reading that! Varley focuses on a married couple with three children and has the wife consider and then undergo a sex-change procedure...he then examines its effect on the husband and family.  A little ahead of its time this story is, although I have a feeling that transplanting brains into cloned bodies isn't going to be in our immediate future. Then again I had no idea a few years ago that people would be walking and standing around everywhere staring at little boxes in their hands...

Next week: more about short science fiction from 1979...

Just Finished Reading Profiles in Courage by John F. Kennedy

Profiles in Courage is a 1956 history book by John F. Kennedy while he was still a United States senator...it won him the Pulitzer Prize the following year, after which it was revealed that his speechwriter Ted Sorenson wrote the bulk of it.  Regardless who actually put the pen to paper, it was Kennedy who placed his stamp of approval on it, and for the sake of simplicity I'll refer to it as his book.  It is comprised of a set of short biographies of eight men who served over the span of American history as U.S. senators: John Quincy Adams, Daniel Webster, Thomas Hart Benton, Sam Houston, Edmund G. Ross, Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar, George Norris, and Robert A. Taft.  Kennedy was careful to spotlight members of differing parties and ideologies...his main thrust of argument was that at crucial points in their Senate careers they made principled decisions that went against the passions of their constituents, ending their political careers or at least delaying their fulfillment (Adams would later become president and then a representative in the House while Lamar would make it to the U.S. Supreme Court).  I don't think this book could (or should) have been written today since some of those profiled were on the pro-slavery side in the nineteenth century, even to the extent of owning slaves themselves.  And there were also a number of historical figures around these eight that the author criticized perhaps a bit unfairly.  Still, I think Profiles in Courage makes a couple of significant points applicable to today's political setting and the Senate in particular.  One, our national legislative bodies operate on the premise that we are a representative republic whose leaders are either directly or indirectly elected by the people...this gives them accountability to the population while acknowledging that they are in a better situation than most of us to get the needed information, expertise, and wisdom for the often difficult decisions that go with their positions. And two, the fact that Kennedy felt the need for this book to highlight just eight senators for their political courage demonstrates that in the vast majority of cases senators and other politicians...when push comes to shove...will usually abandon their principles and succumb to popular prejudices and pressure from their colleagues on important, divisive issues.  You don't have to look around very far today to see this going on with too many of our elected national officials, sadly... 

Dan Mullen Fired from Coaching Florida Gators Football

Back in 2018, when Mississippi State head football coach Dan Mullen was sought and hired to replace erratic Jim McElwain at the University of Florida, trumpets were practically sounding that he was a Spurrier/Meyer-caliber coach that would lead the Gators back to their glory days of Southeastern Conference titles and National Championship contention.  The first two seasons, in which Mullen capitalized on players recruited by his predecessor, were great successes and last year's was as well...until the season's end when UF lost three straight games (although in two of them they were playing for the SEC championship (46-52 against Alabama) and in the Cotton Bowl (20-55 against Oklahoma).  This year their roster reflected Mullen's recruiting efforts for Florida, but it became clear early on that the wide-open passing attack and a fast, aggressive defense that defined the Gators in its recent history would be lacking.  Their games in 2021 were marked by inconsistency from week to week, with the offense and defense alternating between good and awful.  For me, I am more supportive of a head coach being given more time to develop his team, and sometimes the season just doesn't go your way.  But with Dan Mullen, although I give him credit for promoting Covid-19 vaccination recently, I can't get it out of my mind that last fall he, in the middle of a deadly upsurge of the virus in the general population...and no vaccines yet available...advocated that Florida "pack the Swamp [its home stadium]" for a game after losing a close road contest at Texas A&M where the home school practiced lax safety protocols for its own stadium.  Until that moment I had been a supporter of Mullen...afterwards I realized that winning was his only yardstick for success.  Well, you win by your yardstick and in turn lose by your yardstick: his team has lost four out of their last five games and in their only victory over that span they gave up a record 42 points in one half (at home) against a small college.  Running and special teams coach Greg Knox will fill the Florida head coaching vacancy against Florida State this week...if the Gators win then they will be bowl-eligible.  I'm not one of those Florida fans who expect them to compete for the National Championship every year, and sometimes you have years like this one and have to shake it off and move on to the next.  Normally I'd say that the coach should be given more time, but after Mullen's tone-death pandemic denial last season my patience with him was gone long before 2021...

Just Finished Rereading The Shining by Stephen King

The Shining is a 1980 horror novel by Stephen King, one of his big early successes in his long, prolific career as a writer of popular fiction.  I first read it about fifteen years ago, a little before this blog began, so I don't have a review of it...until today, that is.  I was prompted to pick it up again after reading King's latest novel Billy Summers, which mentions the earlier novel's central Overlook Hotel and its topiary of shrubs shaped to look like real animals.  Now I've finished reading The Shining...and have a few things to say about it.  It is about a family of three, the Torrances: Jack, the father, is an alcoholic writer/teacher with a short, violent temper that has stood him poorly in recent times, and Wendy, his beautiful wife, tends to see him as a troubled man and a danger to their five-year old son Danny.  Danny has the special gift of "shining", that is to read others' thoughts and see into the future.  Jack is giving winter employment by his old reformed drinking buddy as caretaker of Colorado's Overlook Hotel and he takes his family with him for the bleak, snowed-in months.  Danny is warned by his "imaginary" friend about the hotel's dangers and befriends the chef Dick Halloran, who is psychically sensitive as well and quickly picks up on the boy's talents.  Halloran is leaving for Florida for the winter, but tells Danny he'll come back if called.  Although on the wagon for several months, Jack finds himself craving alcohol...but the hotel is bone-dry, or is it?  The Overlook seems to have a mind of its own and sees in Danny the means to bring itself power and presence...it intends to use Jack and his addiction to that end.  The rest of the story spirals into a mix of ghosts, violence, and soul possession as the three struggle to survive their experience in this clearly-haunted establishment.  Like several of Stephen King's earlier stories, The Shining deals with demonic forces that invade and possess people...in this sense his writing mirrors the attitudes of many religious people who see demons and evil spirits all around themselves while interpreting others' perceived wayward behavior in terms of demonic possession.  Also, as in the case with many of his works around this time, the narrative often slips into stream-of-consciousness mode...I don't notice this literary device used nearly as much in King's more recent novels.  When I first read The Shining, I misinterpreted the book's ending as to what happened to Jack Torrance...this time around I saw it all in a much different light.  As to the Jack Nicholson movie adaptation, what I saw of it diverged too much from the book, with Nicholson as Jack and Shelley Duvall as Wendy, both roles seriously miscast.  Finally, one message I received from this intriguing story is that people have a tendency to think they are in control and masters of their own lives' destinies while in reality they are often pawns manipulated by forces unseen and beyond their control: welcome to the universe of Stephen King.  Doctor Sleep is a 2013 sequel novel to The Shining, with Danny Torrance grown up and suffering from the same weakness to alcohol as did his father...and having to contend with creatures that prey upon psychics...

Recent Visit to Charleston Harbor and Downtown

 

During our brief visit to Charleston, South Carolina last month, Melissa and I decided to explore its famous harbor and downtown.  We went on a tour boat and were treated to various historical and geographic aspects of the area, including Fort Sumter (see bottom picture), the site of the start of the American Civil War on April 12, 1861.  The U.S.S. Yorktown...not the famous aircraft carrier of the Battle of Midway fame (it sank in the Pacific)...but the new ship commissioned to replace it in 1943...is also in Charleston Harbor on the eastern Mount Pleasant side.  Both Ft. Sumter and the Yorktown have tours, but we were pressed for time and let the harbor ride work for us.  Afterwards we walked the streets of downtown Charleston.  The sidewalks around the harbor and immediate surroundings were often blocked by construction and barricades, but once we got further south and west to Market Street, things became easier.  All along Market Street are long brick buildings that provide a flea-market type of people's marketplace (2nd photo from the top).  We turned south at Church Street, on which is located St. Philip's Church...its steeple makes it the tallest in the city, which has prohibited any building from being taller than it.  Down the road on the right side is a special coffee shop, Bitty and Beau's, a chain with 23 stores (one to open soon in Jacksonville) that distinguishes itself by employing those with intellectual and developmental disabilities.  When we got there the store was about to close, but I managed to get a decaffeinated caffè americano to go...click HERE for the company's website.  Eventually we looped around on our downtown walk and made it toward the garage where we were parked...on the way we were passed by horse-drawn carriages, one of which was followed by a car whose business specializes in cleaning the streets of horse poop.  At the end of our walk we cut through the beautiful Gaillard Center to get to our parking garage.  I would have preferred a little more time to explore the area...I was disappointed that the Slave Market Museum had just closed when we passed by.  Still, I'm glad we visited...maybe at a future time we'll get to explore a little more deeply, and maybe even sit a spell at Bitty and Beau's...

Quote of the Week...from Winston Churchill

The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.

                                                                            ---Winston Churchill

Winston Churchill was perhaps the most famous British prime minister in history, presiding first over the course of World War II and later in the early-to-mid 1950s...let's just assume for the sake of argument that his above derisive quote about the "average voter" was only directed at his own fellow countrymen.  Still, I have issues of my own about American voters...or those from any country where people can freely vote for their leaders, for that matter.  In the election my city of Gainesville just held this past Tuesday, there was a vote turnout of 13%,  meaning that 87% of fully registered voters chose not to participate in the election of one of our city commissioners.  The election, among five candidates, was split evenly enough between the top two finishers so that no one received a majority of votes and the runoff will be held January 25th.  In this digital information age it is only too easy to just speak into the Google search engine and all kinds of sources of candidates' records and viewpoints can be found...but only 13% voted.  And during a time when all I hear is how voting is being suppressed.  I know enough about how people who do vote will make their voting choices according to asinine reasons like how their friends and family voted, the symbols the candidates embrace, innuendos, mudslinging...and the like: anything but how, once elected, the officials will affect their lives and futures by their actions on relevant issues.  Add to this the numerous crank news sources, hack media ideologues and conspiracy theories that too many in our Internet and mass media age have embraced to formulate their political orientation.  Finally, there is always the wishy-washy last-minute undecided voter who will hinge their vote on some sensational news story planted just before the election.  But at least these people are taking the responsible action of casting a ballot...I think I'd modify Churchill's quote to read "The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average registered voter"...   

Constellation of the Month: Cetus (the Sea Monster)

 

Cetus is a large autumn evening constellation, nearly all of it lying south of the celestial equator, just south of the faint Zodiac constellation Pisces.  The stars in Cetus tend to be brighter than some of those constellations surrounding it, although that's not saying much.  To me the standout star is Beta Ceti, better known as Deneb Kaitos, situated at Cetus' southwest corner at magnitude 2.04, a clear marker in the night sky, especially in juxtaposition to its dim setting.  Mira is a noted variable star whose magnitude dramatically and periodically changes from easily-visible 3 all the way to 10, only viewable through telescopes.  There's a Messier object, M77, on the constellation's northeastern end...it is a spiral galaxy some 50 million light-years distant.  Cetus represents the sea monster that mythical Greek heroic character Perseus had to battle.  Its nearby constellations in the fall sky are elements of Perseus' story: Pegasus, Perseus himself, Andromeda and Cassiopeia.  Sometimes Cetus is referred to as a whale, and Curious George creator H.A. Rey's redrawn constellations from his children's book Find the Constellations (which I used to check out a lot as a kid) depict it that way.  Next month I'll discuss a constellation from December's evening sky...

Weekly Short Stories: 1978 Science Fiction, Part 4

With today's article I reach the final three science fiction short stories from 1978, as presented in the anthology Donald A. Wollheim Presents The 1979 Annual World's Best SF...providing the editor's selections from the previous year.  If you know me well, then you might have noticed that I have a propensity to memorize long lists of things of diverse topics...this was the year that all that got started.  I haven't written very much on this blog about that aspect of myself since for some reason I feel it's a bit personal, but since this IS a record of my thinking for the general world's reading pleasure and "enlightenment", I might just share some of my experiences with lists in future articles.  For now, here are my reviews of those last three stories....

WE WHO STOLE THE DREAM by James Tiptree, Jr.

Told from the point of view of the aliens, a humanoid race is oppressed on a distant planet by colonizing humans, but they have over the years furtively and meticulously plotted their escape by commandeering a human spaceship. They also are aware of the existence of their own kind living on the other side of the galaxy and set out to meet them...the resulting encounter sadly reveals the author's position that human nature can transcend even humanity...

SCATTERSHOT by Greg Bear

An alien enemy has hit an Earth spaceship with a device that explodes it through many dimensions. The only known survivor, a woman named Francis Geneva, explores the resulting strange new conglomerate ship with different survivors of the same attack in other dimensions.  Now to get everyone...and they're quite different from one another...back to where (and when) they belong.  A mind-stretching but ultimately frustrating story with its numerous demands on the reader's ability to imagine the author's strange new world with its strange new creatures and rules about time and space...

CARRUTHERS' LAST STAND by Dan Henderson

Carruthers is an anthropologist selected to initiate meaningful communications with a lizard-like alien race 500 light years distant.  He's stationed on the moon, delighting in times when he, pretty much a loner, can get away from the annoying bureaucrats pressuring him with their agendas.  Technologically-generated psychic contact is made between Carruthers and Hun, his alien counterpart. According to the social norms of Hun's world, the two have to constantly exchange colorful insults (very funny), and new technologies are subsequently revealed to humanity.  But joy turns to fear as the Earth bigshots are now worried that they could be attacked by the others.  Carruthers, though, has learned something he realizes he'd better keep from his superiors.  The story's a bit murky toward the end, but redeemed by the ending...

Next week I begin my examination of short science fiction from the year 1979...

As I Age, Medical Interactions Increase

For the most part...until the last decade or so...I have lived my life relatively free of doctors, medications, hospitals and "procedures".  Never having suffered a serious enough illness or injury...not even a single broken bone...to be hospitalized other than inguinal hernia surgery in 1973 when I was 17, I tended to avoid anything resembling the medical establishment. After getting married I finally got around to visiting the doctor from time to time, but always breathed a sigh of relief when exiting the office.  But in late 2011, after visiting an after-hours clinic because of a sinus infection, the attending physician detected a heart murmur and strongly recommended I see my regular doctor about it. She in turn had me examined and it was discovered that not only did I have an aortic aneurism, but that I had a serious birth defect: a bicuspid (instead of the normal tricuspid) heart valve that was responsible over the years for the swollen aorta.  From 2012 through 2021 I underwent annual exams with a UF Health specialist surgeon to see if the aneurism had expanded: beyond a specified threshold he would recommend surgery. But the aneurism remained the same size even at the last exam this past April...still my physician decided I needed to undergo the surgery because my valve had a worsening calcium buildup.  On July 15 I underwent open heart surgery to replace the valve and repair the aneurism...successfully done although there was the complication of atrial fibrillation based on my heart's initial reaction to the operation. This was resolved with the Cardioversion procedure just before I was discharged from the hospital.  Recovery lasted several weeks, primarily to allow my sternum, sawed apart to allow access to my heart for the operation, to fuse back together..as well as strengthening my body, especially the upper part.  Still, at this point with me back at work for more than a month and exercising to the point of running at pretty much my pre-operational level (but more slowly), I am now entrenched in the medical system with two cardiologists, a thoracic surgeon, a gastroenterologist, potentially a urologist, and of course my primary physician, their office and examination appointments strung out into the future.  Besides issues related to my heart concerning continuing recovery and maintenance, there are three areas of my health/body unrelated to what I just went through that have to be addressed...groan!  I suppose this sort of thing just naturally happens when one gets to my age (65)...all kinds of screenings are recommended, usually to detect cancer in different parts of the body.  Well, I think I'm long finished with the part of my life when I avoided doctors and hospitals and pretty much freelanced it with my personal health.  The trick now is not to succumb to the temptation to "self-enfeeble" because of doctors' overactive concerns, while at the same time following the gist of their advice and availing myself of their prescriptions and procedures. I have a very strong instinct that a physically active lifestyle, to which I am accustomed, is important to both physical and mental health, regardless of my age, and I don't have any intention of fearfully tiptoeing through the remainder of my life...

Our Visit to the Charleston Tea Plantation (Garden) Last Month

On this past October 25th, the morning after driving in to Charleston, South Carolina from Asheville, North Carolina, Melissa and I decided to go west and explore two of the area's features: the Angel Oak Tree on John's Island (click HERE for my article) and the Charleston Tea Plantation, which seems to be in the process of being renamed Charleston Tea Garden most likely because "plantation" carries with it connotations of slavery.  In any event, we managed to get past the morning precipitation by the time we arrived there, beyond the aforementioned Tree and onto sparsely populated Wadmalaw Island.  The first thing you notice driving into the place are the rows upon rows of shortly and very evenly-cropped hedges of tea plants.  This is because the choice leaves are cut from branches grown past a certain height by a custom-designed harvester they call the Green Giant (which is in the above pics)...this machine drastically cuts down on the labor formerly needed to tend and harvest the plants.  We parked and went inside, just in time to go on their trolley tour around the farm, with the driver and a recorded tour guide giving out probably more information about tea farming history and its cultivation than I needed to know.  When we got back to the main gift shop area we sampled some of their teas, browsed around, and then went into the back on a walking tour of the facility's tea processing machines.  I hadn't been aware that different kinds of tea didn't necessarily grow on different types of tea plants, but were rather the products of different stages in processing.   At the end, we naturally bought some of their teas and left with a sense of tranquility from our visit...everyone there was friendly and obviously enjoyed their work.  During the tour it was claimed that this is the only substantial tea farm in the continental U.S. and that the site was selected because of the soil quality here as well as the location in a wet lowland area at this latitude.  Bigelow Tea Company now owns it...I enjoyed the experience but most definitely would have enjoyed it more if it were instead about my preferred drink, coffee...

Election for Gainesville City Commission At-Large Seat This Tuesday 11/16

This Tuesday, November 16 the Gainesville City Commission is holding its election to replace Gail Johnson for the At-Large Seat B, from which she resigned a few months ago.  Residents of Gainesville have the opportunity today (until 6 pm) to vote early, either at the Millhopper Library on NW 43rd Street or the Supervisor of Elections office on NW Main.  Both Melissa and I voted by mail-in ballot a few days ago.  I know this election is not for the presidency and has just a one item on the ballot, but I suggest that this is the perfect opportunity for anyone to get started with the self-discipline of consistent, informed voting.  I am sick and tired of people in my party (Democrats) complaining that the other side is robbing them of the right to vote when they themselves won't avail themselves of this right (which I regard as more of a RESPONSIBILITY)...after all, the previous commissioner, Gail Johnson, won with only an 11% voter turnout in this predominantly Democratic city. If you're perplexed as to why so many "blue" states have Republican majorities in their legislatures and even some Republican governors, the answer is partly due to the fact that conservative voters tend to display that self-discipline when those off-year elections come around while too many Democrats seem to be of the mindset that once a president in their own party is elected then that settles everything for the next four years...folks, that ain't how it works.  In Clinton's second year, 1994, and Obama's in 2010, Democratic voters sat on their hands and allowed the Republicans to win back the House of Representatives in Obama's case and both houses of Congress in Clinton's.  And in 2014, two years after Obama had been reelected, they stayed away from the polls again and let Mitch McConnell's party take control of the U.S. Senate, thereby enabling the new Senate Majority Leader to steal a Supreme Court seat by refusing to consider the duly-elected president's nominee, Merrick Garland.  But sadly, I expect more of the same ignorant complacency from my party in 2022...if there's anything I've learned over the past few years it's how precarious of a situation I am in with this "representative democracy" of ours, considering the gullibility and foolishness of much of the electorate: sometimes it feels like I'm on a runaway train with no one at the controls...

Just Watched the Movie Hamilton

Hamilton is a 2020 movie of the same-titled Broadway musical, filmed at its Richard Rogers Theatre on 46th Street in Midtown Manhattan, just a block or so from where I stayed at the Marriott Marquis while visiting with my family in 2010.  At that time we saw the Broadway production of South Pacific at the Lincoln Center...today it was Melissa, Will and I sitting in our living room watching my second Broadway play on our television screen, thanks to Disney Plus which carried it in their listings.  The first few minutes quickly knocked me off my feet with the diverse cast and fast-paced rap, music and action...at first I had to ask if this show was about the same Alexander Hamilton I knew from studying American history.  An immigrant from the Caribbean West Indies, Hamilton was a patriot during the American Revolutionary War and served under General George Washington, a role which would later lead to his appointment as the first president's Secretary of the Treasury.  Along the way he got to know others like Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Aaron Burr...the Broadway play makes his relationship with Burr much more extensive than it apparently was in real life.  Those at all familiar with the real Hamilton know of the tragic end of his life, but I felt the show did an admirable job of presenting it and the aftermath...well, the ending was a real tearjerker!  It's a pretty long film at 2 hours and 40 minutes, so plan in advance some free time to watch it.  I felt that the music was incredible, and may be the first time ever that I had experienced rap on such a high artistic level...amazing.  Later on I read up on Hamilton and found the the Broadway play, which debuted in 2015 and won numerous awards, was not only coproduced by Lin-Manuel Miranda, who portrayed Alexander Hamilton, but he also wrote it and composed its music and lyrics: what an incredible, daunting accomplishment!  All of the acting was fantastic, but I especially appreciated that of Leslie Odom, Jr. as Aaron Burr.  If you're interested in history, then I would suggest this movie as a point of departure and not the final word on what really transpired.  I would rather have been there in person to see Hamilton performed live on stage, but still feel very privileged to have been able to experience this beautiful work of art even if only at home on a wide flat-screen TV.  Why not try it out for yourself?

Quote of the Week...from Alex Roe

Everyone deals with grief in their own way.                         ---Alex Roe

A couple of days ago, while in the midst of my own health issues, I was informed within the span of 24 hours that four dear, sweet people whom I personally knew had passed away. I would be saddened by any of these deaths, but four at one time?  And there are others in my life who are undergoing their own personal health crises right now...I'm not sure I'm liking this new trend, if trend is what it really is instead of an aberration. But as George Harrison titled his landmark 1970 album, all things must pass, and I knew a long time ago that all living beings will indeed pass from this world, including eventually all my loved ones and even myself. Still, knowing this doesn't make it hurt any less when it happens, especially at this level.  By the way, I picked the above quote by Alex Roe although I've yet to see any movie or show this young actor has been involved with...but he was right on target with his statement...

Just Finished Reading Billy Summers by Stephen King

In my reading I tend to use my public library system and check out the books.  With new releases from popular authors, this can take a while, though, and I had to wait several weeks before Stephen King's latest novel, Billy Summers, was available because of the large backlog of holds on it.  I was able to obtain it as an audiobook and read it while at work.  Billy Summers, naturally, is the story's protagonist and would fit the classification of an "antihero", that is someone who compels the reader's sympathy and loyalty but who is also involved in illegal or antisocial activity...you know, someone like Bonnie and Clyde, the Godfather or numerous characters Clint Eastwood has portrayed.  In Billy's case it's that he is a professional hitman, albeit one who only kills people he knows are bad...those hiring him are aware of this precondition and take care to let him know the full depravity of his next target.  He is met and driven to a mobster figure he's known and worked with to get his next assignment: another hitman, arrested on unrelated charges and who is threatening to turn state's evidence on some very important people.  They in turn want this dude vanquished before he can spill the beans, and so here's Billy Summers to solve the problem.  Convinced that the hitman is bad, Billy accepts the assignment and the story progresses from there, with him living for several months among others in a lower-middle class neighborhood and getting to know them more than he had intended.  There is a specific moment when Billy, whose value in the "trade" derives from his sharpshooting expertise at sniping, has to be at a certain window trained on a specific spot below.  That's all well and fine, but Billy...who has pretended to be a lot dumber than he really is...can put the pieces together and realizes that whoever put out the hit on the hitman would most likely want him eliminated as well to cover up the trail.  So he develops an elaborate escape plan involving a secret identity...how it all works out is something that you, the potential reader of this fine story, will have to discover for yourself.  I will say that King splits his narrative into two main sections: the ongoing hit job Billy is tackling and his earlier life, progressing from childhood through his military experiences in Iraq...and particularly "La-La-Fallujah"...as a sniper.  In the novel's second half the reader discovers that this story is a part of Stephen King's fictional universe as his earlier novel The Shining is indirectly referenced through the Overlook Hotel's burnt remains and another eerie phenomenon...I like King's propensity for doing this kind of thing.  And the novel's ending had a peculiar little twist to it, making the reader first think that it is going in one direction until the story's real conclusion is revealed.  I liked Billy Summers a lot and recommend it...Stephen King is my favorite author and this book just reinforces that sentiment...  

Weekly Short Stories: 1978 Science Fiction, Part 3

Today I examine three more science fiction short stories as they appeared in the anthology Donald A. Wollheim Presents The 1979 Annual World's Best SF, presenting the editor's choice of his favorites from 1978.  I was 21-22 at the time, struggling with difficult college classes and suffering from an overwhelming feeling of social alienation.  Nonetheless, I feel it was a time of personal growth and maturity, preparing me for what was to come in my life.  But enough of me, here are my reactions to those stories...

IN ALIEN FLESH by Gregory Benford

On a largely oceanic planet orbiting Zeta Reticuli dwells a huge, whale-like creature called the Drongheda.  It emits enormous quantities of mathematical images and insights, and a three-man expedition is there is record them...but first they have to enter the creature through a small opening.  Reginri, the protagonist, is reluctant for the mission but has been shamed into it by the other two, who had gone on earlier ones.  This time he experiences first-hand the flood of vivid imagery that the Drongheda produces, and it overwhelms him...it's not all mathematical after all.  The story begins with Reginri recovering on a neighboring planet with his wife and recalling it all...the ending reveals something about both the Drongheda's transmissions and human nature...

SQ by Ursula K. Le Guin

In this brief story society has "evolved" to the point where everyone has to undergo a examination to determine their sanity quotient, hence the title.  Before too long, the world's population becomes divided between the insane and the rest...and since there are so many crazies, then the sane remaining population is enlisted for the vast staff needed to care for them.  This leads to fewer and fewer people left to actually run the economy and provide for the rest.  This is obviously a clear case of literary satire and I got the message pretty much after the first page or two...

THE PERSISTENCE OF VISION by John Varley

Set about ten years ahead of the story's writing, Varley presents a world that has undergone at least one catastrophic nuclear disaster (in the Kansas area) and which has a violently fluctuating economy...it's on the downside now, late in the 1980s.  The protagonist, laid off from his financial urban job, has decided to hitchhike and experience the many communes of the American southwest.  He finally arrives at a stone wall-ringed establishment that is populated by deaf and mute people...these are the ones who were born that way to parents afflicted by the measles outbreak in 1964.  The story goes on to describe the commune's history, the protagonist's experiences in trying to communicate with them and assimilate, and where seeing and hearing children stand in relation to their parents in that peculiar society, where taboos are necessarily dispensed with and touching on many levels is developed to a level far transcending "normal" human communication.  The ending was intriguing and reminded me a little of my all-time favorite science fiction short story: Lewis Padgett's Mimsy Were the Borogoves from 1942...

Next week I finish my look at short science fiction from 1978...

Game of the Week: America Says

 

AMERICA SAYS is a TV game show specifically created for the cable station Game Show Network (on Channel 73 for Gainesville Cox Cable subscribers).  It's been around since 2018 and is hosted by John Michael Higgins.  The premise is simple enough: two four-person teams...not necessarily family like the similar show Family Feud...vie against each other for points and bonus round dollars as they fill in the blanks to phrases posed at-large in surveys taken of Americans for their most common answers.  You can see from the above game, with the contestant in the lower left corner, that "home run", "umpire", and "strike" have already been correctly guessed for those blanks on the puzzle screen...the remaining words are hinted at by the lengths of their blanks.  This is not a deliberately racy show with all kinds of dubious sexual references as is sadly the case with Steve Harvey's Family Feud, which I used to watch in the 1970s when Richard Dawson hosted it but now studiously avoid...I like Harvey and thinks he's a talented comedian, but his show has gone in the wrong direction with its emphasis.  On the other hand, I have yet to figure out the somewhat confusing rules on America Says, especially when it comes to team elimination and bonus rounds.  And like just about every game show out there, they spend too much time trying to establish personal rapport with the often very uninteresting guests by asking questions prompted, no doubt, by the questionnaires they filled out beforehand...groan.  No, I can do without all that: what I like is simply competing against the contestants to see if I can't fill in all the blanks.  Another thing making America Says superior to Family Feud is that the puzzle survey is not of the studio audience, with potentially oddball responses, but rather is more likely to be representative of how people really think.  On the other hand, I do like that Family Feud bonus round more...just let me skip the rest of the show.  When I see America Says with all its surveys about often inane topics, it gives me pause as to why there isn't a news cable channel somewhere out there whose only function is to poll the population with pertinent questions about relevant issues affecting Americans today, without any built-in ideological spin...kind of like a Gallop or Harris Poll Channel.  Such a channel would demand a response from our often intransigent politicians when their votes and policies directly contradict the people's will.  But I get it: fat chance of that ever happening...instead we get partisan, biased news channels with their partisan, biased viewership participating in meaningless surveys...

Just Finished Reading A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs

A Princess of Mars was a serialized 1912 science fiction/fantasy pulp fiction novel by Tarzan creator Edgar Rice Burroughs, the first of his Mars series...this story's hero is John Carter, an ex-Confederate soldier at the close of the American Civil War who has gone to the Southwest to search for gold with his friend.  Wary of the warlike Apaches, who claim the same ground on which they prospect, one day they discover their object...and his friend leaves to set up the gold's delivery and payment, only to be killed by pursuing Apaches.  Upon this tragic discovery, Carter finds himself pursued as well and hides in a cave...the enemy find him, though, and the life-or-death battle ensues.  But just before that happens, he has stood outside the cave and observed the planet Mars, musing upon it.  Back in the cave, Carter is now dying...but he wakes up mysteriously transported to the Red Planet, which as it turns out is populated by intelligent humanoids divided into different bellicose races, mainly the vicious greens with multiple appendages and the reds, who seem more to represent the original civilization.  They are at war with each other, and John Carter first encounters the aggressive greens, who are impressed by his superhuman strength, speed and jumping ability in the thinner Martian atmosphere.  They intercept a crashing ship of their red enemies and capture their princess...naturally, Carter protects her and falls in love.  Then all sorts of intrigues and bloodshed ensue...

This novel was said to inspire Carl Sagan as a kid to explore the field of astronomy...since I'm now 65 after first reading it I can make no such claim, but when I was seven my father introduced me to the night sky with its constellations and general principles of celestial motion, which I gleaned from the handbooks he gave me.  I read A Princess of Mars on my friend and former colleague Becky's recommendation as it was a childhood favorite of hers.  What impressed me the most about it was how the author got around the difficulties of space travel and, instead, made the protagonist have to die on Earth in order to be transported to Mars.  The ending had a kind of C.S. Lewis Chronicles of Narnia feel to it...since Burroughs' work predates that of Lewis by decades, I wonder whether the latter got some of his ideas from the earlier writer. I understand that this story was made into a feature-length film a few years ago, but I'm a little hesitant to watch it since much of the book's charm derives from John Carter's first-person narration and his compelling introspection, which I fear may be a little bit too difficult to effectively transfer to the big screen...