Power...and Limits...of Personal Affirmation, According to Podcaster

On his Mindset Mentor podcast recently, personal development coach Rob Dial discusses the idea of affirmations, that is, talking to oneself in positive terms and expecting this to become a major factor in their successful undertakings.  He starts out by bringing up that many of us go through our days saying to ourselves that we "have to" do this and "have to" do that, when the alternative (and better) saying is we "get to"...this allows us to explore ways to learn, grow, and benefit from what we had originally conceived of as a negative obligation.  Also, like Yoda in Stars Wars, we don't "try"...we either do or don't, there is no trying.  Think of the energy behind your words, he adds, along with the notion that how we fill out the powerful statement "I am ___" can go a long away to determining our direction and destiny.  Finally, Rob Dial emphasizes that statements of affirmation, while encouraging and positive, should adhere to reality.  The statement needs to be true, be in the present tense ("I am ___ing") and have an empowering aspect to it.  So I, a distance runner, wouldn't say "I'm so fast that I won the Olympic marathon in 2000" but rather something like "I am a distance runner, I am running several miles a day, and my progress is making me a runner who can handle the longer distances with more ease and speed".  You can apply this to anything...I thought Dial's ideas were pretty good, but of late, with him and James Clear's Atomic Habits book, my head is starting to really get crowded with self-improvement maxims. I probably just need to stick with a few and "run" with them...

Just Finished Reading Never by Ken Follett

Last year Ken Follett published his latest novel, Never, which quickly rose to the top of the best-seller list.  Stephen King, whom I follow on Twitter, highly recommended it and stated that it reminded him of what's going on in the world today, especially regarding the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The characters...including the world leaders such as the American and Chinese presidents and others...are fictional but the countries and situations are painfully real, much of it taken straight from news of recent years.  The story's focus is triangular: (1) in Chad in northern Sub-Saharan Africa, the CIA has agents there to find the ringleader of a notorious international group of extremist Islamist terrorists, (2) a young top Chinese intelligence official in Beijing must maneuver between the hard-liners in his government and the wayward North Korean dictator to further his country's interests, and (3) the U.S. president, Pauline Green, must react in a measured but careful way to the escalating events falling like dominoes after a North Korean rebel military group seizes control of the country's eastern part, including its nuclear missile facilities.  The story is chilling: you can have rational people running different countries, folks who more than anything want to avoid nuclear war and the untold carnage and suffering which it would release onto the world.  Yet within each country, both democratic and autocratic, there are people and forces pressuring those leaders into conflict.  I know, at this time in early April of 2022, that no atomic bombs have been used in war since 1945.  Much of this I believe is due to the deterrence factor with the two main sides, the USSR/Russia and the United States, very much aware that either of them can destroy the other many times over.  But now with nuclear proliferation and regimes like North Korea and Pakistan in possession of nuclear warfare capability, the danger of one of them triggering a nuclear conflict has escalated.  And once something begins on a limited scale, can the escalation process be turned off...and who will take the first step in that direction without surrendering to their enemy?  A tough book to read with an even tougher ending...

Ran the Headwaters 5K This Morning in Gainesville

Gainesville has a relatively new municipal park, Headwaters, located on NW 45th Avenue between US 441 and Norton Elementary School...its name refers to the renowned Hogtown Creek that runs through the northwestern part of town.  Florida Track Club hosts an annual event there, the Headwaters 5K (3.1 miles), taking place in April.  I ran it last year, the first public race I entered since the Covid-19 epidemic broke out the previous year...and it was also the last one I ran before my thoracic surgeon, after ten years of annual testing, finally advised me to go ahead with open heart surgery involving both heart valve replacement and aortic aneurism repair.  That happened on 7/15/21, and today's race marks the sixth one I've run since recovery.  The conditions were perfect for running...well, I would have preferred a lower humidity...but the temperature was around 50 at 8 am.  There were plenty of folks there to brave the slightly hilly race through a very shady and pretty section of northern Gainesville...and the Florida Track Club people and volunteers were, as usual, the best with their friendliness and encouraging attitude.  We started on NW 45th Avenue near US 441 and went straight west, past Norton Elementary, to NW 24th Boulevard.  Then we turned north on it and went to NW 53rd Avenue, turning right again onto the cool, wide bike/pedestrian trail that runs all the way down to 39th Avenue...but we turned left at 45th and ran back to the park, where the finish line stood.  I deliberately worked from early in the race to establish a faster level of pace, and it worked!  My finishing time was 29:28, more than three minutes faster than that of last year's Headwaters run...and the first time in years I've broken 30 minutes in a 5K.  They were serving breakfast there following the race, but I wanted to get back home, wash up, and snooze a bit.  Click HERE for the race results.  I like the proximity of this race to my home and, already being an FTC member, it was free...I'd like to make it an annual tradition...

Quote of the Week...from Yogi Berra

Nobody goes there anymore.  It's too crowded.                       ---Yogi Berra

Hall of Fame catcher and slugger for the New York Yankees, the late Yogi Berra...who had a popular Hanna-Barbera cartoon figure named after him (not the other way around as I believed when I was a little kid)...had a Zen-like predisposition for making quotes that seemed self-contradictory: the above is a perfect example. Major League Baseball belatedly began its regular season yesterday after a prolonged management/labor contract dispute...thought I'd throw in something today "kind of" related to it.  Like some mathematical formulas I've encountered that at first look make no sense, Yogi's above quote actually is pretty profound...if you look at it more deeply.  I've concluded over the years that there is a large subgroup of the human race that is attracted, like swarming insects, to crowds...once a threshold is crossed they just keep on coming in droves.  That's why a place like Starbucks constantly has very long drive-through lines while other places like the Scooter's near my house go on and on without any line at all, even through their coffees and sandwiches are superior, in my opinion, with comparable prices.  There are local eating establishments that attract residents like flies even though their food and service are no better than with any other place.  I do not understand these people, and therefore...like Yogi...exclude them from my notion of "nobody", which he should have more accurately stated "nobody I know" or "nobody I think isn't a complete fool".  I've seen the long line phenomenon in stores as well...why is everyone in these long lines over here while, with a little walk over there exists a perfectly normal one that folks are avoiding?  Doesn't make sense, unless you conclude that there are "people" out there with a vastly differently perspective on things, including the idea that being immersed in a crowd justifies their existence...like a swarming insect, I suppose.  I guess the Woodstock experience, superchurches and other mass concerts are variations of this, as well as the thoroughly creepy Trump rallies that crop up from time to time here and there.  I don't know these people...

Just Finished Reading Atomic Habits by James Clear

Atomic Habits is a 2018 motivational self-help guide written by James Clear.  The use of the word "atomic" in the title reflects two points the author is trying to make here: habits that are very small and potentially very powerful.  Clear discusses how he came about his philosophy of habits when, one day during high school baseball practice, he was hit in the head by a bat, nearly losing his life after slipping into a coma and then gradually making a full, painstakingly gradual recovery.  He claims that people mistakenly pursue goals when they should be instituting and stressing systems, with forming the identity that they want being paramount in importance.  Also, by changing a multitude of small habits over time, revolutionary change is possible. There are four elements to habit formation: cue, craving, response and reward...they can apply to both desirable and undesirable habits.  The trick when trying to form good habits is to make the cue obvious, the craving attractive, the response easy and the result satisfying.  Conversely, when facing bad habits, the strategy is to make the cue invisible, the craving unattractive, the response difficult, and the result unsatisfying...the author gives examples to illustrate how to approach both good and bad habits this way.  And how does one start a new habit?  According to Clear, it's crucial just to get something going...if you're starting to run then put on your running shoes today...tomorrow you can continue the process, maybe jogging for a minute or two.  It's not so much how much you do at the beginning...of course eventually you'll be doing much more...but to get the notion of regularly responding to the positive cues and performing something to make the habit real.  Then once you're "in" it, it is much easier to extend the habit in the direction you are seeking.  Atomic Habits continues chapter by chapter with helpful suggestions about habits...it can get a little cumbersome, all the information here, but James Clear does make it more manageable by outlining the main points at the close of each chapter.  I liked this book, one reason being that it confirmed some of what I had already been doing in my life...for example, I already employ his notion of "habit-stacking" by combining a new habit with one I already have.  I think this book can be useful to anyone...Clear's main intention is to help you become the person you want to be...

Weekly Short Stories: 1983 Science Fiction, Part 5

Today I continue my reactions to stories appearing in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: First Annual Collection, edited by Gardner Dozois and featuring his picks from those first published in 1983.  That was the year that...at least in my mind...marked the music video explosion, although MTV had been in existence since 1981.  Ted Turner decided to run a competing weekend music video marathon show on his Superstation, and I was hooked on it.  This was a period of great experimentation in videos, and although they weren't always good, they usually were interesting...unlike much of the crap that's put out today (well, that's just my opinion).  But back to those stories...

HARDFOUGHT by Greg Bear

This novella starts its narration out from the viewpoint of a young human woman, Prufax, in the distant future when humanity is in a life-or-death war struggle against an ancient race, the Serexi.  The adversary is gas-based with a completely different chemistry, and the story jumps to their perspective as well.  The problem I have with stories like this is that much of their mystery is in the deliberately cryptic way the author unravels their circumstances...eventually we discover exactly who...or what...Prufax is and how humankind has reached this state but, in the meantime, we're struggling to understand what the author is talking about.  Still, Greg Bear is a "hard" science fiction writer, and you stand to learn some interesting facts reading any of his stories...

MANIFEST DESTINY by Joe Haldeman

I'm not exactly sure why this story has been placed within the genre of science fiction...it's more of a historical western with a little prophecy thrown in.  A bold young man is determined to make his fortune in Mexico, back in the 1840s when they were at war with the United States.  He receives a fortune teller's message that he cannot die in Mexico...that's fine for him since he plans to live there for the remainder of his anticipated very, very long future life.  I myself anticipated the story's intended surprise ending, being cognizant of American territorial gains in that era, especially that often-overlooked 1853 Gadsden Purchase...

FULL CHICKEN RICHNESS by Avram David

I vaguely remember reading another story like this one, involving the same species of bird (not the chicken).  At a locally-owned burger joint, presumably in the U.S.A., they serve a great chicken soup...the protagonist thinks he remembers somebody very similar to the owner/cook from his European travels and decides to check him out to see what he's up to.  A time travel story with a hook that, well, seems too familiar to me.  Also, it just might be that Stephen King got some one of his ideas from it that he used in his own time-travel epic novel 11/22/63...

MULTIPLES by Robert Silverberg

Back in the late 1970s and early 1980s, following the blockbuster TV movie Sybil starring Sally Field, multiple personality disorder became something of a chic trend in psychology, with books and claims coming out that different people had "different people" within themselves.  Now imagine a future in which it's all not only true, but that it's no longer considered a disorder but rather something that makes people's lives more interesting and conversely paints "singletons" as being unattractive and drab.  A young woman with no multiple personalities tries to convince a "multiple" guy she's interested in that she's one as well...it's a comedic spoof on something that was a big deal in popular culture back then...

Next week I'll continue looking at 1983 science fiction short stories... 

Congratulations to Gamecocks and Jayhawks for College Hoops Titles

Although at work for much of the championship tournament Final Four basketball action this past weekend, I was able to watch some of it...in the NCAA women's tournament South Carolina clearly dominated, suffocating Connecticut in the final game by thoroughly dominating the paint (with Player of the Year Aliyah Boston playing a major role) and getting one offensive rebound after another while crushing the Huskies on defense.  On the men's side yesterday, Kansas came from a 16-point first half deficit in which their opponent, North Carolina...at one point scoring 16 straight points...had built up an impressive halftime lead.  But the Tarheels came out in the second half shooting cold, and the Jayhawks lit up the floor with a succession of clutch three-pointers to first bring them back into the game and then take a small lead that they held at the very end.  Before the tournament I had picked North Carolina, Miami and Kansas as my favorites...they were undefeated against other opponents...but Miami succumbed to Kansas and, of course, so did North Carolina.  On the women's side I was rooting for Stanford, the defending champion, but they went cold as well against Connecticut in the semifinal round.  Now it's time to regroup and get ready for next year....and then start it all over again.  Before the women's final game on Sunday evening there was a short segment about Aliyah Boston, who is from St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands...Melissa and I stopped over there briefly during our cruise in February 2020 (just before all hell broke out with the pandemic) and we liked it a lot...especially the beach and winding mountain roads.  But you'd better watch out for the hordes of crazy, ravenous chickens running loose...

Motivational Coach Rob Dial Broadly Discusses Addiction on His Podcast

On one of his Mindset Mentor podcasts last week, life coach/motivational guru Rob Dial brought up the topic of addiction, explaining what he believes are its causes.  Dial takes a broad view of addiction, stating that most of us are addicted to something, not necessarily drugs (including alcohol and nicotine).  His examination takes us to our dual nervous system, split between the sympathetic that assumes dominance during high alert, fight-or-flight situations and the parasympathetic that plays the role of conserve and restore...the former involves tension with higher heart rate and the latter a more relaxed state.  When someone is addicted to something, they usually are trying to take a shortcut from being in the agitated, sympathetic state into the more agreeable parasympathetic...Dial refers to this process as "numbing".  He brings up that some who claim not to be dependent on alcohol still will take a drink or two at night to "take the edge off"...but what is the "edge" anyway and wouldn't it be better to find the cause and eliminate it up front?  Anything that one does to switch states...and this often involves running from ongoing problems instead of facing them...can be an addiction, and this includes excessive social media, television, binge eating, sex and even physical training workouts.  Rob Dial suggests that we take some time to just sit without distractions and do nothing, letting our own mind bring up the issues we have been covering up through other activities.  There's a book I just finished reading by James Clear titled Atomic Habits...it addresses addiction as well and suggests that the social and physical environment surrounding oneself can play a major role in its onset and perpetuation...as well as its elimination... 

About Will Smith's Incredible Hulk Moment at the Oscars

The Incredible Hulk was a popular TV series in the late seventies and early eighties.  Based on the Marvel comics character, Bill Bixby starred as mild-mannered Dr. David Bannister, a scientist who accidently exposes himself to such an excess of gamma ray radiation that, in times of extreme stress and anxiety, causes his body to transform into a raging monster, the Hulk (played by Lou Ferrigno).  Not exactly Jekyll and Hyde...Robert Louis Stevenson's character actually changed into a completely different personality...the Hulk retains Bannister's moral compass and compassion. It's just out of control, stuck in a fight-or-flight mode...much like that we experience in our own lives when we're under tense and difficult circumstances, became angry or fearful, and our sympathetic nervous system temporarily gains supremacy over our thoughts and behavior.  And although this period may only last for a few minutes, we're often left with the consequences of irrational and antisocial public behavior.  This is what I believe happened to Will Smith at the Academy Award ceremony the other night when he rushed the stage and slapped (and immediately thereafter cursed at) comedian Chris Rock for making one of his trademark insulting offhand jokes, this one aimed at Smith's wife Jada for her shaven head (she suffers from alopecia).  He was already center-stage and under the spotlight, a favorite to win Best Actor for his dramatic performance in the movie King Richard and most likely already was feeling a bit stressed out. Soon after the incident Smith was very contrite and apologetic for his impulsive action, but will continue to suffer its fallout.  Just who is Will Smith...the soft-spoken and congenial gentleman so many have come to appreciate or the creepy violent dude revealed in that unfortunate moment before the world?  Both, I imagine, just as each of us have this duality...I just think most of us, although probably unpleasant to be around in those moments of extreme anxiety and anger, don't resort to physically violent behavior.  Instead, dramatic and sometimes profane language, extreme passive-negative behavior, or a total shutdown from interaction can be common reactions to those experiencing personal Hulk transformations.  I do find the media reactions to it all interesting.  After realizing the other night that the Oscars were going to show because of the Red Carpet pre-ceremony show, with outfit after gawdy, tasteless outfit touted as high fashion, I made it a deliberate point to avoid the awards...finding out about the Smith/Rock altercation later.  The reactions were divided between those praising Smith for defending his wife's honor and those condemning his violence.  And then the media ghouls went to work, digging up items in both Smith's and Rock's pasts and citing things they had said before.  Different celebrities went to work giving their own feedback, and then the ghouls researched them, digging up even more negative news to promulgate over social and mass media.  What a media circus, and a macabre one at that!  

Are City-Wide Running Races Fading Into the Past?

In his autobiographical book Ultramarathon Man, distance runner Dean Karnazes relates how his first marathon run went.  He was in high school and there was a charity drive in which donors would sign up to pay...if my memory serves me correctly...a dollar for each quarter-mile track lap the participating student ran.  Most reasonable people saw themselves pitching in up to 5 or 10 bucks.  But Karnazes saw fit to run his first full 26.2 mile marathon that day, circling the track 105 times...and then presenting his flabbergasted fellow students with the bill!  It must have been an awfully repetitive run for him...yet that's pretty much how track and field events are conducted.  It certainly is vastly different from the marathon and half-marathon races the past few decades, which often run through the heart of cities and spotlight their own attractions for the racers and those accompanying them.  Typically, streets are marked off and policemen stand at crossings to halt traffic, letting the runners pass through without having to stop...this must cost a pretty penny for the organizers.  I think it also would tend to annoy a lot of folks who just want to go about their normal business without this kind of disruption and delay.  Over my running "career" since 2010...in which I've confined my races to northern and central Florida... I've completed 13 half-marathons and one marathon.  Of these, 6 half-marathons took place in the heart of Gainesville for the Five Points of Life event held in February, 2 races on the south side of Ocala, and 1 in the Tavares-Mount Dora area of Lake County...the others were deliberately conducted in predominantly rural settings.  Even the Ocala races took place mostly on country roads, although the traffic was high enough there to require a bit of police presence and management.  A few years ago the Ocala Marathon/Half-Marathon ceased to be, and in 2020 Gainesville's Five Points organizers switched the race site away from central Gainesville to southwest of town.  After Covid pre-empted the 2021 races, they resumed...back to the heart of town with a modified course that still had runners going through downtown Gainesville, the University of Florida campus (including the football stadium) and the famous hills of NW 16th Avenue.  But the marathon event was eliminated, leaving the half-marathon as the only long-distance event here in February.  Gainesville has another annual half-marathon they hold annually, the Tom Walker Memorial, which uses the rails-to-trails Hawthorne Trail in a there-and-back race emanating from Boulware Springs Park in the southeastern part of town...no police or city infrastructure needed here.  And that's the trend I see coming: races far from streets and set in rural areas and parks.  Furthermore, I see another trend in which half-marathons, marathons, and even ultra-races (longer than 26.2 miles) are being conducted in parks where runners go through multiple loops to achieve the distance they're seeking.  Next Sunday, the 10th, there will be such a race on the Hawthorne end of the Hawthorne Trail...half-marathoners will do a 6-plus mile there-and back on the trail twice, while those running the marathon will do it four times.  But then again, the overhead cost for staging this race is bound to be much, much lower than had they done it through city streets.  On June 18, Ocala has their own similar race planned at their southeastern Baseline Greenway Park...the course loop is a little longer than a mile and half-marathon runners will do it 12 times (no marathon race planned here).  Since 2019 (with a 14-month gap because of Covid), Gainesville has had its own weekly race, the Depot Parkrun 5K, with takes place entirely on park grounds and involves 4 laps to achieve the distance...but it's free and not very long.  The Hawthorne and Ocala races I just mentioned cost a bit of money...the question is whether runners will decide to forgo the adventure of the course in favor of getting a posted result.  As for me, I'm undecided.  I look on the Internet running calendars and still see races occurring in other cities across the country...maybe this drawing back from urban events is only a local phenomenon, who knows...

Quote of the Week...from Abraham Maslow

Education can become a self-fulfilling activity, liberating in and of itself.      ---Abraham Maslow

Abraham Maslow...today is his birthday (he'd be 124 if still alive) was a twentieth-century American psychologist who created the "Pyramid of Needs", the base of which represents people's physical needs and the very top comprising self-actualization.  He also emphasized that self-actualizing people tend to have more of the "peak experiences" in life that many long for, as well as develop an outlook leading to the longer-lasting "plateau experiences" of inner well-being.  I found his above quote about learning "in and of itself" to be an affirmation of how I also have regarded it over the years...and frees education from the tyranny of ego-based, hierarchical judgment that formalized school training tends to foist upon hapless students compelled to endure it, first through compulsory education in the K-12 years and then on to college for career preparation.  I have also tended to be something of a renegade with education, and this did not carry over well into the much more rigid structure imposed by teachers and curricula in school settings...but after leaving school I've experienced great joy at learning different things, without someone standing above poised to beat me down should I stumble in my exploration or diverge from a topic they were promoting.  When I was young, information was available but difficult to come by...nowadays the Internet has opened the door wide to knowledge, and with platforms like YouTube it is possible to learn to do just about anything and even attend virtual classrooms.  Sadly, there are lots of folks who only see the value of learning anything in how they can make money from it...I've been confronted in the past when such a person would spy me studying something that, to them, had no discernible "value".  The problem with their perspective is that they tend to see their own self-worth in terms of increasing wealth and social prestige...should they one day find themselves unable to continue that way, I'm afraid the whole house of cards that sustains their ego-based self-image could collapse.  But let's just skip over some of the psychological jargon I've brought up and cut to the chase: learning, simply put, is fun! 

My March 2022 Running and Walking Report

I'm not sure whether my increased running totals for this past month represent an aberration or part of a continuing process...I suspect the former...but I did have some higher figures: 290 total miles, I ran on all the days of the month, and 18 miles was my longest single run.  I ran in two races: the Micanopy 10 Mile hosted by the Florida Track Club on March 19th and a Depot Parkrun 5K the following Saturday.  I doubt that I'll be running as much as the weather warms further into the spring/summer seasons...I'm hoping to "step" up the walking, as well as begin some swimming workouts, to balance out the picture a bit...

On the April 9-10 weekend there are two upcoming local races.  On Saturday the 9th the Florida Track Club is holding another event, this one the Headwaters 5K that takes place near my home in northern Gainesville. I ran it last year and it's free with my FTC membership.  And then there is the "Run Your Buns Off" event the next morning, starting and finishing from the outlying town of Hawthorne and using a six-mile-plus strip of the Hawthorne Trail to simultaneously stage a number of races, ranging from 5K to a marathon. They accomplish these distances by having entrants undergo multiple there-and-back cycles...the half-marathon involves two and the marathon four, so you're basically covering the same territory over and over again.  The half costs $65 and the marathon a whopping $90.  I don't know...the prospect of spending this amount of money to run a half-marathon with such an unvarying, repetitive course just doesn't appeal to me, especially with the prospect of that free race the previous day (closer to home and with a more interesting course).  After that weekend the only local races I see in "my" Alachua County area are the Depot Parkruns that take place each Saturday morning...my intention is to try them out once or twice a month throughout the rest of the spring and summer.  I might try out some speed-walking in some of those races...I did walk for a total of 125 miles in March... 

Weekly Short Stories: 1983 Science Fiction, Part 4

Today, while keeping my emphasis on 1983, I am switching to the first book in a different science fiction short story anthology series: The Year's Best Science Fiction, First Annual Collection, edited by Gardner Dozois and featuring stories that for the most part do not overlap the concurrent "year's best" series edited by Donald A. Wollheim that I have been examining.  My intention is to review stories from both books until Wollheim's anthology series concludes after 1989.  Here are my reactions to the first five tales appearing in Dozois' book...

CICADA QUEEN by Bruce Sterling

I recently discussed a 1982 short story by Bruce Sterling titled Swarm...this one belongs to the author's same fictional universe in which the solar system is divided between two competing human factions: the Mechanists who tend to be cyborgs and populate the Asteroid Belt and the Reshaped, who alter their makeups through biology and dwell around Saturn's rings.  They trade with an alien reptilian race called the Investors. In this tale an Investor queen has defected and established her own independent zone between the Mechanists and Reshaped...one of the latter in turn defects with his own agenda, that of terraforming Mars for human habitation.  Lots of political maneuvering here...

BEYOND THE DEAD REEF by James Tiptree, Jr.

At a Mexican resort by an underwater reef, a man hears another's tale of adventure and near-death, beyond a dead zone in the water. This is one of those stories citing humanity's abuse of the environment...in this case the pollution and despoiling of the ocean floor...and a possible if rather fanciful defensive response from nature...

SLOW BIRDS by Ian Watson

The best story of today's lot, on an island in Earth's future, generation after generation of the population...spread out among country towns...there is a racing sport involving skates and small sails, played on the round glass surfaces generated by explosions created by "Slow Birds", which are slow-moving missiles that randomly crop up from time to time, occasionally exploding and destroying whole areas, including cities.  One of the sport's athletes crosses his opponent after a race and the chain of revenge threatens his family, leading ultimately leading to the truth about the Slow Birds. I'd love to see this story adapted to the big screen... 

VULCAN'S FORGE by Poul Anderson

This is one of those stories about a computer taking on personality characteristics of humans, to the point where it is treated as sentient, intelligent life with feelings.  The setting is Mercury as a project is underway to study an asteroid, Vulcan, that is so close to the Sun that its metal surface is molten...an unmanned ship has been sent there to gather data, and it contains one of those computers whose memory history deeply bond it with its owner...  

MAN-MOUNTAIN GENTIAN by Howard Waldrop

This is a peculiar take-off on the Japanese sport of Sumu wrestling, in this tale popularized into the 21st century with a special spin in which Zen and paranormal elements enter the ring between the two contestants.  And the wrestlers have funny names, like in our popular phony pro wrestling: Man-Mountain Gentian, Killer Kudzu, Ground Sloth Ikimoto, Typhoon Takanaka, to name a few.  My one personal point of reference with Sumo wrestling is the scene early in the 1967 James Bond movie You Only Live Twice...had I not seen it I probably would be lost in this story.  Still, I didn't quite get its ending...

Next week I'll continue looking at 1983 short science fiction from the Gardner Dozois anthology ...

Women and Men's NCAA Final Four Teams Set for This Weekend

I have been pleasantly surprised recently at the general competitiveness in the women's NCAA tournament, at least in the Elite Eight stage.  Although South Carolina thoroughly trounced upstart Creighton by 30 points in their game, the other contests were pretty close and exciting, Stanford, Connecticut and Louisville coming out victorious and advancing.  I'm looking forward to watching the championship game on Sunday, but will miss the semifinal round this Friday on account that I'll be at work.  I'll be rooting for Stanford against Connecticut and South Carolina against Louisville.  On the men's side, the Final Four action starts on Saturday with an ACC showdown between North Carolina and Duke, and then Kansas vs. Villanova.  I'm with the Tarheels and Jayhawks...I really like that new North Carolina coach.  If you plan on watching any of the Final Four games, the women's games are shown on ESPN and the men's on CBS.  I tried listening to the play-by-play on radio of yesterday's women's Louisville-Michigan game and just couldn't visualize what they were describing...yet I remember back in 1968-69 as a twelve-year old kid experiencing the entire Miami Floridians ABA season via radio...never did actually see a game: go figure...

Podcaster Rob Dial Muses on Self-Belief and Action

On one of Rob Dial's Mindset Mentor podcasts last week, the motivational coach brought up an interesting topic: why do so many people nowadays think that they must possess supreme confidence and belief in themselves before they can even begin a self-improvement project?  Dial maintains that they have it all backwards...nothing inherently wrong with positive self-talk and affirmations, but first we need to act, throw ourselves into the fray, so to speak.  Then, as the results of our actions become manifest, we can act on them while at the same time gradually build up that sense of self-confidence and belief that we had erroneously thought to be a prerequisite to getting started.  It's a variation of Dial's maxim "Ready fire, aim", juxtaposing the last two terms of this common exhortation to emphasis the need for action up front, followed by adjustment.  It's also an indictment of the overthinking folks tend to engage in before they undertake meaningful endeavors, especially the ones in which ego and potential social humiliation could be involved.  One tool I use is the humorous disclaimer "Don't mind me, I'm just a tourist!"...even in my hometown...whenever I screw up: a sense of humor about oneself is certainly helpful.  And as we engage ourselves in the activities that are important to us, stumbling is often on the menu: get used to it and don't fear it to the point where it immobilizes you.  But as our host also often says, we don't fail when we mess up while trying...on the contrary that's inevitable for growth. Failure is only the result of either never starting or giving up...

Just Finished Rereading The Waste Lands by Stephen King

The Waste Lands, from 1991,  is the third volume of Stephen King's seven-volume The Dark Tower fantasy series.  The series, ostensibly based on a narrative poem by Robert Browning, features Roland Deschain, the Gunslinger, whose mission and quest lead him...with the aid of his ka-tet of fellow travelers...to that fabled dark tower through which all of reality is spun and governed.  Before I go on, let me warn you that this article is going to contain some plot spoilers.  Something is amiss in the Tower and Roland is determined to follow his ka, or "destiny" as four special characters...Eddie, Susannah, Jake, and Jake's little animal friend Oy (a "billy-bumbler") make up that group.  The first part of The Waste Lands, which I initially read in 2009, concerns the effort to bring in Jake from his old world, an alternative universe that is, in essence, our own...Roland's world (and most of the story's setting) is from a different reality.  That being accomplished, after much struggle naturally, the group goes to the run-down, post-apocalyptic metropolis of Lud, where Jake claims an insane train named Blain is there to take them to a portal that can lead to the Tower...no, I don't get it, either. There's a really bad, bad man in Lud named the Tick-Tock Man that they have to get past, and a nefarious character named Richard Fannin is later introduced.  The biggest impact the book made on me was its depiction of Lud and what happens to a society and its culture when the world has "moved on": the population loses its earlier connection with its legacy of technology and, worse, forgets the crucial social institutions that held it all together as a civilized, cultured and rationally-based society.  Now the people are governed by fear, violence and greed, quick to subscribe to the latest conspiracy theory around and to follow charismatic and ruthless strongmen...starting to sound familiar?  I'd recommend anyone read the second part of this book about Lud to see the direction we're going as a society and pause to reflect on how to turn it all back around.  Of course, a series like this builds open itself and you'd probably be lost if you didn't read the preceding material first, not knowing what had transpired in the narrative up to that point.  The next book in the series, titled Wizard and Glass and which was my favorite one the first time I read through The Dark Tower, would come out in 1997.  For now, though, I will take a short break from rereading this interesting if not rather confusing series to read Ken Follett's latest novel Never, which Stephen King wholeheartedly recommended recently on his Twitter feed...

Ran in Gainesville's Weekly Depot Park 5K This Morning

Gainesville has a cool, free weekly 5K race on Saturday mornings at Depot Park on 874 SE 4th Street...the Parkrun concept is spreading through the USA and other countries, now with some 48 locations here and many more abroad.  You sign up for it online and print out the barcodes they provide you...these will be scanned at the end of each event so that your times can be recorded and posted.  I signed up at the start of 2019...so far, with today's run, I have participated in seven races, with a fourteen-month period of no races held between March 2020 and May 2021 during the Covid pandemic.  My finishing times have never been particularly fast, even by my own past standards.  But I enjoy the positive vibes generated by the volunteers and other runners and the park is beautiful...I especially enjoy listening to the various birds singing around me as I run by the many trees there.  This past Wednesday and Thursday we received a lot of rain in northern Florida, but come race time today at 7:30 the sky was clear and the temperature a pleasant 49 with 90% humidity.  It was announced just before the race that several folks were running the Trail of Payne 10K the same morning in Paynes Prairie State Park a few miles down the road...I passed on it, unwilling to endure the rain-soaked ground and mud of that trail race.  My goal with today's 5K was simple: find a faster pace that I could feel comfortable running for a sustained distance.  I think I accomplished that, finishing in 30:45 with a pace slower than I was running, say, ten years ago but one more suitable to my advancing age.  I mentioned a few weeks back that I'd like to occasionally try speed-walking the Depot Parkrun. There's an incredible 79-year old who does this for longer races and I'm very impressed by his speed...ultimately I see my own future in distance/speed walking as well.  Click HERE for today's results...

Quote of the Week...from Stephen King

The big boy's face was one that Jake had seen before.  It was the face of a kid who would think it the height of hilarity to douse a cat's tail with lighter fluid or feed a bread ball with a fishhook planted in the middle to a hungry dog. The sort of kid who sat in the back of the room and snapped bra straps...and then said, "Who, me?" with a big, dumb look of surprise on his face once someone finally complained.  There weren't many kids like him at Piper but there were a few.  Jake supposed there were a few in every school.  They dressed better at Piper but the face was the same.          --Stephen King, from The Waste Lands

I'm currently rereading Stephen King's fantasy series The Dark Tower, and just came across the above lines in the third book The Waste Lands.  When it got to "Jake supposed there were a few in every school" I thought, yes, that's true...only there were more than a few from the school I attended in south Florida.  And my own bus stop seemed to hold an extremely high concentration of them, commonly referred to as "bullies".  When I was growing up through the 7th through 12th grades there was a nastiness of behavior among many of my peers that I have not seen remotely matched ever since I left this school.  In King's story, he was referring to one individual, namely pivotal character Eddie Dean's bullying and disturbed big brother Harry.  On the screen bullies are also often depicted as loners feared and scorned by the majority of "normal" kids around them.  But where I came from it was the bullies who were the stars of the show, and not only did other kids rush to adore and suck up to them...even collaborating in their persecution of whichever targeted victim was the focus of attention...but the teachers themselves either turned a blind eye to this behavior or held the aggressors in high regard.  One of the traits that bullies have is that, when confronted, they often claim that they were just "kidding around" and "can't you take a joke".  And there has been a kind of ethos perpetuated among both kids and adults that in bully/victim confrontations, it's always the responsibility of the victim to stand up for his or her self alone...as if this is a necessary rite of growing up (see the Andy Griffith episode about Opie's bully).  Stephen King has written a lot about bullies, and it's one of the many things I like about him...they stand out in the stories It and the The Body.  King also brought up an important detail about standing up to them: sometimes they're armed, and in today's world that is becoming more and more of a likelihood...try "standing up" to that.  I've seen celebrities long grown-up fondly look back on their childhood years and claim that they were bullies, laughing it all off as good-natured fun...Bill O'Reilly comes to mind in this regard.  The question I have is whether bullies in childhood, even after many years of being adults, are constitutionally capable of recognizing the hurt to others from their past behavior and have truly transformed themselves into more compassionate, empathetic human beings...from what I've seen so far with some of my old classmates I've yet to see this happen...

The Awkwardness of Talking About Mathematics

Many decades ago, back in late 1973, I was a teenager working at a Miami Shores firm as a records clerk.  Hank, one of the auditors there, one day randomly asked me if I knew about trigonometry and could explain to him the meaning of sine and cosine.  Having studied the basics of it all a year earlier, I patiently presented the concepts as I had learned them: starting with a circle of radius 1 and center (0,0) and then explaining cosines and sines as the x and y points on that circle where the line intersecting said circle goes through the origin and creates an angle with the x-axis (of which cosines and sines are functions).  But I didn't speak any of this by itself...I got pen and paper and illustrated it.  Ol' Hank then got very angry and said he only wanted to know about solving triangles using trigonometry (which I was on the way to covering) ...and I walked away, not in the least bit willing to accommodate that anger: screw him.  Hank was a contentious little so-and-so who would take history classes at the local community college just to argue with the instructor...a real ditto-head long before Rush Limbaugh would coin it and turn it into a dubious badge of honor.  I mention all this not because I carry any grudge or offense against this forgettable character, but because it happens to be the last time anyone brought up anything about mathematics to me away from school that went beyond simple arithmetical problems.  And since I did not become a mathematics teacher, engineer or scientist, I have never professionally used anything I have ever learned in this field beyond early elementary school, although in college I studied calculus, differential equations, probability and statistics, and linear algebra. Yet within the academic corridors mathematics reigns supreme, although it's not exactly a conversational icebreaker.  In fact, I find bringing up mathematics in conversation with anyone extremely awkward and random...after all, mathematics is the antithesis of ego: it exists on its own terms and cares not whether folks like it, understand it, or even find it interesting.  But I think I'm going to experiment around a bit and see whether or not I can get people to open up about how they feel about mathematics, and even delve lightly into its contents if that's possible.  My initial results seem to indicate that people are a lot more interested in talking about how math made them feel and affected their lives than discussing it on its own terms...

Weekly Short Stories: 1983 Science Fiction, Part 3

Today I finish examining 1983 science fiction short stories as they appeared in Donald A. Wollheim's anthology The 1984 Annual World's Best SF, spotlighting what the editor deemed as the choice tales from the previous year.  Yet next week 1983 will continue as I switch to a new sci-fi anthology series, that one edited by Gardner Dozois.  But for now, let's look at the last three in Wollheim's book...

AS TIME GOES BY by Tanith Lee

This is a story of time travel paradoxes and second chances, its entire premise unique and bizarre.  You see, in this tale every star system in the cosmos exists in its own peculiar, different time frame...for travelers to interact between systems they must first go to way stations in which time does not exist.  It is at one of these stations that the captain of a ghost ship, supposedly destroyed in space but continually sighted, enters the bar and is confronted by a young woman...the story goes on from there.  The problem with stories like this is that as a reader I guess I'm supposed to be impressed by the paradox involved while at the same time meekly accepting the impossible "rules" the author has laid out concerning time and space.

THE HARVEST OF WOLVES by Mary Gentle

In a nightmare totalitarian future world in which people are only allowed to continue living if the State finds them useful, an elderly woman living in poverty must carefully maneuver around a young man...who she knows is an informant for the State...in order to preserve what little is left of her independence and life.  The moral of this story that has a twisted ending: we all do what we must to survive.

HOMEFARING by Robert Silverberg

In this novella, a man's consciousness is sent into the body of another in the future as part of a scientific experiment, but instead of landing within a human being just decades ahead as planned, he finds himself sharing consciousness with a highly intelligent, evolved lobster in the distant future.  Silverberg presents an intriguing look, not only of the possibilities for eventual intelligent life in the sea, but also a way that life forms could communicate through the medium of water by means of chemicals.  The story is also interesting because, in the second book of Stephen King's Dark Tower series...which I just finished rereading...the protagonist Roland walks through mysterious doors that lead to similarly shared consciousnesses with select individuals from different times.

Next week I continue my look at the year 1983 in short science fiction as I begin the "new" anthology series...

About This Year's NCAA March Madness Basketball

One of the problems with championship playoffs in various sports is that, unless you walk away with the title, your team's final game is bound to be a loss that will get under your skin for the entire off-season.  In each of the men and women's "March Madness" NCAA basketball championship tournaments for 2022, after so many teams struggled for so much in the latter part of the regular season just to "make" the tournament, the initial fields of 68 have been brutally whittled down to 16 in the span of five days...this weekend it will go down to 4.  I remember in 2014 when "my" Florida Gators, then under head coach Billy Donovan, made that Final Four and had visions of yet another championship.  But Connecticut, the eventual tournament winner that year, got hot and eliminated UF in the semifinal...I hardly ever hear of that wonderful season spoken in happy terms...why?  Because the Gators didn't win it all!  I for one did think of it as a glorious season...folks just have to get a better sense of perspective about what winning means...

On the women's side Florida bowed out early, 69-52 to the University of Central Florida.  But they had a great turnaround season with their new coach Kelly Rae Finley...I'm happy for them.  The men's team didn't make the NCAA championship tourney but were invited to the National Invitation Tournament, losing to Xavier in the second round...good for them, too.  Their coach, Mike White, left the team after their conference tournament to work for Georgia...Florida just hired San Francisco Dons coach Todd Golden to replace him after he led them to their first NCAA tournament appearance since 1998.  The Gators men's team, I strongly believe, has had issues for years about poor shooting...2022 was no exception.  Maybe the new coach can emphasize this need in his upcoming recruiting.  As for the remaining teams in the tournament, for the men my favorites North Carolina, Miami and Kansas are still in there...with the women the TV coverage is not only poorer, but there is much less parity between the elite teams and the rest of the field that has made the men's side more interesting to watch: sadly, it's always seemed to be that way. Well, come Thursday we will see the games resume with the Regional semifinals...

Life Coach Podcaster Suggests Journaling

Last week on his Mindset Mentor podcast...which I listen to regularly...Rob Dial urged listeners to engage in the constructive activity of personal journaling.  I've done this sporadically in the past, but in an unstructured way.  Dial suggests that many of us don't do it right, anyway.  He says that for journaling to be an effective device for improving our own lives, we might follow his advice of asking ourselves questions, particularly about how we feel about aspects of our lives, that we can reflect upon and write down...and then to go more deeply in turn by questioning those answers.  His rationale for journaling is that what we mentally ponder is often difficult to follow up on and explore in depth unless we put it on paper to look at.  Of course, one problem many have is that when they are reflecting upon highly personal topics, a frank self-discussion of what they want and where they are going may not be things they would wish to fall into the hands of others.  To this concern Rob Dial replies that if that's what is keeping anyone from journaling then all they have to do is just rip up and throw away whatever they just wrote...after all, it's the process of journal writing in itself that is the catalyst for personal enlightenment, focusing our thoughts on the things that matter.  Although I've been generally faithful in writing this blog of mine, it is (deliberately) far removed from what Dial is talking about regarding personal journaling.  I plan to try out his ideas and see where they lead, in a separate format of course...   

Just Finished Rereading The Drawing of the Three by Stephen King

The Drawing of the Three, the second novel in Stephen King's fantasy/science fiction series The Dark Tower, came out in 1987...the series is loosely based on Robert Browning's 1852 narrative poem Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came.  I probably need to interject here that since this is the second volume of a series, then my following discussion of it will necessarily involve giving away some of what happens in the first book...in other words, spoiler alert! The protagonist, a nobleman-turned-gunslinger named Roland Deschain, is from an alternate universe, having grown into maturity on a world that has "moved on" and is in a state of decline and stagnation...although from time to time there is evidence of a previous, technologically advanced society.  Roland is seeking the Dark Tower, an edifice that holds all of reality together...but it has an unwelcome occupant, the Crimson King, whose nefarious ends threaten that reality.  Roland's chief adversary on his quest has been the sorcerer Walter or "The Man in Black", who at the close of the previous book The Gunslinger revealed to him that he will be drawing three people into his life.  In this second book, Roland awakes on the western beach and is attacked by a huge predatory crustacean he calls "lobstrosity"...this sets into motion a life-or-death struggle for him as he also tries to find a remedy for the infection the monster's bites have inflicted on him.  To this end he encounters a door standing by itself on the beach...by entering it he also enters into the mind of Eddie Dean, a heroin addict from New York in the 1980s.  As the story develops, so does the adventure with another figure, Odetta Susanna Holmes, representing the second character to be drawn, from a second door down the shore.  Like Eddie, she is also to be found in New York City...but unlike him her time is in the early 1960s...and she has a dual personality in Detta Walker.  Eddie and Odetta/Detta generate enough drama for Roland to have to deal with while trying to both find medicine for himself as well as keep his body on the door's other side from being eaten by the lobstrosities.  But there is yet a third door, and Walter's prophecy only states to Roland that the third to be drawn is "Death, but not for you".  And thus approaches the book's climactic scene...

The Drawing of the Three enhances the depth of the Dark Tower series by introducing these two pretty complicated characters as they interact with Roland and one another.  On the other hand, although the idea of doors as portals into other realities seemed really cool to me the way Stephen King presented them, I still found the whole idea of Roland's quest and the doors kind of preposterous.  But, after all, it's just a story and I thoroughly dug this book...as well as the series as a whole: what a ride!  Now, on to Book Three, titled The Waste Lands...

Ran the Florida Track Club's Micanopy 10-Mile Race Today

 

This morning I got up at the ungodly time of 5:45 to get myself ready for a ten-mile race I had already signed up for.  The Micanopy event, which begins at 8:00, is a combination five and ten-mile race, starting in front of the cemetery on Smith Street, going down Whiting Road south of town and then turning into hilly dirt roads before heading back, finishing in front of the ballpark at 3rd and 6th.  The extra five miles for my chosen ten-mile run consisted of a loop of slopes and hills while the running surface was uneven, slick, rocky and full of treacherous little depressions.  I listened to my MP3 player the whole way, and once the race had gone on a few minutes we were all pretty much spread out on the course and distanced from one another...the way I like it.  The temperature during the race varied from 63 to 67 degrees and the humidity an unpleasant, muggy 83-87%.  The Florida Track Club holds these kinds of races year-round and maintains a positive, low-key spirit that is infectious.  I had set as a goal beating the time of an hour fifty minutes...when I crossed the finish line my time was 1:48:24. I've noticed a peculiar thing about this race and February's half-marathon: my pace seems to strangely speed up a bit when I'm tackling the hills, even though I often walk stretches of the steepest slopes.  My recovery from the race seems to be going well...Melissa and Rebecca accompanied me out there and enjoyed breakfast and then walked around the town while I ran.  Looking back on it, I, too, enjoyed the experience...maybe this can be the start of a new annual tradition...

Here's a link to the race results...

Quote of the Week...from Rick Pitino

Set higher standards for your own performance than anyone around you, and it won't matter whether you have a tough boss or an easy one.  It won't matter whether the competition is pushing you hard, because you'll be competing with yourself.                                   ---Rick Pitino

Rick Pitino is the current head basketball coach of Iona College, whom my Florida Gators just played (and somehow defeated) in the opening round of this year's National Invitation Tournament.  He's coached several teams over the decades, most notably Kentucky and Louisville, consistently taking them deep into the NCAA championship "March Madness" tournament and winning a couple of titles.  He mentored his assistant coach Billy Donovan, who would in turn coach Florida for many years, earning them consecutive national titles in 2005 and 2006.  But Pitino also fell from grace in scandal as in 2017, as part of a sweeping NCAA investigation covering many schools, as his program was found tainted by illicit escort services and bribery for players...he was first suspended and then fired, later suing Louisville on account that they did not provide him due process...the two parties ultimately settled.  I'm sad about all that, but also realize that people do fall from time to time in their lives from their own flaws, and the more famous they are the harder and louder they hit the ground.  That's too bad for Pitino as he absolutely did not need to cut any corners to generate competitive, winning teams: he was and still is a great, motivating coach...as his above quote indicates.  It's been my experience over the years that keeping high working standards for myself and consistently adhering to them, while possibly (and irrationally) perceived as a threat of sorts by insecure bosses and colleagues, over time works to liberate myself from others' control, whether it be from micromanagement or peer pressure manipulation.  It helps that I've seen as role models over the course of my life other people who have exhibited this independent consciousness to their assignments and always noticed how they tend to deflect controversy and intrigues away from themselves.  I'm not perfect in this regard, but along with another quote, from Max Ehrmann's Desiderata, I think I'm making a little progress: "Avoid loud and aggressive persons: they are vexatious to the spirit.  If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain and bitter for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself."  I wish Rick Pitino the best for the rest of his career and life...it was great seeing him coach his team against the Gators Wednesday evening...

Constellation of the Month: Canis Minor (the Lesser Dog)

 

Canis Minor is a small February/March evening constellation, just north of the faint constellation Monoceros (and further north of Canis Major (last month's featured constellation).  It lies just south of the Zodiac, at the junction of Gemini and Cancer.  Although small...only two stars are brighter than 4th magnitude...it is still more prominent than many other constellations, including the aforementioned Cancer and Monoceros.  It features Procyon, the seventh-brightest star in the night sky and one of the nearest, only 11.4 light-years distant.  The other readily visible star is Gomeisa at third-magnitude brightness but much more distant, around 160 light-years.  The easiest way to see Canis Minor from latitudes north of the Equator is to either go straight up from Sirius, the brightest star of the night sky, or fix on Orion and go due East (left) from the star Betelgeuse in the north part of that constellation.  In the evening sky, when spring rolls around the stars above are much dimmer...a look toward the west will reveal all those bright stars and constellations of the winter, now following the sun to the setting horizon.   But I always have a soft place in my heart for the springtime, for it was during this season back in 1964 when my father introduced me, at age seven, to the constellations, pointing them out to me in the sky...what a great memory!  Next month I'll pick another constellation to discuss...

Weekly Short Stories: 1983 Science Fiction, Part 2

Today I continue looking through 1983 science fiction short stories as they appeared in Donald A. Wollheim's anthology The 1984 Annual World's Best SF, featuring his picks of the choice works from the preceding year.  In 1984 another sci-fi anthology series began, this one edited by Gardner Dozois and it would last through 2018.  Like with Wollheim, his books also spotlight stories published the year before.  I intend to include it as well in my reviews...there's not much overlap between Wollheim and Dozois, so my weekly advance through the years is necessarily going to slow down as I go through more material.  Here are my reactions to the next three tales in Wollheim's book...

IN THE FACE OF MY ENEMY by Joseph H. Delaney

Kasioma, or Casey as others commonly call him, is an American Indian man who works on a crew for a space development company.  He has a secret, though...at a distant time in his past...hundreds of years before...an alien culture rescued him from a violent death and not only resuscitated him to life but modified his body so that he is virtually immortal.  On the planet Campbell they've discovered an alien structure and want to keep the authorities ignorant and distant...Kimberly Ryan (the narrator) has been sent to investigate but her flight is sabotaged and crashed. She and her bodyguard, who just happens to be Casey...survive and solve the mystery.  The story's plot was a little too convoluted for my tastes...

THE NANNY by Thomas Wylde

Humanity has foolishly blown itself up in war and its last dying hope is a ship dispatched from Earth orbit to Alpha Centauri, carrying wo astronauts and many eggs that carry the future of the human race.  An explosion midtrip awakes one of the crew, who discovers the other is dead and that the eggs must be unfrozen and incubated.  What follows is a race against time and a lesson in the positive, sacrificial virtues that people can demonstrate...often from those one would never suspect.  The ending was unexpected and encouraging.  I was also impressed with the hard science used to drive the plot...

THE LEAVES OF OCTOBER by Don Sakers

Unlike on Earth, tree life in the cosmos, the Hlut, is not only sentient but also telepathic, and the story's narrator is one such life form, describing its odyssey of assignment to Earth to assess for the "others" the intentions and possible threats of humans as they explore space and ultimately establish a military-based empire.  This story stood out by depicting things from a plant's viewpoint...pretty intriguing...

Next week I conclude my look at the 1983 stories from Wollheim's book before I start with those from Dozois...

Just Finished Rereading The Gunslinger by Stephen King

Having gone through a number of revisions over the course of years, The Gunslinger is the first of seven books in Stephen King's fantasy/science fiction Dark Tower series.  Here's an excerpt of my blog article about the series from January, 2009:

But let’s go over now to Stephen King’s history of writing a series. He conceived of the Dark Tower series during the late 1960s, beginning writing on the first installment, The Gunslinger, in 1968. The finished first volume was published in 1982. He built up a loyal readership with this series although the next three books were relatively spaced apart in publication: 1987, 1991, and 1997. Then, following the fourth book of the series, The Wizard and Glass, no more books came out for a while. Finally, after King was almost killed by a distracted motorist while walking down a Maine road in 1999, he resolved to complete the series. And in a torrent of writing, he rushed out the last three (lengthy) volumes in 2003 (#5), 2004 (#6), and 2004 (#7)!

Back then I didn't mention that King in 2003 made a number of revisions to The Gunslinger to bring it more in line with the rest of the series narrative...I think I must have read an earlier version the first time I read it fourteen years ago, but this time around it's clear that it had been updated.  The setting to the story is an alternate (but similar) universe set some time in the future, after the world has "moved on"...but is it really the future?  There is a sense of everything having run down, including civilization and the clues of a technology-based society destroyed by a past cataclysm.  Roland Deschain is the protagonist, the Gunslinger who in his boyhood was a young noble whose world was turned upside-down in a revolt...he is now on a quest to find and catch the "Man in Black" behind it all.  Along the way he encounters oracles and a boy, Jake Chambers, who claims he was in a completely different reality, in a big modern city, and was pushed into the street to his death by none other than the man Roland is pursuing.  There is a lot of prophecy and symbolism here...part of Roland's problem is that he doesn't really know yet what he's after, and meeting with the Man in Black is his hope to find some answers.  Much of the story is spent in flashback...there's even a flashback embedded within another flashback...of Roland's childhood experiences, family and friends as well as that of the doomed town of Tull that Roland had earlier encountered on his journey.  Stephen King is known for his ability to draw out the depth in his characters' personalities, and The Gunslinger is no exception.  Now I've begun rereading the second book, titled The Drawing of the Three...I'm already past the opening section about those darn lobstrosities...

Rob Dial's Podcast Discusses the Need for Action, Not Overthinking

The other day on The Mindset Mentor podcast, creator and host Rob Dial discussed a subject he's often stressed: the need to just get out there and start doing whatever it is you're trying to achieve in live...and stop the destructive overthinking and procrastination that is just a disguise, a self-deception masking the fear of being humbled and exposed as a failure.  Dial makes clear that the only time you fail in something happens either when you never start or when you give up...messing up in itself is an integral part of the ultimate success you will enjoy.  He likes to repeat his mantra of "Ready, Fire, Aim", deliberately juxtaposing "fire" and "aim" to emphasize that first you've got to get out there doing stuff...and then you can make the needed adjustments.  Dial also stressed that it does no good to dwell on the enormity of the quest you're on, as if you have to accomplish it all in a day. Instead, focus on what you're going to do today and let tomorrow...and the next ten years...unfold a day at a time.  Get closer to your goal by focusing on your direction and taking action, with less emphasize on your speed. The host gave as example that on a long road trip the driver takes in one stretch of the route at a time, not being concerned about what...say mile marker 240...will bring.  Dial says that people make things out to be much harder than they really are and that if they've never done something before then they tend to think that they can't do it...all symptoms of overthinking.  Instead, act like you're always "in the headlights" and immerse yourself in the area for which you've set your goals.  Will you screw up from time to time and, God forbid, reveal to others that you're not perfect and could stand some improvement? Sure, but's that's an important part of it all.  As for me, this broadcast hit home as I tend to delay starting new things because I'm usually at such a low level of competency in them...of course I am since I haven't started them yet!

NCAA and NIT 2022 Tournament Brackets All Set to Go

Today is the day that the men and women's major college basketball teams are selected for their respective championship tournaments' 68-team fields...along with the second-tier National Invitation Tournament.  My hometown women's University of Florida team made a dramatic improvement this year at 21-10 and made the NCAA tournament...they'll play the University of Central Florida in the first round.  The men's team not only didn't make it to the championship tournament this year, but they also lost their coach, Mike White, who left the Gators to fill the head coaching vacancy at Georgia.  Florida...with a 19-13 record... did make it, though, to the N.I.T. and will play their first-round game against Rick Pitino-coached Iona...some fan made the perfectly reasonable comment (reasonable to me, a Pitino fan) that Gainesville shouldn't let him leave town before signing him on as Florida's new coach.  For me, I like my local teams to do well, but as far as the NCAA tourney is concerned, by this time next week the surviving teams for each one will be down from 68 to 16.  Texas A&M, which beat Florida in the Southeastern Conference tournament a few days ago and made it all the way to the finale, was thoroughly ripped off by the NCAA selection committee and snubbed...they're in the N.I.T. as well.  As for the men's NCAA tournament, I plan to root for Miami, North Carolina and Kansas...and just enjoy the other games I'm able to watch.  I'm not sure about the exact dates for the tournaments, all of which are commencing this week...my strategy is since I'm scheduled to work until 10 pm Monday through Friday I'll just check out what's currently showing on TV when I do get home...

Just Finished Reading Death and a Dog by Fiona Grace

Second in the "cozy mystery" series by Fiona Grace featuring antiques dealer Lacey Doyle, Death and a Dog continues...and to an extent repeats...the protagonist's adventures and trials as she adjusts to life in a small English coastal village following her divorce from a deadbeat husband back in New York who gets spousal support from her.  After reading the first book Murder in the Manor last month, I concluded that "Fiona Grace" in all likelihood is a fictitious name since "she" has come out with 33 books in several different series in less than 3 years!  With this second installment of the series I'm reading, I was disappointed that, although new characters were introduced and technical aspects of the plot were different from the first (including the first time I've seen a sextant used in a story), I still experienced too much repetition...especially regarding how Lacey is always the first one to find the murder victim's body, the two clueless cops on duty always suspect her, the village's petty, gossiping people alternate between adoring and shunning her, and her mother and sister back home...and her ex...are overly negative and hostile. Neither the background stories of the romance between Lacey and Tom nor the mystery of her father's death in the area years before is advanced...I could go on.  Like the first book, the murder's solution in the end was lame...and yes, Lacey's adopted superdog Chester saves the day as the book's title clearly telegraphs.  I don't have a problem with the series being written by probably underpaid anonymous hack writers as much as I do about Lacey continuing to alternately seem spunky and assertive when around the cops and certain other people while playing the passive eternal suffering victim role around her own family and the fickle villagers around her. But maybe this is actually the one aspect of it all that rings true: don't we tend to stand up to some folks while folding to others?  Call me a glutton for punishment but I'm going to continue with this series.  I want to see if the "author" has the nerve to string out the repetition into a third book...

Quote of the Week...from Kyle Lowry

Go out there and play hard, understand your teammates, understand the other team's gameplan, understand your coaches' philosophies and what they want you to do.            ---Kyle Lowry

Kyle Lowry is a repeat all-star National Basketball Association point guard who helped guide the Toronto Raptors to several winning seasons as well as a league championship in 2019.  I've always admired his teamwork and positive demeanor on and off the court...now I'm really encouraged because this year he's playing for the Miami Heat, a team I usually root for since I'm from that area.  He joins another player I've followed for years, Jimmy Butler, a small forward/shooting guard who caught my attention years ago with the Chicago Bulls.  Back in that 2019 Raptor championship playoff run, Butler was on the Philadelphia 76ers opposite Lowry...that was one of the all-time best playoff series ever!  Lowry's philosophy is a formula for success, and I believe that the truly wise players all follow its basic tenets.  Other players that I've noticed with a team spirit combined with skill, athleticism and sportsmanship are Golden State's Klay Thompson and New Orleans' C.J. McCollum, who used to be with Portland for several years.  I tend to look for these kinds of "stars behind the stars" and pull for the teams they're playing on.  The other night Miami was playing Phoenix...unfortunately they got blown out by 21 points and Butler was out due to sinus issues.  I did see Lowry on the court, but he was in more of a supportive role than I usually see.  Still, Miami's currently leading the entire Eastern Conference and come playoff time, I'm looking forward to seeing how Lowry and Butler do, along with Thompson and McCollum on the other teams...

A Visit to the Dentist...and Starbucks

After my (ugh) teeth-cleaning procedure yesterday morning I thought I'd reward myself for having survived it all by going a few blocks down 13th Street and getting an iced coffee from Starbucks...but no, that outlet is often backed up to the street with its drive-through line, clogging up the parking lot even for those like me who prefer to drink their coffee on-site.  So, I instead went to my familiar Starbucks haunt, a store that's been there since 2000 and never converted to one with a drive-through.  I understand the Starbucks Corporation's policy about rebuilding and moving existing stores to ones with that option for customers...I'd do it, too if I were in their shoes.  But my preference has always been for coffee shops WITHOUT drive-throughs, and I bemoan the loss of several Starbucks that, in the past, I had frequented and spent time studying and enjoying the ambiance.  I miss the ones in Tioga, Hunter's Crossing, Newberry Road (near the Royal Park Cinema), Archer and 34th, and 13th Street and 16th Avenue...these five were great places to visit and were highly popular. I have always enjoyed hanging out in coffee shops and have found their slightly nerve-wracking public surroundings an excellent setting for energizing my mind and focusing my thoughts on creative writing and introspection.  I'm writing this article in that favorite Starbucks in NW Gainesville's Magnolia Parke...may it never close down!  Before Starbucks arrived in my hometown, I often used to go to Krispy Kreme on NW 13th Street and 3rd Avenue, close to the University of Florida campus...I just got a gift card for KK so maybe I should check them out again.  I've also been in the habit of going to fast food places and just ordering a coffee, accomplishing the same thing for less money than at Starbucks.  I've tried this at my public library...it's just not the same.  As for that teeth-cleaning, in the past I had always regarded visiting the dentist's office as a traumatic experience...this time, though, using Eckhart Tolle's principles of think-less/observe-more from his book The Power of Now, I mentally sank into the background and put my old thought reactions on hold during the procedure.  It worked, producing the most pleasant dental visit I've had in quite a while...if you can really properly place the words "pleasant" and "dental visit" together in the same sentence. Also, the experience of open-heart surgery the previous July...along with the following two-week hospital stay and subsequent weeks-long recovery period...puts relatively minor things like a simple teeth-cleaning appointment into sharper perspective...

Weekly Short Stories: 1983 Science Fiction, Part 1

Today I start reviewing science fiction short stories from the year 1983 as they appeared in Donald A. Wollheim's anthology The 1984 Annual World's Best SF, featuring the editor's picks from that genre for the previous year.  In '83 I was living a frugal, single life in Gainesville as a cook in a local Chinese restaurant, studying foreign languages on the side like Chinese, Vietnamese, and Japanese...almost a monastic kind of existence, looking back on it.  This was also the year in which the Nuclear Freeze movement took off in Europe, while a very important TV movie on nuclear war was shown here in the States: The Day After.  More on this special year next week...right now let's a take a look at those stories...

BLOOD MUSIC by Greg Bear

Predating the late Michael Crichton's interesting novel Prey on a similar theme by nineteen years, this story examines a scenario in which nanotechnology merges with microbiological synthesis to produce an unseen world within one's body that works much faster than does evolutionary change in modifying and "improving" it.  An employee at a company researching such stuff foolishly injects himself with some of the microscopic, synthesized protein material and the change begins to happen...what an ending!

POTENTIAL by Isaac Asimov

It seems that supercomputers have the capacity for breaking down the myriad sections within the human genome to find that which predicts telepathic abilities.  The government's top-secret espionage section is naturally interested in this and discovers that an Iowan teenage boy may well be endowed with such talent.  They visit, interview and test him...tough luck, guess they were wrong.  When they leave, he breathes a sigh of relief...then realizes that they had been mistakenly trying to see if he could read other people's minds... 

KNIGHT OF SHALLOWS by Rand B. Lee

This tale is a look at the world worlds of alternate universes, and it seems that there are certain individuals who have the ability (or curse) to travel in and out of them, each universe containing a different version of that person.  The story's protagonist is one of these and his subsequent adventures have him searching through wildly divergent realities for a murderer (an alternate self), who kills other alternate selves...while our hero collaborates with yet another alternate self.  All within a few blocks in Key West, Florida, centered around a bar.  Intriguing...and a little funny, too...

SPENDING A DAY AT THE LOTTERY FAIR by Frederik Pohl

This brief story, similar in theme to Shirley Jackson's famous 1948 short story The Lottery, takes place in a future of overpopulation as each nation on Earth takes its own path in dealing with it.  In America they hold fancy festivals involving lotteries...but a small percentage of the entrants will die while few believe their "number" will come up because of the low odds.  Yet in this story all abortion and birth control have been banned...while killing off little children in the lottery is okay.  Ultimately, this is a tale indicting the ongoing politics about abortion, with the author siding with those complaining how many of the "pro-lifers" lose interest in the lives they want to protect after birth occurs...

Next week I continue looking at the year 1983 as it pertained to short science fiction...

Just Finished Reading A Beautiful Mind by Sylvia Nasar

A Beautiful Mind, published in 1998, is Sylvia Nasar's biography of American mathematician John Forbes Nash, Jr. (1928-2015).  It is better known for its 2002 Ron Howard-directed movie adaptation with the same title, starring Russell Crowe as Nash and which won the Academy Award for best picture that year.  Yet the movie diverges in major ways from the book that took me aback.  In both versions we are presented with the life story of a brilliant, accomplished academic whose young adult life was turn upside-down...as well as that of his loved ones...when he became afflicted with paranoid schizophrenia.  The film version, however, takes great liberties with Nasar's account, weaving its own imaginary tale about John Nash suffering from visual hallucinations (which he didn't) and imaginary friends and foes (again, he didn't).  According to the book, in the late 1950s Nash began to have grandiose delusions of his role in the world with conspiracy theories abounding...in today's dumbass world that would have got him elected president but back then it just got him committed...and released...and committed...and released.  Ron Howard's movie makes the story of Nash's life very compact and simple, omitting the Noble Prize-winning mathematician's earlier affair and love child, for which he denied financial support.  It also omitted the fact that even following his mental breakdown he continued to produce mathematical works, many of which Nasar bravely attempted to describe for us nonmathematical readers: in the film you'd think that all he did of significance was that prize-winning paper on economic equilibrium.  The book and the film each sought to sell a narrative about the life of John Forbes Nash, Jr., but even though the print version was obviously closer to the truth about him, by its very structure and nature it was still far from what really happened.  A life is lived one minute, one hour...one day at a time and attempts to make a narrative tale out of it that conforms to traditional storytelling patterns is bound to distort it.  Although I found the movie version to be much more suspenseful, endearing and entertaining (I even bought the DVD), it's a bit unsettling to see how far it diverged from the true life of this extraordinary and flawed human being after reading Sylvia Nasar's excellent account.  If you saw the film...or didn't, for that matter...A Beautiful Mind will be a great ride through history...not only of one special individual's life, but also of the social and historical context in which he lived.  Sadly, in 2015 both John Nash and his wife Alicia perished in an auto crash in Newark after returning from Norway, where he had been honored with an academic prize...he was 86... 

I got two significant take-aways from the book and film.  One is that it's not prudent to automatically accept the truth and accuracy of a work's narrative and characterizations, just because the author or producer claims it to be nonfiction or based on real events: the very nature of the story structure with the presentation of a moral theme and the aim to be interesting is bound to twist it.  Two is that I think almost all of us, like Nash, believe in nonsensical, irrational...and sometimes farfetched ideas but that for "healthy" people they understand the extreme nature of those beliefs and thereby tend to avoid communicating them to others...unlike Nash, whose narcissistic sense of self-importance precluded this.  But if within society certain wacky ideas seem to become more mainstream then an explosion can ensue with masses of the population expressing adherence to them...do you know what I'm talking about?

Podcaster Rob Dial Lays Out Some Thoughts for Pursuing Goals

A recent episode of Rob Dial's Mindset Mentor podcast had the title How to Turn Your Life Around, but its theme was more precise: how to pursue goals to successful outcomes.  He starts out by acknowledging the current world of instant gratification where someone can just pick up the phone and get most anything promptly delivered...or flick on the TV and choose from an incredibly wide variety of programming.  But making progress in our personal lives still takes time.  And going in the right direction.  And planning.  Dial quoted a motivational guru, Tony Robbins, who said that people overestimate what they can do in a year but underestimate what they can do in a decade.  Instead of expecting success to happen quickly and then becoming discouraged when it probably doesn't, it's better not to hurry but consistently work toward the objectives in the right direction.  And to assure that correct direction, it is necessary to know...as precisely as possible...where in their lives people want to be, say, five or ten years in the future...along with the even bigger picture of the end of their lives.  So, some serious, concentrated soul-searching is in order, as well as the need to sit down with pen and paper and start planning out the strategy to achieve the arrived-at goals.  And the host adds (a bit more colorfully than me), that failure is not messing up...it's a part of the success process...it's giving up that causes failure.  I like how Rob Dial distills and expresses stuff I already knew, but in a more organized, systematic form that I can refer back to...this episode should help me as I figure some things out...

Interesting Pro Golf Tourney in Orlando Today on NBC

Call it "Arnie's Revenge" if you like, but this year's PGA Arnold Palmer Invitational, played at the Bay Hill course near Universal Studios and Walt Disney World west of Orlando, has turned into one of the more interesting and entertaining tournaments I've watched over the past few weeks.  Generally noted for scores well under par, this year it seems that the winds are playing havoc with the golfers...as well as very treacherous putting greens.  I don't think I've ever witnessed so many missed short putts as well as putts shot too hard past the hole.  The leaderboard has been in continual flux as the tournament draws to its close.  It looked like Viktor Hovland at one point was going to run away with it, but his putting woes gave him two consecutive bogies.  Then Scottie Sheffler, who won a tourney just a while back, surged into the lead, only to be passed by Gary Woodland when he eagled...but Woodland would fall back on just the next hole with a double bogey.  The tournament was renamed in 2017 after Arnold Palmer, who passed away the previous year.  Palmer was known for his expressive antics when he missed important putts in years gone by...I've seen quite a few grimaces and head shaking today from pros who seem completely mystified by the tricky slopes presenting by the putting greens.  Yet Tiger Woods won this tournament eight times between 2000 and 2013.  It's showing right now on NBC...I really don't care who wins it, but I want to see how they accomplish it.  Sheffler is the only golfer among the leaders in today's final round that I know of, but I'm gradually accumulating a list in my memory of several golfers over the weeks as Sunday afternoon golf is becoming a regular TV habit of mine...

My Depot Park 5K "Non-Run" This Morning

I deliberately woke up at 6 this morning, making a pot of coffee and checking to see whether I really was going to drive out to Depot Park and run one of their weekly 5K (3.1 miles) races they hold there on Saturdays at 7:30.  After a few minutes of self-assessment I decided to go back to bed...and woke up a little past ten.   It's a bit ironic, I think, that finally after having worked on my off day for several Saturdays in a row that on the morning of one in which I am truly off from work all day I would choose to sleep in...you might think that I'd be more inclined to stay in bed on other Saturday mornings, seeing that I get off from work Friday nights at 10 and sometimes get overtime up to midnight.  But it's how the mind interprets situations, not the situations themselves, that determines one's course of action and here I am, late in the morning and that dang race has gone by me for another week.  The weather was forecast to be great, in the low 50s...a Goldilocks Zone for runners like me...but I might have put too much pressure on myself for considering trying to set a personal record with today's race instead of treating it as a "cover the distance" training run as I had for the previous ones.  There's another opportunity next Saturday morning for a Depot Parkrun, as they like to call it, and then looms on the 19th a ten-mile run in the wilderness south of Micanopy held by the Florida Track Club...that will most definitely be a purely "cover the distance" event...

Quote of the Week...from President Biden

The State of the Union is strong...because you, the American people, are strong.  We are stronger today than we were a year ago...and we will be stronger a year from now than we are today.

                                                  ---Joseph Biden, President of the United States

So concluded our president in his first State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress this past Tuesday evening.  Although I did not watch it, I later heard that it was widely regarded by the American public in a positive light, garnering a 78% approval rating in one poll.  He touched among a number of topics, including the Russian invasion of Ukraine, infrastructure, voting rights, climate change and inflation.  His delivery from the highlights I did see later seemed good and he had a natural kind of folksiness that Democrats hadn't seen from one of their presidents since Clinton in the 1990s.  But his above quote, which he made at the end of his speech...while sounding appropriately optimistic in the setting of any State of the Union address...did not ring true to my ears.  I don't agree that the state of our union is strong.  Fascism is on the sharp rise, with a frightening level of the electorate poised to endorse their own party's overturning of any election result not going their way.  The cult personality worship of an incredibly flawed, authoritarian individual, namely Donald Trump, just won't go away as we approach the 2022 midterm elections in which he stands to gain de facto control of Congress if Democratic voters do what they are known to do every time they elect a president of their own party...which is to sit out the following election and passively allow the Republicans to win control of Congress and state governments.  And in light of the Covid-19 pandemic that has devastated our country (and the world) over the past two years, it has been very dismaying for me to witness the utter selfishness and disregard for public health on the part of such a broad swath of our population as they refused to wear masks in public or even vaccinate against this scourge that has to date killed nearly a million people so far in our country alone and caused many, many more long-term health problems.  Issues like global warming and racial reconciliation are now being treated as highly controversial by a major political party as we find ourselves as a country receding into backwardness, with anti-science and prejudice on the upsurge.  And people now tend to seek out the news sources that are biased to fit their own preconceived views while mass and social media accommodate this increasing refusal to face the reality of what is going on around them...

So no, Mr. President, although I support you and want you to succeed, I'm afraid and sad to say that it's we, the American people, who are going to let you down as we continue to slip further and further into weakness, not strength.  Sorry for the downer today, but I'm just calling it as I see it...you and Jill are still welcome to come over for some coffee and chat...