Daisy in the Frame

 

We've had our little mixed-breed puppy for a little more than four months now...Daisy was only two months old back in May when we adopted her at PetSmart off Archer Road through a pet adoption non-profit group.  Then she weighed just seven pounds...click HERE for an earlier article (and picture).  Now she's 29 pounds but still a little puppy...I took the top picture above a couple of days ago while holding her in my right arm.  Melissa came up with the name, which I quickly took to, but didn't recognize the significance in "Toon World" as Daisy is also the Bumsteads' pet dog in their comic strip Blondie.  One thing tying the two together is that both Daisy's make it a point to make sure they're "in the frame"...check out an old one featuring Dagwood shirking his chores.  I've been walking Daisy around the block each morning in order to train her to follow me and not her own agenda...mixed results so far.  She loves standing on her hind legs and looking out the front window, watching alertly from the left to the right (and back) and huffing and puffing and growling...and occasionally barking at passing cars, people, and of course dogs.  She's very much bonded to both of us but much more so with Melissa...when she leaves the room for just a little bit Daisy turns into a big crybaby.  For a few weeks recently we took her to "puppy kindergarten" where she met up with fellow pups and practiced training Melissa and me to be better humans.  Her growth seems to have slowed down a bit, but maybe that's just wishful thinking on my part.  We love Daisy and wish her a happy, well-behaved life...

Weekly Short Stories: 1986 Science Fiction, Part 7

Here are my reactions to four more stories from the year 1986 as they appear in the Gardner Dozois anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Fourth Annual Collection.  To be perfectly frank, this week's entries didn't exactly set my imagination afire, and the first and third seem to have been written apparently to confuse me as to what was really going on.  Sigh...sometimes as a reader you come across weeks like this...

CHANCE by Connie Willis

This is a circular tale about a woman's regrets about her decisions a couple of decades earlier, with the narrative switching without warning between her present, unsatisfactory existence and that past time when different choices...at least in her present mind...would have led to a happier existence.  I don't know whether the author was making this point, but I thought that since everyone screws up along the way, then the truly regretful decision is for someone to be overly regretful about their past decisions...I did say this story is circular, didn't I?  I'm not sure what was science fiction about this tale, but the worms crawling everywhere outside kind of creeped me out...

AND SO TO BED by Harry Turtledove

Turtledove, later widely known as an alternative history writer, wrote this early tale set in 1661, and which speculates what would happen had the European explorers encountered in the New World of the Americas not Native American Indians, but rather Neanderthals...which they term as "sims".  A famous London diarist...a real historical figure...writes "alternative" entries that describe his relationships with the two new sims he has purchased as servants.  And comes up with a controversial theory predating Darwin by nearly two centuries...

FAIR GAME by Howard Waldrop

A man, Ernst, who has built his long life on big-game hunting and adventure has been called in to a small Bavarian country village, where he is hired to hunt and kill the Wild Man who has been raiding them and killing animals and people.  A Wild Man is a novelty, only in this story: they are hairy, eight-plus feet tall, descendants from "ordinary" people.  Ernst is tired and old, and the village people get him a hunting partner: Mgoro, his old friend from many years back in Africa.  Not spelled out directly, the nature of this hunt becomes more apparent toward the end...but it's still what I would call a "murky" story...

VIDEO STAR by Walter Jon Williams

Violent youth gang warfare only heightens in a a technology and drug-rich future.  Set mainly in Arizona, Cadillac gang member Ric has high ambitions as he involves himself in associations and networks with people and organizations, none of which he can trust.  On one international drug smuggling transaction he carelessly lets himself get nearly fatally poisoned and spends months in recovery.  A bleak picture of a breakneck-paced future in which technology, violence and drugs rule the social reality...are we really going there (or are we there already)?

Next week I look at more stories from 1986...

Podcaster Discusses His Tips on Learning

On one of his recent Mindset Mentor podcasts, personal development coach Rob Dial lists and describes four tips to learning better.  He's covered this material before...I like the reinforcement of the message.  First of all, he suggests the use of the "Pomodoro" method of studying hard and focused for 25 minutes and then taking a (non-cellphone) break for 5...and then returning to the studying.  He says that studies have shown that this periodic short rest period gives the brain the time it needs to properly assimilate the material. Second, he urges the student to try teaching the material just learned to another person, and in the simplest language possible that can adequately convey it.  Third, he says that the inevitable difficult areas that present blocks in the road are important to learning and to stress overcoming them...duh!  Finally, Dial suggests that once finished with this process, go back and repeat it.  He bases his tips on what he has learned can increase neuroplasticity, which enables learning to take place.  For me, I remember learning back in the fourth grade the "SQ2R" method of tackling a book or lesson: first SURVEY the material to be covered, without undue attention to detail.  Then pause and reflect on it, asking yourself QUESTIONS that come up about it. Next, READ the material in depth and do the assigned problems.  Finally, go back and REVIEW what you've just covered in the session.  I suppose it's a good idea to practice both lists of learning ideas.  I think I already unconsciously do that Pomodoro technique anyway since I tend to start zoning out after about 20-25 minutes of intense studying...

Just Finished Reading The Stars Did Wander Darkling by Colin Meloy

Colin Meloy is the front man and chief songwriter for the Portland, Oregon based indie musical band The Decembrists...I remember hearing their songs played back around 2003-07 on my local alternative rock radio station WHHZ "The Buzz"/100.5.  That included The Engine Driver, which featured Colin's lyrics that he was a writer of fictions. I didn't take that literally, but he really is a fiction writer, having produced a children's series titled The Wildwood Chronicles.  He's just come out with a standalone children's novel, The Stars Did Wander Darkling, which I just finished reading. The title is a line from the Byron poem Darkness.  The setting is coastal Oregon in a small town with a dark history of the mass disappearance of its population a century earlier.  Thirteen-year-old Archie Coomes enjoys his life, including his close circle of friends with whom he goes camping, among other things.  His father heads a construction company excavating for a new hotel near the historic (but now rumored haunted) Langdon House but has stopped the project because the ground below is full of holes...like Swiss cheese...and presents a danger.  But not only is talk going on that they discovered something sinister down there, but people in town are beginning to change.  Archie suspects a conspiracy afoot, and soon finds himself on a dire race against time to discover the truth and fight off three sinister, strange men who seem to be involved.  For me, this novel was more appropriate for adult readers...in fact, its premise reminded me of the very dark Stephen King novel Desperation, as well as the equally dark movie Invasion of the Body Snatchers.  I liked how Colin Meloy wrote it, making the language simple with short sentences...I bet Hemingway would have dug that.  He made the characters very life-like and compelling, although some of the mystery and resolution at the end seemed a bit cloudy to me.  I recommend it nonetheless and am considering reading Colin's earlier series.  But for now, I'm about to start reading Stephen King's latest novel, Fairy Tale...

My #13 All-Time Favorite Album: Close to the Edge by Yes

My #13 all-time favorite album, CLOSE TO THE EDGE, by the progressive rock band YES, took a long time to reach my full conscious attention.  I was fifteen in late 1971 when I heard my first Yes song on the radio: I've Seen All Good People.  At first, I thought the singer was a woman, but soon learned that it was Jon Anderson, who had a naturally high, feminine-sounding voice.  No matter, that song, a melodious first half and guitar-rocking on the back end, become for me my "song of the year".  In 1972, this progressive rock band, heavy on the keyboards, came out with the hit single Roundabout off their Fragile album.  Later that year they released their follow-up to Fragile, a critically acclaimed LP titled Close to the Edge.  It continues Anderson's singing and includes some wicked guitar and keyboard jams, along with a prolonged descent through what I've lovingly called the "rabbit hole" of musical and lyrical chaos.  Side One's opening track is the album's title: Close to the Edge...it turns out to be the only track, eighteen minutes in length. Opening with natural sounds including birds, it suddenly transforms into a wild, dissonant guitar jam before leading into Anderson's verses.  The song goes from one stage to another...a little past its midpoint begin my two favorite parts: the dreamy, slow "I Get Up I Get Down", followed by perhaps the jazziest, most versatile rock keyboard instrumental segment ever recorded, before the closing verses and final return to nature.  Whew, the amazing thing is that although my friend Barry from high school introduced it to me back in '73, I never got around to hearing the entire song until some twenty years later: Close to the Edge is my "song of the year" for 1993 and to this day ranks up there among my all-time favorite songs.  Side Two of the album contains just two tracks: And You and I and Siberian Khatru.  The former is a slow-moving, contemplative ballad about ten minutes in length while the latter is a faster-paced rocker.  The lyrics on this album, I believe, are deliberately vague in order to allow the listener to fashion his or her own interpretations, but Anderson said he was inspired for the song Close to the Edge by Hermann Hesse's book Siddartha.  Yes has had many member changes over the decades, but during those productive and inspired early 1970s, it was Anderson on lead vocals, Chris Squire on bass guitar, Steve Howe on guitar, Rick Wakeman on the keyboard and Bill Bruford on drums.  In their next two album releases the band would continue with ultra-long tracks...including Close to the Edge this would make six whopping album-side-length songs!  But trust me: Close to the Edge is the best one, and the two songs on the album's flip side...especially And You and I...are pretty doggone good as well.  Today Yes still exists, with Howe the only member on it from when they recorded Close to the Edge.  Anderson, Bruford and Wakeman are still around while Squire died seven years ago...

Next week: my #12 all-time favorite album...

Just Finished Rereading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is a largely autobiographical philosophical novel written by Robert Pirsig, who passed away five years ago at age 88.  Originally published in 1974, the narrative covers a motorcycle journey taken by Pirsig and his son Chris, along with another couple on the early stages, through the northwestern US.  The author weaves together a diversity of topics: his own life history as a creative writing professor in Montana, debates about the legacy of ancient Greek philosophy, most notably that of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, two conflicting modern attitudes toward technology as epitomized by the schism in approaching motorcycle maintenance, and his rocky relationship with his son, complicated by the mental breakdown he had earlier suffered along with the consequential memory loss caused by now-discredited electroshock therapy.   Pirsig discusses what he sees as two conflicting worldviews people today (and in the past) maintain about how they approach life: the Classical, which involves seeing things for their components and underlying form (expressed commonly in science and technology) and the Romantic, which involves seeing things for their whole essence (the arts).  I first read this book back in the late summer of 1990 and tend to associate it with working at the old downtown Gainesville post office where I read most of it during my breaks...I recall the Gulf War was heating up at the same time.  At this second reading, I tried culling all of the sometimes-challenging detail into something I could remember better, coming away with two key words Pirsig talked about: quality and gumption.  According to him, quality, very difficult to describe in technical terms, somehow became separated from truth in ancient Greek philosophy and needs restoration.  And he discussed gumption as something akin to motivation and confidence, a trait necessary for an effective life as well as, of course, for properly maintaining a motorcycle.  It's a great book, although the "zen" in it seemed elusive for me.   I see a third reading somehow down the line...maybe I won't wait 32 years next time...

Quote of the Week...from M in the Movie Dr. No

Miss Moneypenny, forget the usual repartee.  007's in a hurry.                  ---M, Dr. No

For a long-standing movie series' first installment, the James Bond spy series got a lot of things right from the get-go with Dr. No, from 1962.  Then again, you can see some unworthy, dated stereotypes as well.  But I've always enjoyed the brief interplay from movie to movie between Bond and Miss Moneypenny, M's secretary in the supersecret British spy agency M16.  M, in the early movies played excellently by Bernard Lee, is Agent 007's immediate superior and has a very quick, acerbic wit...he's probably the only character in the series to which Bond displays a respectful subservience.  In an early scene from Dr. No, Bond, played here by Sean Connery, goes to M's office for his assignment and naturally encounters Moneypenny (played by Lois Maxwell), where they engage in their typical light, flirtatious banter.  Then Bond goes in to see his boss.  As he is leaving, M presses his speaker and delivers the above quote to Moneypenny...and 007 promptly leaves, giving her the empty box from his new gun.  I recognized the brilliance and humor of inserting this exchange in the movie, but I see a deeper significance.  I can't begin to count the times of annoyance when I would be watching the news on TV or listening to a radio talk show or podcast and the people on it would waste time just gibbering around with one another on no topic in particular.  This naturally doesn't occur when there's just one person present.  I'm guessing that part of this is to make the audience identify with them as regular folks, and part is to fill in some dead airtime between the actual features that they're really there for.  But sometimes they just go on and on as if they are in on some private joke apart from the audience and even snicker and giggle...that really sets me off: it's one of several reasons I refuse to watch the Greg Gutfeld show.  As for podcasting, I have written regularly about one series I enjoy listening to: Rob Dial's Mindset Mentor, in which he gives some ideas about living better in a conversational but disciplined manner.  I thought that since I like running, I might find a podcast that addresses that activity and found one featuring a couple who seem to feel that doing the old "Sonny and Cher" verge-of-argument routine is a great way to present a show.  After trying them out more than once, I came to the conclusion that although they did get around to eventually addressing the subject for which they had the podcast, it was too frustrating plowing through all that "repartee", as M termed it.  If I'm watching or listening to anything, I can tell you flat-out that this kind of prolonged banter is a big turnoff.  However, real life is different, and I think that light, inconsequential conversation is the stuff that greatly helps to hold us together in families, workplaces, stores, schools, and anywhere else people find themselves to keep from going to war with one another.  A little of that in movies, TV shows, radio, and podcasts...like Bond and Moneypenny in their flicks...adds some welcome flavor to the experience, but as with spices added to a recipe, too much can ruin everything...

Follow-Up about Rob Dial's Podcast on Hobbies

The other day I wrote about podcaster Rob Dial's tips about hobbies.  He suggested that we each have different types of them, one hobby that brings in money, one that enhances physical fitness, one that provides a creative outlet, one that improves memory and intelligence...and one that challenges the mindset.  The only of these that I had an issue with was the first one...and apparently, I'm not the only one.  Yet if I go to an art exhibit or craft show in town, inevitably I will see price tags next to the items on display.  Do I begrudge the creators of these objects their putting a price on their artistic expression, which by and large the greater part of them do as a hobby, a labor of love so to speak?   No, actually I think more of it as an expression of confidence and a statement of quality about their work.  I absolutely recognize the excellence of my favorite athletes, musicians and actors...yet I doubt that their acceptance of millions of dollars for their achievements has tainted their chosen field for them: they still love what they do.  But if I do charge money for some hobby I already love doing, doesn't that also imply that I am committed to the benefited party that my product meets a higher standard than if I were just dithering around?  It's this imposition on my sense of freedom as well as a possible sense of insecurity that I am not up to the task or am undeserving of what I might charge that, at least to me, presents the main challenges I have to this notion of Dial's.  Now one objection I heard about it was that if you're retired you don't feel the need to try to make more money...enough is enough: I totally get that viewpoint and think maybe charity or philanthropy might be viable alternatives.  But Dial, who is 35 with a work history in sales, wasn't just speaking to retirees.  Nor was he suggesting that people's lives are so pathetic that they need to wheedle others out of their cash in a petty manner.  As I said before, the emphasis is on quality and confidence, and receiving a little dough in some area...just one, not everything...can enhance life.  Plus, it's not a bad thing to feel a little challenged and confronted about something like this: it makes me work to examine my own life and that is a good thing...

Weekly Short Stories: 1986 Science Fiction, Part 6

I'm continuing to plod through the year 1986 in sci-fi short stories as I go through the Gardner Dozois anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction, Fourth Annual Collection. As is the case with a number of Gardner's selections, not all the four stories I'm discussing today truly belong to the genre of science fiction, in my opinion.  Yet the middle two do fit quite well within the horror genre and are stories that Stephen King might be proud of.  Speaking of King, he has a new novel out now titled Fairy Tale...I'm getting ready to start reading it.  But for now, here are my reactions to those four stories from the anthology...

THE BEAUTIFUL AND THE SUBLIME by Bruce Sterling

In a future society when machines have made everything pretty much automatic, the once lucrative fields of engineering and science have taken a back seat to the arts in economic power and social prestige. A well-to-do poet tries to win over the daughter of a technology firm magnate by sabotaging his rival's manually controlled flyer.  The impression I got from this story is that the author didn't think too highly of the arts and that society would become too soft if technology made everything too easy...

TATTOOS by Jack Dunn

A man with a heart condition, his wife and teenage son pay a visit in upstate New York to a country fair where he discovers an old friend who used to be a talented artist running the tattoo parlor.  But Nathan looks emaciated and has scars all over him.  His customers also seem to include, besides the regulars, people with special problems.  The idea of healing others' afflictions by taking them onto oneself isn't just an old Star Trek episode...it goes to the heart of the Christian gospel.  Yet Nathan is no Christ...

NIGHT MOVES by Tim Powers

Wow.  Being a night owl for much of my life and spending so much conscious time in those "graveyard" early, early morning hours, this story totally captures the essence of that time of day when most of us are in bed dreaming.  But what if those dreams...by means of a strange roaming essence...are transformed into reality and make their presence known on a city street?  Told from the viewpoint of a few different witnesses of such an occurrence around a city traffic circle, this story may cause the reader to reflect on who (or what) is really out there during those godforsaken wee hours...

THE PRISONER OF CHILLON by James Patrick Kelly

Part of this post-apocalyptic story is about history, part is about geography, and most of it concerns the struggle of a journalist to get her story out in one piece (both the story and herself) after covering a daring orbital theft of sensitive AI (artificial intelligence) data and following the surviving thief to the surface in Switzerland where they meet the man who is buying the info, living in the famous Chillon castle near Montreux.  I thought while reading it that many science fiction writers underestimated the progress that would be made in digital technology and AI in particular.  The story focuses on the characters of the thief, the journalist and the castle-dweller, who being almost completely physically incapacitated has surrounded himself with "smart" robots...

Next week: more about 1986 stories from the Gardner Dozois anthology... 

Thinking of 9/11/01

It's been a couple of days since September 11, now 21 years separated from the horrible events that transpired that morning in New York, Washington, D.C., Pennsylvania and those four doomed passenger jets.  I watched the History Channel Sunday night...they had a couple of good documentaries of ordinary citizens recording the events as they happened.  At the time I was working overtime on the flat sorting machine at the Gainesville post office and remember going on my final break where they had the TV on.  They were showing a gaping, smoking hole in one of the World Trade Center towers...this was a little before nine Eastern Time.  When I got back to the machine I told Timothy, my coworker, who rushed to the breakroom to see for himself. He returned with the news that the second tower had likewise been hit...we knew then that it was terrorism. Subsequent events that I would have assumed to be engrained in the American consciousness unfolded, among them the call to war.  Sometimes it's hard to calmly discuss options in the immediate aftermath of such a gut-wrenching disaster like this...I remember Washington senator Patty Murray being roundly attacked by the Republicans for daring to suggest that we seek to find out what actually motivated the terrorists. But it all gave certain elements of that party a justification to push their already-held agenda of invading Iraq, throwing out dictator Saddam Hussein and effecting "regime change" even though he was not involved in the plot.  I suppose that, depending on your political orientation and cherished narratives, our reactions to 9/11 were either well thought out, stumbling, or even devious...I'm guessing that elements of all three were involved.  As for now in 2022, I think we're in a "breather" period before more atrocities ensue, sad to say.  I wonder how we'll react to the next "9/11" if and when it occurs...

Podcaster Suggests Five Kinds of Hobbies

When I saw the title of a recent podcast of Rob Dial for his Mindset Mentor program, I was under the impression that he was going to reveal five different specific hobbies I should consider pursuing to enhance my personal development.  If he had really done that, I probably would be writing this article laying out my objections to this hobby or that.  Instead, he described five different kinds of hobbies: oh, yeah, I can dig that.  Here are his suggested hobby categories:

1--Hobbies that provide an income.

2--Hobbies that enhance physical fitness.

3--Hobbies that provide a creative outlet.

4--Hobbies that increase knowledge and intelligence.

5--Hobbies that improve one's mindset.

I believe that I am already engaged in hobbies that fulfill to varying degrees #2 through #5, but I'm wondering whether I can (or want to) tweak a couple of them to meet #1 as well.  Of course, since I'm approaching retirement, the free time on the other side of that transformation should open up opportunities for all five areas.  Also, there is some overlap between them.  But for an old geezer like I'm becoming, examining hobbies like this sounds like a pretty spiffy idea.  What are your hobbies, and do they fit in the above divisions that Dial delineated?  I know there are some that don't for me, such as watching TV and listening to good music, although there could be an argument made that if done thoughtfully, they could contribute to numbers 4 and 5. And of course they provide a good amount of material for my writing, a creative outlet (see yesterday's article)...

My #14 All-Time Favorite Album: Magical Mystery Tour by the Beatles

MAGICAL MYSTERY TOUR, by THE BEATLES, is my all-time #14 album.  Although it came out in late 1967, when I was eleven, I didn't hear many of the songs on it until years later.  This is a strange album in its conception, with one side consisting mainly of popular singles hits and B-sides from that year and the other a string of tracks featured on their ill-fated British television special, patterned after the title track. It is that "singles" side that makes it one of my all-time favorites, for songs like Strawberry Fields Forever, Penny Lane, All You Need is Love and Hello/Goodbye are true classics.  Here's a listing of the album's tracks according to my liking:

1 Strawberry Fields Forever--I first heard it on Feb. 12, 1967 on the Ed Sullivan Show (along with Penny Lane)...pretty gutsy video that caused a lot of headshaking among viewers back then.  For a long time, I thought Ringo sang the lead on this song, but no, it was producer George Martin combining John's singing on two different takes by changing the speeds...

2 All You Need is Love--I first heard this one recorded live on the British Our World TV special on June 25, 1967.  It's a song I've loved from the beginning...

3 Hello/Goodbye--There were times I considered this one my favorite Beatles song...sometimes the simple lyrics are the best...

4 I am the Walrus--This is a special kind of song I term "rabbit role music" where the lyrics are exceedingly cryptic and the musical accompaniment breaks down into a kind of chaos: done well it's unforgettable, as it is here with John chiefly responsible...

5 Penny Lane--A nostalgic "Paul" piece about a street in his hometown of Liverpool...producer Martin added a wicked piccolo trumpet line to the recording at McCartney's suggestion...

6 Baby You're a Rich Man--a "John" contribution, heavy on psychedelia: "How does it feel to be one of the beautiful people?" The music belongs to an era we'll never see again...

7 Fool on the Hill--Paul's answer to Lennon's earlier song Nowhere Man: same general message about marching to your own drumbeat...

8 Your Mother Should Know--This is another of what I've grown to call Paul's "cutesy" repertoire of songs...another, Goodbye, he gave to friend Mary Hopkin; that may have been the best of them...

9 Blue Jay Way--Not to be outdone by Paul with Penny Lane, George Harrison wrote this one about a street he visited that year in Los Angeles.  Mysterious and gloomy...works for me!

10 Magical Mystery Tour--for some reason this song rubbed me the wrong way...maybe it just sounded too much like the band was trying to sell me on something they weren't too sure about themselves or maybe just trying to recreate the Sgt. Pepper hoopla...

11 Flying--Songwriting credits go to all four Beatles on this song, a rarity.  It's mostly a harmless, slow instrumental with some la-la-la's thrown in for good measure.  Good filler track, though...

Next week: #13...

Beach Instead of Football Planned Today

As Melissa and I head out of town to Daytona Beach on this stormy weekend, many other folks are pouring into Gainesville to partake of the festivities of the University of Florida Fightin' Gators football team as they try to beat Kentucky this evening.  Everyone's excited because they won their first game last Saturday...if only by the skin of their teeth.  But confidence morphing into cockiness abounds...sooner or later they're gonna lose and that will be tough for some to withstand.  I've been to three UF home games since 1977...all of them due to others inviting me or handing over their tickets due to other commitments.  The only time I "enjoyed" the experience was the time during Muschamp's last year as coach when it was homecoming and Missouri humiliated Florida...that was all right with me: I was sitting with Melissa in the front row in the end zone cushioned chairs instead of those bleachers.  With bleachers, you come to an early conclusion that you have a simple choice: either stay seated and only see the backs of the people standing up in front of you or stand up yourself and block the people behind you...no thanks!  No, we'll be out on the oceanfront, most probably ignoring the Gators and other sporting events.  Hope the truckers aren't out there...they really screwed up our Labor Day weekend visit there a couple of years ago...

Quote of the Week...from Queen Elizabeth II

Football's a difficult business and aren't they prima donnas.  But it's a wonderful game.

                                                                    ---Queen Elizabeth II

Queen Elizabeth II of England passed away at her family's Scotland home yesterday at the age of 96, having one of the longest realms in the history of nobility at seventy years.  It was interesting reading and hearing of the outpouring of emotional tributes coming from some sources you might not automatically think of, like for example the Rolling Stones' Mick Jagger.  But most reasonable and mature people understand that she was born into ceremony and royal duty and had precious little actual political power...her life was one largely preprogrammed for her.  She still made the most of it with a lot of class and some refreshing candid humor, as the above quote about her country's (and most of the world's) chief sport of soccer.  I think the same about other sports, too...with the U.S. Open going on now, tennis comes to mind as player after prima donna player pitches fits on the court, breaking their rackets, bawling their eyes out and screaming epithets at the judges and spectators.  TV analyst John McEnroe has provided more humor by publicly castigating their excesses, although he himself was one of the worst offenders when he played...

I had the television on yesterday morning when the Weather Channel mentioned the Queen's deteriorating health and I switched to the three main cable news channels.  CNN and MSNBC had concentrated coverage of the gathering of her family and different aspects of her life and career, but FoxNews was completely ignoring this momentous story, instead focusing on key political races that "their" party, the Republicans, needed to win in November.  Apparently, boss Rupert Murdoch had given the order to snub her, but why? Well, maybe a clue is in another quote of hers, from nine years ago: "I don't like to badmouth people.  but I'm the head of a monarchy that began in the ninth century, and I'm apparently more modern than Chris Christie.  Look, I know he has to appeal to the crazy right-wingers in his party, but the fact is, he's not as forward-thinking as an eighty-seven-year-old lady who wears a crown on her head.  It's pathetic." Melissa later told me that Fox did finally start to cover Queen Elizabeth II's death, but their decisions yesterday morning were telling: "fair and balanced" my ass...

So now it's King Charles III in charge of things...I remember my mother telling me about him in the late 1960s and it's been a long wait, for sure.  I've never been one to care about the news within the English royal family or any others...dang it, didn't we shed all that when we declared independence in 1776?  Still, I always liked Elizabeth and, like many others, will miss her presence and often incisive and straight-forward humor...

Horrible Weather Continues, Here and There

Just when it looked like my poor lawn would finally dry up and stop resembling a rice paddy, the sky opened up today and its right back to where it was, a big, green saturated sponge.  And it looks like there's plenty more rain to come...good grief.  I'm looking forward to dryer times...if that ever happens.  But after watching the Weather Channel lately, it looks as if the rest of the country has its own weather issues.  I sometimes entertain a daydream of just getting on a plane and going to one of the many places further up north that hold half-marathons this time of year, because it's supposedly colder there, you see.  One of the places, Scottsbluff in western Nebraska, is holding one in a couple of weeks.  But according to TWC, temperatures have recently climbed to 99 degrees there.  And these heat waves have been horrible this summer, subjecting normally more temperate places like Oregon, Montana, Minnesota and New Hampshire at different times to horrendous conditions.  Maybe I'll just stick to an air-conditioned lifestyle for a while...

Weekly Short Stories: 1986 Science Fiction, Part 5

Here are my reactions to three more science fiction short stories as they appeared in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction, Fourth Annual Collection, edited by Gardner Dozois and featuring his selections from 1986.  That year I was completing a lengthy stint as a cook in a local Chinese restaurant...the following year I would start work at the post office and am still there: I don't change jobs very often.  Well, here are those stories I was talking about...

THE PURE PRODUCT by John Kessel

Imagine a future world where not only all diseases are eradicated, but the injured body heals and seals itself, guaranteeing people invulnerability as well as immortality.  Now imagine further a psychopath from this era who has gone back in time and is currently looking for kicks among us...that's the setting for this tale where the narrator is about as cold and brutal as one could get...

GRAVE ANGELS by Richard Kearns

This story reminds me of Ray Bradbury's nostalgic novel Dandelion Wine in that it depicts the deaths of different people in a boy's life.  This time it's from the vantage point of the town's two racially segregated cemeteries, where an angelic elderly black man digs in advance the graves for those about to die...

TANGENTS by Greg Bear

If you're wondering about the 3-dimensional shadows that 4-dimensional "objects" cast, this story's for you.  It's also about how our society can make misfits out of its most brilliant members and cruelly dispose of them, as an elderly English man patterned after Alan Turing (see the movie The Imitation Game) and a precocious young Korean orphan boy join forces to explore what lies beyond our ordinary reality.  Pretty cool ending...

Next week: more from '86...

Happy Anniversary to My Dear Melissa

I'd like to take this opportunity to tell my beautiful wife Melissa how much I love and appreciate her, and that I wish her a wonderful 36-year anniversary.  I love you!

Podcaster Stresses Living in the Future Instead of the Past

Personal development coach Rob Dial has a successful podcast titled Mindset Mentor.  Four days a week he spends about 20 minutes on various topics relating to success, motivation and self-improvement.  On a recent show he discussed how too many people allow their pasts to dictate their present outlook and behavior, consequently holding them back from success.  Instead, he proposes that we project ourselves into the future...Dial suggests about 10 years ahead...and visualize the kind of person we want to become. Consequently, we would be tackling the kinds of life situations we are experiencing in the present based on that future vision of ourselves. In other words, get the brain to go into the future instead of the past when determining our actions.  This sounds a little counterintuitive to me, especially since the same podcaster has in past episodes stressed living in the present moment, with the past and future only representing abstractions instead of reality.  But it's a good habit to have a sense of direction in life and taking some time and effort to know what person I want to become.  James Clear's book Atomic Habits lays a similar foundation when he stresses "becoming" over "goals" as a guide for eliminating bad habits and growing into new ones.  For me, at age 65 I have a long span of memories that I can let negatively influence what I undertake now, and, yes, projecting myself into the future and letting that vision guide me sounds reasonable.  On the other hand, and Rob Dial acknowledges this to an extent, I didn't get to where I am today by dismissing my past experiences wholesale: memory is an important survival mechanism.  So, as with so many other things, this comes down to discernment and a sense of balance... 

Surprising Tennis and College Football Results This Labor Day Weekend

I was surprised yesterday and today to watch the men's number one and number two seeds at the U.S. Open tournament go down in flames in their respective Round of 16 matches.  Sunday top-seeded Daniil Medvedev, last year's tournament champion, lost to Nick Kyrgios and today second-seeded Rafael Nadal was taken apart by Frances Tiafoe.  Although I was rooting for Kyrgios, I suspected that the finale would naturally be between Medvedev and Nadal...is this finally the signal for the changing of the guard in men's pro tennis?  With the women, top seeded Iga Swiatek is still hanging in there, but #2 seed Aryna Sabalenka is, at this writing, one set down to Danielle Collins...I'm watching on ESPN2 to see what happens.  I was also surprised yesterday to see both Florida and Florida State win their season openers, the former at home against seventh-ranked Utah and the latter at Baton Rouge against Louisiana State.  Both contests ended up as nailbiters, the Gators intercepting a Ute TD pass attempt with 17 seconds left to win 29-26 and the 'Noles prevailing on a blocked extra-point attempt at the end of regulation, giving them a 24-23 win.  Both teams...as well as my third traditional Florida college football team favorite, Miami, should provide plenty of entertainment for this 2022 season.  I was a little taken aback at the big boast that Florida's attendance crowd was a packed record at over 90,000, this happening while new Covid vaccines are being rolled out amid the newer strains' resistance to older versions...and folks are still getting sick, are going to the hospital and are dying from this pestilence.  Oh well, I guess people just want to pretend it's all over now...

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Correction...Sabalenka is seeded #6 and did come from behind to advance tonight.  #2 was Anett Kontaveitt, who lost in the second round to Serena Williams...

My #15 All-Time Favorite Album: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band by the Beatles

My #15 all-time favorite album, SGT. PEPPER'S LONELY HEARTS CLUB BAND by The Beatles, is probably one you're familiar with.  It's funny: in my family when I was a kid in the 1960s my parents were big Beatles fans ever since that February 1964 Ed Sullivan Show appearance.  They bought nearly every studio album the band released from 1964 through 1966 and played them endlessly.  But after Revolver the Beatles forswore live concerts, embraced psychedelic drugs and grew moustaches.  The final straw for my mom and dad was the insane Ed Sullivan video for Strawberry Fields Forever...the Fab Four had gone over the edge.  Henceforth it was up to my sister or me to buy any new albums...and at the time we were both lacking in funds, to put it lightly.  Anyway, here in 2022 when you can liberally find music from YouTube and the public library, plus often buy online at great discounts, this lack of access decades ago must seem relatively primitive.  But when I did finally hear the entire album, I discovered that I pretty much liked every track on it...some naturally more than others.  Producer George Martin worked magic devising an enchanted instrumental background for each song. Here's how I rank them according to my liking (but as I said I like them all) ...

1 Sgt Pepper Reprise/A Day in the Life--The title track's brief preceding reprise was always played with this classic closing song on album rock radio.  John's dreamy lyrics are interrupted by Paul waking up and then going into his own dream.  The ending crescendo and crashing piano are classic...

2 With a Little Help from my Friends--introduced as "Billy Shears", Ringo Starr does a Q & A with the rest of the band regarding his practical take on life...

3 She's Leaving Home--a rather melodramatic track, kind of reminded me of Paul's Eleanor Rigby from the previous year...

4 Getting Better--politically incorrect in today's Woke culture, I dug Paul's generally upbeat lyrics contrasted with John's "It can't get much worse"...

4 Good Morning Good Morning--John would later disparage this track of his, but I liked the line "I've got nothing to say but it's okay".  And the barking dogs were pretty cool...

5 Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band--back in '67 when the album first came out, I was confused. Did the Beatles change their name or what?  I think they were just trying to reinvent their image: it worked!

6 Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds--John always maintained the title didn't refer to the drug L.S.D., which the band had begun to take then...come on, dude! 

7 Fixing a Hole--Paul's fixing a hole to stop his mind from wandering where it will go, and it really doesn't matter if he's wrong or right...

8 Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!--according to John, the lyrics are straight off a circus show poster he saw...

9 Within You Without You--George's Indian/sitar-themed contribution is beautiful and psychedelic in its own way...he should have gotten more respect and album space for his creativity...

10 Lovely Rita--Paul sings the verses and the other Beatles, along with some visiting musicians, provide the chorus on this piece about a meter maid. The song gets a little unhinged at the end: naturally it works...

11 When I'm Sixty-Four--a "cutesy" song by Paul, like Your Mother Should Know, Honey Pie and Maxwell's Silver Hammer: it's kind of dated since he's now 80...

Next week: #14...

Rocket Launch, Football, and Tennis on TV Today

NASA's planned launch of its Artemis I mission to the Moon and back earlier this week was scrubbed for technical issues and rescheduled for today, with 2:17 pm being the start of a two-hour launch window.  We'll just have to see whether other technical problems arise as well as keep an eye on the weather during this pretty stormy season for central Florida.  I'll be watching to see what happens...NASA television has a live feed, and you can see it on YouTube, they say.  I'm wondering whether the Weather Channel will cover it...they tend to clog up their weekend schedule lineup with prepackaged, annoying shows.  The mission, which will send the Orion spacecraft on a six-week voyage to circle the Moon with mannequins inside before returning, is the first such attempt since Apollo 17 sent three astronauts there in December 1972.  As I wrote before, the plan is to mimic the Artemis I flight in 2024 but using live astronauts, and then land humans on the Moon's surface in 2025 for the first time in more than 52 years...it's about time!

On a completely different note, being a long-term Gainesville resident, today I'm treated to the start of the hometown University of Florida football season with a traditional home game this evening, this one a more difficult assignment with the Top Ten Utah Utes coming into town to play the Gators.  Florida has a new head coach in Billy Napier and I'll probably be watching some if not most of the game in my living room on TV.  While on break at work around 5:30 yesterday afternoon I noticed two fighter jets flying around low and fast...I wonder whether they will be part of a pregame show.  The U.S. Open tennis tournament will be ongoing as well...maybe there will be an interesting match on ESPN...

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Later, around 12:30 pm: They've already scrubbed today's rocket launch...next window on Monday.  Let's see whether they can at least get the football game in...

Quote of the Week...from Abraham Maslow

If you only have a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.       --Abraham Maslow.

Abraham Maslow was a twentieth century American psychologist who devised the "Pyramid of Needs" model to account for human motivation.  I used a different quote of his earlier this year...click HERE to read that article.  There are varying degrees to read his above quote, but all interpretations lead to the same general principle: how one tackles problems depends inextricably on that person's own mental and physical makeup.  Kids toward their parents, students toward their teachers, employees toward their bosses...all eventually learn to discern their superiors' innate traits and abilities and tailor their behavior toward them in order to secure a reasonable environment.  Well, that's probably how it's supposed to go although what I think happens is that the subordinate in question mixes up leader #1 with leader #2 and gets frustrated with a completely different reaction to their input.  Poor Mary Richards: an earlier supervisor liked her spunk, but Lou Grant hates it!  In my own long, checkered history from toddlerhood on to the present moment, I've dealt with authority figures of different kinds.  And it's tough when one of them sees everything about me as a nail to be hammered back into place...I've come to recognize them early on, though, and tend to quickly get myself out of their line of attention as much as possible.  Fortunately for me, it's been a few years since I've had to deal with anyone of this sort head on...I've been blessed with some pretty wonderful people around me.  Yet in other locales, I've heard from others about their own disheartening experiences with authority figures. So, if you're the one in charge, the last thing you want to be seen as is someone who is springing around trying to catch others misbehaving or only resting for a moment in order to "hammer" them back in place. You'll end up creating an alternative, hidden world among whoever your subordinates happen to be, with them doing everything they can manage behind your back, instead of them feeling secure in presenting their selves, along with their mistakes, candidly before you.  Not a good way to go about things...it reminds me of that great old sixties spy/science fiction TV series The Prisoner and one episode in particular: Hammer into Anvil....

My August 2022 Running and Walking Report

In August I ran 405 miles, running on every day of the month with 16 miles being my longest single run and my highest one-day mileage being 30.2...I've tended to do multiple runs over the course of a day with speed deemphasized. I didn't measure my walking distance but estimate that the monthly total amounted to about 100 miles.  I have been training with the goal of being able to run any distance race coming up that is half-marathon length or less...I'd like that capability to be a year-round sort of thing...not that anything near Gainesville is happening in the near future other than the weekly, free 5K Saturday (early) morning races at Depot Park I've been regularly shirking.  Running during most of the day is easy for me...getting up early in the morning for it isn't.  But maybe it's time for me to shift into a habit pattern of not staying up too late at night and shifting the waking hours to early morning...after all, that's what South Park says old people do.  I do remember that brief time in Leesburg, Florida many years ago when I was a breakfast cook at Jerry's and the place would instantly fill up at 6 am with all those retired folks...might as well get a head start on this early rising even though Jerry's has sadly gone by the wayside...

Weekly Short Stories: 1986 Science Fiction, Part 4

Today I continue my look back at 1986 in the realm of short science fiction, switching to Gardner Dozois' lengthy anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Fourth Annual Collection.  As is usually the case between the two year-by-year anthologies I'm currently covering...the other one is edited by Donald A. Wollheim...there is a small bit of overlap.  Although the following stories are in the Dozois book, they're also in Wolheim's, so I've already read and reviewed them: R & R by Lucius Shepard, Strangers on Paradise by Damon Knight, Pretty Boy Crossover by Pat Cadigan, Against Babylon by Robert Silverberg and Into Gold by Tanith Lee.  And now here are my reviews of the first four tales (excluding the above) in the Dozois anthology, all of them interestingly Earthbound...

HATRACK RIVER by Orson Scott Card

This is a story set in a rural alternative American Midwest, either pre-or-postindustrial. Eleanor is a little girl with an acknowledged and accepted gift of telepathy.  The people in her family and others are very superstitious...no science or advanced technology here.  A flooded river threatens to wash away another family trying to cross it, including a woman about to give birth.  It's up to Eleanor to summon up help, but will it be in time? I had some trouble wrapping my head around this story, although the characters were compelling...

FIDDLING FOR WATERBUFFALOES by Somtow Sucharitkul

A farcical introduction to traditional Thai culture as an alien has mentally possessed a young man's brother, with the aim of extracting on of their crucial components left behind at an archaeologic ruin some centuries earlier.  Lek's abrupt changes in behavior flummoxes everyone and may interfere with the two brothers' plans to open their own live-dubbing movie theater.  Mary, an American visiting archaeologist, romances our hero and sheds light on her mission, tied in with the aliens' agenda.  A really kooky, funny tale...

SEA CHANGE by Scott Baker

Sometime in the future the Tla, benevolent giant alien beings, have arrived and live on Earth alongside a depleted human population.  In what is left of Venice, Italy, one of them dies...but a little boy thinks he knows better as he is able to hear the Tla, now in a much smaller form and in the water around him. Many of them call to him, resulting in an ambiguous ending, either happy or tragic depending on your viewpoint.  It reminded me of a much earlier story from 1943, Lewis Padgett's classic Mimsy Were the Borogroves...

COVENANT OF SOULS by Michael Swanwick

The world is not only severely running down in this tale of a most peculiar, large church with a sinister entity hovering over its altar, but it's also on the brink of a nuclear holocaust: oh joy.  Hard to find anything to hold on to here...everything seems to be getting worse as Peter, the manager, is ordered to fire the aging custodian Sam, who is suffering from cancer, while desperate homeless people are everywhere and a young woman, Jenny, is seen as a ghost infiltrating the church.  Throw in a badass government black-ops dude and the dystopia is complete.  Swanwick must have gotten up on the wrong side of the bed that morning when he wrote this, but Dozois obviously liked it...

Next week: more of my reactions to stories appearing in the Dozois anthology from 1986...

Enjoyed First Round Tennis from U.S. Open on ESPN

It was fun watching the action in the first round of the U.S. Open tennis tournament, held in Flushing Meadow, New York City and broadcast on ESPN and ESPN2.  Although last year's spotlighted players Novak Djokovic and Ashleigh Barty were unavailable, the former being banned from entering the country because of his refusal to be vaccinated for Covid and the latter having retired earlier in the year, I was able to see some familiar faces play, including of course Serena Williams as she made her grand reappearance in a Grand Slam event after a long gap from injury and recovery.  Williams, for whom I was rooting, surprised me by her play and defeated her first-round opponent, Danka Kovonić, in straight sets...still, I was taken aback at the excessive hype and crowd bias and felt a bit sorry for Danka being shoved into the background: she worked hard to get there, too.  Stefanos Tsitsipas, a very talented and high-ranked but annoying player with his court antics, was upset in the first round as was Simona Halep.  Top-seeded Daniil Medvedev advanced easily in his match...although to me it seems too grueling for the men to have to win three sets to advance while the women need only win two.  Leylah Fernandez got in her first-round match and won...she made it to the Open finals last year against Emma Raducanu, the defending champ, who has yet to play.  I also watched Nick Kyrgios advance...he's interesting with his emotional playing: maybe I'll follow him in the tournament instead of absent Novak, who last year had been trying for a Grand Slam sweep.  And Rafael Nadal, returning after an abdominal tear forced him to withdraw from Wimbledon in July, has yet to play as well.  Plus, there are many, many more players at this stage and I'm sure I'll get to know some "new" players.  The crowd is always interesting, too...sometimes I think the folks in the stands are more interesting than the players on the court.  I'm going to miss a lot of the tournament this year as I'll be at work more this time around but will catch up later on in the night...

Artemis I Moon Mission Launch Delayed Til Friday

Today's scheduled launch of the Artemis I mission to the Moon and back was scrubbed because of engine bleeding.  The next window for launch is this Friday around noon, followed by an opportunity Saturday afternoon should that also not work out.  What, you say, there's a Moon mission?  It's been in the works for years and has already been delayed due to politics and cost overruns, but since President George W. Bush wisely set our sights once again on our nearest celestial body to visit and, this time, establish a base, this project of NASA's has become the victim of political tampering and, apparently, mismanagement.  When Barack Obama ran for president in 2008, he promised, while campaigning in Florida, not to mess with Bush's space plans.  But once elected, in 2010 he dismissed a return to the Moon, explaining idiotically that "we've already been there" and essentially scrapping the project in favor of privatization of the space program. The latter in retrospect turned out to be a healthy thing with Elon Musk and his SpaceX, among other companies, stepping up to develop advanced rocketry and space technology for their own planned missions, including Mars and asteroid exploration.  President Trump reinstated Artemis and we're now on a multi-track manned space program, with one company (Boeing) focusing on the Moon and the other (SpaceX) with its sights on Mars...cool. Unfortunately, our media seems more concerned with what the Kardashians are up to than granting adequate coverage to today's planned launch as well as our space program in general.  Last Friday I quoted a noted business figure as stating, "Done is better than perfect", but made a couple of exceptions: operating rooms and nuclear facilities.  I'd like to add rocket launches to that, but the general public, used to immediate gratification in our pushbutton digitalized modern world, tends to regard delays like this as imperfection instead of a necessary part of the process.  Well, I'm looking forward to seeing whether the launch takes place this Friday...at least the Weather Channel is giving it the coverage it merits.  With mannequins instead of live humans aboard, the rocket, launched from Cape Canaveral, will send the Orion spacecraft to the Moon, where it will orbit and return after six weeks.  Ordinarily, my politics tend to side with the Democrats, but regarding our space program the Republicans seem to be the driving force toward progress in recent years, a turnaround from when President Nixon axed the final planned Apollo Moon missions that President Kennedy had envisioned.  Frankly though, I'd just as soon everybody from both parties be on the same page and support our space efforts, but that's just fantasy thinking, I guess.  Should this Artemis I mission be successful, they're planning to send a manned crew in 2024 with Artemis II, and then try landing on the Moon in 2025...assuming the politicians don't interfere, that is...

My #16 All-Time Favorite Album: Monster by R.E.M.

MONSTER, my all-time #16 album, is by the American alternative rock band R.E.M., coming out in the summer of 1994.  R.E.M. is comprised of lead singer/lyricist Michael Stipe, guitarist Peter Buck, bassist/keyboardist Mike Mills and drummer Bill Berry...the music for their songs is a full collaboration among the band's members.  After the group's two previous albums had received much widespread popularity and critical acclaim, I was eagerly looking forward to more of the same type of sophisticated music and lyrics.  Instead, Monster is an in-your-face, sometimes angry and musically harsh record, sounding more hard rock...even heavy metal in places...than anything the band had done before, or ever would do.  I've heard that legendary recording producer Phil Spector would employ something called a "wall of sound" involving a lush orchestral instrumental background permeating his artists' tracks...listen to the Beatles' Across the Universe, The Long and Winding Road and George Harrison's What is Life to get what I'm talking about.  Here on Monster, although Spektor wasn't involved with it, there seems to be a wall of sound as well, with the often-harsh electric guitar reverberating on most of the songs...the opening one, What's the Frequency, Kenneth? takes it to extremes.  Monster has two lyrical themes as I can discern them: grief and sexuality.  The grief over lead singer and lyricist Michael Stipe's friend Kurt Cobain committing suicide earlier in '94 is the reason for what I consider Monster's best song, Let Me In and seems to dictate the mood of the rest of the album.  Other songs express in veiled phrases Stipe's take on sexuality, especially with Crush with Eyeliner, King of Comedy, I Don't Sleep I Dream, Star 69, Strange Currencies, Tongue, Bang and Blame, You and Circus Envy. Yeah, the subject seems to dominate the album although, by today's general standards of popular music, I don't think it's anywhere nearly as flagrant as what's being played now, especially within the hip-hop genre. By the way, that last-mentioned tune, Circus Envy, should have been titled Monster after the album since its use of the word was significant: had it been released as a single with that name I think it would have gone far in the charts.  What's the Frequency, Kenneth? derives its title from the incoherent words of a disturbed man while he had recently physically attacked journalist Dan Rather, an R.E.M. fan.  And I Took Your Name is a brilliant, nightmarish piece, the definitive work on identify theft.  Finally, here are my own personal rankings of the songs on this great album: 

1 Let Me In

2 What's the Frequency, Kenneth?

3 I Took Your Name

4 Circus Envy

5 King of Comedy

6 I Don't Sleep I Dream

7 Star 69

8 Crush with Eyeliner

9 Bang and Blame

10 Strange Currencies

11 You

12 Tongue

Next week: album #15...

U.S. Open in Tennis: 1st Round on ESPN Monday

The U.S. Open professional tennis tournament, one of the sport's four annual grand slam events, will be showing first round matches from Flushing Meadows in New York City on Monday.  ESPN and ESPN2 are showing much of the action, so if you're into other sports, then starting next week I'm afraid tennis is going to temporarily crowd you out on these channels.  Although I'm looking forward to watching this year's action...in 2021 I was at home fulltime recovering from open heart surgery and saw much of the tournament...I'm more than a little confused by the bans going on in '22.  Earlier on, at the Australian Open, Novak Djokovic, who provided much of the interest at last year's U.S. Open, was expelled from that country because he wouldn't take the Covid-19 vaccine...even though the pandemic was raging in late 2021 as well (and on a deadlier level).  Then the French Open, the second grand slam tournament, took place in the spring and he was back on the court.  As was the case in July's Wimbledon in England...but because of the Russian/Belarus invasion of Ukraine that began late February, players from those countries were banned from playing although they were allowed to play in France: following everything so far?  Now we're back in the good ol' USA and players from Russia and Belarus are welcomed with open arms...but now it's Djokovic who once again can't play...although he could in 2021 when Covid was raging much worse!  Apart from the war and Covid bans, throw into the mix the fact that tennis on this high, demanding level tends to produce fragile athletes prone to long-term injuries and you never know who among the elite players will be well enough to participate: Serena Williams, Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal? Dunno. Just give me a match and two good players...I don't care who they are or where they came from... 

Quote of the week...from Sheryl Sandberg

Done is better than perfect.    --Sheryl Sandberg

Sheryl Sandberg is chief operating officer at Facebook...you can react to that information in either a positive or negative way.  I have my own mixed feelings about this pervasive social media site.  It does connect people across the planet and years, reuniting many who had lost touch for decades and live far from one another...I like that.  And it gives me a link through which I can place my daily blog articles...another thumbs up.  But it also tends to bubble off people within likeminded groups, reinforcing the same biased political and social narratives while diminishing alternative views...that's a problem. And I'm not so keen on the tendency for this social media site to be focused on personal bonding and popularity over the exchange of information and truth. Having said all that, I picked the above quote of Sandberg's not for what I think of Facebook, but because it's so appropriate to just about any area of life...at least outside the operating room or nuclear facility, that is.  It's all about the tendency for some people to have difficulty starting, much less finishing, projects because they are obsessed with avoiding any mistakes in the process.  And mistakes are the catalyst in learning, very necessary for eventually attaining excellence in anything. Most folks, though, do not want to be responsible for anything that makes them vulnerable to criticism...or even worse, derision...from others.  YouTube, Yelp and Goodreads are loaded with critical comments...some of them reaching essay length...blasting the creative efforts of contributors, sometimes in very hurtful language.  I remember finding an Arkansas pastor's efforts at teaching Biblical Greek on a YouTube site.  For introducing interested people to the meanings of ancient Greek expressions and words of the New Testament, he fulfilled his purpose although he obviously didn't pronounce like a native.  For this he was rewarded with a pretty nasty comment on his site by a native Greek speaker who was offended that a nonnative would undertake this sort of effort and that his lessons were worthless. People with different agendas and narratives than me will often strictly scrutinize what I do and say and be readily available for criticism, even if it involves twisting things completely out of context or cherry-picking for items to ridicule.  That's just human nature in one of its common, crappy forms, and I'm not going to seek an impossible perfection in my daily walk just to appease massively imperfect, heavily flawed critics.  And now I'm done with this admittedly imperfect article: time to move on to the rest of my day...

Just Finished Reading Royal Assassin by Robin Hobb

I'm currently plowing through another fantasy book series after taking an extended vacation from the genre.  This one is Farseer Trilogy by Robin Hobb and I just finished reading the second book, titled Royal Assassin and published in 1996.  Typical for fantasy settings, it is a different world where the population lives in a preindustrial, pre-firearms technology where despotic nobility still holds the political power and magic manifests in different ways.  The story is told in the first person by the narrator, FitzChivalry, the illegitimate son of a prince and now a trained assassin for the king.  There is a power struggle going on between the princes for succession, and invaders from the sea are wreaking havoc on the society and economy...as well as turning people they conquer into something resembling soulless zombies.  Telepathy exists here, either in the form of Skilling, which a very tiny portion of the population can do, or Witting, a proscribed, taboo talent for getting inside the minds of animals.  Fitz can do both, but his ability as a Wit far exceeds his Skilling.  Our narrator has a love interest in Molly, but sadly being a commoner, she brings little in political advantage to a marriage and the king wants him to wed the daughter of a noble from another duchy to seal an alliance.  Not wanting to give away the story, I'm afraid I might have already stated too much...especially if you've yet to pick up the first book.  Let me just say that a lot of what frustrated me about this genre of literature is coming back...especially concerning not only the overwhelming oppression everywhere in this world where death, torture, or imprisonment are but an arbitrary royal pronouncement away but also the notion of it being a virtue to submit oneself completely and unquestioningly to the whims of the king, who in essence is an absolute dictator.  Since the protagonist is telling the story in retrospect, I can assume that he will make it through the rest of the trilogy...maybe.  Each book is getting longer...that's another typically annoying feature of fantasy literature.  As fiction of this sort goes, I think it's well written and at least the author as taken care not to inject too many characters and subplots into the narrative. That's more than I can say for some other series I've suffered through.  Well, I'm determined to finish Farseer Trilogy, but first I'm taking a detour and returning to Robert Pirsig's great book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, which I first read back in 1990...

Weekly Short Stories: 1986 Science Fiction, Part 3

Today I conclude my look at 1986 short science fiction as they appeared in Donald A. Wollheim's anthology The 1987 Annual World's Best SF, featuring his picks from the previous year.  1986 was the year of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor meltdown disaster in northern Ukraine, then a part of the Soviet Union.  Now it's 2022 and the invading Russian forces seem to have learned nothing about the environmental consequences of damaging these kinds of facilities...doesn't look good for our planet's future when madmen can gain control over entire, heavily nuclear-armed nations and sacrifice untold lives and threaten the world order just to alter borderlines on maps. It's almost as if I'm living out a surreal apocalyptic story, sad to say.  But back to the book's final four tales...before we all run out of time... 

INTO GOLD by Tanith Lee

A historical fiction tale set in the frontiers of post-Roman Empire rule in Central Europe, the remnants of an outpost town, beset earlier by a devastating fire, are treated to a trade caravan from the East that includes a young woman who can transmute anything to gold.  The narrator is suspicious of her motives as she seduces and marries his old friend, the town's military leader.  A story that brings up notions of alchemy and the possibility that some of us just might be more than human...

THE LIONS ARE ASLEEP THIS NIGHT by Howard Waldrop

Imagine an alternative world where the African slave trade is reversed, colonization is overthrown much earlier, and this continent rises to become a modern society.  A little boy in a western African nation likes to read and has aspirations as a writer. His books inspire him to write a play based on an earlier, more traditional society...but will the local publisher accept it? 

AGAINST BABYLON by Robert Silverberg

Here "Babylon" is really Los Angeles in the present time (1986) as a firefighter pilot works with others to contain massive fires started by the landing of three large alien ships around the city.  What are their intentions, and were the fires, which seem out of control, deliberate or accidental?  The pilot's own wife, a freethinker, appears to have been abducted by the strange visitors, complicating matters further.  I think this could make a good movie...

STRANGERS IN PARADISE by Damon Knight

A space traveler finally gains permission to visit perhaps the only human paradise in the universe, a planet settled and terraformed a few hundred years before, with what seems to be a perfectly workable social system without violence.  He wants to visit where their great poet lived and learn why she suddenly ceased writing anymore.  A rather stark, sad reflection on what it means to be human, even a "good" human...

Next week I'll continue reviewing science fiction short stories from 1986, but from a different source: Gardner Dozois' excellent anthology series...

Election Day Today for Florida Primary and Local Elections

Well, today's finally election day, that is for the primary and some local races here in Florida.  Being someone who likes to vote in person, I had nevertheless requested a mail-in ballot in 2020 during the height of Covid restrictions and have continued to receive one for each subsequent election...including this one.  So, I'm finished with voting having mailed in my ballot a few days ago, but naturally am interested in finding out about the results as they come in tonight.  If you're registered to vote in Florida, the polls are open until 7 this evening...regardless of your party or voting preferences, why not get out and exercise your civic duty?  I'd also like to know what the voter turnout is with this election, broken down by party affiliation and demographic groups.  A few months ago, they were actually praising a 13% voter turnout at a local election...that just doesn't cut it with me.  I think the biggest problem I had with this particular election is that where I live, here in Gainesville and Alachua County, the mayor, city commission and school board races are officially nonpartisan.  Still, I discerned certain candidates, by their rhetoric and endorsements, were Republicans.  I checked out the leading Republican conservative-sounding mayoral candidate and discovered that he had either hidden or wiped all of his Facebook posts before he declared his candidacy earlier this year.  That frustrated me because I wanted to know how he reacted to Covid public health mandates and recommendations as they happened, as well as whether he sided with the majority Trump wing of the party in trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election.  I've written in an earlier article that these were two big issues for me, and I suspect that this individual was trying to hide something although he's entitled to do whatever he likes in managing his social media account.  Oh well, if he ends up getting elected, I suppose at least we'll no longer be subjected to condescending political correctness lessons championed by the present occupant of that office.  In all likelihood, though, the mayor's race will end up in a runoff decided in November...

Podcaster's Notion of "Being Yourself" Needs Slight Revision

On his Mindset Mentor podcast last Friday, personal development coach Rob Dial discussed a topic I thought pertinent: how to be your true self.  I've heard of folks putting on their "church faces" on Sunday morning while presenting themselves differently at other times in the workplace, at home, or behind the wheel.  And I understand that different social situations call for different standards of speech and behavior.  Dial posits a different point of view, stating that each of us should be true to his or her own authentic self...and he gave a personal example.  Dial likes to swear, and I don't mean using just lightweight profanity either.  At the start of his podcasting, he used to refrain from cussing and said his listener numbers were low, but after he decided to speak in the highly colorful manner that he is accustomed to, they skyrocketed.  And then he said that we shouldn't tailor our personal presentation for approval from others...yet his own chosen example seems to contradict this!  After all, maybe Rob Dial thinks cursing in any situation he finds himself in is just him being his authentic self, while someone else "authentically" never admits defeats and always claims rigging in any contest they're in: do you know who I'm talking about?  Or perhaps somebody has always had a tendency to react in a knee-jerk violent manner to any perceived provocation from others...and yet another thinks it's just acting according to who they are to depend on chemicals to alter their mental state.  I could go on and on about "authentic selves" and antisocial behavior...wouldn't it be better to work to transform oneself to a higher level, authentically becoming that new person with better habits?  Just saying...

Having been on Facebook a number of years as you also likely have, I've seen myriad postings along the lines of "I'm going to be this way and if you don't like it, go screw yourself", or something to that effect.  How does this kind of message "push the needle forward" as Dial likes to say?  As for cursing, I used to freely engage in it as a growing kid around others, but I discovered that its primary use was as a tool of verbal aggression and immature bravado and came to greatly curtail its use. So, I think that, while Dial's notion of staying consistently true to who you are is flawed in some ways, it is also worth considering and adopting...but only in line with the good habits that one wants to inculcate while working to become a better person.  Sure, consistently be the same person in all circumstances...but be a "better" same person with higher standards...

My #17 All-Time Favorite Album: Wish You Were Here by Pink Floyd

My #17 all-time favorite album, WISH YOU WERE HERE by the British progressive rock band Pink Floyd, came out in 1975, two years after their breakthrough, critically acclaimed work Dark Side of the Moon.  Although I recognize the quality of that album, I never really got into its music that much...other than those amazing few seconds of transition between the tracks On the Run and Time.  This next album, though, is in my mind a masterpiece...although it took me a few years to put it all together.  Wish You Were Here is not a singles-generating album, but four of its five songs have received much album rock radio play over the years.  It opens with Shine On You Crazy Diamond, a 13-minute jewel that most assuredly gave DJs across the country time to get in a couple of smokes and hit the bathroom.  When I initially would hear it, I would usually grow impatient and switch the station.  Then on one evening in the late 1990s I heard it played from the start without any distractions on my end...it was beautiful!  There's a great amount of musical/instrumental depth on this track as well as the others on the album.  Diamond has two parts (although the album misleadingly lists nine): the opening track on Side One and the closer on Side Two.  The latter is good listening, but to me doesn't measure up to the rest of the album.  Here are my takes on the album's five songs:

1--Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Side 1)...a lengthy, slow instrumental lead-in followed by a sad ode giving tribute to a lost friend, presumably former bandmate Syd Barrett who left them suffering from mental illness...

2--Welcome to the Machine...nothing sounds as foreboding and haunting as the opening to this song of Big Brother dystopia...but songwriter Roger Waters apparently meant for it to be about the record industry...

3--Have a Cigar...nobody in Pink Floyd wanted to sing this one, so they brought in a friend, Roy Harper, to perform the honors.  It's all about how the band is mishandled and misunderstood in, you guessed it, that pesky record industry.  The line "Oh, by the way, which one's Pink?" stands as one of the greatest in rock lyrics...

4--Wish You Were Here...another tribute to Syd Barrett, David Gilmour's virtuoso guitar playing stands out here, making it one of the greatest ever "air guitar" pieces.  My favorite track of the album...

5--Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Side 2)...slightly shorter than Side 1's version, lots of interesting musical stuff here...maybe if I listened to it as much as I have the other tracks, I'd like it more...

For the core, most popular years of their existence, Pink Floyd was composed of four musicians: bassist/singer Roger Waters, guitarist/singer David Gilmour, keyboardist Richard Wright and drummer Nick Mason.  Wright passed away in 2006 and Waters is no longer with them.  Waters wrote all the lyrics to Wish You Were Here. By the way, this album's cover is one of the deepest I've ever seen: check it out...

Next week: Album #16...

Today in Florida Early Voting Ended for 8/23 Primary Election

Today marked the final day of early voting for Florida's August 23rd primary...that Election Day is next Tuesday.  On a number of occasions during the last few days, I've found myself driving down NW 43rd Street here in Gainesville, past the Millhopper Branch public library where they held early voting.  The grass along the street and sidewalk was covered in campaign signs and various volunteers...and a few candidates as well...lined the road waving at the passing cars as if they were riding a float in a parade.  I wonder whether anyone ever made a voting decision on a candidate because of all this hullabaloo...probably a lot, sad to say.  I think it's pretty sad that nowadays one of our major political parties seems to have adopted the notion that an election is only valid if their side wins, after the previous president in that party displayed his reprehensible childish sore loser behavior (and still does) in denying his 2020 loss.  I have called "fascist" those politicians in Congress who voted to overturn final results from that election, including my own representative and one of my state's senators.  But this self-inflicted brainwashing in favor of authoritarian rule is not just a symptom of Republicans and the political right, although far too many of them have voluntarily succumbed to cult personality worship.  To a lesser degree, many Democrats decided to reject wholesale Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign in favor of their own idol, Bernie Sanders...to the point where enough of them either sat out that election in protest or voted for the Green Party candidate instead: the result was an extremely narrow Trump victory that year.  And in the late 1970s a populist left-wing, strongly political religious cult, the People's Temple, led by narcissist/psychopath Jim Jones, attracted an adoring, widespread following in northern California...who knows how far it would have gone had social media and the Internet existed back then, beyond the horrendous mass homicide/suicide event that occurred in Guyana in 1978.  So, when I say that I think certain Republicans are fascists, don't get me wrong: this is a human, not politically partisan problem and any group can fall victim to it.  The representative I referred to earlier, Kat Cammack, cast one of her first votes after being sworn in to overturn the Pennsylvania presential election result that went for Biden in spite of the fact that the challenges that went to court had already been investigated and were dismissed.  Yet she calls liberals in her TV ad "dumb clucks".  Well, if she can do those things, I think I'm warranted in calling her "fascist", but in truth I think instead, after giving it due reflection, that she is nothing more than your run-of-the-mill demagogue pandering to the clucks within her own political base.  But hey, vote for her if you want, that's your business.  I just happen to belong to the school of thought that while it's understandable for a politician to play to the groups within their constituency that will faithfully win them elections, their elected role puts them in a position of responsibility for everyone they represent, even those who didn't vote for them. I'm totally cool with a politician I didn't vote for winning an election, but tragically for our future I'm afraid that too many of us are incapable of accepting defeat, and this number is rapidly growing...

Quote of the Week...from Jonathan Frakes

I always enjoyed going into the holodeck.                             ---Jonathan Frakes

You may recognize Jonathan Frakes...who just turned 70 today...by his most famous role as Commander William Riker on the sci-fi classic series Star Trek: The Next Generation.  I checked out his quotes and settled on the above one because...well...it was intriguing.  I wonder if Frakes says he likes going into the "holodeck", which is just a part of the filming set, because it stimulates his imagination, or does he really regard it as a holodeck, in which just about any kind of setting or environment programmable into the ship's computer system can be reproduced.  I like the concept of holodeck myself, although I do remember an episode of the series in which the programming went haywire and the supposedly harmless gangsters it generated suddenly became lethal.  Imagination is a great thing, but I'd like a device that more vividly portrays different exotic environments and approximates various kinds of experiences.  I had expected that virtual reality with its funny helmet/masks would be more developed than it is right now...God knows that the demand for something like this among the population has to be very high.  One of my all-time favorite book series is the four-volume science fiction classic Otherland by Tad Williams...it takes virtual reality technology to its proper ends.  What I'd like from a holodeck or sophisticated VR device is to simply be able to travel to different places and walk around...no game or role playing here, just approximating the travel experience without the burdens of expense, danger and red tape.  Of course, sitting at a French café this way I wouldn't expect to be able to savor my drink or meal.  And how does one reproduce effects like temperature, wind, touch or smell without intrusively applying probes to one's body?  Still, I think it would be awesome to reproduce a surround-experience even with some of the more problematic areas omitted.  I think Frakes' meaning about liking the holodeck was that it was a little like going down the rabbit hole in Alice in Wonderland...you're never quite sure what's going to happen next...  

Looking at Upcoming Running Races...and Some Missing Ones

I'm looking at upcoming distance running races in my local area in Gainesville and surrounding locales, so I decided to check out the Web to see what's up.  I was surprised to discover that there's a 10K race this coming Saturday morning to be held on the paved Hawthorne Trail southeast of town with the starting and finishing line at Boulware Springs Park.  I'm not interested in shorter distances than 10 K (6.2 miles) and think it might be fun to try this one out.  The only problem is that I do get off from work at 10 the previous evening and would have preferred a Sunday race day instead.  Oh well...

While checking out that upcoming race I also looked to see whether there was any hint of revival for three of my favorite races: the 10K Thanksgiving Day Turkey Trot and the Five Points of Life Half-Marathon here in Gainesville and the Ocala Half-Marathon.  All three events were halted in 2020 because of Covid and only the Five Points race resumed this past February...but even that one seems to not be scheduled.  That's sad, but understandable, I suppose.  It seems the general trend for races in these times is to hold them on outlying sites like parks and rails-to-trails courses where the overhead expenses may be lighter on the organizers.  Earlier this year there was a very flexibly run race of multiple distances down in Ocala, completely contained on a looping 5K course inside a park...the distance options ranged from 5K all the way to 50 miles!  But I can't seem to find any indication that its parent company, "Awesomesauce" is even still in existence...certainly no more races seem to be in the works for 2023.  That's one thing that bugs me about the Internet, where you supposedly can get any information that you want.  Well, that's clearly not true, for when someone decides to close shop on something...even if it's gone on for years...they usually just leaving you hanging with no information, wondering whatever the hell happened... 

Weekly Short Stories: 1986 Science Fiction, Part 2

Here are three more 1986 science fiction short stories I'm reviewing from Donald Wollheim's anthology The 1987 Annual World's Best SF, presenting his choices from the preceding year.  1986 was a news year dominated by the Iran-Contra scandal affecting the Ronald Reagan administration...the first story I'm covering deals with the escalating conflict in Central America. It was also the first full year of Mikhail Gorbachev as leader of the Soviet Union...no one knew then the direction he would take his country and Eastern Europe toward peace, reconciliation and freedom...it's a shame someone of his caliber isn't the president of Russia now.  But for now, here are my reactions to those stories...

R & R by Lucius Shepard

Take the Vietnam War and transfer it forward in time and space to Central America and a quagmire of a conflict there...not difficult in 1986 considering the proxy war going on there in El Salvador and between the Contras and Sandinistas of Nicaragua.  Only this story, novella length, goes a step further, injecting ESP and shapeshifting into the mix as a trio of American GIs employ their own "magical" rituals in order to somehow survive their stint of combat duty.  But when the routine is interrupted, each man must decide his own course.  Much more of a war story than science fiction, its themes and conclusions run pretty deep...

LO, HOW AN OAK E'ER BLOOMING by Suzette Haden Elgin

A Wisconsin woman, tired of the escalating war drums and the impending holocaust, makes a simple miracle by pronouncing the continual blooming of a local oak tree...even in the dead of winter.  No one, though, can perceive her intended message as instead they try to destroy it as if the oak itself were upsetting the natural order of things.  Very allegorical to any period in which those calling out serious problems are treated as if they themselves were the problem...

DREAM IN A BOTTLE by Jerry Meredith and D.E. Smirl

The narrator is a space traveler in a fleet that features disembodied brains running complex shipboard computer systems...each of them formerly belonging to a person whose body died.  They are continually living out fantasy lives...a different one for each entity.  It is up to the narrator and his crewmates to keep them functioning and deluded as to their real state of existence.  But a glitch in the system occurs threatening all...and casting in the narrator's mind doubts about his own true existence...

Next week I continue looking at Wollheim's anthology of 1986 sci-fi tales...