Quote of the Week...from Neil deGrasse Tyson

Democracy...of the people, by the people, and for the people...is so fragile that you can vote it out of existence.  Just select candidates who will only accept the election results if they win.

                                                           ---Neil deGrasse Tyson

It's now coming up on three days since the midterm elections that were supposed to determine which parties control the Senate and House of Representatives...and it still is inconclusive, although in all likelihood the Republicans will regain control of the House after just four years of being in the minority.  Supposedly, the tedious time-consuming mail-in ballot counting is continuing across the country, with Nevada and Arizona standing out among the close Senate races and numerous House races still undetermined.  As for me, throughout my adult lifetime I've seen swings between the two major parties and easily accept how voters can run on emotion and ignorance when casting their ballots...I've been known to regret some of my own votes as well.  But implicit in all this cyclic give-and-take of partisan political power is the confidence we have that the losers of elections will accept the results and allow for the peaceful transfer of power.  Ever since the Bush-Gore election debacle in 2000 I've seen an increased amount of election denial on the part of both politicians and people at large, and this is unhealthful for a representative democratic republic as we have.  It reached a head in 2020 when an actual sitting president refused to accept his electoral defeat...and now within one of our parties a large number only accept elections if they win.  So, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, the narrator of the great Cosmos series...and someone I follow on Twitter...is absolutely right in his assessment, which he made just before the election.  By the way, in fledgling democracies elsewhere in the world, the same thing has happened and is happening...the people elect someone as leader who uses the system once he is in power to change the laws to ensure that he will remain in power: not cool at all here in the good old U.S.A....

Tropical Storm Nicole Passing by Gainesville Today with Wind and Rain

Nicole, hopefully the final tropical storm to affect us in northern Florida, is currently passing through the central part of the state's peninsula on its way to the Gulf of Mexico where, at some point, it is predicted to make a turn toward the north and Georgia and the western Carolinas.  In the meantime, Gainesville is being subjected all day and night today to strong winds and tropical storm force gusts along with continual, strong and slanted rain.  I've been tuned in to The Weather Channel, which has been emphasizing Florida beaches...especially those sections like Vero Beach where the minimal hurricane, now a tropical storm, came ashore and places like Daytona Beach Shores which suffered much damage during Hurricane Ian a few weeks ago.  Still, other than the rain and annoying wind, Nicole should pass through our area without too much trouble...although I'm crossing my fingers about the power staying on in our area.  It developed a few days ago east of the Bahama and began drifting westward through Florida, sending Weather Channel meteorologists up and down the eastern Florida coast.  Melissa and I have stayed a number of times at Daytona Beach Shores and seeing the combination previous damage from Ian with the new storm's surge made a big impression on us.  Locally, Santa Fe College and the University of Florida are closed today and, of course, tomorrow is Veteran's Day.  Nicole is not a very strong storm as hurricanes go, certainly nowhere near in impact as Ian, but it does encompass a very large area and will take a while to pass on through...  

Weekly Short Stories: 1987 Science Fiction, Part 6

Today I continue discussing short stories from the Gardner Dozois anthology The Year's Best SF, Fifth Annual Collection.  1987 was an interesting year for me in sports.  In baseball, the World Series, between the St. Louis Cardinals and the improbable Minnesota Twins went seven games: that's nothing new.  But it was the only time that the home team won every game in the Series, leading all of them into the ninth inning.  In pro football, the NFL experienced its second players' strike in five years...this one in mid-season...and the owners decided to use replacement non-union players (scabs in union parlance) to fill in the missing games.  So, in the American Conference East, Baltimore went 3-0 during this period while my Dolphins, without Dan Marino, went 1-2...and missed the playoffs by one game: what a rip-off.  The only redeeming factor in the season was former Tampa Bay quarterback Doug Williams, now for Washington, thoroughly kicking Denver in the Super Bowl...but that happened in early 1988.  Okay, enough about sports, how about those stories...

EVER AFTER by Susan Palwick

This is dark fantasy, not science fiction.  In a medieval culture, this story reads more like Cinderella with Caitlyn subbing for her, and her "fairy godmother" is an earthly woman of a distinctively familiar, scary persuasion...maybe I should term this tale "gothic fairy tale horror" instead... 

THE FOREST OF TIME by Michael Flynn

An alternative reality in which the United States is broken up into warring sections, the "country" of Pennsylvania is visited, accidently, by a scientist from "our" Earth who has researched interdimensional travel and has lost his way back home.  Different individuals in the military interrogate him in captivity after his rescue in the wilds. It's these interactions that make the story work for me as the reader sees different motivating factors at work... 

THE MILLION-DOLLAR WOUND by Dean Whitlock

My favorite story of today's bunch, it takes the state's exploitation of its soldiers in wartime to its logical conclusion as Billy thinks he got his "million-dollar wound" that will take him out of the brutal ongoing Bolivian war and save him...but he instead is "saved" by advanced medicine and returned to combat duty.  He and his buddies soon see that their loophole of surviving this conflict through injury is being thwarted at every step, as modern medical technology and procedures seem to have the answer to every eventuality.  You might think a story like this is promising, but it's really kinda scary...

THE MOON OF POPPING TREES by R. Garcia y Robertson

The 1890 massacre of the Sioux at Wounded Knee and its leading causes, including the Ghost Dance, form the focus of this tale, told from the vantage point of a young Indian woman caring for an elderly shamanic Indian man.  Their dreams are entangled with modern physics of the relativity sort, recognized by a white Quaker at the local school.  He helps them as they embark on a vision quest into the forbidden Black Hills.  And then there is the Tachyon, which really sends this story deeply into the science fiction realm...

DINER by Neal Barrett, Jr.

Where are the birds and why are there so many annoying bugs? This question and others are eventually answered as a man in a near-future western Gulf coast fishing town lives his daily existence in poverty along with the other townsfolk...the food, drink...even cigarettes...are all substandard, but they get by.  And then there are the Chinese functionaries and soldiers who exercise authority over them.  Implied is a future conflict between the Soviet Union and the U.S.A. that's leaves the Chinese in control to pick up the pieces and reorganize the world as they envision it...

Next week I conclude my look at short science fiction from the year 1987...

Podcaster Gives Suggestions for Better Communication

On a recent Mindset Mentor podcast, personal development coach Rob Dial approached the subject of effective communications, which incidentally turned out to be the title of an English class I took in my senior year of high school.  Except that back then the teacher...as was overwhelmingly the case during that time...didn't really teach anything.  Dial, on the other hand, has broken the subject down to interpersonal interaction...usually on a conversational level...with three key elements to his presentation.  They form the acronym L-U-V, coined by psychologist Karol Kumpfer: listen, understand, validate.  This in itself wouldn't be of much help to me, but Dial expands upon them.  With "listen", he decries the way most exchanges go, with silence beyond a brief pause something awkward and to be avoided, and the two sides often thinking more about what they're going to say next than actually picking up what the other is saying.  Instead, Dial suggests that the listener give the speaker his or her undivided attention and, whenever a pause happens, count "one Mississippi" to three before speaking.  This gives the other a chance to continue, often going into a deeper and more meaningful mode of expression. Listen without judgments, and with empathy toward the speaker...for we all have different life experiences leading to where we are today.  With "understand", the idea is to convey that through one's expressions, head nodding, "uh-huh" type cues, and so on, that the speaker is understood (I'm already pretty good with this).  And "validate" is to let the speaker know that you are not there to "fix" them and render judgment, but instead that you are interested in their viewpoint, asking follow-up questions to express that interest and their worthiness as a speaker.  Dial noted that many families have this problem where parents tend to listen to their children with the aim of "fixing" any perceived problems...leading to the kids clamming up and becoming secretive (that was the case with me when I was growing up).  I think all these suggestions are valuable as long as I am focused on communicating in a proactive way...but that's only half of the formula as I see it.  I think all of what Rob Dial presented would be self-evident if I myself, as a speaker, had over the course of my formative years regularly experienced conversations in which the other attentively listened without judgment or interruption and affirmed the worth of my opinion or narrative, not seeing my message as a problem that they were supposed to fix or a challenge that they needed to put down.  The spiritual saying "Do unto others as you would have them to unto you" is the proactive path, but most folks actually learn to "Do unto others as they do unto you"...

Ran the Tom Walker Memorial Half-Marathon Yesterday Morning

Yesterday morning I ran my fourth Tom Walker Half-Marathon race here in Gainesville, and weatherwise it was easily the worst by far.  There's a reason that long-distance races just aren't offered across Florida during the late-spring-to-early-fall months: the heat combines with the high humidity to produce a very difficult running environment as it tends to interfere with the body's capacity to perspire effectively, commonly resulting in overheating.  Although I signed up to run this event during the last week in October, it wasn't until a few days later that I found out the temperature and humidity would be the worst, in the 70s and 90s respectively...ugh, this just isn't supposed to happen in November!  To further aggravate the situation, the clock was moved back an hour Sunday morning, meaning that the sun would be that much further above the horizon at the 8:00 race time. Still, I gamely got up early yesterday morning and made my way down to Boulware Springs Park, in southeastern Gainesville, where it hooks up with the racecourse, the Hawthorne Trail.  I pre-hydrated and carb-loaded on Saturday but knew this run of 13.1 miles over a lot of sloping trail would be a challenge.  The Florida Track Club, which organized this race, provided pacers, with the slowest one going at a 2-hour 20 minutes finishing time; I thought that was a little too fast for where I was at, but for the first six miles I kept up with the pacer.  Then I had to have a conversation with myself about how I would continue, with the heat/humidity really starting to take a toll on me.  I decided to go Galloway Method for a few miles, running for one or two minutes and then walking for one.  This I did up to about the ten-mile mark, when I decided to simply walk at a brisk pace...this is how I finished the race, in my easily slowest finishing time by far, 3:05:29...yet I won my gender/age group (because I was the only finisher in my gender/age group).  Still, I covered the distance...this was my 14th half-marathon since I began running them in 2010.  In retrospect, I probably should have run from the start at a much slower pace instead of trying to keep up with that pacer...maybe I wouldn't have had to walk as much at the end.  After the race was over, the good people at FTC who were managing the finish line let me sit for a few minutes on one of their chairs...thank you!  It's Sunday afternoon as I write this to be posted early Monday morning, and I feel a lot better but still predictably tired and sore.  I'm going to need to look at how I tackle this distance in any future races...I had actually skipped running the Tom Walker Memorial Half-Marathon in an earlier year just because it was too hot and muggy...which proves that growing older doesn't automatically translate into growing wiser!  Still, am I glad I ran this race under such conditions? Hell yes!  Would I run it the same way again? Hell no! You can read the 2022 results by clicking HERE...

My #6 All-Time Favorite Album: Automatic for the People by R.E.M.

For the Georgia-based alternative rock group R.E.M., AUTOMATIC FOR THE PEOPLE...my #6 all-time favorite album...was the 1992 follow-up to Out of Time (#21 for me) and the immediate predecessor to Monster (#16), at the apex of that great band's long run.  My first exposure to it, appropriately, was its first track, Drive, played on my local station Rock/104.  Later on, Man on the Moon came out and blew me away...they're both all-time favorite songs of mine, as is the album's closer Find the River.  In all, Automatic for the People is comprised of twelve tracks that, for the most part, present a mood of melancholia and a coming to terms with aging and death in their different manifestations.  So, it's not exactly a rocker, and former Led Zeppelin keyboardist/bassist John Paul Jones even contributed string arrangements for several of the tracks (including Drive).  I was surprised reading how lead guitarist Peter Buck, bassist Mike Mills and drummer Bill Berry worked out and recorded much of the tracks' instrumental sections and then presented them to singer/lyricist Michael Stipe to bring out the lyrics, surprised especially when his words seamlessly fit with the music.  Below are listed the album's tracks in order, along with a little commentary from yours truly...

DRIVE--Whatever Stipe's intentions when writing this, I keep thinking of a rebellious kid down the street from me when I was growing up who thought he was so cool because of his impulsiveness and surly demeanor.

TRY NOT TO BREATHE--One of several songs at least on the surface dealing with impending death (or drastic change).

THE SIDEWINDER SLEEPS TONIGHT--To me this is about a cute little baby/toddler and the wonder of childhood...

EVERYBODY HURTS--A strong anti-suicide song, to urge those in desperate straits to form a broader perspective about their plight...

NEW ORLEANS INSTRUMENTAL NO. 1--Pretty, no words obviously, I though Endgame from Out of Time much better.

SWEETNESS FOLLOWS--Very gently sung, about overcoming adversity. 

MONTY GOT A RAW DEAL--Very somber tribute to actor Montgomery Cliff, disfigured in an auto accident at the height of his career and victim of persecution for his homosexuality.

IGNORELAND--Strongly political, anti-Republican it seems, Stipe didn't care for the then-recent and ongoing Reagan/Bush administrations and was clearly pissed off here.

STAR ME KITTEN--"Star" in the title is a euphemism for "F###", which appears in the song lyrics: lush and sensual.

MAN ON THE MOON--A combination tribute to the late comedian Andy Kaufman and celebration of rational humanism, not so much about the moon after all.

NIGHTSWIMMING--A wistful reminiscence about youthful, innocent skinny-dipping.

FIND THE RIVER--The video emphasizes death, but the lyrics can mean any impending, profound passage, be it within this life or beyond. 

Next week: Album #5... 

Just Finished Reading Assassin's Quest by Robin Hobb

The other day I finished reading Assassin's Quest, Robin Hobb's concluding book in her Farseer Trilogy after going through the first two, Assassin's Apprentice and Royal Assassin...click on their titles to read my reviews, which I recommend before you continue this article.  As in tightly chronologically ordered series like this where what happens in the first two volumes directly leads into the beginning of the third, there is little of specifics about which I can discuss without ruining the story for anyone who hasn't begun reading this series yet.  I can cut to the chase with generalities, though...here we go.  Assassin's Quest succeeds in tying up the lingering mysteries from the first two books as readers normally expect from the author...bravo!  I mentioned in one of my reviews the absence of mythical creatures in this series...I'm afraid the ending backloaded a crucial factor in this regard, which almost made it seem like a deux ex machina tactic on the part of Hobb that made the ending much less satisfying to me.  I also felt that telepathic communication over distances between the different characters, sometimes knowingly and sometimes not, took up too much of the narrative and drove the story's resolution to too high a degree instead of real-life action and character interaction.  Well, for what it's worth, I'm glad to get that off my chest.  There is no shortage of fantasy fiction out there to read, but unfortunately too much of it involves privileged "nobles"...in essence authoritarian dictators...presented as the "good guys" while commonfolk are often depicted as overly ignorant and superstitious.  If you dig these stereotypes, then you shouldn't have too much trouble with this genre...but it bugs me.  Maybe down the line I'll try a new fantasy series, but for now it's on to a different type of fiction...

Quote of the Week...from José Altuve

 I feel proud to be able to play every day.  That's what makes me really happy.      ---José Altuve

José Altuve is perhaps the most talented and accomplished hitter in baseball today when it comes to pure batting.  He has played for his major league career on the Houston Astros, a team that has won the Amercian League pennant four out of the past six seasons and the World Series in 2017.  It was in that year of 2017, however, that the franchise...and players like Altuve...have received much negative attention for its team scandal in which, during home games in their stadium, opposing teams' catchers' signals to their pitchers were secretly filmed and conveyed to Astro batters to give them an unfair advantage, a clear violation of the rules that has tainted them in subsequent years...even up to today as Houston plays Philadelphia in this year's Series.  This sort of cheating scandal isn't new to sports, and instead of going more deeply into it I'd like to discuss what it does to players like Altuve who get stuck in it.  José Altuve is the last player who needs an unfair advantage to prop up his already spectacular batting, and he reportedly was angry whenever the others tried to give him stolen signals.  But whenever there is a conspiracy within an organized group to transgress the rules or law, be it a sports team, the police, a political group, family, just about any workplace, or even an informal social clique, the "Code" comes into play which compels the members to silence in the face of the violations...this doesn't just happen in The Godfather and Goodfellas.  The result is such members find themselves as victims of a no-win situation that they had little-to-no influence in creating.  Either they come clean and report the violations outside the group and be shunned as violating the Code, or they stay true to the Code and get vilified by the outside...such is the situation Altuve and other Astros players like pitching ace Justin Verlander find themselves in.  I am personally very much aware of this disgusting aspect of human social interaction and have many memories going back all the way to my childhood of this type of group abuse of individuals.  It's gotten to the point where I have a strong sense of when something untoward is going on around me, causing me to instinctively withdraw as much as possible from contact with those I believe are centrally involved.  And I can tell among a group that certain of them are up to no good...even when I am not privy to any specific information.  People-lovers will say I'm paranoid...no, I'm just experienced and wary.  As for Mr. Altuve, I say don't worry, my friend, be happy and play...

More Jigsaw Puzzles

 

At the Alachua County Friends of the Library book sale recently I bought a couple of 300-piece jigsaw puzzles...there they are above, I just finished them.  I enjoy the process of putting together these pictures, with each piece a challenge as to color shade and shapes that interact with each other to form the composite scene.  Three prerequisites to me doing a jigsaw puzzle: (1) no large sections...such as a clear sky...in which there are little to no variations on the picture from piece to piece, (2) the pieces cannot be so similar in shape that the wrong piece fits in the wrong place, and (3) the puzzle has to be a simple picture: no special gimmicks such as a puzzle within a puzzle.  The best ones are the 300–500-piece puzzles I can lay out on the tabletop and assemble in an hour or two, like the above.  Now that I'm through, I'm thinking that maybe I should have hung around that sale longer and bought some more puzzles...

Weekly Short Stories: 1987 Science Fiction, Part 5

Here are my reactions to four more 1987 short stories as they appeared in the Gardner Dozois anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction, Fifth Annual Collection. 1987 may well be the last year I faithfully and regularly listened to Top Forty radio, actually noting with interest which songs rose to the top of the charts.  There was a lot of good music this year, with Susanne Vega's haunting ode about child abuse, Luka, being my favorite song of that year...right behind it on my "list" was T'Pau's one hit: the rousing Heart and Soul. I remember this was the time when U2 punched through into superband status with their Joshua Tree album, highlighted by the tracks With or Without You and I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For. Music videos were still imaginative and creative, and I could have the radio on and every record they played was actual music, even if I didn't like it...not like today.  But enough of music: let's get back to those stories...

SHADES by Lucius Shepard

This novella is a ghost story, set in post-war Vietnam as a returning soldier encounters the departed spirit of his own fighting comrade, a disliked superior named Stoner who died in a village from an explosion.  And as in other tales, Stoner's spirit is trapped in Vietnam, seeking release...and so flows this very descriptive story that reads as if it were written by someone who had experienced that terrible conflict in the most personal terms.  Very gripping...

THE FAITHFUL COMPANION AT FORTY by Karen Joy Fowler

This is a brief, thoroughly muddled tale mixing the Lone Ranger and Tonto characters with Eastern philosophy, social theories and a general treatment of someone who seems fated to play second-fiddle to the more charismatic character.  Maybe it's me, but I just don't get this story...

CANDLE IN A COSMIC WIND by Joseph Manzione

Sometimes stories are hard to pick up at the start...this one was, with a Soviet observer at a US nuclear missile base caught in a sudden nuclear superpower war and conflagration.  But then there are these tall, ducklike friendly aliens walking around later in the middle of what she interprets as the nuclear winter...what is Avdotya Nazarovna to make of this as she blames the Americans for starting the war?  Quite a brilliant story, when all is said and done...

THE EMIR'S CLOCK by Ian Watson

This short tale covers a lot of stuff. The young prince of a small Middle Eastern emirate, soon to ascend to his country's leadership in the face of terrorism threats, is attending college in the USA, where he platonically befriends a young American woman.  The prince is forming his own theories about the creation of humanity, and the woman discovers they go contrary to his Muslim faith.  And...she wonders...what is his rationale behind his sometimes casual, hedonistic behavior?  The prince one day shows her a cryptic message hidden alongside an old church clock...and then she wonders if terrorism might be a viable option after all.  The story, though, isn't plausible to me since it assumes time travel into the past...

Next week: more from 1987...

I Voted, Let the Election Take Its Course

Melissa and I have both filled out, signed and mailed our ballots for the November general election this year.  But those political ads continue on TV, annoying in their negativity and dishonesty...wish I could somehow get some sort of exemption from having to see them...wait a minute, how about just muting them and looking away!  Although progressive documentary filmmaker Michael Moore has predicted the Democrats will do very well in this election, most other people...including myself...think that the Republicans will take over control of the House of Representatives and possibly even achieve a Senate majority, while continuing their control of most state legislatures and governorships.  Why?  One reason as I see it: Democratic-leaning voters reverting to their old habit of sitting on their hands during off-year elections whenever "their" president is in power, as if they expect him to wave a magic wand and decree everything they want.  Folks, that ain't how things work here in America!  You have to be a consistently active, interested voter on the local, state and national level in every election presented to you.  If one party's constituents statistically pass over elections that don't "excite" them, then the other has a built-in advantage that regularly results in unpopular politicians elected and unpopular legislation enacted (upheld by unpopular judges).  Getting out on the streets and protesting the actions of people you could have voted against is NOT "democracy in action" as one deluded senator had earlier claimed.  In spite of all the rhetoric about voter suppression going on in various states, the sad truth is that the drop-off in voting during off-year elections is primarily due to too many registered voters WILLFULLY REFUSING to exercise their civic duty as Americans.  Not that I plan to let this election get under my skin...I performed my voting responsibility as a citizen and can't control what others choose to do (or not do).  Along with our mail-in ballots we received a notice that we will have to reapply to receive them for future elections.  I myself would much rather vote in person on Election Day and only went absentee because of Covid...

My October 2022 Running and Walking Report

In October my running stats were pretty much commensurate with those of the previous few months...just plodding along, exercising every day.  The major difference was that, with the onset of the fall running race season here in northern Florida, I was able to enter a couple of middle-distance races here in Gainesville, both 10K (6.2 miles): the Tom Walker Preview on 10/15 and the Run the Good Race on 10/22.  Both were held on Saturday mornings, the first out on the Hawthorne Trail and the other in the office park and residential area around North Florida Regional Medical Center.  I ran both seeking to establish a reasonable.pace for my age, finishing with times of 1:04:55 and 1:03:20, respectively.  My legs were sore in the immediate hours and days following each race...my training has been on soft, level surfaces, and the hard, hilly asphalt surfaces in these races were a bit uncomfortable.  I thought maybe I should train more under these conditions for future events and then concluded that I don't want to overtrain and overstress the soft connective tissue...a problem plaguing athletes in today's "only winning matters" sports world.  In November, there will be two half-marathons (13.1 miles) offered, both along that same Hawthorne Trail...I've already signed up for the first on Sunday the 6th and if all goes well, might try out the second one two weeks later.   As for my walking, since I naturally rack up the mileage due to my generally active lifestyle, I haven't been measuring it for months, although I easily average several miles a day.  Oh, with regard to that upcoming half-marathon on November 6th, the Florida Track Club is organizing it and they have included pacer runners based on different finishing times...the slowest is running at a 2 hours 20 minutes pace.  My plan is to run just behind that pacer...it should alleviate a lot of the pacing problems I had when I ran the preview race earlier this month.  Hopefully, the weather will hold up for that morning...

My #7 All-Time Favorite Album: The White Album by the Beatles

The 1968 double album THE BEATLES, more commonly referred to as "THE WHITE ALBUM" due to its packaging, is my all-time #7 favorite album.  The Fab Four composed much of the music here while on an Indian retreat and, while the recording reflected a much more individualist approach to the Beatles' music-making then their previous, more team-oriented efforts, the overall effect...and this may have had a lot to do with their incredibly talented producer George Martin...was a surprisingly cohesive work, especially considering its length and number of tracks.  I wouldn't hear the entirety of this album until four years later in the fall of 1972 when a buddy of mine lent me his copy...I bought one for myself soon thereafter.  For an album with such a name, The White Album was easily the band's darkest work and should have been named "The Black Album"...it dovetailed perfectly with the personal period of prolonged adolescent depression I was undergoing at the time (especially the contributions from George Harrison and John Lennon).  The album also was loaded with "clues" about the "Paul McCartney is dead" conspiracy theory floating around at the time, and I would listen intently to the most suspicious track, Revolution 9, for hidden messages buried beneath the wall of noise in it.  That was the longest "song" on the album although it was more an abstract audio collage created together by John and his newfound love Yoko Ono.  Some of the tracks I knew from the late '60s like Blackbird (covered by the Brazilian group Bossa Rio) and Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da, a Beatle-ized reggae tribute. And I much preferred the "fast" Revolution that was the flip side to Hey Jude to the album's slower Revolution 1.  Good Night, written by John for his son Julian, was sung by Ringo Starr, his greatest ever vocal performance in my opinion.  Below are my own personal rankings of the thirty tracks...in their own ways they were all good...

1 BLACKBIRD

2 GOOD NIGHT

3 OB-LA-DI, OB-LA-DA

4 MARTHA MY DEAR

5 EVERYBODY'S GOT SOMETHING TO HIDE EXCEPT FOR ME AND MY MONKEY

6 WHILE MY GUITAR GENTLY WEEPS

7 REVOLUTION 9

8 GLASS ONION

9 CRY BABY CRY

10 BACK IN THE U.S.S.R.

11 SAVOY TRUFFLE

12 SEXY SADIE

13 MOTHER NATURE'S SON

14 HONEY PIE

15 REVOLUTION 1

16 BIRTHDAY

17 I WILL

18 HELTER SKELTER

19 THE CONTINUING STORY OF BUNGALOW BILL

20 WHY DON'T WE DO IT IN THE ROAD?

21 DEAR PRUDENCE

22 YER BLUES

23 DON'T PASS ME BY

24 I'M SO TIRED

25 LONG LONG LONG

26 ROCKY RACCOON

27 HAPPINESS IS A WARM GUN

28 JULIA

29 PIGGIES

30 WILD HONEY PIE

Next week I discuss my #6 all-time favorite album...

Mass Rallies Creep Me Out

Back in the fall of 2020, when COVID-19 was going full blast, then-Florida Gator football coach Dan Mullen praised the over-full College Station, Texas stadium of his rival Texas A&M following a close loss to them, stating that UF needed to "pack the Swamp [their stadium]" as well.  Soon thereafter the next game against Missouri was moved back because of several positive COVID test results among the team.  Now, although this scourge is still raging unabated, there are no crowd restrictions, and the expectation is full stadiums in every football game out there...at least the college ones.  Just a few months earlier in '20, news outlets like CNN were meticulously filming...often using zoom lenses to distort the effect...beaches that were beginning to draw crowds following their reopening, trying to create the impression that assemblages were still improper.  Then, suddenly, mass protests started after the police killing of George Floyd and, just like the snap of a finger, the emphasis on avoiding crowds changed to embracing them...for the protest demonstrations across the nation, that is.  And so have mass rallies, protests and sporting events been used to manipulate public opinion even to the point of brainwashing people along a certain narrative.  I like to watch sporting events, but the tens of thousands of yelling fans creep me out almost as much as do those Trump rallies with all the head-bobbing grinning zombies pictured together behind the Orange Man as he blathers on.  I have attended a church in which a pastor got up in front of the congregation and acted as if we had all been doing something wrong by previously staying at home and watching online services in 2020, and then pronouncing it all over (even though it wasn't).  Packed churches, rallies, demonstrations, stadiums, concerts, whatever...getting a bunch of people together in a concentrated, noisy mass to parrot whatever happens to be the organizers' intended narrative...is the opposite of democracy, where people can individually calmly, quietly, and anonymously select their own leaders and vote on referenda.  I remember in 2016 immediately following Trump's election (which I recognized although I didn't vote for him), demonstrations against him were organized with the ongoing mantra "NOT MY PRESIDENT!".  I thought that was a bit over the top, but four years later it paled in contrast to Trump's refusal to concede the 2020 election and his call to Washington for militant groups like the Proud Boys to swarm the Washington Mall in protest of the Electoral Vote official certification by Congress, resulting in the violent storming of the US Capitol building.  If you derive a sense of legitimacy about anything by seeing masses of assembled people agreeing with you, then I believe you are a part of a serious problem that is only growing in this country.  Sure, I get it at sporting events...it's fun for everybody to get together and root for their team.  On the other hand, I was watching the baseball playoffs the other day and the home crowd, whenever their pitcher was on the mound, would loudly boo whenever the umpire called a ball on a pitch that was clearly far outside the strike zone...there's a difference between being passionate for your cause and being a dishonest, sore loser...did you get that, all you Trumpies?  I didn't think so..

Quote of the Week...from Elon Musk

 the bird is freed                                                      ---Elon Musk

I thought I'd keep the language sloppiness to this Twitter submission by the richest man in the world, who just bought Twitter and made it his own private company to do with as he pleases.  As is the case with business innovators and tycoons, I have a degree of admiration for Elon Musk and his vision for the future.  This is especially true with his SpaceX plans to travel to and eventually settle the planet Mars, and his Falcon 9 rockets kick major ass, to put it crudely.  One problem that seems to infect people of this stature, though, is that because they have shown themselves to excel in a few things, then that means they are geniuses in everything...which clearly isn't the case.  Musk says he wants Twitter to return to the old days during the Trump presidency when anyone could put out any disinformation on this social media platform with no accountability other than that of dissenting comments.  The only problem I see in this is that it's already been established that foreign governments hostile to the U.S. have used venues such as Twitter and Facebook to plant false narratives under fake identities in order to unduly shape public opinion and influence elections in favor of candidates more to their liking...I've heard no acknowledgement of this problem from Musk, though.  Well, although I tend to avoid making "tweets", I've been on Twitter before Trump, and stayed there during what I regard as a fascist demagogue's reign as our 45th president. I will continue to be there as well after Elon Musk's takeover, but I wish the dude would focus his attention more on his companies' wonderful accomplishments and plans in future technology and not be so full of himself...which I recognize is probably a complete waste of my wishing efforts... 

2022 World Series is a Rematch of Classic 1980 NLCS

In 1980 I enjoyed watching the resurgent Atlanta Braves under rookie manager Joe Torre rise from their divisional cellar to achieve a winning regular season record, although they were still a couple of years from making the playoffs.  Instead, the playoffs for the National League championship pitted the Philadelphia Phillies under manager Dallas Green against Bill Virdon's Houston Astros in a best-of-five series.  Both teams had their retinue of great players, the Phillies with Pete Rose, Mike Schmidt, Tug McGraw and Steve Carlton and the Astros with Joe Morgan and Nolan Ryan...just to name a few.  This series, which I initially cared little about, turned into what I still consider to be the most exciting league championship series ever played, with the two opponents playing series brinksmanship on a level I haven't seen since...at least, that is, until the Boston Red Sox turned the tables on the New York Yankees in 2004 after trailing their best-of-seven series three games to none.  I remember that last game with the series tied two-two and the Astros had built up a 5-2 lead after seven innings...with ace Nolan Ryan pitching for them.  Yet the Phillies miraculously came back for a squeaker 8-7 win in ten innings...unforgettable!  Since then, of course, Houston jumped over to the American League and has been dominant there for the past five years or so...they won the pennant last year as well but bowed to Atlanta in the World Series.  Critics of the changed playoff system this year point to 100+ win teams like the Braves, Mets and Dodgers losing to upstart teams like the Phillies and the San Diego Padres, but over on the American League side the best regular season teams prevailed in their playoffs.  Houston is heavily favored over Philadelphia, but just like back in '80 I'll be rooting for the spunky, never-say-die Phillies.  Game One is tomorrow evening in Houston...

Weekly Short Stories: 1987 Science Fiction, Part 4

Below are my reactions to four more short stories as they appeared in the Gardner Dozois anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction, Fifth Annual Collection.  It was in 1987 that I taught myself rudimentary computer programming skills...all to create a training program, using BASIC language, on an old Atari game console that my brother-in-law left with us, that simulated the city scheme computer training I was undergoing for my impending job as a postal letter sorting machine clerk.  My program, consisting of timed random numerical iterations passing by on the screen, fully prepared me to pass the modules that more than 90% of the rest of newly hired trainees were failing.  Switching over to working at the post office was a curious type of culture shock for me considering the social climate there that was vastly different from anything I had experienced in the work force before.  Well, maybe I'll tactfully elaborate on some of that after I eventually retire...for now, let's discuss those stories...

BUFFALO GALS, WON'T YOU COME OUT TONIGHT by Ursula K. Le Guin

A little girl being flown over the SW US desert falls out of a crashing plane and somehow survives, being rescued and cared for by a coyote...or is it a woman?  She soon realizes that there are two types of humanity and her newly adopted community consists of the first, with the residents living dual existences as people and the native animals.  This sounded to me like a speculative adventure as to "what if" American Indian myths were literally true...

GLASS CLOUD by James Patrick Kelly

The extremely intricate and advanced march forward with technology is contrasted in this novella with the often-crass inanity motivating humans...and even supposedly more advanced aliens...in their decision-making progress.  Architect Phillip Wing's vision of a Glass Cloud has been accepted as one of the future Modern Wonders of the World, but his personal life has entered a time of turmoil and all signs of the cause seem to point to an ostensibly benevolent, but shallow, alien named Ndavu whose race is subtlety ruling the Earth from the background and which is promoting the notion of immortality through machines.  The nature of immortality and whether it is even desirable get treatment here, as well as the often-banal reasons for major undertakings...

THE EVENING AND THE MORNING AND THE NIGHT by Octavia E. Butler

The best story of the today's four by far, in my opinion, it's also pure, hard science fiction...and has an ominous bearing on what's going on in the world today.  The cure for cancer has been found in a special vaccine shot.  Only one problem: it drastically alters the genetic makeup of the recipient to the point that they eventually tear at and eat their own flesh...before beginning on that of others.  A young woman is the offspring of two such parents...both of them have succumbed to the brand-new disease and she carries the fatal gene.  In a future of no hope, she visits, with another so afflicted, his mother who was in the advanced throes but has been stabilized at a new, special retreat.  There they learn their respective fates... 

NIGHT OF THE COOTERS by Howard Waldrop

Reminiscent of the old fifties film version of H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds, but with a vastly different (and much funnier) outcome.  The invading Martians have picked two Earth sites to stage their invasion: London, England and some hole-in-the-ground rural town in Texas: they should have stayed away from the latter.  The local citizenry mobilizes with their weaponry, and they sock it to the thoroughly disgusting aliens before anyone else in the country can get there to help. Ha-ha-ha-ha... 

Next week: more about 1987 short science fiction from the Dozois anthology...

Dramatic vs. Incremental Personal Transformation

As you probably already know if you've been regularly reading this blog, I listen to a podcast titled Mindset Mentor.  On it, host Rob Dial, a 36-year-old self-help coach and entrepreneur, puts out each week four twenty-minute monologues on different topics in this field.  His premise is that success in life in general and in one's specific endeavors depend heavily on whatever mindset is brought into it...and that we all can become the people we want to be...within the reasonable parameters of physics, chemistry and biology, that is.  He sometimes, as would one who covers any field in a comprehensive manner over time, sounds as if he is contradicting himself...the other day's topic is a good example.  Dial is a big advocate of change over time, with little habit changes snowballing over long spans into life-altering transformations.  He consistently stresses that folks write down what they want to accomplish in the future in the most specific terms possible...one of Dial's explanations for people failing is that they really don't know what they're after.  I agree that substantial betterment can be achieved this way...gradually over a reasonable time span.  But on a podcast last week he suggested that his audience dramatically "disappear" for six months, work very, very hard on their written goals, and avoid everything else in their lives...besides the bare basics of providing for dependents.  This sounds a bit over-the-top to me and doesn't resonate with other broadcasts of his...as well as sources such as James Clear's book Atomic Habits, which stresses deliberate, small-but-significant incremental directed life changes.  Well, as I've written before, I don't always agree with the person I listen to, even if I derive a substantial benefit from them.  I think Rob Dial was concerned about those of a younger age than myself with really bad habits or addictions, or maybe whose jobs were going nowhere and whose lives had become stagnant...I guess some "emergency" action might be called for here!  But for me at least, dropping out and disappearing for six months, other than for potential future medical reasons I don't presently foresee, just isn't on the plate...maybe it would work for others according to their own circumstances, though...

Time Off at Book Sale and Starbucks, Election Comments

Today is, for all practical purposes, the first day of my two-week vacation although, technically, it began Saturday at midnight, the "official" start of my work week. I took advantage of the free time this afternoon by going over to the Friends of the (Alachua County) Library book sale that had been going on since Saturday...it lasts through Wednesday, located in the 400 block on the east side of North Main Street here in Gainesville.  There I browsed a little and bought two math exercise books and two jigsaw puzzles, shelling out just $5.50 for the lot.  The mask and social distancing rules from earlier sales were gone, but I wore a mask anyway out of respect to others.  Now I'm sitting at my favorite Starbucks off 39th Avenue writing this.  Earlier, while walking from my parked car to the book sale site, I crossed past the elections office where they had begun early voting for the November general election.  It reminded me that I need to fill out my mail-in ballot and get it out...I wasn't sure about some of so-called "nonpartisan" races.  I had previously stopped off at my local library and on the way out picked up a copy of Gainesville's left-leaning news rag The Iguana to see who they were endorsing for the five cryptic Soil and Water Conservation Group seats.  After noting their endorsements, I then received in the mail a "conservative" piece listing all of their (presumably) Republican endorsements.  I was surprised to see some overlap between their picks and the "other" side's. Nevertheless, because of this party's deep infiltration by fascist anti-democratic elements and their general refusal to take the Covid-19 pandemic seriously, I vowed to avoid voting for ANY candidates that I believe to be Republicans.  Sorry, bros, maybe next time around I'll consider you...but only if you dump Trump, come to your senses, and get your act together...I'm actually on the conservatives' side with some issues! Well, I guess I've spent enough time here...time to swing around to Publix to pick up a couple of items...

My #8 All-Time Favorite Album: Houses of the Holy by Led Zeppelin

HOUSES OF THE HOLY, the fifth studio album of the British hard rock group Led Zeppelin, is my #8 all-time album.  It came out in 1973, largely overshadowed on the radio by their monster hit from the previous album, Stairway to Heaven.  Yet Houses of the Holy is loaded with a high quality and diversity of musical types within its eight tracks.  D'yer Mak'er, later revealed to be pronounced as "Jamaica", became a U.S. singles hit later that year.  Many of the other songs received extensive play on album rock radio stations, including my local one in South Florida at the time, WSHE/103.5.  Still, it wouldn't be until I began working in the post office as a letter-sorting machine clerk in the late 1980's that I began to more fully appreciate this album along with the band that produced it.  You see, much of my job then involved sitting at a console with modified keys while letters, one by one, whizzed by me as I keyed in the code for their next destination.  We were allowed to listen to radios with earphones while doing this, and one song stood out as I regularly tuned in to Gainesville's Rock 104: Over the Hills and Far Away, from this album. Then, in late 1990, their box set was released, and Rock 104 played it in its entirety: I was blown away by the depth of their music and suddenly became a big fan of Led Zeppelin although I had known of them since 1970. In the ensuing couple of years, I collected their music, always regarding Houses of the Holy as one of their greatest works.  Here are the album's tracks, along with some brief commentary: 

The Song Remains the Same---Primarily a vehicle to demonstrate Jimmy Page's amazing guitar virtuosity, it's mostly instrumental with front man Robert Plant providing curiously weak singing...

The Rain Song---Pretty lengthy and very slow to the point of being languid, with an orchestral-sounding Mellotron background.  The melody is beautiful...

Over the Hills and Far Away---Two very different songs in one, a slow section sandwiches the central, rousing philosophical ventures of Plant with Page providing the guitar excitement.  I think what won it over to me, though, was Page's acoustic guitar introduction and the keyboard closing, likely by John Paul Jones...

The Crunge---One of my favorite Zeppelin songs, it's a humorous tribute to James Brown...yes, the King of Soul really sounded like this.  I loved the song's crazy beat as well...

Dancing Days---Another personal favorite, its generally dark mood belies the deceptive title.  Page's defining guitar riff along with Jones' haunting interspersed keyboards are unforgettable...

D'yer Mak'er---Ostensibly the band's half-hearted, jesting stab at reggae music, by the time Page put his guitar work into it this commercially successful singles hit sounded like something completely different.  The radio played it a lot around December 1973...

No Quarter---A thoroughly brilliant exercise in utter despair, it may be the most artistically pure piece that the band ever produced.  But the depths of that despair expressed here may be difficult for some listeners...

The Ocean---The title refers to Led Zeppelin's loyal base of fans and the song is pretty upbeat...that's good, considering the previous track!  The song abruptly switches gears from a slow-paced, heavy grinder to a spirited, happy ending...

I didn't mention one of Led Zeppelin's indispensable members: their incredible drummer John Bonham.  His death in 1980 ended the band, pure and simple.  Maybe their disbanding after that tragedy saved them from the fate of others who continued on for decades while producing substandard work...

Next week: my #7 all-time favorite album...

Ran the "Run the Good Race" 10K This Morning

Running In the USA is a good website that has a detailed running race calendar for just about anywhere in the country...I regularly consult it, which is how I first found out about today's race.  Back in 2019 I ran one local race here in Gainesville, titled "Run the Good Race" and which features a 5K (3.1 miles) or 10K (6.2 miles) option, the course being in the North Florida Regional Medical Center office park and the hilly residential area behind it.  Back then it was held in April...click HERE to read about my experiences...but after the Covid-19 cancellations it was revived last year, moved to October.  Since at that time I was still recovering from my July open heart surgery, I didn't participate.  Early this morning, though, I was able to and managed to pull my sorry old body out of bed and get down there.  There were some similarities and contrasts with last week's 10K on the Hawthorne Trail...let me discuss the differences first.  I mentioned last Saturday that there were too many "Galloway runners" in that race, runners who would go through a repeated cycle of walking for a set time and then running for a set time: I didn't encounter any of these today.  Neither did I experience the annoyance of bicycles buzzing by me at high speed as happened last week.  There were not only indoor bathroom accommodations at today's race, but participants could also huddle indoors from the cool early morning temperatures before race time.  Also, last week's race was runner-centered, organized by the Florida Track Club.  Today's event was Christian-themed and had as a goal to raise money to fight the trafficking of women, a very noble cause.  And, of course, this race didn't take place way the heck in the middle of nowhere as did the other!  As for similarities between the two, the biggest standout was the hilliness of the course in both of them and how I have not trained for hill running...I need to insert something for that in my future routine.  For today's Run the Good Race 10K I passed the finish line as the timer read 1:03:20...for the complete race results, click HERE...

Quote of the Week...from Ursula K. Le Guin

The unread story is not a story; it is little black marks on wood pulp.  The reader, reading it, makes it live: a live thing, a story.                                                      ---Ursula K. Le Guin

Ursula K. Le Guin is a renowned science fiction writer who passed away in 2018...today she would have turned 93.  I've read her Earthsea fantasy series as well as her acclaimed novel The Left Hand of Darkness...not to mention a number of short stories.  Le Guin's above quote reminded me of the time in my eleventh grade English class when a poet paid a visit.  He said that although he may have been thinking along a certain thread when writing a poem, it's always what the reader or listener gets from it that makes it all legitimate.  I think that goes for music and lyrics as well...once the creator releases his or her product for others to share, it becomes a property of the world to interact with.  Her opening words "The unread story is not a story" bother me: how many books are out of print and have never been digitalized...or ever will be available for others to read?  Yet with music I can get digitalized copies of some of the most obscure, out-of-print recordings...why are books lagging so far behind in this?  It's true that we do have the mega-corporation Amazon and some other sites to dig up hard copies of some long-gone novels and collections, but their prices are often inflated if they are available at all...

If you've read this blog for any length of time, you know that I like to read.  I go at it with Ursula K. Le Guin's philosophy that my reaction and take from a story is just as essential as the writer's original intent was.  I also write this blog with the presumption that whoever reads it will naturally apply their own background and interpretation to it... that's what makes it all interesting and worthwhile, after all... 

I Want Condensed Baseball, Please

The Major League Baseball playoffs for 2022 have finally reached the League Championship Series, when the top two teams from each league play a best-of-seven series to determine who will be playing in this year's World Series.  Last year's champion, the Atlanta Braves, won their division but were eliminated in the playoffs by wild card Philadelphia.  In the Amercian League Houston, who lost to the Braves in the '21 Series, is playing the New York Yankees.  Meanwhile, on the National side the Phillies face the upstart San Diego Padres for that league's pennant.  I like to watch baseball, although for nearly all of the time a game is going on, nothing is really happening.  Much of the time I'm okay with this as I can easily walk away from the TV and do other things.  But since there are already built-in breaks after each half inning, I'd like to have the option of watching a game with the action condensed to eliminate any time in which the ball isn't in play or there's no action on the bases.  I'm guessing that most games could be reduced to about 20-25 minutes this way.  Of course, while a game is going on live this couldn't be done, but why not have an option...make it late at night if that's convenient...where the game is presented super-condensed, eliminating the boring commentary and dugout bubblegum-blowing and spitting? This especially makes sense to me when I have another commitment, such as work, and can't get myself in front of a TV to watch a live game....I sure don't want to invest more than two hours to watch a repeat broadcast!  Will my suggestion ever be adopted? Probably not, since it's probably all about advertising, anyway...

Weekly Short Stories: 1987 Science Fiction, Part 3

Today as I review more science fiction short stories from 1987, I switch over to the Gardner Dozois anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction, Fifth Annual Collection, featuring the editor's picks.  In covering these stories as they appear in the book, I'm skipping over the ones I've already discussed that were in the other anthology presented by Donald A. Wollheim.  Now, without further ado, here are my reactions to the first five stories appearing only in the Dozois anthology... 

DREAM BABY by Bruce McAllister

A great story in its own right, there are still telling similarities in concept with the Twilight Zone episode The Purple Testament as well as the Stephen King novel Firestarter.  A nurse serving in the Vietnam War dreams of the soldiers who will be flown in and die under her care.  She encounters one, though, with a different paranormal ability...unwittingly attracting the attention of a government black-ops agent...

FLOWERS OF EDO by Bruce Sterling

Not exactly science fiction, but an enlightening revelation about what it must have been like in the years following the forced exposure to the West and its society and technology imposed upon imperial Japan following Matthew Perry's naval expedition in 1853.  An embittered former samurai tries to relate to the new Japan as it adopts foreign Western concepts...funny in places but ultimately shown to be a horror tale...

AT THE CROSS-TIME JAUNTERS' BALL by Alexander Jablokov

Demigod-like humans have the ability to create new realities, entirely different worlds with notable similarities at times to one another.  Some "ordinary" humans serve specialized functions for them, including the protagonist, whose job is to be critic to their "artistic" creations.  But he finds that someone is trying to kill him as he journeys from world to world while trying to keep his marriage together.  One of those stories that show that vanity and arrogance are universal with people, even those with extraordinary abilities and power...

THE TEMPORARY KING by Paul J. McAuley

On a future Earth when humanity has settled the cosmos, there are protected pockets of more traditional, pretechnological cultures...the Lemue family live in one not far from advanced, bustling San Francisco.  But a strange man with high tech gizmos has suddenly appeared, and his presence has the locals practically deifying him.  A teenage girl, one of the Lumues, sees a different side of him...

PERPETUITY BLUES by Neal Barrett, Jr.

The saga of little Maggie from her seventh birthday through her teens is revealed in this humorous tale of strange disappearances, a dubious crash-landed-but-kindly alien, abusive relatives, truckers, gangsters, and on it goes.  Maggie deals with her situations and plights with blunt optimism...she's pretty cool!  Very funny...and very Maggie...

Next week: more short sci-from '87...

Mixed Feelings About a Recent Podcast Promoting Freedom

On a recent Mindset Mentor podcast of his, Rob Dial examined the notion of freedom and how his audience needs to exert more of it in their lives.  To the extent that each of us already has the freedom to make significant choices in our lives and only need to recognize it and begin to change our self-defeating habits that hold us back, I agree with his premise.  I especially related to his claim that surrounding people expect one to be the same from day to day and that sudden changes...even for the better...are often seen as threats to be put down. But before one goes off and starts behaving in ways detrimental to others, oneself, and his or her relationships, it's a good idea to sit down and understand that freedom only works within a framework of standards and laws.  Once when I was a kid in elementary school, a few of my classmates (and I) often chanted the mantra "It's a free country!" when objecting to our teachers' policies on matters we didn't agree with.  Fast forward to 2020 and across the country in the middle of a dangerous pandemic is an explosive growth of self-styled "libertarians" who think they're some kind of heroes by refusing to wear a protective mask around others while proclaiming the sovereignty of private property.  But I saw one of those self-proclaimed libertarians walk into a privately-owned grocery, with its own mask mandate, without a mask...and with a big grin plastered on his face: hypocrite, he expects everyone else to follow "his" rules in his own workplace!  I'm also a little hesitant about endorsing an attitude about freedom that focuses on present feelings and diminishes the significance of past commitments.  I remember a great old movie, You Can't Take It with You, in which an entire family "drops out" to pursue their own interests and skirt working for a living.  But their patriarch had already amassed a small fortune to support them, and they had no problem with having two paid housekeepers working at their home.  Which brings me to an important principle about freedom: is my attitude toward the subject such that if everyone else in the world adopted it, we'd be better off or worse?  A mature attitude that acknowledges personal responsibility and respects work...especially that of a menial nature...is, in my opinion, an indispensable prerequisite to asserting one's freedom.  How does that old beer commercial go? Yes...you only go around once in life: make your choices and feel free.  And if those choices are hurtful to others, I suppose you're also "free" to fabricate an ideology to buttress your behavior and make yourself feel "principled"...

Just Finished Reading Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng

Everything I Never Told You is Celeste Ng's first novel, and it won all kinds of acclaim after it came out in 2014.  I had already read her 2017 book Little Fires Everywhere...read my article about it by clicking HERE.  With this first effort of Ng's, the focus is on an American family living in the Midwest in 1977: the mother Marilyn, the father James, and their three children Nathan, Lydia and Hannah.  Ng clearly delineates the often diametrically opposed perspectives of each of these members, their love for one another and the inevitable conflicts, sometimes very intense.  And...I'm not giving away the story since it happens at the beginning...Lydia's drowning death in the nearby lake is the trigger setting off not only the story's subsequent events and how the surviving family members resolve their grief and conflicts, but also many interspersed flashbacks, including those from Lydia herself.  There is an ongoing mystery as well: how and why did she die, and what about the teenage rebel neighbor Jack, whom Nathan loathes and suspects of foul play regarding his sister?  Guess you'll have to read it to find out.  As for my own reactions, I will say that there is a lot of scrutiny about the marriage between white Marilyn and Chinese-descended James and the real (and imagined) hostility and prejudice that they and their children unfairly receive for this.  And Marilyn is loaded with resentment for how she had wanted to become a physician but was held back by resistance from her own family and society as a whole because she is a woman.  So, I get it, this story...compelling as it was...I believed still derived much of its critical success from appealing to victimized identity groups, not that I am diminishing the fact that discrimination and prejudice affect us.  What appealed most to me personally was how Ng reveals the often-wide chasm of communication differences between parents and their children, especially with regard to how mother and father often transfer their own past, frustrated dreams to their sons and daughters, expecting them to accomplish what they themselves could not.  That I also totally get, and the author nailed it perfectly.  Everything I Never Told You is very well written, but it's also pretty sad and might well cause anyone reading it to reflect on their own family histories and relationships...

My #9 All-Time Favorite Album: Snowflakes are Dancing by Isao Tomita

The great French classical composer Claude Debussy (1982-1918) wrote a number of tone poems and what he termed "symphonic sketches", much of his work based on the piano.  In 1974 ISAO TOMITA arranged some of Debussy's tone poems into an album compilation using the Moog synthesizer and other electronic sound equipment, titling it SNOWFLAKES ARE DANCING after the first track.  It's my #9 all-time favorite album, but from the end of 1974 and through the next year I was mesmerized by it.  My local South Florida album rock radio station, WSHE, played one of its pieces, Arabesque No. 1, repeatedly in its rotation and even one night played the album in its entirety.  By the way, Jack Horkheimer, the director of the Space Transit Planetarium in Miami, used Arabesque as the theme music for his long-running five-minute PBS star gazing show.  The songs on the album are all instrumental, naturally, but Tomita does generate imitations of human singing on some of them: Arabesque, Golliwog's Cakewalk, Passepied and The Engulfed Cathedral.  Some tracks send the listener down the proverbial musical rabbit hole with their dreamlike mysticism: Gardens in the Rain, Claire de Lune and The Engulfed Cathedral stand out.  In 1975 I bought this album and played it so much that I concluded it was exerting too much influence over me, so I took it and smashed it, that's how significant it was to me (later on I bought another copy).  The songs on Snowflakes are Dancing have an insidious way of getting under my skin, but I no longer let myself get carried away by them...that's good because I can hear it on YouTube whenever I like...

Here are the tracks on Snowflakes are Dancing in the order of my liking:

1 ARABESQUE NO. 1

2 GARDENS IN THE RAIN

3 CLAIR DE LUNE

4 REVERIE

5 THE ENGULFED CATHEDRAL

6 SNOWFLAKES ARE DANCING

7 THE GIRL WITH THE FLAXEN HAIR

8 PASSEPIED

9 FOOTPRINTS IN THE SNOW

10 GOLLIWOG'S CAKEWALK

Next week: Album #8...

Ran the Tom Walker Preview 10K This Morning

The Florida Track Club annually holds the Tom Walker Memorial Half Marathon in November...this month they offered a "preview" shorter race, 5K or 10K as you wish, on the same course: the paved Hawthorne Trail.  The starting and ending point is the same: that part of the trail that cuts through the west end of Boulware Springs Park, on SE 15th Street in Gainesville.  After several months of skipping races, I decided to avail myself of this one since it was 10K (6.2 miles) in length.  I've also run on the Hawthorne Trail a number of times in the past...for some reason, though, I keep forgetting how sloped it is.  At this morning's race time, 8:00, the temperature was in the upper fifties and very pleasant.  Everyone running in the 5K and 10K races started at the same time...since I just wanted to establish a workable running pace, I deliberately kept to the back of the crowd.  As the race bore on, it quickly became obvious that many if not most of the entrants were engaged in something known as the Galloway Method, in which the runner runs for X number of minutes, followed by a walking break of Y minutes...and the cycle goes on and on.  I've even trained this way and it works.  But it's extremely annoying and even unsettling to be trying to determine my own pace while different people are speeding past me (especially when they are in groups), only to suddenly go into a walk...I even had to swerve to avoid one of them when he abruptly began to swing out his arms and run just as I was passing him.  Not only did I have to contend with the Galloway crowd, but bicyclists apparently decided that buzzing closely past the runners at high speeds was a peachy thing to do...between the two groups I somehow managed to focus enough on my own running to finish with, for my purposes, a reasonable time of 1:04:55.  I am a member of the Florida Track Club and as such didn't have to pay to run in this race.  Next month's Tom Walker Half Marathon will require an entry fee although as a member I'll be getting a discount.  I'm not exactly what you would call a social runner...no, let's just come out and admit I'm pretty damned antisocial...so participating in these events is quite a stretch for me, besides the very uncomfortable aspect of having to get up so early in the morning...and don't get me started about the parking.  Next week I'm considering running in a different 10K race, this one held in town behind North Florida Regional Medical Center.  I wonder if the Gallowayeans and cycle freaks will follow me there, sigh...

When the results are posted online, you can see them by clicking HERE...

Quote of the Week...from Judy Garland

 Always be a first-rate version of yourself, instead of a second-rate version of someone else.             

                                                                               ---Judy Garland

Judy Garland, best known for her portrayal of Dorothy in the 1939 movie The Wizard of Oz, was both an accomplished singer and actress, with a string of popular and critically acclaimed albums and movies before her tragic death in 1969 at age 47.  Instead of focusing on Judy's personal life, today I'd rather look at this quote of hers.  Nowadays there's a popular acronym, GOAT, which on the surface might imply something derogatory, but actually means "greatest of all time".  So endless sports discussions take place where fans argue about who is the GOAT in whatever sport they're discussing.  You can take it to any field: music, science, art, writing, presidents, whatever.  In each setting, though, the context is externally based.  As individuals our entire lives constitute the context, and none of us should feel obliged to try to box our efforts into one of the categories others have provided for us, nor should we necessarily compare ourselves to those who have achieved greatness in this area or that.  My life is a tapestry of my myriad experiences and relationships, truly something unique and precious.  I do want to better myself but taking on the persona of another to do it according to their standards or those of others will only make me a dissatisfied, cheap copy. There is something like eight billion people in the world today...seems like getting super good at being my individual self in the face of pressure for mass conformity is the way to go, just saying...    

Constellation of the Month: Cepheus (the King)

 

Cepheus, which crosses the meridian just above Polaris (the North Star) around 10 pm in October (Daylight Savings Time), is a prominent northern hemisphere constellation although it boasts of no prominent stars. Alderamin is its brightest, barely dimmer than 2nd magnitude.  Cepheus represents an ancient king, the husband of Queen Cassiopeia in the Perseus mythology.  In this region of the sky the Perseus myth is strongly represented by several constellations: the hero Perseus, the fair maiden Andromeda, the winged horse Pegasus, the sea monster Cetus...and Andromeda's parents Cepheus and Cassiopeia, side by side in the night sky.  I probably should have inverted the above depiction of Cepheus as that is its position when it is highest in the sky.  It possesses several deep-space objects although none are from the traditional Messier catalogue.  According to Wikipedia, the constellation contains a very powerful quasar powered by a supermassive black hole as well as a hypergiant star, Mu Cephei, whose surface would extend beyond Jupiter's orbit were it situated in our Sun's place...

If it's not cloudy, I think I'll go out tonight and check out Cepheus.  By the way, that bright "star" you see rising high in the southeast sky during the evening is really the planet Jupiter...

Next month: another constellation...

Weekly Short Stories: 1987 Science Fiction, Part 2

Today I continue looking at old science fiction short stories from the year 1987, as they appear in Donald A. Wollheim's anthology The 1988 Annual World's Best SF, featuring the editor's picks from the preceding year.  In 1987 I was in my first year of marriage with Melissa and during the middle of the year we lived in Leesburg, Florida, where she had grown up and had family.  Then in September I began working at the Gainesville Post Office...in November we moved back to Gainesville.  I have fond memories of that time in Leesburg, and miss Melissa's mom and dad...they passed away in 2007 and 2009.  Sigh, well...back to the reviews...

ANGEL by Pat Cadigan

The editor suspects this story of being "cyberpunk" science fiction...having read that I went into it with a slight feeling of trepidation, not exactly enamored of that subgenre. The narrator is out on the city street where hustlers roam and rescues what appears to be a young man, abandoned and lost, giving him the name Angel.  Angel has some paranormal skills that come in handy, like going through walls and the like.  It all comes down to Angel's origins and identity...and that of the narrator as well, particularly regarding their sexuality. In 2022 I don't think this story would be as provocative as it might have been in '87...

FOREVER YOURS, ANNA by Kate Wilhelm

This is another of those annoying time-travel paradox stories that I had thought we were rid of by 1987...oh, well. Gordon, a renowned graphologist (handwriting expert), has a new client: an agency searching for special scientific research papers written by one of its recently deceased employees. They suspect his girlfriend of absconding with the research, and would Gordon please try to find clues of this woman's identity from the letters she wrote her lover?  A promising tale with a frustrating ending...

 

SECOND GOING by James Tiptree, Jr.

In an overcrowded Earth threatened by nuclear war and self-annihilation, the arrival of benevolent aliens with special knowledge of genetics promises to make everything better.  And they are so, so nice: wait, didn't I see a Twilight Zone episode that started this way?  Well, they turn out to be well-intentioned, but their remedy probably wasn't what the human race had in mind.  This tale discusses gods as real entities created by people (and aliens)...reminds me of a Neil Gaiman novel...

DINOSAURS by Walter Jon Williams

Many thousands of years into the future humanity has evolved to a much different state than it is now, with the body's functions externalized and highly specialized.  Unfortunately, traits like compassion and empathy have failed to keep pace with the changes as an enraged intelligent species finds their planets callously terraformed by the humans with billions of lives lost.  The Shars, more human than the humans have become, run into a communications wall trying to deal with the "evolved" emissary from Earth...

ALL FALL DOWN by Don Sakers

The tree-like Hlutr dwell in many star systems and communicate telepathically, yet humans tend to be unaware of their intelligence until a sweeping disease infects their numerous galactic settlements, wiping out every person wherever it reaches.  One man seeks the Hlutr's help, although assisting other species is something this life form tends to avoid...will they change their collective mind this time?

Next week I begin reviewing tales from the 1987 Gardner Dozois science fiction anthology...

Examining My Mail-In Ballot for General Election

The other day Melissa and I received our mail-in absentee ballots for the November general election.  There are the easily understandable partisan races, such as for US senator, US representative, governor, state cabinet seats, state representative, and Alachua County Commission.  Then comes a long list of judges that I'm somehow supposed to know whether to retain or kick their sorry superior asses out.  This is followed on the ballot by officially nonpartisan races for circuit judge, Gainesville mayor, city commission, and five "soil and water conservation" seats.  Seeing these makes me automatically wonder who the stealth Republican candidates are in our heavily Democratic city...I strongly suspect at least one of them took great pains to wipe their Facebook page clean of any past comments they might have made concerning COVID-19 policy or the 2020 Election.  On the ballot's flip side are three Florida State Constitution amendments, along with three more local referenda.  I haven't a clue what to do about the judges...seems like our judiciary has become extremely politicized and will only get worse as vacancies arise.  As for the "nonpartisan" races, I'm not voting on any of them until I can distinguish the candidates' party allegiances.  As for that flip side, I don't see the point in "changing" the Florida Constitution after a previously approved amendment to restore voting rights to felons who had completed their sentences was negated when the state legislature subsequently added the condition that they first pay an exorbitant penalty fee for their incarceration. As for my recommendations on this ballot, I have none...just my own opinions, for better or for worse.  You're entitled to your own as well...why not inform yourself and vote this time around?

Podcaster Advocates One Special Attitude Shift

On his Mindset Mentor podcast the other day, personal development coach Rob Dial hit upon a familiar topic of his: how we talk to ourselves.  Whereas in past shows he emphasized building oneself up instead of irrationally claiming to be inferior and failure-prone, this time he took a different tack, promoting the idea that folks can experience a much better existence if they would do apply just one principle to their daily lives.  Instead of approaching a task or obligation with the words "I have to do this", switch to an attitude of gratitude and say, "I get to do this", while considering the blessings of being in such a situation when so many in the world are deprived. "I have to go to work" becomes "I'm grateful that I have a good job that I get to go to".  "I have to drive someone somewhere" becomes "I'm grateful I get to own a good, dependable car that I get to drive around".  "I have to tell someone I love something unpleasant" becomes "I am grateful to have such a wonderful soul in my life with whom I get to share my trials". "I have to clean and declutter my home" becomes "I'm grateful to get to clean this home for the space, shelter and privacy it provides".  "I have to work out" becomes "I'm grateful I have a body that is healthy and mobile enough for me to get to exercise".  And on and on it goes.  It doesn't mean I have to be a Pollyanna and pretend problems don't exist, just to put it all in perspective and count my blessings.  Sounds reasonable to me...now it's time to sign off, since I have to get to take the dog outside...

My #10 All-Time Favorite Album: Kasabian by Kasabian

KASABIAN is an English alternative rock band, and their 2004 debut release, also titled KASABIAN, is my #10 all-time favorite album.  I first heard their first American hit single from it, Club Foot, while listening to my favorite radio station at the time, 100.5/WHHZ "The Buzz"...they were Gainesville's only alternative rock broadcasters.  Although I didn't care for that song as much, I began to notice this very creative and talented band when the next track L.S.F. (Lost Souls Forever) begin to get airplay and I saw its video on YouTube.  Then came Reason is Treason, another song from the album: Kasabian was definitely a new favorite of mine.  They stay true to their rock n' roll roots with the guitar and drums strong on their songs, but they also are fearless with the keyboard and instrumental backgrounds.  For this first album the band consisted of songwriter Sergio Pizzorno, who also did backup vocals and guitar, and wrote all of the lyrics.  Chris Karloff, who would leave Kasabian during their recording of the next album, co-wrote some of the music and was also on guitar.  Chris Edwards was bassist and Ian Matthews drummer.  The group's front man was Tom Meighan, who would be asked to leave Kasabian in 2020 after he allegedly beat up his fiancée.  The two eventually married, but Kasabian goes on without him or his trademark voice.  But in 2004, Meighan's imprint was everywhere and although probably not the best singer in the world, like the Stones' Mick Jagger, you kind of liked it anyway somehow.  Here are my listings of the tracks from the album Kasabian, in the order of my preference...you can hear them on YouTube:

1 REASON IS TREASON

2 TEST TRANSMISSION

3 L.S.F. (LOST SOULS FOREVER)

4 PROCESSED BEATS

5 BUTCHER BLUES

6 RUNNING BATTLE

7 I.D.

8 CUT OFF

9 CLUB FOOT

10 OVARY STRIPE

11 U BOAT

There is an alternate Reason is Treason version on the U Boat track, about three minutes after that song ends.  Ovary Stripe is purely instrumental, as are the two brief tracks Orange and Pinch Roller.  At this writing Kasabian has come out with seven studio albums, each with at least one really good song, and Switchblade Smiles from their Velociraptor album is my #2 all-time favorite song.  But their debut work, in my opinion, is the best: great from start to finish.  Sergio Pizzorno has been the creative genius behind this band, operating...at least until Meighan's departure...in the background much like The Who's Pete Townshend.  Hopefully, Kasabian will be around a long time to come...but I'm content with what they've produced so far...

Next week: Album #9...

Baseball Playoffs Underway Amid Debate about Home Run King

"My" two Major League Baseball teams here in Florida, Tampa Bay and Miami, both in their own ways have figured into the playoffs, now underway with the second wildcard-round games scheduled today.  The American League Rays are in the playoffs as a wild card team, playing the Cleveland Guardians on the road in a best-of-three series having lost their first game yesterday, 2-1.  And although the Marlins did not make the National League playoffs (good pitching, lousy hitting), in their season-end series against Milwaukee, they went up there and handled the Brewers, spoiling their playoff hopes.  I'll be following the playoffs today, although I won't exactly be frozen in front of the TV set.  This year New York Yankees slugger Aaron Judge set the American League single season home run record at 62...but Barry Bonds of the National League San Francisco Giants still holds the official Major League record at 73, from 2001 during the insane peak of the steroid era from 1998-2001 when Bonds, Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa among them had home run seasons of 73, 70, 66, 65, 64 and 63.  Since the baseball authorities regard them all as official and haven't "asterisked" them, they are the records pure and simple.  We've had periods during the span of baseball "history" when the ball itself was "juiced up" to make the game livelier...in fact this alteration is what ushered in the Babe Ruth era of home runs in the 1920s.  And speaking of Ruth and that era, for each and every one of his career home runs, he accomplished it with blacks barred from competing against him, either as opposing pitchers or fellow sluggers...all because of the color of their skin: are Ruth's records really any more legitimate that that of Bonds?  I remember back in '98 when McGwire and Sosa were both on track to beat Roger Maris' 1961 benchmark of 61 home runs, and the baseball establishment was hyping it all up as much as they could to generate more interest in their sport, which had been in decline since the disastrous season-ending strike of 1994.  I'm not saying McGuire, Sosa, Bonds, and many other players of that era were right in ingesting performance-enhancing substances, but if you are going to compare their records with those from other times, then I think it's only fair that you also consider factors that favored those other players back then...