Quote of the Week...from Dean Karnazes

Struggling and suffering are the essence of a life worth living.  If you're not pushing yourself beyond the comfort zone, if you're not demanding more from yourself...expanding and learning as you go...you're choosing a numb existence.  You're denying yourself an extraordinary trip.           ---Dean Karnazes

I've read criticisms about ultra-distance runner Dean Karnazes such as he's not even one of the Top Ten ultramarathon racers and he's just good at marketing himself.  To me that's like saying that the Beatles, none of whom had formal musical training or could read music, were "just good at marketing".  While I always defer to the elite in any sport, including distance running, it was Dean Karnazes with his book Ultramarathon Man who renewed my interest in this activity, not the fast finishers...and Karnazes has repeatedly emphasized that he's not among those elite.  But he is an elite at popularizing the sport and encouraging others, although I have to admit that I don't exactly appreciate someone standing there on the sidelines near the finish of a long race yelling at me to "Push it!"...there's such a thing as too much encouragement, too!  Regarding the above quote, which I believe is an excerpt from that first book of his, I wholeheartedly agree with it...although I don't think it necessarily means that all of us are suited for ultra-distance running...or running at all for that matter.  I knew a kid in high school who was like Karnazes in that he was always taking the "extreme effort" and "no gain without pain" position about running, often yelling at others to try harder...I liked his enthusiasm, but I think he crossed the line at the same time with his sometimes-unsolicited exhortations.  It's also possible to take one single endeavor and make it into a kind of idol while neglecting other important areas of one's life...Dean's quote has its greatest use when applied across the board to all areas of our lives, not just one.  And one other thing: I don't think it's profitable to seek out struggling and suffering for their own sake...but if you're engaged in something worthwhile and those feelings arise, then the above quote makes a lot of sense...

Misleading MSN Newsfeed Story Typical of Media Manipulation in Our Times

This morning as I started up my computer the MSN newsfeed flashed up on the screen with its picks for "news" stories.  One of them carried the provocative title "Iowa Head Coach snubs Jill Biden invite with brutal message for First Lady and President".  It comes at the heels of Iowa's NCAA women's championship game loss to LSU, which the Bidens supposedly watched.  Mrs. Biden liked how Iowa played and actually did invite the Hawkeyes coach and team to the traditional White House visit usually reserved to the champion...LSU was naturally congratulated and invited as well.  I wanted to find out the "brutal message" about the "snub", so I read further and discovered that Iowa coach Lisa Bluder graciously thanked Jill Biden, but said that Iowa would stick with tradition and allow the champions to go visit the President and his wife in Washington.  Nothing mean or controversial or personal or political, no "brutal message" or "snub".  Just a classy example of good sportsmanship and deference to the actual team that won it all.  This is just one example of how the way news is presented can created division and rancor among the population.  If you're someone who just goes by headlines on newsfeeds or lead-in comments on news shows to get your information, you're liable to find yourself seriously misinformed at the end of the day.  These news "sources" depend upon viewer and reader interest, and so they cynically devise misleading (or, in this case false) headlines to tease you into committing to the general article or story.  The network news shows pull this stunt as well by hinting at a tantalizing story later on in the show to keep you watching...when it does come up it usually is hardly discussed and isn't anything like how it was promoted earlier.  Nowadays I think the big news story is the news story itself, and how American public opinion is being manipulated by hucksters to become overemotional and more and more dependent on them to get that "high", a feeling that has absolutely nothing to do with learning what's really going on in the world around them...

Weekly Short Stories: 1990 Science Fiction, Part 3

It's Wednesday, and so once again here I am discussing short science fiction from 1990 as it appeared in Gardner Dozois' excellent anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction, Eighth Annual Collection.  In the summer of that year, nothing in the international news seemed to indicate trouble...in fact, the Soviets had withdrawn from its invasion of Afghanistan and there was a blooming of freedom, democracy and independence in a number of Eastern European countries.  Then, it seemed suddenly, Iraq's dictator Saddam Hussein instigated a conflict with oil-rich neighboring Kuwait and invaded it, setting off a chain reaction of alliances, culminating in the United States and several allies, with at least the tacit support of usual adversaries Iran and Syria, amassing troops in Saudi Arabia near occupied Kuwait's border in Operation Desert Shield...to be changed the following January to Desert Storm when the fighting began. There had been a lot of debate in Congress as to whether to authorize action, but the measures to support President Bush (the original one) eventually passed.  Well, back to these own tense times of ours today and my reactions to three more stories...  

THE ALL-CONSUMING by Robert Frazier 

In a rural Central America of the near future, where the economy sucks and the nearby jungle is a morass of pollution and extremely dangerous, toxic and utterly gross mutated life forms, a man arrives with a lot of money to lure a local man, whose outlook on life has turned cynical because of his past unjust treatment, to provide him with the jungle to eat...and he will eat anything!  The vivid imagery in this story is brilliant and completely disturbing...not for the queasy or weak at heart.  Yet can I say that it resolves itself equally brilliantly? Totally impossible, but fun to speculate about...

PERSONAL SILENCE by Molly Gloss

In a nightmare future of perpetual world war...and I mean covering the whole planet...a pacifist journalist literally mutilated from his travel experiences writes about his one-man planet-crossing from different locales, to be serialized in an overseas paper.  He is now in Miffle, Washington...a nondescript little town on the tip of the state's northwest peninsula...as he decides to build a boat to take him to Vancouver a few miles north.  The man letting him camp on his property has a daughter, and she carries with her a disturbing prophecy about herself and the war.  This is more than about plot or characters, rather instead a mood piece about how it might all go down if the fools at the top aren't careful with their lethal toys and egos: in that sense it's scary seeing some of them doing essentially the same kinds of things today...

INVADERS by John Kessel

This satirical tale jumps between three areas: Pizzaro's Spanish invasion of the Incan Empire in 1532, a "soft" invasion of cocaine-dependent aliens in the near-future bringing with them all sorts of panaceas for humanity's problems...and the author essaying out his thoughts on the fictional genre of science fiction.  A light-hearted story about how time travel into the past might be possible...but I saw the Christopher Pine Star Trek movie a few years ago and already know about it...

Next week I continue with reviews of sci-fi tales from 1990...

Paul McCartney's Final Three Wings Albums

From 1976 to 1979 former Beatle Paul McCartney made and released his final three albums with himself, wife Linda and their band Wings: Wings at the Speed of Sound (1976), London Town (1978) and Back to the Egg (1979).  Since I don't actually own these albums, I checked them out on YouTube...which in itself was a bit confusing, since later CD editions of them tended to be enhanced with all sorts of extra tracks not on the original vinyl albums.  So, I went back to Wikipedia and determined the basic songs to listen to.  Of course, I was already familiar with singles hits from the three LPS like Let 'Em In, Silly Love Songs and With a Little Luck.  I listened to all three albums and came away from the experience slightly pleased, but at the same time disappointed...with one very notable exception.  I appreciated that McCartney had the good sense to mix his ballads, rockers, and "middling" tracks to sustain listener interest, and the music was for the most part fun, light stuff...nothing to write home about, though, and just occasionally there would be a stinker like Old Siam, Sir (off Back to the Egg).  My immediate impressions were that I liked Beware My Love and San Ferry Anne from Wings at the Speed of Sound, Backwards Traveller and I've Had Enough from London Town, and Getting Closer, We're Open Tonight, Spin It On and Baby's Request on Back to the Egg...that last mentioned track reminded me a bit of Paul's Honey Pie on the Beatles' White Album.  But the greatest song by far from these three albums...and one that I've not been able to stop playing in my head, was his Speed of Sound love ballad Warm and Beautiful.  To me, it's the best thing I've heard Paul McCartney do since the Beatles and would have been a dominant track on any of their albums had it appeared on them.  After Back to the Egg, McCartney disbanded Wings and went back to "solo" work...but I think that in my next article about his post-Beatles musical career I'll discuss the non-album singles he recorded over the span of the 1970s...

Action Before Self-Belief is a Recurring Podcaster's Theme

Rob Dial is a 36-year old podcaster who specializes in personal development coaching, residing in my sister's home town of Austin, Texas.  Sometimes he gets a little...no, a lot...more materialistic than me about his presentation, showing off the millions he's made and the numerous places to which he's travelled.  Yet he also recognizes that each of us are constituted differently with our own values and sense of what direction we want our lives to go.  So that makes him something more than a multilevel marketing huckster trying to shame me into leaving my steady employment to make it on my own like him, and I respect him for that.  I also appreciate his different approaches to self-improvement, which he cycles back through over the course of weeks, reinforcing a few basic principles.  One of these, from a recent show, is that you don't start anything challenging by having to first believe in yourself...but if you already have that self-confidence that's cool, too.  No, instead, you figure out what you want in as much detail as possible, plan it out in likewise fashion, and then take action...even if you fear failure.  You most like will fail some, and then learn from your mistakes and get better.  And then as you get better, you will begin to believe in yourself.  Determining what you want, how you will get it, acting on it...and finally, the feelings...are the order that Dial presents for getting stuff done...sounds reasonable to me.  I just have to figure out what I want to do...

Just Finished Reading I Am the Cheese by Robert Cormier

A couple of weeks ago while in Lexington, Kentucky we paid a visit to their Peddler's Market, a regional chain of flea markets presented on a higher, more customer-friendly level.  I found there an old paperback book, I Am the Cheese, by Robert Cormier, read the back accolade (School Library Journal Best Book of the Year, 1977) and picked it up, having just finished reading it.  It belongs to the "young adult" genre of fiction, and vividly reminded me of what was in vogue in film during that era.  We're talking about films and books full of devious government "deep state" secret and ruthless organizations preying upon innocent Americans, depriving them of their civil rights and even killing them should a decision come down from the top...The Parallax View, Marathon Man and Three Days of the Condor immediately come to my mind.  In I Am the Cheese, a teenage boy, Adam Farmer, finds himself desperately riding his bicycle down treacherous roads in rural Massachusetts to find his father, who he thinks is confined somewhere in southern Vermont.  Interspersed with the narrative of his adventures are sessions of him as a sort of patient/inmate being interviewed by a man calling himself Brint and being fed drugs whenever he gets too anxious as he describes his life, families, friends, enemies, and the special circumstances that had resulted in him being here.  The author presents it all as a mystery...one which is resolved at the book's end.  The question is whether an ordinary citizen can live a life of integrity and decency and, when presented with a tough decision, be able to rely on his government to back him up.  The answer in this story by Cormier, known to have written some pretty depressing books, is a resounding NO...which shouldn't surprise anyone recalling the culture of suspicion and conspiracies popularized in the kinds of movies I mentioned earlier. Somebody I know talked to me about this book many, many years ago but I forgot who...I just know that it came out after I finished high school.  But it's clearly the kind of reading I suspect many, many school kids from that time were assigned in English classes.  I'm not knocking the story per se, but the narrative here...along with the stuff coming out from other sources...fed into what I think eventually caused a groundswell of popular cynicism about government and its intentions: demagogic political outsiders, I believe, like Ross Perot and Donald Trump, would later manipulate that negative feeling to their advantage...

My March 2023 Running and Walking Report

In March I ran enough, about 310 miles, although less than the previous few months because of the week's vacation that saw me traveling through Georgia, Tennesse and Kentucky.  I ran in two of Gainesville's local Depot Parkrun 5K's, on the 11th and 25th, doing these public races more or less for the sake of consistency.  I successfully tried wider, more thickly padded running shoes to protect my toes, but now I have another, better pair that I began wearing yesterday.  As for walking, I didn't do anything extra besides my regular daily routine, which piles up mileage at my warehouse-size facility over the course of my workday. If you've read some of my running posts on this blog, you may already know of marathoner and running popularizer Jeff Galloway, who devised a clever "walk-run" strategy to get people through long-distance races like half-marathons and marathons: alternate "x" minutes of running with "y' minutes of walking...back in 2010 I made a lot of progress training on long outings with a 6:1 running-to-walking ratio.  But now I'm thinking of turning Galloway's strategy on its head and alternating a lot of (fast-paced) walking with short running spikes thrown in. I especially think that this would suit the upcoming (very) hot summer season here in northern Florida...should be interesting to see how it works.  In April, on Saturday the 8th, a race is taking place in Hawthorne at the very place I ran a half-marathon back in January.  I had even considered entering their marathon distance race but have retreated to the half-marathon as my distance, should I choose to run in it...I'm going to check the weather forecast for Saturday before deciding.  On the same morning the Florida Track Club is holding a 5K race, originally slated to be at a park near my home but just recently moved way the hell over to the other side of town.  Well, if I have to go that far then I might as well just keep on driving all the way to Hawthorne for the other race. A couple of days ago I wrote about how three full videos of the New York City Marathon from the perspectives of fast, medium and slow finishers were posted on YouTube...I suggest you watch them, clicking on my links within that article to the three videos.  I'm thinking that with long-distance races my future rests in that third, slowest, video and the strategies I saw in it, especially concerning those walking breaks interspersed throughout the run...   

Quote of the Week...from Clint Eastwood

Baxters over there, Rojos there...me right smack in the middle.  

                                                      ---Clint Eastwood, from the movie A Fistful of Dollars

Akira Kurosawa's 1961 Japanese movie Yojimbo, where a roaming samurai serves as the nameless character Clint Eastwood portrays and the plots of both movies tend to intertwine, culminated in a successful lawsuit by the Japanese filmmaker...but 1964's A Fistful of Dollars is much more widely known and launched Eastwood into superstardom.  Eastwood's unnamed character, a roamer as well, rides into a small western border area town bedeviled by two rival crime families: the liquor traders Rojos and the gun merchants Baxters.  Standing between the two families' houses, out on the balcony with the local bar owner Silvanito (played by José Calvo), Eastwood makes the above remark gesturing first toward the left and then to the right, anticipating what he will do to take advantage of the conflict between the two gangs as he manipulates them to violence against each other.  As for me, I'm not bent on messing with anyone...much less organized criminals...but sometimes I, too, feel as if I am "right smack in the middle" between two polarized groups of people.  Take running, for example.  Ever since I could run as a little kid, I discovered that I could usually do it faster than almost anyone else...for short sprints. I really wanted to be able to sustain that speed in longer runs, but as I went through high school, I discovered that my abilities in that department plateaued at a relatively uncompetitive level on varsity teams.  But distance running as an open social activity began to explode in popularity during the 1970s...still, from 1976 up to 2008 I avoided racing.  Since then, I've participated in about 100 events ranging from 5K (3.1) miles to marathon (26.2 miles) and usually in a pretty decent shape of training and fitness, putting me "right smack in the middle" as good ol' Clint would say, gesturing toward the left at the elite athletes and toward the right at the bottom-finishers (instead of the cinematic Baxters and Rojos). I can further extend this "right smack in the middle" notion to interaction with a number of families either obviously wealthier than me or much poorer. I don't know whether it is me or them with our respective attitudes, but although I am pretty much in the middle, average as far as my material wealth is concerned, I'm either perceived as being poor or rich to these others...with a resulting slant in how I'm seen and judged: but I'm just me, the same person!   I'm a materialist, too, but beyond a certain point with it I've grown to see that ostentatiously flaunting "stuff" and wealth...or, on the other extreme, deploring the material state I'm in and getting defiant and bitter about it...as exercises in futility.  Fortunately, I also know some people, with whom I've had the pleasure to spend time with recently, who either have substantially more material wealth than I or substantially less, and they...God bless them...don't make an issue of the disparity as if I've done anything wrong.  I don't tie my sense of self-worth in with my economic status (and I lived a spartan, monk-like existence for a number of years in my young adult life) and don't appreciate others trying to impose their judgements on me. But maybe that's just me setting my own identity as well "in the middle": move over, Clint...

Three NYC Marathon Full Videos on YouTube

I noticed that YouTube has full-length marathon runs, taken from a runner's vantage point.  I focused on the New York City Marathon and three videos from it, based on three widely different finishing times. (click on each of the following to watch them...I don't know how long they'll be up): (1) 3 hours 13 minutes, (2) 4 hours 46 minutes, and (3) 6 hours 6 minutes  The New York City Marathon is on the first Sunday in November and takes entrants through all five boroughs, starting with Staten Island and passing through Brooklyn (for a long time), Queens, Manhattan, the Bronx and then Manhattan again before ending in the southwestern corner of Central Park.  The first (and fastest) video was taken in 2019 by a Chinese-speaking runner with plenty of friends to chat with along the course of the race...that was pretty cool.  In this video most everyone (but not all) were relatively young and clearly in good shape with similar strides and running styles.  The second and third videos were from this past November's race and, to me are the most interesting because they represent approximations of where I was twelve years ago...let me explain.  By the time 2011 rolled around, I was 54 and seriously training for an attempt at a marathon, for the first time in my life.  A couple of times in the previous weeks I had surmounted 20 miles in neighborhood training runs but soon thereafter would hit that fabled "runner's wall" when the energy level would suddenly plummet.  Then, on January 15, 2011, I pulled it off: a 26.6 mile run in 4 hours 23 minutes.  I thought then that I was more than ready for a go at the Ocala Marathon scheduled for Sunday the 23rd...but I developed an IT-band injury near my knee that manifested in the form of pain after about ten miles of running.  I rested myself to get better before the actual race and was fine for the first ten miles again...and then the pain began to reappear and intensify to the point where, until reaching Mile 19, I alternated brief painful runs with walks, which were painless as long as I didn't run.  But for the last 7 miles of the race I had to walk...and slowly at that.  It was a big blow to me because not only would my finishing time be lousy, but I would have to spend weeks healing, meaning that I wouldn't be able to run in Gainesville's Five Points of Life Marathon the following month.  I hobbled over the finishing line at 6 hours 4 minutes...with hardly a soul there to greet me...and after being unceremoniously instructed to get on the sidewalk because traffic was being opened up again.  This experience was totally different in the NYC marathon where boisterous crowds shouted encouragement and congratulations to even the slowest of runners as they approached the end. I enjoyed how the three videos kept showing, naturally, the same landmarks that the runners (and walkers) passed by...kind of reminded me of the movie Groundhog Day as "I" kept running past the 7/11 on 4th and 89th in Brooklyn, down the pretty stretch on Lafayette Avenue with all its trees and crossing the Ed Koch Queensboro Bridge from Queens to Manhattan.  If you sometimes run in your own home as I do, watching marathon videos like this is a fun way to at least pretend you're part of the action...but I hear it can be pretty hard getting into some of the more popular marathons since so many apply for them...  

Weekly Short Stories: 1990 Science Fiction, Part 2

Once again here we are, looking at short science fiction from the year 1990 as they appeared in the Gardner Dozois anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction, Eighth Annual Collection.  For me, 1990 was very special as it was the year that our son Will was born...I'll never forget him looking up at me as I held him right after birth and he nonchalantly yawned as if it were all just one more day at the office...ho-hum. Melissa had a string of medical issues that year as well, thankfully recovering well from all of them...the hospital was definitely a recurring setting that year.  But back to those stories...

A BRAVER THING by Charles Sheffield

One of the snags about making a significant scientific discovery or invention is the potential harm that people could use it for.  And the one making that discovery must draw upon his or her own sense of morality, which is...as this story reveals...quite subjective and different from person to person.  The protagonist is a young man in England who in boyhood befriends a nearby wealthy family with another boy, a brilliant loner.  It traces their parallel educational paths and diverging friendship to a climactic point that eventually has Nobel Prize implications.  This story has a lot to say and left me thinking about it long afterwards, especially the meaning of its title...

WE SEE THINGS DIFFERENTLY by Bruce Sterling

In a tale set around our current time but written in a year that saw the First Persian Gulf War, a young Muslim man from the newly created Arab Caliphate spanning the Middle West flies in to a morally and financially bankrupt America to interview its leading and dangerously charismatic rock star, Tom Boston.  Written from Sayyid's perspective, he intersperses his ongoing narrative with his justifications for his own faith and his fears of charismatic figures (he points out Khomeini, Hitler and Stalin) steering entire populations toward destruction and calamity.  I might have dug this story more had I not lived through the years of Bin Laden's Al Qaeda with its 9/11 attack and the subsequent formation of ISIS with its own charismatic leaders and calls for such a caliphate.  Still an intriguing story...

AND THE ANGELS SING by Kate Wilhelm

A misunderstood but ultimately kindhearted newspaper editor in a northern city encounters a figure lying by the road on a cold rainy night.  Taking it home...the body is unconscious but shivering...he first thinks it is a girl or young woman but then discovers the bizarre nature of her/its body.  Bringing in a woman reporter/photographer coworker to document his discovery, the story progresses to her assessment of him and his life, which turns out to be "spot on" when he makes an important decision at the end...

PAST MAGIC by Ian R. MacLeod

Set in a future Britain where society has broken down to criminal gangs and the ultra-wealthy live sheltered lives in luxury, a man with a declining writing career returns to his old home on the Isle of man where his wealthy former wife introduces him to "their" little daughter...only that child had died ten years earlier in a tragic accident.  The man knows who she really is, though...what he doesn't know is his ex's intentions toward him. With a surprise ending, this story shows the lengths some people will go to enforce their will on others...and God help them if they have the money to do it...

BEARS DISCOVER FIRE by Terry Bisson

A remarkable, sweet and sad tale with an absurd premise embedded within its title.  So, bears discover fire, and you can see the flames as they camp out at night on bushy interstate highway medians where the peculiar berries that they like to eat grow the most.  A man lives bordering a stretch of the interstate and sees them firsthand...but the story is really what happens when his ailing old mother, unhappy in her nursing home, makes an escape.  The imagery presented at the end here is special and unforgettable...

Next week: more about sci-fi short stories from 1990...

Just Finished Reading The Secret, Book and Scone Society by Ellery Adams

Ellery Adams is the pen name of Jennifer Stanley, a prolific writer of mystery novels in the "cozy" subgenre.  I'd already read three of her books, which she tends to divide into ongoing series, and decided to try out a new series: The Secret, Book and Scone Society with Book #1 bearing the same title.  Nora Pennington has very visible burn scars on her face and body from a past traumatic accident that thoroughly traumatized her.  She lives in the small western North Carolina town of Miracle Springs and loves books to the point that she opened her own bookstore there.  Along with other women in town they form a tight circle of self-support as they reveal the secrets of their personal pains to one another.  This ties into the book's title, for Nora and her friend who runs a nearby bakery respectively offer people a book and a scone to draw them in to help alleviate and resolve their personal pains.  But an Ellery Adams novel would not be so without a murder, and a realtor approaches Nora for help.  Before they can meet, though, he dies in an apparent accident...or is it an accident?  Events and clues begin to tie together and soon a real estate company engaged in developing a new subdivision in the area comes under the women's suspicion...and so progresses the story.  I like this series of Adams...at least this first volume of it...better than the previous ones, as well as its very likeable and admirable lead character of Nora.  I should have known that, sooner or later, I would find the right Ellery Adams cozy mystery series for me.  Now on to the next book, although I plan to first make a couple of detours with other books...

About Paul McCartney (and Wings) and His Three Albums from '73-'75

Last week I discussed my impressions of Paul McCartney's first three solo albums after leaving the Beatles in 1970.  I had heard his first two back in that general era, but once he began with his group Wings I lost interest.  My loss, for Wild Life is pretty good in spite of the know-it-all critics running it down...come to think of it, they panned his first two works McCartney and Ram as well, and I especially liked the latter.  It's now so many decades later and I'm just getting around to listening to this extraordinary musical artist's catalog of albums, in their chronological order of release.  This week I listened to Red Rose Speedway (1973), Band on the Run (1974) and Venus and Mars (1975), all recorded under the moniker Wings, but in fact dominated by the former Beatle with the major other contributors being Paul's wife Linda and former Moody Blues front man Denny Laine.  The first of these features his singles hit My Love, which I thoroughly hated them but at least benignly tolerate now. Other than the lively opening track Big Barn Bed, which includes a line from McCartney's Ram (Reprise) track two years earlier, the rest of the tunes on the album are light ballads...even the closing eleven-minute medley.  Now I'm not against ballads, but I don't have to be George Martin to know that you mix the fast and slow tempos on LPs in order to sustain the listener's interest...this always had worked for the Beatles.  The next album, Band on the Run, spotlights the title track as well as Jet (about Paul and Linda's pet dog), both favorite singles releases of mine.  This time he puts in more lively music...I particularly like Side One's Mrs. Vanderbilt and the closing track Nineteen Hundred and Eighty-Five.  As for Venus and Mars, I was more or less blown away by its high quality and energy...plus that almost mystical sense of something special taking place.  I felt this the strongest with the opening tracks for both sides: the Venus and Mars theme song.  It's a shame McCartney didn't expand it into a longer piece, for it has that special kind of old-time Beatles mood that I had been expecting from its members after their disbanding.  I was also taken by the songs Rock Star and Magneto and Titanium Man, both rousing and funny pieces sounding like a tribute to David Bowie's then-ongoing Ziggy Stardust glam rock alter ego.  The slower Love in Song would have fit in quite well on Rubber Soul...in fact, I feel that it is better than several of the songs on that remarkable Beatles album. And then there is Listen to What the Man Says, the album's big single that I enjoyed way back when I lived through '75.  Although I thought that Red Rose Speedway is good, I thought that Venus and Mars' songs are all better.  And Band in the Run is excellent as well.  Next week I'll take a listen to the final three studio albums Paul McCartney recorded with his group Wings...

NCCA Men's March Madness Hoops Now Down to Final Four

With the completion of today's two games, the NCAA men's basketball championship "March Madness" tournament has now come down to the vaunted Final Four, a great milestone in itself for many schools.  Among them are the Florida Atlantic University Owls, based in south Florida in Boca Raton where my beloved father spent his last days in 2013.  This was their last year in Conference USA...they're jumping later this year to the American Athletic Conference.  Neither conference gets much national attention or respect, so it surprised many to see this team, seeded only #9 in their region, win it to advance to next Saturday's semifinal round with a very close and exciting game against Kansas State, 79-76.  Although I was rooting for the Owls, I don't understand why the Wildcats, down by only three points in the game's closing seconds, had two different possessions but didn't shoot for a three-pointer...that must have really frustrated their fans.  Along with FAU, Connecticut advanced to the final showdown with a complete thrashing of Gonzaga, 82-54...their pinpoint passing and positioning on offense is amazing to behold.  The Huskies to me are the strongest team in this year's tournament although they were only seeded #5 in their region...not remotely even one close game so far in the six they've won to get to this point.  Those were Saturday's games.  Today's contests pitted San Diego State against Creighton and Miami against Texas.  By the way, you might take note that all of the top seeds were eliminated in earlier rounds and Texas was the only #2 seed left with this weekend's games...none of the brackets filled out at the tournament's start came close to predicting this scenario!  In today's games San Diego State somehow managed to outlast Creighton 57-56 although neither seemed to shoot very well. In the other "my" Miami Hurricanes were 13 points well into the second half and didn't seem to have an answer to the Longhorns' offense, but they managed to storm back and win it 88-81.  So half the Final Four is from South Florida.  Florida Atlantic plays San Diego State in one game and it's Miami vs. Connecticut in the other.  Whoever wins that latter contest should be the favorite to win the championship game. I'm looking forward to following the two semifinal games next Saturday, but I'll be at work when the championship game takes place Monday evening.  At this juncture, to me Connecticut should be the strong favorite to win it all, but my heart lies with the Florida teams.  CBS is covering the games on TV...

Ran Gainesville's Depot Parkrun 5K This Morning

Having inculcated the "atomic" habit of getting up earlier in the morning, I decided to use it today to run the Depot Parkrun 5K.  This Gainesville running event takes place every Saturday morning at 7:30 at the city's Depot Park, just south of downtown.  It's free...you only need to register at their site online and they will give you some barcodes to print out.  Take one of them to the race for them to scan along with the plastic token they hand you right when you finish, and they will scan both to record and later post your times.  I signed up early in 2019 and have now run twelve races there...my times, though, have never approached my best 5K finishes in other races from earlier years: hey, I'm getting older, for crying out loud!  You know you're getting along in years when you look at the race results and try to figure out how far you are from being the oldest finisher. Today I knew it was going to be a bit challenging since I was wearing my heavier (but more thickly padded) Air Monarch shoes while the combination of 69 degrees and 94% humidity mimicked the awful conditions last October when I struggled through the Tom Walker Memorial Half-Marathon then.  I decided to try a faster pace than the previous Parkrun earlier this month but wasn't interested in setting any personal records...just maintain some continuity to keep in touch with public racing.  The going was rough, but as in most of my other races I ended up running negative splits, gradually picking up my pace while at the same time I was gradually feeling crappier under the conditions.  I finished with a time of 33:19, far from my best but quite satisfactory and 43 seconds faster than two weeks ago here.  On Saturday, April 8 there are two different races being held in the area: a 5K close to my neighborhood and a half-marathon starting and ending in Hawthorne.  I'll either run one, the other, or neither...no clue yet as to which one of these options I'll take.  Click HERE for today's Depot Parkrun 5K results,,.

Quote of the Week...from Alan Watts

 You're under no obligation to be the same person you were five minutes ago.

               ---Alan Watts

Alan Watts was a twentieth century English philosopher, with a multitude of relevant quotes that we can use for ourselves in our daily lives. I think each of us has a personal responsibility for conducting how we live.  That having been said, the time of childhood and adolescence, a long span in which much of our eventual place in the adult world is determined...either through family life, economic level, or school performance...is marked by a scientifically recognized immaturity in our brain growth, interfering with our ability to form sound judgments and act on them accordingly.  Yet we are unfairly judged anyway...no matter.  What has happened before is gone...maybe the effects of the past linger, but I can make my own decisions...not just today, but at this very moment.  But I've also heard that relationships are supposed to be so very crucial to one's happiness and fulfillment.  Some of those who are the most familiar with me and think they "know" me, I believe, are the most resistant to accepting any change I consciously make in my life, even for the better.  It reminds me of the Joni Mitchell song Both Sides Now, which Judy Collins made into a big hit "But now old friends, they're acting strange. They shake their heads, they say I've changed.  Well, something's lost but something's gained in living every day." As for me, I find the idea of changing myself wholesale in a matter of minutes akin to jumping to the top of a tall building...and I'm no Superman.  No problem: I can change little habits without abandoning whatever virtues I've built up over the years.  Besides, once folks get over the notion that I'm going to change anyway, they can them accustom themselves to me as "The Changer"...

Constellation of the Week: Cancer (the Crab)

 

Cancer, the springtime evening Zodiac constellation east of Gemini and west of Leo...and representing a crab...is perhaps the faintest of the Twelve.  As a matter of fact, because of the dimness of even its brightest stars, the best way to locate Cancer is to find the gap in the sky between its Zodiac neighbors and going straight north from the more visible head of Hydra.  I guess in a completely dark sky away from city lights you can make it out, but I have never seen for myself the constellation other than on star maps.  It does feature two deep-space Messier objects. M44 "Praesepe" or the Beehive, is an open star cluster relatively close to us at 590 light years, located in the constellation's center. M67, in the south of Cancer, is another open cluster.  I think I'll make a promise to myself and one clear night in the next week or so pull out my binoculars and check it out...lugging that big old telescope out from the back is too much trouble and, besides, I never could figure out how to pinpoint stars with it. Hey, maybe that can be my next project after I see Cancer with the field glasses...

Next month I'll try to dish up another constellation to discuss...

Weekly Short Stories: 1990 Science Fiction, Part 1

Today I begin my look at the year 1990 in short science fiction, as presented in the Gardner Dozois anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction, Eighth Annual Collection.  At the time I was in my fourth year at the Gainesville post office, working the late night/early morning shift processing mail on the LSM (letter sorting machine) and FSM (flat sorting machine).  Since then, pretty much everything has been automatized, but I was fortunate to be able to work during the last years of "mechanization".  Yet even in 1990 an OCR (optical character reader) was installed in our already overcrowded downtown facility....we wouldn't move to the newly built warehouse-size building near I-75 until June, 1991.  Anyway, here are my thoughts about the first three stories in the Dozois anthology...

MR. BOY by James Patrick Kelly

It is the year 2096 and the filthy rich are beyond filthy as they flaunt their wealth and alter their own genes to cut back to their youth, as the protagonist Peter, "Mr. Boy", goes from 25 to 10 years physical age.  Or drastically alter their bodies' structure and appearance: Peter's friend Stenni resembles a dinosaur and his own mother the Statue of Liberty...inside which he himself lives!  The rich kids still interact...just like today...with the unrich, the "stiffs" (like us) who age normally: Peter is so sensitive to them that he can smell the "stink" in their age.  But he encounters a teenage "stiff" girl Tree who introduces him to a side of life his pampered existence has shielded him from.  In the process he confronts an adversary in the form of a software bot trying to reprogram his own robot servant.  Written from the spoiled rich kid's perspective, it reminded me of another privileged, snotty rich kid I went to college with and who constantly reminded everyone around him of his perceived superiority...ugh...

THE SHOBIES' STORY by Ursula K. Le Guin

In a humanity many thousands of years into the future, people have dispersed into space, settling worlds many light-years away and genetically changing to the point where offspring can become both male and female at the same time.  But travel is still barred from going past the speed of light, slowing things down considerably and presenting a strong barrier between star systems.  That is until now, when a new method is invented that seems to transcend physics and delves into the metaphysical world of relationships and consciousness.  A close-knit group of ten people ranging from adults to little children have been selected to test the new method, and their cohesion...and its shortfalls...are starkly exposed when they make the instantaneous jump to a planet far, far away...

THE CARESS by Charles Sheffield

A police investigator in 2060 discovers a woman murdered in her home...and then goes into the basement to find, to his horror and amazement, a comatose woman...or is she a leopard: human head on a cat's body.  His efforts to solve the murder and explain this bizarre entity lead him to an old painting and what is behind it all.  The notion of being so rich and powerful as to be untouchable by the law is a theme here...as, sadly, we're already seeing around us...

Next week I continue with the next science fiction short stories from 1990...

Something Buc-ee's This Way Comes

This article's title is deliberately derivative, doubly so in fact: it comes from a South Park episode titled Something Wall-Mart This Way Comes, a play upon the outstanding Ray Bradbury novel Something Wicked This Way Comes.  Well, Buc-ee's is neither Walmart (South Park's spelling is different) nor wicked...although I imagine that from some people's perspective the comparisons are close.  Buc-ee's is a chain of humongous convenient stores usually located at interstate highway exits, providing very clean bathroom facilities, rows upon rows of gas pumps and an enormous store with fresh-made sandwiches (they tout their beef brisket), salads, fruit, coffee and beverages, and many other items...including the pictured coffee mug and cap featuring the Buc-ee the Beaver logo.  The company was founded in a Texas town in 1982 by Arch "Beaver" Aplin III, but he wouldn't expand it out of that state until 2018, when it grew explosively to many surrounding parts, primarily in the U.S. southeast.  Never having heard of it before our vacation drive to Kentucky last week, we stopped off at Buc-ee's in Georgia during the outing in two different locations, Warner Robins and Calhoun.  It's a bit intimidating going in there as it seems the whole world has descended on the place.  I found the employees...and they hire many people...to be professional, friendly and enthusiastic: the check-out lines went fast and smoothly.  The bathrooms are gigantic and, as advertised, clean, while the number of gas pumps is breathtaking.  Buc-ee's doesn't permit large trucks on their facilities...tough for the drivers but great for the rest of us.  Buc-ee's subscribes to the oft-promoted notion that bigger is better...Walmart would agree...but this tends to bring criticism that such a presence can negatively influence a local economy by unfair competition against smaller businesses in the area.  Right now, the trend seems to be to have these mega-convenient stores out on interstate exits, not in the middle of town...and they do employ a lot of people.  I first heard of the "new wave" of large convenience stores with the advent of Wawa in the Gainesville area just a few years ago, although that company has been in existence since 1804.  But they are nowhere near the size of the crazy Buc-ee's stores I visited.  And apparently, with Buc-ee's already in St. Augustine and Ormond Beach, construction for the third Florida store is set for Exit 358 on I-75 north of Ocala.  In the Calhoun facility I even saw Buc-ee himself walking around...dang it, I missed out on the opportunity to add yet another picture of me standing next to a complete stranger in mascot garb...

Paul McCartney's First Three Solo Albums

In the spring of 1970, it was already a turmoil-filled, depressing time in my life, at the time thirteen years old and suffering the pangs of early adolescence. I certainly didn't need to hear that my favorite band, the Beatles, were breaking up...but they did, with Paul McCartney releasing his self-titled first solo album and declaring their end.  Even though the Fab Four would still release their Let It Be album (ironically dubbing it as a "new phase Beatles album"), there would be no more new, highly anticipated material produced.  Instead, John, Paul, George and Ringo would be producing stuff on their own...although they would still be getting by "with a little help from their friends".  It took me a while to get a copy of McCartney...my first solo album of his was his 1971 second album Ram.  It had been foreshadowed for weeks by the radio play of one of its tracks Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey, a rambling light-hearted childlike medley of Paul singing with his wife Linda.  I listened to Ram repeatedly and got to seriously like it, with tracks like Too Many People, Ram On, Smile Away and Eat at Home becoming my favorites on it...even today some 52 years later.  Back then I just had a phonograph in my room with no earphones, so I probably drove others in my house crazy...especially my mother...as I cranked up the volume.  Other notable tracks on Ram are Heart of the Country, Dear Boy, Long Haired Lady (a favorite of my sister) and Back Seat of My Car...Monkberry Moon Delight, on the other hand, was (and still is) utterly horrendous.  Later I would pick up a copy of the debut 1970 album McCartney and, while not liking it as much as Ram, I did gravitate to the songs That Would be Something and Every Night, the latter I already knew from radio play as well as Maybe I'm Amazed, Paul's ode to Linda.  Paul recorded McCartney by multitracking his own instrument play (he played all of them) with Linda's singing being his only collaboration with others.  By the time in late 1971 he came out with his third non-Beatles album, Wild Life, he had formed a subservient band Wings around himself and his wife...but Paul McCartney was always the boss pure and simple, and the backing crew either followed his lead or they left.  Back in 1971, although I had liked Ram, something within me had changed and I didn't even want to give Wild Life a listen...it wouldn't be until just recently in 2023 when I listened to the album, largely panned by critics, in its entirety.  I would hear over the years radio play of two of its Side One tracks: Love is Strange (a cover of an old Mickey and Sylvia hit) and the title track, in which McCartney wails and loses his composure...not very pretty.  Now I kind of like the whole album, including the two aforementioned songs that I used to hate.  My favorite tracks are Bip-Bop...which Paul himself has later criticized...and the opening, rousing piece Mumbo.  I also like Side Two's Tomorrow a lot.  It's funny what a half century of living in the intervening years can do with one's musical tastes...I'm looking forward to hearing the next three Paul McCartney albums he did with Linda and his band Wings back in the early-to-mid 1970s.  For the purposes of this blog, I will refer to everything McCartney did under the name "Wings" as solo work, since after all he was the one running the show...

Back Home After Week's Travel and Visits in Kentucky, Tennessee and Georgia

It's good to be back in Gainesville after a week of car travel in which we went first to Kentucky to visit with Melissa's sister and then to Tennessee to stay a couple of nights with a friend from her elementary school years.  Naturally, I've come up with a few items for discussion here on this blog and will, from time to time, address them.  I will make one observation up front: the weather seems to have anticipated our journey by misbehaving on the road...and at our destinations...in some of the worst ways possible.  I don't suppose it was reasonable to expect blue skies and temperate temperatures for this brief time...the weather hasn't exactly been very cooperative the rest of 2023, either, with regard to my participation in local scheduled running races.  Much of the drive to and from...mostly on 1-75...was spent in the rain, with an ugly two-hour (very) slow crawl on Day One just after we crossed the Florida-Georgia line.  Then, the morning after our first night in a bed-and-breakfast in Lexington, Kentucky saw a light deposit of powdery snow everywhere outside...the coldness would prevail until we got into Nashville later in the week.  We got one good, rainless day there with reasonable temperatures and took advantage of it...more on that later.  But Friday morning when we set out on the road homeward, the rain took off again and kept us company to varying degrees all the way back.  And it's definitely good to be back...

Podcaster Suggests Alter Egos Can Help Create a Greater Self

Mindset Mentor podcaster Rob Dial recently had a show in which he said that it's a good idea to develop an alter ego type of personality, explaining that with celebrities like Kobe Bryant and Beyoncé, their own "superhero" alternate selves (Black Mamba and Sasha Fierce, respectively) enabled them to drastically overcome their own shyness and lack of confidence.  I get what he's saying, but I can't help laughing anyway...I keep picturing the South Park cartoon character of Butters, a timid little boy who's had enough of being grounded by his parents and humiliated by his friends, creating...complete with an aluminum foil costume and mask, the archvillain Professor Chaos. Professor Chaos does bold, brash things little Butters would never dare do, such as secretly switching orders at restaurants, hiding his teacher's blackboard eraser, threatening mass flooding on Earth by turning on his home's outdoor hose faucet and destroying the ozone layer after buying up several aerosol cans and spraying them in the air one by one.  So, while Dial may be onto something with this alter ego "Clark Kent changes to Superman" notion, it's also true that any of us could do this while at the same time not actually stepping out into that kind of effective boldness he advocates.  Do you...or have you ever had...alter egos into which you transformed yourself to project a different kind of persona to the world and for your projects?  In an informal way I have, and I suspect that to a degree most of us do, when for example we put on ourselves a "public" or "at work" personality that is at variance with our private selves.  Still, I'm not sure that's exactly what this podcaster meant on this episode that suggested listeners create their greater selves...

Taking a Vacation Break from Blog

For the next few days, I'll be skipping this blog since I'm on vacation, looking forward to resuming it...

NCAA March Madness Basketball Tourney Starts Tomorrow

I just glanced at the men's NCAA Basketball Tournament bracket, and I wasn't surprised or disappointed, for a change.  Naturally, "my" Florida Gators (I think they're 16-16) didn't make it, nor did North Carolina, the other team I tend to follow.  Florida State had a poor showing this year, but Miami is one of the favorites to possibly get to the Final Four and I guess they're my "main" team.  Duke, Houston, Alabama, Gonzaga, UCLA, Marquette, Purdue, Arizona, Texas...and my third "favorite", Kansas...all figure into the upcoming action.  Starting with 68 teams in the field that includes several weaker smaller college champions, two games will be held Tuesday and Wednesday while the real first round starts Thursday...by Sunday night we'll be down to the Sweet Sixteen. CBS, TBS, TNT and TruTV will carry the games, many of which in the early going I'll miss.  Looking forward to see who makes it past Sunday...

Just Finished Reading A Killer Collection by Ellery Adams

I just finished reading yet another Ellery Adams (pen name of Jennifer Stanley) cozy mystery novel, this one the first in a different series.  The book is titled A Killer Collection and the series, centered around the western North Carolina Blue Ridge Mountains and the folk/craft industry there, is called Antiquities and Collectibles Mysteries.  Delving into this new series may have been a mistake: I couldn't care less about pottery...which was the theme of A Killer Collection...and understood less why anyone on Earth allow themselves to get into a murderous frenzy over collecting it.  Now food...that's another story...maybe I'll return to her Supper Club series for the next book.  Anyway, in this story the protagonist is Molly, a young, single reporter at a local periodical devoted to collectibles.  Her editor/boss is irritating, and she has a coworker she's slowly developing a romance with.  She lives with her mother and their cat...fall asleep yet?  Well, the author goes into a degree of detail describing the pottery creation process...now I'm really sinking into slumber!  The story does pick up at a pottery sale/auction, an event where everyone seems to go a little berserk as they claim different pottery pieces to buy.  One of them is the wealthiest collector in the area, known for his rudeness and arrogance...guess who ends up dead?  And the mystery is on.  One thing I like about these cozy mysteries is that, if one book doesn't resonate with me, it's short enough for me to finish and then consider whether it was just that book or the theme of the series.  To me, A Killer Collection is a good story...I just don't give much of a hoot about pottery or folk art in general...

Ran Gainesville's Depot Parkrun 5K This Morning

One of my "atomic" habits I'm trying to instill is to get up earlier in the day.  One big reason for this is that most running races are held on Saturday mornings, usually around 7-9.  I have missed quite a few of them since resuming regular running in 2007, so getting up at 6 am today was for me a big accomplishment...of course, having the previous night off as I begin a week's vacation didn't hurt!  I took advantage of my early rising to run, for the eleventh time, in Gainesville's free weekly 5K race, held Saturday mornings at 7:30 in beautiful Depot Park, just a few blocks south of downtown.  Although the humidity was high, the temperature was pleasantly in the upper 50s...and the runners and walkers were exuberant and positive, spanning from childhood to old age and looking like a sampling from the United Nations: awesome!  I was trying out my Nike Air Monarch shoes, the brand I wore in several races a few years ago including a number of half-marathons...my feet had been hurting in recent races when I wore lighter shoes, and I wanted more padding, even if it meant the shoes were heavier.  So, I planned to go slowly today, picking 36 minutes as a reasonable finishing time.  Although being at the back of the crowd (it took me some twenty seconds just to reach the starting line) and I deliberately went super-slow at the beginning, I managed to finish with a time of 34:02, definitely far from my fastest but better than expected.  I'm happy to report that these shoes worked well...my feet are definitely grateful!  Even though I may not run in this event on a weekly basis, I do think it would be beneficial for me, as a matter of habit, to get up early on Saturday mornings in the future since I already have a 3.3 mile running course laid out through my neighborhood.  You can see today's Depot Parkrun 5K race results by clicking HERE...

Quote of the Week...from Steve Jobs

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life.  Don't be trapped by dogma...which is living with the results of other people's thinking.                                           ---Steve Jobs

Just a couple of Fridays ago I quoted the late Steve Jobs. The late cofounder of Apple had some pretty profound things to say.  I dare say that most of us do as well, if as Jobs has suggested, we listen to our own inner voices and not allow the noise of others and their dogma drown out our own capacity for independent, realistic and positive thought.  I don't need a religious guru, political radio/TV commentator, or narcissistic business tycoon/politico to regale me with their spin on things, as if I can't figure it out for myself.  The problem, though, in this age when we can almost instantly have vast amounts of information on our smartphones...including news of the world, our country and localities...is that bias and dogma are now pervasively inherent in even the selection by various news sources as to what is reported (and what isn't), with that undesirable, underlying dogma often just in the background, out of sight.  Bill O'Reilly once had a show on FoxNews called the No-Spin Zone, but he himself was one of the worst ever spinners of information to custom-fit his own dogma.  It's only too easy in these days to hear or read a particular news story and get carried away with it...before my rational mind filters it all through what I already know to be true, and to discern what the sources and their motivations might be behind its telling.  Figuring out the news has gotten a lot more complicated...

The Opera Scene from the Movie Hannibal

Have you ever been to Florence, Italy? I haven't, and I'm not sure whether what I've seen in a certain major movie is really that northern Italian city or a reasonable facsimile thereof.  I was similarly fooled when I thought the principals in the 1959 Alfred Hitchcock thriller North by Northwest were actually traipsing about on the carved presidential heads at Mount Rushmore, but no, the movie shots were cleverly made around artificially constructed models in the studio.  I say all this because, having recently seen the 2001 thriller Hannibal, follow-up to the acclaimed Silence of the Lambs with Anthony Hopkins portraying erudite and cultured cannibalistic serial killer Dr. Hannibal Lecter, there is a two-minute scene (at 1:02-1:04) in which Hopkins' character is seated in an outdoors theater watching a wonderful operatic performance.  I was curious as to which centuries-old work it was and, to my astonishment after looking it up, discovered that the opera itself was imaginary and that what I saw was only a "libretto" titled Vide Cor Meum (See My Heart) based on a poem by philosopher Dante Alighieri and composed solely for the movie by Patrick Cassidy.  You may not go for the horror genre in film, especially the kind that shows gore and extreme violence like this one.  But this two-minute segment is almost magical in its otherworldliness, and also captures the building suspenseful conflict between Lecter and Italian police inspector Rinaldo Pazzi, played by Giancarlo Giannini, as the two exchange dueling stares in the midst of the performance.  I have noticed that I have a tendency, when rewatching movies I like, to fast-forward to the most appealing scenes. This one, very brief scene from an admittedly disturbing movie, to me, is one of those unforgettable, all-time greats.  You can hear the extended version of the piece by searching on YouTube.  I come away from this particular experience with a greater appreciation...as well as some apprehension...as to how expertly done media can influence my thoughts and emotions, this time for the better.  As for Hannibal, it all focuses down to a spectacular two-minute interlude.  Makes me want to visit Florence...or a reasonable facsimile thereof...

Weekly Short Stories: 1989 Science Fiction, Part 8

Today I finish my look at the year 1989 in short science fiction as it appeared in the Gardner Dozois anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Seventh Annual Collection.  I have enjoyed reading through these stories, although it's very clear how much better some are than others.  A lot of it, as far as I am concerned, has to do with whether the author lays out a clear narrative in plain language or tries to be "literary" or "cute" and muddle up the narrative enough to where the reader spends too much time and effort just trying to figure out what's going on.  There's a good mix of these two extremes with the following four stories...

JUST ANOTHER PERFECT DAY by John Varley

A victim of a motorcycle accident in 1989 now suffers from a short-term memory impairment that has him forgetting the previous day's events upon falling asleep, having to start all over again each time.  He wakes up again and encounters a note he wrote to himself to guide and inform him along his clean-slate new day, and there's some disquieting "new" news...

THE LOCH MOOSE MONSTER by Janet Kagan

A quirky little yarn about settlers on a distant world where scientists can seed...through plants...different forms of genetically modified animal life.  There's rumored to be a mysterious, monstrous creature in a lake, but from the title you might guess what form it takes...

THE ODD OLD BIRD by Avram Davidson

This story of Archaeopteryx, the first bird...being discovered in the present, or at least a couple of centuries ago, seemed strangely derivative to me, to the point where I accurately anticipated the punchline ending as it were all a twisted joke to be slowly revealed.  These kinds of stories either work or not...knowing in advance how it would end kind of ruined it for me since I read something very similar in a previous anthology...

GREAT WORK OF TIME by John Crowley

Crowley takes time travel fiction to its frustrating and paradoxical extremes in this novella as a man is caught time-traveling between the years 1983 and 1883, while a secret organization whose aim is to prevent the collapse of the British Empire takes advantage of the time machine to subtly manipulate history, using the protagonist as point man to effect the most pivotal change of all.  But there is a grave cost to all this tinkering with time, causing me to wonder whether Stephen King read this story and may have used some of its ideas in his great 2011 novel 11/22/63, although he claims he first thought of the story back in 1971: maybe King has a time machine, too...

Next time (I plan to a week off from this blog) I move on to the year 1990 as I continue to discuss science fiction short stories...

Some Stuff about Facebook

First of all, before I go further, I deeply appreciate you readers of this blog, all of you.  Chances are very strong that you access it from Facebook, where I post my (usually) daily entries.  But I have to admit that I'm not very enamored with Mark Zuckerberg's social media site, since it is largely there for people to bond with one another and establish social pecking orders.  For me, I'm more like the Goth Kids in South Park who say screw the established order...we're going our own way and if you don't like it, too bad.  I had a friend request the other day, not an uncommon occurrence but still annoying, since the overwhelming number of my Facebook "friends" are people who, although connected with me in some way, I have never even had a simple pleasant conversation with.  Yet to Facebook they are "friends".  You don't have to interact in person to have a conversation...I value those who have taken a few moments of their lives to type in a comment to one of my posts...or even hit one of "like" icons.  Anyway, this young man who friend-requested me is someone I've never met but seems to have some affiliation with the church I used to attend...or at least organized Christianity.  I checked out his posts before responding and he is heavy on both Bible verses and subscribing to far-right-wing political propaganda, including bashing in a hatefully personal way Anthony Fauci, the epidemiologist who spearheaded the fight against COVID-19 in cooperation with Presidents Trump and Biden.  Worshipping the two gods of Religion and Politics may seem for some to be totally compatible...and it's true that if you're into some of the homegrown paramilitary groups flourishing here in America, the fusion of the two into one mega-god to idolize might sound alluring.  My take is simple: restrict your automatic acceptance of things requiring faith to that faith which you have adopted, and keep a skeptical eye on the other stuff that you (and I) are being constantly deluged with in this scam-filled digital media age...

Podcaster's Suggestions for Manifesting One's Desired Future

On one of last week's Mindset Mentor podcasts, personal development coach Rob Dial discussed a subject he's covered a number of times before: manifesting your future.  He is a strong believer that people can become who they want to become...within the obvious limits of physics and biology, of course...if they assiduously follow the necessary steps: he lays out three, although I'm breaking down the "first" step into two.  One, you need to know what it is you want to achieve and/or become, and in as great a detail as possible.  Lots of folks get tripped up here...they really don't have a clue about where they want to go.  Two...and this is where a lot of skeptical, analytical people might find objections...is to believe with no hint of failure that what you're after is already a done deal: you just have to live it out and that there is no reality in which your aims are not fulfilled.  Three, you must make a plan, a strategy...again, in as much detail as possible, to go about daily working toward success.  Finally, none of the first three is possible without taking action: execution, on a consistent basis in accordance with your plans and directed at who you want to become, completes the picture.  Sounds simple, but if anyone...including myself...wants to throw cold water on this algorithm of Dial's, I think they should strictly follow the steps as he has outlined before doing so.  Just speaking for me alone, I can look back at numerous times I've undertaken projects for self-improvement and can confidently say that for those times I fell short, I was also falling short on at least one...and usually more...of the podcaster's suggested steps...

Not a Fan of DeSantis, But At Least He's Not Trump

The other day, a friend of mine from work Facebook-messaged me about a supposed bill a Florida legislator is filing which stipulates that any blogger who mentions Governor Ron DeSantis would have to be registered, whatever that's supposed to mean.  I replied that this sounded like the last Harry Potter book, The Deathly Hallows, in which anyone simply saying out loud the Dark Lord's name, Voldemort, would instantly prompt a visit from his Death Eaters.  Maybe if this legislation...and I can't imagine anyone to regard it as anything more than a foolish political stunt...passes, I'll just say "Voldemort" when referring to He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named instead. But that's the Internet for you and, for all I know, this is just a hoax.  I've found that, although DeSantis has been heavy-handed with his decrees and criticisms in various areas, most particularly his conveniently one-sided interpretation of "woke" culture, his interference with university and public school curricula, his callousness in busing undocumented immigrants to out-of-state "sanctuary cities" and opposition to effective public health measures to prevent the spread of Covid, I never detected in him the narcissistic hypersensitivity to criticism that is so characteristic of his former political ally and now presidential rival, Donald Trump. In fact, DeSantis has always been politically savvy enough to recognize that it comes with the job to expect criticism from those in the opposition Democratic Party...it's the Trump wing of his own party that seems to be beside themselves with irrational anger and hatred toward the governor in spite of his attempts to appeal to the basest elements of that base.  For the last election, I switched my party affiliation to Republican in order to help to nominate principled conservatives who believe in respecting election results. DeSantis, although some may not like the new more restrictive voter/election law he signed, has not been an active participant in the election denial lunacy we saw after Joe Biden was legitimately elected U.S. president over sore loser denier Donald Trump, and unlike the former president he has shown a sense of responsibility when dealing with hurricane threats, displaying a spirit of bipartisan cooperation with our current Democratic president.  Also, I have never heard DeSantis speak ill of Trump, although the reverse is plainly true. Were the Republican Primary for president held today with Ron DeSantis on the ballot, I would vote against Trump and for DeSantis in a heartbeat. Our governor bravely served our country in the military and is articulate and persuasive, educated and well-informed on a number of issues...can't say any of this about the Orange Man. Although I have never voted for DeSantis in his two gubernatorial races and likely wouldn't support him nationally in a general election, at least I can see him, if eventually elected, as a serious president seeking to do America's bidding (although I may many times disagree with him) and, unlike Trump, not holding everything and everyone hostage, including our country's best interests, to his own ego gratification. As far as whom you and everybody else support or oppose, I guess that's your own business to figure out: be my guest and vote (or not vote) however it suits you...I never endorse or campaign for (or against) anyone, just expressing my opinions on the subject every now and then...

Checking Out This Year's March Madness in NCAA Basketball

From time to time over the years...starting with the improbable run by Jacksonville University in 1970 to the NCAA championship finals against UCLA, I have followed in a sporadic way men's college basketball.  Perhaps my most intense season was in 1983 when I had a lot of free time on my hands and spent an enormous amount of time watching college hoops on TV...especially games in the Atlantic Coast Conference.  That was when super-teams like Michael Jordan's North Carolina Tarheels, Ralph Sampson's Virginia Cavaliers and Hakeem Abdul Olajuwon's independent Houston Cougars were surpassed at the end by the Cinderella North Carolina State Wolfpack, coached by the indefatigable Jim Valvano...never seen anything like that again.  I enjoyed the rise in stature of my hometown Florida Gators in later years under coaches Lon Kruger and Billy Donovan...those back-to-back championship seasons in 2006 and 2007 were incredible.  Of late, my interest has waned...probably at its lowest when the March Madness tournament in 2020 was cancelled because of the COVID-19 outbreak.  Today I switched my TV back and forth watching a number of games as the regular season is coming to an end before conference championship tournaments begin next week...that's already happening on the women's side.  Florida most likely will not be going to the NCAA tournament this year with a 16-15 overall record, but they showed me why they, under first year coach Todd Golden, should at least get a bid in the second-tier NIT.   I haven't been keeping up with this season, but I have a few days to catch up before the bids for the 68-team field in the NCAA tournament are presented.  And then the fun begins with the brackets...

Quote of the Week...from Barack Obama

This idea of purity, and you're never compromised, and you're always politically "woke" and all that stuff, you should get over that quickly.  The world is messy; there are ambiguities. People who do really good stuff have flaws.  People who you are fighting, may love their kids and, you know, share certain things with you. There is this sense sometimes of: "The way of me making change is to be as judgmental as possible about other people, and that's enough." ...That's not activism.  That's not bringing about change.  If all you're doing is casting stones, you're probably not going to get that far.  That is easy to do.

                     ---Barack Obama

I haven't always agreed with our 44th President, but regarding "woke" culture, I think he pretty much said it all in this excerpt from a 2019 speech.  The only thing I feel the need to add is that when folks say "woke" in this context they are almost exclusively referring to the political left and liberals.  I, on the other hand, think there is an equally oppressive "woke" culture on the political right, one that allows for no dissent when it comes to their pet issues such as opposing: gun regulation, masking, vaccines and social distancing during the COVID crisis, kneeling before sporting events, reproductive rights, respecting sexual preference and identity, while obsessing on the border...and other issues. The tribalism of ideology is dividing our society as never before...if you don't mind, I'd like to just be able to be myself, warts and all, and let the chips fall where they may...and from my perspective, so can you! Pick your poison if you want to go down either the left or right politically correct road and be as smug as you want about how virtuous you are: but people need to feel free to express themselves without clowns coming down on them for using the "wrong" pronoun or expressing the "wrong" opinion.  

Just Finished Reading Chili con Corpses by Ellery Adams

If you're thinking about the title of the book I'm about to discuss, I wonder if you, like myself, see it as both grotesque and funny...I keep thinking about that old South Park episode Scott Tenorman Must Die.  Chili con Corpses is the third volume in Ellery Adams' (pen name of Jennifer Stanley) Supper Club cozy mystery series, set in the imaginary western Virgina town of Quincy's Gap.  The principals are all there again, including the protagonist James Henry, a pudgy divorced ex-college literature professor who has settled down in the area as the head of the public library.  He and four others are trying to lose weight and control their eating habits, having formed in the first book the Supper Club, more informally known among themselves as the "Flab Five"...this series is definitely not sensitive about "body shaming".  In this episode, James and Club member Lucy are in a romantic relationship, but there are serious disagreements between the two...seems like a broken record with them.  Two gorgeous young women, twins, are introduced to the group and instantly provoke jealously with their looks.  On a school field trip to a nearby cave, a murder occurs that involves them...that's all I'll say in case you want to read it.  As for the title, you South Park viewers will be relieved to know that there are no corpses in the chili.  Instead, the cuisine of this story is Mexican based, and what sounds like an excellent recipe for chili is given out...I for one happen to love chili, especially in winter and with a lot of shredded cheese on top.  The stories in this series aren't all that deep, but the writing is simple enough...an underrated talent in my opinion...and you really do get to know the characters, always a plus for me.  Still, I'm heading over to a different Ellery Adams mystery series, this one about antiques and collectibles...

Weekly Short Stories: 1989 Science Fiction, Part 7

Once again here we are, discussing more science fiction short stories from 1989 as they appeared in the lengthy Gardner Dozois anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction, Seventh Annual Collection.  I would be remiss leaving that year before mentioning the terrible "World Series" earthquake, at a scale of 6.9, which happened right in the middle of a game between the San Francisco Giants and Oakland A's.  Thousands were injured and 63 died during this strongest quake to hit central California since the devastating one in 1906. Now let's check out some more of the stories from '89...

THE THIRD SEX by Alan Brennert

A person is born with no sexual organs, male or female, and as such lives within society dancing between the two roles since no viable alternate is available.  A real commentary on how people, even in our own so-called "enlightened" times, still irrationally obsess in a judgmental way about sexual identity and preferences.  Intriguing tale...

WINTER ON THE BELLE-FOURCHE by Neal Barrett, Jr.

A white American westerner in the nineteenth century talks tough as he tracks out the land in the wild cold but is sensitive to his adoptive environment and the natives dwelling there. Then comes a young white woman with a name we should all know.  Their encounter provides us with an alternative explanation for her eventual greatness...

ENTER A SOLDIER. LATER: ENTER ANOTHER by Robert Silverberg

Two great figures from world history are recreated in essence on a miniature level for the hotshots in our future to study...how Genghis Khan and Socrates interact surprises all...

RELATIONSHIPS by Robert Sampson

A lonely middle-aged man, unlucky in love, one day discovers that he can recreate...temporarily...women from his past.  Since they continue to reject him, this doesn't do him much good until...

Next week I conclude my look at the year 1989 in the subgenre of short science fiction...

My February 2023 Running and Walking Report

A few days ago, I strained my back a little while playing "double soccer" with my 40-pound mixed breed puppy Daisy in the back yard...I was losing my balance and instinctively jerked my back in a probably unwise way to keep it.  But I've kept myself functional and active over the past few weeks, still available for races although a confluence of factors has seemed to impede me from this.  The main running race I wanted to participate in during February was the Florida Track Club's Micanopy Ten-Miler on Saturday morning of the 11th.  Unfortunately, not only do I get off from work late Friday nights, but they had forecast 90% chance of rain with thunderstorms for the entire Saturday morning in question.  I had signed up for it but as a FTC member was spared an entry fee, so Friday night I decided to skip the race.  I woke up the next morning and discovered it wasn't storming after all...I felt bummed out from the faulty forecasting.  I ran the same event in March of 2022 and had wanted to establish a tradition with it.  And although here in Gainesville we're blessed with a free 5K race (the Deport Parkrun) every Saturday morning, I just never got around this month to pulling my sleepy body out of bed to get out there by race time at 7:30.  Still, I've been consistently running at home and walking, keeping myself in shape. As for March, on the 25th there is the annual Trail of Payne 10K run that's in Paynes Prairie south of Gainesville...I've always managed to avoid it over the years and, of course, it's on a Saturday morning.  Looks like I'll have to change my sleeping and waking times if I ever want to run another race...and I'm now more than a little skeptical of my local weather forecasts. I'm looking a bit ahead to April 8th when there will be yet another half-marathon held from Hawthorne, going down the same Hawthorne Trail stretch I ran in another half-marathon on January 15th.  What I would like is to get into the habit of running at least one public race per month, even if it is only the 5K Parkrun...but preferably a longer event...

YouTube an Interesting Site for Exploring

Right now, on my television (in Roku mode) is a YouTube video, three hours forty-three minutes in length, from the viewpoint of someone running the Boston Marathon...and man, the weather on this date is awful!  Rain, obvious cold, slick roads...not exactly my choice for running a race, but definitely interesting to watch.  Of late I have been exploring what's available on YouTube and have been pleasantly surprised.  Although audiobooks and movies seem to be largely available only at a premium, the "free" version of this site contains an incredible selection of video types to watch.  If you want to learn anything in an academic setting without the twin traumas of exams and tuition, you can attend high quality classes online in just about any subject you want...I'm partial to the college mathematics material and my current favorite teacher is "Professor Leonard", who has an excellent teaching style, not skipping steps and showing the kind of respect toward the students I found uncommon in my own experience going to school.  His courses span college curricula from algebra review to precalculus to three levels of calculus to differential equations to statistics.  I had hoped he taught linear algebra, but alas, that's not to be...but there are other resources for that.  I also like foreign language listening practice videos...Kendra puts out some good ones in the more known languages.  When I was recliner-bound, recovering at home from my open-heart surgery in 2021, I liked to watch coffee shop videos that would go on for hours...just empty shops with hot, steaming coffee cups in different tables with usually some piano or light jazz in the background.  Lately I've noticed a plethora of "study with me" videos, usually of college students either doing their assignments (mostly on computer) at home or in public places like Starbucks (my preference).  I also have enjoyed going on various roller coaster rides vicariously on YouTube...my favorites are the rides at Tampa's Busch Gardens like Montu and Kumba...and some of the newer ones I've yet to go on.  I've always regarded Montu as the "Cadillac of Coasters" and have ridden it in the "real world" some 27 times...unfortunately I've read that Kumba (rode it 22 times) may soon be disassembled to make way for future attractions at the park...still, I'll have the YouTube experience to fall back on, I suppose. I've only begun to scratch the surface of what is available on this fascinating medium. I just turned around to see what's going on in the marathon: there are some blue patches in the sky around the 27-minute mark, but they're all still far from downtown Boston on the course, although they're no longer way out in the boonies where the race began...

This Winter Ridiculously Warm Here in Northern Florida

It's hard to imagine that we're still in the middle of the winter as February winds to a close with daytime temperatures in the upper 80s day after day...ugh.  I would have thought that we'd be seeing temperatures dipping in the 40s at night with highs in the 70s...but no, this 2023 winter has got to be the record-setting warmest, at least in my memory, for northern Florida.  Of course, I grew up in South Florida, living throughout childhood without any air conditioning at home, so I'm at least a little conditioned to stifling heat...but now I can find refuge indoors with the AC cranked up to high.  I was watching the Weather Channel this morning...they were deploring what they (and they alone) were calling "Winter Storm Piper" as it made its way with snow and icy conditions across Wisconsin, headed toward Michigan.  It's funny: I had all my winter clothing ready to go in anticipation of getting at least some use, which mostly now involves throwing on a light sweater when the house gets just a little too chilled.  I hope this all doesn't portend a record breaking hot summer...

Just Finished Reading "And In the End" by Ken McNab

And In the End is a 2020 book by Ken McNab describing the turmoil-filled year of 1969 for the British band the Beatles, a year that led to their breakup.   I just finished reading it and thought the author, a journalist from Scotland, did an excellent job treating the subject from the viewpoints of not only Paul McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr, but also from others who were around them at that crucial time.  After the drug overdose death of their manager Brian Epstein in 1967, the Beatles were directionless and helpless regarding their financial and legal matters.  Creating Apple Records as a new way to bring in and promote new talent, they soon discovered that their project was speeding them toward bankruptcy.  The fact that the British tax laws meant that they were losing some 90% of their income to the government didn't help, as was also the fact that although John, Paul and George wrote by far most of their own music, they did not own majority ownership rights to the songs and only derived a percentage of the royalties.  Epstein's death and Apple's financial troubles prompted Lennon in a January 1969 news conference to declare how badly the band's finances were...prompting successful American music promoter and manager Allen Klein, already known for his work with groups like the Rolling Stones and Animals, to quickly meet with Lennon and his soon-to-be wife Yoko Ono: not only did Klein impress the two, but Lennon convinced Harrison and Starr to join him in hiring Klein as the Beatles' manager.  But Paul McCartney was skeptical at the start of Klein and thought him to be engaged in shady practices...he wanted his fiancée Linda's father John Eastman to take charge as band manager.  This split between McCartney and the other three Beatles, along with several other negative incidents over the course of the year, including Harrison's angry departure from the band only a week after beginning recording for a new album in January and several difficult business meetings, eventually culminated...despite the band's having recorded two excellent, memorable albums (Let it Be and Abbey Road)...in their breakup.  Without reproducing the book in its entirety, let me instead provide my own insights. For one, each of the Beatles had their own personal lives, loves, and interests. These tended to draw them apart from each other.  The money and song ownership issues cast a gloom over their whole Beatles enterprise, to which they had devoted themselves so much for their entire adult lives...they were worn out from it all.  But to me, the glaring problem that accelerated their demise was the faulty notion...probably held more by Paul than the others...that they were under some sort of time pressure to constantly stay busy coming out with new material.  Looking back from today's era when it's an accomplishment for musical acts to space their albums out by two or three years, the frantic pace of the Beatles in the sixties seems almost insane. If anything, these guys seriously needed a break from it all and to chill out!  Ironically, they had just signed a contract in September of '69 that would have accorded them that breathing room when John, reacting to Paul's suggestion that they go on the road performing at small venues, retorted that he was leaving the band.  Had they managed to stay together, I'm sure their music would have been a lot different, and I regret that we missed out on a lot of potentially great songs because of their breakup.  The supreme irony, I think, is that after Lennon's outburst at McCartney, the band did end up going on an extended break...after which the latter announced the end of the Beatles in April of 1970.  If you're interested in the history of rock music, or maybe just liked the Beatles and some of their songs, this is a good book that captures the personalities and viewpoints of the principals involved in the closing of their illustrious, long collaboration...

Quote of the Week...from Steve Jobs

Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice.            ---Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs (1955-2011) co-founded Apple and led the company as a pioneer in the new digital information age.  I never did go for the Apple line of products...probably my loss. Since today is Jobs' birthday, I decided to check out some of his quotes...he's got a lot of good ones, but I settled on the one above.  Whether you're a leader or just some ordinary "Bill" like me getting through life, each day carries with it a multitude of choices, decisions that sometimes have a trivial nature, but often can change the direction of your life in a profound way.  I have to be centered on my own thinking process and have enough confidence to make those decisions, at times acknowledging that I might be in error but never going against my strongest convictions just to fit in with others who convey a more aggressive manner to express their opinions.  I'm a big fan of the Desiderata line "Avoid loud and aggressive people, they are vexatious to the spirit".   That doesn't mean I feel the need to pick an argument with those I disagree with, but I've long grown past the time when I gave a hoot about what the background of other people thought of me...at least beyond a certain point.  Each of us has to chart our own course according to the values we individually hold dear.  But that doesn't not mean forsaking community and close relationships: it does mean establishing in an honest way who we really are to those we care for and love the most...which is actually a way to demonstrate deep respect for them.  Of course, if you're a complete lowlife jerk, it might behoove you to forget what Jobs said and listen for a change to those other opinions...

Podcaster's Notions about Gut Feelings Interesting but Possibly Flawed

On a recent Mindset Mentor podcast of his, personal development coach Rob Dial discusses his opinions about intuition, more specifically what he terms "gut feelings", in making decisions about others and situations.  Announcing that it was science, he claims that we all have a separate nervous system from our brain-controlled Central Nervous System (CNS): the Enteric Nervous System (ENS), that exists with more than 500 million neurons within the walls of our digestive system.  This much I go along with...Michael Gershon discovered the ENS in the late nineties, according to Dial.  What I do have difficulty automatically accepting is Dial's notion that connects the ENS, or "second brain" as Gerson terms it, with the idiomatic expressions "gut feeling" and "butterflies in stomach" as if it's giving me independent information.  Dial goes further and says that the ENS, unlike the brain which often focuses on the future and past, is wholly rooted in the present and makes itself known through feelings.  The part of his show that I did get was that we shouldn't carelessly dismiss those feelings and signals...regardless from where in our bodies they arose.  If you want to believe that you're a multiplicity of thinking systems, go for it...I tend to think that it's a lot more complicated and interrelated (and interdependent) than that.  Rob Dial is good in his "lane" of self-improvement advice and coaching, but he's not a scientist...neither am I.  Just because he or I may have learned a little about something doesn't qualify either of us from going downtown with it and attributing special narratives where they haven't been shown to apply...