You Shoulda Heard This Joke

 

Looks like our little puppy Daisy is overcome with mirth...we're always joking around.  But no, I just caught her in mid-yawn on this recent lazy day loaded with bad weather, including heavy rain, keeping her inside...and curled up on the recliner.  When we first got her at a pet adoption fair at PetSmart in May of '22 she was only seven pounds...but we then believed that she could grow to be 60 or higher at full weight.  But Daisy Dewlop, as Melissa, her human mommy, likes to call her, stabilized at 41 lbs.  She's quite a vocal character who has a mission to fight squirrels, birds, bugs, lizards...and trucks.  Humans, dogs...and especially humans with dogs...are okay when she's looking out the window at home, though: they may pass! Yet she's still pretty skittish and tense while in the car or out in public, barking up a hysterical storm when she spots people and other dogs close by.  We are training her to overcome her anxiety, though, and respond more readily to our commands.  Daisy is definitely a great blessing to us.  Below is a shot of her, with her "cousin" Kairi (our daughter Rebecca's dog) on lookout duty at our front window...

Quote of the Week...from a Fortune Cookie

Many a false step was made by standing still.      ---Fortune Cookie

I lifted the above "fortune cookie" quote straight out of the book I'm currently reading, The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss.  It's full of some pretty interesting quotes, and I find just about all of them profound, yet riddled with caveats...including this one. I think that you need some discerning wisdom to determine when, in the midst of a situation, to act and when to lay back...especially when it comes to speaking truth to people.  Since the book I'm reading is a pretty serious call to action, though, the author's intent is to get people to be bolder in taking initiatives in their lives...and doing the many little things that can bring about the fruition of their dreams. There's another quote in this book that says to do at least one thing each day that scares you.  Well, both fear and hesitation can be good or bad things, depending on your circumstances and what you're trying to accomplish.  I think first you need to figure out what you want and come up with a rough plan in which to direct yourself to it.  Then, action...as well as facing obstructive fears...is definitely in order.  But I also think it's important to wisely choose your battles in life and to develop a sense of contentment and gratitude as well, an appreciation of this present moment.  It's all a matter of balance...    

Constellation of the Month: Corona Borealis

 

Corona Borealis, although a small constellation, is easy to spot in the June evening sky at northern temperate latitudes...if the skies are clear, that is.  It's situated between Boötes to its west (left) and Hercules to its right (east), with the rough u-shaped crown studded with stars...a very easy pattern to make out.   Easily the brightest star in Corona Borealis is Alphecca (also called Gemma), a binary system about 75 light years from us.  The simplest way to find Corona Borealis in the sky is to first find Arcturus, easily the brightest star in this part of the night sky and go a little up (north) and to the left (east) from it.  Corona Borealis is, in English, the Northern Crown, and it is fun to see as it passes directly overhead: maybe an hour or two before or after it hits the zenith might be the preferred observation time to avoid straining your neck! Now we're officially entering the summertime, and if you can stand the mosquitos, enjoy clear skies and are free of obstructing streetlights, then get hold of a star map and see how many summer constellations you can recognize...Corona Borealis should be one of the more obvious ones to find.  

Next month: another constellation...

Weekly Short Stories: 1991 Science Fiction, Part 7

Here are my reactions to four more short stories appearing in the Gardner Dozois anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction, Ninth Annual Collection, spotlighting the editor's picks from the year 1991.  In only University of Florida head football coach Steve Spurrier's second year there, with Shane Matthews as quarterback, they won the Southeastern Conference championship in 1991 with a perfect league record, unexpected losses to Syracuse and Notre Dame keeping them from national title hopes that year.  The Gators had "won" the SEC back in 1984 but scandals involving then-coach Charley Pell forced them to vacate the title.  Spurrier would go on to win six total conference championships during his twelve-year tenure at UF...pretty impressive!  But back to those stories...

POGROM by James Patrick Kelly

In a dystopian, decaying near future, society is sharply divided between the fearful and insulated elderly generation and disadvantaged, often violent youth.  Ruth, one of those elderly, embarks on a tense and terrifying trip across the city to visit her friend Matt, a teacher who was recently severely beaten by a young gang.  This story is applicable to many situations today, I'm afraid to say.  Especially when folks overreact in scenarios calling for cool-headedness and restraint...

THE MOAT by Greg Egan

A multi-layered story set in Australia when rising sea levels are submerging entire Pacific islands and sending their inhabitants to Australia as widespread popular sentiment weighs in against accepting them.  Weave this narrative in with the notion of a special, secret human genetic strain that guarantees immortality from disease, and you have a somewhat disjointed tale that points the accusing finger at the superwealthy elite for manipulating the ignorant masses against the refugees...while they have their own genetic "moat" against all of them...

VOICES by Jack Dunn 

This story has more of a Ray Bradbury feel to it as boys in a small town discuss what happens at death and one of them says the dead had spoken to him.  To test this, they sneak into a funeral home where a boy they didn't know from another town was lying.  What happens when they try to reach him...you can read it to find out.  But I've a feeling that the author was presenting his own ideas about death in this very readable and compelling story...

FOAM by Brian W. Aldiss

In the near future, an academic is researching old churches is in Hungary where he is beset by a former colleague who claims that the previous ten years of his memory was wiped clean (FOAM: free of all memory) and that he was going to a Budapest clinic that promised restoration...but would his friend help him out by going to fill in some gaps to the past.  The narrator complies, realizing too late after the fact that this was a setup and that he, too, now had vast memory gaps.  The story mixes this narrative in with ongoing commentary on the decline of organized Christianity and an ongoing war between Russia and the West.  It's all good reading but I couldn't fit these three threads together into a coherent pattern...

Next week I conclude my look at the year 1991 in short science fiction...

Just Finished Rereading Carrie by Stephen King

Carrie, from 1974, was Stephen King's first published novel, paving the way to his close identification with the horror genre in fiction.  I first read it before 2007 when I began this blog...hence, no review until today, after I have just reread it.  It's not my favorite King book by a longshot, but it does touch upon a theme that the author and I both seem to have sensitivity toward: teenage bullying and the often-indifferent attitude that adults witnessing it take, as if the victim were the culprit, not the aggressor.  Carrie White, the title character, is a shy girl, dominated by her nearly insane religiously fanatical mother as she unsuccessfully tries to socially fit in her high school, in the small fictional Maine town of Chamberlain.  Susan Snell sympathizes with Carrie and asks her own boyfriend Tommie to ask Carrie to the senior prom.  But other classmates, bent on revenge for their punishment after mocking Carrie's onset of menstruation in the girls' shower...a very traumatic event for her...have their own ideas concerning Carrie for the prom.  What results is very definitely horror, with telekinesis (the ability to move objects with one's mind) a major factor.  The 1976 Carrie movie starring Sissy Spacek as Carrie presents the narrative chronologically, but the book treats the events from a future date looking back, as an assemblage of investigative articles and analyses...King then inserts key narrative passages in between these to present an interesting collage where the reader knows what ultimately happens early on while the movie viewer experiences more building suspense to the climactic scene.  Like I said earlier, Carrie is not one of my favorite King novels, but since I'm going back to his longer works that I hadn't yet discussed, this seemed to be a good opportunity.  But I think he's come out with a lot better stuff than this although his depiction of the psychological makeup of bullies in this story was right on target...

Pain is Here, But Blog Goes On

It's been a while since I missed a daily entry in this blog...this past weekend I skipped both Saturday and Sunday.  The reason's simple: I'm riding out a period of constant and recurring physical pain, a type of which I've experienced in the past and which I'm hoping and praying will end soon...yes, I'm seeing a doctor.  But life goes on, and so does this blog, which I've always defined for myself as a writing exercise and discipline. It's also a good way to work out various issues in my mind, be they personal, societal, or news items. Sometimes I'll sit down to address a topic and find myself changing my point of view as I write, the process itself aiding me in my reasoning.  For that reason, along with many others, I encourage you to start a blog of your own...tailoring it to your own special interests, of course.  Back during the decade before Facebook came along, personal blogs were the rage on the Internet...I loved randomly going through others' blogs and reading their stuff, especially the ones whose writers shared my interests.  But personal blogging diminished significantly after mega-social media sites sucked in so many people that they became the places to go on the Web...and many blogs ended or were never started.  I plan to keep on with my blog as long as I am able and Google keeps it going...hope you enjoy it...

Quote of the Week...from Oscar Wilde

There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.

                                                              ---Oscar Wilde

Late nineteenth century Irish novelist and playwright Oscar Wilde is probably best known for his book The Picture of Dorian Gray, and he has a lot of witty things to say about this thing and that.  As for the above quote, I'm assuming I'm not to take it literally for I can come up with a lot of things in life worse than being talked about.  But I get what Wilde is trying to say here...let me expand upon it a bit.  It seems that in today's world, more than ever before, people at large are letting themselves get caught up in two seemingly diametrically opposite offenses. On one hand they are obsessed with privacy about their personal lives and while in public are sensitive to anyone passing their low threshold of what constitutes undue attention.  But on the other hand, they want to be known by others...in a good sense, of course...with their sense of self-worth tied in to how attractive their appearance and personality shows in public...and being ignored is offensive.  I just saw a social media post laying out a number of ways someone can determine whether another is stalking them in their gym...then saw an ad for my own gym that emphasizes how one can use it to make their bodies look like those of professional models, an obvious appeal for those prospective customers wanting to turn others' eyes toward them.  Social media is kind of peculiar in this regard, too, with the clamor for privacy always a major beef among various sites' users...yet they're using the sites to come out into the public arena, aren't they?  I have come to believe that while privacy is a legitimate and major concern for people to have, the fear of a future in which everyone has forgotten them becomes worse...as Mr. Wilde so eloquently stated.  I think people in general are unrealistic in that they want to control who pays attention to them and talk about them, while if they are realistic about it they will acknowledge that there's always going to be some unwelcome reactions to their presence and message  Still, there's a limit to what I'll put up with on this blog with some past trolls...you don't have to agree with me but you also don't have to be a jerk about it...   

Just Finished Reading Talking to Strangers by Malcolm Gladwell

Talking to Strangers, from 2019, is the third book I've read by journalist Malcom Gladwell...the other two are Blink and The Tipping Point: click on the titles to read my reviews from this blog.   I first became aware of Talking to Strangers a couple of weeks ago when Melissa and I were browsing through a now-rare local used bookstore...Book Gallery West if you must know.  Stepping up to the cashier for our purchases, the customer at the counter was purchasing just the book I'm reviewing today: I stepped out of character and had a pleasant chat with him and the cashier, thinking that Gladwell would be happy to see me "talking to strangers".  But after I checked out his book on Libby and began to read it, it became soon clear that this was no "overcome social awkwardness" how-to book.  Gladwell's major premise is that there are embedded biases in human interaction that, while they tend to ensure a more orderly and peaceful flow of social discourse, from time to time they also create some serious problems.  One is what he calls "default to truth" whereby there is a bias toward believing in someone's honesty, often in spite of the objective outside evidence...Neville Chamberlain's belief in Adolf Hitler concerning Czechoslovakia in 1938, the many flimflammed by con investor Bernie Madoff just a few years ago, and the difficulty some American intelligence professionals had in concluding that a woman working for them was a double agent for Castro's Cuba are just three of the examples he presents of this bias going terribly wrong.  Then Gladwell goes on to discuss another bias, that of "transparency" whereby society has constructed standards of outward social behavior that supposedly tell when someone is being honest or not...he uses an episode of the TV sitcom Friends to illustrate when people are acting transparent...and thus presumably believable.  He then claims that many, however, while still being honest, do not necessarily abide by the sometimes-arbitrary rules of transparency, citing as an example the case of Amanda Knox, a young American woman falsely accused and convicted...later released...for the murder of her roommate in Italy after many thought her demeanor was untransparent and therefore suspicious.  Finally, the tragic case of Sandra Bland, who was arrested after a spurious traffic stop in Texas and later committed suicide in jail, ties together the author's thesis regarding defaulting to truth and transparency.  This time, he claims the policeman on duty should have defaulted to truth with her and not allowed his perception that she wasn't being transparent influence his judgment, which created an escalating conflict leading to the unnecessary arrest.  I, on the other hand, have a different take on it: the dude was a complete @$$hole, full of his own sense of power and dominance.  I clearly get where Malcolm Gladwell is going in this book...I see folks strangely following and believing every word of scoundrels like Putin and Trump nowadays and wonder when they decided to flush their critical thinking abilities down the toilet.  But the same people don't "default to truth" when they regard Zelensky or Biden, so I think this is more the case of them being prideful and stubborn with their own viewpoints.  What I'd like to see is a book where Gladwell takes his earlier "Blink" and "Tipping Point" theses and integrates them thoroughly with the ones he propounds in this book.  Talking to Strangers was interesting, but I don't always agree with the author's conclusions...

Weekly Short Stories: 1991 Science Fiction, Part 6

And so once again I am discussing some short fiction from 1991 as it appeared in the Gardener Dozois anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction, Ninth Annual Collection.  My life that year was dominated by work and family.  With work, my employer that year opened the floodgates for overtime...at least for those requesting it, and I was among the ones on the list.  With family, it was Melissa, me, and our infant son Will...and four if you include our little poodle Taffy.  Life was sometimes tiring, sometimes trying, but ultimately rewarding.  But enough about my life, let's talk about the lives of people who never existed except in their authors' imagination...

A WALK IN THE SUN by Geoffrey A. Landis

This is a great "old school" hard science fiction story, reminiscent of Robert Heinlein's classics, dealing with an emergency on the moon.  An astronaut is the only survivor of her craft's crash landing there, and to beat the odds with her dwindling supplies and the setting sun threatening her solar powered energy supply, Trish sets out in the moon's low gravity to keep up with it...the "ultra" in ultra-long racing, both to keep up with the sun and last until her rescuers can reach her...

FRAGMENTS OF AN ANALYSIS OF A CASE OF HYSTERIA by Ian McDonald

The title does little to explain this harrowing tale of a young Jewish woman who meets a young pre-World War I Hitler, undergoes a "ratty" experience at a mysterious Vienna nightclub and ultimately hides with her family from the Nazi persecution.  Very compelling and historically interesting...

ANGELS IN LOVE by Kathe Koja

More of the genre of horror short fiction I would expect from Stephen King, a woman hears strange sounds coming from the apartment next door...she thinks it's lovemaking with something mysterious but whatever, it's keeping her awake when she's already having trouble sleeping at night.  One day she has an opportunity to see what's really going on...not for the squeamish...

EYEWALL by Rick Shelley

On a distant planet dominated by mostly ocean with very frequent super-hurricanes, a meteorologist and his team are sent from an Earth recently devastated by a strong series of hurricanes to test methods of controlling them, using this planet's storms as test subjects.  The people stationed there, including a Japanese staffer strongly against ever using atomic explosions for any reason, are cold to their presence...especially when they discover that the researchers' plan to detonate a fusion hydrogen bomb in the eye of one hurricane.  To discuss the ethics of this adequately I would need to take up more writing space, but let's just say that I'm not totally on board with where the author was leading here...

Next week: more sci-fi from '91...

Podcaster Gives His Feelings about Money

Podcaster Rob Dial, on his show Mindset Mentor, recently gave his own take about the meaning of money for him...and naturally extended his conclusions to what attitudes each of us should have about the subject.  This in itself raises little warning alarms within me, for in our diverse society based in large part on economic freedom, that is, the liberty to decide what you do with your money, widely differing decisions folks make have combined to create the most prosperous economic culture in history.  Dial presents his own experiences...he makes no secret of the fact that he is one of those travel addicts, especially enamored with Italy.  I have no problem with this except that he seems to think we should all follow his footsteps in this regard, promoting his conclusions like a true evangelist.  The truth is that he found in his life a nice little money-making strategy for himself, worked very hard to achieve his goals and has become financially independent: good for him, nothing wrong with that!  I don't think, though, that his experiences are completely translatable to the population at large, even the much smaller body that tunes in to his podcasts.  Dial says that while being responsible about how we manage our money, we shouldn't be like Scrooge in treating it like wealth itself...by itself money is valueless, useful only in what it can bring us.  And to Rob Dial, whose financial blessings in his life have pretty much guaranteed him an easy retirement with plenty of moolah to fuel his every desire, he apparently interprets being careful with finances, to the extent that most of us are with more limited incomes and resources as we plan for our later years, as a mistake.  At least that's how I see it.  I travel, too, but I don't just pick up whenever I want and spend weeks somewhere across the world...if that's what you like to do and you have the resources to do it, then be like Rob Dial and do that: I'm happy for you.  This fits in with what I had earlier termed "our diverse society based in large part on economic freedom".  And I know of several people who have limited incomes and means and must be very careful about their finances.  So, although I deeply understand the "you can't take it with you" mentality of Dial's podcast about money, I felt he was a bit flippant and insensitive about the wide range of circumstances people find themselves in regarding it...

Subscribed to Steve Kaufmann's LingQ Language Learning Site

Steve Kaufmann, as I have written in a recent article, is a polyglot (speaker of several languages) whose views about language learning pretty much line up with those I've embraced over the years.  He strongly stresses passive vocabulary amassment through reading and listening over the traditionally taught emphasis on perfect pronunciation and grammar, areas that are also worth studying but are secondary to the main goal: comprehension.  He has a company, LingQ (pronounced "link") whose website offers detailed instruction and practice in many languages.  After discovering that its free version gave few benefits, yesterday I finally decided to sign up for the premium, which provides all of Steve's touted advantages to language learning that appeals to me...it's only about nine bucks a month.  Last night I started out with basic lessons in six different languages...but the user can skip around to any level so desired.  There's also a feature in which I can import material from outside the site...I'll get around to figuring that out, I'm sure.  In any event, I needed something like this that offered quick, effective translation to what I'm reading and/hearing so that I can learn new words faster without slowing down my studying.  From time to time, I plan to write about how I'm doing here...should be an adventure of sorts...

Just Finished Reading (for the 3rd Time) 'Salem's Lot by Stephen King

I've been slowly plodding back through the collected works of my favorite author, Stephen King...a few days ago I reviewed on of his early stories, The Long Walk, that he wrote under the pseudonym Richard Bachman.  While waiting for his first published novel, Carrie, to be available on my library's audiobook for checkout, I decided to go ahead and reread the next one he did, titled Salem's Lot.  I first read it about twenty years ago or so, and then reread it in 2017...click HERE for my review article back then.  I don't want to just repeat what I wrote back then, so I encourage you to first read that six-year-old article.  Salem's Lot, published in 1975,  is about vampires...a clear tribute on the part of King to Bram Stoker's classic 1897 novel Dracula.  Here, two sinister figures from Europe arrive in the sleepy Maine town of Jerusalem's Lot...Straker and Barlow...ostensibly to set up an antique furniture shop.  But fiction writer Ben Mears suspects something bad going on in the old Barlow House that looms over the town where they have moved...Mears in his childhood experienced a life-changing, horrible vision when he went inside this "haunted house" on a dare.  As people in 'Salem's Lot begin to disappear one by one, Mears and others like his new girlfriend Susan Orton, precocious young Mark Petrie, physician Jim Cody, English teacher Mark Burke and Catholic priest Father Callahan join up to investigate, increasingly suspecting, against common sense skepticism, the existence of vampires around them.  Everything I love about Stephen King novels is here, including excellent development of the characters that reveals their deeper motives and emotions as well as a building climax that is wonderfully suspenseful.  And his ending leaves a tantalizing bit to the reader's imagination, another of his literary talents I've come to enjoy.  Father Callahan would go on to appear in King's Dark Tower series...his travails in 'Salem's Lot revealed this story's God as coldly righteous, devoted to shutting out the unclean in spirit...very "Old Testament".  This novel isn't very long and is readily available both from public libraries...the audiobook version free through the Libby's service...and bookstores or Amazon, preferably used.  Now, on to Carrie...

Ran Gainesville's Depot Park 5K Run This Morning

On a warm and humid June morning following a day loaded with rain and thunder (and work), I managed to get down to Gainesville's pleasant Depot Park...a few blocks south of downtown...home of the "gator in the pond" and full of birds singing away, chief among them red-winged blackbirds and mourning doves.  Saturday mornings at 7:30 they hold 5K (3.1 mile) races, free of charge and supported by volunteers...I did just that, checking the course before the race.  I had a choice during the event: either run the whole distance, walk the whole distance, or split it up between running and walking...I chose running, but taking it easy on the first (of four laps) and building up my speed to finish at 33:48: not my best, but during this time of year I'm going for covering the distance, not doing it fast.  Click HERE to see the results.  Next week, instead of the Depot Parkrun, they will be staging the Juneteenth-themed Freedom Walk...also 5K (but not a timed race), starting and ending from this park and going through various historic neighborhoods in the vicinity.  Then on the 24th the parkrun resumes...I might just walk that one if my plans work out...

Quote of the Week...from Groucho Marx

I find television very educating.  Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.   

     ---Groucho Marx

Facebook is a peculiar social media website, but like others it employs AI algorithms to guess and then present unsolicited material that supposedly resonates with my interests. One result is that I'm getting a lot of stuff about the Beatles...no problem with that.  I also like another site, called Goodwill Librarian, that promotes books and reading and has all sorts of funny and pithy posts.  The other day they showed the above quote by comedy legend Groucho Marx, who also said, "I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member" and "Why, a four-year child could understand this report.  Run out and find me a four-year-old child.  I can't make head nor tail of it." In his day, though, television gave its viewers few options beyond the three major networks, public television and an occasional independent channel.  Now, though, although you can still get brain-wasted sitting in a stupor watching inane programming, television offers a variety of opportunities for educational experiences...especially if you use Roku or something similar to access YouTube.  That channel can teach you just about anything on Earth...just do a search on your topic and see what happens.  Earlier this year...although I've gotten away from it more recently...I was learning college mathematics in different on-line lectures on YouTube.  Nowadays I've been stuck on the Kendra listening practice in the five languages I'm studying...it's a great way to both get used to the spoken language and fill in my vocabulary with new words.  There's also a lot of "how-to" maintenance and repair stuff there...go ahead, give it a try.  You can even run a virtual marathon if you like...or follow a number of great classical music pieces with the written music on screen tracing the audio.  And on and on...yep, I wonder what kind of savvy, hilarious quip my old friend Groucho would have to say about all that... 

Follow-Up on Tuesday's Political Article

I thought I'd follow up on Tuesday's venture into politics on this blog to clarify where I stand in an area that causes so much confusion, fear and rage among some folks.  For one, I neither campaign for nor "endorse" any candidate or referendum issue stance...you're all big boys and girls, figure it out for yourselves.  But this blog IS a major outlet of free speech in which I can lay out my views on this thing or that...politics just happens to be a (minor) facet of my life and what I'm interested in.  As for my leanings, I tend to be an "old school" Democrat...albeit currently registered as Republican...who believes in equal opportunity for all regardless of whatever demographic category happens to be hung on them...but I'm also averse to people getting carried away by identity politics and the various "groups" they see themselves belonging to.  I am very skeptical of the media as it stands today, with the figures both in front of and behind the camera and microphone often with hidden (and some brazenly clear) agendas and biases. My preferences tend to be in the political center...conservative with national defense and security and liberal with civil rights and social safety nets like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.  I believe that there is a strong role for government to play when it concerns public health (including pandemics), the environment, and the building and maintenance of transportation and communications infrastructures.  But government should do whatever it can to encourage the development of a free-market economy...sometimes the best way for that is to back off and do little.  I used to watch a lot of the floor debates of the US Senate in recent years, and whenever a speaker (from either party) enunciated the above points, I have agreed with them.  Two days ago, I wrote that I was supporting Tim Scott for the Republican presidential nomination, but here again another factor comes into play: for all practical purposes, Senator Scott is a stranger although I like his demeanor and positive attitude...I still could be totally wrong about him.  Well, I guess I could string this article along further about politics, but I'm sure I'll get plenty of chances in the upcoming weeks and months as the 2024 presidential election approaches...  

Weekly Short Stories: 1991 Science Fiction, Part 5

It's Wednesday, so here I am again, slowly going through yet another Gardner Dozois anthology, his ninth annual collection of his series titled The Year's Best Science Fiction and focusing on stories published in the year 1991.  These books of his are very, very huge...not like the previous two different series I reviewed, edited respectively by Isaac Asimov and Donald A. Wollheim.  Yet I do appreciate the stories, by and large, that Dozois selected: today's three subjects are no exceptions.  If you're wondering when I get around to reading these tales for my weekly articles, the answer is simple: on my breaks at work!  And now, without further ado, here are my reactions to these tales as they appeared in the book...

A HISTORY OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY, WITH ILLUSTRATIONS by Kim Stanley Robinson

A writer is commissioned to write a history book about the twentieth century...but at every turn he is confronted with its horrible wars and bloodshed.  Finally, he drives to a far, distant place in the north to get away from it all and repeats for the next century the rosy, optimistic scenario that another writer a hundred years before had predicted for the twentieth.  After all, as bad as it was, you have to look ahead with hope...

GENE WARS by Paul J. McAuley

A short, frenetically paced story about a young gene design entrepreneur written at the time when the whole controversy about owning trademarks to aspects of biology was just getting started.  McAuley brutally takes this emerging industry and trends to their logical...and very extreme and disturbing...conclusion...

THE GALLERY OF HIS DREAMS by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

This is a very tender, sensitive story of the great American Civil War photographer Mathew Brady and an examination both of the fickle nature of public fame and the horrors of war.  I'm guessing that the author drew on a lot of truth about Brady's life and his beloved wife Julia...and then turned it into a science fiction time travel yarn that somehow worked well.  Highly recommended...

Next week: still more from the year 1991 in short science fiction...

Further Reflections on GOP Presidential Politics

It's sad for me to see my state's governor sink so low in pandering to his constituency's base of hate as he seeks to out-bully his only major rival for his party's presidential nomination for 2024.  I had written in an earlier article how I would support DeSantis over Trump after the latter sought with every means possible...including urging a swing state's secretary of state to manufacture more than eleven thousand nonexistent votes for him...to overturn a free and fair election he closely lost.  But with the Florida governor's recent antics, I'm afraid that he's lost my primary vote...instead I'm strongly leaning to South Carolina senator Tim Scott, a decent and likeable conservative who recently threw his hat into the ring.  Ronald Reagan, considered by many on the political right to be the greatest president of our era, in 1976 ran unsuccessfully as an ideologue, pushing the hot-button issues for his base in similar manner to what DeSantis has been doing.  But in 1980 he drastically changed his approach, presenting himself as an effective leader who wanted to bring the country together, make the economy strong again and protect it from outside adversaries.  And he was wildly successful, trouncing incumbent Jimmy Carter in that year's general election.  Well, I'm only one individual but I thought I'd set the record straight about who I support and who I don't.  I may or may not vote for Senator Scott were he to (improbably) win the Republican nomination next year, but at least I can see him as a thoughtful president who respects our Constitution and shows responsibility for the nation as a whole, not just one fraction of it...

Podcaster Promotes Reading...My Motivations Differ

Today's topic on personal development coach Rob Dial's Mindset Mentor podcast is one he's covered in the past: how to read faster and more effectively.  I may have already covered a few of his points in an earlier blog article, but I couldn't find it...so here goes.  Dial cites some kind of study from a year ago in which it stated that only 33% of high school graduates have ever read a single book after finishing school...the figure isn't much better for college graduates: 42 %! Additionally, some 80% of American households have never bought a book...I'm presuming that doesn't count the times kids in school have to buy stuff for reading assignments.  On the other side, the "average" CEO of a corporation reads some 60 books a year: if I were Archie Bunker, I'd say so much reading is why they're average...but I get Dial's point: reading a lot can help make you smarter and more successful in life.  He then expands upon his own reading habits, which although he tends to prefer paper books, have evolved into using several available features of the digital Kindle and Audible services.  He's a big fan of highlighting sections of text and saving them for future viewing...that tells me that he is primarily a non-fiction reader.  Dial likes to combine buying Kindle books...which he can read on his computer, iPad or iPhone, along with the audio text component when that is available.  For me, although I use Kindle, primarily for my Gardner Dozois science fiction anthology series, I've never used audio with it...and that series doesn't offer it anyway.  I do use my public library's free Libby service to check out audiobooks that I can read on my phone, often at work during appropriate times. Although reading books may indeed help with intelligence, knowledge and worldly success, that's not why I like to read.  I like to read because it's fun...I don't think Rob Dial ever got around to mentioning that...

Enjoyed Golf on TV Today for a Change of Pace

I was relaxing this afternoon and, after starting to surf the available TV channels, fell upon live coverage of the final round of the Memorial Tournament in Dublin, Ohio...hosted by legendary golfer Jack Nicklaus.  I didn't even know it was going on until I tuned in, and then decided to stick with it a while after recognizing familiar names like Scottie Scheffler, Viktor Hovland and Roy McIlroy at the top of the leaderboard.  But an unfamiliar name, that of Danny McCarthy, was leading everyone, usually by a couple of strokes, as the afternoon wore on.  He had never won a PGA tour before but this time around it looked as if he would finally succeed as the normally clutch pros around him kept stumbling through hole after hole.  Finally, McCarthy, who hadn't bogeyed a single hole today, did just that on the 18th while Hovland had sunk an incredible long birdie putt on the difficult 17th...this forced a playoff which Hovland won on the first sudden-death hole.  Never having played as much as a single hole of golf in my lifetime...I don't count miniature golf, which I think I'm adequate at...it is interesting to see these trained players at the top of the game struggle with their swings to keep the ball on the fairway and out of the tall grass, woods, sand traps and water.  I do understand that the putting greens are often deliberately designed to be treacherous with their deceptive slopes that the golfers often must spend enormous concentration trying to figure out...after all, that's all that miniature golf is: putting.  Sitting back and placidly watching the tournament approach the conclusion was fun, but you know, I highly doubt that I'll be doing the same thing next week...maybe once every month or two sounds about right...

Ran Gainesville's Depot Parkrun 5K This Morning

Last Saturday morning was unusually pleasant for this time of year, with the temperature dipping to the upper 50s with low humidity...today it returned to warm and humid: 69 degrees and 94% humidity at race time at Gainesville's free, volunteer-run weekly 5K event, the Depot Parkrun.  Depot Park is a few blocks south of downtown, accessible from both Main Street and Depot Road.  I had thought of volunteering for today's event, but it looked as if they had plenty of folks already signed up.  No problem: I ran it instead! It's always a bit challenging at the start of these runs since so many people are crowded together in such a small space, with establishing a workable, steady running pace next to impossible.  Since this "race" (they don't like to call it that for some reason) involves four laps around the park, I was able to get split times called out by one of those blessed volunteers.  As is usually the case, I had negative splits, with my fastest one by far being that final lap.  I finished with an improved time of 31:22, far from my best but a good effort anyway.  The good people running this show meet after the race at 9 in a nearby coffee shop (Opus Coffee on SW 4th Avenue) and invite anyone to join them...I'd like to go but not all hot and sweaty: maybe later in June when I walk the course again.  As for today's posted results, you can see them by clicking HERE...    

Quote of the Week...from Steve Kaufmann

The best way to learn a language is to massively ingest it, by listening and reading.  Listening and reading are so powerful.  If you can read the books, you know the language.  To get to know a language takes a lot of time and a lot of interacting with it...and a lot of that time has to be on your own.  I think it's better to work on comprehension and vocabulary without pressure to reproduce the language (by speaking). 

                                                                               ---Steve Kaufmann

Steve Kaufmann is a 77-year-old Canadian polyglot...that is, someone who speaks more than two languages...in his case, twenty to varying degrees.  He has spent his lifespan traveling and living abroad, investing years in his country's foreign service.  I've seen him on YouTube and he really does know his field, able to switch at a moment's notice from one language to another.  The above quote, which I lifted verbatim from the Wikipedia article about him, sums up his philosophy about learning languages. I have long felt that my formal academic education in foreign languages, from elementary school through high school and even college, totally got it wrong when emphasizing sometimes arcane grammar concepts, perfect pronunciation, and grading students on the "correctness" of their speech instead of doing what they should have been doing, which was to stress building vocabulary and increasing listening and reading comprehension.  My life experience has been very different from Kaufmann's although I have entertained a long-time interest in foreign languages...I've yet to set foot on another country's soil.  Yet in today's world of near-instant communication and vast resources through the Internet I find it easy to access material in any language I want to pursue...of course, Wikipedia is a great starting place, along with an instant translation program or app.  I can also translate this blog and then note the new vocabulary and structure in the target language...pretty cool!  Steve Kaufmann has his own podcasts and a language-learning company called "LingQ"...I've heard that it's of limited use in its free version and that the premium version, for about ten bucks a month, opens up a lot of links and vocabulary-building features in a number of languages.  But for now, I'm listening to Steve's podcasts and working on my listening and reading.  The languages I'm focusing on, all of which I already have a reasonable...but to me, pretty inadequate...degree of understanding, are Spanish, French, German, Russian and Chinese...

My May 2023 Running and Walking Report

In May I kept up my pace of running training, adding to it a regimen of incremental speed walking.  On the 6th and 20th I ran the Saturday morning Depot Parkrun 5K here in Gainesville, and on the 27th I walked the course.  I've also been paying regular visits late night after work to my local 24/7 gym, where I have been gradually increasing my walking speed on their treadmill...now up to 4.6 mph (13:02/mile) for a mile's duration.  I'd like to develop a good mix in the future for half-marathons...and possibly even marathons...of a steady running pace regularly interrupted with fast walking breaks: in other words, the Galloway Method perfected by marathoner Jeff Galloway.  In June I plan to do more of the same with my training and sticking to that Parkrun for public races...although they're PC about calling them "runs" and not "races".  I've also done a lot of my running in my own nicely air-conditioned house while listening to podcasts and watching race videos on YouTube...lots of fun and pretty convenient, too.  Hope you're doing well with whatever you may be training on...

Weekly Short Stories: 1991 Science Fiction, Part 4

Once again, it's Wednesday and time for me to continue with my look back at the year 1991 as I review three more sci-fi short stories appearing in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction, Ninth Annual Collection, edited by the late Gardner Dozois and featuring his picks from that year. In '91 Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, an icon in the civil rights movement, after 24 years on the bench, announced his retirement.  The Republican president at the time, George (H.W.) Bush, nominated very conservative judge Clarence Thomas, another African American, as Marshall's replacement.  Although the Democratic majority in the Senate wasn't enthusiastic about a conservative justice replacing a liberal as it would change the dynamics of future cases and rulings, unlike Republican Mitch McConnell with his more recent stonewalling of Merrick Garland, they processed Thomas' nomination. And even though Anita Hill accused Thomas of past sexual harassment, he was narrowly confirmed...and is now the senior justice on the Court.  But as I like to say, back to those stories... 

DISPATCHES FROM THE REVOLUTION by Pat Cadigan

This is another of those tedious "what if" alternative history stories, focusing on the 1968 Chicago anti-war protests during that tumultuous election year.  The lefties are the good guys here and the righties...especially Ronald Reagan...are portrayed as the evil villains.  I think the author was saying here that even if the tragic assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King that year turned out differently, horrible things would still have happened as they were all symptoms of an underlying sickness in the country.  It's up to the reader to agree or not with that premise...

PIPES by Robert Reed

There's a project in the future, kind of like Jurassic Park, where extinct prehistoric animals are to be brought back into existence and set in a vast reserve in the American plains, accessible to the wealthy and elite for study and entertainment.  The scientist spearheading it all has everything down about the needed genetic codes down on his computer in his apartment, when a Native American plumber pays him a visit to fix his pipes.  The point of his appearance soon becomes clear when he, apparently already aware of the project, proposes that the Indians also be returned their land that was taken from them.  A thoughtful and funny ending...

MATTER'S END by Gregory Benford

Trying to prove the decay of protons is a formidable task, especially in India of the future where much of the population has grown hostile to science and technology after biological "innovations" have unintentionally decimated their agriculture and even bred tiny predatory fish that lodge themselves in people's urinary tracts...shudder!  But deep beneath the surface near Bangalore is a facility that reports to have evidence that the world's scientific community has been waiting for...a western scientist is there to ascertain the experiment's validity and report on it.  The result: let's just say that once again here is a tale that pretends that religious dogma...in this case of India...rings of literal truth.  And that perceptions of truth...even greatly exaggerated...can create new truths, if you can wrap your head around that.  By the way, Benford is an astrophysicist as well as a sci-fi writer: he knows his science at least...

Next week: still more stories of 1991 discussed from Dozois' book...

2023 Atlantic Hurricane Season Begins on Thursday

The 2023 Atlantic hurricane season is set to officially start this Thursday, June 1, but already there is a low-pressure disturbance...albeit not yet tropical in nature...in the Gulf of Mexico that is slated to pelt the central part of Florida this week with much rain and storms.  The forecasters say that this year should be close to normal in the quantity and intensity of named tropical storms and hurricanes.  But all it takes is one big hurricane coming right at your home area to make a monumental mess of things, and I'll be keeping an eye a little more on those daily forecasts and tropical outlooks on the TV weather stations.  Gainesville has been almost providentially spared the head-on wrath of a major storm, although in recent years it has been sideswiped on a number of occasions.  My major concern is a Category Four or Five hurricane strengthening in the Gulf and coming ashore around Cedar Key, heading straight for my hometown.  It's not a high probability for a single year, but over a span of decades the likelihood of that occurring is drastically increased.  But for now, all seems normal...

On Memorial Day

Nobody I know ever says "Happy Memorial Day" like they would on a different holiday, for today is the time to somberly and gratefully reflect on those brave and dedicated people who in our past gave their lives in combat to protect our freedoms and way of life here in America.  People can argue...and rightly so...about the wisdom of our civilian leaders in various conflicts over our history, but the soldiers who carried out those policies with courage and the ultimate sacrifice deserve the greatest honor.  God bless them all...

Funny Old British Comedy Skit Sticks with Me

I was just recently mentioning to a friend a very funny British comedy skit I once saw back in the '80s on one of the many good shows my local Gainesville PBS station used to broadcast back then.  In it, a frumpy late-middle-aged couple is going off to bed, but first the wife insists that the reluctant husband take out the garbage.  Grumbling, he trudges outside and then, after looking around him, suddenly rushes to his car...still in his pajamas...and heads to the airport, where he takes off in a jet, super-high speed, to go partying and gambling in some far-off resort.  The jet zooms back in and he quickly gets back to the garbage cans, when he slowly makes his way back to his room.  Then his wife asks him if he got all the trash...and he's off again!  That skit stuck with me because, one, it was so damned funny and, two, it opened up the possibility of having a wacky, self-contained adventure during a weekend...and then getting back to "business as usual".  In particular, I think of various marathons and half-marathons scattered each weekend across America...and even in other countries of the world and wouldn't it be cool to pull off something like that dude emptying the garbage...except that I wouldn't be secretive about it.  I wish I remembered which series that skit came from: I've narrowed it down to Dave Allen At Large, Not the Nine O'Clock News, and Monty Python's Flying Circus... 

Walked Gainesville's Depot Parkrun This Morning

In recent days I've been embarking on a more strenuous training regimen for walking, as my schedule permits.  To this end I decided to use the free Depot Parkrun 5K event, held (almost) every Saturday morning at 7:30, to try at least once a month walking an entire race.  Today was my first complete walk, but the temptation just before race time was to go ahead and run it, the weather being an unseasonably cool and pleasant 58 degrees with 84% humidity.  But no, I had made up my mind and decided to hike that distance.  I do feel the need to mention that for the previous couple of weeks I had periodically been walking at incrementally faster paces on my gym's treadmill after work late at night, stepping off each time after one mile: yesterday I got my sustained walking speed up to 4.5 mph.  Today's race involved lots of runners naturally passing me...you need a certain degree of humility to speed-walk races.  Of course, I was also trying to go fast while maintaining foot contact with the path.  My goal was to break 50 minutes, but I was surprised not only to finish the 5K without breaking a sweat, but that my finishing time was 45:14, a pace just faster than 4.2 mph.  You can see today's results by clicking HERE.  I'm becoming more convinced that the treadmill, used wisely, can help to automatically improve the user's walking form by progressively increasing their speed at a manageable distance from workout to workout.  I'm thinking of expanding this principle to running, which in retrospect is what I did back in 2007 when I began training for races after a more than thirty-year hiatus.  Depot Park, site of this event, is about eight blocks south of downtown Gainesville... 

Quote of the Week...from Lenny Kravitz

We're getting so pulled in by computers and technology, and our kids have their face in computers all day. The human relationship is being diminished by this.                 ---Lenny Kravitz

Lenny Kravitz is an American solo rock artist who I've always considered as one of the most musically talented in the profession.  His singles hit Fly Away was my personal top favorite song for the year 1998, and he shined portraying Katniss' stylist Cinna in the movies The Hunger Games and Catching Fire.  Although I like his music and acting, I'd like to focus on Lenny's above quote.  Sixty-six years old now, I grew up and spent my early adult years free of the then-fledgling digital revolution, whereas it's the only thing that younger generations know of in life.  Fifty years ago, people would be astonished at a picture of a typical city street of today with half the people quizzically staring down at their hands as if in a trance.  When I went with my then-eighteen-year-old son Will to his college in Jacksonville fifteen years ago, we went to see what the main library looked like...the tables were full of students, without books, eyes glued in on their laptop computers.  Whatever happened to that "cognitive reverie" of hanging out at the stacks there, surrounded by books, which is what I used to do as a student?  And the video games...don't get me going with that.  Of course, I, too, have my head in computers all day as well...especially considering my "smart" phone.  And it's not all bad, don't get me wrong: I'm taking advantage of this wonderful opportunity to write this free blog for anyone (in a free country) in the world to read!  Kids do get outside and play and interact...at least some of them.  But computers have this instant feedback and reinforcement trait that can be addicting.  In generations past, children had their heads in books...with mine it was television all the time...and now with the young it's computers.  I wonder what the snare will be a couple of generations from now.  There is one glaring difference between computers and TV/books: people...not just young...find their personal validation through social media and the Internet, and that makes it much more likely that they can be manipulated by the ones pulling the strings on the other side, often hidden...

Just Finished Rereading The Long Walk by Stephen King

Before I began writing this blog back in April of 2007, I had already read most of Stephen King's published novels.  Since I tend to review books here that I just read, this means that I never got around to discussing those earlier books.  King early on liked to publish come of his works under the pseudonym Richard Bachman...The Long Walk, from 1979, was one of them.  And I just finished reading it...again. The setting...as in so many other Stephen King stories...is Maine.  America has turned into an authoritarian, militaristic state and the big sport on the day of the story is the annual Long Walk, where everyone wagers on who will survive the grueling ordeal...and only the last one left walking will.  Survive, because any participant who dips below the four miles per hour threshold will be warned three times and then shot dead by the soldiers patrolling the route.  Yet many young men volunteer for this "race", because if they do survive, they will pretty much have anything they want for the remainder of their lives.  Ray Garraty, a native of Maine, throws his hat into the ring and, along with 99 other boys, sets off.  The tale is about surviving, giving up, the limits of human endurance and the meaning of friendship and honor while the walkers all know that the others must die in order for them to continue living.  Ray has his friends and foes, and the story gets pretty worked up as you might imagine whenever a boy cannot physically go on any further...and here come the soldiers.  I picked The Long Walk as the first of a series of rereads I plan to continue with because, well, although I'm not going to go out on such a race myself, I have been working on my walking speed both around the neighborhood and at my gym on the treadmill.  The plan is to develop an athletic level of performance with walking, past the 4-mph standard of King's novel.  Oh, although the author was depicting a cruel American society that didn't exist, I might add that it doesn't exist yet: it will happen, though, if its people allow it to happen...

Weekly Short Stories: 1991 Science Fiction, Part 3

Here is another installment of my weekly review of science fiction short stories I have just read. I am currently going at a crawling pace through the Gardner Dozois anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction, Ninth Annual Collection, featuring his picks from the year 1991. This was the year that my workplace moved to its new location in far southwestern Gainesville: still there...as a matter of fact I'm sitting in their employee parking lot right now typing this. I've enjoyed my work over the years...definitely a plus in my life with lots of good people around me as well.  But as I usually say at this juncture, back to those stories...

THE DARK by Karen Joy Fowler

A very curious story this is, weaving together three improbable narratives: a missing little boy in Yosemite National Park, the cyclic rises and falls of the plague over the centuries, and tunnel fighting during the Vietnam War.  Yet it works well in this tale worth rereading...

MARNIE Ian MacLeod

A man with a singular, horrible event in his past keeps coming back within his body from the future (presumably with the aid of a time machine) to avert the tragic event...but can't seem to get past himself as the time draws near. To me this story shows just how much folks go through their daily lives on autopilot, usually reacting without thinking to what happens around them. And also, that it's our own inner resistance keeping us from change, not always that which we think the world imposes on us...

A TIP ON A TURTLE by Robert Silverberg

A woman taking a vacation break following the breakup of her marriage finds on a tropical resort romance...and turtle races in the pool as a mysterious man she's attracted to has a gift for picking the winners.  It's all about the gift of foresight...or is it a curse?

¨

ÜBERMENSCH! by Kim Newman

What if Superman didn't crash land as a little child in Kansas, but rather in Bavaria, Germany during Hitler's rise?  This story is an exercise in speculation on that "what if" premise, peculiar since, after all, there was no Superman to begin with from which to create an alternative "history"...or is this just a spoof of the whole alternative history subgenre? Read it for yourself and get back to me...

Next week I will continue discussing short sci-fi from 1991...

Podcast Discusses Regret and How to Avoid It

Yesterday's Mindset Mentor podcast had host Rob Dial cover a topic he's covered before: don't be full of regret when approaching death.  Yes, this sounds like an inherently morbid topic, but it's also one of Stephen Covey's principles of highly effective people: begin with the end in mind, looking back from the grave after one's life is completed.  So, we're dying (or have died, looking back) and see our lives before us.  Dial says that to avoid regret, the first thing we need to have done is to kick the bad habit of having acceptance by others as a priority in our relationships and behavior.  He cited part of the Jim Carrey quote I discussed last June: "Your need for acceptance can make you invisible in this world."  Then he quoted a fellow podcaster on the same subject: "I don't need you to like me.  I want you to like me.  But I won't change myself for you to like me." Dial goes further to stress that it takes certain life skills to be able to break out of the mold of living just to please others when he cites his own late father, who in a letter written to Rob's sister said, "I hope you live your life with courage, love and laughter." Dial was so impressed that he had that tattooed on his arm.  One other point from this podcast: it's never too late in life to change direction in life and be true to oneself.  Much of our early life is involved with creating a false personality that "fits" with those around us in society...and then later in life shedding that and discovering our true selves and purposes...according to Rob Dial.  Of course, I would add that one person's purpose and true self might be another's drudgery and false face...so it's also important not to get "sideways" in trying to tell others how to live their lives: each of us has our own path to follow...

Check Facts Before Going Off on Conspiracy Theories

A couple of people, whose identities I would rather protect but can say that I care for both of them, recently lowered a bomb of a news story on me.  In it apparently our own state government has a special agenda for persecuting and even eliminating their identity group, based on two news stories, one about paramedics and the other a piece of legislation signed into law a few days ago.  Upon hearing their narrative, I expressed empathy with them and outrage as to what was going on.  Then, later on in the day I got on my computer and investigated both stories, which these two had tied together into a sort of conspiracy.  The stories were completely unrelated, with the event about the emergency medical services having taken place long ago back in 2012, and in a distant state, just to begin with...along with other mitigating factors.  As for the bill in question, I read its official summary in detail and concluded that my friends' fears were completely unfounded...albeit with a possible hidden reason for their group's underlying concern that they probably didn't want out in the open.  Let me just say that all of this drama and rushing to judgment with sinister conspiracy theories doesn't just afflict right-wingers like MyLumpyPillow boss Mike Lindell...anyone can go bananas over absolutely nothing if that's what they feel led to do and are too lazy to perform just a little honest fact-checking and refuse to allow for the possibility that their initial hunch was wrong...

No Thanks, So-Called "50th" Class Reunion

This isn't going to be a very upbeat article, so you're welcome to pass on it if you would prefer. During the past few years, from time to time I wondered whether I would attend my high school's "Class of 1974" fifty-year reunion, should they decide to hold one.  I had avoided the previous reunions, thinking that maybe it would be better to let maybe just a little more time to separate me from those largely nightmare years of being "institutionalized" in a large public school ruled by bullies, snobs, and mostly indifferent teachers.  It was supposed to be the premier high school in my county with a higher number of wealthy families sending their kids there, so I'm assuming that the other places were probably higher in their percentage of bullies and lower with the snobs.  Don't get me wrong, I believe in forgiving although not necessarily forgetting the treatment I got back then as a kid just trying to get through each day.  I even picked up a few Facebook friends from there, although the only ones who ever responded to my posts on it were hard-right Trump kooks, full of venom whenever I wrote something they opposed...especially when I wrote some pieces urging gun regulation following mass shootings.  Finally, one of them put out a racist posting and I unfriended him...one night a few months ago I finally saw the writing on the wall and unfriended the entire lot of fellow alumni and haven't regretted it one bit.  So back to that upcoming reunion in 1974...I just got an email asking me for an RSVP on it...which was to start yesterday!  Uh, it's 2023 and unless my arithmetical skills are failing me, that's 49, not 50 years.  But wait, reading on I discovered that they decided to combine the classes of '73 and '74...guess they won't be holding one for my group next year after all.  In the email were listed those who had replied that they would be attending...one of them was the biggest, meanest bully of that class above me, a trained boxer no less, who I was stuck with for years at my own bus stop and who actually resembled the Scut Farkus bully character in the movie A Christmas Story: yeah, like I want to party with that dude!  They say the years can effect great changes on people...I know that's true in my own case, hopefully for the better.  But unless I see my old "buddies" from school show some of that change within themselves, I think I'd instead just rather keep my distance from them: better to just pick 100 strangers at random and have a wingding with them. Sadly, I feel that even holding a 6oth reunion wouldn't change anything...

Ran Gainesville's Depot Parkrun This Morning

After skipping a week, I had planned to once again get on down to Depot Park a few blocks south of Gainesville's downtown section and run the free, volunteer-organized Saturday morning Depot Parkrun for another go at 5 kilometers (3.1 miles).  I almost missed it, though, when my alarm failed...but Melissa woke me just in time to get there for the 7:30 start.  Outside the fog, which was strong at the start of my drive there, suddenly lifted and the sky was totally clear.  The temperature was 70 degrees with an excruciatingly muggy 96% humidity...not good!  Once again, I ran the event trying to settle into a running groove, which I probably mistakenly set at too high a pace due to that humidity.  I noticed that a number of fellow runners may have miscalculated as well, for they found themselves having to walk after a time on the course.  I finished at 31:46 without needing to slow to a walk...you can see the results by clicking HERE.  It was one of my faster efforts recently at the Parkrun although I should have run a little slower, truth be told.  Some 99 people crowded today's run...unfortunately a small number of them didn't get their times properly recorded with their names: either they didn't preregister online (it's how you get the barcodes for your results to be recorded) or there was some sort of glitch.  As for future Parkruns, I can see that the weather conditions here in Gainesville are only going to get more unbearable in the weeks to come.  My plan, at least right now, for June is to walk one Saturday, run another, and volunteer a third...on the 17th the run will be cancelled due to the park being used for the Freedom Walk during Juneteenth weekend.  As for next week at Depot Park, maybe I'll try walking that one, too: I've been practicing speed-walking both around my neighborhood and at the gym on their treadmill...

Quote of the Week...from Keanu Reeves

It's easy to become very self-critical when you're an actor.  Then you get critiqued by the critics.  Whether you agree with them or not, people are passing judgment on you.

                   ---Keanu Reeves

Although he's been the star of many successful movies by now, I strongly identify Keanu Reeves by his role of Neo, aka "Mister Anderson", in the outstanding and profound Matrix science fiction trilogy. I think he fit that role superbly...I probably should check out other flicks of his.  Not being an actor myself, I won't speak to that specific profession, but rather in a more general sense.  As a simple human being grinding out my own life on this planet at this time and place, I feel that I am continuously under the judgmental gaze of others.  It's disconcerting when I go to a simple men's breakfast at my church and all everyone wants to do is play pecking order games about their respective careers and accomplishments...guess who gets to be at the bottom of the social status totem pole with my steady union job (and what does any of this have to do with Jesus)? But then again, I...and most probably you as well...have had times in my life when I was considered at the top of whatever it was that I was involved with.  During those occasions I discovered that while most people didn't treat me any differently during those periods, there were also those who exaggerated whatever success I had experienced while others would explain it all with comments that I had some kind of unfair advantage. I believe that too many people create prisons for themselves by imagining judgment coming down on them from others if they don't dress, look or speak a certain way or have the "correct" associations.  Like Keanu, I recognize nearly universal judgment going on around me while at the same time deprecating its importance in the grand scheme of things. In truth, that judgment is vastly dwarfed by another social syndrome: being generally ignored and eventually forgotten. And that, I'm afraid, is something which is so much worse that few want to face it head on, although even with all of our social media and instant communication it is the sign of our times...   

Podcaster's Show about Worry Spurs My Own Reactions

On yesterday's Mindset Mentor podcast, personal development coach Rob Dial laid out a simple strategy for dealing with worry.  Worry is an insidious feeling that can eat away at happiness, but Dial claims that studies have shown that some 85% of what people worry about never happens, and of the remaining 15%, fully four out of five aren't anywhere near as bad as imagined...leaving 97% as a figure of probability weighing against worry.  No, I don't know where he got those figures, but I'm flowing with the podcast to see where he leads.  Dial's prescription for worry IS something that I wholeheartedly agree with: action!  Of course, if you're worried who the next president will be or how the Russian invasion of Ukraine will end, your action against the massive scope of the situation isn't necessarily going to alleviate it or even end your worry.  So, I'd qualify Dial's suggestion and say that if you're worried about something going on in your own personal life, then of course action accompanied by a resulting sense of progress in dispelling the problem is a sensible road to go down.  Otherwise, it's like the Serenity Prayer (written by Dr. Reinhold Niebuhr), with serenity being the polar opposite of worry: "God give me the serenity to accept things which cannot be changed; Give me courage to change things which must be changed; And the wisdom to distinguish one from the other." I can guarantee that the world will never run out of things to worry us about, but we do have a choice in how we react to them... 

Weekly Short Stories: 1991 Science Fiction, Part 2

Here are my reactions to three more tales from the year 1991 as they appeared in the Gardner Dozois anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction, Ninth Annual Collection.  Last week I mentioned 1991's significance in international events by citing the Persian Gulf World that happened early in the year.  But a few months later something else occurred that dwarfed the drama of that conflict: the coup d'état in the Soviet Union, leading to the downfall of Communist Party chief Mikhail Gorbachev and the breakup of its fifteen constituent republics after a resistance movement spearheaded by Boris Yeltsin, who would become the new Russian Federation's first president.  Wow...but back to those stories...

SKINNER'S ROOM by William Gibson

I've read stories like this one set in a decaying, crumbling dystopian future where people get by living in the ruins of their ancestors.  This time it's San Francisco and folks are somehow making ends mean with makeshift homes they can put wherever they can...even high up on the Golden Gate Bridge, where our protagonist ventures to pay a visit...

PRAYERS ON THE WIND by Walter Jon Williams

Tibetan Buddhism has swept humanity through the cosmos. One planet they rule over gets a visit from the representative of a warlike species complaining about human settlement on what they claim to be their own planet.  In the middle of this the ruler (both in a spiritual and political sense) suddenly dies and the search is on to find which fetus his reincarnated spirit has entered.  This story takes that religion's dogma and treats it as literal truth...with some frightening imagery resulting.  But the author brings it all together with a pleasing, kickass ending... 

BLOOD SISTERS by Greg Egan

In a future world contaminated by pathogens developed in a supposedly secure laboratory and then...ahem...accidentally released (sound familiar?), a woman has come down with a cancer caused by her infection from them.  Given newly developed medicine to treat it and possibly cure her, she remembers that susceptibility is largely genetically based, so she calls her identical twin sister now living in Africa to be tested as well.  What follows is an indictment on the cruelty inherent in scientific testing...but what can be done about it if you want the best information?

Next week: more stories reviewed from 1991...

Plan to Enjoy Our Long, Hot Summer

I'm gearing up for a long, hot summer, briefly interrupted by a planned Alaskan cruise with Melissa late in July...assuming they don't cancel out.  I say that because two of the excursions within Alaska that we signed up for were canceled on us, and I have yet to set foot on foreign soil after our last cruise in 2020, which featured a stopover in the Bahamas, that excursion unceremoniously canceled as well.  This time around the foreign country in question is Canada, which I am frankly more enthusiastic about visiting.  In the meantime, my intention during the grueling Florida heat in the weeks ahead is to get outside a lot, stay hydrated...and get a lot a walking in, mixed in with a little running.  I heard that the pool at Westside Park here in Gainesville has reopened after a year of renovation...maybe a little stopover there with my senior discount would be a fun thing to do as well...

Musing About Race Virtual Videos and Someday Running in "Real" Ones

Of late I've been watching quite a few running race videos on YouTube from the runner's perspective...but if you've been reading this blog, you already know this.  At this juncture in time, I'm pretty confident that not only can I run pretty much any low altitude half-marathon (I'm a perennial sea-level Floridian) but can also cover the distance in marathon races by splitting my running with walking.  So, when I watch (and run with) the Cardiff, Paris, Toronto, Brooklyn, Hartford and Boulder half-marathons along with the NYC, Disney World, Flying Pig (Cincinnati) and Boston marathons, I can easily picture myself there within the pack, albeit in reality the runners I'm "with" in those videos would have (with the exception of one race) left me behind in the proverbial cloud of dust. No, it's not what goes on between the starting and finishing lines that holds me back from participating in these races in the "real world".  It's more that with some, like Boston, you have to be pretty damned fast just to be eligible to run, and with others, like NYC and Brooklyn, it often comes down to lotteries and connections in order to get into them.  And then there is the transportation issue of getting to these places (and back home). Once there, I'd still need to find a place to stay and plot out transportation to the race site...New York City looks like a monumental nightmare in this regard.  I'm a bit miffed of late that my hometown of Gainesville has turned its back on city-based long-distance races with the demise of the LifeSouth Five Points of Light Marathon/Half-Marathon annual events, which went on from 2006 to 2022...I ran in its half-marathon six times. You can still run races in these distances, but they're all way the hell out in the boondocks on the remote Hawthorne Trail, with basically trees as your cheering spectators...oh joy. "Out of the way" races...sometimes the organizers are even ashamed to call them "races"...seem to be on the upsurge with the many 5K Parkruns sprouting up in parks across the land and "Run Your Buns Off" and "Medal Madness" remote races, all off the city streets and tucked away in parks, requiring multiple there-and-back laps among the disinterested flora and chirping birds to attain their races' distances.  This just doesn't fit it with my vision of engaging in races as a form of running tourism, although I do appreciate and participate in my local Depot Parkrun (gotta love them red-winged blackbirds).  So, although I'm thinking of trying out a special weekend during which I fly out to some distant race site where city streets are still an important part of the course, run it and then be back in town in time for work the next week, it's right now just a fantasy...but one that might someday be realized...

Constellation of the Month: Crux (the Southern Cross)

Crux is a striking little constellation in the celestial southern hemisphere...if you're located in a southern-enough latitude to be able to see it, that is.  I have lived most of my live in Florida, which if you happen to be in the Keys or southern Dade County is just far enough south to see Crux barely scrape the southern horizon at its apex.  Perhaps from my old house where I grew up at 26 degrees North latitude, I might have been able to see it were it not for the trees and city lights obstructing my view.  No, instead it wouldn't be until 2 AM on our cruise ship in February 2020 when it was near the Virgin Islands that I (and Melissa) saw it for our first time looking out at the beautiful seas over the rails...pretty romantic, right?  Yet I could accurately draw this constellation and its position in the sky ever since 1964, when I was first introduced to it at seven years age. The four brightest stars, two of them first-magnitude, can form either a cross if you connect just the opposite ones, or a rough diamond if you connect the adjacent ones...the former pattern is what stuck through the ages. The Coal Sack Nebula occupies a large part of Crux, along with parts of adjacent Centaurus and Musca...it's reported to be a very visible "dark" patch in the already dark sky, if you can wrap your head around that.  Anyway, someday I'd like to be south enough on a clear night to be able to clearly make out Crux...along with the many other southern celestial constellations I've known of for decades. I call Crux my "constellation of the month" for this May because it is during this month that it crosses the Meridian during the mid-evening hours...even though my only time seeing it was that February in the early morning hours. Next month I'll pick another constellation to discuss...  

"Stepping Out" Today into Long, Brisk Walking

This morning I skipped Gainesville's Depot Parkrun 5K, which I had participated in for the previous three weeks in a row...I don't think I had ever raced for three straight weeks.  Instead, this morning I ran indoors to the NYC Marathon on YouTube and, just now, went out on a brisk 3.2 mile walk in my neighborhood as the storm clouds with their thunder and lightning quickly gathered to threaten my excursion's last mile or so.  I like working out indoors and also appreciate that here in Gainesville we have a Parkrun (check their website HERE to see if they have one in your area), but I miss getting out on my old neighborhood courses as well.  Since I have the Runkeeper app on my phone, I can pretty much walk anywhere and at any time...no need to change clothes, either, as I would if going out on a jog.  As the northern Florida weather deteriorates over the rest of spring and through the summer with scorching temperatures well into the nineties, I think long, fast walks are going to be the theme in my exercising for 2023.  I even plan to do pure walks during some of my future Depot Parkrun races, with two sets of personal records there to work on: one for running, and one for walking...

Quote of the Week...from Yogi Berra

It was impossible to get a conversation going...everyone was talking too much.           ---Yogi Berra

Yogi Berra was the great Hall of Fame catcher for the New York Yankees, known for his many funny sayings that seem to contradict themselves...with the above quote this seems to be an example, at least on the surface.  For it would seem that this is what a conversation is...people talking to each other, right?  The other day my TV unexpectedly found itself tuned in to the Dr. Phil show and, as usual, he was doing his best to manipulate the emotions of his viewers by having on guests with diametrically opposed views on a hot-button issue.  They never did have what I would normally call a conversation, that is the two sides patiently alternating between listening to the other and speaking.  No, each side had their own rock-hard position, and they not only would refuse to consider the other's viewpoint but also seemed determined to prevent it from being expressed, with continual interruptions as it all degenerated into a shouting match...of course with the "good" doctor playing the phony role of neutral intermediary when he in fact was the one who instigated it all.  But you don't have to be on a reality/exploitation show to see that folks in general have problems with simple conversation, rarely ever changing their views on anything and viewing such a change as a sign of personal weakness with their standing in relation to the other side in jeopardy of diminishing.  Conversation isn't just talking...it's also listening, and doing so in an empathetic way so that although the speaker might not say everything you agree with, you can at least see where they're coming from and demonstrate this in your reply instead of "doubling down", a trend that is sadly on the rise...

Funny French Running Race Goes Through Buildings and Tight Spaces

I've been watching YouTube of late with their many virtual treadmill running videos made by folks participating in various races across the USA and world.  The other day I came across a very funny one, 9 KM Inside The Race For Treadmill/ A la Décourverte de Dinard...click HERE to view this 55-minute piece (while it's still up).  It's a 5.4-mile race in Dinard, a coastal town in Brittany, northwestern France.  Runners start on a beach and then brush by onlookers and others just going about their daily business as they go upstairs and downstairs, around narrow walkways and even through schools, hotels and other buildings in very close quarters in perhaps the most convoluted, maze-like course ever devised.  You really get to know the town from the inside...looks like the actual people living there were completely caught off guard by the event!  I can't see doing this at home...here in Gainesville everything is separated too much: maybe we could have an on-campus University of Florida run involving running through various buildings, including the Reitz Student Union and Library West. Shands Hospital would probably be inappropriate.  I already did something a little similar during the old Five Points of Life half-marathon when we'd make a detour through the Gators' football stadium...a lot of fun, but in an event like the French one I just saw on YouTube requires a lot of volunteers standing at numerous strategic points to direct the runners and separate them from the rest of the poor perplexed souls who are just out there minding their own business...

Weekly Short Stories: 1991 Science Fiction, Part 1

Today I'm starting on a new book in Gardner Dozois' anthology series The Year's Best Science Fiction, this one subtitled Ninth Annual Collection and covering the editor's picks from the year 1991. I remember 1991 for a number of things...it certainly was a big year internationally, with the Persian Gulf War's Operation Desert Storm taking place as General Norman Schwartzkopf's Allied troops...primarily of American soldiers...drove Iraq dictator Saddam Hussein from Kuwait and then deeply into his own country before the invasion stopped.  But back to that year's sci-fi short fiction... 

BEGGARS IN SPAIN by Nancy Kress

Scientists in the near future have discovered how to genetically manipulate children to be born without the need to ever sleep, and a small number of them are born in the USA and world at large.  How society reacts to them reflects the common roots of prejudice, built upon fear and envy of what is perceived to be others' unfair advantages in life.  Although the analogies from this important story could apply to different areas in today's world, I couldn't help but see the similarities to how Jewish people have been mistreated by different societies over the centuries...

LIVING WILL by Alexander Jablokov

A wealthy, aging man has programmed his computer to a high AI level, to the point where he can converse with it as it becomes more similar to his own personality...remember that this came out 32 years ago!  He is noticing that his mental faculties are quickly declining and soon Alzheimer's is diagnosed.  Now what does his computer have to do with his new strategy?  Disturbing and intriguing...

A JUST AND LASTING PEACE by Lois Tilton

Here is an alternative history tale about the aftermath of the American Civil War.  In this world the defeated South is subjected to long-term military occupation and oppressive rule, with the "rebels"...now generations distant from the original conflict...suffering degrading persecution and discrimination from the North, with the white population kept at a bare subsistence level.  It's basically Jim Crow flipped over, and the narrator, a white southern boy, describes the growing armed resistance movement.  In "our" real world, the Union victors were very mild with their Reconstruction by world historical standards...look at what would go down in former Yugoslavia among the Serbs, Croats, Bosnians and Kosovans in the ensuing 1990's after their previous centuries of conflict among themselves... 

Next week I continue reviewing science fiction short stories from 1991...

Enjoyed Our Brief Visit to Daytona Beach

 

Melissa and I just got back from a two-night trip to Daytona Beach, staying at our favorite hotel there.  Sometimes it's good to break the regular pattern and routine and get out of town, if only for a little while.  For the most part we rested and enjoyed the ambiance...although I did go out on a 4.5-mile beach run yesterday afternoon during low tide.  The temperatures during the day stayed in the seventies...unusual for this time of year...but the winds coming from the southeast were ferocious, as I discovered during my run when I turned around to go back to our hotel.  As is the case in my workplace, they're doing some renovation work at this hotel...some things I guess you just can't get away from...

Podcaster Repeats Theme of Manifestation

Today's Mindset Mentor podcast featured host Rob Dial, a personal development coach, repeating a theme he's frequently discussed in the past: manifesting one's own reality by believing to the utmost degree the positive things he or she envisions...and then acting on it.  He cited an example back when he was a student at a crowded Florida university with parking shortages, but repeatedly convinced himself on successive occasions that an empty slot would just open up for him near the front, and presto! wouldn't you know it, but they did!  Oh, by the way, the same thing happened to me recently on a couple of occasions...people often come and go and it's perfectly reasonable to expect places to open up.  I think it's important to possess confidence when thinking of the future, and to have personal destinations or achievements ahead in as specific detail as reasonably possible.  This way my mind is working behind the scenes to direct me toward their attainment.  But I tend to look at it all with a double negative: if I DON'T employ a confident attitude about successful future outcomes, then they WON'T materialize...or at least to the degree that I had wanted.  I also think how well you get through life involves how well you react to disappointments and setbacks, which are inevitable.  I did appreciate that Rob Dial emphasized personal action and not just passively sitting back expecting everything to automatically come together...