Just Finished Reading Dostoevsky's The Idiot

Fyodor Dostoevsky, already my favorite Russian author, can add another book to the list of my favorites with his novel The Idiot, which came out in 1869.  The "idiot" in the title is a Russian prince, a young man named Lev Nikolayevitch Myshkin, more commonly known as Myshkin, or the Prince.  He is far from being the idiot that others portray him as...his affliction is epilepsy, and in the story's opening passage he is returning to Russia from a Swiss clinic in which he has spent much of his youth under treatment.  His aim, which he eventually succeeds at, is to look up some distant relations in order to get help adjusting to living independently. On the railway trip there, he meets up with and befriends Rogozhin, a sinister character obsessed with a woman named Nastassya Filippovna.  Myshkin himself in time becomes enamored with her, but explains his affections as being of pity.  These two characters, Rogozhin and Nastassya Filippovana, keep resurfacing throughout the book.  As the story develops, it becomes clear  that the Prince, always willing to forgive and put others in the best possible light, displays in his behavior a kind of naivete that predisposes others to manipulate him instead of respecting his good intentions toward them.  At the beginning of The Idiot, I was certain that the term was an abject, unfair misnomer, as Myshkin is quite intelligent and lucid with his deeply held thoughts.   But as the story progressed, and especially toward the end, I began to have second thoughts about this.  It is one thing to have an abstract intellectual intelligence, as well as being smart enough to be able to clearly communicate to others one's thoughts.  But there is something called "social intelligence" as well that allows one to learn, through experience, how to deal effectively in the context of social relationships. In this, Prince Myshkin is sorely deficient, and his incapacity to adapt to his social situation puts him in one ridiculous, if not dangerous, circumstance after another.  Not one to give away the book's ending, I'll just say that, after having the reader teetering on the edge of despair about poor Myshkin, Dostoevsky works a little miracle of justice and mercy on this sympathetic character.

In any good work of fiction, the author puts a lot of himself or herself into the story...and also elicits a sense of empathy from the readers, a recognition within themselves of truths that are being expressed.  The Idiot, I believe, is a masterpiece at fulfilling both of these conditions.  In Myshkin's perplexity about the confounding behavior of his circle of friends and acquaintances toward him, I am totally in sympathy, as I have endured this sort of thing to various degrees for a lifetime.  But unlike with Myshkin, I feel that, at least to a modest degree, I have learned a little from my experiences...

After Car Accident, All is Restored

After my car accident on April the 20th, in which I suffered a rear-end collision while waiting at a red light with the car being totaled in the process, Melissa and I have been shuffling the use of one car between us.  But yesterday we were able to purchase a good, quality used car from another party, and as a result, will not suffer any financial setback from a circumstance that I was not at fault with in the first place.  As for me personally, after nearly three weeks I never did feel any physical pain or injury from the accident.  So we've been blessed throughout all this, and appreciate the concerns of our friends...

2015 Atlantic Hurricane Season Predicted to be Light

After last month's forecasts by various meteorological organizations of a very subdued Atlantic hurricane season for 2015, it is interesting that, more than three weeks before the official beginning of that season, we may have our first named storm.  For the last few days, there has been a tropical disturbance, starting in the Bahamas and affecting South Florida, and then drifting northward in the Atlantic just east of the Florida peninsula.  It looks as if it may well strengthen,  not to mention finally hit the mainland, most likely long the coast of South or North Carolina.  If its sustained winds reach 39 mph, it will be named "Ana".

Besides Ana, the first named Atlantic tropical storms in 2015 will be Bill, Claudette, Danny, and Erika. The experts don't expect the number to get far beyond that, though, since the Atlantic Ocean temperatures have been much cooler than usual and, as a result, work as a retardant to the development of tropical storms.  But even with that in mind, it only takes one hurricane hitting a vulnerable area point blank for a disaster scenario to occur.  So the storm hovering out in the western Atlantic right now can serve as a wake-up call for those us who live in the coastal eastern states....

A Rising Flood of 2016 Presidential Candidates

Former Arkansas governor and FoxNews fixture Mike Huckabee has announced that he is once again running for president.  Huckabee joins Carly Fiorina and Ben Carson, along with several earlier announced candidates, in what is amounting to a flood of candidacy declarations...and this a year and a half before the 2016 election.  When they all finally get there in the ring, I wonder how they're going to handle the logistics of holding debates between them.  I do know that watching news channels is going to be an even greater ordeal than usual, with these faces going to whatever lengths they can to grab headlines...or their opponents trying to put them in a negative spotlight.  Groan...

I can't believe that most of these candidates are so full of themselves that they think they will slip through and get their party's nomination, so there must be other reasons for them to run for president.  But I do think a lot of them ARE full of themselves and see an opportunity here to be the focus of attention.  Others may be running for vice-president or the cabinet of the ultimately successful candidate, hopefully from their own party...and think that by running for president this will give them more political leverage with their ambitions.  And then again, some may be running for a FoxNews job down the line!  Who knows...although each and every one of them is putting out the narrative that they just love their country and want to change it in a better direction.  I suppose, though, that the ones who last the longest in the campaign will find that their stated agendas will support the specific agendas of the wealthy organizations and individuals pouring money into their campaign funds, not necessarily those candidates who are willing to make the tough decisions to make this country stronger and give its people hope for the future...

Considering Return to Marathon Running

When I was struggling through my only official 26.2-mile marathon, the Ocala Marathon, back in 2011, I was forced to walk the last seven miles due to an IT-band injury, just below my left knee, that became excruciatingly painful to run on.  At the 19-mile mark, I asked a race worker if I could just end the race and get a ride back to the start where I was parked...she replied that I should stick it out and finish the marathon, even if I had to walk the rest of the way.  I did just that, although I felt a bit humiliated when slow runner after slow runner trudged past me.  Some of them were also rather advanced in years, well past social security retirement age.  I thought to myself then that these folks had forged for themselves a very active lifestyle and were, for their age, athletes in their own right with their marathon running...even if they were considerably slower then the younger "whippersnappers".  After that race, which I did manage to painfully finish, I decided to first heal from my injury and then focus instead on half-marathons...I've finished nine of them so far.  But that memory of the slower, elderly runners completing that marathon has stuck with me...

I'm not getting any younger myself, and in regard to running, I'm not planning on getting much faster, either.  No, I think that just perhaps now might be the time for me to redirect my efforts toward distance, even if it entails me running a bit slower in the process.  Of course, I'll need to be careful to avoid those pesky injuries that tend to plague runners.  Still, I can see me becoming a regular (albeit slower) marathon runner the way I've been doing the half-marathons for the past few years...

Major League Soccer Standings Misleading

I was looking through the sports section of today's Gainesville Sun when my eyes fell upon the Major League Soccer standings.  I saw that "my" Orlando City Iron Lions were a bit down among the teams in the East with a 2-4-2 record (with MLS, the numbers represent wins-losses-draws, while with other leagues the order is wins-draws-ties).  Down at the bottom of the division were two teams: the Philadelphia Union and the Montreal Impact.  Philly had a 1-6-3 record while the basement-dwelling Canadian team was 0-2-2.  I had to do a double take when I saw this, for this meant that one team had already played 10 games while the other had only 4. I already knew that the Impact were deeply involved in the CONCACAF (Americas) tournament involving league teams in the Western Hemisphere and had made it to the championship round.  No doubt some of its MLS regular season games had been rescheduled to make room for its tournament games...the same happens for the European leagues as well with their various extra-league tournaments.  But that still doesn't account for the wide disparity in games played.  Of course, eventually all of the MLS teams will finish the regular season having played the same number of games.  But since, on any given day, standings are computed based on 3 points per win, 1 per draw and 0 per loss, a team with fewer games played will tend to be down in the standings while one that has more games under their belt than others will have a more favorable position. Although this may present an illusory impression about the respective teams' successes, mid-season coach firings and player trades may result, based on popular reaction to the different teams' positions.  So I'm a little bit disconcerted that the various teams have such a wide range in games played, but perhaps this is unavoidable given various circumstances (including the aforementioned tourney).  Still, regarding the ongoing standings, they instead could go by an indexing system whereby the total accumulated points, divided by total games played, would determine the relative positions of the teams.  In the end it would amount to the same thing when all teams have played the same number of games, but during the course of the regular season it would give a much more accurate indication of how well or bad different teams are doing...

A Bit Out of Shape on My Bicycle

I went out again this morning on my bicycle, riding around my neighborhood for 3.4 miles.  It was clear and relatively cool for this time of year, and the air seemed drier than usual as well.  But it seemed that, no matter which direction I was riding in, I was getting the wind coming at me...and believe me, I wasn't going fast enough to cause the effect with my riding speed.  Also, in spite of the fact that my neighborhood is, for all practical purposes, as flat as a table top, I felt as if I were continually fighting my way up a gradual slope.  I think there's probably a reasonable explanation for this all: I'm out of training on my bicycle...and anything that might possibly contribute to me having to make an extra effort is going to be magnified in my mind.  But I'm going to keep grinding away and gradually step up the mileage.  The irony is that I could run the same course I just rode my bike down and come away from it with a different reaction...but I'm used to running a lot and I haven't biked regularly since 1995...even though, from time to time, I've taken the rusty old contraption out of the storage shed and wheeled around on it...

Just Finished Reading (Again) Sue Grafton's "C" is for Corpse

I'd written a little while back that I was a fan of mystery writer Sue Grafton's "alphabet" mystery series, with each book going through a letter in the alphabet, starting with "A" is for Alibi.  After skipping around from book to book in no particular order, I found myself wondering which books I had read and which I hadn't...so I decided to go back to the beginning and read them all in alphabetical order...whether I had read them already or not.  So I've read  A, B, ... and, now, the C book ("C" is for Corpse), and so far they're all books I've read before.  Still, each story was interesting, and I had the advantage of knowing in advance who the killer was...so I could examine how Grafton inserted them and certain clues earlier on in the novel.  The next Grafton book is "D" is for Deadbeat, but right now I'm in the middle of reading three other books: The Mysterious Island by Jules Verne, The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky, and Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke...

My April 2015 Running Report

In April, I kept up with my total running mileage while limiting the lengths of individual runs, managing this with multiple runs per day.  My total mileage for the month was 309, with my longest single run being for only 5.3 miles.  I ran on 29 of April's 30 days, in spite of suffering a pretty severe rear-end collision on my car on the 20th and spending the day two days later at the hospital undergoing medical tests for a life-long condition.  With both of these, I emerged with no injuries or complications...so onward with the running!

I wasn't able to run in a race this past month, but then again races are secondary for me to the daily running itself.  Maybe I'll pick and choose some races during the next few months to enter...most likely they'll be of the 5K sort.  I also got out my old rusty, cheap bicycle a couple of times and rode around my neighborhood.  Just for the sake of recording it, I rode a total of 8.3 miles with 5.0 miles being my longest ride.  Next month, though, I intend to do much more bike riding and combine that with my running...so I look forward to greatly increasing the mileage there...

Just Finished Reading Edith Wharton's Novel Ethan Frome

Published in 1911 and set in that time period in a rural New England community, Ethan Frome, a short novel by Edith Wharton (and one of those books that tend to be high school English class reading assignments), tells the story a man beset by a feeling of entrapment as he struggles between his true feelings and his strongly held sense of duty and pride.  Ethan Frome is a relatively poor farmer, intelligent and talented but duty-bound to care for his ailing parents instead of pursuing education and a career in engineering, his true calling.   After the death of his father, he hires a nurse, Zeena, to care for his mother until her death...after which he marries Zeena, who in turn takes on the role of an invalid (albeit a hypochondriac invalid).  Kattie, a young cousin of Zeena's, comes to stay with them at their farm and helps with chores while Zeena retreats further and further into her self-absorption with her own imagined illnesses.  Ethan's feelings for Kattie grow stronger and stronger, which of course causes great internal turmoil as he wrestles with jealousy over how other men treat her and his own guilty feelings about betraying his wife.  These three people are the focus of the story, and their interrelationship develops to drive the narrative to its climax...which produces a surprise ending.  

I got several different impressions while reading Ethan Frome.  The story begins from the viewpoint of an outside character who is visiting the area on a work assignment.  He sees and meets Frome, and then discovers the reason for his terrible limp: a terrible accident he suffered 24 years earlier when he was 28.  That accident, its causes, and its ramifications are the climax of the tale...although throughout the story the reader knows it is coming as part of an extended flashback narrative dominating the body of the novel.  But aside from getting a good sense of what life was like in rural New England in wintertime just before the advent of the automotive age and becoming thoroughly depressed with the dismal lives of the characters, the main thing I got out of Ethan Frome, intended or not, is that some families seem to have the need within them for someone to play the role of "invalid"...even when no one is ill or incapacitated.  Frome's mother is the invalid first and Zeena, the nurse, cares for her.  After the mother's death, the "invalid" role becomes vacant, so to speak, but then Zeena rushes in to fill it with her hypochondria.  And to confirm this, the surprise ending to the story, which I won't reveal (in case you decide to read it), further affirms this curious phenomenon in another way. Did the author mean to express this idea with this tale of a very dysfunctional family or not? Who knows, but it made a big impression on me...

Coffee Shops Like Starbucks Starting to Bug Me

For many years, I used to like to go out to diners and coffee shops...and just sit there and read, write, and study.  And after Starbucks opened its Magnolia Parke store here in Gainesville in 2000, I've gone there a lot, along with other Starbucks locations.  But in recent years I've grown tired of going out like this...besides, with so many people also going to these locations (especially to Starbucks), I often find that there is no place to sit.  I also find myself more and more irritated by the crowds and the noise, so why bother when I can stay at home and accomplish the same things while drinking better tasting and less expensive home-brewed coffee?

I'm sure that one of the big contributing factors to my discomfort at coffee shops is the fact that, now with the omnipresent Internet, customers will take their tablets and laptops there and sit for hours upon hours...making it difficult for me to find a spot for myself.  I don't want to sound like a hypocrite, though: that's what I used to do, too, and for decades before the Internet was ever an option...

Went to Yesterday's Friends of the Library Sale in Gainesville

Yesterday my son and I went to the Friends of the Library book sale on Main Street, here in Gainesville.  Will wanted to get there early on the first day of the sale, which lasts through Wednesday.  I'm glad he was keeping up with it, for I had forgotten about the sale.  We drove over there and found that parking was a bit of a problem, but managed to find an available space a healthy walking distance from the site.  When we finally walked across Main Street, we found a very, very long line of people waiting for the impending opening of the building warehousing the thousands of books that would be for sale.  The line actually went to the end of the block and curled around the corner.  One of the crossing guards said that we might as well just stand there and let the line catch up with us, but Will and I decided to just go ahead and get in line...entailing another considerable walk.  When the sale opened and we finally got inside, the place was predictably packed with book fiends (I wonder what the fire code's maximum limit of people was).  It was almost impossible to get anywhere because of the density of customers, but eventually I was able to make my way to the areas I was the most interested in.  I found a couple of 50-cent mystery novels and three foreign language Bibles: a 10-cent Spanish version, a $1 French version, and, best of all, a $1.50 Chinese/English dual translation version.  And I was able to find a book on the history of Christianity that I hope will help Melissa in her studies.  Will was also able to find some good books, and we were both satisfied with our purchases, not to mention finally getting out of that overly congested building.

The Friends of the Library sale is held each April and October.  The event's organizers were expecting a crowd yesterday, but according to an article in the local newspaper Gainesville Sun today, the turnout was much, much larger than they had anticipated.  Of course, with a good public library system like we have here in Alachua County,  I can check out books for free and then return them when finished..hoarding piles of cheaply bought books can be a bit troublesome in the long run. So I'm not quite as much of fan of the FOL sale as others...but that Chinese/English Bible was a special find...

Just Finished Reading Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels

A few days ago, I finished reading Jonathan Swift's classic novel, titled Gulliver's Travels.  Because it came out in 1725, nearly 300 years ago, I feared that the language might be a little too antiquated...but it turns out that Swift's writing is easy to follow.  Most people who haven't read Gulliver's Travels are aware that Gulliver is a sea-goer who gets himself shipwrecked on a strange island...and wakes up to find himself bound and surrounded by minuscule people: the Lilliputians.  But that's just the first part of his odysseys into fanciful lands populated, not just by the diminutive Lilliputians, but also by the ultra-giant Brobdingnags, the Laputans with their floating capital, the Balnirabi with their ridiculous, pointless science projects, the Luggnaggs with their shunned and pitied immortals, the Glubbdubdribs with their ability to drum up ghosts...any ghost you'd want to converse with, and finally, the Houyhnhnms, horses who within their domain replace humans (which they call "Yahoos") as the intelligent, reasoning species.  Because of the funny-sounding names Swift imagined for these "peoples", reading aloud can contribute greatly to the effect of his writing...and it can lead to uncontrollable fits of laughter, especially when Lemeul Gulliver (a physician by profession) goes off in a laudatory rant about the esteemed and superior Houyhnhnms.

I have read that there is a lot of satire in Gulliver's Travels, and I'm sure that Swift had different groups in mind when he wrote about various societies that his hero encountered.  But there is a punch line to his satire: after Gulliver discovers and reveals the various down-sides to these very disparate cultures, he tries to convince the Houyhnhnms how reasonable his own English culture is and that they should be regarded as equals.  Only one problem: as Gulliver goes on describing his own society, he finds himself continually criticizing it and exposing its many injustices and flaws.  Finally, he sees that his own native world is just as bad as the strange ones he had encountered previously.  Upon returning to England at the end, he can't adjust to even being in the presence of his fellow humans, much less interacting with them...

I was pleasantly surprised with Gulliver's Travels.  Not only did it crack me up with its humor, but its sobering description of Swift's contemporary English society still holds up nearly three centuries later with ours of today.  I don't think you'd regret it if you found a copy of this book and read it...

Car Accident and Annual Medical Checkup

It's been a few days since I wrote an article on this blog, but I've been a little preoccupied.  On Monday afternoon, I was driving to work and, while I was stopped at a traffic light, another (larger) car plowed into the back of my car, crumpling up the back of it like an aluminum can.  Fortunately, I had my foot solidly on the brake pedal and my car remained stationary throughout...so I avoided hitting the car in front of me.  And, oh yeah, I also had on my seat belt, a real life saver.  People around me seemed surprised that I was walking around afterwards without a scratch.  Two days later, I'm still not feeling as if I sustained any kind of injury.  I suspect that the driver (also apparently uninjured) who hit me was distracted, because the impact was pretty severe...not like someone who was slowing down for the light but whose brakes couldn't completely stop their car...

Yesterday I spent the whole day at Shands Hospital getting my annual checkup for a chronic condition that was discovered in early 2012 and which, as it turns out,  I had from birth.  The condition hasn't worsened in the three years since that diagnosis, and as such I've been "cleared" again for another year.  I was a little surprised (and dismayed), though, to discover that my weight had creeped up to an unacceptable level.  This in spite of all the running I've been doing.  But then again, of late I have been eating too much, and especially too much of the wrong foods.  It looks as if a "dietary reset" is due for me...

Southeastern Storm Squall Line Finally Hits Gainesville

A massive storm system, full of lightning, hail, high winds, heavy rain...and, yes, tornadoes, has slammed into the southeastern part of the United States and has just begun to pass over Gainesville...hopefully as briefly as possible.  The squall line just hit, and if we're fortunate we'll just get soaked, along with a few tree branches blown down.  The above photo tries to capture a little of the enveloping storm...

Just Finished Reading John Irving's Last Night in Twisted River

Many years ago, I once saw an episode on the 1980s sitcom Newhart, in which Bob Newhart's lead character, an author living in Vermont, had just published a novel.  Curiously, every character in his story was almost exactly like a "real"-life friend or family member...and the laughs began as each of the people discovered themselves in the book and reacted to their portrayal.  It was a pretty funny episode, as I remember it.  And that memory has returned after reading John Irving's novel Last Night in Twisted River. 

In Last Night in Twisted River, published in 2009 and which I've just finished reading, John Irving explores the craft of writing through the character Daniel Baciagalupo, a cook's son who spends his childhood years at a logging camp in New Hampshire.  As the result of a horrible accident at the camp, Dominic, the father and his son are forced to flee elsewhere, with the aid of Dominic's close friend, Ketchum, as they try to avoid the wrath of the sadistic and vengeful Constable Carl.  Starting in 1954, the story flashes back to 1942 and then jumps ahead in spurts, to 1967, 1975, 1983, 2000, 2001...and, finally, 2005.  But even with that abrupt progression, the story isn't told in a linear chronological order...in 1983, for example, events from earlier years are told in flashbacks, a frequent device of Irving in this novel. As for my earlier allusion to Newhart, Daniel as a novelist keeps churning out book after book whose characters are eerily close to the people in his past and present...to the point where his father discovers details of his son's life that otherwise would have been too intimate and controversial to discuss openly. Parallel to this, Irving himself seems to be revealing his own life through this author, who has renamed himself with "Danny Angel" as his pen name.   For example, Danny goes to an Iowa writers workshop where he meets and befriends the great author Kurt Vonnegut...it was actually Irving himself who did this in real life.  And the New Hampshire setting along with Daniel's attendance at Exeter Academy closely dovetails with Irving's personal experiences...along with the fact that both Daniel and John were able to avoid being sent off to Vietnam during that war because they were fathers of young children. In all of this, Irving seems to be telling his readers that in order to write effectively, you must put all of yourself into it and avoid self-restraint...and that will most likely result in your own personal experiences, along with the people you come to know and the events you encounter, in one form or another, becoming a part of your stories...consciously or unconsciously. In other words, each of us has to write from where we are, not from the point of view of some hypothetical "objective" person: they don't exist, anyway...

I was frustrated at the often foolish decisions made by Danny, Dominic, and Ketchum in the story, but now, looking back on it, I respect Irving for having made these characters seem so real through their imperfections.  On the other hand, the author unrealistically had Danny, in his forties, going out on casual 6-to-7-mile country runs, in which he could collect his thoughts and come up with new writing material...all the while running at a 6-to-7 minutes-per-mile pace.  Casually. A little too fast for my tastes, I would think...

As a couple of side notes, if you're inclined toward the culinary arts, you'd enjoy the many sections in the book that Irving devoted to different types of food and how they are prepared.  And for the politics junkies among you, there's plenty of that, too, with Irving expressing, through his characters, what he thinks about George W. Bush and his policies.  Although I wasn't too keen on the political potshots, I did appreciate that the author had people well into their elder years, several even well into their eighties, who were active, lucid, and deeply involved in the high drama of the story.  In this it reminded me of Stephen King's earlier novel Insomnia, one of my favorites of his...

NBA Playoffs Begin This Saturday

The National Basketball Association "second season" of the playoffs begins this weekend as sixteen teams vie in eight best-of-seven series in the first round.  The pairings, based on the seeding according to regular season win-loss records in each conference, are thus:

East
Atlanta vs. Brooklyn
Toronto vs. Washington

Cleveland vs. Boston
Chicago vs. Milwaukee

West
Golden State vs. New Orleans
Portland vs. Memphis

Houston vs. Dallas
Los Angeles Clippers vs. San Antonio

The playoffs are constructed in a bracket format, similar to the NCAA tournament.  So regardless of the relative seeding of the winners of the first round, the next opponents will be within the groupings that I have set off...hence, suppose Atlanta and Washington win their opening series, then they'd face each other the next round...and so on.  Then, the two remaining teams from each conference will play for the conference titles...and then those two winners will play for the league championship, to end some time in early June.

I'm rooting for Atlanta, Washington, Boston, Chicago, New Orleans, Memphis, Dallas, and San Antonio in the opening round, but I suspect that Cleveland and Golden State will easily win theirs.  As for the eventual NBA championship series, I'd like to see Chicago playing San Antonio, with the latter winning the title...but I suspect it will be more like Cleveland playing Golden State, with Lebron James of the Cavaliers adding another championship to his resume...

Read Robert Jordan's Crossroads of Twilight a While Ago

Usually when I have just finished reading a book, I'll review it (without spoiling the ending) within a week at the latest.  However, I was going over my reviews of Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time series, a fantasy venture in which the author seemed to have lost his way over the years in the process of writing it.  Crossroads of Twilight is the tenth volume of this fourteen-part series.  Jordan would write one more before dying...and writer Brandon Sanderson (who wrote the excellent Mistborn fantasy series) would finish the final three volumes.  But this last book I read (from March 17 to the 27th) was so inconsequential and left so little an impression on me that I forgot all about it very soon after I finished...and thus never got around to writing a review.  Eventually, since the beginning of the Wheel of Time series, we've been told that main protagonist Rand al'Thor, also known as "The Dragon Reborn", will unite the forces of good behind him and defeat the evil Dark One in a monumentally cataclysmic final showdown battle.  This battle, after ten books, seems to be even further away than it was at the start, and Rand seems to be failing miserably in his quest to bring people together behind him: other than his closest, inner circle of loyalists, they are obsessed with petty bickering and backbiting.  Minor characters abound, and I wonder what ultimate purpose the author had in bringing their subplots to the foreground of the narrative...

Well, I reviewed the story line in Crossroads of Twilight, which as I can see it has one important development...right at the very end.  I'm prepared to embark on Jordan's eleventh and final (for him) book  and then see what Sanderson was able to do to salvage the series.  I could just walk away from it right now, seeing all of the other books I could be reading instead...but I've already invested too much of my time into it.  To the bitter end!

Yesterday's City Commission Runoff Election, Deplorable Turnout

In yesterday's Gainesville City Commission runoff elections, Harvey Budd and Charles Goston squeaked out very narrow victories over their respective opponents Jay Curtis and Yvonne Hinson Rawls.  The turnout was an abysmal 11.8% of registered voters.  Goston won his election by only 69 votes.

I keep hearing how we're supposed to honor our brave young men and women in the armed forces who defend our liberties with their service and have done so over the course of our country's history.  And I do honor and respect them.  One way that I do this is to take seriously the hard-won liberty of being able to choose our own leaders and representatives through the democratic voting process.  Apparently though, 88.2% of Gainesville's registered voters don't agree with me about the value of their collective and individual sacrifices for our freedoms...freedoms which too many take for granted...

Today is Election Day in Gainesville...Why Not Vote?

Today is election day here in Gainesville, Florida.  In last month's two city commission races, there was only a 12% turnout.  Based on the early vote attendance in the last few days, today's runoff vote will have an even smaller turnout.  Needless to say, I went down to my local precinct, which was crowded (it's a senior recreational center) and voted, being the only voter there...and probably had been for quite a while.

The two races are for District One, in which I don't live, and for an at-large seat comprising the entire city.  Therefore,  I only voted in the runoff election between Harvey Budd, who seems to be supported by the more left-leaning faction of the Democratic Party, and Jay Curtis, who seems to be represent reasonable growth and lower utility rates.  In the District One race, Yvonne Hinson-Rawls is running against Charles Goston.  Budd and Curtis each got about 33% of the vote in the initial election: I think Budd will win it, though...although I had a more favorable opinion of Curtis.  I'm not sure about the other two, although Hinson-Rawls seems to be garnering more support from the political establishment here.

So if you're a resident of Gainesville and are a registered voter, why not refamiliarize yourself with your local precinct and have a voting experience today?  Then you can go around the rest of the day and lord over others the fact that you voted and they didn't...