Here I am, at this writing (at 9:30 AM, although it will be posted later in the day), sitting in my favorite spot at my most frequented Starbucks in Magnolia Parke on 39th Avenue. I'm here, and not at home rousing myself out of bed, because one of our cars has some air conditioning issues and is getting a look-over at the auto shop on the other end of the complex. I have a number of little routines that I try to get in on a daily basis; I'm knocking off a few of these while waiting for the verdict on the car...
First, I like to practice temporarily memorizing sentences in certain foreign languages...Chinese, German, Spanish, and Russian...that I use various books for and whose meanings I make sure I understand...and then write each one down on paper from memory. Daily I do this with ten Chinese sentences and four each for German, Spanish, and Russian. It obviously isn't the same as being immersed in a foreign language environment, but it does keep me thinking in each language, albeit to a limited degree...
I am currently engaged in another daily routine: writing an article for this blog of mine! Sometimes it's hard to come up with a topic, and sometimes it's easy...this morning's circumstances automatically furnished me with one...
After finishing this entry, I will embark on another routine, which is daily reading. Currently, I am nearing the end of Jules Verne's adventure story The Mysterious Island and just finished the second book in Madeleine L'Engle's Time quintet, titled A Wind in the Door. And I'm about to start on Voltaire's short novel Candide (translated into English, of course). For now, I'll read some of Jules Verne's tale...
Hopefully, this auto repair today won't take too long and I'll get back home in time to perform another daily routine of mine...running!
Tuesday, June 16, 2015
Monday, June 15, 2015
WUFT-FM To Add Classical Music Station on 92.1
On June 11, WUFT-FM, which broadcasts a talk/news format on 89.1 mHz, announced that, pending expected FCC approval, they will soon be starting a new station on 92.1 that will feature classical music, the 89.1 station's original format years before they changed their programming (to my chagrin). This station already exists as an HD-radio option for those equipped with such receivers, but I don't have one and am looking forward to the resumption of good classical music over the open airwaves here in Gainesville. I have three questions about the new station, though. One, when is the new station going to begin its broadcasts? Two, how powerful will the signal be...will it be as strong as the 89.1 signal, or will it be a hard-to-pick-up low-power signal like the station on 94.7?. And, three, will it actually be broadcasting classical music 24/7, or will it have that late night/early morning jazz programming from before, which used to annoy me to no end?
All questions aside, I welcome the new station and look forward to listening to it...
All questions aside, I welcome the new station and look forward to listening to it...
Sunday, June 14, 2015
Just Finished Reading Robert Jordan's Knife of Dreams
After reading the tenth book in fantasy writer Robert Jordan's expansive The Wheel of Time series, I began to wonder whether or not the author was truly interested in reaching a final resolution, as he kept introducing new minor characters to the epic and obscuring the main story line with numerous subplots. But with this, his eleventh book, titled Knife of Dreams, I can start to see some light at the end of this tortuously long and convoluted reading experience. The main protagonist, a young man named Rand al'Thor, is the reincarnation of an ancient hero who had defeated and imprisoned the supremely evil Dark One...now Rand has the title of Dragon Reborn, and the prophecies strongly point to his fateful rematch with his nefarious adversary in the Last Battle...we've known about this fact since very early in the series. In the meantime, though, Rand has been crisscrossing the land, alternately making alliances and war, much as have done his friends Mat, Perrin, and associated supporting characters like Egwene, Nynaeve, Elayne, Min, and Loial, to name a few of the most important. There are all these various kingdoms and movements around, most of them at complete odds with one another, and Rand seems to be saddled with a thoroughly hopeless cause trying to unite them together under his leadership. But some of the main story threads have attained some resolution in Knife of Dreams, especially regarding the main characters. This gives me hope for the future books in this series! Only one problem, though...
Robert Jordan died after the publication of Knife of Dreams. In order to continue and ultimately complete the Wheel of Time series, his extensive notes outlining what he wanted to do for the final book(s) were collected and examined, and esteemed fellow fantasy fiction writer Brandon Sanderson was hired to complete the series. This he did in three books, making the final The Wheel of Time series a rather unwieldy fourteen volumes. It will be very interesting to see how Sanderson manages to tie so many divergent tales together...I sincerely hope he doesn't introduce many more insignificant characters or irrelevant side stories as did the original author...
Robert Jordan died after the publication of Knife of Dreams. In order to continue and ultimately complete the Wheel of Time series, his extensive notes outlining what he wanted to do for the final book(s) were collected and examined, and esteemed fellow fantasy fiction writer Brandon Sanderson was hired to complete the series. This he did in three books, making the final The Wheel of Time series a rather unwieldy fourteen volumes. It will be very interesting to see how Sanderson manages to tie so many divergent tales together...I sincerely hope he doesn't introduce many more insignificant characters or irrelevant side stories as did the original author...
Saturday, June 13, 2015
Some 1965-66 Nova Elementary Memories, Part 1
How old are you? I'll be 59 in October and sometimes, looking back on my life, have vivid memories of certain circumstances along with big, gaping holes of time, my recall of which seems elusive. One of those "vivid" times was entering the Nova educational system in 1965, when I was starting the fourth grade. Eventually, I would graduate in 1974 from Nova High School. But that first year at Nova Blanche Forman Elementary School, which was also the very first year of its own existence, still evokes strong memories...
The previous three years, I had been attending Boulevard Heights Elementary School, which was about a block and a half from my home in West Hollywood, Florida (before it all was annexed into Hollywood in 1965). To get to Nova, though, I needed to ride a school bus to cover the five mile distance north into Davie. So from the very beginning I got to know a circle of kids at my bus stop like Martin, the two brother combos of Jim/Greg and Mike/Scott, along with pipsqueaks Harold and Kenny (who got us into trouble at our bus stop with his uncontrollable shrieking)...and also Glen, the "senior" among us. Yes, for some random reason at the beginning my bus stop was all boys...and this eventually may have been one reason why we tended to get into trouble. But I digress...
Nova Elementary School, when I went through it, comprised grades one through six, the concept of "middle school" still yet to be implemented in the public school system. My school was divided into four "suites", as they called them: A,B,C, and D. I was assigned to Suite C, which had all of the fourth-graders and half of the school's fifth graders. How the folks in charge of all this decided which fifth-graders were to be assigned with us fourth-graders and which were assigned with the sixth graders in Suite B (renamed Suite D the following year) is beyond my understanding...but there we were. I was in Miss Kidder's home base Room 7 (initially it was Room 8, but for another unknown reason we were all switched around a few weeks after the school year began). Let's see if I can remember the other teachers in Suite C: Mrs. Hernandez (who replaced a different teacher whose name I forgot) in Room 8, Mrs. Jenkins in 9, Mr. Drew in 10, and Mr. Johnston in 11. Normally, a suite would have six classrooms, but where Room 12 would have been was the Practical Arts room, where Mr. Mielock held fort. Across from our suite, looking westward, on the far left, was the Multi-Purpose Room, aka the cafeteria (why couldn't they have just called it that), then the Science Room, complete with a botanical section and a top-level lab equipped with hard tops and gas jets for bunsen burners...Mrs. Bethune was in charge here. Then, continuing to the right, there was/were one or two little conference rooms, a hallway (containing the audio-visual equipment room) going back to the back of the building (where the supplies store and Suite B were) and then the library to the right (I have a mental block about the librarian's name). At the far right, from the perspective of Suite C, was administration, which for the main purposes of the students, was where the principal (then it was Mrs. LaBelle) and nurse's station was located. Across the hallway from the library, and next to our suite was one of the first-through-third graders' suites. Our outside-directed windows faced the bus-loading area (my bus number was at first #79, changing later in the year to #75...they were both rickety, old buses)...
I'm taking up a lot of blog article space writing about this topic, so I think I'll continue writing about it in a couple (or more) days. Part of all this is expository, to give a picture of my experiences back then to those (almost all of you) who weren't there. And part of this is just for my own sake of putting my memories on the record, as trivial as some of them may seem...
The previous three years, I had been attending Boulevard Heights Elementary School, which was about a block and a half from my home in West Hollywood, Florida (before it all was annexed into Hollywood in 1965). To get to Nova, though, I needed to ride a school bus to cover the five mile distance north into Davie. So from the very beginning I got to know a circle of kids at my bus stop like Martin, the two brother combos of Jim/Greg and Mike/Scott, along with pipsqueaks Harold and Kenny (who got us into trouble at our bus stop with his uncontrollable shrieking)...and also Glen, the "senior" among us. Yes, for some random reason at the beginning my bus stop was all boys...and this eventually may have been one reason why we tended to get into trouble. But I digress...
Nova Elementary School, when I went through it, comprised grades one through six, the concept of "middle school" still yet to be implemented in the public school system. My school was divided into four "suites", as they called them: A,B,C, and D. I was assigned to Suite C, which had all of the fourth-graders and half of the school's fifth graders. How the folks in charge of all this decided which fifth-graders were to be assigned with us fourth-graders and which were assigned with the sixth graders in Suite B (renamed Suite D the following year) is beyond my understanding...but there we were. I was in Miss Kidder's home base Room 7 (initially it was Room 8, but for another unknown reason we were all switched around a few weeks after the school year began). Let's see if I can remember the other teachers in Suite C: Mrs. Hernandez (who replaced a different teacher whose name I forgot) in Room 8, Mrs. Jenkins in 9, Mr. Drew in 10, and Mr. Johnston in 11. Normally, a suite would have six classrooms, but where Room 12 would have been was the Practical Arts room, where Mr. Mielock held fort. Across from our suite, looking westward, on the far left, was the Multi-Purpose Room, aka the cafeteria (why couldn't they have just called it that), then the Science Room, complete with a botanical section and a top-level lab equipped with hard tops and gas jets for bunsen burners...Mrs. Bethune was in charge here. Then, continuing to the right, there was/were one or two little conference rooms, a hallway (containing the audio-visual equipment room) going back to the back of the building (where the supplies store and Suite B were) and then the library to the right (I have a mental block about the librarian's name). At the far right, from the perspective of Suite C, was administration, which for the main purposes of the students, was where the principal (then it was Mrs. LaBelle) and nurse's station was located. Across the hallway from the library, and next to our suite was one of the first-through-third graders' suites. Our outside-directed windows faced the bus-loading area (my bus number was at first #79, changing later in the year to #75...they were both rickety, old buses)...
I'm taking up a lot of blog article space writing about this topic, so I think I'll continue writing about it in a couple (or more) days. Part of all this is expository, to give a picture of my experiences back then to those (almost all of you) who weren't there. And part of this is just for my own sake of putting my memories on the record, as trivial as some of them may seem...
Friday, June 12, 2015
Just Finished Reading Sue Grafton's J and K Novels
As I continue to make my way through the alphabet, Sue Grafton-style with her series of Kinsey Millhone mystery novels, each title based on a letter, I've just finished reading two more: "J" is for Judgment and "K" is for Killer...having skipped "I" is for Innocent, which I just read this past January. With each of "J" and "K", I thought I might be reading them for the first time, but as it turned out, both are books I've already gone through. Here is the link to my January article about "I" is for Innocent...
With "J" is for Judgment, Kinsey is hired to search for Wendell Jaffe, who had disappeared on his boat five years earlier and was assumed to have committed suicide in the face of insurmountable debts. But did he fake his death instead? Someone has seen a man who strongly resembles Jaffe in Mexico, and Kinsey goes down there to investigate. During the course of the story, she also discovers cousins, aunts, uncles, and her own grandmother who all had been living nearby her home city of Santa Teresa, California, but had never felt the necessity before to contact her, an orphan from early childhood after an auto accident had claimed her parents. Needless to say, Kinsey has very mixed feelings about these people...
"K" is for Killer introduces organized crime, the way you might imagine it practiced in The Godfather. But those criminals are not the problem here...although they may well end up being the solution. A young woman has recently died in her rented cabin and her mother hires Kinsey to investigate her death. Grafton introduces a plethora of potential suspects in this classic whodunnit story...
The most remarkable elements of these last two novels I've read of Sue Grafton are their memorable endings...one with Kinsey putting pieces of the mystery together long after everything had already apparently been settled, and the other with her realizing that the criminal justice system is often woefully inadequate when it comes to seeking and catching suspected killers...and maybe she has to skirt the system for real justice to occur, a very touchy matter indeed...
With "J" is for Judgment, Kinsey is hired to search for Wendell Jaffe, who had disappeared on his boat five years earlier and was assumed to have committed suicide in the face of insurmountable debts. But did he fake his death instead? Someone has seen a man who strongly resembles Jaffe in Mexico, and Kinsey goes down there to investigate. During the course of the story, she also discovers cousins, aunts, uncles, and her own grandmother who all had been living nearby her home city of Santa Teresa, California, but had never felt the necessity before to contact her, an orphan from early childhood after an auto accident had claimed her parents. Needless to say, Kinsey has very mixed feelings about these people...
"K" is for Killer introduces organized crime, the way you might imagine it practiced in The Godfather. But those criminals are not the problem here...although they may well end up being the solution. A young woman has recently died in her rented cabin and her mother hires Kinsey to investigate her death. Grafton introduces a plethora of potential suspects in this classic whodunnit story...
The most remarkable elements of these last two novels I've read of Sue Grafton are their memorable endings...one with Kinsey putting pieces of the mystery together long after everything had already apparently been settled, and the other with her realizing that the criminal justice system is often woefully inadequate when it comes to seeking and catching suspected killers...and maybe she has to skirt the system for real justice to occur, a very touchy matter indeed...
Thursday, June 11, 2015
Personal Favorites Lists
During the last couple of years on this blog, I've generally steered away from putting out lists of my personal favorites, which in preceding years I'd been in the habit of doing...usually in areas like music, television, movies, and reading. But I still do have my own favorites, and have of late felt that writing down a few lists might be interesting. In past articles, I've often headed an entry featuring such lists with the designation "List Madness"....maybe I'll leave that introduction off future lists...
Needless to say, like most everyone else, my favorites in different areas change over time. What I listed, say, as my top 25 favorite songs back in 2007 is obviously going to be a bit different now...so I think updating that list of all-time favorite songs is in order. Maybe I'll designate a certain day of the week to publish a "favorites" list in different categories. Should be interesting (at least for me)...
Needless to say, like most everyone else, my favorites in different areas change over time. What I listed, say, as my top 25 favorite songs back in 2007 is obviously going to be a bit different now...so I think updating that list of all-time favorite songs is in order. Maybe I'll designate a certain day of the week to publish a "favorites" list in different categories. Should be interesting (at least for me)...
Wednesday, June 10, 2015
Soccer Focusing on National Teams as Spring Passes Into Summer
Now that the soccer leagues other than America's Major League Soccer have finished their seasons, the summertime soccer focus has switched to national teams. In men's soccer, there are many exhibition games, for some reason called "Friendlies", going on between national teams. Today, for example, the USA team plays against Germany in such a contest (which can be seen on TV). There are World Cup tournaments going on this summer as well: the U20 World Cup featuring players under the age of 20 and the Women's World Cup. The U20 play is currently in the quarterfinal stage, while the Women's competition has just begun its group stage...
In the Women's World Cup there are six groups, each with four teams that will play the teams within each group twice, one "at home" and one "away"...actually, the games are all being played at various locations within Canada. The top two finishers in each group will advance to the "sixteen" stage, along with the four third place finishers with the best records. The United States is in the same group as Sweden, Nigeria, and Australia. They defeated Australia 3-1 in their first match. Both the Women's World Cup and the U20 World Cup are being shown at various times on TV...check your listings if you're interested. There is also a U17 World Cup, but I haven't seen any TV broadcasts of their games...
And, of course, there is still MLS, which plays its games (generally) over the weekend...
In the Women's World Cup there are six groups, each with four teams that will play the teams within each group twice, one "at home" and one "away"...actually, the games are all being played at various locations within Canada. The top two finishers in each group will advance to the "sixteen" stage, along with the four third place finishers with the best records. The United States is in the same group as Sweden, Nigeria, and Australia. They defeated Australia 3-1 in their first match. Both the Women's World Cup and the U20 World Cup are being shown at various times on TV...check your listings if you're interested. There is also a U17 World Cup, but I haven't seen any TV broadcasts of their games...
And, of course, there is still MLS, which plays its games (generally) over the weekend...
Tuesday, June 9, 2015
NBA Finals a Good Show So Far
Like a few of my readers, I have been casually following the National Basketball Association playoff finals between Cleveland and Golden State...which I predicted would take place (against my own preferences) a few weeks ago on this blog. The series has gone through two games, both home games for Golden State (at Oakland, California) with both going into overtime...each team winning once. I had pegged Cleveland, with the trio of stars Lebron James, Kyrie Irving, and Kevin Love, to overcome the high-flying offense of the Warriors, led by their MVP guard Stephen Curry. But the Cavaliers have suffered some serious misfortune of late, with both Irving and Love out with injuries for the rest of the playoffs. So now it's all up to Lebron and his entourage...incredibly, Cleveland handled Golden State Sunday by a combination of a career performance by James and Cleveland's tenacious defense of Curry, limiting his ability to get off any good shots. And by winning a game in Oakland, a very difficult task for visiting teams, the Cavs are unexpectedly in a good position to build a good lead in these finals with their upcoming home games. But I suspect that Curry and the Warriors are going to adjust to Cleveland's strategy and Lebron James, even with a good performance, will not be able to carry his team on his shoulders to two consecutive home wins. The main thing for me, as a basketball fan who doesn't have any particular preference in this series, is that the games continue to be close and that the series will go all the way to the seventh and deciding game...
Sunday, June 7, 2015
Just Finished Reading The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells
Seeing that I am in the prolonged (for reasons which I will reveal in the future) process of reading a rather lengthy novel (The Mysterious Island) by renown science fiction writer Jules Verne, I decided to tackle something shorter by another famous author within this genre. So I picked H.G. Wells, probably more famous for his stories The Time Machine and War of the Worlds, and read his 1897 short novel The Invisible Man. The title is the same as a sci-fi thriller movie in which the villain is a complete terror...or at least that's how I remember it from childhood. But that isn't how Wells portrays, at least initially, his protagonist, a brilliant young physicist named Griffin who, by dint of changing the refraction of light in his own body's living cells, has made himself invisible. Almost at once, he realizes that he hasn't prepared for the many bad things that can result by walking around without others noticing him...most immediately that traipsing around naked outside in England during cold times would have most assuredly give him a bad cold...which it does, burdening him with the embarrassment of continually giving away his presence to others with his sneezing. But more than that, Griffin keeps almost comically going from one predicament to another...and his angry rage grows. What he wants now, more than anything else, is to figure out how to restore his visibility...but the circumstances in the culturally provincial small towns in southern England where he struggles confound him time and time again. These nosy people just won't respect his privacy (he has tried representing himself, completely clothed and bandaged, as someone recovering from wounds), and the growing suspicions among the people that he is responsible for a local burglary (which he is) increases the unwelcome scrutiny on him. He becomes more and more emotionally unstable and resorts to physical violence against others, in particular against a vagrant named Tom Marvel with whom he has entrusted the task of carrying his crucial scientific notebooks and money. Marvel flees with the goods, and the invisible man is now in a state of murderous rage after him. The story's violence escalates, and the protagonist "looks" more and more like the evil figure portrayed in the movie. As a reader, I naturally try to empathize with the main character...which I was able to do to an extent at the first with this hapless invisible man. But Griffin's personality is so self-centered as he rationalizes away his abhorrent behavior toward others that I quickly began to root against him...a troublesome predicament for a reader like me who is accustomed to pulling for the story's "hero".
As usual, I left out the ending to this novel so that you might pick it up and read it for yourself some day. It gives a good picture of small-town England and its people at the end of the nineteenth century. But more than that, The Invisible Man carries an unspoken warning about scientific ventures undertaken without considering all of the possible negative consequences...
As usual, I left out the ending to this novel so that you might pick it up and read it for yourself some day. It gives a good picture of small-town England and its people at the end of the nineteenth century. But more than that, The Invisible Man carries an unspoken warning about scientific ventures undertaken without considering all of the possible negative consequences...
Saturday, June 6, 2015
Plenty of Sports to Watch on TV Today
There is plenty of interesting sports action to follow on TV today...although I'm not really interested in golf, tennis (women's final today in the French Open), NASCAR, or college baseball. And the NBA finals between Cleveland and Golden State won't continue until tomorrow evening...still, I'm surprised, even for a Saturday, how much is going on...
First and foremost, horse racing's Triple Crown culminates today in New York's very long Belmont Stakes, which will be shown on NBC with the pre-race hoopla starting at 4:30. American Pharoah, winner of the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness, has a very good shot at horse racing immortality if it manages to beat out the other seven horses in this endurance race. Last year it was California Chrome, also victorious in the first two races, trying for a sweep. But Tonality, which was entered only for the Belmont, prevailed...prompting the California Chrome owner to go off on a ridiculously bitter rant about the circumstances of his horse's loss. Funny thing is that I had a feeling about Tonality before the race...this year there is another similarly named entrant, Materiality, going up against American Pharoah. H-m-m...
The UEFA Champions League in soccer, a season-long European tournament of the previous year's top professional league soccer teams, will hold its finale starting at 2:45 PM (EDT) with the game, featuring Spain's Barcelona against Italy's Juventus, to be played in Berlin, Germany. Barcelona, the heavy favorite, features three of the all-time best soccer players in Argentina's Lionel Messi, Brazil's Neymar, and Uruguay's Luis Suarez. If you watched the World Cup last year, you'd know what I'm talking about regarding these highly talented players...and they're all on the same team! Good luck with that, Juventus!
In hockey, Tampa Bay tries to even the Stanley Cup finals tonight against the Chicago Blackhawks in their second game, starting around seven. This game will be shown on NBC. At the same time, FoxSports1 will show a FIFA Women's World Cup soccer match between China and Canada...
And, of course, there's plenty of Major League Baseball to watch today, with my Florida teams going unexpectedly in different directions this year. The Tampa Bay Rays, expected to do poorly with a rebuilding year, are at or near the top of their division, while the Miami Marlins, expected to be contenders, are underachieving and are well below .500...and have already undergone a managerial change. Still, I can see that this team has a lot of spirit and drive. I expect them to make a big comeback later on this summer...
So, there's a lot going on today! Not that I intend to spend the whole day watching sports on TV...I plan to do a little running of my own...
First and foremost, horse racing's Triple Crown culminates today in New York's very long Belmont Stakes, which will be shown on NBC with the pre-race hoopla starting at 4:30. American Pharoah, winner of the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness, has a very good shot at horse racing immortality if it manages to beat out the other seven horses in this endurance race. Last year it was California Chrome, also victorious in the first two races, trying for a sweep. But Tonality, which was entered only for the Belmont, prevailed...prompting the California Chrome owner to go off on a ridiculously bitter rant about the circumstances of his horse's loss. Funny thing is that I had a feeling about Tonality before the race...this year there is another similarly named entrant, Materiality, going up against American Pharoah. H-m-m...
The UEFA Champions League in soccer, a season-long European tournament of the previous year's top professional league soccer teams, will hold its finale starting at 2:45 PM (EDT) with the game, featuring Spain's Barcelona against Italy's Juventus, to be played in Berlin, Germany. Barcelona, the heavy favorite, features three of the all-time best soccer players in Argentina's Lionel Messi, Brazil's Neymar, and Uruguay's Luis Suarez. If you watched the World Cup last year, you'd know what I'm talking about regarding these highly talented players...and they're all on the same team! Good luck with that, Juventus!
In hockey, Tampa Bay tries to even the Stanley Cup finals tonight against the Chicago Blackhawks in their second game, starting around seven. This game will be shown on NBC. At the same time, FoxSports1 will show a FIFA Women's World Cup soccer match between China and Canada...
And, of course, there's plenty of Major League Baseball to watch today, with my Florida teams going unexpectedly in different directions this year. The Tampa Bay Rays, expected to do poorly with a rebuilding year, are at or near the top of their division, while the Miami Marlins, expected to be contenders, are underachieving and are well below .500...and have already undergone a managerial change. Still, I can see that this team has a lot of spirit and drive. I expect them to make a big comeback later on this summer...
So, there's a lot going on today! Not that I intend to spend the whole day watching sports on TV...I plan to do a little running of my own...
Friday, June 5, 2015
RFK Murdered on This Date in History
In Davie, Florida, on the morning of June 5, 1968, I found myself in Room 18 of Suite D in the grand, exalted Nova Elementary School "educational experiment" as a Sixth Grader. I was, for whatever reason...it was not the ordinary routine...sitting in the southwestern part of the room (closest, through the walls, to the basketball court), which was old man Bartfay's home base (you had to have been an original "Nova Titan", based in the elementary school experience, to know what I'm talking about). It was there and then that I was informed by one of my fellow students (or, more accurately, my fellow inmates), that New York Senator Robert Kennedy had been murdered in California following his victory speech after that state's Democratic Party primary had given him all of its delegates in the fight for the presidential nomination. The horrible act had occurred several hours earlier, but since in my own highly dysfunctional childhood family back then none of us ever gave a hoot about what was going on in the world during the early morning hours besides our own self-pitying circumstances, we all had woken up in the morning that sad day and each of us had gone off on our merry (check that, miserable) ways, completely oblivious to the terrible tragedy that had already taken place some three thousand miles west. But there I was...and I can't remember who I was with...with another assassination on my hands to deal with, after Martin Luther King's a couple of months earlier...
When I think of Robert Francis Kennedy, I naturally hearken back to his brother John Fitzgerald Kennedy, whose middle name was my mother's maiden. I also think of the very talented comedian John Byner and how he, on the Steve Allen television show in 1968, would perform his hilarious rendition of Bobby Kennedy by means of his character "Kenny Bobbity", which forever established firmly within me RFK's unmistakable voice (although you can still hear it by listening to Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal). I do remember watching Bobby Kennedy debating Gene McCarthy on television just before that fateful California Primary...and noticing that his opponent thoroughly creamed him in it. But Kennedy narrowly won the primary anyway...although historians seem to forget that Vice-President Hubert Humphrey, who had forgone campaigning in California, had already collected enough delegates to win him the party's nomination in the first round. I know this with confidence, because I actually went to the library (at the University of Florida) and examined day-to-day newspaper records of the ongoing events. It was only years after the fact that some revisionists began to claim that RFK would have gotten the '68 Democratic nomination had he not been assassinated. That claim is completely false...
My parents were very skeptical about Robert Kennedy, claiming that he was a political chameleon who changed his colors with the times, going from fervent anti-communist witch-hunter in the fifties...to his brother JFK's right-hand man in the early sixties...to Gandhi-like peace advocate later that decade. I tend to agree with their opinions, but nevertheless the man was done a terrible injustice with his shooting that terrible night 47 years ago...
When I think of Robert Francis Kennedy, I naturally hearken back to his brother John Fitzgerald Kennedy, whose middle name was my mother's maiden. I also think of the very talented comedian John Byner and how he, on the Steve Allen television show in 1968, would perform his hilarious rendition of Bobby Kennedy by means of his character "Kenny Bobbity", which forever established firmly within me RFK's unmistakable voice (although you can still hear it by listening to Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal). I do remember watching Bobby Kennedy debating Gene McCarthy on television just before that fateful California Primary...and noticing that his opponent thoroughly creamed him in it. But Kennedy narrowly won the primary anyway...although historians seem to forget that Vice-President Hubert Humphrey, who had forgone campaigning in California, had already collected enough delegates to win him the party's nomination in the first round. I know this with confidence, because I actually went to the library (at the University of Florida) and examined day-to-day newspaper records of the ongoing events. It was only years after the fact that some revisionists began to claim that RFK would have gotten the '68 Democratic nomination had he not been assassinated. That claim is completely false...
My parents were very skeptical about Robert Kennedy, claiming that he was a political chameleon who changed his colors with the times, going from fervent anti-communist witch-hunter in the fifties...to his brother JFK's right-hand man in the early sixties...to Gandhi-like peace advocate later that decade. I tend to agree with their opinions, but nevertheless the man was done a terrible injustice with his shooting that terrible night 47 years ago...
Thursday, June 4, 2015
Soccer's Joseph "Sepp" Blatter: Controversy and Accomplishment
I've been following professional soccer in earnest ever since the Men's World Cup games last summer. I discovered in the process that the globe is covered with leagues upon leagues...just about every place has at least one pro soccer league. And the countries all seem to be represented by national teams as well. After seeing how incredibly popular soccer is in England and how more popular it is becoming here in the United States, it is clear to me, without knowing who is in charge, that they must be doing quite a few things right. The organization FIFA has authority over the professional sport of soccer and, since the late 1990s has had as its president a Swiss watchmaker named Joseph "Sepp" Blatter. Blatter, it is reported, along with his predecessor, have often been accused of bias against the more industrialized countries of the West in favor of third world soccer development. And he does seem to have enormous support among the myriad countries comprising Africa, Latin America, Asia, and Oceania. That support enabled him to withstand a formidable challenge to a fifth term as president during the election held just last week...amid a severe scandal involving many high-ranking FIFA officers, accused of seeking and accepting massive bribes by countries wanting to be picked as World Cup hosts...most particularly Qatar, which won the honor for 2022 over its chief competitor, the United States...
Blatter was able to defeat his opponent, a Jordanian prince, by mustering up enough third world support to get a 133-73 majority on the first ballot. Before the second ballot (candidates must get a two thirds majority to win on the first ballot), the opponent withdrew, handing Sepp, as he is commonly called, the election and a fifth term. He immediately began by walking up to the podium and giving a condescending and arrogant victory speech, even once saying, "I am now the president of everybody". Even though I had never heard of the man before this election last week, he irked me a lot and I felt defensive about the U.S. and England, which he seemed to have issues with. And then, to everyone's surprise, just a couple of days ago Sepp Blatter held a press conference in which he announced his resignation...of course he has his own hand-picked successor (election pending), just as he himself was "picked" years before...I assume, to continue his agenda...
I don't know how deeply, if at all, Joseph Blatter is involved in the FIFA scandal, which the FBI is now investigating. Who knows at this point...I reserve judgement...except that he doesn't sound as if he thinks it is that important. It is that callousness that I object to, but after looking back on things, I have to reconsider (at least a little) my earlier objections to Blatter. Sure, he's obviously an egomaniac, full of himself and his position. He treats other people representing the various countries like little children, and it doesn't help that some of them grovel at his feet. My personal dislike of the man having been said, however, I have to note that soccer has exploded in popularity under his tenure, not just worldwide but also here in America, where we have a well-established tier of professional leagues. And also under Sepp Blatter's presidency, women's soccer has taken off as well: this summer we'll be able to watch as the favored U.S. women's soccer team goes for another FIFA World Cup championship. But finally, it is I as an individual who discovered how much fun it really is to watch soccer, at least as it is played with a high level of skill in the premier leagues. And since he's been the dude in charge of things, in some way Blatter deserves credit for all this...
Blatter was able to defeat his opponent, a Jordanian prince, by mustering up enough third world support to get a 133-73 majority on the first ballot. Before the second ballot (candidates must get a two thirds majority to win on the first ballot), the opponent withdrew, handing Sepp, as he is commonly called, the election and a fifth term. He immediately began by walking up to the podium and giving a condescending and arrogant victory speech, even once saying, "I am now the president of everybody". Even though I had never heard of the man before this election last week, he irked me a lot and I felt defensive about the U.S. and England, which he seemed to have issues with. And then, to everyone's surprise, just a couple of days ago Sepp Blatter held a press conference in which he announced his resignation...of course he has his own hand-picked successor (election pending), just as he himself was "picked" years before...I assume, to continue his agenda...
I don't know how deeply, if at all, Joseph Blatter is involved in the FIFA scandal, which the FBI is now investigating. Who knows at this point...I reserve judgement...except that he doesn't sound as if he thinks it is that important. It is that callousness that I object to, but after looking back on things, I have to reconsider (at least a little) my earlier objections to Blatter. Sure, he's obviously an egomaniac, full of himself and his position. He treats other people representing the various countries like little children, and it doesn't help that some of them grovel at his feet. My personal dislike of the man having been said, however, I have to note that soccer has exploded in popularity under his tenure, not just worldwide but also here in America, where we have a well-established tier of professional leagues. And also under Sepp Blatter's presidency, women's soccer has taken off as well: this summer we'll be able to watch as the favored U.S. women's soccer team goes for another FIFA World Cup championship. But finally, it is I as an individual who discovered how much fun it really is to watch soccer, at least as it is played with a high level of skill in the premier leagues. And since he's been the dude in charge of things, in some way Blatter deserves credit for all this...
Wednesday, June 3, 2015
Just Finished Reading Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time
Published in 1962, Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time is a children's science-fiction novel, the first of the Time Quintet. It involves the struggle between good and evil, championed by the "kids combo" of social misfit Meg Murray, her precocious younger brother Charles Wallace, and their new friend, Calvin O'Keefe...neglected by his own family. With the help and direction of the mysterious and angelic trio of Mrs. Whatsit, Mrs. Who, and Mrs. Which, they travel to different worlds by means of the "tesseract", which wrinkles space and allows them to cross great distances quickly (sounds like an episode of Wormhole). Meg and Charles Wallace are determined to find their missing father, a physicist who had traveled into space on a secret government mission. They ultimately land on a planet called Camazotz, where they find their father and struggle against the evil leader of the controlling darkness, called "IT". How does this all end? Hey...I have to leave you some motivation to read the book for yourself!
In A Wrinkle in Time, Madeleine L'Engle makes clear her Christian orientation, but also pays respect to other cultures and philosophers seen as fighting against the "darkness". But the evil that she presents here seems to be rather thinly-veiled communism...all together with the totalitarian brainwashing, severe restriction of individuality, and strict, forced egalitarianism that many in the West have stereotyped it as encompassing. It is clear to me that this story (and as I suspect, the subsequent ones in this series) is, at least in part, the author's attempt to indoctrinate the young with her own religious and political viewpoints...which, as far as I'm concerned, she has every right to do. However, that being noted, I found parts of it a bit annoying...
What I liked the most about A Wrinkle in Time wasn't the religion, politics, the sometimes very intriguing science, or even language (Mrs. Who continually dishes out great quotes in assorted foreign tongues), but rather its characters and their backgrounds and personalities. I felt a great deal of empathy toward both Meg and Charles Wallace (that is, until the latter seemed to assume a kind of superhuman psychic ability). Both are misfits at school and for different reasons...but both from which I suffered throughout my own school years. Another thing I liked about this book was less tangible...it just seemed to have a sweetness to it...
I'll be continuing this pleasant (so far) series through to its end...just because it's aimed at a younger readership doesn't mean that a budding old codger like me can't enjoy it, too...
In A Wrinkle in Time, Madeleine L'Engle makes clear her Christian orientation, but also pays respect to other cultures and philosophers seen as fighting against the "darkness". But the evil that she presents here seems to be rather thinly-veiled communism...all together with the totalitarian brainwashing, severe restriction of individuality, and strict, forced egalitarianism that many in the West have stereotyped it as encompassing. It is clear to me that this story (and as I suspect, the subsequent ones in this series) is, at least in part, the author's attempt to indoctrinate the young with her own religious and political viewpoints...which, as far as I'm concerned, she has every right to do. However, that being noted, I found parts of it a bit annoying...
What I liked the most about A Wrinkle in Time wasn't the religion, politics, the sometimes very intriguing science, or even language (Mrs. Who continually dishes out great quotes in assorted foreign tongues), but rather its characters and their backgrounds and personalities. I felt a great deal of empathy toward both Meg and Charles Wallace (that is, until the latter seemed to assume a kind of superhuman psychic ability). Both are misfits at school and for different reasons...but both from which I suffered throughout my own school years. Another thing I liked about this book was less tangible...it just seemed to have a sweetness to it...
I'll be continuing this pleasant (so far) series through to its end...just because it's aimed at a younger readership doesn't mean that a budding old codger like me can't enjoy it, too...
Tuesday, June 2, 2015
NSA Surveillance Reauthorization Advancing In Senate
The reauthorization for the NSA surveillance that has come under such scrutiny and controversy of late is advancing in the United States Senate (the House of Representatives has already passed it) with a cloture vote, which was just held at this writing. The 60 votes minimum to advance the bill was assured: only 14 senators opposed it. The champion of this small minority is Kentucky Republican Rand Paul, who, like his father in the U.S. House, Ron Paul, is an strong advocate of personal liberties and privacy from government snooping. Recently, as I recounted in an earlier article, he went on the Senate floor and blasted the Patriot Act, which included the NSA surveillance provision. This provision was to expire last Sunday, and Paul was able, by maneuvering through arcane Senate rules, to delay matters until it had already expired. And now the Senate is hastily trying to put it back into law...
I'm for the NSA protecting American citizens from an obvious and dire threat, which is the infiltration of terrorists from abroad into this country as well as their recruitment of American citizens to perform their nefarious deeds from within. My only problem with this is that, as Senator Paul mentioned during his ten-hour "filibuster" speech last week, the government can use data gathered from the collection of phone numbers and contacts to construct probability scenarios for various Americans who they think are likely to be involved in some sort of non-terrorist-related criminal activity...in other words, change the whole point of the law allowing this mass data collection in the first place. It's been done before: the government was using anti-racketeering laws, originally aimed at organized crime, to restrict anti-abortion protests. It took twenty years of legal fighting until the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled in 2006 that those laws were being misused against the protesters. I sadly see a similar potential for misuse with this mass data collection, all denials by the senators supporting reauthorization notwithstanding...
I'm for the NSA protecting American citizens from an obvious and dire threat, which is the infiltration of terrorists from abroad into this country as well as their recruitment of American citizens to perform their nefarious deeds from within. My only problem with this is that, as Senator Paul mentioned during his ten-hour "filibuster" speech last week, the government can use data gathered from the collection of phone numbers and contacts to construct probability scenarios for various Americans who they think are likely to be involved in some sort of non-terrorist-related criminal activity...in other words, change the whole point of the law allowing this mass data collection in the first place. It's been done before: the government was using anti-racketeering laws, originally aimed at organized crime, to restrict anti-abortion protests. It took twenty years of legal fighting until the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled in 2006 that those laws were being misused against the protesters. I sadly see a similar potential for misuse with this mass data collection, all denials by the senators supporting reauthorization notwithstanding...
Sunday, May 31, 2015
My May 2015 Running Report
May saw me limiting my running due to a leg strain, the pain from which seems to come and go. Before it, though, I managed to accumulated a decent amount of mileage, giving me a monthly total of 122 miles, run over 19 days...mostly in the first part of the month. My longest single run was for 4.1 miles.
I'm probably going to be limited with my running for a while as I recover. I still would like to eventually train up to marathon level...albeit at a slower pace. But since we're entering the hottest part of the year here in Florida, I think limiting the miles for a while is a reasonable idea, injury or not...
I'm probably going to be limited with my running for a while as I recover. I still would like to eventually train up to marathon level...albeit at a slower pace. But since we're entering the hottest part of the year here in Florida, I think limiting the miles for a while is a reasonable idea, injury or not...
Saturday, May 30, 2015
Just Finished Reading Aldous Huxley's Brave New World
The 1931 novel Brave New World, by English author Aldous Huxley, is one of those books I've heard about for years, a kind of predecessor of all of these dystopian stories that have since proliferated onto the literary scene. Sometimes you might wonder whether some of the presumptions of some of these tales have become obsolete over the years...with Brave New World, which I finally just got around to reading, this may be partially the case...but only partially...
In Brave New World, projected to take place in the 2500s, the "civilized" parts of the planet have been reorganized into a tightly controlled society with its people manufactured in genetic factories and then conditioned from infancy to parrot the society's maxims. People are either alphas, betas, gammas, or deltas...with the latter two groups deliberately deprived in gestation of necessary nutrients in order to produce imbecilic humans who are destined to perform the menial functions of society. Concepts like "mother", "family", and "privacy" have been relegated to the status of the obscene, and people are conditioned to never have to experience extremes of emotion caused by deprivation or pain...and if things do get out of hand with an individual, they are administered soma, a drug that puts them off into a "dream holiday". Sex is promoted as a collective, social activity without any associated emotional value like love or jealousy. The old is condemned for the sake of the new, and a throw-away culture of consumption predominates throughout. It is no accident, then, that Henry Ford, the originator of industrial mass-production, is the great hero of society...even to the point where the calendar year has been changed to "Before or After Ford". Another barb that Huxley threw was aimed at British socialist George Bernard Shaw, one of the very few "old" figures still highly esteemed in this cradle-to-grave society of government control...
With Brave New World's characters, the focus changes from the beginning when the Director reveals the system of growing embryos and then educating infants into their role in society through a modified form of hypnosis. Then, as the story progresses, social misfit Bernard and thoroughly conditioned Lenina carry on a curious courtship based on one misunderstanding after another. They visit a "savage reservation" in the North American southwest where the native people are still allowed to follow traditional culture, including natural childbirth and family relationships. There they find John, a misfit in his own right, whose light European skin paints him as an outcast to others within that society. His sickly mother Linda pines away for a return to London, and John, who has developed his own world view and language from a book of Shakespeare that she game him, quotes Miranda, in eager (and mistaken) anticipation from The Tempest, "Oh, brave new world!" when he discovers that Bernard and Lenina would be taking them back with them. John finds himself attracted to Lenina, but their gulf of cultural disparity is even much larger than was that between her and Bernard...a foreboding of tragedy. The end of the book largely concerns itself, besides their troubles, with a conversation between the World Controller Mustapha, Bernard, a talented friend of Bernard named "Helmholtz", and John (now commonly referred to as "The Savage"). Each argues his own opinion on how society should be structured, and Mustapha, to my amazement, presents an entirely reasonable point of view defending the totalitarian world that he has authority over...
As I look on it, ever since 9/11, the population at-large has gone heavily on the side of personal security in the face of violent religious extremism...and as a result, the state has been given a stronger role in our lives. Also, Huxley's consumer-based culture of disposability has become the norm in our society...without the need for anyone in government to dictate that trend. The idea that intellectuals and strong passions are both responsible for the calamities that befall us in the forms of war and terrorism was a motive in Brave New World for the state to strictly control people's education and emotions, with any deviations carefully noted and dealt with. Let's hope that our real future doesn't ever come down to that level...
In Brave New World, projected to take place in the 2500s, the "civilized" parts of the planet have been reorganized into a tightly controlled society with its people manufactured in genetic factories and then conditioned from infancy to parrot the society's maxims. People are either alphas, betas, gammas, or deltas...with the latter two groups deliberately deprived in gestation of necessary nutrients in order to produce imbecilic humans who are destined to perform the menial functions of society. Concepts like "mother", "family", and "privacy" have been relegated to the status of the obscene, and people are conditioned to never have to experience extremes of emotion caused by deprivation or pain...and if things do get out of hand with an individual, they are administered soma, a drug that puts them off into a "dream holiday". Sex is promoted as a collective, social activity without any associated emotional value like love or jealousy. The old is condemned for the sake of the new, and a throw-away culture of consumption predominates throughout. It is no accident, then, that Henry Ford, the originator of industrial mass-production, is the great hero of society...even to the point where the calendar year has been changed to "Before or After Ford". Another barb that Huxley threw was aimed at British socialist George Bernard Shaw, one of the very few "old" figures still highly esteemed in this cradle-to-grave society of government control...
With Brave New World's characters, the focus changes from the beginning when the Director reveals the system of growing embryos and then educating infants into their role in society through a modified form of hypnosis. Then, as the story progresses, social misfit Bernard and thoroughly conditioned Lenina carry on a curious courtship based on one misunderstanding after another. They visit a "savage reservation" in the North American southwest where the native people are still allowed to follow traditional culture, including natural childbirth and family relationships. There they find John, a misfit in his own right, whose light European skin paints him as an outcast to others within that society. His sickly mother Linda pines away for a return to London, and John, who has developed his own world view and language from a book of Shakespeare that she game him, quotes Miranda, in eager (and mistaken) anticipation from The Tempest, "Oh, brave new world!" when he discovers that Bernard and Lenina would be taking them back with them. John finds himself attracted to Lenina, but their gulf of cultural disparity is even much larger than was that between her and Bernard...a foreboding of tragedy. The end of the book largely concerns itself, besides their troubles, with a conversation between the World Controller Mustapha, Bernard, a talented friend of Bernard named "Helmholtz", and John (now commonly referred to as "The Savage"). Each argues his own opinion on how society should be structured, and Mustapha, to my amazement, presents an entirely reasonable point of view defending the totalitarian world that he has authority over...
As I look on it, ever since 9/11, the population at-large has gone heavily on the side of personal security in the face of violent religious extremism...and as a result, the state has been given a stronger role in our lives. Also, Huxley's consumer-based culture of disposability has become the norm in our society...without the need for anyone in government to dictate that trend. The idea that intellectuals and strong passions are both responsible for the calamities that befall us in the forms of war and terrorism was a motive in Brave New World for the state to strictly control people's education and emotions, with any deviations carefully noted and dealt with. Let's hope that our real future doesn't ever come down to that level...
Friday, May 29, 2015
Mexican Soccer Championship a Done Deal Even With Final Game Left
Even with the final match looming on Sunday, it should be pretty clear to anyone that Santos Laguna is the new Mexican Premier League MX champion for the Clausura split-season this year. This is because the northern Mexico team thoroughly annihilated their finals opponent Queretaro 5-0 in their opener for the two-game series. Last night's game was at Santos Laguna while the Sunday contest takes place at Queretaro. The series winner is determined by adding the goals of each team for each game. It's going to take a miracle of sorts for Queretaro to come back from five goals down...
Santos Laguna is one of those teams that peak just at the right time of the year...barely making the playoffs as an eighth seed and then plowing through opponent after opponent. In this, they remind me of last year's two World Series baseball teams, Kansas City and San Francisco, who both sneaked into their finals as wild-card teams while others were given more attention over the course of the year. However, if I had my way, the World Series would have been between the top-two regular season teams in each league and the Liga MX championship would have simply been the aggregate best team over that league's regular season as a whole, without the gimmicks of split seasons and playoffs. By this, then, the Tigres of UANL (a Monterrey team) would have won the Liga MX championship outright and the Los Angeles Angels would have faced the Washington Nationals instead in the World Series. Of course, had "my" system been in place, I'm sure that the various teams and their management would have made many different decisions and would consequently have caused the results to be different as well...
Santos Laguna is one of those teams that peak just at the right time of the year...barely making the playoffs as an eighth seed and then plowing through opponent after opponent. In this, they remind me of last year's two World Series baseball teams, Kansas City and San Francisco, who both sneaked into their finals as wild-card teams while others were given more attention over the course of the year. However, if I had my way, the World Series would have been between the top-two regular season teams in each league and the Liga MX championship would have simply been the aggregate best team over that league's regular season as a whole, without the gimmicks of split seasons and playoffs. By this, then, the Tigres of UANL (a Monterrey team) would have won the Liga MX championship outright and the Los Angeles Angels would have faced the Washington Nationals instead in the World Series. Of course, had "my" system been in place, I'm sure that the various teams and their management would have made many different decisions and would consequently have caused the results to be different as well...
Thursday, May 28, 2015
Just Finished Reading Sue Grafton's "G" and "H" Kinsey Millhone Stories
As I continue (happily) plodding through the "alphabet mysteries" of Sue Grafton, featuring Californian private eye Kinsey Millhone, I've just knocked off two more books: "G" is for Gumshoe and "H" is for Homicide. The former is one that I already read (and liked a lot), and the latter is a first-time read (and I liked it even more). As a matter of fact, I was so impressed by "H", that at this point in time I consider it to be my favorite Kinsey Millhone novel.
In "G" is for Gumshoe, Kinsey is hired by a woman to find her elderly mother, while at the same time she discovers that a thug she helped to catch in the past has placed her on his hit list...and others on that list are getting knocked off. She hires a bodyguard, who is another detective...and they develop a more personal relationship in the process. This book has an interesting ending, one in which the two biggest "bad guys" (for entirely different reasons) inadvertently cross paths...
In "H" is for Homicide, Kinsey goes undercover to expose an auto insurance fraud racket that is based in Los Angeles, as well as try to solve the murder of an employee of the insurance company that she is loosely associated with. There is a lot of interaction between several unsavory characters here, and this is a story that takes our detective away from her home town of Santa Teresa. The affliction known as Tourette's Syndrome is examined as the main villain prominently exhibits it. And the curious mixture of family-like intimacy/ informality with the violent cutthroat culture prevalent in gangs and organized crime is also a prominent feature of this tale...
Next up: "I" is for Innocent, a Grafton book that I believe I've already read before...
In "G" is for Gumshoe, Kinsey is hired by a woman to find her elderly mother, while at the same time she discovers that a thug she helped to catch in the past has placed her on his hit list...and others on that list are getting knocked off. She hires a bodyguard, who is another detective...and they develop a more personal relationship in the process. This book has an interesting ending, one in which the two biggest "bad guys" (for entirely different reasons) inadvertently cross paths...
In "H" is for Homicide, Kinsey goes undercover to expose an auto insurance fraud racket that is based in Los Angeles, as well as try to solve the murder of an employee of the insurance company that she is loosely associated with. There is a lot of interaction between several unsavory characters here, and this is a story that takes our detective away from her home town of Santa Teresa. The affliction known as Tourette's Syndrome is examined as the main villain prominently exhibits it. And the curious mixture of family-like intimacy/ informality with the violent cutthroat culture prevalent in gangs and organized crime is also a prominent feature of this tale...
Next up: "I" is for Innocent, a Grafton book that I believe I've already read before...
Tuesday, May 26, 2015
Just Finished Reading (Again) F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby
Forty-two years is a considerable span of time between two readings of the same book...but since I've only read the overwhelming majority of books in my lifetime just one time, that still says something. I first read The Great Gatsby, a 1925 novel by F.Scott Fitzgerald, in the fall of 1972 in my high school eleventh-grade English class...and then proceeded to write a research paper about it, a rush job that regrettably garnered me a poor grade and didn't reflect the fact that I had liked the book. But I shouldn't hold that against either Fitzgerald or that English teacher, although the latter in retrospect did a lousy job of teaching (as, sad to say, did most of my high school teachers). This novel, set in the early 1920s in New York's Long Island during the early years of the Prohibition Era (which lasted from 1919 to 1933), painted a time picture of an America that was struggling with its identity following a trying world war and the promise of prosperity with the advent of mass production. Organized crime, both in regard to gambling (the fixing of the 1919 World Series in baseball is mentioned) and alcohol smuggling and distribution was on the rapid rise. There also was a cultural clash of sorts between the nouveau riche, those people who made their wealth rapidly (legitimately or not) from the middle and lower classes and those from the traditionally upper classes with their own sense of inherited entitlement and superiority...
The Great Gatsby is told in the first person by the character Nick Carraway, a young bonds trader who has just moved east to Long Island and, in his relatively modest home, finds himself living next door to a mansion in which a mysterious young man, Jay Gatsby, resides. Gatsby is continually throwing parties at his house, and eventually Carraway is invited to attend one...at which he meets his host in person and strikes up a friendship. In the meantime, Nick has met back up with a distant cousin named Daisy, who is married to a brutish, bigoted, and snobbish dude named Tom Buchanan (as you might guess, a thoroughly unlikable character). When Gatsby hears of Daisy, the circle is closed, for as it turns out, they had been lovers just before he was to sent off as a soldier in World War I...but their respective disparity of social standing kept them from marrying each other. Daisy instead, brought up in money, married Tom, another "well-to-do", while Gatsby, following the war, got rich quick...with the implication that he was involved with organized crime on some level. So, as readers, we find ourselves dealing with this triangle of Gatsby, Daisy, and Tom...plus Tom's mistress Myrtle and her estranged husband George. And now it's up to the author to mix circumstances together in such an improbable manner as to brew up an ending which bothered me.
Don't get me wrong, I still liked the story, Jay Gatsby's constant and thoroughly annoying use of the saying "Old Sport" notwithstanding. But the novel's outcome does depend on an incredibly unlikely chain of events...it would have been better had things gone down in a more believable manner. Still, F. Scott Fitzgerald gave us an incisive look at America in the early 1920s as the growing decadence of its culture combined with its economic optimism and growing mass consumerism...and the accompanying tendency to dispose of anything, including people, that might interfere with one's lifestyle or plans...
The Great Gatsby is told in the first person by the character Nick Carraway, a young bonds trader who has just moved east to Long Island and, in his relatively modest home, finds himself living next door to a mansion in which a mysterious young man, Jay Gatsby, resides. Gatsby is continually throwing parties at his house, and eventually Carraway is invited to attend one...at which he meets his host in person and strikes up a friendship. In the meantime, Nick has met back up with a distant cousin named Daisy, who is married to a brutish, bigoted, and snobbish dude named Tom Buchanan (as you might guess, a thoroughly unlikable character). When Gatsby hears of Daisy, the circle is closed, for as it turns out, they had been lovers just before he was to sent off as a soldier in World War I...but their respective disparity of social standing kept them from marrying each other. Daisy instead, brought up in money, married Tom, another "well-to-do", while Gatsby, following the war, got rich quick...with the implication that he was involved with organized crime on some level. So, as readers, we find ourselves dealing with this triangle of Gatsby, Daisy, and Tom...plus Tom's mistress Myrtle and her estranged husband George. And now it's up to the author to mix circumstances together in such an improbable manner as to brew up an ending which bothered me.
Don't get me wrong, I still liked the story, Jay Gatsby's constant and thoroughly annoying use of the saying "Old Sport" notwithstanding. But the novel's outcome does depend on an incredibly unlikely chain of events...it would have been better had things gone down in a more believable manner. Still, F. Scott Fitzgerald gave us an incisive look at America in the early 1920s as the growing decadence of its culture combined with its economic optimism and growing mass consumerism...and the accompanying tendency to dispose of anything, including people, that might interfere with one's lifestyle or plans...
Monday, May 25, 2015
Futoshiki: Another Numerical Logic Puzzle
Adding to the group of numerically based logic puzzles like Sudoku, Kakuro, Ken-Ken, and Hidato, which I already regularly play, Futoshiki recently came to my attention. It is a puzzle based on inequalities between the squares, with "greater than" and "lesser than" symbols separating them, either vertically or horizontally. The occasional absence between squares of such a symbol means that the relationship between the two adjacent numbers is not revealed...not exactly an aid in solving the puzzle. Otherwise, Futoshiki operates in similar fashion to Sudoku in that each row or column contains unique numbers covering those available...e.g., in a five-digit game, 1,2,3,4, and 5 each appear once in each row and column...in different orders, of course, based on the inequality signs that direct the flow of the game.
Right now, I'm focusing on the "easy" Futoshiki puzzles as I develop my own strategies for solving them. On different websites that provide these puzzles, they often provide a section revealing strategies for filling them in. That would, for me, take away much of the pleasure I derive from this pastime, since developing my own techniques is a major part of the activity...
Right now, I'm focusing on the "easy" Futoshiki puzzles as I develop my own strategies for solving them. On different websites that provide these puzzles, they often provide a section revealing strategies for filling them in. That would, for me, take away much of the pleasure I derive from this pastime, since developing my own techniques is a major part of the activity...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
