Just Finished Reading Jules Verne's The Mysterious Island

Published in 1874, The Mysterious Island, by Jules Verne, fulfills the qualifications for what constitutes true science fiction perhaps better than any story in that genre that I've read.  It obviously is fiction, no doubt about that.  But there is so much science (and engineering) in it that I would recommend this book for a general middle school science class.  Unfortunately, the often excessively detailed attention that the author devotes to explaining how different things were devised and constructed slowed down my reading to the point where it took me much longer than I had expected to complete this 500-page novel.  That having been noted, I still thought it was a good tale...

The setting for the opening of The Mysterious Island is the besieged Confederate capital city of Richmond, Virginia in February of 1865, just two months before the end of the U.S. Civil War and the ensuing assassination of President Lincoln.  Engineer and Union Army Captain Cyrus Harding is a prisoner of war there, but is allowed to freely roam through Richmond without being allowed to leave. He is joined by his servant Neb, a freed slave who has been employed by Harding as a servant on his Massachusetts farm for much of his life.  They meet up with a New York reporter named Gileon Spilen, a sailor named Pencroft, and a young teen-age boy accompanying Pencroft named Herbert.  Pencroft points out to Harding that the Confederates had constructed a large hot-air balloon to break the siege and were planning soon to use it.  Instead, with the aid of a fortuitous strong storm, the five of them sneak aboard the craft and take off.  The storm, much stronger than they had expected, puts them on a perilous flight for thousands of miles into the open South Pacific Ocean.  There, with some adventure, they manage to land on an uncharted island and, using their individual talents, create shelter, agriculture, and industry using the raw materials available.  But there is a mystery here on Lincoln Island, as they named it.  Some anonymous person or force, at different times of crisis, keeps intervening to save them...just enough so that they cannot trace the source of their benefactor.  Without wanting to give away the assorted adventures that our "heroes" encounter throughout the book, let me just say that the mystery does get eventually resolved...and it points to a hilarious time contradiction that Verne must have known about but still allowed to stand...

It isn't apparent for most of The Mysterious Island, but this novel is indirectly related to an earlier Jules Verne work...the name of which I'll let you, the adventuresome reader, to discover for yourself.  The problem with time here is that both novels are set in the same time period, yet The Mysterious Island is supposed to take place many years after the conclusion of that earlier novel!  I think that the author had wanted to tie in two different historical events: the Indian Mutiny of 1857 and the end of the Civil War in 1865...and couldn't integrate the two dates without creating a troublesome overlap. Oh well, that's the author's prerogative...I'll just roll with it (but it's still funny)...

With most stories I read, the characters have all sorts of conflicts with each other...this is usually one of the desired effects that the authors are trying to produce.  Not with The Mysterious Island, though.  The "five", although truly distinct individuals with their own personalities and bents, all continually work together with a common spirit, camaraderie, and commitment .  I was very impressed with their high level of cooperation...maybe The Mysterious Island should be taught in social studies classes, too!

Major League Baseball: Following Florida and West Coast Teams

Although they've just lost a couple of games in a row, baseball's American League East Division-leading Tampa Bay Rays have come a long way from last year.  Currently, they are 40-32, while after 66 games in 2014 they were a dismal 24-42.  With proven success Joe Madden leaving the team after last season to manage the Chicago Cubs (which he has predictably turned around into a contender), many weren't giving the Rays much of a chance this year, especially in such a competitive division.  But Kevin Cash has stepped in and done a great job so far.  Still, the East has four of the five teams bunched up close together at the top, while even cellar-dwelling Boston could well be a factor in the second half of the season should they put things together...

The same good news cannot be said for the Miami Marlins in the National League East, currently mired in fourth place at 30-41.  The good news is that this team is in the same situation as the aforementioned Red Sox, i.e. should they catch fire and go on some winning streaks in the second half of the season they might be able to contend for a playoff spot at the end.  Still, when I consider some of their additions this year, like Dee Gordon, Michael Morse, and Ichiro Suzuki, along with the productivity of slugger Giancarlo Stanton, I'm more then a little dismayed by this team's failures so far...they should be at the top of the standings with the Nationals and Mets...

Although I tend to follow the two Florida teams in baseball, my work schedule, which has me getting home a little before 12:30 AM, has given me the opportunity to watch the conclusions of games played out west...so I'm becoming more familiar with Seattle, both Los Angeles teams, Arizona, San Francisco, San Diego, and Oakland...and I tend to root for the Mariners (who aren't playing up to expectations so far) and the Giants (who are matching, if not exceeding expectations)...

Some 1965-66 Nova Elementary Memories, Part 2

This is a continuation of the article I wrote on June 13...

There were a lot of different things going on at Nova Blanche Forman Elementary School (in Davie, Florida) during the 1965-66 school year, when I was in the Fourth Grade, assigned to its "Suite C".  But there were also events taking place in the news as well.  The War in Vietnam was escalating throughout this time as more and more troops were sent over there, out into the jungles and enemy-occupied lands to basically "draw fire" and locate them for aerial attacks.  This cynical strategy of my country's military planners to sacrifice the precious lives of our young soldiers (many of them draftees, not volunteers) as bait wasn't to be revealed for decades.  Instead there was a great patriotic fervor about how brave the soldiers were and they were out there preserving our freedoms back home.  In my school, we would often have assemblies within our classrooms when we would do nothing but sing American fight songs and anthems.  Mr. Johnston (the Room 11 teacher) and the librarian (whose name I have forgotten) held a mini-course about American patriotism, complete with a nifty textbook.  We would meet in small groups in one of the library's conference rooms and discuss topics like patriotism...and, of course, being willing to lay down one's own life in a war like Vietnam.  I remember the librarian mentioning that her own son was over there...which in retrospect was probably why Johnston had enlisted her help in teaching this course.  I believe it was at that time that I mentally began to calculate the number of years before I would be old enough to have to go over there and dutifully sacrifice my own life...not something very appropriate for a nine-year old to have to be considering.  Anyway, Mr. Johnston, who must have been a soldier of sorts in his own youth, possessed a sizable collection of military insignia and mementos, which he displayed in his home room.  One day, though, someone must have stolen some of his items, for the entire Suite C was told to sit there quietly in their rooms for upwards to an hour while the teachers went around haranguing everyone about the theft and that the thief was making everyone else suffer for their misdeed.  How "professional" of my teachers to do that to us...

Aside from Vietnam, during my Fourth Grade at Nova they would send up the orbital Gemini space flights, which preceded the Apollo Moon missions and were designed to prepare the astronauts for space walks and docking and releasing the modules in space.  Whenever such a flight was going on during the school day, I remember the TV being on, with endless coverage of the event, complete with tedious, unchanging "simulations" interspersed with Tang commercials...

More on my 1965-66 Nova Elementary School memories to come...

Just Finished Reading Voltaire's Candide

French philosopher Voltaire wrote in 1759, during the Enlightenment and before the French Revolution, the satirical short novel Candide...which is also the name of its protagonist, a young man who plays the common literary/cinematic role of the "noble innocent"  (like Prince Myshkin in Dostoevsky's The Idiot, or, in our own era, Forrest Gump).  Candide is a German from Westphalia, placed in a castle and then thrown out of it by the distantly related Baron when he becomes infatuated with his daughter, the beautiful Cunegonde, and is caught kissing her.  The eviction leads Candide to join the Bulgar army, after which he discovers that the same army has ravaged the land around his former home and butchered the very people he lived with...including Cunegonde herself and his teacher, an unreasonably optimistic fellow named Pangloss, who sees everything that occurs, no matter how negative on the surface, as "all being for the best".  Subsequently, Candide finds himself travelling from one land to another...to Portugal, then Argentina, then Paraguay, then Suriname, back to Europe in the Netherlands and off the coast of England, then in Venice...finally culminating in the Turkish Ottoman Empire.  Early during these journeys he discovers that Cunegonde has survived the earlier attack.  While in South America, he and his servant Cacambo accidentally discover the hidden realm of El Dorado, whose inhabitants amaze him with their wisdom, grace, and untold riches...reminding me a bit of the horse-like Houyhnhnms in Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels.  Along the journeys, Pangloss has resurfaced alive, only to be hung as a heretic by the Inquisition in Portugal following a severe earthquake...and then resurfacing alive later.  While in South America, Candide encounters the pessimistic counterpart to Pangloss in Martin, a man of Manichaean belief whose cynical views continually contradict the unwarranted optimism that Candide has learned to exhibit from Pangloss.

Much of Candide's travels are motivated by his search for his love Cunegonde, with whom he had been reunited for a little while but had been again separated from when a powerful Buenos Aires nobleman decided to take her as his mistress.  Will they ever see each other again?  Well, you can read Candide for yourself to find out, if you're interested.  To be perfectly honest, though, I began to lose interest in what happened to the novel's various characters when I realized what Voltaire was trying to do here, which I believe is twofold...

First, Candide is a concentrated piece of satire, heavily dripping with sarcasm directed at the society of his time.  Voltaire rips apart the notion of war being fought by "international rules" while innocent people are being tortured and killed and their land and possessions either destroyed or stolen.  The idea that nobility is an absolute quality that someone can possess is also ridiculed (Cunegonde's noble line counts back to 72 generations, just a little too many for Candide to "qualify" as a husband).  And the various nations of the time, not to mention religious institutions, receive their share of abuse at the author's pen.

Aside from satire, though, Voltaire has an important, serious philosophical point to make with Candide.  The various characters go through the story looking for the key to happiness and freedom from suffering...and only at the end, through a happenstance encounter with a modest Turkish farmer, does Candide realize the "magic formula": work at cultivating your own garden and be devoted to it.  As the farmer put it, by focusing on purposeful, hard work you will be engaged and not in danger of falling to the three great evils of boredom, vice, and poverty.  Cultivate your own garden...this is an "internal" approach for one to take instead of  "externally" seeking out the answers from wealth, adventure, pleasure, politics, religion, or any other "solution" the world has to offer.  I think that's pretty profound, if I might say so...

Record Heat and Ichetucknee Springs Logjam

The temperatures in north-central Florida, where I live, are off the charts and have been almost unbearable for about a week.  Today the forecast high, as I viewed it on my television screen, was to be a "near-record" 95 degrees.  I looked at this prediction at the same time they were showing the current temperature: 98!  Just stepping out of the door is like stepping into a furnace, it is so hot.  This morning, Melissa and I drove out past Fort White (a few miles northwest of Gainesville) to Ichetucknee Springs, where on the Ichetucknee River, largely shaded, visitors traditionally ride tubes down the slow current.  We were going, however, to attend some river baptisms that our church was holding there.  As we drove through Fort White on our way to the park, we passed, on the right side of the road, business after business renting out the huge inner tubes used at Ichetucknee...and the visiting vehicles were being loaded up.  But when we got to the park's entrance, there was a backup of 70+ vehicles.  As it turned out, Ichetucknee Springs was packed to the hilt and each car had to wait for one to leave in order to enter...an excruciatingly slow process.  Seeing the pointlessness of hanging around, I turned the car around and headed back.  On the way, we passed into High Springs and I stopped at a place, alternately called "The Corner" and "The Talented Cookie" which serves coffee, tea, desserts, sells some antiques, and rents out boating and water sports equipment.  Melissa and I enjoyed our respective tea and coffee along with our sweets.  A nice place to stop by, if you happen to be going in that direction (it's on the left side of US-27 going northwest, just before the US-41 intersection).  Afterward, we continued on home.  I felt sorry for all those people who had gone to all the trouble to rent out those tubes and had expected to soon be enjoying themselves in that river...only to be hopelessly in an endless line just to get into the park to find a parking space.  Some other time, though, I'd like to go there with Melissa and tube down the river...but not on a weekend, especially one when there are baptisms taking place...

In spite of the weather, I had an impulsive urge this afternoon to spring into action and mow the front yard, which was beginning to look like a wheat field.  That being done, I washed up and am now at my favorite Starbucks (at least as I write this) working on iced coffee and iced water...I think a refill is in order.  The main thing, though, is that I'm on the air-conditioned side of the window!

Just Finished Reading Madeleine L'Engle's A Wind in the Door

A Wind in the Door, by Madeleine L'Engle, and which I just finished reading a few days ago,  is the second book in her TIme Quintet science fiction series aimed at young adults and teens.  Like its predecessor, A Wrinkle in Time, the Murray children of Meg and Charles Wallace, along with their friend Calvin O'Keefe, are involved in another adventure to save the world from evil forces threatening it.  But unlike the first book in this series,  the focus here is on microbiology, with the Murray kids' mother, a microbiologist, being the science expert instead of their father, a physicist and whose adventures were featured in the previous story, which involved planet-hopping through a device called the "tesseract".

The crisis in A Wind in the Door focuses on the human mitochondria, found in each cell and which are indispensable to life.  A disease that infects them has spread among the population, and young Charles Wallace catches it, his life in peril.  In the meantime, Meg has discovered that her hated former school principal, Mr. Jenkins, has tripled in number, all three identical on the surface.  But two of the Mr. Jenkins are Echthroi, which go about destroying things by "un-naming" and emptying them (also called "X"-ing). Meg is tasked with the problem of naming which of the three is the real Mr. Jenkins, and she discovers that love for this thoroughly unlikable person is the key in accomplishing this.  Then, with the help of a dragon-like cherubim, the real Mr. Jenkins, and a visiting human-like Mr. Blajeny to teach them, Meg and Calvin (along with the cherubim and Jenkins) shrink way down in scale, recalling to me the movie Fantastic Voyage (but much, much smaller), and enter the mitochondria of Charles Wallace to determine what is causing the sickness.  There they encounter a rebellion of young "farandolae" (one of them, named "Sporos", is also a pupil of Blajeny), which according to the author's imagination are in symbiosis with the mitochondria and are needed for their healthy function.  And who is stirring up the trouble among these mouse-like creatures?  None other than those troublesome Echthroi...and it's up to Meg to quell the rebellion, defeat the Echthroi, and save the life of her little brother...

There's a lot of science in A Wind in the Door...much of it speculative.  I can see how Madeleine L'Engle's stories can spur young readers to take a greater interest in areas like biology, physics, and astronomy.  But the main emphasis is more about ethics and philosophy...and how love is the driving force in life and creation...

FIFA Women's World Cup in Soccer Finishes Group Stage

The 2015 FIFA Women's World Cup in soccer yesterday completed its group stage of play, with two exciting games within Group E determining the final lineup, heading into the "knockout" round of sixteen.  Originally, I had erroneously reported that each team within a group played the others twice...but, alas, there are only three total games in group stage.  That's good, though, for the United States, which had been for some reason thrown into a group with two 2011 group qualifiers, Australia and Sweden (and the latter had made it all the way to the semifinals) and had managed to be first in that group after playing everyone once.  By contrast, Canada, which is hosting the World Cup this year, had no opponents within their group that had advanced last time, giving them an easier run at it.  The field of teams in 2015 was increased from 16 to 24, and instead of eight coming out of the group stage into the quarterfinal round, this year we have 16 qualifying for the new knockout round, which will be played in various locations across Canada June 20-22.  All eight teams making it out of group stage in 2011 are still in the running (defending champion Japan, runner-up USA, Sweden, France, Germany, England, Brazil, and Australia).  Canada plays against Switzerland on June 21st, while the United States plays against Colombia, a powerhouse in men's international soccer but a fledgling team in the women's sport, on the 22nd.  The tournament will proceed until the final championship game, which will take place on July 5th.

I'm finding the level of play within women's international soccer to be very high, and the games carry a lot of excitement with them.  One thing I noticed, which maybe some of my readers have also, is that there is an enormous amount of yelling back and forth between the players.  Then again, I experience the same phenomenon when watching other women's sports like basketball, lacrosse, volleyball, and softball.  I'm sure that the men playing these sports also yell from time to time, but not anywhere to the same extent that the women do.  I wonder what this discrepancy between the genders means.  Any ideas?

My Favorite Songs of 2015 So Far

The first half of 2015, as far as my own personal musical preferences are concerned, has been dominated by two sources: alternative indie/rock music on two different radio stations (WHHZ/100.5/Gainesville and WXXJ/102.9/Jacksonville) and the release of Sufjan Stevens' beautiful new album, titled Carrie and Lowell (largely a tribute to his deceased parents).  As a matter of fact, I prefer his album over Beck's Morning Phase of last year (which I also liked)...a work that garnered him a Grammy for Best Album.  Sufjan (pronounced "soof-yan") should at least get a nomination for his work...

I'm still working through the tracks on Carrie and Lowell.  Sometimes it takes a while for a song to "reach" me, and sometimes I "get it" from the first listen.  I have a feeling that this album features both kinds of songs.  In Carrie and Lowell, Sufjan has abandoned the annoying "bells and whistles" of his electronic musical laboratory and returned to a more acoustic-like sound (well, generally so...he tactfully does use some electronic background arrangements as well on some tracks). For those who tend to be turned off by ear-splitting, screaming rock songs, this album will be easy to digest with its subdued mood...

As for the alternative music I'm hearing of late, there's a lot of good stuff out there. Last year, one of the more minor songs I liked that didn't make my "Top Ten" list was Sail by a group called AWOLNATION (always written with capital letters...no, I don't know why, either).  This year "my" stations are playing another of their songs, Hollow Moon (with the alternate title Bad Wolf).  This is a rather complex song, compared to others getting radio play.  It's fast-paced, with widely divergent musical themes alternating but somehow seamlessly fitting together.  It's danceable...yet there's a bit of the Nirvana sound as well, especially toward the end.  A pretty interesting piece, I'll say...which, besides the important fact that it is just plain fun to listen to, is why at this point of time it's my favorite song of 2015.  Next, at number two, is a song by Bear Hands titled Agora...it actually was released in 2014 but has such a following that it gets regular air time even now.  Other songs I like to listen to are Mess is Mine by Vance Joy, Cigarette Daydreams by Cage the Elephant, Renegades by X Ambassadors, and Saint Motel's My Type, a curious song that sounds like a cross between K.C. and the Sunshine Band and Franz Ferdinand.  Here's my list of favorite songs so far in 2015:

1 HOLLOW MOON (BAD WOLF)...AWOLNATION
2 Agora...Bear Hands
3 Death With Dignity...Sufjan Stevens
4 Mess is Mine...Vance Joy
5 Cigarette Daydreams...Cage the Elephant
6 Should Have Known Better...Sufjan Stevens
7 Blue Bucket of Gold...Sufjan Stevens
8 Renegades...X Ambassadors
9 My Type...Saint Motel
10 Fourth of July...Sufjan Stevens

So, as Casey Kasem used to say on his weekly Billboard Top 40 radio show, there you have it. But don't expect this list to remain static throughout 2015...it's bound to change quite a lot before the year is through...

At Starbucks Waiting for Auto Repair

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!

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...

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...

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...

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...

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)...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...