George Orwell's short novel Animal Farm is one of those stories that I've heard so much about over the years that I never felt any pressing need to read it...yet, I did just that the other day. Set on a farm in England, the animals in it decide to rebel against the cruel rule of Farmer Jones and set up a self-governing farm...renamed Animal Farm from its original title of Manor Farm...using the principles of "animalism". The pigs have set themselves up as the intellectual force behind the movement and, led by Snowball and Napoleon, have come up with a list of seven rules for the animals that they have put up on the barn wall. As the story goes on, there is a power struggle between the two porcine leaders and one, using a forged alliance with the dogs, emerges as an autocratic ruler over the animals. One by one, the rules are amended as the pigs gradually assume the very roles of the humans they had displaced. Finally, at the end, the other animals find themselves even worse off under the pigs, who have even thrown away the rules, along with the name Animal Farm.
Animal Farm is obviously an allegory to communism and the rule of Josef Stalin over the Soviet Union. Originally promoted as a worker's revolution to give them the rights they deserved, the clique running the communists made themselves "more equal" than the masses they were supposedly there to serve...eventually the people were even more severely subjugated than they were under autocratic czar rule.
Although intended to frame Stalinism in satirical terms, Animal Farm can apply to any social/political/religious movement with benign stated intentions but whose leaders and organizers set themselves apart from those for whose causes they claim to be fighting...while in reality manipulating and taking advantage of them. Since I seem to have an innate suspicion of people setting themselves up as authorities with the power of command, this story deeply resonates with me...
Wednesday, July 8, 2015
Tuesday, July 7, 2015
Iranian Nuclear Negotiations Looking Like an Exercise in Futility
The ongoing negotiations between Iran and Western countries, including the United States, to come to an agreement whereby Iran limits its nuclear development and allows independent inspections of its facilities, are due to end on July 10, with, at this point of time, little to indicate that the talks, reportedly at a standoff, will succeed before that date. To me, I'm not quite sure what good any negotiated "deal" will accomplish...Iran's de facto dictator, Ayatollah Khamenei, has been the supreme authority of that country with the power to arbitrarily interpret, validate or reject any laws while being at the same time the commander-in-chief of its armed forces. And Khamenei, who has ruled that country since 1989, has already flatly stated that he would never allow international inspectors at Iran's military facilities. So U.S. Secretary of State Kerry, his fellow Western negotiators, and the polite and amiable Iranian negotiators can agree on whatever they want...it doesn't matter...because in the end, only what Ayatollah Khamenei says about it is what Iran's policy will be...
I was around in 1980 during the Iranian hostage crisis, when President Carter sought out authoritative Iranian representatives to negotiate the release of the 50+ American hostages being held there...and the then-Ayatollah Khomeini would repeatedly frustrate and contradict any progress that the Iranian-American negotiations were making. I see nothing different...their current "supreme" leader feels no sense of honor or duty to live by international agreements...instead, he insists on his own exalted authority to change or interpret them as he sees fit. So the way I see it, these negotiations are an exercise in futility...
I was around in 1980 during the Iranian hostage crisis, when President Carter sought out authoritative Iranian representatives to negotiate the release of the 50+ American hostages being held there...and the then-Ayatollah Khomeini would repeatedly frustrate and contradict any progress that the Iranian-American negotiations were making. I see nothing different...their current "supreme" leader feels no sense of honor or duty to live by international agreements...instead, he insists on his own exalted authority to change or interpret them as he sees fit. So the way I see it, these negotiations are an exercise in futility...
Sunday, July 5, 2015
Getting "Good" at Math vs. Kindling a Passion For It
I was just listening on my car radio to a PBS show featuring an interview with a young man who, as the result of a street mugging that left him with a concussion, suddenly began to discover that he was inclined to view his reality in mathematical terms, focused on geometry. I don't know how his story ended, because at the time a squall line was about to strike, with me racing into my Magnolia Parke Starbucks parking lot to get inside before all hell broke loose...so I left the program unfinished and rushed indoors to escape the deluge. Now that I'm inside having taken the last available table...with that hell now breaking loose outside...I'm reflecting a bit on what it takes to be "good" in mathematics...
I'm not being arrogant or prideful when I state that I have always registered extremely high in mathematical ability on aptitude tests (e.g. my SAT math score was the maximum 800). However, that aptitude never translated well to the classroom, where I consistently underachieved. Why? I have always felt turned off by the combined hyper-competitive and moralistic tone of most math classes. By this I mean that the focus was rarely on the fascinating field of mathematics itself, but rather on the performance of the math students. We were supposedly in some kind of de facto competition with each other to see who was "best", and failure to answer questions correctly always seemed to have a moral sense of condemnation. The irony is that whenever I undertake the study of something for its own sake, free of competitive pressures, then I naturally tend to float to a higher level than others. The young mathematics scholar on the radio program had independently developed his own high level of competence in the field, relatively free of the aforementioned distractions and obstacles imposed in formal math instruction. He envisioned mathematics ultimately in its geometric form, according to how his brain's functioning had changed following the assault...
I don't believe I need a bop on my head in order to get good at mathematics, but then again, that young man wasn't necessarily trying to "get good" at it, either. No, he was able to kindle a passion for mathematics based on the mental equipment he was furnished according to his circumstances. I see no reason why I couldn't follow the same principle, albeit with the particular gifts toward the field that I have been provided...
I'm not being arrogant or prideful when I state that I have always registered extremely high in mathematical ability on aptitude tests (e.g. my SAT math score was the maximum 800). However, that aptitude never translated well to the classroom, where I consistently underachieved. Why? I have always felt turned off by the combined hyper-competitive and moralistic tone of most math classes. By this I mean that the focus was rarely on the fascinating field of mathematics itself, but rather on the performance of the math students. We were supposedly in some kind of de facto competition with each other to see who was "best", and failure to answer questions correctly always seemed to have a moral sense of condemnation. The irony is that whenever I undertake the study of something for its own sake, free of competitive pressures, then I naturally tend to float to a higher level than others. The young mathematics scholar on the radio program had independently developed his own high level of competence in the field, relatively free of the aforementioned distractions and obstacles imposed in formal math instruction. He envisioned mathematics ultimately in its geometric form, according to how his brain's functioning had changed following the assault...
I don't believe I need a bop on my head in order to get good at mathematics, but then again, that young man wasn't necessarily trying to "get good" at it, either. No, he was able to kindle a passion for mathematics based on the mental equipment he was furnished according to his circumstances. I see no reason why I couldn't follow the same principle, albeit with the particular gifts toward the field that I have been provided...
Saturday, July 4, 2015
Some 1965-66 Nova Elementary School Memories, Part 4
Here are some more memories, in no particular order, that I've somehow kept of my fourth grade experiences at Nova Blanche Forman Elementary School in 1965-66, the first year of its existence...
--Individualized study was the norm at Nova, at least in the five-classroom section called "Suite C". They had SRA (Science Research Associates) study lab kits that we were all supposed to be engaged with...there were Reading Lab, Spelling Lab, and Math Lab, if memory serves me correctly. I tended to avoid SRA, though, which although a required activity, never got me into trouble with my teachers...convincing me that the faculty was detached from the students they were entrusted with teaching. But later in the school year, I undertook to do another, more advanced SRA program, called Study Skills, which, unlike the other SRA kits, required library visits to do and which involved reading essays and stories...and then answering comprehension questions following them. I did all of Study Skills, which had quite a few lessons and was a feat that very few students accomplished, and then turned in my folder to my teacher showing my completion. I never got acknowledgement for my efforts and found my folder a few weeks later lying on a counter without any teacher's notes on it...as if no one had even bothered to look at it...
--We did have field trips that year. One was a combination trip to Port Everglades and the Broward County Courthouse. I think the teachers conducting it had in mind all of us boarding a ship as part of the excursion, but weren't able to swing it. My highlight with the courthouse visit was standing on the high roof overlooking downtown Fort Lauderdale and seeing how close to the edge I would dare myself to stand. I think we also may have, at another time, visited the Seminole Indian Village on US 441 in Dania, but if we did my memory eludes me...
--In preparation for our school-wide Christmas assembly, each suite came up with a show. Suites, A, B, and D each had skits they performed. Our suite, though did something I thought was pretty cool: a Mexican dance, completely choreographed with partners, kicking and swirling, on an enormous scale. I was paired with Eleanor, another student who would complete the Nova program all the way through senior graduation. That dance, which the whole suite had practiced and practiced to a numbing degree, easily stole the show...
--Speaking of Christmas, many students at Nova Elementary were Jewish and celebrated Hanukkah in December. Students were encouraged to bring in items pertaining to how they celebrated the holidays, and I heard Jewish holiday songs and became acquainted with the dreidel, a top with the sides inscribed with Hebrew letters. Another totally cool experience...
--I have some memory of Spanish being taught in the context of the story Goldilocks. I also remember Marjorie getting the role of Goldilocks in the subsequent performance because of her ability to ham it up...
--Speaking of acting, later in that year we assembled in the cafeteria (officially called the "Multi-Purpose Room") to watch some other skits, one of which featured Paige, a classmate whose stage presence even at that early age indicated a promising future in entertainment, as confirmed by her role many years later as the voice of Belle in Disney's Beauty and the Beast...
More memories to come...
--Individualized study was the norm at Nova, at least in the five-classroom section called "Suite C". They had SRA (Science Research Associates) study lab kits that we were all supposed to be engaged with...there were Reading Lab, Spelling Lab, and Math Lab, if memory serves me correctly. I tended to avoid SRA, though, which although a required activity, never got me into trouble with my teachers...convincing me that the faculty was detached from the students they were entrusted with teaching. But later in the school year, I undertook to do another, more advanced SRA program, called Study Skills, which, unlike the other SRA kits, required library visits to do and which involved reading essays and stories...and then answering comprehension questions following them. I did all of Study Skills, which had quite a few lessons and was a feat that very few students accomplished, and then turned in my folder to my teacher showing my completion. I never got acknowledgement for my efforts and found my folder a few weeks later lying on a counter without any teacher's notes on it...as if no one had even bothered to look at it...
--We did have field trips that year. One was a combination trip to Port Everglades and the Broward County Courthouse. I think the teachers conducting it had in mind all of us boarding a ship as part of the excursion, but weren't able to swing it. My highlight with the courthouse visit was standing on the high roof overlooking downtown Fort Lauderdale and seeing how close to the edge I would dare myself to stand. I think we also may have, at another time, visited the Seminole Indian Village on US 441 in Dania, but if we did my memory eludes me...
--In preparation for our school-wide Christmas assembly, each suite came up with a show. Suites, A, B, and D each had skits they performed. Our suite, though did something I thought was pretty cool: a Mexican dance, completely choreographed with partners, kicking and swirling, on an enormous scale. I was paired with Eleanor, another student who would complete the Nova program all the way through senior graduation. That dance, which the whole suite had practiced and practiced to a numbing degree, easily stole the show...
--Speaking of Christmas, many students at Nova Elementary were Jewish and celebrated Hanukkah in December. Students were encouraged to bring in items pertaining to how they celebrated the holidays, and I heard Jewish holiday songs and became acquainted with the dreidel, a top with the sides inscribed with Hebrew letters. Another totally cool experience...
--I have some memory of Spanish being taught in the context of the story Goldilocks. I also remember Marjorie getting the role of Goldilocks in the subsequent performance because of her ability to ham it up...
--Speaking of acting, later in that year we assembled in the cafeteria (officially called the "Multi-Purpose Room") to watch some other skits, one of which featured Paige, a classmate whose stage presence even at that early age indicated a promising future in entertainment, as confirmed by her role many years later as the voice of Belle in Disney's Beauty and the Beast...
More memories to come...
Friday, July 3, 2015
Just Finished Reading The Gathering Storm by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson
Robert Jordan, author of the extensive and expansive The Wheel of Time fantasy series, was working on his very lengthy concluding book when, in 2007, he passed away. Fellow fantasy writer Brandon Sanderson was enlisted to finish the series, with the aid of Jordan's outlines and notes. He decided to break that last super-long book that Jordan had envisioned into three volumes...I just finished reading the first of these, titled The Gathering Storm...the 12th book in the series. I was very pleased with the result...
Brandon Sanderson had a monumental task before him, which was to stay true to Robert Jordan's vision and intentions for the series ending while reconciling the many subplots and characters that the original author had introduced and then just left hanging. While staying true to the main characters with their distinct personalities (a strength of Jordan's writing), Sanderson managed the seemingly impossible task of significantly advancing the story (a weakness of Jordan). In this book, the focus is on two main characters, Rand al'Thor and Egwene al'Vere. Rand, generally known to most others living in his fantasy world as "The Dragon Reborn", struggles with his emotions, his mounting distrust of others, his belief that he is imprisoned by prophecy and fated to die, and the feeling that he is going insane. Egwene has her own struggle to unite the White Tower of the Aes Sedai under her leadership. First, she has to endure beatings and imprisonment while her access to channeling has been blocked...all under the direction of the false leader Elaida. Egwene also knows of an impending attack on the White Tower by an imposing enemy called the Seanchan, but her warnings to Elaida fall on deaf ears. With both Rand and Egwene, the suspense builds throughout the book until each undergoes a climactic ordeal, and the book concludes with a sense of resolution for both...
I expect the action to dramatically pick up in the next book of this series. The characters Mat (my favorite in the series), Perrin, and Elayne also have very important parts to play, and I expect more coverage of their own stories to get greater focus. I'm sad that Robert Jordan died, and that he didn't have the opportunity to finish The Wheel of Time as he would have liked. But Brandon Sanderson has stepped in to provide some hope for us readers who have already put in so much time going through these books...
Brandon Sanderson had a monumental task before him, which was to stay true to Robert Jordan's vision and intentions for the series ending while reconciling the many subplots and characters that the original author had introduced and then just left hanging. While staying true to the main characters with their distinct personalities (a strength of Jordan's writing), Sanderson managed the seemingly impossible task of significantly advancing the story (a weakness of Jordan). In this book, the focus is on two main characters, Rand al'Thor and Egwene al'Vere. Rand, generally known to most others living in his fantasy world as "The Dragon Reborn", struggles with his emotions, his mounting distrust of others, his belief that he is imprisoned by prophecy and fated to die, and the feeling that he is going insane. Egwene has her own struggle to unite the White Tower of the Aes Sedai under her leadership. First, she has to endure beatings and imprisonment while her access to channeling has been blocked...all under the direction of the false leader Elaida. Egwene also knows of an impending attack on the White Tower by an imposing enemy called the Seanchan, but her warnings to Elaida fall on deaf ears. With both Rand and Egwene, the suspense builds throughout the book until each undergoes a climactic ordeal, and the book concludes with a sense of resolution for both...
I expect the action to dramatically pick up in the next book of this series. The characters Mat (my favorite in the series), Perrin, and Elayne also have very important parts to play, and I expect more coverage of their own stories to get greater focus. I'm sad that Robert Jordan died, and that he didn't have the opportunity to finish The Wheel of Time as he would have liked. But Brandon Sanderson has stepped in to provide some hope for us readers who have already put in so much time going through these books...
Wednesday, July 1, 2015
Venus-Jupiter Conjunction Tonight...Look Westward After Sunset
Yesterday evening at 9:30 while at work, I went out on my "lunch" break to my car. As I looked in the sky toward the west-northwest, a little above the horizon, I saw two bright star-like objects very close to each other. These "stars" are nothing less than the two planets Venus and Jupiter, with Venus being the brighter of the two. This closeness of our celestial neighbors from the perspective of Earth, in astronomical terms called a "conjunction", will be visible tonight as well, weather cooperating. If I'm not mistaken, they are positioned in the faint constellation Cancer. And should you want to add another planet, Saturn, to your sky-gazing experience, look southward toward the constellation Scorpius (representing a scorpion). Just west of the "claw" lies the ringed planet...or, should I say, one of the ringed planets, now that astronomers have discovered them around Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune as well. By the way, the brightest star in that constellation, Antares, is a red giant that would engulf the Earth were it in our Sun's position...
Tuesday, June 30, 2015
My June 2015 Running Record
In June, following May's left leg strain, I built back up my total running mileage, finishing the month at 303. I spread out my runs over the course of each day, so I didn't have a "long" run per se. My longest single run was for 4.2 miles. I ran on each day of the month...
The weather where I'm at is horribly hot and muggy...and when the humidity does drop, the temperature goes into the upper 90's...not very conducive to long-distance running. So indoor running has become the norm for me, although I like to get outside on the road for a short run from time to time.
As for races in July, this upcoming weekend features two on July 4th, both starting at 8 AM. In Gainesville, there's the three-mile Melon Run at Westside Park, which I've raced in before. In Branford, a few miles west of Fort White and Ichetucknee Springs on US Highway 27, they are holding the Firecracker 5K/10K. I'm wondering which, if any, of these events I want to run in. If I do decide to participate, I plan to just treat the race as a training run, with my focus on just covering the distance. And this time I'm carrying a bottle of Gatorade with me...in my last 10K race, the organizers didn't provide us with anything but water in that very humid afternoon event...
The weather where I'm at is horribly hot and muggy...and when the humidity does drop, the temperature goes into the upper 90's...not very conducive to long-distance running. So indoor running has become the norm for me, although I like to get outside on the road for a short run from time to time.
As for races in July, this upcoming weekend features two on July 4th, both starting at 8 AM. In Gainesville, there's the three-mile Melon Run at Westside Park, which I've raced in before. In Branford, a few miles west of Fort White and Ichetucknee Springs on US Highway 27, they are holding the Firecracker 5K/10K. I'm wondering which, if any, of these events I want to run in. If I do decide to participate, I plan to just treat the race as a training run, with my focus on just covering the distance. And this time I'm carrying a bottle of Gatorade with me...in my last 10K race, the organizers didn't provide us with anything but water in that very humid afternoon event...
Monday, June 29, 2015
USA Plays Germany in Women's World Cup Semifinals Tomorrow
Tomorrow (Tuesday) will see what I call the "World War II" semifinals in the FIFA Women's World Cup of soccer. Why? Simply because of the pairings: England plays Japan and Germany plays the United States. So, depending on the outcomes of these two matches we'll either have an Axis final (Germany-Japan), an Allies final (England-USA)...or a continuation of the war...
The so-called experts in soccer have Germany ranked #1 and the United States at #2, so it's a little disappointing that there won't be a chance of them facing each other in the final. Still, should defending World Cup Champion Japan win against England, the final should be very entertaining regardless who wins between Germany and the US. The Japanese impressed me greatly during their last game against Australia with their aggressive play, team coordination, and skill with the ball...
Two important scorers on the American team missed the previous contest against China due to yellow card (foul) accumulation in the previous round against Colombia, but they'll be back to face Germany. Germany may well win tomorrow's game, but I believe their "favorites" status is largely due to them running up the score to 10-0 in their group stage match against relatively weak Ivory Coast. I think the Americans will prevail in the end, but then again I'm not going to be out there on the field determining the result...
One striking difference between women's and men's national soccer teams is that the players on the women's teams tend to be amateurs and the men professionals. This is because the professional league system for men has been around much longer and women's pro soccer leagues are simply not yet bringing in the fan and media attention that would sustain a level of income appropriate to a professional career for the players. I bet most of my readers...even many soccer fans...don't know that the U.S. has its own women's league: the National Women's Soccer League, with nine teams and which plays its regular season concurrently with the men's Major League Soccer. I understand that many of the games, although not on regular television, can be viewed on YouTube...
Largely because girl's soccer in America is often promoted in high school athletics as a counterpart to boy's football, on an international level women's soccer in the United States, with its large pool of developing talent, has grown to a higher level of respect than has the men's sport. It would be a shame if the most talented of these athletes were continued to be denied the opportunity to make a decent living from their sport when male soccer players of much lesser stature in their own respective leagues can support themselves with their higher pay...
Tomorrow's games will be shown on FoxSports1 Channel, which in Gainesville is on Cox Cable Channel 62. Unfortunately, I'll be at work during the games and won't be able to watch them...
The so-called experts in soccer have Germany ranked #1 and the United States at #2, so it's a little disappointing that there won't be a chance of them facing each other in the final. Still, should defending World Cup Champion Japan win against England, the final should be very entertaining regardless who wins between Germany and the US. The Japanese impressed me greatly during their last game against Australia with their aggressive play, team coordination, and skill with the ball...
Two important scorers on the American team missed the previous contest against China due to yellow card (foul) accumulation in the previous round against Colombia, but they'll be back to face Germany. Germany may well win tomorrow's game, but I believe their "favorites" status is largely due to them running up the score to 10-0 in their group stage match against relatively weak Ivory Coast. I think the Americans will prevail in the end, but then again I'm not going to be out there on the field determining the result...
One striking difference between women's and men's national soccer teams is that the players on the women's teams tend to be amateurs and the men professionals. This is because the professional league system for men has been around much longer and women's pro soccer leagues are simply not yet bringing in the fan and media attention that would sustain a level of income appropriate to a professional career for the players. I bet most of my readers...even many soccer fans...don't know that the U.S. has its own women's league: the National Women's Soccer League, with nine teams and which plays its regular season concurrently with the men's Major League Soccer. I understand that many of the games, although not on regular television, can be viewed on YouTube...
Largely because girl's soccer in America is often promoted in high school athletics as a counterpart to boy's football, on an international level women's soccer in the United States, with its large pool of developing talent, has grown to a higher level of respect than has the men's sport. It would be a shame if the most talented of these athletes were continued to be denied the opportunity to make a decent living from their sport when male soccer players of much lesser stature in their own respective leagues can support themselves with their higher pay...
Tomorrow's games will be shown on FoxSports1 Channel, which in Gainesville is on Cox Cable Channel 62. Unfortunately, I'll be at work during the games and won't be able to watch them...
Sunday, June 28, 2015
Some 1965-66 Nova Elementary School Memories, Part 3
As I continue on with memories of my fourth grade experiences at Nova Elementary (in Davie, Florida) in 1965-66, I'll present the rest of them anecdotally, in no particular order of chronology or importance...
--My first physical education class at Nova was unforgettable...most likely because it was one of my first classes there with a teacher actually teaching something. My teacher/coach was Mr. Tilton, an amiable jock type who, for some reason known only to himself, decided to take advantage of this groundbreaking event to give the class a clinic on how to punt a football. I took his lesson to heart and am still a pretty damned good punter. Only a couple of things, though...(1) He didn't bother to actually explain the rules of football, which in 1965 I didn't know, and (2) To this day, I have NEVER punted a football in any game on any level...
--One of our first science projects was to take seeds of a plant and grow them under different conditions and observe and record the results. My assigned plant was given the adequate water and soil...only it was kept in darkness, in one of the lab's cabinets...and grew wildly with a sickly pale color...
--In that same lab, led by Mrs. Bethune, I went though the fifth grade textbook and performed experiments. For much of the time I worked with Jill (who, like me, went all the way through the Nova system) as a lab partner. We had lab report sheets we had to fill out for each experiment, with spaces for PURPOSE, MATERIALS, PROCEDURE, OBSERVATIONS, and CONCLUSIONS. At the time, I felt that filling these sheets was tedious, to say the least, but now I realize their value, and not just for science. When you undertake anything, you need to determine why you're doing it, what you need in order to do it, how to do it, what happened when you did it, and what are you going to do with what happened...
--At the beginning of the school day, we would meet in our respective home "bases" where students could order supplies they needed (there was a designated student who would then go down to the "bookstore" down the hallway to get them). One item always in great demand was a box of "gummed reinforcements", those doughnut-shaped stickers we'd lick and then place on papers so that they wouldn't rip out of notebooks. Back then they were necessary because we'd have to poke papers without holes punched into them into binders, and the gummed reinforcements would keep them from ripping apart. But ever since the Nova Elementary School experience, I have never used a gummed reinforcement...
--The five classrooms in our Suite C were connected to each other by movable partitions, a new innovation in schools that would quickly spread throughout the school system and become a standard feature. This way, the teachers could at times hold assemblies just by pulling back the walls. I never could get the knack of closing them...
--Since Nova Blanche Forman Elementary School in 1965-66 was the debut of elementary education into the experimental Nova system (there was already Nova Junior and Senior High School, which my sister Anita attended), from time to time during certain school days we could look out of our classroom windows into the hallway (our school was completely enclosed in one building) and see well-dressed visitors looking in on us, apparently being on tours as part of whatever educational, business, or political groups they were associated with. These visitors always made me feel a bit uneasy, as if I were some kind of zoo animal on exhibit...
--There was musical instruction given this year in Suite C, first for those wanting to learn how to play the recorder, and then, with the acquisition of an electric organ (with headphones) for those wishing to play that instrument. I never did take to either of these, although I loved music and have always had a high degree of manual dexterity...
--In Nova, they were very proud of the innovation they introduced as the "LAP", an acronym for "learning activity package"...in common parlance, you and I would call it a "lesson" or "unit"...always in the form of some papers stapled together and handed out to the students by the teacher. We would get these LAPs, which always seemed to be overly pretentious as to what exactly they were trying to say, and then be expected to just automatically take off on our own initiative in doing them. Although LAPs were a common feature of Nova, I cannot, to this day, remember any of them, in any subject. In my judgment, looking back more objectively on it all, they were designed to replace the teacher as the driving force in our education...in fact, it was uncommon to have classes then where teachers actually stood up in front of the class and taught lessons. In all of my years at Nova, I cannot remember one single time when any teacher ever took it upon his or herself to sit down with me and discuss a LAP. The burden of communication was always on the student, as if we kids automatically knew how to educate ourselves. What folly...
Stay tuned, there are plenty more random memories of this period in my student life to come...
--My first physical education class at Nova was unforgettable...most likely because it was one of my first classes there with a teacher actually teaching something. My teacher/coach was Mr. Tilton, an amiable jock type who, for some reason known only to himself, decided to take advantage of this groundbreaking event to give the class a clinic on how to punt a football. I took his lesson to heart and am still a pretty damned good punter. Only a couple of things, though...(1) He didn't bother to actually explain the rules of football, which in 1965 I didn't know, and (2) To this day, I have NEVER punted a football in any game on any level...
--One of our first science projects was to take seeds of a plant and grow them under different conditions and observe and record the results. My assigned plant was given the adequate water and soil...only it was kept in darkness, in one of the lab's cabinets...and grew wildly with a sickly pale color...
--In that same lab, led by Mrs. Bethune, I went though the fifth grade textbook and performed experiments. For much of the time I worked with Jill (who, like me, went all the way through the Nova system) as a lab partner. We had lab report sheets we had to fill out for each experiment, with spaces for PURPOSE, MATERIALS, PROCEDURE, OBSERVATIONS, and CONCLUSIONS. At the time, I felt that filling these sheets was tedious, to say the least, but now I realize their value, and not just for science. When you undertake anything, you need to determine why you're doing it, what you need in order to do it, how to do it, what happened when you did it, and what are you going to do with what happened...
--At the beginning of the school day, we would meet in our respective home "bases" where students could order supplies they needed (there was a designated student who would then go down to the "bookstore" down the hallway to get them). One item always in great demand was a box of "gummed reinforcements", those doughnut-shaped stickers we'd lick and then place on papers so that they wouldn't rip out of notebooks. Back then they were necessary because we'd have to poke papers without holes punched into them into binders, and the gummed reinforcements would keep them from ripping apart. But ever since the Nova Elementary School experience, I have never used a gummed reinforcement...
--The five classrooms in our Suite C were connected to each other by movable partitions, a new innovation in schools that would quickly spread throughout the school system and become a standard feature. This way, the teachers could at times hold assemblies just by pulling back the walls. I never could get the knack of closing them...
--Since Nova Blanche Forman Elementary School in 1965-66 was the debut of elementary education into the experimental Nova system (there was already Nova Junior and Senior High School, which my sister Anita attended), from time to time during certain school days we could look out of our classroom windows into the hallway (our school was completely enclosed in one building) and see well-dressed visitors looking in on us, apparently being on tours as part of whatever educational, business, or political groups they were associated with. These visitors always made me feel a bit uneasy, as if I were some kind of zoo animal on exhibit...
--There was musical instruction given this year in Suite C, first for those wanting to learn how to play the recorder, and then, with the acquisition of an electric organ (with headphones) for those wishing to play that instrument. I never did take to either of these, although I loved music and have always had a high degree of manual dexterity...
--In Nova, they were very proud of the innovation they introduced as the "LAP", an acronym for "learning activity package"...in common parlance, you and I would call it a "lesson" or "unit"...always in the form of some papers stapled together and handed out to the students by the teacher. We would get these LAPs, which always seemed to be overly pretentious as to what exactly they were trying to say, and then be expected to just automatically take off on our own initiative in doing them. Although LAPs were a common feature of Nova, I cannot, to this day, remember any of them, in any subject. In my judgment, looking back more objectively on it all, they were designed to replace the teacher as the driving force in our education...in fact, it was uncommon to have classes then where teachers actually stood up in front of the class and taught lessons. In all of my years at Nova, I cannot remember one single time when any teacher ever took it upon his or herself to sit down with me and discuss a LAP. The burden of communication was always on the student, as if we kids automatically knew how to educate ourselves. What folly...
Stay tuned, there are plenty more random memories of this period in my student life to come...
Saturday, June 27, 2015
Just Finished Reading Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere
The novel Neverwhere, by Neil Gaiman, is a fantasy exercise into an alternate reality secretly coexisting with the conventional real world. In this it bears a slight resemblance to the world of Harry Potter in that those on the "other side"...in Gaiman's case those dwellers of "London Below"...are aware of the conventional inhabitants (or "muggles", with Potter), but the reverse isn't necessarily true. The protagonist, a young man named Richard Mayhew, painfully discovers this. He has moved to London and has a budding, successful career underway as a financial trader. He is also newly engaged to Jessica, who besides being beautiful is a bit on the controlling side. One day, they are walking down the street and they come across a teenage girl lying and bleeding. Richard stops to care for her and Jessica leaves in an angry huff, hardly thinking about the girl and her plight. This insensitivity on her part is later explained by the fact that those living "above" are incapable of holding on to thoughts or memories about those dwelling "below"...and the injured girl, named Door (appropriately named, for she has a special knack for opening them), is one of the latter. But Richard, by taking her in and caring for her, has himself inadvertently slipped through into London Below and cannot return to his former life...no one remembers or recognizes him anymore. Returning to London Below, he becomes further drawn into the drama as Door flees from two sadistic hired murderers, Croup and Vandemar, and helps her try to discover who hired them to kill her family. He meets up with what I call a "wild card" character in the Marquis de Carabas, a scoundrel who nevertheless seems to be fighting on the side of Door. But is he really?
Neverwhere, besides creating an enchanting imaginary world of a complete, hidden society underneath London proper, examines the ideas of loyalty and betrayal...and how, on the one hand it is so easy to rationalize one's betrayal of another...and on the other hand, betrayal sometimes seems to be impossible to avoid, even with the best of intentions. The character of Richard Mayhew reminded me a bit of another fantasy fiction hero, Bilbo Baggins of The Hobbit. Like Bilbo, Richard is rather ordinary and believable, with his compassion for those who are suffering being a strong trait of his...
As is usually the case when I write about books I've read, I'll leave what happens to Richard, Door, the Marquis, and those two awfully bad dudes to you, the reader, should you decide on take on this book. This story is a maze of plot twists and turns...just when you think that things are improving, you discover that they're getting worse instead (and vice versa)...it can almost get to be a little dizzying. But that's a positive feature of Neverwhere, as I see it...which, among its other qualities, is why I recommend Neil Gaiman's book, which I recently discovered was also adapted as a BBC-TV series in the late 1990s...
Neverwhere, besides creating an enchanting imaginary world of a complete, hidden society underneath London proper, examines the ideas of loyalty and betrayal...and how, on the one hand it is so easy to rationalize one's betrayal of another...and on the other hand, betrayal sometimes seems to be impossible to avoid, even with the best of intentions. The character of Richard Mayhew reminded me a bit of another fantasy fiction hero, Bilbo Baggins of The Hobbit. Like Bilbo, Richard is rather ordinary and believable, with his compassion for those who are suffering being a strong trait of his...
As is usually the case when I write about books I've read, I'll leave what happens to Richard, Door, the Marquis, and those two awfully bad dudes to you, the reader, should you decide on take on this book. This story is a maze of plot twists and turns...just when you think that things are improving, you discover that they're getting worse instead (and vice versa)...it can almost get to be a little dizzying. But that's a positive feature of Neverwhere, as I see it...which, among its other qualities, is why I recommend Neil Gaiman's book, which I recently discovered was also adapted as a BBC-TV series in the late 1990s...
Friday, June 26, 2015
Soccer: Women's FIFA World Cup Quarterfinals Start Today
The 2015 FIFA Women's World Cup in soccer is continuing today and tomorrow, with eight national teams playing in the quarterfinal stage. The pairings are remarkable, when you look at them: superpower rivals USA and China play this evening while the afternoon game is between traditional European rivals France and tournament favorite Germany. Tomorrow has Pacific foes Japan, the defending champion from 2011, playing Australia while the two other British Commonwealth national teams have their own private game: England vs. host nation Canada. I wonder whether these games were deliberately set up this way, or did they just randomly fall into place...no matter, we're in for some great games! Unfortunately, I'll miss today's contests since I have to go to work...but tomorrow I should be able to see the other two.
There was another World Cup soccer tournament going on, too, this one being the U-20 (under 20) Men's World Cup. FoxSports had been showing games in the earlier group stages and tournament rounds, but I didn't see any final match shown...maybe they did show the championship game and I was at work when it happened...but all the same I'm disappointed that I didn't get to see Brazil play Serbia for the title, which the latter won 2-1...
There's also a concurrent national teams tournament focusing on the Western Hemisphere, but I haven't been able to follow it as well as I might have liked...let's face it, I like league play more and the only league around right now is North America's Major League Soccer. As for all the tournaments involving national teams, as I've said before, I tend to be a bit turned off by the overly nationalistic attitudes taken by the fans, media, and even the players...
There was another World Cup soccer tournament going on, too, this one being the U-20 (under 20) Men's World Cup. FoxSports had been showing games in the earlier group stages and tournament rounds, but I didn't see any final match shown...maybe they did show the championship game and I was at work when it happened...but all the same I'm disappointed that I didn't get to see Brazil play Serbia for the title, which the latter won 2-1...
There's also a concurrent national teams tournament focusing on the Western Hemisphere, but I haven't been able to follow it as well as I might have liked...let's face it, I like league play more and the only league around right now is North America's Major League Soccer. As for all the tournaments involving national teams, as I've said before, I tend to be a bit turned off by the overly nationalistic attitudes taken by the fans, media, and even the players...
Thursday, June 25, 2015
U.S. Supreme Court Rules for Obamacare 6-3
The United States Supreme Court has just upheld an important provision of the Affordable Care Act (aka "Obamacare") by a 6-3 vote, with conservative judges John Roberts and Anthony Kennedy siding against the Republican-backed plaintiff and in favor of the Obama administration. The provision involved whether federal subsidies of health insurance exchanges are constitutional in states where no state exchanges were authorized. Supposedly, had the Court ruled the other way, the ACA would have been severerly hurt. In any event, I have felt that those who fought to pass it into law back in 2009-10 had the generally correct idea, but they left out a crucially important principal involving health care, insurance, and expense...
To my admittedly possibly simplistic way of viewing things, health care can either be regarded as an economic good, which then would obey the laws of scarcity and demand, or as a type of human right to which all in society are entitled. If you believe in the first option, then you most likely would be against Obamacare as it aims to insure those previously unable to afford health insurance and diminish that concept of economic "scarcity". But if you are like me and want everyone to have access to health care, then the entire concept of "insurance" becomes redundant, since therefore there would be no need to demographically separate people based on their medical history or ability to pay. Besides, having the health insurance industry positioned between the people and their desired professional health care just adds a great burden of expense to the whole process. If you are employed in the health insurance business or are dependent on someone who is, I'm sorry about all this...but the fact that you're making a living off of it tends to prove my point. In any case, the Affordable Care Act, in my opinion, just kicks the can down the road regarding the burden that health insurance places on people. Also, who says that businesses should be saddled with the burden of providing health benefits to its employees? In my opinion, if we as a society believe in universal health care, then we should fund it through taxes and congressional budgeting in just the same way that we fund our national defense or road systems. But the word "tax" has, for many years, been relegated to taboo status, politically speaking...so we're left with this halfway measure called the Affordable Care Act that does a lot of mandating of insurance but does little to guarantee that it will be affordable or that it will lead to quality health care. Although countries like Canada that have nationalized health care are often termed as practicing "socialized medicine", in truth they have freed their own (capitalist) businesses from the cost of providing health insurance and thus have given them a competitive advantage over our own companies. And the prospect of people not being economically devastated by illness or injury means that they can participate more actively in their economy as consumers, further stimulating the economy, or put the money to use with investments...
In spite of my own view on the subject, I'm realistic enough to recognize that it is politically unfeasible to reform health care on a national level that would restore the patient-doctor relationship without middleman interference or prevent catastrophic health issues from financially destroying families. Neither the current law nor the system preceding it adequately address these issues, sad to say...
To my admittedly possibly simplistic way of viewing things, health care can either be regarded as an economic good, which then would obey the laws of scarcity and demand, or as a type of human right to which all in society are entitled. If you believe in the first option, then you most likely would be against Obamacare as it aims to insure those previously unable to afford health insurance and diminish that concept of economic "scarcity". But if you are like me and want everyone to have access to health care, then the entire concept of "insurance" becomes redundant, since therefore there would be no need to demographically separate people based on their medical history or ability to pay. Besides, having the health insurance industry positioned between the people and their desired professional health care just adds a great burden of expense to the whole process. If you are employed in the health insurance business or are dependent on someone who is, I'm sorry about all this...but the fact that you're making a living off of it tends to prove my point. In any case, the Affordable Care Act, in my opinion, just kicks the can down the road regarding the burden that health insurance places on people. Also, who says that businesses should be saddled with the burden of providing health benefits to its employees? In my opinion, if we as a society believe in universal health care, then we should fund it through taxes and congressional budgeting in just the same way that we fund our national defense or road systems. But the word "tax" has, for many years, been relegated to taboo status, politically speaking...so we're left with this halfway measure called the Affordable Care Act that does a lot of mandating of insurance but does little to guarantee that it will be affordable or that it will lead to quality health care. Although countries like Canada that have nationalized health care are often termed as practicing "socialized medicine", in truth they have freed their own (capitalist) businesses from the cost of providing health insurance and thus have given them a competitive advantage over our own companies. And the prospect of people not being economically devastated by illness or injury means that they can participate more actively in their economy as consumers, further stimulating the economy, or put the money to use with investments...
In spite of my own view on the subject, I'm realistic enough to recognize that it is politically unfeasible to reform health care on a national level that would restore the patient-doctor relationship without middleman interference or prevent catastrophic health issues from financially destroying families. Neither the current law nor the system preceding it adequately address these issues, sad to say...
Wednesday, June 24, 2015
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!
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!
Tuesday, June 23, 2015
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)...
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)...
Monday, June 22, 2015
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...
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...
Sunday, June 21, 2015
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...
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...
Saturday, June 20, 2015
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!
Friday, June 19, 2015
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...
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...
Thursday, June 18, 2015
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?
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?
Wednesday, June 17, 2015
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...
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...
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