Just Finished Reading Ursula K. Le Guin's The Tombs of Atuan

Three days ago I wrote about science fiction & fantasy writer Ursula K. Le Guin's book A Wizard of Earthsea, the first in her Earthsea Cycle series.  Now I've just finished reading the second volume, titled The Tombs of Atuan.  The setting is the Earthsea Archipelago on our fantasy make-believe planet, on the northeastern island of Atuan, controlled and populated by the vicious Kargish...analogous to our Vikings.  A young girl is taken from her family according to the traditionally held belief that when the Priestess of the Tombs dies, she is reincarnated into the body of another female.  And the Priestess has just died and an investigation ensues across the land to find another born at the moment of her death.  It is poor Tenar who is chosen to live her life among the dark and foreboding tombs in the middle of the desert...

The Tombs of Atuan continues on with Tenar after a few years...she is now called "nameless" or "Arha"...a seeming contradiction of terms.  She learns of the secret underground in the tombs, including a long and tricky labyrinth that contains a treasure room somewhere within.  And in that treasure room is half of the Ring of Atuan, which generations earlier a hero fighting the Kargish lost there.  The other half's fate is unknown, but legend tells that a family in the area may be hiding it.  Why is this important?  In the first book, A Wizard of Earthsea, it is told that protagonist wizard Ged would successfully get the ring and return it to its people.  Predictably, Ged does make his appearance in this second book, although under inauspicious circumstances.  And that's where I'll leave you, the potential reader of this series, to go see for yourself what happens...

In the realm of fantasy literature, there aren't too many female protagonists.  Tenar is a compelling character worth following.  Unlike with Ged in the first book, hers is a life of physical hardship and restrictions with little or no opportunity given for growth or glory.  Her spirit fights against these limitations...while Ged, in the face of his opportunities, had foolishly spurned them...

So now I've read two books in this series, and each one has its own main protagonist.  I wonder what Ursula K. Le Guin...who incidentally lives in Portland, Oregon...has to offer us in the third one.  Guess I'll just have to read it and find out...

Three 5K Races in Area This Saturday

Last Friday I was considering running in a local 5K race, to take place at Cofrin Nature Park off Newberry Road the next morning.  But I was tired that night when I got off from work at midnight and decided to defer my racing to another day.  Now it's the following Thursday and I'm looking at three 5K events, all scheduled for Saturday morning.  One is the Gainesville Youth Chorus Run/Walk & Fun Run at St. Francis Academy on NW 39th Avenue, one is the Sam Strong Run 2 End Duchenne (a form of muscular dystrophy) in Newberry, and the other is the Hunting for a Cure 5K (to cure sarcoma, a type of cancer) in Williston.  I can't run in them all, and if I feel like I did last week, I won't run in any of them.  But I also know that nobody around here is going to schedule any 5K races on a Sunday or Monday morning, when I've had plenty of rest.  So maybe I'll just have to tough it out and get up and run in one of these events Saturday morning...that Youth Chorus race should be the easiest to get to...although that area can be pretty hilly.  The course is described as cross-country/trail, and the race is set to begin at 9 am.  The Newberry race starts at 8:30 and might be easier to handle.  I guess I'll just have to wait and see how I feel about it all when I get off from work again tomorrow night...

Tropical Storm Julia Forms Over Florida Land

I was surprised last night while watching the eleven o'clock local news during my final break at work to discover that a new tropical storm, named Julia, had formed and was in the Jacksonville vicinity.  But I wasn't aware until a few minutes ago that Julia had developed into a tropical storm while its center of circulation was over land...about five miles west of Jacksonville.  This is the first recorded instance of a tropical depression intensifying into a named tropical storm while centered over Florida land, although Beryl likewise intensified while over Louisiana in 1988.  Normally, someone like me living in Gainesville would be concerned about so near a storm as Julia, but almost all of its bad weather lies to its east, over the ocean.  After passing through Jacksonville without much concern other than winds of around 40 mph and strong rip currents along the beaches, it has maintained its minimal tropical storm strength and drifted on northward, at this writing centered in the vicinity of Savannah, Georgia.  There are no steering currents to send Julia on any discernible trajectory, and the various computer models are all over the map regarding where it will eventually go...

It's funny how, with some tropical storms...such was the case with Hermine...we'll go on for days and days noting its position, the prospects for it strengthening, and wondering what direction it will take.  And then there's a storm like Julia that seems to have formed out of nowhere and is suddenly right on us.  And along the lines of storms involving days of anticipation, it's just been announced that there is a new, strong tropical depression that just came off the coast of Africa...

Just Finished Reading Ursula K. Le Guin's A Wizard of Earthsea

A Wizard of Earthsea, written by Ursula K. Le Guin and first published in 1968, is the first book in the Earthsea Cycle, a fantasy series for younger readers.  Being a glutton for punishment, I suppose, I decided to begin reading yet another fantasy series...will I ever learn?  Once again, here we go with the wizards, dragons, secret words and names, arcane histories, wizardry school, bronze age technology, special rules for magic, wise old masters of the craft, and so on.  Oh, and of course this all happens in a make-believe place, this one being the Earthsea Archipelago, basically on a world covered by ocean where the entire human population lives spread out on numerous islands...or so it seems.  The protagonist is a young wizard (or mage) named Ged, also called Sparrowhawk, who grows up on the island of Gont, the homeland of many in the magical trade.  Called to the "profession", Ged has an issue with personal pride and is always trying to impress others with his magical abilities.  At first I was tired of feeling that I was expected to root for this rather shallow character, but then the story took a turn and he became more of a tragic hero, evoking my sympathies...

A Wizard of Earthsea is a short book, but it is full of esoteric details and place names that can tax the reader's memory.  This aspect of fantasy literature I've grown to expect, though.  There is a lot of adventure here, but the story's ultimate messages evolve into themes of self-discovery and balance with the world.  So the story turns out at the end to be a bit deeper than it hinted at the start.  Because of the setting, the narrative has a strong maritime emphasis, giving it a special uniqueness in the fantasy genre.  And Le Guin departed from the stereotypical white-Nordic type of fantasy heroes by making hers dark-skinned...good for her!  I give A Wizard of Earthsea a "thumbs up" and am currently about halfway through the second book in the series, titled The Tombs of Atuan...

NFL Shows Double Standard with "Free Speech"

The National Football League's double standard concerning the issue of free speech as it pertains to player protests during the national anthem and one team's attempt to honor its slain law enforcement officers is too much for me to bear.  Following the refusal of the league to allow Dallas Cowboys players to display a small memorial to the recent murdered policemen from their city on their helmets, the same organization is bending over backwards to appease players who refuse to honor our national anthem, either by remaining seated, kneeling, or pumping their fists in the air.  Now if you are going to side with the players who protested in this manner before yesterday's games because you agree with their agenda but oppose what the Dallas players want to do, then perhaps you are one who believes in freedom of speech only as long as whoever is speaking "freely" agrees with you.  On the other hand, you may agree with some of the reasons for the protests...as I do and am also concerned about civil rights violations of minorities by police...but think that this form of expression is unacceptable.  I know that our Constitution's First Amendment, which protects us from being persecuted or censored by our government for what we say or express, does not extend to private employees who are expected by their employers to abide by a certain standard of demeanor for the sake of the company's public image...or go seek employment elsewhere.  No doubt this also includes playing for professional sports teams as well.  And the National Football League is quick to apply free speech restrictions in the case of the Dallas Cowboys players wanting to honor their fallen police heroes.  But they then turn around and say it is these other players' "rights" to openly show their contempt for this country while publicly on the field, wearing their teams' uniforms, and getting paid their millions.  Something is seriously amiss here.  I followed the first weekend of the 2016 regular season to see what would come of all this after second-rate 49er quarterback Colin Kaepernick started it all by refusing to stand for the anthem before an exhibition game. Sad to say, I am very disappointed at the outcome and plan to boycott the National Football League henceforth...

Since 9/11

The horrendous coordinated terrorist attacks against the United States on September 11, 2001 were done in the name of Islam by Al-Qaeda, using nineteen mass-murderers to hijack four passenger jet planes and bring down the two World Trade Center towers, hit the Pentagon, and unsuccessfully attempt to hit either the White House or Capitol building.  Some 3,000 people died from this abominable perversion of a great world religion by a few. And a few of us here in America may sometimes come to the erroneous conclusion that we brought it on as retaliation for something we had done, like supporting Israel or stationing troops in Saudi Arabia in order to drive Saddam Hussein's Iraq out of Kuwait in the Persian Gulf War.  Or maybe they just didn't like our liberal society with social freedoms of which they disapprove with their distorted view of the way things should be.  But before some of us go too far with this self-assessment...and before any of us condemns the entire religion of Islam for the actions of some who seem to be demonically-possessed and who commit their atrocities in that name, let's just take a look at the list of countries since that infamous day in 2001 who have likewise been victimized by Islamic extremist terrorism, whether by Al-Qaeda, ISIS (or Daesh, as Muslims derogatorily call it), Boko Haram, other terrorist organizations, or lone-wolf attackers (the list comes courtesy of Wikipedia):

India, Israel, Pakistan, Tunisia, Philippines, Indonesia, Russia, Kenya, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Turkey, Spain, Iraq, Bangladesh, Egypt, Netherlands, Lebanon, United Kingdom, Jordan, Yemen, Somalia, Uganda, Iran, Sweden, Germany, China, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Nigeria, France, Bulgaria, Libya, Algeria, Niger, Afghanistan, Syria, Australia, Canada, United Arab Emirates, Cameroon, Denmark, Mali, Chad, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Belgium,...and of course, the United States...

These terrorist attacks over the span of the last fifteen years have happened on five continents and in at least forty-six countries, of which twenty-two...nearly half of the total...have majority Muslim populations.  So, you see, it isn't just us in the U.S.A. they're fighting...don't you think it's about high time the world came together to firmly stand up against this perversion...and openly recognize it for what it is?

Just Finished Reading Ruth Rendell's The Crocodile Bird

A few days ago I read my first Ruth Rendell book, the novel Portobello.  I enjoyed it enough to want to investigate other writings of hers, including her celebrated Inspector Wexford series.  But first I decided to read another standalone Rendell novel, this one titled The Crocodile Bird.  Once again, the setting and culture is distinctly English...but whereas in Portobello the focus was mainly on three different men living in London, this story is about a mother and her daughter living in the secluded English countryside...

Ruth Rendell has been described as a psychological mystery writer.  I think I now understand that assessment: it isn't necessarily so much that her narrative immerses the reader in a whodunit-type mystery as much as unravelling the underlying background and motives of the characters and their actions.  Eve is the mother and Liza her daughter, and they live alone together throughout the girl's childhood in the gatehouse to an estate called Shrove.  Eve, already well-educated in the classical sense, keeps her daughter out of school and teaches her at home.   Eve is obsessed with Shrove and wants to live the rest of her life there while insulating Liza from the rest of the world, which Eve loathes as a terrible place.  The problem here is that Eve doesn't own Shrove...it is another, Jonathan Tobias, an absentee-but-benevolent man about Eve's age, who controls the property she covets and lets her reside there in the role of estate manager.  The entangled, long-running relationship between Eve and Jonathan, the overly protective manner of mother bringing up daughter, and Liza's little acts of rebellion along the way are all significant parts of the story.  Of course, we want to know the roots of all this as well, and that is gradually revealed in the book.  If this were all there was to The Crocodile Bird, it might be interesting on some level...but Liza knows the dark secrets of her mother regarding the disappearances of men on the property.  She loves her mother and is protective of her while herself not subscribing to the latter's cynical view of the world.  And why should she, being brought up ignorant of things others take for granted...like television and shopping, for example...

I guess that's about as far as I can go discussing the plot of The Crocodile Bird without giving away important elements and spoiling it for the reader.  And this is a very good book, a worthwhile investment of your reading time.  One thing I got out of it was something that I had long known from personal experience.  As a child, you can grow to discern the faults of your parents and become reconciled to them, intellectually separating yourself from their undesirable traits while still loving and respecting them.  But there can still be a strong, unconscious imprint of the parents' personalities on the child, the result of which often is displayed throughout that individual's lifetime, for better or for worse.  Can we as adults rise above what we've unwittingly picked up as children and chart our own courses without that imprint negatively affecting us?  The Crocodile Bird is ultimately an examination of this important question...

McDonald's Beats Starbucks with Coffee, Prices, Seating Space

I'm sitting here about an hour before I have to go in to work, which is close by. "Here" is the McDonald's at SW 34th Street and Williston Road at the southern fringe of Gainesville, where I am enjoying their rather generous promotion of iced coffee, any size going for $1.39.  You can get it in different flavors: I prefer hazelnut.  The coffee goes down faster, but I enjoy it more than the hot version.  I can sit just about anywhere I want and, of course, get free Wi-Fi here...so why go to Starbucks when there is more than an even chance that I won't be able to find a place to sit while paying through the nose for less coffee?

McDonald's is more of a blue-collar place to visit as opposed to Starbucks' somewhat snobby, gentrified appeal.  But who am I kidding?  I'm a blue-collar kind of guy anyway...and besides, I know a good deal when I see it.  Also, this seems to one place in town where students haven't taken over, staking out tables for hours with their laptops.  This particular McDonald's is interesting because it is situated at the southernmost I-75 exit in Gainesville and is a frequent stop for travelers.  When I walk out of here, it's less than five minutes to my workplace.  So why do I even bother stopping off at another place before work? 

Just Finished Reading James Patterson's The 6th Target

So far I understand there have been fifteen books published in James Patterson's Women's Murder Club crime series.  I'm reading them in numerical order, having just finished The 6th Target.  This is another Patterson novel in which he shares writing credits with another, the collaborator again being Maxine Paetro.  As is the general pattern in this series, main protagonist Lindsay Boxer, a San Francisco police homicide officer, is embroiled in trying to catch a seriously deranged killer. This time one of her best friends, a fellow member of the informal group called Women's Murder Club, has been shot and seriously wounded.  And there are two other ongoing mysteries as well: abductions of precocious children of wealthy families...along with their nannies, and a series of nasty crimes committed at the apartment complex where Cindy, another "Club" member, resides.  As I read on into the novel, I kept expecting these three distinctly separate story lines to come together at the end, but no...Patterson/Paetro apparently decided to take what could have been three different short stories and combine them into the format of a single novel, adding assorted subplots involving the personal and professional life of Boxer.  I wasn't very surprised, since the same sort of thing happened with the previous book in the series, The 5th Horseman...

These Patterson crime novels are pretty short and simple to read, and I have no problem getting hold of them.  But there is something disturbing about the attitudes of the "good guys", i.e. the police, in these stories.  They tend to be insulting and unnecessarily rough with suspects, something that is easy enough for the reader to support since he or she enjoys the advantage of already knowing their guilt.  But in real life, being picked up and interrogated and/or arrested for a crime is all on the side of our system of justice known as "presumed innocent".  However, the cops in Lindsay Boxer's SF Police Department seem to go on the presumption "guilty until proven innocent".  I've seen this kind of attitude in numerous movies...Clint Eastwood's Harry Callahan series is a prime example...and several television police series.  Maybe the notion promoted in many of these shows that the police should be the arbiters of justice instead of the courts is why I have a sense of aversion to them.  It certainly doesn't help me to get through this Women's Murder Club series...

Happy 30th Anniversary, My Sweet Melissa

Wow, today I've been married thirty years.  It could only have happened with such a wonderful, precious woman like my sweet Melissa...I love you so much, honey!  I'm eagerly looking forward to the next thirty!

Fun and Interesting Labor Day Weekend for Me and Family

This won't be a long entry...I have to get on to work soon.  I had a wonderful, interesting Labor Day weekend with my wife and family.  Melissa, Will, Rebecca, and I attended the University of Florida's season opening football game, experiencing the crush of the crowd as well as the heightening anxiety as to whether or not the Gators were actually going to be able to beat their small college opponent.  It was a rainy night and we got to know the UF campus...at least part of it...quite well on our walks to and from the parking garage...

Then from Sunday afternoon through this morning, Melissa and I went to stay at a hotel we like on Daytona Beach.  That was a fantastic, memorable outing...too bad I have to go back to work now....

The Beach, The Who, and Politically Correct Self-Censorship

Right now I'm sitting here on my fifth-floor hotel balcony in Daytona Beach, looking out on the high tide coming in on the beach and the very windy conditions, thinking that, although this is the time of day that I typically do my outdoor run, I think I might just wait until I have a little more beach to run on.  On the other hand, it's already rained a bit this morning and the outlook for the afternoon just increases the probability of storms.  Oh well, maybe I'll just end up using the treadmill in the exercise room... 

When I'm at the beach like this, listening to the waves and sea gulls, sometimes I think of the great British rock band The Who.  Why? The answer lies on their masterpiece album Quadrophenia, which I bought in 1997 but was originally released in 1973, and contains a number of tracks that vividly put the listener on the beach.  One is Sea and Sand, which I moderately liked...I liked just about everything on this great album...and another is Bell Boy,  which I consider to be one of The Who's all-time greatest songs.  Bell Boy has two lead singers on it, Roger Daltrey and Keith Moon.  I wasn't aware of Moon's vocal contribution until recently, having thought all these years that Daltrey was just altering his voice in a comical way.  But on MTV/Live (Cox Channel 1098 in Gainesville) there was a documentary show about the making of Quadrophenia that spotlighted Moon's special role in the song.  And it was this very show that disturbed me concerning possible self-censorship for the sake of political correctness...

The documentary, titled The Who: Quadrophenia--Can You See the Real Me? went in chronological order to how the different tracks were finally arranged on the album.  It was toward the end, and they had just discussed the recording of Bell Boy and I was anticipating them reviewing how they made the beautiful...and sinister...next track, Doctor Jimmy, which in my opinion was the crowning achievement of Quadrophenia.  But they didn't discuss Doctor Jimmy...no, they just skipped right over it to the final song, Love, Reign O'er Me.  Although that last track was full of sexual overtones, Doctor Jimmy may have been considered too politically dangerous to discuss, with the themes of jealousy, violent revenge, and sexual conquest and aggression dominating its lyrics.  But it was not promoting any of these negative and undesirable feelings and behaviors: it was revealing something about the inner darkness of one of the story's characters (Quadrophenia is structured around a story, much as The Who's Tommy was three years earlier).  Surely they could have said something to this effect and still talked about the song on the show.  And who knows, maybe Pete Townshend, who nearly single-handedly created, wrote, and produced Quadrophenia, just didn't think it was significant enough to cover in the documentary.  But Doctor Jimmy was a big staple on album rock radio and any show about Quadrophenia that omits it has to be questionable, for whatever motives...

Hermine's Aftermath Brings Dreary Weather

In the aftermath of Hurricane Hermine, which only dealt the Gainesville area a glancing blow with minimal damage...although tragically a homeless man in the county to our south was killed when a tree fell on him and the Gulf coast town of Cedar Key suffered devastating storm surge damage...the rest of the Atlantic Seaboard is now in a state of alert with the storm predicted to stick to a meandering, aimless path for the next few days, causing intermittent bad weather, high winds, and severe rip current along their beaches.  Right now I'm sitting at my usual spot at Magnolia Parke Starbucks, having managed to procure the end seat at the window counter after trying sitting outdoors...that is until little raindrops started to fall on my laptop.  The skies have been pretty much uniformly overcast and dreary today with periods of rain.  I like the dreariness...at least in the daytime, but can do without the rain that often accompanies it.  It's best later on in the year when dry cold fronts sweep through us from the northwest, bringing the welcome cloud cover as well as pleasant coolness.  But now I'm happy just to have the clouds...but please, enough rain, already...

The other day a friend of ours gave Melissa four tickets to the University of Florida opening day football game tonight against the University of Massachusetts in whatever they're now calling the Gators' home stadium (they change its name every few years)...so the whole family will be venturing out there this evening.  Aside from finding a parking spot, I'm a little concerned about the weather and how much, if any, it will be raining...especially while we're making our way to and from the stadium (I've been told that our tickets are for seats with an overhang...we'll see).  Maybe a few ponchos will alleviate those concerns...

Although I like the clouds during the day, I feel the opposite about it all after the sun sets.  I love clear nighttime skies, full of stars, planets, and occasionally, the moon.  I have some autumn projects planned with my star-gazing, in particular concerning the fainter and more obscure constellations like Pisces, Lacerta, Grus, Aquarius, Capricornus, Camelopardalis, Sculptor, Phoenix, and Indus...well, Indus may be too far south for my Gainesville latitude.  I just wish I had an available location more out in the unlit country where I could go to see the stars in their full glory...

Just Finished Reading Ruth Rendell's Portobello

Ruth Rendell was a renown British mystery novelist, best known for her long-running Inspector Wexford series.  However, this writer, who sadly died just last year, is not as well-known here in America as she is in her home country.  I hadn't heard of her until just recently and decided to read a standalone novel of hers to get acquainted with her works.  The book was Portobello, published in 2008...

Portobello is a road in London, and various people of different socioeconomic groups live in its vicinity.  Although not so clear at the story's beginning, Portobello develops more as a character study of people as their vastly disparate lives touch upon each other and they deal with their own individual crises.  There is the middle-class bourgeois gallery shop owner Eugene, his girl-friend/fiancée Ella, a pathetic young man named Joel who suffers a heart attack and then claims to have someone from the other side in his mind, Lance, a ne'er-do-well, slow, socially naïve young man, and his reformed criminal-turned-religious fanatic uncle Gib.  While Ella, the most reasonable and "normal" of the characters, serves to connect the others together within the narrative, it is Eugene, Joel, and Lance on whom the novel focuses...

Lance, chronically unemployed and perpetually on the government dole, engages in petty burglaries to supplement his meager income.  At his core, though, he is very immature and even childlike: during one of his break-ins, he is completely distracted by a tasty cake made by the tenant, to the point where he eats most of it right there, strewing crumbs all over the floor and taking the rest of it with him when he leaves.  Joel is a tragic figure of sorts: his very wealthy father completely supports him financially but refuses to talk to him, years after Joel's sister died in an accident for which his father holds him responsible by neglect.  Now his health is poor and he retreats into darkness...with his "companion" increasingly taking hold of his mind.  And Eugene?  This is where Ruth Rendell makes a great contrast.  Eugene has no outstanding difficulties...at least as far as anyone else might be able to discern.  But he is a secretive man, and he has an increasingly obsessive habit of eating sugar-free candies called "Choc-orange".  Surreptitiously procuring and then hiding bags of this stuff from Ella eventually consumes his thoughts...the contrast between Eugene's ridiculous and trivial obsession and the ordeals facing Joel and Lance points to a message I think that Rendell was trying to make to the reader: what really is going on in our lives and our subjective judgments about what is going on are two entirely different matters.  And that, whether or not things are going smoothly in an objective sense, it is our own biased appraisals that will ultimately prevail as to whether we're O.K. or not. But then again, maybe that's not what she was trying to say at all.  I guess it's too late now to ask her...

Portobello is a good story that weaves together the lives of different folks who live under very different circumstances, but close to one another.  The ending is great, and if you like extensive character development in your fiction, you can't beat it.  I'm definitely not through with Ruth Rendell's books...maybe I'll start next on that Inspector Wexford series...

Hermine About to Strike North Florida Gulf Coast

I wrote about what is now called Tropical Storm Hermine last week in an article (here is a link to it [link]).  Back then it was a low pressure disturbance termed "Invest 99-7L".  At that time the meteorologists were giving it as much as an 80% chance of development as it made its way through the Bahamas, posing a threat to South Florida.  Those predictions never materialized, and Invest 99-7L drifted on through the Florida Straits into the Gulf of Mexico, causing little more than some stormy weather in the Florida Keys.  But the area slowly began to develop and eventually was given "Tropical Depression 9" status.  It wasn't until yesterday, though, that its maximum sustained winds reached the point where it was named Tropical Storm Hermine.  And since then it has been rapidly organizing, strengthening, and enlarging, while my worst-case scenario from that earlier article of a tropical system switching directions in the Gulf and hitting Florida around Cedar Key has come true...

To be sure, the projected path of Hermine has shifted a bit to the north, with its center set to hit the Florida Gulf coast south of Tallahassee.  Still, this storm is assymetrical, with its worst weather...including strong thunderstorms, winds as high as 60 mph, heavy rains, and tornado threats...lying to its center's east.  And guess what?  That's exactly where we in Gainesville are!

By noon, Hermine had already strengthened to a powerful tropical storm with maximum sustained winds of 70 mph.  It is expected to be upgraded to Category 1 hurricane status by the time it makes landfall later today.  Since I don't live by the Gulf, I don't have to be concerned with storm surge, which by all accounts is going to be very dangerous...and is already making its effects felt there.  But the strong winds, heavy rain, and chance of tornados are going to be matters that we in the Gainesville area will have to deal with during the next 24 hours, in spite of apparently having "dodged the bullet" of a direct hurricane hit...

My August 2016 Running Report

Running for me in the month of August was more or less a matter of daily routine, with me running mainly around the noontime hour.  I ran a lot more outside in the summer heat, although not to excess...I believe that it helped me with my training.  I amassed a total of 113 miles for the month, running for all but three of the days.  My longest single run was for 4.5 miles.  The problem I had been experiencing with my right foot seemed to diminish, a good sign...

There were no local races in August, but next month I see a couple of 5K races being offered here in Alachua County.  I plan to continue to train my distances upward as I want to get in at least one half-marathon race before 2016 is through...

Voted This Morning at the Senior Rec Center

This morning I slept in a little longer than usual...maybe it's just that I was more tired than usual, or maybe I'm just getting a little older and the ol' body just doesn't jump to my commands as before.  But I remembered that I had some things to do, including going down to my assigned precinct, which is the Senior Recreation Center on NW 34th Boulevard, to vote in today's statewide primary election.  So I dragged myself out of bed and over there.  I voted on the issues and races presented me...which wasn't a lot...slid my ballot into the slot, and walked out of the polling room and down the hallway to the exit, once again not having to wait even one second in line to get my ballot.  While walking, I noticed many elderly people in different rooms enjoying different activities: there was a yoga class, a woman appeared to be telling a story to a ring of enthralled listeners, some folks were on the Internet in the computer room, a couple was sitting in comfy chairs reading, and a man was playing pool. When I was about to walk out of the building, I looked over at the Senior Recreation Center's welcome counter and spied a calendar of events and a brochure of programs they offered.  Snatching them up, I made my way to my car, drove the three minutes back home, and quickly put on some coffee to brew...

This was the last election that I will just be walking through the Senior Recreation Center to vote.  No, I'm not turning cynical on democracy and elections: I'll be turning 60 in early October and, when the general election comes around on November 8, I'll be a registered member of this fun group, finally having met the age requirements.  The Senior Recreation Center is free to participate in: you just have to be 60.  It runs on a nine-to-five, Monday through Friday basis...which means that with my present work schedule, I can only participate in morning and early afternoon activities.  They have chess, bridge, tai chi, yoga, and a monthly book club, as well as a slew of activities that hold little interest for me.  But you don't have to go there for a meeting or scheduled program: you can just sit there and read...or use their computers...or play pool...or who knows what else.  They even have a seniors sports competition, the winners of which get to compete statewide.  When I think of this place, I think of my late parents: my father probably wouldn't like being here, but I think my mother would have loved it.  Whether I end up using the Senior Recreation Center much or not, I'd glad it's here, providing a welcome environment for our senior community...

Viacom Forces MTV Awards Show on Its Many Channels

I don't suppose that, in the grand scheme of things, it really matters all that much to me as a TV viewer...but it does give me some pause when a major media corporation decides to flex its muscles and demonstrate the control it has over my television dial.  Last night I happened to be toggling my remote back and forth between MLS soccer and the NFL preseason game between the Jaguars and Bengals.  I checked out the lineup for the different channels and noted that MTV was holding its annual Video Music Awards program.  Good for them, I said to myself...I had long given up on MTV after it had abandoned showing music videos in favor of those horrible "reality" TV shows that continue to this day.  But hey, they're still giving out awards for music videos...they must be showing them on another channel.  But back to what I was saying...

I was perusing the schedule and began to notice that not just MTV was showing the VMAs...so was VH1, VH1 Classics, CMT, and BET.  Okay, I said to myself, these channels tend to be music-oriented and the company running MTV probably also runs them as well.  But still, I wondered: why prevent these other stations from offering viewers a choice in their programming when MTV is almost universally available anyway?  But then it got worse...

It wasn't just the aforementioned channels showing the MTV Video Music Awards...it was also Spike, Comedy Central, and...of all channels...TVLand!  People go to watch TVLand for the expressed purpose of avoiding crap like MTV!  But I'm not finished...there used to be a channel called Palladia that featured live musical performances.  Last year it was changed to MTV-Live, but the programming seemed to remain unchanged.  I checked that channel: it wasn't showing the VMA show...it wasn't showing anything! Not until the MTV awards show was over did it go back to its regular programming.  So what gives here?

Viacom Media Groups is the umbrella commercial organization controlling MTV, VH1, BET, Spike, Comedy Central, CMT, and TVLand.  They essentially pulled a power play on the American viewer last night, dictating that we could watch their lousy awards program (and it is very, very lousy) or else.  Well, I chose "else".  But today I read that this overhyped ceremony, dominated by clique-insider acts who always seem to win the awards despite their substandard music, never once paid tribute to either Prince or David Bowie.  These two artists, both of whom passed away a few months ago this year, were giants in the industry.  Both of them made appearances in the past on the MTV VMAs shows and won awards for their videos.  But they were spurned this year.  I am resisting a strong urge to say something really profane here...

You may think that you have a great diversity of television programming to choose from, but events like last night's should remind all of us of the concentrated power that a small number of corporate entities have to dictate what we actually get to see.  No wonder so many people are choosing to reject cable television programming in favor of alternatives...

Just Finished Reading Harry Potter and the Cursed Child

Normally when I write one of these articles about books I've just finished reading, I'll take care to include the author's name within the title as a matter of extending proper credit.  With Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, which just came out less than a couple of months ago, this would have been a bit too unwieldy.  For although J.K. Rowling, the creator and author of the seven-volume Harry Potter series, is one of those credited with this new book's authorship, so is John Tiffany and Jack Thorne.  And it is ultimately Jack Thorne who is given full credit for having written this story in rehearsal script form...for that's what the book Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is: the rehearsal script for a play.  Already knowing that and having read some Shakespeare as well as Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman, I decided to go ahead and plunge into it despite its departure in structure from Rowling's original narrative: after all, plays are literature, too...

The setting for Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is again England and Scotland, as it is nineteen years (and beyond) after the climactic end to the original series, at the close of the seventh book Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.  At that book's very end, a glimpse is given of Potter's "future" life and his family as he sends his worried son Albus off to Hogwarts Academy for the very first time.  The new story picks up where that railway station scene leaves off.  Albus, whose life is constantly submerged under the greatness accorded his father while being unfairly compared to him, finds himself sinking into despair and cynicism at Hogwarts...with his only friend in the world coming from the unlikeliest of families.  And that is where I will leave you, the reader, to go find out for yourself "the rest of the story", as radio icon Paul Harvey used to say on his show...

Without wanting to spoil the story for anyone, I will say, however, that much...in my opinion, far too much...of the narrative in The Cursed Child is derivative, not original, in nature, drawing heavily upon previous Harry Potter stories.  And there is a certain literary device commonly used in science fiction stories...as well as in the third Harry Potter book...that is grossly overused here.  Once you get a little ways into the story, you'll know what I'm talking about.  However, having gone into reading Harry Potter and the Cursed Child with subdued expectations, I've come out of the experience recommending it to others, albeit without the accolades I might have extended to a work entirely of Rowling's.  As a matter of fact, the story is so derivative of her earlier works that I wonder how much writing, if any, "J.K." herself actually contributed to this tale that, at least partially, bears her name in the credits...

2016 UF Football Season Begins Next Saturday

Next Saturday evening, September 3rd, will be the opening of the University of Florida's 2016 football season as they play at home against the smaller college University of Massachusetts.  Although the Gators are predicted to easily win this game, the Gator Nation is very interested in seeing just what kind of team second year head coach Jim McElwain will be putting on the field.  After all, many of us are still scratching our heads trying to figure out what happened to Florida in 2015...

When Coach McElwain took over the team last year, hopes were high for the Gators, but most fans did not anticipate them shooting straight to the top and were willing to give them time to develop under the new leadership.  But Florida was impressive, winning ten out of its first eleven games and at one point rising to number eight in the national rankings.  Then in November, even though they continued to win against weaker opponents, Florida's offense began to sputter severely.  By the time they played Florida State in the regular season closer, it had pretty much conked out.  Was this really the same team that rallied late in the game to upset touted Tennessee 28-27, scored 28 points against LSU in a close loss, and annihilated Mississippi and Georgia 38-10 and 27-3 in their respective contests?  When November came around, Florida only managed to barely squeak by Vanderbilt 9-7, won against fading South Carolina in a lackluster game 24-14, and then had to go to overtime to defeat Florida Atlantic 20-14.  Yes, hooray, the Gators won the Southeastern Conference East Division for the first time in several years...but they decisively lost their last three games of the year: to FSU 27-2, to Alabama in the SEC championship game 29-15 (it wasn't as close as the score might indicate), and then a thorough clobbering at the hands of Michigan in their bowl game, 41-7...

I'm no expert on football, but it was clear that once their promising quarterback Will Grier was suspended for the season because he tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs, then it was going to be difficult for them to keep their offensive production at the level they were enjoying. Still, had Florida sported a stronger offensive line, they would have done much better.  And now, we've had the off-season with all the recruiting and training: what will be the results of those efforts? Grier has transferred to West Virginia and at least for now, McElwain has given redshirt sophomore Luke Del Rio the starting quarterback job.  I for one can't wait to see the new 2016 team, especially regarding the new offense.  But I doubt that we'll really be able to tell for sure how good they are until Florida faces a more challenging opponent.  For now, though, UMass will just have to do...