Quote of the Week...from George S. Patton

Don't tell people how to do things, tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results.
                                                               ---George S. Patton

George Smith Patton, Jr. was a famous general during World War II, commanding the Third Army through north Africa and the invasion of Sicily and the Seventh during the invasion of France and Germany.  He has always been known as a tough, demanding leader strong on discipline and personal responsibility...and of acting decisively in a timely manner.  To Patton, too many leaders plan too much when perhaps less perfect preparation and more prompt implementation would have produced better results.  To this end he depended on the resourcefulness of his officers and the soldiers under them to solve problems as the situations arose on the battlefield.  It isn't always possible to be able to pull out a manual that explains in detail how to do things, and those in leadership positions can't always explain their orders step-by-step.  So it is necessary to place some trust in those of subordinate positions to use their own abilities to come up with solutions.  This not only applies to combat situations in war, but also within the workplace and carries an important application to life in general...

With the above quote comes the implied assumption that those told to do things have been already judged to be competent at those tasks...whether a surgeon, repairperson, soldier,  or anyone else with a specialty, they obviously need much detailed training before reaching the point where the General's statement applies.  But sometimes within the managerial structure of an organization, folks forget that their subordinates have already been vested as to their competency and intelligence...and are quite able to come up with methods and solutions without someone up the authority ladder continually hovering over them and dictating each step and how to do it.  The analogy carries further, too, to how we manage ourselves in our personal lives: when faced with a challenge that involves variables and a bit of on-the-spot decision making, it won't do to beforehand sit down and try to plan out every contingency before even beginning.  In other words, much of the time you just have to wing it...

5/21 Sermon on 1 John, Part 6

This past Sunday at The Family Church, Pastor Philip Griffin continued his message series on the New Testament book of 1 John, this sermon titled The Truth About Anger.  The text of focus was Chapter 3, Verses 11-16...shown here in the New International Version, courtesy of Bible Gateway:

¹¹ For this is the message you heard from the beginning: We should love one another. ¹² Do not be like Cain, who belonged to the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own actions were evil and his brother’s were righteous. ¹³ Do not be surprised, my brothers and sisters, if the world hates you. ¹⁴ We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love each other. Anyone who does not love remains in death. ¹⁵ Anyone who hates a brother or sister is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life residing in him.
¹⁶ This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters.

Note that the author made reference to Cain, Adam's son from the book of Genesis.  As Pastor Philip pointed out, Cain was angry about God's rejection of his sacrifice in favor of his brother Abel.  This anger he fostered and built into a hateful rage, culminating in Cain's murder of Abel.  So while initial anger in itself is normal, what leads to sin and hate is the harboring of it...the ultimate target of vented wrath that has been stored up through time is often someone completely unrelated to...or at least innocent of...the initially perceived transgression.  And the violence contained within that rage is not only expressed in our actions, but also in what we say.  But while, as Philip further stated, murder starts in our hearts, we have a hope to overcome the devastation that harbored anger can lead to: Jesus, who bore punishment for our sins so that we can overcome hate and, like him, truly love...

I think you'll enjoy watching Philip's message, in which he gives a striking analogy using the story of a bomb buried in the ground under a Ukrainian woman's bed for 41 years.  You can see it through the church's YouTube video channel...here's the link to this message: [link]. The Family Church is located at 2022 SW 122nd Street and holds its Sunday morning services at 9:30 and 11, with friendly people, good coffee, and lively praise music included...

Weekly Short Story Review: Huddling Place by Clifford Simak

Clifford Simak was one of my favorite science fiction writers.  He was also a favorite of Isaac Asimov, who was a few years his junior and was so impressed by Simak's writing style that he claimed to have emulated it.  One of the first science fiction stories I ever read was when I was a little kid and got hold of one of my father's old sci-fi paperbacks.  Within it was a short story by Simak titled The Big Front Yard and I never forgot it.  Since then I've read a few more from this fantastic author...Huddling Place, which is one of the stories from Isaac Asimov Presents: The Great SF Stories 6 (1944) (DAW Books), is definitely the one that has had the greatest impact on me...

Huddling Place, a relatively brief short story about the future, is about a middle age physician, renown as an expert in neurology, not just on Earth but also on Mars, where the intelligent species there has a long history.  He has retreated, however, to his home estate where robots wait on him and he can interface with others in a virtual way (this story, from 1944, was way ahead of its time, at least in this regard ).  Consequently, he develops a phobia common to many in his age: he must stay at home and avoid any travel in order to avoid the dreaded open spaces: he has agoraphobia.  But as you might have guessed, the story presents a start challenge to him and his fear...

I'm not a great advocate for "traveling gone wild", i.e. having a compulsion to be in a near-constant state of travel and to continually develop excuses for jetting around the country (and world) as a couple of folks I know do.  On the other hand, it isn't healthy, either, to be permanently entrenched in one's own home, avoiding opportunities for growth that involve stepping out and evenly possibly getting on a plane.  I tend to be more like that person who stays at home...fortunately I am blessed with Melissa, who is much more balanced about this and helps me to resist this tendency.  Also, I regularly and deliberately...against my inclinations...go out in public just to put myself into my discomfort zone...sitting at a Starbucks may seem like paradise to some, but it bothers me being there...and helps me focus my thinking on my projects. And, of course, having a job to go to that involves me getting out of my house is a big help.  So I can see how the scenario of Clifford Simak's excellent Huddling Place can come true...especially as the Internet keeps growing and virtual reality and robotics are developed... 

I think it's about time I started looking for a collection of Clifford Simak's best fiction.  Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find Huddling Place on the Internet as I had with the short stories I discussed the previous two weeks...

Tuesday's List: I Rank the Moody Blues Studio Albums

If you've heard the songs Go Now!, Nights in White Satin, Tuesday Afternoon, Question, Just a Singer in a Rock and Roll Band, The Voice, or Your Wildest Dreams, then you're already aware of the Moody Blues, a British rock band from the sixties that has endured to this day...although it's going on eighteen years since their last non-Christmas studio album.  When they started out, Denny Laine...later in Paul McCartney's group Wings...was the lead singer and they focused on covering others' rhythm and blues songs.  But the band stagnated in popularity when their first album went nowhere on the charts in 1965, Laine and some others left, and Justin Hayward and John Lodge joined and changed to a more orchestral/electronic/progressive orientation. From 1967 through 1972 they produced seven albums of this type...subsequent works tended to have a much more pop music flavor to them.  If you look at this list of mine, you'll clearly see where my preferences are!  My favorite composer/singer in the group has always been Ray Thomas, who was in the original lineup and retired in 2003...he's responsible for my all-time favorite song of theirs, For My Lady, off Seventh Sojourn. And now, without further ado, my list of favorite-to-worst Moody Blues albums (in capitals), with my three favorite tracks from each one listed under the title:

1 IN SEARCH OF THE LOST CHORD (1968)
     Legend of a Mind
     Departure/Ride My Seesaw
     Voices in the Sky
2 ON THE THRESHOLD OF A DREAM (1969)
     Lazy Day
     Are You Sitting Comfortably
     Never Comes the Day
3 TO OUR CHILDREN'S CHILDREN'S CHILDREN (1969)
     Eyes of a Child/Floating
     Out and In
     Candle of Life
4 SEVENTH SOJOURN (1972)
     For My Lady
     Isn't Life Strange
     Just a Singer in a Rock and Roll Band
5 DAYS OF FUTURE PASSED (1967)
     Nights in White Satin
     Peak Hour
     Tuesday Afternoon
6 A QUESTION OF BALANCE (1970)
     Question
     Minstrel Song
     And the Tide Rushes In
7 EVERY GOOD BOY DESERVES FAVOUR (1971)
     Nice to Be Here
     After You Came
     The Story in Your Eyes
8 THE PRESENT (1983)     
     Meet Me Halfway
     Sitting At the Wheel
     Running Water
 9 OCTAVE (1978)
     One Step Into the Light
     The Day We Meet Again
     Steppin' in a Slide Zone    
10 LOST DISTANCE VOYAGER (1981)
     Gemini Dream
     The Voice
     Talking Out of Turn
11 KEYS OF THE KINGDOM (1991)
     Celtic Sonant
     Lean on Me Tonight
     Say It With Love   
12 THE OTHER SIDE OF LIFE (1986)
     Your Wildest Dreams
     Talking Talking
     The Other Side of Life
13 STRANGE TIMES (1999)
     The Swallow
     My Little Lovely
     English Sunset
14 THE MAGNIFICENT MOODIES (1965)     
     Go Now!
     True Story
     I'll Go Crazy
15 SUR LA MER (1988)
     I Know You're Out There Somewhere
     Miracle
     River of Endless Love

Just Finished Reading Elizabeth Berg's Tapestry of Fortunes

Elizabeth Berg is an established author of several novels...Tapestry of Fortunes is one of her latest, from 2013.  She tends to write stories about women and their relationships, not exactly the genre of literature I'm accustomed to reading.  But hey, I'm also stepping out of my habitual patterns by reading a historical romance novel right now, so why not try out this book, which incidentally cost me nary a penny since I checked it out from my local public library.  It turned out to be a different kind of fiction than I'm used to...

In order to fully grasp with a sense of sympathy, if not with a fully empathetic understanding (since I'm not a woman), it seemed necessary for me to read Tapestry of Fortunes with the mindset that women think and value things differently from men...especially in how they see their own lives more in terms of their relationships with others.  Now this might seem to be an overgeneralized assumption on my part, and I firmly believe that individual people should not be put into a box based on gender.  But this story's presentation is nevertheless all about how some women view life from their own perspectives...

The main protagonist, as well as the first-person narrator, is a middle-age woman named Cecelia who had lost her best friend Penny to ovarian cancer just a few months earlier.  Cece, as she is nicknamed, makes a living giving motivational speeches and writing self-help books.  She decides one day to step out and follow Penny's advice to make a difference in others' lives, first moving into a house with three other women, each with very distinct personalities and outlooks, and then doing volunteer work.  Cece has one man from her past, Dennis, with whom she wants to reestablish contact...and the other three women each come up with something that they want to rectify in their respective personal lives.  To this end the four go on a long road trip of self-discovery, from their home state of Minnesota eastward toward Ohio.  And I'm afraid I probably went a little too far in telling the story, although the details and outcomes of everything I've still left as a mystery to you, the potential reader of this tale...

It's tough as a reader if you undertake a novel like this and cannot hit it off with the main protagonist.  But I never could get into Cece's personality and came away with the impression that her value system was pretty shallow.  And it irritated me to no end that she was totally into the New Age movement, continually pulling out her deck of Tarot cards in order to direct her in what to do...and to give her friends similar advice.  O.K., I said it: call me close-minded, but although I love New Age music and like some limited aspects of that belief system...such as the value of quiet meditation, respect for the environment and diverse peoples, healthy eating, and the rejection of material accumulation for its own sake, I'm not at all into other more dubious features (at least as I see them) such as Tarot, crystals, channeling, psychic readings, or past lives...frankly, I thought the paranormal side to it had all peaked in popularity back in the 1990s.  So Cece's addiction to the Tarot got in the way of my enjoyment of this book...I wonder whether the author is herself a New Age aficionado and if this theme is in her other books...

All that aside, I'm glad I read Tapestry of Fortunes.  One big reason is that it portrayed characters who were passing through middle age, reexamining their own lives and whether they should change their priorities.  Now that is something I can latch onto...

Ran Yesterday's 5K May Day Glow Run in Tioga

This is the second straight year that I've run in the 5K (3.1-mile) May Day Glow Run, held in the small town of Tioga a few miles west of Gainesville.  It's called "glow" run because it takes place during the transition from twilight to early evening darkness...the event's volunteers pass out colorful glowsticks that can be worn twisted into loops like one pictured above.  Most 5K races take place Saturday mornings just after sunrise...an inauspicious time for me considering that I get off from work at midnight Friday night and couldn't think just then of many things I'd rather do less than get up so early the next morning to run a race.  But afternoon and evening races? No problem, even with the heat...that's good since Saturday afternoon's high here reached 95 degrees. By race time at 8:15, though, it had dropped to 85 with a 53% humidity...still, it seemed a lot muggier than that...

For me to even have considered running this race was a longshot after the troubles I have been suffering with my arm pain and nervous system woes since late April.  However, I was able to eventually return to light running after a brief layoff and thought that I would try this race out as a very slow training run...and see how my body responded afterwards.  As it turned out, I'm glad I didn't set out to run a fast time since I didn't register until less than an hour before the race and they had already issued all of their timing chips...meaning that I could get my tee-shirt and run with the others, but my time wouldn't "count".  No problem, I ran the entire time of the race...which is a lot more than I could say for too many of the other participants who seemed thoroughly pooped through much of it...and finished with a time of approximately 33 minutes, easily my slowest ever 5K race time.  But I feel good and my coughing woes from the past never surfaced...

This May Day Glow Run is a fundraiser for Newberry Community Christian school.  Everyone volunteering in it was very friendly and helpful, and their positive attitude definitely rubbed off on those running in it...it certainly did for me.  I'd like to make a tradition of running this special springtime evening race each year, as long as they keep holding it and my health holds up, too.  But maybe next year I'll sign up in advance to make sure my final time is recorded and posted...

Foundational Documents, Their Interpretation, and the Living-Out, Part 1

Back in the late 1980s when I began to work for the post office, whose employees work under separate collective bargaining agreements between management and four different unions, my own union gave each member a copy of the then-current collective bargaining agreement...a compact, easy-to-tote paperback volume.  As I was reading through it one day I noticed what seemed to me to be a rule that was being flagrantly violated as it pertained to certain individuals being eligible to bid by seniority on posted job assignments.  I brought this up to my reluctant union steward, who dissuaded me from pressing the issue and introduced me to the concept of "letters of understanding".  In many sections of the agreement, whenever a dispute occurs over a passage's meaning and application, a process has to be taken whereby the passage is more precisely interpreted and delineated as to how it applies in the real world of management-employee relations.  So going around waving the collective bargaining agreement in people's faces...as if one thoroughly understood the process...is pointless.  Because the collective body of precedent and refinement contained within the massive amount of those letters of understanding...along with laws and regulations that can supersede elements of the agreement...make it all much more cumbersome to deal with: that little paperback book turned out to be only the starting place...

I bring up my old collective bargaining agreement as just one example of a foundational document that, while important as creating a structure of rules and/or knowledge in a particular area, is also in itself incomplete...needing much interpretation as those trying to implement it live it out in the real world.  Our society is full of these documents...our Constitution is a prime example, as are the scriptures on which different faiths are based.  And to be perfectly frank, although these often tend to be treated as original in nature, in fact they have their own precedents from which they were derived.  So a televangelist may casually wave the Bible around onstage or a Senator may thrust out his pocket-sized copy of the Constitution during a floor speech...as if that's the be-all and end-all to everything...but there's a lot more to these works, what they represent, and where they came from... 

I'm not sure whether I'll make this discussion of foundational documents a weekly topic or whether I'll just write about it from time to time...in any event, there's more to come...

Quote of the Week...from Louis Pasteur

Let me tell you the secret that has led me to my goal. My strength lies solely in my tenacity.
                                                                              ---Louis Pasteur.

France's Louis Pasteur was one of the giants of the nineteenth-century explosion of scientific discovery in the field of microbiology, developing the science of vaccination and the process of Pasteurization among many other achievements.  But you don't need to be someone of Pasteur's fame and respect to recognize the great truth behind the above quote of his: tenacity...or perseverance or endurance, if you will...is a very crucial factor for succeeding in any sort of goal-directed endeavor.  But in order to fully appreciate what I believe Pasteur meant by tenacity, I think it's important to stress that it involves not just sticking with an endeavor through time and against adversities, but also to continually pursue that endeavor in a concentrated, focused way that others may regard as being a bit on the fanatical side.  And here is where I have a problem: social resistance to one's development of excellence...

One can be wholeheartedly committed to an endeavor and have everything in place to employ that tenacity of consistent, concentrated effort that Louis Pasteur referred to, but if the surrounding people are continually calling them to task for that very arduousness that is so necessary for success...using arguments that they've changed for the worse, aren't paying enough attention to this thing or that, need to spend more time doing other things, or that their life needs more balance...then eventually they're going to give up just through sheer frustration.  I think there's a good rationale behind the idea of young people, after having built up their social relationships throughout their childhood and adolescence in their home towns, then going away to a fresh environment at a more distant college to pursue their degrees...of course, they'll still have their everyday distractions there as well as having to contend with folks who object to their serious task-orientation, but at least they won't have their entire being called into question for devoting the prolonged, focused attention they need to employ in order to achieve their academic goals.  For myself, my problem isn't with the people in my life, who have been supportive, but rather with an inner sense of inertia that keeps me from boldly striking out in new directions...

5/14 Sermon on 1 John, Part 5

This past Sunday at The Family Church in far western Gainesville...2022 SW 122nd Street...senior pastor Philip Griffin continued his thoughtful series focusing on the book of 1 John, found near the end of the Bible in the New Testament.  The passage on this day was Chapter 2, Verse 29 through Chapter 3, Verse 10...here is a link to it via Bible Gateway so that you can read it, too: [link].  The title of the message, Born of God, refers directly to that opening verse...

In laying out the framework for this message, Pastor Philip stressed that faith comes first...then good works...not the opposite.  Then what are the effects and expectations when I become born of God through faith?  Well, there are four: I am in his family, have a glorious future, will be pursuing holiness, and am empowered to live a holy life.  As for family, Philip gave the analogy of someone, when adopted into a new family, having his or her name changed to conform to that of their new father...in this case it's the heavenly father.  With the future, having the confidence that we belong to Jesus, who will appear and with whom we will live forever...plus knowing him as he really is, is in stark contrast to what our pastor said about others: "People who don't know what they ultimately will be don't know how to live now".  With holiness, the message went a little down the road of theological details...as far as I see it, at least...by explaining that Jesus purifies us through justification and we ourselves through sanctification: dual purification.  Finally, as the discussion went to living a holy life, Pastor Philip contrasted the tendencies of many to either live with truth and no love (legalism, judgmentalism) or love and no truth (permissivism, no consequences).  He gave as an example of the Gospel of John story of the woman condemned for adultery.  Jesus showed both love and truth when he rescued her from stoning while at the same time telling her to go and sin no more...

I think the point of all this goes back to the beginning of the message: first comes faith and then flow the good works.  But the author of 1 John was speaking to fellow Christians when he was in effect exhorting them to good works and not to sin.  And many people who are not Christians live virtuous lives full of good works.  But maybe here we're assigning our own designations to exactly who is in God's family and who isn't.  After all, there is the truth and then there is "our" version of the truth: our heavenly father, who exists in the past, present, and future, knows who is in his family...are we really better informed than him?

The Sunday morning sermons at our fellowship can be viewed on YouTube through the Family Church channel there...here's a link to this day's: [link].  The services are held at 9:30 and 11, with inspiring praise music before each message.  And the church offers family groups along with discipling and leadership training...and there's that precious coffee they offer as well...along with some pretty friendly folks...

Weekly Short Story Review: The Game of Rat and Dragon by Cordwainer Smith

Paul Linebarger was one of those writers who used a pseudonym for his fiction...in his case it was "Cordwainer Smith".  His stories in the realm of science fiction, written in the mid-twentieth century, were all interconnected with his own imagined universe and timeline for future human history...and that imagination conjured up some very interesting and strange scenarios.  A great example is his short story The Game of Rat and Dragon, appearing in the collection Isaac Asimov Presents: The Great SF Stories #17 (1955) (DAW Books, 1988).  In it humanity is in full extraterrestrial exploratory mode, settling the far reaches of space after Earth has become unsustainable.  But once spaceships passed out of our solar system and into deep space, they discovered horrible psychic predatory monsters waiting in the darkness...only disposed of through bombardment with intense light.  A scheme was devised using telepathic partnership between people and cats...with the humans directing the missions and the felines, with their super-quick reflexes, attacking the enemy by setting off the light bombs.  This foe, lurking in the remote darkness, was envisioned by people as dragons and as giant rats by the cats.  So there's your scenario for this provocative tale...and what makes it provocative?

What intrigued me about it all, and might for you as well...especially if you're a cat-lover...is how the author explored the thought patterns of cats...and how they were translated to their human partners through the connecting "pin-sets".  It's really quite a brief story and I can't recall reading any other of this nature...and it's also very, very funny!

And here's some good news...you can read this story right now, through the following site from Project Gutenberg: [link].  Enjoy!

Tuesday's List: My Top 100 Twilight Zones Episodes

The original Twilight Zone, which aired from the fall of 1959 through the spring of 1964 on CBS, is one of my all-time favorite television series.  Rod Serling, the cigarette-smoking-and-gesturing host, also wrote many of the episodes and was instrumental a few years later with the similar Night Gallery.  The Twilight Zone is also fixed in its time: two of my favorite episodes, And When the Sky Was Opened and Where is Everybody?, came out in 1959, after the Soviet and American space programs began but before any human was launched into space: these episodes speculated on the consequences of such ventures.  The Bewitching Pool was the first Twilight Zone episode I ever saw, back in the early 60s when I was little: shown past my bedtime, I sneaked into the hallway and surreptitiously watched it with my parents, who sat around the corner in the living room unaware of my presence.  Well, here's the list of my top 100 episodes out of the 156 made.  And just because an episode appears low on the list doesn't mean I didn't like it: I deliberately cut it off at 100 to exclude those shows I disliked.  Most of the episodes were thirty minutes long; those few from the fourth season that lasted an hour I've marked with an asterisk (*).  Here's a link to the Wikipedia article about this series: [link].  If you'd like to read about a particular episode, you can copy and paste the title from below onto Wikipedia's search engine...all Twilight Zone episodes have individual Wikipedia articles...

1 And When the Sky Was Opened
2 Little Girl Lost
3 Mirror Image
4 The Odyssey of Flight 33
5 The Purple Testament
6 The Mind and the Matter
7 The Hitch-Hiker
8 Death Ship*
9 Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up ?
10 Twenty Two
11 Time Enough at Last
12 The Masks
13 Hocus Pocus and Frisby
14 The Prime Mover
15 A Stop at Willoughby
16 A Piano in the House
17 The After Hours
18 Elegy
19 What You Need
20 Passage on the Lady Anne*
21 A Game of Pool
22 The Last Flight
23 The Trouble with Templeton
24 Miniature*
25 The Quality of Mercy
26 Nightmare at 20,000 Feet
27 Midnight Sun
28 A Hundred Yards Over the Rim
29 The Old Man in the Cave
30 A World of Difference
31 Shadow Play
32 Death's Head Revisited
33 Changing of the Guard
34 Mr. Denton on Doomsday
35 The Mighty Casey
36 Four O'clock
37 Nick of Time
38 The Hunt
39 The Bewitching Pool
40 Where is Everybody?
41 Garrity and the Graves
42 Stopover in a Quiet Town
43 A Kind of Stopwatch
44 A Penny for Your Thoughts
45 The Little People
46 To Serve Man
47 On Thursday We Leave for Home*
48 Mr. Bevis
49 The Fugitive
50 Spur of the Moment
51 A Most Unusual Camera
52 The Invaders
53 The Jeopardy Room
54 A World of His Own
55 Of Late I Think of Cliffordville*
56 The Chaser
57 Kick the Can
58 The Jungle
59 The Thirty-Fathom Grave*
60 Nervous Man in a Four-Dollar Room
61 The Fear
62 Walking Distance
63 Printer's Devil*
64 Long Live Walter Jameson
65 A Thing About Machines
66 The Valley of the Shadow*
67 You Drive
68 Person or Persons Unknown
69 Perchance to Dream
70 An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge
71 The Howling
72 I Sing the Body Electric
73 He's Alive*
74 The Fever
75 Showdown with Rance McGrew
76 The Living Doll
77 The 7th is Made Up of Phantoms
78 Five Characters in Search of an Exit
79 A Nice Place to Visit
80 Once Upon a Time
81 People Are Alike All Over
82 Eye of the Beholder
83 The Whole Truth
84 One More Pallbearer
85 Black Leather Jackets
86 It's a Good Life
87 Third from the Sun
88 The Obsolete Man
89 Nightmare as a Child
90 Nothing in the Dark
91 The Incredible World of Horace Ford*
92 The Lonely
93 Uncle Simon
94 Man in the Bottle
95 Mr. Dingle the Strong
96 Dust
97 Dead Man's Shoes
98 The Rip Van Winkle Caper
99 Escape Clause
100 From Agnes with Love

Some Talk About Trump

So the Federal Bureau of Investigation is conducting a probe into the alleged interference by Russian president dictator Vladimir Putin in the 2016 U.S. presidential election against Hillary Clinton and on behalf of Donald Trump.  And the House of Representatives is also conducting a very similar investigation...as is the Senate...and the Justice Department...along with CIA, NSA, and Treasury Department investigations. On top of all this, the Democrats are calling for an independent special prosecutor to conduct what I tally up to be an eighth investigation of the same thing.  But it was well-reported and readily available to the American public, well before the election, that Paul Manafort, Donald Trump's onetime campaign manager, and retired general Michael Flynn, a strong Trump supporter and campaigner, had strong ties to the Kremlin.  And suspicions that Russia was behind the hacking that led to the WikiLeaks release of sensitive and politically damaging Democratic Party emails were also broadcast and were common public knowledge before the election.  But folks still went to the polls and voted for Trump in spite of this, putting him on top in the crucial swing states of Pennsylvania, Florida, and Michigan...and electing him as our legitimate 45th president.  And now, more than half a year after the election, we're still going on with the allegations and controversy...but where's the proof that Trump's campaign was actively colluding with the Russians?

If you have read this blog over the course of the last election campaign, you already know that I don't care for Donald Trump: I'd still vote for his opponent, be it Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders, were the election held today...I'd even happily choose Ted Cruz, a man of much greater personal integrity than Donald Trump, over him were it just between those two.  But I'm not buying wholesale into all of the conspiracy theories and calls for impeachment that some of my Democratic friends are enthusiastically putting out there.  Donald Trump may not be "their" president as far as they are concerned, but he is mine.  I want him to be successful and strong...and to do what is right and good for the American people.  To the extent that he has gone back on his word during the campaign, I have no problem criticizing him...for example, his rush to support the House Republicans' health care bill that essentially nullified affordable coverage for many of those with preexisting conditions was reprehensible and a violation of his own stated principle in his book The Art of the Deal whereby it's sometimes important to walk away from the negotiating table if the outcome isn't something you want.  Trump criticized Obama as being too eager for the Iran nuclear deal, but he showed that he himself was too eager to get a health care bill...any bill...passed by the House.  There are other things I disagree with our current president on...but I agree with some of what Trump is doing, too...maybe I'll expand on this in a future article.  But now back to this Russian affair...

The notion that one country...or the leadership of that country...would try to affect the outcome of another country's free elections sounds insidious and wrong, right?  Then why didn't I hear cries of protest when President Obama unsuccessfully pushed for Benjamin Netanyahu's defeat in the last Israeli elections...and for British voters to reject leaving the European Union (which they did anyway)?  And although he is no longer president, didn't Obama also very publicly endorse one candidate over the other in the recent French presidential election?  My own concern about the Russians was focused on whether they might have hacked into the vote tabulation process...but that was looked into and dismissed.  Ultimately, it is the American voter who needs to process the information they receive and make rational choices at the polling place.  There are many voters who had good, well-thought-out reasons to support their candidate in 2016, be it Trump or Clinton.  My problem, however, has always been the wishy-washy, irrational last-minute deciders who wait until the very end to make up their minds and allow spurious and emotionally-laden news stories to unduly influence their vote.  Sometimes this goes in favor of the Democrats (like in 2012) and sometimes it works for the Republicans (like in 2016).  And the Russians aside, if you are going to blame someone for Hillary's defeat, I think ex-FBI chief James Comey is much more culpable with his phony October surprise about more emails resurfacing.  That instantly deflated the strong momentum she had built up following her impressive debate performances against Trump and her surge in the polls disappeared.  And no, I don't think it's scandalous or impeachable that the president just fired Comey...this guy was way too much of a political showboat for the position he held...his ignoble exit has been long overdue...

So let the investigations continue, and I surely have no problem with an independent prosecutor looking into Russian attempts to influence the last election.  And if something tangible comes out of any of these many investigations that directly links our president with Russian subterfuge, then I'll take it seriously.  But only if that happens...

Just Finished Reading Gamble by Felix Francis

Felix Francis is the son of the late Dick Francis, a British mystery writer who centered his works around the theme of horseracing in England.  After his father's death, Felix continued writing the short novels while giving the general credit as "Dick Francis's _____".  Hence the full name of the book I just read: Dick Francis's Gamble by Felix Francis.  Not having read any of the senior Francis's books, I'm in no condition to compare father with son.  But this book was a good, worthwhile venture into mystery reading, with an interesting angle, it being all related to horseracing...

Nicholas "Foxy" Foxton, in his early thirties, is still a young man...but has for more than ten years already retired from his first love, as a horserace jockey, due to an accident leaving him with a broken neck and a precarious potential outcome on any subsequent mishaps.  So he switches careers and becomes a financial advisor for Lyall and Black, a small London firm.  Many of his old racing colleagues become clients of his and he maintains, through them, a connection to the racing scene.  One day he is attending the races in a crowded stadium with a fellow financial advisor when his coworker is gunned down dead in front of everyone.  The killer disappears into the crowd and the mystery is on as to who did it and why.  The plot twists and turns this way and that with various angles thrown in, such as a jockey immediately needing a hundred grand in cash or a spurious land development venture going down in Bulgaria.  Foxton eventually finds himself to be a hunted man, both by the police and the unknown criminal mastermind who murdered his cohort...

When writing a novel in this genre, it's necessary to have a likable, sympathetic protagonist, have him or her in a state of peril, gradually solve little mysteries as the story progresses, and then at the end come up with a big surprise.  Gamble fulfills all of these conditions and also gives a glimpse into the often different way of life across the sea in England...reminding me a little of Ruth Rendell, another England-based mystery author.  Although as far as I know, Gamble is a standalone novel, I can easily see Felix Francis expanding it into a longer series, with "Foxy" Foxton solving more mysteries.  But regardless whether Dick Francis was a great writer or not, his son should write any future books solely under his own name...he has that right in his one life to be recognized for his own writing, as much as he may revere his father's legacy...

Enjoying Watching Mexican Pro Soccer Playoffs

The Mexican Liga MX (premier professional soccer league) Liguilla championship playoffs for the Clausura 2017 season are underway, with eight teams playing each other in two-match series.  My favorite UANL Tigres...from the Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León, located in a city in greater Monterrey...are predictably back in the hunt after winning the Apertura Liguilla tournament back in December.  Their manager, Ricardo Ferretti, is a consistent winner, regardless who is playing for him...he reminds me a lot of football's Bill Belichick and basketball's Gregg Popovich...and he's been managing Tigres for seven years now, a long term for professional league soccer.  Tigres won their opening match against crosstown rival Monterrey 4-1 and are now playing the second leg, leading at halftime 1-0.  The goals for the two contests afterwards are added together and the team with the highest total advances to the next round...

Tigres spent most of the 2017 Clausura regular season low in the standings and only qualified for the playoffs through a late-season surge...which seems so far to be continuing into the playoffs.  Tijuana, which finished the regular season in first place, also had the aggregate best record for the combined 2016-17 Apertura/Clausura seasons: were this a European league like the English Premier League, Spain's La Liga, or Germany's Bundesliga, Tijuana would have won the title outright since these leagues don't stage postseason playoffs and give the trophy to the high regular season finisher.  On a different note, the Monarchs (Monarcos) de Morelia were slated to finish to be relegated to the lower Ascenso league, but a last-second goal on the last day of the season kept them in the top league...and also qualified them for the Liguilla.  And they won their first game against Tijuana 1-0...talk about a dramatic change of fortunes!  The other teams in the championship tournament are Atlas vs. Guadalajara and Toluca vs. Santos Laguna...

I don't know whether Tigres will win the championship this time around, but I love to watch their disciplined and defensive play.  Now let's see if they can hold on against Monterrey in the second half.  Univision is showing the game I'm watching...if you also have the UnivisionDeportes channel (which I don't), you'll be able to see Toluca/Santos Laguna later on tonight...

Quote of the Week...from Thom Yorke

Being in a band turns you into a child and keeps you there.           ---Thom Yorke.

And exactly who is this Thom Yorke, you might ask...the quote gives a telling hint.  He is the lead singer of the British alternative rock band Radiohead, a group that has been around for decades but which I only began to follow in earnest seven years ago.  You may know them from their early 1990s debut hit Creep, but there is a lot more to Radiohead than that one song...which I incidentally didn't care for all that much.  They're still together and have made nine studio albums...someday I plan to list my favorites from those recordings in much the same way I did for R.E.M.'s discography just this past Tuesday.  And I'll always associate this band with my training in late 2010 and early 2011 for the marathon...just about all of my long runs featured me listening to a shuffled mix of their albums on mp3...

Radiohead is a band whose members delight in musical experimentation and innovation, not at all afraid of failure.  They all clearly have a childlike enthusiasm for their craft and doubtless feed off each other's efforts.  As adults we need to have learned how to live a mature, responsible life...but that does not mean forgetting or demeaning the joys of our childhood.  Nor does it exclude us from returning to that sweet state of exuberance when we allow ourselves to plunge into an exciting field of endeavor.  Music has been that for Thom Yorke, keeping him essentially young at heart.  But with each of us it could be something different...we need to explore and discover what brings out our inner child and cultivate it.  That doesn't mean we're being childish and immature...on the contrary, it makes us more complete and presents us as a positive, attractive light to the rest of the world...

5/7 Sermon on 1 John, Part 4

The sermon last Sunday at The Family Church here in Gainesville was the fourth part of a series about the New Testament book of 1 John...this message was titled Exposing the Counterfeit, based on Chapter 2, Verses 15-28 (you can read it through this link to Bible Gateway: [link]). Pastor Philip Griffin broke the message down to three parts: counterfeit fulfillment, a counterfeit savior, and, finally, counterfeit-free living...

Regarding counterfeit fulfillment, Philip referred to the world’s system of values and how people imbued in it evaluate their lives in terms in pleasure, power, position, and possessions. I might add a couple to these...bragging both about one's associations with the famous and powerful (revealed through name-dropping) and one's experiences and extensive travels, maintaining that having done everything and been everywhere somehow makes one better or more authoritative than others. Then again, these two additions of mine could well go under the “power” umbrella. In any event, all of these worldly values have a common factor: pride, based on comparing oneself...as the pastor noted...to others...

 Then Pastor Philip went on to how to spot a counterfeit savior: the "Jesus" is different...well, that should go without saying.  There is also usually a new revelation, apart from anything in the Bible.  And the moral test fails: by their fruit you shall recognize them...Jesus said to judge leaders by their teachings and fruit. 

 And finally the message went on about how to live counterfeit-free: be grounded in scripture, rely on the holy spirit, and avoid drifting.  Whoa, I have a problem with all this...although it all makes sense, it is too general.  People over the years have always been able to pick and choose passages from scripture that justify their preconceived notions, and relying on one's inner voice as the holy spirit can be deceptive as well...especially if there are those selective scripture passages to lean on.  And don't drift?  I'm not even sure what that's all about.  But if it means running off and starting with a new church (while touting your own high and noble principles) just because someone in the old one hurt your precious little feelings...no, that kind of drifting isn't going to work...

 I wasn't very comfortable with this message, to be perfectly honest.  The first part about counterfeit fulfillment was on target...but the counterfeit savoir and counterfeit-free living sections didn't go far enough...it might have worked better to have broken it up into two or three separate sermons instead.  Still, I appreciate Pastor Philip and the message's main points...

You can watch this message and others through The Family Church YouTube video website.

Weekly Short Story Review: A Subway Named Mobius by A.J. Deutsch

A few years ago I was a very enthusiastic reader of classic science fiction short stories, amassing many collections of "year's best" books.  In one such book, Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 12 (1950) (DAW Books, 1984), there appeared A Subway Named Mobius by A.J. Deutsch, an astronomer not known for his writing...at least in the realm of fiction.  Deutsch, who lived from 1918 to 1969, would later be honored for his astronomical work with a moon crater named after him.  But you can all put your telescopes back into storage...the Deutsch crater is on the far side of the moon...

In the mathematical field of topology, the Möbius strip, represented by a strip of paper twisted back on itself and fastened to form a continuous loop, is often given as a seemingly impossible example of an object with only one surface...continue going along the paper and you will eventually cover both "sides".  With A Subway Named Mobius, Deutsch postulated that a sufficiently complicated system, such as the subway in a large city (in his story it's Boston), can also create an apparent physical paradox with the addition of an element that changes its mathematical structure.  And this indeed happens after a new shuttle run is added to the system and one of the trains is discovered to be missing in transit.  Where did it go, how are its passengers, and what will happen to it? The investigators had better find out quickly, for time is running out...

This story is not your typical science fiction tale, for we're not talking about future dystopian societies, alien encounters, or space exporation here: it is this immediacy, this sense that something so bizarre could occur in our own everyday, humdrum lives that gave it such an appeal to me.  And the ending was nothing short of brilliant, making me wonder why Deutsch didn't feel motivated to write more fiction...who knows, maybe they would have honored him with a crater on "our" side!  I noticed that this story is on the Internet on a couple of sites in PDF format.  I don't know whether his copyright expired, but I have a feeling that A Subway Named Mobius has slipped into public domain...so why not Google it and read it for yourself?

Tuesday's List: Ranking R.E.M.'s Studio Albums

It looks as if I'm about to begin yet another weekly feature on this blog: lists of things...usually of my favorites in some category of the arts...in today's case a list of the American alternative rock group R.E.M.'s studio albums as I rank them according to personal preference.  This includes not only their regular LPs but also their initial EP titled Chronic Town...and excludes Eponymous which is mostly rejected studio outtakes.  R.E.M., for most of their history (they supposedly called it quits in 2011), had four members: lyricist and lead singer Michael Stipe, bassist Mike Mills, lead guitarist Peter Buck, and drummer Bill Berry (who retired due to health issues in 1997).  I first heard an R.E.M. song while watching MTV back in the early 1980s when they actually showed music videos...the haunting, beautiful South Central Rain (I'm Sorry) was my introduction to this talented and important band.  Well, here goes my list, from most favorite to least favorite...each album (in capitals) is followed by the year of its release...and then I list, in order of liking, my three favorite songs on it...

1 OUT OF TIME (1991)
    Half a World Away
    Endgame
    Low
2 AUTOMATIC FOR THE PEOPLE (1992)
    Find the River
    Man on the Moon
    Drive
3 GREEN (1988)
    The Wrong Child
    Pop Song '89
    Turn You Inside Out
4 MONSTER (1994)
    Let Me In
    I Took Your Name
    What's the Frequency Kenneth
5 UP (1998)
    Suspicion
    Walk Unafraid
    At My Most Beautiful
6 CHRONIC TOWN (1982)
    Stumble
    Wolves, Lower
    1,000,000
7 REVEAL (2001)
    Imitation of Life
    The Lifting
    I've Been High
8 MURMUR (1983)
    Pilgrimage
    We Walk
    9-9
9 NEW ADVENTURES IN HI-FI (1996)
    E-Bow the Letter
    Electrolite
    Undertow
10 FABLES OF THE RECONSTRUCTION (1985)
    Maps and Legends
    Can't Get There From Here
    Driver 8
11 COLLAPSE INTO NOW (2011)
    Walk It Back
    Blue
    Every Day is Yours to Win
12 ACCELERATE (2008)
    Man-Sized Wreath
    Supernatural Superserious
    I'm Gonna DJ
13 DOCUMENT (1987)
    Strange
    Finest Worksong
    Welcome to the Occupation
14 LIFE'S RICH PAGEANT (1986)
    Cuyahoga
    What If We Give It Away?
    Fall On Me
15 AROUND THE SUN (2004)
    Electron Blue
    Aftermath
    The Ascent of Man
16 RECKONING (1984)
    South Central Rain (I'm Sorry)
    Harborcoat
    Camera

May Brings On Hot Weather and Malady

Well, it looks as if the brief period of cool (for May) weather we've been enjoying may soon be ending, with the summer heat finally taking over for good here in northern Florida...although at least there seems to be a pleasant breeze blowing about right now.  In other parts, though, the coolness has been lingering: I was watching a live Earthcam of Midtown Manhattan last night and the many folks out there roaming up and down the streets were generally bundled up.  But I'm not planning on going up north anytime soon and I might as well get used to temperatures creeping up during the day into the 90s and never quite cooling down enough at night...

During the last few days I've been experiencing some health issues...it's amazing what a thin, fragile world we live in with our bodies subject to all sorts of breakdowns.  Yet most of us take our good health for granted until we wake up one morning sick or in pain...or both.  When you're sick or injured, health tends to blot everything else out of your mind until you feel that you're on the road to recovery...or at least a reasonable state of equilibrium with your malady.  I've gone through this sort of thing this past week and a half...will my recovery be complete or will there be setbacks to have to deal with?  One thing for certain:  the month of May, 2017 hasn't exactly been one of my favorites up until now...maybe getting outside in the sunshine will do me some good...

Just Finished Reading The Rise of Endymion by Dan Simmons

Having read Robert Jordan's nearly interminable fourteen-volume Wheel of Time fantasy series, twelve volumes of the actually interminable Sword of Truth series by Terry Goodkind (now ongoing with seventeen books already out), and the apocalyptic monstrosity called Left Behind by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins, I've pretty much had my fill of protracted series in literature.  The exceptions are those series, many of them mysteries written by folks like Sue Grafton, Janet Evanovich, Ruth Rendell, and James Patterson, in which each book contains a complete story...making it possible to read them out of order.  The way I see it now, if you can't get your point and the story across in four volumes max (well, maybe five if the books are short), then you just might want to consider breaking it all up and instead write completely separate stories.  And this ridiculous situation with George R.R. Martin's series A Song of Ice and Fire ("Game of Thrones") and his refusal to get on with his writing, coupled with his lack of vision as to how to eventually end it all, is beyond the pale.  So when I came across the Hyperion Cantos science fiction series by Dan Simmons, I was gratified to have in front of me a complete set contained in four volumes.  And I just finished reading the final one, titled The Rise of Endymion...

It is a thousand years into the future and the human race has long settled among the vastness of our galaxy, with the fate of our own mother planet Earth a great mystery.  The strange pilgrimage of the Seven to the remote planet of Hyperion back in the first book is still of paramount importance three hundred years later as Raul Endymion, who grew up there, finds himself on a seemingly impossible quest to escort a hunted young woman through the known populated universe as she changes the course of history...while at the same time fighting an AI (artificial intelligence) presence that has manipulated and threatened humanity for those thousand years. Now if you're thinking that this is all some kind of ripoff of The Matrix, keep in mind that Neo's movie debut happened in 1997, the same year that the Hyperion Cantos series ended...if anything, The Matrix was guilty of ripping off Dan Simmons...

There's no way I can further describe the characters and situation of The Rise of Endymion...at least in specifics...without giving away the series, which I strongly recommend as a great science fiction work.  I will say this much: the Hyperion Cantos series...and especially this final volume...delves pretty deeply into religion and philosophy.  This is not literature that you will want to rush through, although at times the author's detailed descriptions of the nearly impossible-to-fathom technology he has envisioned can be a bit difficult to endure.  But especially as you approach the end of the last book, I think you'll appreciate the extra time and attention you spent trying to understand it all...

So yes, I liked Dan Simmons' Hyperion Cantos a lot and consider it now to be one of my favorite sci-fi book series...but not my all-time favorite, which still happens to be the relatively unknown Otherland series (also four volumes) by Tad Williams.  And of course no list of favorite science fiction series would be complete without Isaac Asimov's Foundation and Arthur C. Clarke's Space Odyssey...