11/12 Sermon: Questions I'd Ask God, Part 2

Senior pastor Philip Griffin at the Family Church here in Gainesville continued his message series titled Questions I'd Ask God with this week's topic/question: How Could A Good God Allow People to Suffer?  In presenting it he focused on the New Testament story of Lazarus's death and resurrection found in John 11:1-44...here's a link to it in the New International Version translation via Bible Gateway: [link]...

Implied within the question "How could a good God allow people to suffer?" is the accusation that God is responsible for that suffering. As Pastor Philip pointed out, scripture however reveals that sin has brought into the world suffering and death. In this fallen world, people suffer yet they can turn to God, who not only uses their trials to accomplish good, but is also deeply moved by them.  Philip continued by noting that, while God is not the cause of people's suffering, he has entered into it and conquered death by sending into the world his son Jesus, who took on the sins of the world so that those who believe in him will be saved.  In the end, God will make all things new...and as written in Revelation 21:4-5, "He will wipe every tear from their eyes".  God is compassionate, but he is also good and just.  He wants all of us to freely choose to follow him and, through this, he will be glorified...

I think that this idea of people suffering because of the sin in the world can be one of the hardest doctrinal points of this faith to understand.  Little children can suffer more than anyone and yet they have little power or knowledge to understand fully the doctrines of sin and salvation.  I personally grasp that God has allowed us the free will to either accept or reject him, and that he did this in love.  But the kind of suffering that doesn't directly arise as a result of one's own behavior...say a devastating cyclone in Bangladesh, a tsunami in Thailand, a hurricane in Puerto Rico, or an earthquake in Mexico...can be hard to figure out in terms of our own sinful natures...

This sermon can be viewed on the Family Church YouTube video website...here's the link to it: [link].  The Family Church is at 2022 SW 122nd Street on the far western edge of Gainesville.  It holds Sunday morning services at 9:30 and 11 with inspiring, lively music, a relevant message, and opportunities for prayer and fellowship.  Wonder what the question will be next week...

Weekly Short Story: The Liberation of Earth by William Tenn

I read The Liberation of Earth several years ago when I bought the science fiction anthology Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 15 (1953), published by DAW Books in 1986.  For some reason 1953 featured several outstanding short stories of this genre...I discussed Time is the Traitor by Alfred Bester in an earlier article.  Today's story is another one by William Tenn, the pen name for Philip Klass...you might have read my article about his 1959 story The Malted Milk Monster...

The narrative in The Liberation of Earth is from the future...nine generations after the described events.  One day an alien ship arrives on Earth and proclaims that they are the Dendi, who preside over the galactic federation and have been observing humanity from a distance...without interference...while we develop to the point when we are admitted as a participating member.  But events have interfered with this as the invading Troxxt have occupied nearby star systems and our solar system is within their sphere of influence.  To counteract them and "liberate" Earth from the Troxxt, the Dendi have arrived to set up their own base here.  Then the Troxxt attack and drive away the Dendi and proclaim themselves as liberators.  This conflict between the two galactic powers goes back and forth...and each time untold numbers of people are killed and the environment progressively ruined.  At the end, well...the story is told as an oral history handed down from generation to generation...the narrator gives a hint of his current situation on Earth by stating. "Looking about us, we can say with pardonable pride that we have been about as thoroughly liberated as it is possible for a race and a planet to be!"

The Liberation of Earth is a very thinly-veiled satire about how the East and West during the Cold War treated the many different countries that they deemed as strategic in their struggle against the other.  It was written at the opening of the Korean War in 1950 and published at its conclusion, three years later.  Each side in that conflict...as well as in Vietnam a few years later...made great public fanfare about "liberating" the country's people...while increasingly making their homeland uninhabitable.  After the Cold War we still have our proxy conflicts...look at the devastation in Syria and Yemen as other countries interfere with them while proclaiming themselves as liberators...

Earth as a proxy war target between two much more advanced alien races may seem a little bit too speculative for anyone to seriously consider as a possibility, but if you happen to live in one of the Third World countries with relatively little military might to defend themselves and you have little to interest you other than taking care of yourself, your family, and immediate community, the relatively sudden presence of super military powers and "wars of liberation" on your land may seem just as far-fetched to you...and just as tragic...

Tuesday's List: Ten Leading Causes of Bankruptcy

I was watching the U.S. Senate floor proceedings on C-Span2 this morning when Senator Dick Durbin (D, IL) spoke about the proposed Republican tax reform bill...specifically its provision eliminating deductions for medical expenses.  Durbin pointed out that many households have large accrued medical expenses and need this deduction to keep themselves afloat...he said there were more than 300,000 in his home state of Illinois alone.  This is nothing minor: as the senator stated, medical expenses account for the number one cause of bankruptcies in this country...and it's not even close.  Well, Durbin's speech made me wonder exactly what are the primary causes for bankruptcy, so afterward I did a search and quickly came across Clear Bankruptcy, which seems to be designed to help people in tough financial straits: good for them, I suppose...there are other sites that have similar lists.  On their webpage they listed the top ten causes of bankruptcy, which I've listed below:

1 MEDICAL EXPENSES (42%)
2 JOB LOSS (22%)
3 UNCONTROLLED SPENDING (15%)
4 DIVORCE (8%)
5 UNEXPECTED DISASTER (7%)
6 AVOIDING FORECLOSURE (1.5%)
7 POOR FINANCIAL PLANNING (1.5%)
8 PREVENTING LOSS OF UTILITIES (1%)
9 STUDENT LOANS (1%)
10 PREVENTING REPOSSESSION (1%)

Now I believe that for many of the bankruptcy cases the causes are probably a mixture of different factors coming together for a "perfect financial storm", but it is inarguable that medical expenses present a very big problem for Americans, regardless how well they plan their finances and handle their money. And it's because of our health care system here that, Obamacare notwithstanding, still regards medical treatment more as a privilege than a right.  It is almost academic that as people age their health will decline and more and more serious medical problems will present themselves.  And with the improvement of the medical community's means to handle those problems with often very expensive treatments comes a drastic increase in the costs, which can devastate people's finances, often just as they are either preparing for retirement or already there.  And now one of our political parties apparently wants to aggravate the problem by eliminating medical tax deductions. If this provision of the tax reform bill becomes law, expect that "42%" figure to get higher (other sources already have it as high as 62%)...

Need to Learn Robert's Rules of Order

I regularly watch the televised proceedings of the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate on C-Span1 and C-Span 2.  Sometimes, though, I get confused and lost as to what exactly they are talking about...tabling, reconsidering, quorum, objections...these and many other aspects of parliamentary-constructed meetings are obviously necessary, since they are used so much.  Yet I don't know all the ins-and-outs on when, how...and, most importantly...why they are used.  My own union local also uses the rules of order, and having started attending its bi-monthly meetings in September, I am similarly taken a little aback at how the proceedings flow there.  Supposedly, Robert's Rules of Order lay out everything one needs to know regarding how to conduct such meetings, and I feel it's about time I learned them.  Of course, sometimes in these assemblies the rules can get to be stretched or overlooked, and it's always good that the participants go into them with a spirit of comity, which is the attitude and expression of mutual courtesy and respect.  Sometimes this can be difficult with some folks by their nature, and also the degree of familiarity they might feel about those with whom they are attending.  I do know from watching the U.S. Senate for some sixteen years that it is possible to engage in some pretty passionate verbal combat on some issues while at the same time maintaining a sense of at least formally-expressed goodwill toward the opposing speaker, being deliberately generous with praise...and absolutely NO criticism or animosity on a personal level.  So order and civility go hand in hand in formal meetings, be they legislative, labor, or any other kind...it's probably a good idea to become well-trained in both...

Some People Change When They Get Behind the Wheel

I never was a particularly adept middle-to-long distance runner, although in the end that seems to be the sport I took to for much of my life, especially for the last ten years.  When I was growing up, I was in fact a pretty ferocious sprinter in high school and did very well in the 50-yard dash...until around the 11th grade when fellow classmates grew up past me.  But one crucial difference that made running the longer distances more attractive to my higher instincts was that it forced me to go out into the world to train...when my natural inclinations were bent toward staying home, safely indoors. And consequently, I got to observe the flow of that world around me, including how people tended to compartmentalize themselves in their motor vehicles...anonymous to the world while I was out there in the open, along with the other runners, pedestrians, and bicyclists.  I noticed that when folks were safely ensconced in their cars, they would sometimes shed the common respect and courtesies they would normally be careful to display were they personally identifiable.  So cars would honk at me for exercising my right-of-way, curses yelled safely from behind windows as they sped by...once someone threw their soft drink at me just to be an [expletive deleted]. And I've experienced eggs, glass beer bottles, and even a firecracker thrown at me while riding my bicycle on different occasions.  This dichotomy between the insulated and unaccountable masses and the vulnerable few (like me) came to influence my view of the world and human nature...

For most of us, we slip in and out of situations where we are traveling in motor vehicles and walking, running, or bicycling.  Yet a few don't have that option: for various reasons, someone may be forced to walk or bike to wherever they need to go...many others have to take public transit and spend much of their time walking to and from bus stops.  But in a city like Gainesville, the traffic is weighed very heavily in favor of road travel, and pedestrians are often overlooked as drivers allow themselves to get distracted by their various gadgets that they like to play with when they should be paying attention to where they are going.  The other day, Tommy, a middle-aged man whom people in this area had come to know well and who due to his life circumstances had to resort to walking to get where he wanted to go, was crossing NW 39th Avenue from his home, just across from where I am sitting here in this Starbucks.  A car was switching lanes and took no notice of the pedestrian stepping out onto the pavement and struck him, killing him.  Now there is one of those sad flowery memorial displays at the site to remind us...or at least try to remind us...to please look out for people and not just take the narrow view of the vehicles around us when we drive.  But I look back at the conclusions I drew from running roadside way back then in the 1970s and I know it's all probably an exercise in futility: some people just go through an ugly metamorphosis whenever they get behind the wheel.  I don't know the exact details of what the driver who hit Tommy was thinking or doing...or even whether Tommy may have stepped out too soon...but I have had too many personal experiences over the years with drivers who imperiled my life with their distracted or aggressive driving and others who harassed me while I was out there walking, running, or bicycling.  Yet if I encountered any of the same people in a store or restaurant...in person...I'm confident that they would all be on their best behavior...

Just Finished Rereading Bag of Bones by Stephen King

I first read Stephen King's 1998 ghost story novel Bag of Bones nine years ago and decided that a rereading was in order...I remember liking it, but forgot a lot of the reasons why.  Well, now I've been updated...

As is the case with many other Stephen King stories, the protagonist of Bag of Bones is a relatively successful writer.  But Mike Noonan has writer's block, ever since his wife Jo suddenly died of a brain aneurysm.  After her death, hints begin to come out that she had been leading a double life...and she was pregnant, information she had withheld from her husband.  With these disturbing facts, coupled with his own inability to write in the face of increasing pressure from his agent and publisher, Mike decides to move from their hometown of Derry, Maine (oh-no, not another Stephen King story with Derry) to their lakeside estate in the unincorporated area of rural western Maine called TR-90.  The estate's name is Sara Laughs, named after Sara Tidwell, a blues singer who more than a century earlier had travelled through this area with her family and entourage and lived at the very house that Mike and Jo later purchased.   It isn't long before Mike hears voices in his country home and objects begin to move around...including the magnetic letters on his refrigerator.  So he rightly suspects that his domicile is haunted by ghosts and he vividly dreams and starts to have visions of the past.  In the meantime...

One day Mike is driving and encounters a young girl walking alone down the center stripe of the highway.  He pulls off the road and whisks her out of danger...just before a large truck comes speeding by.  The three-year-old is Kyra and her mother, Mattie Devore soon shows up frantically searching for her straying daughter.  And so Mike is drawn into their story, which involves widowed Mattie's wealthy computer magnate father-in-law struggling to wrest custody of Kyra from her.  What begins as an apparently unrelated subplot eventually becomes woven into the fabric of the story, involving Kyra and Mattie with the secrets of Jo, Sara, and Mike's writer's block...as well as that town's dark and dirty past and its current residents...

No, as usual I'm not going to say how it all comes out.  But Bag of Bones lays forth the proposition that the dead will call out from their graves for justice and that there is an ultimate accounting for our transgressions against others.  The term "bag of bones" is multi-layered and referred to in different contexts throughout the book: Thomas Hardy once referred to characters in a story as nothing more than a bag of bones, but the term comes to take on a more literal meaning...but what else would you expect, this being a ghost story written by the King of horror fiction...

I've heard that Bag of Bones was adapted to television a few years ago, but I don't plan to watch it.  Sometimes Stephen King will place characters and events from other stories into the latest book he's writing: this novel is no exception as Insomnia's elderly hero Ralph Roberts has a pleasant conversation with Mike Noonan.  But, thankfully, there's no sign of Pennywise the Clown...another Derry denizen...here.  On the other hand, I'm now rereading Tommyknockers, and I know from the first reading that this evil dude from It gets to make a cameo appearance toward the end of that novel. Well, that's Derry for you...

Quote of the Week...from Donald Trump

We must have universal health care. Just imagine the improved quality of life for our society as a whole...The Canadian-style, single-payer system...helps Canadians live longer and healthier than Americans...There are fewer medical lawsuits, less loss of labor to sickness, and lower costs to companies paying for the medical care of their employees.                ---Donald Trump

Yes, our current president, who seems to have gone in the diametrically opposite direction from this 2000 quote with his national health care agenda, at one time was strongly in favor of the kind of universal, single-payer health care systems almost all of the world's developed countries use.  He also stated back then that this is the one big issue that he, although mainly conservative, was liberal about.  The above quote of his I took from a reprint in my bi-monthly union magazine of an editorial article written by my union president Mark Dimondstein.  In his article Dimondstein laid out the reasons for the United States to join the rest of the civilized world and deem health care to be a right and not a privilege...and to free its people from the financial bondage and uncertainty imposed by our current health insurance system, be it Obamacare, Trumpcare, or what we had before.  I would make one correction to Trump's earlier stance on this issue: I believe that universal health care should be embraced by conservatives as being compatible with their political philosophy, and here are some points to make in that regard...

1-Businesses would be shed of the red tape and financial burden of providing health insurance.
2-Universal health care encourages job-changing, risk-taking, and entrepreneurialism by those in mid-life and/or with pre-existing conditions...or by those related to such an individual.
3-Deprives liberals of what conservatives often see as "divide and conquer" political strategy by demographic groups.
4-Gives people a greater sense of liberty with their lives...they can invest their money back into the economy.
5-Insurance companies provide no health services but add greatly to the total cost of care as a middleman between provider and patient.

And how does this all get funded? Well, this is where the "modern" conservative, for whom the expression "raise taxes" is anathema, and I part ways: you fund it by raising taxes. The net effect, though, will be to reduce health care expenses, provide universal coverage, and end catastrophic medical events in people's families leading to personal bankruptcy...

As Mark Dimondstein wrote in his article, and our current president implied with his remark 17 years ago, we need as a nation to decide whether health care is a right or a privilege.  If it is the former, then let's get down to business creating a universal health care system modeled after the most successful countries that employ it.  If is the latter, let's go back to the way it was before the Affordable Care Act and let the marketplace freely determine its financing.  The way things are now is an unholy, messed-up mishmash of both approaches, whether you call it Obamacare or Trumpcare...

11/5 Sermon: Questions I'd Ask God, Part 1

For the next few weeks The Family Church here in Gainesville, Florida will be examining common questions related to Christianity that come from our surrounding community.  The question this past Sunday was "How Could a Good God Send People to Hell?".  In presenting his response, senior pastor Philip Griffin focused on Luke 16:19-31, found in the New Testament of the Bible and which you can read through the following link to Bible Gateway: [link]...

Pastor Philip presented three important points to try to answer this problematic and troubling question of the existence...and destination for some...of hell: hell reveals the love of God, it reveals the justice of God, and God has gone to great measures to rescue us from it.  That first one just sounds wrong at first glance, but as Philip explained, God has given us the freedom to choose our identity in him...or elsewhere.  And our identity is where we find our sense of value, justification, and meaning.  God does not force us to depend on him in this regard: it is our choice, and the default choice is separation from God in this life...ultimately leading to eternal separation: in a word, hell.  As far as the justice of God is concerned, Philip continued: we see so much violence today in our world, much of it based on the flawed notion that God won't punish those deserving it, and therefore people have to take vengeance into their own hands to see real justice done.  This idea rings true to those either believing in no God, an impersonal and uncaring God, or that God will allow all, believers or not, into his heaven after death and that there is no hell.  But in this world, the ability to forgive others can greatly depend on the belief that God is just and will hold those transgressors accountable.  As for that third point, God went to the extreme measure of sending his only begotten son, Jesus Christ, to this world to live among us and die as an atoning sacrifice for the sins of all who accept him as their savior.  As for me, I can't get too intellectual or doctrinal about the concept of hell...let's just say that (1) I believe that it is by definition the eternal separation from God and (2) I really don't want a whole lot of detailed knowledge about it, seeing how I don't want to ever go there anyway.  And I agree with Philip, who emphasized that the primary motivation for us in our faith should be to love and be closer to God and not just to escape hell...

You can watch Pastor Philip's sermon via the church's YouTube video website...here's a link to last Sunday's message: [link]. The Family Church, at 2022 SW 122nd Street, meets each Sunday morning at 9:30 and 11 for the weekly message, beautiful and inspiring music, worship, prayer, and fellowship.  I wonder what the next question will be...

Weekly Short Story: Successful Operation by Robert Heinlein

Twentieth century science fiction writer Robert Heinlein is probably best known for his novels Starship Troopers, Stranger in a Strange Land, and The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, but he also wrote a multitude of short stories.  Being a strong anti-fascist when Hitler and Mussolini had their followers in America before World War II,  Heinlein put his philosophy of liberty into his stories and never wavered from it after the war when he became equally anti-communist.  Successful Operation was one of his earliest works...from 1940...and is also very short, four pages long.  I'm happy to be the proud owner of Off the Main Sequence (SFBC Books, 2005), which is an extensive collection of short stories that tended to be left out of other collections of Heinlein's...this tale started off the book...

Heinlein had Successful Operation first published with a different title, "Heil!", in a pulp fiction magazine under a pseudonym, "Lyle Monroe".  That original title gives a hint about the story, as a racist dictator meant to be Adolf Hitler is in a health crisis with an undesirable solution.  His pituitary gland, which is located at the base of the brain, is diseased and he will only survive with a transplant.  The only surgeon available who can perform the operation, however, is Doctor Lans, who is implied to be Jewish and is in a concentration camp.  Lans and the Leader meet, and the doctor lays out his conditions for the operation, which include the restoration of his fortunes, passports for his family and himself, and that the operation take place on foreign land away from the Leader's control.  Begrudgingly, the dictator accedes and the operation is set.  The healthy pituitary gland to be transplanted belongs to a fellow inmate of Lans, and the donor agrees that he would rather have a sick pituitary and be free than have a healthy one and be under oppression.  Then the operation takes place and it's a success...only one problem, though, the Leader and the donor have both been secretly whisked back to their country.  And thus is the setup for the predictably outrageous ending for such an abbreviated story...

If our consciousness and identities are based within the strict confines of our own bodies, then where are they located there?  The obvious choice would be the brain...but beyond that it's an open question.  Robert Heinlein takes a deep dive off the board of speculation and comes up with an answer that would easily fit well in a Twilight Zone episode...I wonder whether that might in fact have been done... this story just seems familiar to me, as if I had already experienced it or something very similar before.  And now you can read it through the creative commons license via this link to the Free Speculative Fiction online site: [link]...

Tuesday's List: Olympic Games Sites Since 1968

You may be wondering why the following is a list of the sites of the Summer and Winter Olympic sites since 1968...why that year, considering that the former began in 1896 and the latter in 1924?  It's because 1968 is the year I began following the Olympic Games, at the age of eleven: I watched Peggy Fleming win the gold medal for the USA in figure skating.  So this list is more like a personal life memory project for myself: some of these Olympics I vividly remember...like the 1968, 1972, 1976, 1984, and 1996 Summer Games, while others slipped by almost unnoticed.  Of course, the United States boycotted the 1980 Moscow Summer Olympics because of the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan the previous year and most folks here agreed that they couldn't care less about that one.  Corresponding to my 1968,1972, and 1976 interest in the Summer Games was my following of the Winter Games those years, as well as the Lake Placid Winter Olympics in 1980.  Through 1992, the Summer and Winter Olympics were held the same year, but in 1994 the Winter Games started during even-numbered off-years, the same year that the men's World Cup in soccer takes place...

It's interesting how during the Cold War, the communist bloc nations staged essentially professional Olympic athletes while strict rules of amateurism were enforced for the rest of the world...an offensive double standard, in my opinion.  Ironically, it was after the Cold War ended that standards for professionals competing in the Olympics were relaxed and suddenly you began to see all these multimillionaire pro athletes competing while at the same time being featured on commercial breaks...I see very little amateurism anymore and that's sad...

Well, here's that list...another one that probably works better for me than you, the reader.  The Summer Olympics sites I highlighted in red, the Winter in blue...

1968 Summer  Mexico City, Mexico
         Winter     Grenoble, France
1972 Summer  Munich, West Germany
         Winter    Sapporo, Japan
1976 Summer  Montreal, Canada
         Winter     Innsbruck, Austria
1980 Summer  Moscow, USSR
         Winter     Lake Placid, NY
1984 Summer   Los Angeles, CA
         Winter     Sarajevo, Yugoslavia
1988 Summer  Seoul, South Korea
         Winter     Calgary, Canada
1992 Summer  Barcelona, Spain
         Winter     Albertville, France
1994 Winter     Lilliehammer, Norway
1996 Summer   Atlanta, GA
1998 Winter     Nagano, Japan
2000 Summer   Sydney, Australia
2002 Winter     Salt Lake City, UT
2004 Summer   Athens, Greece
2006 Winter     Turin, Italy
2008 Summer   Beijing, China
2010 Winter     Vancouver, Canada
2012 Summer   London, United Kingdom
2014 Winter     Sochi, Russia
2016 Summer   Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
---------------------------------------------
-----------(Future Games)---------------
2018 Winter     Pyeongchang, South Korea
2020 Summer  Tokyo, Japan
2022 Winter     Beijing, China
2024 Summer   Los Angeles, CA

Texas Church Massacre Just Five Weeks After Las Vegas Massacre

A young Texas man, dishonorably discharged from the U.S. Air Force and with a history of domestic battery, opened fire Sunday morning at a small town church that was holding its weekly services, killing 26 and injuring 20 more...before apparently taking his own life after a high-speed chase by two brave heroes.  The immediate verdict I'm hearing about the perpetrator of this massacre of the congregation at the First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs is that he was mentally ill, deranged as President Trump put it.  Oh, I didn't know Donald Trump was qualified in diagnosing mental illness...

When you consider somebody like the Las Vegas shooter or the Sutherland Springs creep, it's easy to take the mental illness route of explanation...after all, how could anyone in their right mind commit such terrible atrocities?  I'm afraid that this argument, however, has two counterproductive consequences.  One, it paints a picture of those suffering from mental illness as being more violent and a danger to society, when in fact they are much more likely to be the victims of others.  Two, it ignores the concept of evil as it infests the souls of people throughout their lives.  These two men, whose names are beneath mentioning, made a deal with that evil and deliberately killed and injured scores of innocent people.  They were not only evil, but also cowards...this last one dressed up in military costume and gunned down a baby, children, women, and old people.  I get where the mental illness arguments are coming from, but in the end when do you stop going down that road and start to hold people responsible for their own actions?

University of Florida Football's Perennial "Hot Seat"

After Jim McElwain was fired from his head coaching job at the University of Florida following his football team's humiliating 42-7 loss to rival Georgia eight days ago, speculation quickly arose as to who would eventually take his place while Randy Shannon served out the remainder of the 2017 season as interim coach.  Gator quarterback legend Tim Tebow weighed in on the matter and, to me, put it best: "It’s a program that can ascend very quickly to the top few in college football, but also what it is, it is a very hot seat." He then went on to claim that Florida's greatest two coaches, Steve Spurrier and Urban Meyer...who combined guided them to lots of SEC titles and three national championships...were both finally worn out by the job and sought employment elsewhere.  And that's the problem: usually, the term "hot seat" is used to describe the position a coach is in when his team isn't doing well and he's about to be canned.  But with the University of Florida football program, every day as head coach is the hot seat...and as Tebow added, it will take someone with a very strong, unwavering personality to fill it without suffering burnout.  Gator fans come in all shapes and sizes and follow their team with varying degrees of fervor.  But there seems to be a more abundant supply of fans with very demanding and unrealistic expectations, more so than with other schools.  If two coaching icons like Spurrier and Meyer reached their own breaking points here, then something's terribly wrong...

Tim Tebow believes that the next coach will be the right fit for Florida, but as far as I'm concerned that means someone who will have a very thick hide and stand for little criticism.  Because no matter how well or poorly Florida does, there will always be a quantity of "bad fans" around.  For myself, I just want whoever does get the job to consistently put on the field a complete team, both offensively and defensively, recruiting not just star high school players but also creating depth in the roster for those inevitable injuries that take out starters.  And please, please, no more of these ridiculous scandals among the players: it's the coach's responsibility to provide some leadership here.  I don't expect the Gators to set the football world on fire every single year, but wanting them to be consistently competitive winners isn't asking too much.  And we've had too many games in recent years where they've been given little-to-no chance of winning.  At least field a team that doesn't go out there and humiliate themselves on a regular basis...

Selective With Even My Favorite Musical Acts, TV Shows, and Movies

Although I like rock music, television, and movies, in truth whenever I have the opportunity to listen to my favorite musical acts, or watch a TV series or movie I like, I find myself rejecting most of my choices...

With rock music, I may like a particular act...but usually, with very few exceptions, I have little-to-no interest in hearing most of their material.  It got worse this year when I listened to new album releases from artists I have recently preferred: Arcade Fire, Kasabian, Sufjan Stevens, Spoon, and Gorillaz.  I listened through each their new LPs' tracks and concluded that I didn't care for any of them.  I've recently heard Twenty One Pilots on the radio, and because I liked some of the songs decided to check out their most recent album...most of that stuff didn't cut it, either.  Even with classic bands and solo acts from the past, the overwhelming amount of their recordings don't resonate with me...I'd rather listen over and over again to their very best works and scrap the rest...

When I'm checking the program listings for a favorite TV series, I take care to note which episode is showing before I decide to watch it.  No matter what the series...even the original Star Trek, the early Andy Griffith, All in the Family, Columbo, Mary Tyler Moore or Twilight Zone...all series that I like a lot...chances are that whatever episode they're showing is one I don't want to watch.  Turns out that most of even my favorite series' episodes I could do without...

And with movies, you'd be correct in assuming that if I owned the DVD for a particular movie, then it would be one of my favorites.  So here I am with the Lord of the Ring series (extended version), The Godfather, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, Polar Express, The Producers, A Beautiful Mind, and You Only Live Twice...to name a few.  Yet whenever I am watching one of these movies I find myself skipping most of the scenes and confining my viewing to just a few, leaving the rest of the movie unwatched...

I wonder whether others are like me in this regard, becoming more and more selective as to what they will watch and listen to.  Now there are some things that I am much more open to, though: classical music, ongoing sports events like football, soccer, hockey, and baseball, the U.S. Senate floor proceedings, and live coverage of major news and weather stories.  With these, however, my attention isn't completely riveted to what I am hearing and/or watching and I can be engaged in other activities while they are going on...

Quote of the Week...from Sue Grafton

Books are like movies of the mind and it's better to leave Kinsey where she is.
                                                         ---Sue Grafton

Sue Grafton is the author of the successful ongoing "Alphabet" mystery novel series featuring Kinsey Millhone as the resilient, blue collar Californian private eye.  Each successive book, starting with "A" is for Alibi, progresses further down the alphabet...we're now close to the end with "Y" is for Yesterday just recently published.  Grafton has stated that with the "Z" book, her series will conclude.  She has also insisted that as long as she lives she will never allow it to be adapted to movies or television...

I can sympathize with Sue Grafton's opposition to any film adaptation of her Kinsey Millhone mysteries.  Look at all the great Stephen King stories that made it to the big (or small) screen and how so many of them were drastically altered. The author himself allowed much of that to happen, but as a reader I still feel a bit put out by it, especially when some of those changes (like in The Mist and The Shining) directly affected the outcome of the story and the message I received from it.  Even when adaptations work well, as in the Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings series, an enormous amount of background material, large sections of the story, and even some characters may be trimmed in order to fit the movies into a reasonable time length: e.g. three successive chapters in The Fellowship of the Ring (which included the very interesting character Tom Bombadil) were completely omitted from the movie version.  But The Hobbit adaptation was a travesty, with entire subplots and new characters added with impunity...that was disgraceful.  I recognize that a lot of folks, while capable at reading, really don't like doing it for pleasure and would prefer a cinematic experience instead.  For me, though, when I read books, they are, as Grafton said, like movies of the mind...my mind...and I visualize for myself the various characters and scenarios, which to me is more fulfilling than having it already done for me on the screen...

As for "Y" is for Yesterday, its release back in August flew right by me...now I'm on a long waiting list to check it out from my public library...
 

10/29 Sermon on David, Part 7

Senior pastor Philip Griffin of The Family Church concluded his series about King David of Israel with Part 7, titled The Ingredients of an Unhealthy Home.  Not exactly a positive-sounding title, is it? Well, that's because David himself gave a multitude of examples of poor parenting...and these weren't just his shortcomings: we have to deal with the same issues today.  The scripture of focus was 2 Samuel Chapters 13-18...you can read it through the following link to Bible Gateway: [link]...

Pastor Philip listed five ways in which parents can create an unhealthy home for their children as well as for themselves: setting a bad example, refusing to discipline, denying problems, avoiding reconciliation, and not expressing true feelings.  In the selected passages, David set a very, very bad example to his children through his adultery with Bathsheba and murder of her husband: Amnon, one of his sons, raped his own half-sister Tamar.  When her full-brother Absalom found out, he expected his father to punish Amnon...but David refused to discipline him.  So a severe family problem came into being, and Absalom lured Amnon into a deadly ambush...with David willfully oblivious to the developing crisis.  After Absalom fled, he was allowed to return to Jerusalem but David made no effort to meet with his son: no reconciliation ever happened.  The embittered Absalom then usurped David's throne and publicly slept with his wives...it wasn't until Absalom's eventual death at the hands of his old enemy Joab that David expressed contrition toward his now-diseased son: but it came too late...

Although the example of David and his sons is very dramatic and moving, all of us have our own dual memories and responsibilities with our families.  With our childhood families, we not only remember how our parents treated us, but we tend to unconsciously copy them as we in our own turn become parents, for better or for worse...sometimes even things we know that our own parents did wrong.  Pastor Philip laid out some very constructive principles to help guide us to become more Christ-like in our parenting roles and apply the ingredients of a healthy home: setting a good example, choosing to discipline, acknowledging problems, welcoming reconciliation, and expressing true feelings...

Although I usually hear the weekly sermon at church on Sunday, sometimes I'll click on their YouTube video website to brush up on some of the speaker's points.  You can watch this week's message, too, through the following link to YouTube: [link].  The Family Church meets each Sunday morning at 9:30 and 11, with the  weekly message, music, prayer, fellowship, hospitality, and opportunities for discipleship and learning.  Oh, and the complimentary coffee isn't bad, either...

Weekly Short Story: The Pedestrian by Ray Bradbury

One of the late Ray Bradbury's more important stories is a very short one: The Pedestrian, five pages long, which he published in 1951 and appears in the retrospective anthology Isaac Asimov Presents the Great SF Stories 14 (1952).  When I first read it, I instantly knew that Bradbury had nailed it perfectly.  Although it was written many years ago, its significance has if anything increased over the years.  And why not?  Its setting is in the future, in the year 2053...

In a time when a young Sanford, Florida man couldn't walk home alone in his neighborhood from a nearby convenience store without being scrutinized, accosted, and ultimately killed by a "do-gooder" vigilante driving around the subdivision, the message of The Pedestrian is clear: if you're inside enclosed walls, that's cool...it's also okay if you're outside, as long as you are safely enclosed within the confines of your motor vehicle.  But don't you dare get out on the street and walk down it...why, then you're a menace to society.  The irony of all this is that, while people who are taking walks are the least likely folks to present a danger to others, it is those driving around in vehicles who potentially could present the much greater threat, what with their mobility, insulation, ability to transport and hide weapons, and room to abduct victims.  In my frequent runs around my neighborhood and the nearby ones, I have often experienced cars (and worse, vans) creeping up on me, sometimes even stopping down the road before taking off again.  It's obvious that I was their target of interest: were they George Zimmerman wannabes, are maybe they were just your garden-variety Ted Bundy sort of predator...it's easy to get carried away with these thoughts when you're out there, vulnerable to whatever comes by.  And then, of course, there is always the fortified security-minded neighbor, probably with an arsenal of guns in his house, who keeps in his yard ferocious attack dogs that from time to time get loose and wreak havoc up and down the block with anyone who has the nerve to walk, run, or even ride their bicycle down it. Finally, the police themselves, when patrolling an area, are much more likely to look down suspiciously on pedestrians...especially men...as potential criminals, especially within residential areas where home invasions are feared possibilities...

On the plus side, walking as a fitness activity seems to be on the upsurge, and I like seeing people out there improving their own lives with exercise.  Being a pedestrian boils down to the most basic form of human locomotion: walking, and if you can't freely walk around in public anywhere and anytime you want without suffering some sort of harassment or unwarranted scrutiny and suspicion, then you aren't truly free...

And now YOU can read The Pedestrian for yourself...just click on the following link: [link]...

My October 2017 Running Report

In October my total running mileage substantially increased to 83 miles.  My longest single run was 4 miles and I ran on every day of the month.  October was a better month for my health as I suffered no sickness or injury.  Having switched my shoes seems to have helped to ward off foot pain.  Also, I have been generally eating better and have lost some needed weight...

In November, Gainesville will host two races: the Tom Walker Memorial Half-Marathon on the 11th and the 10K Turkey Trot on Thanksgiving Day.  The half-marathon event will start and end at Boulware Springs Park in southeast Gainesville and covers a section of the Hawthorne Trail.  The Turkey Trot will take place at Tacachale, which is a residential center for the developmentally disadvantaged off Waldo Road in northeast Gainesville.  I think at my current state of fitness that I can cover the 10K race, but I have questions about the half-marathon.  But if I tackle the longer race by running and then regularly taking short walking breaks...as marathon guru Jeff Galloway teaches...I should be able to get through that one, too.  I think the biggest difficulty I will have with either race, assuming I can keep myself free of injury during the next few weeks, is getting myself up so early in the morning when I'd rather just sleep in.  Going to bed early the night before isn't an option: I'm scheduled to work then and end my shift at midnight...

Tuesday's List: Ted Cruz's Seven Tax Reform Goals

If you are a political conservative, Ted Cruz should be someone you pay close attention to, as his take on the various issues is almost always in line with that philosophy.  Tax reform, which Congress is now taking up, is no exception and the junior Texas senator last September laid out seven elements of what he sees as constructive, effective tax reform...I heard him just last week restate it all on the Senate floor.  In making this list, he emphasizes that his guiding principles are growth, simplicity, and fairness.  For Democrats and others more on the left of the political spectrum, that last one...fairness...seems to be by far the most important, and they have long accused the Republicans, Senator Cruz included, of being very, very unfair with their legislative proposals.  And I agree with them to an extent, especially in the way most of the G.O.P. was willing to wreck health care insurance protections for millions just to score a political victory.  But many on the left have a problem recognizing growth as an essential element in a healthy economy...an element that touches upon all of us...and see things in a more static framework, and in terms of the "haves" and "have-nots".  I think that growth is paramount to improving our standard of living and pushes employment and wages upward.  And our national tax policy discourages it to the extent that its corporate tax rate is highest in the world...and Cruz points out a couple of other areas that need change to enable our companies to stay home along with their money.  That's not to say that I don't see a bit of hypocrisy in what Ted Cruz is saying.  For one, pointing out that because other countries levy lower corporate taxes, we should follow their example while at the same time disregarding the fact that most of these also have successful universal health care systems is a bit disingenuous.  For another, when Obama and the Democrats were running things a few years ago, Cruz's one big overriding issue was to reduce the national debt...where is that consideration in his proposals other than a vague implication that overall growth will compensate for lower rates and increase net tax revenues?  That aside, I'm listing his seven ideas for tax reform, some of which I'm inclined to agree with and others that I admittedly don't understand very well.  So, without further ado, here they are, as Rachel del Guidice reported on the conservative The Daily Signal website:

1. A LOW, FLAT RATE.
2. THE ABILITY TO FILE TAXES ON A POSTCARD.
3. IMMEDIATE EXPENSING.
4. A LOW CORPORATE RATE.
5. ENCORAGE REPATRIATION.
6. ABOLISH THE DEATH TAX (ALSO CALLED THE ESTATE TAX).
7. END THE ALTERNATIVE MINIMUM TAX.

Of the above, I strongly believe Cruz is right on #2, #4, and #7.  Our income tax process is way too complicated for the average American and needs simplification.  I've already expressed that I feel we need to bring our corporate tax rate to the same level as that in competing nations.  And the alternative minimum tax discourages hard-working Americans from making "too much" money to avoid falling into this dreaded category, a cruel joke in our tax code. I doubt that getting #1 to ever become law is a moot point as too many people would regard it as being very unfair to those with lower incomes.  As for #6, when you hear the two sides of this argument debating, it almost sounds as if they are speaking about two separate issues, but I'm inclined to see Cruz's argument: for those passing down less than $5.49 million in assets the tax doesn't apply anyway, but many farms and small family-owned businesses are affected by this tax, which threatens their very enterprises should a death occur.  And that leaves #3 and #5: the way Cruz argues for them makes sense, but I need to study the subject and hear the other side to form a reasonable opinion.  In any event, I put Ted Cruz's proposals on this blog not to endorse them, but rather to try and get people thinking more in terms of issues and less of personalities.  We can all easy idolize or despise a public figure, but it takes a bit more mental finesse and discipline to listen to what they are saying without automatically accepting or rejecting everything wholesale just because of which "side" they are on... 

Just Finished Reading Under the Dome by Stephen King

Several years ago, not long after Stephen King's very long novel Under the Dome was first published, I began to read it...but stopped in frustration about a third of the way through.  I was tired of all the political references, with the good guys seeming to support then-President Obama and the bad guys against him.  I also took exception to the way evangelical Christianity was being negatively portrayed in the novel: after recently picking it back up and reading it all the way through, I realize why King did what he did but still feel that he could have done more to balance out the equation on both political and religious fronts.  Since I was already attuned to these issues, I could put them in the background as I read and enjoyed the unfolding story.  Turned out to be a pretty good story, after all...

Just before noon on an October Saturday in the fictional small Maine town of Chester's Mill, a thin, transparent, and impermeable barrier suddenly materializes, separating everybody and everything on both sides of the town's borders.  A plane crashes against the dome as do cars, trucks, and multitudes of birds...many deaths occur in those first few minutes of its existence.  Dale "Barbie" Barbara, the story's chief protagonist (and it contains many protagonists) is close to leaving town after a violent altercation with town ruffians the night before...he just misses getting out in time as the car he was hoping to hitch a ride with doesn't stop as it exits.  So now Barbie has to go back to Chester's Mill, which is full of small-town society and politically dominated by a demagogue, "Big Jim" Rennie, who is a manipulative used-car salesman with no scruples when it comes to enhancing his own power and wealth.  As the dome remains over Chester's Mill, the struggle is on between Rennie's forces and those in the town who want to prevent a dictatorship...

The dome cannot be physically crossed, but the other side is both visible and audible, and radio and the Internet still pass through the barrier.  Barbie is informed by his former Army superior from Iraq that he has been reinstated and promoted to corporal from his former captain rank...and that he is expected to take control of Chester's Mill.  Thus ensues a power struggle with Rennie.  But these characters, although crucial to the story, are just a few of the many that King follows in Under the Dome.  As I said before, it contains many protagonists and subplots...and quite a few villains as well.  I'll leave what happens in this speculative tale to you, the prospective reader, and instead focus on a couple of my own reactions to it...

I can't help but feel that with this story Stephen King was alluding to our planet Earth as a sort of enclosed system that is susceptible to environmental abuse.  The indiscriminate burning of fossil fuels and the release of pollutants into the atmosphere threatens the fragile system that supports our own lives, and like the folks living under that dome, we have nowhere else to go.  I also understand the author's example of how people tend to deny the rights of other species of life to simply be able to live out their own lives...he used the example of kids setting fire to ants with a magnifying glass, regarding them as not really being alive anyway.  What if some alien beings had the same attitude about us that we have toward "lower" creatures?

So in the end, I give a "thumbs up" to Under to Dome.  Be prepared for a long reading excursion, though...it's more than a thousand pages long.  As for the television series, I haven't seen it and don't have any plans in that regard.  There are some sections to this novel that are unforgettable: the strange friendship that develops between Andy Sanders and Phil "Chef" Bushey was totally unexpected.  And Stephen King was brilliant with the dialogue throughout...

Jim McElwain Fired As Florida Football Coach

I didn't think things were going well with this year's edition of the University of Florida football, and they worsened when starting quarterback Luke Del Rio suffered a season-ending injury, the third year in a row in head coach Jim McElwain's short tenure in which his best hope at that crucial position was taken out early in the season.  But against Georgia yesterday afternoon, the Gators were downright embarrassing, although the defense as usual displayed signs of life with little-to-no help from the offense.  Coupled with McElwain's disturbing but unproven revelation last week of death threats against him and his staff, his team's apparent inability to grow and improve under his direction may have been what pushed the powers-that-be at Florida to fire him today.  And for some reason, he's had a bit of difficulty with keeping his players out of trouble...well, that's all over now...

Florida's defensive coordinator Randy Shannon will be the interim head coach for the rest of the 2017 season.  I'm disappointed that their offense remained stagnant...their redshirt freshman quarterback Feleipe Franks, highly touted when they recruited him out of high school, doesn't seem to have been able to learn the skills necessary to effectively play his position on a major college level...maybe he would be a better fit at a smaller school.  I wrote before that a head coach should be allowed time for his own recruits to fill the starting lineups before judging his job performance, but there doesn't seem to be any sign at all that improvement for the Gator offense is in the works...and it is the offense that McElwain singled out at his hiring for a major overhaul.  Well, that didn't happen and now he's gone...

Florida is now 3-4 for the season, with the Southeastern Conference East Division title beyond their reach.  But if they can win at least three of their last four regular season games, they will once again be eligible for a bowl game.  Here's that schedule, all games to be played on Saturday:

11/04: at Missouri
11/11: at South Carolina
11/18: hosting UAB
11/25: hosting Florida State

I'll still be pulling for the Gators, win or lose...