My 500 All-Time Favorite Songs: #390-381

Here are the next ten entries in the list of my 500 all-time favorite songs. Don't get sidetracked by the big numbers: I love these songs...

390 FOREVER IN BLUE JEANS...Neil Diamond
This early 1979 song wasn't one of Diamond's biggest hits, but in my opinion it's the most romantic one. And that's saying an awful lot considering some of the songs he had produced previously.  It also brings up various associations regarding my own life at the time of its popularity...music can be a great memory aid in this regard...

389 THINGS WE SAID TODAY...the Beatles
When I was a kid during the 1964-66 Beatlemania years my parents, also Beatles fans, would buy each succeeding album as they came out.  In mid '64 when the movie A Hard Days Night hit the screens, United Artists issued the same-titled album while Capitol released Something New, containing an overlap of songs with the other album.  We ended up with the United Artists version, meaning I missed out on Things We Said Today, a Paul McCartney composition and what I might call a "pensive" love song.  Wish we'd got that album instead...

388 WORDS...Missing Persons
In the fall of 1982 when this song was played on the radio, the New Wave music movement was in full bloom, one of its Los Angeles success stories being the band Missing Persons, featuring Dale Bozzio as the vocalist with a Betty Boop singing style and a top-notch guitar/synthesizer/drum band to back her.  Words has several great lines such as "You look at me as if you're in a daze, it's like the feeling at the end of the page when you realize you don't know what you just read"...

387 NOVACANE...Beck
An example of a song I discovered many years after its initial release, Novacane is one of Beck's hilarious nonsense pieces...this one's from his acclaimed 1996 Odelay album.  But it was its hard-driving, relentless nature along with the sharp guitar breaks that won me over to it when I first heard it just a few years ago...a good tune to take along with my training runs.  Its ending, though, you may want to cut off since it deteriorates into ear-splitting noise.  Here's one of those classic Beck lines..."Mission incredible undercover convoy, full-tilt chromosome cowboy, X-ray search and destroy, smoke stack black top Novocaine boy"...

386 DANSE WITH ME GEORGE...Ambrosia
Ambrosia was one of those obnoxious late-1970s love ballad groups that fared well on the pop charts...but not with me.  But then comes this bizarre track...a tribute to the Polish classical composer and pianist Chopin...off one of their albums.  It's about 7:20 long and is good listening throughout (and very different from other Ambrosia songs) but the really interesting "plunge down the rabbit hole" begins at 4:14. By the way, the "George" in this song refers to Chopin's long-time love interest, the novelist Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin, better known as George Sand.  There's some pretty dazzling piano playing going on here...I'm sure the band hired out for it.  It's one of the strangest pieces I've heard: give it a listen and see if you don't agree...

385 TOUCH AND GO...the Cars
The unsettling beat, which as a music theory dunce I looked up as being polymeter, stands out in this minor 1980 singles hit for this great old Boston-based band...sad to know that both singer Ric Ocasek and bassist Benjamin Orr have passed on.  And the keyboards in this underrated piece are simply haunting...this might be a good song to spring on people on Halloween.  This is another example...like #390...of a singles release that should have been a major hit but only resonating to a lesser degree with the general public...

384 LODI...Creedence Clearwater Revival
If I ever get around to learning guitar the way I want to, this is one of the first songs I want to learn to play.  And while I'm at it, I want to sing it just the way John Fogerty belts it out.  Lodi, like Johnny Mathis' I'm Coming Home earlier on this list, is about the singer lamenting of his disillusionment at trying to make it big and only wants to go back to his old home town...I bet a lot of people have gone through this kind of experience: the rat race isn't for everyone and it sure as 'ell isn't for me...

383 DON'T CROSS THE RIVER...America
Still another minor, highly underrated hit from a major band, Don't Cross the River was getting its brief radio airplay back in March of 1973.  I invariably associate it with my struggles at that time (on my high school track team) to transform my body into that of a long-distance runner...something that I eventually abandoned in 1976 but resumed in 2009 and am continuing to this day.  But this kind of struggle is fun and this song has an inspiring feel to it, making me want to keep on running and not stopping no matter what my sore legs, feet, aches all over my body, and fatigue are telling my brain...

382 DARE...Gorillaz
Speaking of running, back in 2011 I collected all of the British alternative act Gorillaz's albums and transformed them to my MP3 player, listening to them on shuffle mode while doing my neighborhood training runs that year...Dare, from their 2005 album Demon Days, is one of their best tracks and suggests a sense of vertigo you might get from one of those up-and-down, revolving thrill rides in a theme park.  What I also like about Dare...as well as many of the other Gorillaz songs...is that it's pretty funny without necessarily meaning to be so.  You never can be too sure what you're going to get when you first listen to one of their songs.  More from Gorillaz to come...

381 TALK TALK...Music Machine
Talk Talk, the group Music Machine's one big hit, came out in late 1966 and got a lot of radio play in the beginning of the following year.  To me it's the rallying anthem for anyone who ever felt they were despised outcasts in their everyday existence.  Have you ever undergone such an experience when, without any good reason, you seem to have derision heaped upon you from all around and even those who you thought were friends turned on you?  Dig these words from the song: "My social life's a dud, my name is really mud, I'm up to here in lies, guess I'm down to size".  I didn't fully appreciate this song when it came out...only years later when I finally carefully listened to the lyrics and said to myself, this bro's speaking some truth!

Next week: #380-371...

Ran the 2019 Tom Walker Memorial Half-Marathon This Morning

I had been determined to run in a half-marathon race sometime in 2019, but I had missed some opportunities at the beginning of the year (and really wasn't in good enough shape anyway) and knew that this Tom Walker Memorial Half-Marathon, which I had run a couple of times a few years ago, would be available for me come November.  It's very conveniently held here in Gainesville with Boulware Springs Park off SE 15th Street as the base for operations and is organized by the Florida Track Club.  You park your car, cross the small park to the back...and there is the Hawthorne Trail stretching off in both directions.  The entire half-marathon takes place on this very popular rails-to-trails project, a there-and-back course with the midpoint turnaround just before you get to the County Road 234 crossing...so there's no actual motorized traffic to contend with, although the bicycle traffic can be a major nuisance on the trail with their darting in and out among the runners...

I got there early this morning in order to register...I'm not a fan of paying in advance for races when I can avoid it.  The temperature was a perfect 46 degrees, a little chilly at the race's start but warming up to the 60s by the end, with relatively low humidity.  In recent years the event's organizers added a 5K race to coincide with the half-marathon...much of the crowd was there for this shorter race.  Upon reaching the trail before the start at 8:00, I made my way to the back of the racing throng, knowing in advance that I wouldn't be setting any speed records today.  My strategy was clear: go out slow, run slow, keep running slow, and finish slow...with the main word in this sentence being "finish".  As a matter of fact, at the race's start I was running so slow that I was going barely faster than a gentleman clearly several years older than me who was walking the race. I also was prepared to take periodic walking breaks as I do during my training runs, but although I noticed many other participants employing this run/walk method to get through the race I felt comfortable just running it on through from beginning to end.  My finishing time was 2 hours 35 minutes and 20 seconds...easily the slowest finishing time of the twelve half-marathons I've run since 2010.  But I hadn't run one since February of 2018 and that race was marked by severe leg cramps near its end while in 2017's half marathon I suffered deep coughing attacks...neither of these happened today.  And unlike my 13.3 mile training run three weeks ago, I never ran into a "wall" and kept a high energy level throughout it all.  So no, I didn't run a very fast race, but finishing it well gives me hope at age 63 for future races...and a possible venture into longer distances...

Here's a link to the race results: [Start 2 Finish Race Management]...

Comparing Access in Russia and China to Social Media and Blogsites

Before Facebook came along and provincialized and insulated social media, the blogosphere was a worldwide, developing phenomenon that promised to bring millions of people of diverse backgrounds, countries, and perspectives together.  I set up my own personal blog in 2007, using the Google Blogger free blogging site...and I have been regularly writing articles ever since, totaling now over 4,100 (and you can read every one of them if you wish).  Before Facebook I had a more cosmopolitan reading audience but ever since that site took over the world's social media the formerly-explosive development of personal blogging receded in favor of this convenient, albeit much more insulated and restrictive, form of Internet communication.  I finally saw the writing on the wall in early 2013 and began to post links on my Facebook page to my daily blog articles while still hoping that international readers...or others at-large from the good old U.S.A....would hit upon it as well, not just my Facebook friends and family.  Then I realized that other countries, to varying degrees and for different reasons, were blocking access to social media and blogging sites...the biggest reason I imagined being to stem the flow of any dissident material against their respective regimes.  Since Russia and China are often mentioned in the same sentence as being nations highly restrictive of the free flow of communications, I thought I'd compare how they deal with the most popular Western social media and blogging sites...

Right up front, pure and simple, China totally blocks Google, YouTube, GoogleMaps, Instagram, Facebook, Tik Tok (although it is a Chinese company's product), Twitter, and Wikipedia.  WordPress.com-hosted blogs are also blocked there, but WordPress.org-generated blogs are not.  LinkedIn technically isn't blocked, but the Chinese version reportedly carries greater restrictions.  In Russia, among the above sites only LinkedIn is blocked, and that is reportedly because it violates a Russian law prohibiting individual Russians' user information being stored outside the country.  And some Wikipedia articles have been blacklisted in Russia.  Yet I have read ongoing Twitter live on-the-spot reports by a Russian journalist during recent Moscow protests...no problem picking it up along with commentary and video.  And he would agree with me that although Russia isn't as free and open a society as America with our dearly-held First Amendment, it is still a much freer place for its people regarding the Internet than is mainland China.  Russian folks can read my blog...Chinese cannot, and that about expresses it as far as I'm concerned.  Now it's true that the Russian authorities over the years have placed restrictions on certain matters of content...particularly with YouTube...but bloggers and social media users still really do have a good amount of freedom between the U.S. and Russia.  China? Forget it...

Quote of the Week...from Billy Joel

Though we choose between reality and madness it's either sadness or euphoria.    ---Billy Joel

The above quote is a line from Billy Joel's 1976 Summer, Highland Falls, a track from his 1976 Turnstiles album.  This song's lyrics are a cognitive reverie in philosophy...I encourage you to listen it, which I just posted this past Monday as #393 on my all-time favorites list.  Before I go into what this quote meant for me, let me share that once in my eleventh-grade English class back in late 1972 we had a guest speaker, a poet of renown, to sit in on the class and discuss his craft.  I remember him stating that oftentimes he would get feedback from people who credited him with all sorts of revelations in his poems that enlightened them...but that he himself hadn't been thinking at all along those lines when composing them.  And then he said that the work stands on its own once it's out there and that even unintended interpretations are legitimate, as far as he was concerned.  So with that in mind I acknowledge that I may or may not be in total sync with Billy Joel's intended message here, but I'll give my own "feedback" anyway, for what it's worth...

If there's one word that I believe adequately describes these times we live in and the social attitudes epitomizing it, it is "narrative".  Art Linkletter may have said that "kids say the darndest things", but people in general believe the darndest things as long as they fit within their own personal adopted narratives about the nature of the world around them and their own perceived lives.  These narratives, which include past personal history, religion, politics, socioeconomic class, identity categories, economic status, consumption patterns (including that of drugs), and entertainment preferences, tend to reinforce themselves in their holders' minds through supporting input...be it true or false...while they tend to reject any contradictory information regardless of its truth value...to believe something patently false just because it fits your narrative to me is a feature of madness.  And behind each person's personally and tenaciously held narrative...each with its peculiar mixture of reality and fantasy...is the unrecognized cause for it: the narrative makes them feel better...

One thing that social media like Facebook and Twitter do very well is to reveal and encourage people's personally held narratives.  These forums feed into narrative bias by giving users access to just about any opinion source that supplies catchy slogans or "news" items propping them up.  I believe folks in general want to have a sense of order about their lives and what's going on around them, and since it comforts them more they will be willing to throw away any objective, respectful and skeptical treatment of the news or the diversity of viewpoints about a particular point and instead boil it all down to the good guys (who possess all of the truth) versus the bad guys (born liars, all of them).  It's frustrating for me to see this in others, along with their tendency to only reference the news sources that resonate with their narratives, yet in all honesty as a human being here along with the rest of us I'm also plodding along through my own life with my own tightly-held, cherished narrative...after all, it's either sadness or euphoria.  But I've noticed one thing ever since I began this blog more than twelve years ago: when I write about a particular subject I often finding myself taking on both its pros and cons and on a number of occasions end up with a message that I hadn't previously intended...and I watch and read all kinds of perspectives on what's going around us.  Why don't you start your own writing blog and share your views with the world as well?  I'd be interested in reading it, plus it may benefit you as it has done me by helping you to sort out your own narratives. Wordpress or Google's Blogger (which I use) are good places to start...

Just Finished Reading The High Mountains of Portugal by Yann Martel

Yann Martel is best known for his 2001 novel of Life of Pi...here is a link to my earlier review of it on this blog: [Life of Pi]. His 2016 work the The High Mountains of Portugal conveys a very different mood while continuing with the themes of animals, religion, cross-cultural encounters, mortality and grief...all present in that earlier work. It is divided into three separate tales, set in 1904, 1939, and 1981 with unifying elements of family, religious symbolism, and a small village in "mountainous" east Portugal (where the author points out that there are no true mountains). This book was much more difficult for me to get through than Life of Pi, especially that very confusing second story...but this is how Martel wrote it and I accept it, without necessarily liking it...

The first tale concerns grief-stricken young Tomás, whose beloved wife and their young son had recently died of illness, reacting by only walking backwards while becoming engrossed in a 17th century diary of an obscure Portuguese priest assigned to Angola and Sao Tome in Africa. Tomás embarks on a quest to find that priest's special, mysterious crucifix, hidden somewhere in an unknown rural eastern Portugal church.  The second story involves a Portuguese pathologist, his wife, and a visit from an elderly woman in grief.  And the third is about a burned-out Canadian politician who abandons his office to return to his ancestral roots in Portugal...with a very special companion...

It's often difficult for me to write a review without giving away too much...let me just say in the case of  The High Mountains of Portugal that I've read some of the reactions to it on the Goodreads website and discovered that readers usually either loved it or despised it.  That stands to reason as this novel of Yann Martel is in places difficult to follow as a literal, reality-based narrative and is full of all sorts of symbolism and allegory...seems like the kind of book that high school English teachers like to assign to their hapless students.  I also think a lot of readers were hoping for another story along the lines of Life of Pi and were put off by the descent into weirdness in the 1939 story, but as I had previously noted, the two works do have several overlapping themes.  I'm glad I read it, but I much, much preferred Life of Pi...

Weekly Short Stories: 1953 Science Fiction, Part 2

I continue my look back at 1953 science fiction, reviewing more selections from the anthology Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 15 (1953).  Here are the next five from the book...

SAUCER OF LONELINESS by Theodore Sturgeon
On their 1979 Regatta de Blanc album, the Police have a very popular track titled Message in a Bottle...its culminating line resonates strongly with the message in this story of a woman, who while taking a walk through Central Park one day, gets hit in the head by a small flying saucer with its own message to convey.  She discovers that loneliness and being alone are two entirely separate things as she is harassed and subjected to interrogations and universal notoriety and scrutiny as a result of her experience...

THE LIBERATION OF EARTH by William Tenn
I reviewed this story in an earlier article...click on the following link to read it: [Link].  This is a tale that has almost universal allegorical application: Earth is just minding its own business when one day a far-more technologically advanced alien race lands and informs "us" that they are embroiled in a serious galactic war with another race of beings...and that they are "liberating" Earth from its influence (which was never felt in the first place).  The battles between the warring parties ensue with our dear home world further damaged and its population decimated with each succeeding encounter.  To apply the allegory, think of all the situations on different levels when people just want to be left alone to mind their own business and some other more dominant party decides, according to its own values and self-interests, to interfere and ultimately subjugate and harm them while at the same time claiming that it is working to help or "liberate" them...

LOT by Ward Moore
Another story that has allegorical value, Los Angeles has just been struck in a nuclear exchange and the city is in a near-panicked state of mass evacuation.  Mr. Jimmons has foreseen this development and has already meticulously planned his escape plans, including his destination, escape route and strategy, and what to take and what to leave behind...unlike his wife and three children, each with their own shortsightedness, petty concerns and unwillingness to see the changed reality in their situation for what it is.  The narrative describes their journey along the highway and the revealing ongoing conversation in the car between them, as well as Jimmons' unspoken thoughts that explain and justify his actions.  And the title Lot is in itself an analogy...from the Old Testament of the Bible...

THE NINE BILLION NAMES OF GOD by Arthur C. Clarke
According to this story, there is a sect of monks off across the Himalayas believing that when God's nine billion names are compiled, his task in the universe will be complete...whatever that's supposed to mean.  The monks hire a western tech company to send them a computer, along with two technicians, to print out all reasonable combinations of letters that would eventually encompass those nine billion names.  This is one of those typically brief short stories of Clarke that has a knockout, memorable final line.  As for the computer, remember that this story was written in 1953!

WARM by Robert Sheckley
This story depends on the notion that what we perceive as humans is conceptualized by trying to form "wholes", or Gestalts, out of those perceptions.  Sheckley, through his protagonist who is about to leave his apartment to pick up his date to a party, describes in progressive fashion what would happen if one abandoned his humanity and began to perceive reality on its own terms and not through our own evolved filters of conceptualizing. This is a pretty doggone deep story and kind of makes you wonder about it all...

Next week: more sci-fi short stories from 1953...

Giving Miami Dolphins a "Mulligan" After Beating Jets

Usually in professional sports a franchise's management won't deliberately come out before the season even begins and make it clear that they plan to "tank" their team by (1) finishing poorly in order to garner top draft picks and (2) trading away any current players of any value for future draft picks.  When done this way, like with the baseball Miami Marlins in 2018 or the football Dolphins this year, the effect is like team management giving the finger to its fans while expecting them to continue shelling out the big bucks for tickets, TV subscriptions and merchandise.  At first it looked as if the Dolphins were going to deliberately let themselves be humiliated in their quest to be absolutely the worst NFL team ever to hit the field.  But over the past few weeks, although they continued to lose, Miami under their first year head coach Brian Flores showed a lot of spunk in games against Washington, Buffalo, and Pittsburgh, nearly winning the first and leading late in the other two. In spite of their management's tactics the coaches and players WANT to win.  And last Sunday at home they beat the New York Jets, a team that had hired for its head coach Adam Gase, whom the Dolphins had fired last year and despite its initial high hopes for the 2019 season now find themselves sharing a 1-7 record with Miami...and in last place in the division for having lost to them.  But if I were Dolphins management I wouldn't start panicking yet...there are at least three top quarterback prospects that will be entering the upcoming draft, enough to spread among the very worst teams in the league. What they don't seem to get, though, is that along with raw talent it is very crucial that a franchise establish a tradition and reputation for a disciplined, tough, and winning approach to the game...that's worth a couple of places in the draft hierarchy, in my opinion.  So, using a term from the sport of golf whereby a player gets a free swing after "muffing" one, I'm giving the Miami Dolphins a Mulligan...may they use it well as I continue to root for them.  Meanwhile, it looks like we'll be seeing other teams like the Jets and the Cincinnati Bengals joining Miami's management...but not its players and coaches...in the tanking strategy now that their seasons have been torn to tatters.  By the way, the Cleveland Browns, a recent repeat tank act, were supposedly going to set their division on fire this year with their top pick at quarterback and other acquisitions...they're now at 2-6 with only one more win than Miami: how's that strategy worked for them?

One other thing: the Baltimore Ravens, which humiliated Miami 59-10 in the season's opening game, knocked the New England Patriots...43-0 winners over the Dolphins in the second week...out of the undefeated ranks by beating them 37-20 Sunday evening.  That leaves the San Francisco 49ers as the last remaining undefeated team in the NFL this year.  May the Seattle Seahawks perform the needed task of defeating them next week so that the 1972 Miami Dolphins, the only team that went through an entire season and playoffs with a perfect record, once again will be able to celebrate their unique status in pro football history and break out that champagne...

My 500 All-Time Favorite Songs: #400-391

Today I start on the next hundred in my weekly countdown of my own 500 all-time favorite songs...so without any more intervening jabbering, here are the next ten and my comments...

400 TWILIGHT OMENS...Franz Ferdinand
Franz Ferdinand is a Scottish alternative/indie rock band that came out with a couple of hit singles in 2004: Take Me Out and This Fire.  On the their 2009 Tonight album is the deep track Twilight Omens, pretty short at 2:29 but it has a very riveting introductory (and recurring) musical theme...I listened to it a few times and the song continued playing itself in my mind, almost spellbinding...

399 SCOFF...Nirvana
Off Nirvana's 1989 Bleach album is Scoff, another of composer/singer/lead guitarist Kurt Cobain's tributes to teenage angst as he takes on the role of someone facing adult authority and judgment, rejecting that authority and judgment...well, that's what I got out of it.  Oh, and he wants them to give him back his alcohol...repeatedly.  The lyrics are deranged and defiant and the music is loud, stomping, and in your face...another one of those cathartic tracks telling listeners that they're not alone: they have fellow travelers in their anguish...

398 JUST LIKE ROMEO AND JULIET...the Reflections
When I hear such a spot-on, well-produced song like this one from the Reflections in 1964, I wonder to myself why this group didn't come out with a string of great hits...there are lots of artists over the years I feel this way about.  Still, I'm grateful for this exuberant song with a very catchy beat and wonderful harmonizing and vocal range, another tune I liked hearing off the radio even back when I was but seven years old...

397 CASTLES IN THE AIR...Don McLean
Don McLean, best known for his cryptic anthem American Pie in 1971, ten years later released the single Castles in the Air...demonstrating that he still had the "magic".  Only one problem with that conclusion: McLean had written this song back in 1970 and released it as a single before American Pie...the 1981 version he modified and rerecorded.  It's a bittersweet song Glen Campbell could have successfully recorded back in his Galveston and Wichita Lineman years as it expresses the singer's longing for the country life (and a country wife)...

396 TOO MANY PEOPLE...Paul McCartney
In 1971 I enthusiastically bought Paul McCartney's second solo album, Ram, and played it over and over.  Ever since that time I thought the opening track Too Many People was one of the few standouts on it...I've often thought there were "too many people" and that they seemed determined to make a misery out of my unassuming little life. But McCartney, I think, who at the time was in the midst of a nasty lawsuit against his former bandmates from the Beatles and their manager Allen Klein, was directing his invective...in a backhanded manner...at them, not people in general. What I grew to like most about this song was McCartney's lengthy instrumental jam session at the end...

395 I TURN MY CAMERA ON...Spoon
Speaking of songs with catchy beats, this alternative hit from 2005 pretty much introduced this Austin, Texas-based act to the rest of the world.  Gritty-voiced singer Britt Daniel is also one of the main creative forces with Spoon and pretty much produced I Turn My Camera On himself...his take on the lyrics is that it described someone who hid behind his camera from the reality he was shooting...interesting, and a song that definitely makes you want to snap your fingers as Daniel goes into falsetto mode...

394 SUKIYAKI...Kyu Sakamoto
Sukiyaki is a nonsense title given to Japanese artist Kyu Sakamoto's 1961 hit, originally titled Ue o Muite Arukou…I can see why they changed it to something more memorable: after all, the song is completely in Japanese.  By the way, that earlier title, which is also the opening line, means "I look up as I walk".  Why after this monster hit we didn't hear anything else by Sakamoto, a very expressive singer, is beyond me...I'm sure he produced a lot of good music for his Japanese fans...

393 SUMMER, HIGHLAND FALLS...Billy Joel
This track from Billy Joel's 1976 Turnstiles album should have been titled "Sadness or Euphoria" for those recurring words as he combines philosophical introspection with poetic lyrics and piano virtuosity. There's not an unquotable line in the song...maybe I should examine some of these lyrics sometime in my Friday "Quote of the Week" focus on this blog. The essence of this song as I see it is that people tend to complicate things in life when they're really making simple choices as they go along.  And no, I have no idea what "Summer, Highland Falls" has to do with any of this...

392 THE WAY...Fastball
The subject matter for this 1998 song, which sounds like the group was emulating the style of the Beatles back in '64-66, is pretty dark as it describes a couple who one day decide to suddenly abandon all their responsibilities...including their own children...and run away to a new life abroad.  I think this might be based on a real news story of such a couple being discovered and arrested for child neglect.  I say hey, if your life isn't going the way you wanted, go ahead and change it to something better but please don't victimize or betray others in the process.  Having said that, I loved this song 21 years ago and once again can't understand why this group didn't produce any more hit records afterwards...

391 THAT GIRL COULD SING...Jackson Browne
It was in the fall-winter of 1980 when this song was popular on the radio...I associate it with cold weather, apparently that was a cold winter in Gainesville.  I taped it off the radio and played it over and over again back then...it's my second favorite song by Browne. This very talented artist, however, tended to go overboard with promoting whatever left-wing political causes were in vogue at the time...and this bugged me, not that some of those causes weren't just, but rather that he seemed so patronizing about how "right" he was about it all.  That Girl Could Sing is a love song of sorts...but the singer has to come to grips with the fact that his love, as he sang it, "could have turned out to be almost anyone...almost anyone...with the possible exception of who I wanted her to be"...

Next Monday: #390-381...

Just Finished Reading Slade House by David Mitchell

Slade House, a 2015 novel by David Mitchell which I just finished reading, is my third from this author, the first two being Cloud Atlas (which I was intrigued into reading from its movie promos) and The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet...you can read my past reviews of them by clicking on their titles. In Slade House I encounter once again the concept of "psychic vampire", which Stephen King wrote about in his novel Doctor Sleep and which one of the sci-fi Scanners movies also delved into.  It's always been interesting to me that, once the author has introduced paranormal or supernatural powers into his or her story, then it becomes necessary to impose special limiting rules on those powers...like, for example, the existence within the Superman series of kryptonite as a counter to his otherwise unlimited powers.  In Slade House, the "vampires" have to replenish their power at a specific place in London (hence the book's title) every nine years by drawing to them unsuspecting victims who they know possess the psychic component they must feed upon. This way the novel divides itself into essentially separate short stories, jumping from 1979 to 1988 to 1997 to 2006 and finally 2015...

The theme of reincarnation, which was evident in the earlier Cloud Atlas, is here as well in Slade House.  But then I discovered that this book has a predecessor, The Bone Clocks, which I should have read first since some of those "rules" I referred to were first laid out in it while one of its characters makes an important appearance at the end of Slade House.  It seems that David Mitchell is like other authors such as Isaac Asimov and Stephen King, creating his own fictional universe with recurring characters and paradigms that crop up from time to time within his supposedly "independent" novels...it would have been more accurate to describe them as all being a part of the same series. In 2006 Mitchell reportedly wrote a book, titled From Me Flows What You Call Time, that he has put off its release until the year 2114: I can hardly wait, let's see, I'll be turning 158 that year...

Slade House was a good story in the gothic horror tradition.  My only problem with it was that the author didn't make it a complete story in itself but tried to integrate it with his earlier works...I've read Stephen King's novels Hearts in Atlantis and Insomnia and had the same problem with these two works' tie-ins with his Dark Tower series: if you haven't read it then you're lost to some extent with these two books.  But David Mitchell's writing is what it is and I plan to read his other novels, including The Bone Clocks...

Thinking of Teaching Self a Musical Instrument (or Two)

My father was an excellent country-style guitar player and also played clarinet earlier in his life...his singing sounded a lot like that of Hank Williams.  My mother was also adept at guitar to the point of mastering the basic chords necessary to accompany folk songs that as children me and my sister Anita, a very good singer, would sing along with her while she played.  My son Will became a very good piano player and my daughter Rebecca has a talent for hearing tunes and readily transferring them to instrument as well as for her beautiful singing voice. And my wife Melissa played flute in her high school band.  Me?  I'm very good at listening to music and not much more.  I took some private piano lessons a few years ago but didn't progress very far, although I managed to survive a recital playing a short classical piece.  Musical ability for most of us is something that works best when we start it very early in life...a lot of classical composers started out learning music and playing instruments as toddlers and Mozart wrote most of his officially-credited symphonies by the age at which I graduated from high school.  So in stating that I'd be interested in my later years taking on learning a musical instrument may sound like a lost cause...but I think I'll try it anyway, focusing on  teaching myself basic guitar and reviewing and surpassing my previous instruction level on the keyboard.  There are even apps that help with this sort of thing and I plan to make full use of them.  Should be interesting, everybody plug your ears...

Quote of the Week...from Jeff Galloway

Being an athlete is a state of mind not bound by age, performance or place in the running pack.
                                                                  ---Jeff Galloway

One thing that you probably noticed upon reading the above quote by Jeff Galloway, himself a longtime runner who has achieved personal success in marathon races and who encourages and teaches others from the general population who want to complete a 26.2 mile race for themselves, is that his definition of "athlete" is confined to the sport of competitive running.  I'm sure, though, that Galloway, many of whose precepts about running I follow and who seems like a thoughtful, reasonable sort, would normally expand "athlete" to encompass the world of sport in general...although when ESPN shows poker games I draw a sharp line there.  Some people who otherwise could physically and medically participate in athletic sports are prevented from running...sometimes they have issues with their knees or feet, or example.  These can transfer Galloway's statement to another activity, be it swimming, biking, or maybe something more team-oriented.  Although I do not enter running races with the primary goal of beating others, even my finishing time is increasingly secondary to actually covering the distance successfully.  And maybe it's ironic that I'm like that, since in the last two races I finished this past spring I won awards for best finisher in my male/age category...then again I was the ONLY finisher in the category for each race!  I consider myself to be an athlete, not only with running but also with walking.  That's also good, since as I age (I'm 63 now), barring medical developments to the contrary, I intend to continue running and walking as long as I can do so.  On November 10th I plan to run the Tom Walker Memorial Half-Marathon to be held at 8 AM at Boulware Springs Park in southeastern Gainesville...

As long as I'm writing about running and this is the first day of November, here is my running report for the previous month.  In October I ran for a total of 139 miles, with 13.3 miles being my longest single run.  I missed running for two days in the month, and during that time I was walking considerably, including a hike along a Georgia mountain trail with Melissa.  All considered, a pretty good month for my running/walking.  Looking forward to see what happens this coming month...

Just Finished Reading Centennial by James A. Michener

In the summer of 1976 I had signed up to take a summer college course in general American history...the young instructor in his opening lecture told the students that he wasn't that concerned about facts per se, but rather that we picked up on the trends being taught in the course.  I promptly dropped the class and switched to the same course but by a different instructor, a crotchety old man who taught from a scrapbook of different newspaper and magazine clippings he had assembled over the years.  And he covered facts, boy did he ever...as well as laying out his own admittedly biased worldview.  But I liked Mr. Theriault's way of teaching anyway...if you're not solidly based in historical facts then you're susceptible to any cockamamie idea floating around...and there are quite a few a these nowadays.  I say all this because James A. Michener's 1974 historical novel Centennial, set in a fictional Colorado county on the Wyoming border north of Denver, mixes the two approaches in a disconcerting way.  After reading it I feel I understand the trends and eras leading up to the present (the author's 1974, that is) while at the same time I became very uncomfortable with all of the "facts": the characters, locales, and events, while very similar to real historical people, locations, and events, are nonetheless fictional.  So now I have this very-well researched and described fictional mental picture that is in all likelihood a very faithful representation of what the area around Centennial, a made-up town along the real Platte River, was really like.  But that's the way it is with historical fiction, and I have to admit to greatly admiring Michener's attention to detail as well as his compassion and discernment in presenting all sides, good and bad, of his characters and the way societies and movements developed and declined there over the years...

Centennial is in essence a fictional history researcher's account of his commissioned area in northern Colorado, and he goes all the way back to the Earth's formation and the area's geological origins...then on to presenting life from the viewpoints of different animals populating the same region, including the dinosaur diplodocus, an early horse, a bison named "Rufus", a mother beaver, and a battle between a rattlesnake and eagle.  How this fictional researcher came across these experiences strikes me as being a bit dubious, but he presents them all as fact...as well as the stories of a Clovis spear-maker from nearly 10,000 BC and Lame Beaver, an Arapaho Indian warrior.  Don't get me wrong: I loved all of these little stories...and the book itself is by and large a collection of short stories bound in chronological order by the narrative connecting them all to the same geography.  I already greatly admired Michener's writing after reading his 1982 novel Space, which I recently reviewed.  I intend to embark on another Michener book in the near future, but I don't know which of his 40 novels it will be.  So if you're interested in getting a good sense of what it was like in the American west...more specifically northern Colorado just east of the Rockies, you'll get a lot of input from Centennial about geology, dinosaurs, mammoths, horses, beavers, rattlesnakes, eagles, Arapaho-Shoshone-Pawnee-Cheyenne-Comanche Indians, French traders, the Army out west, outlaws and the gun culture, the gold and silver rushes, white prejudice against Indians and Mexicans, German, Russian, and Japanese settlers, the Mexicans and their revolution, cattle drives, ranching, religious attitudes of the time, the tactics of land acquisition and control, farming beets and then wheat, the Dust Bowl, and the effects of urban development on the environment...just to name a few items...then I say go for it!

Weekly Short Stories: 1953 Science Fiction, Part 1

When I recently picked up my own copy of Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 15 (1953), it struck me that I've owned that particular book in the series longer than most of the others, having read several of its stories a number of times.  Today I'm covering the first three of the selected science fiction short stories from 1953: all three are set off in the future on other planets, the first two of which happen to be Mars...

THE BIG HOLIDAY by Fritz Leiber
This story reads like something that Ray Bradbury would have written about the good ol' days growing up in a small midwestern town, but the people here are living on a future terraformed Mars...and seem to have gotten their priorities straight, celebrating the "Big Holiday" by laying down their work and engaging in good-natured community games, feasts and parties...along with the rest of the now-enlightened collective population of Earth and Mars.  It's a story of hope, that somewhere along the line the things that should really matter to us will finally become the determining priorities for humanity's future instead of destructive warfare, fear, and hate...

CRUCIFIXUS ETIAM  by William M. Miller, Jr.
A young man from Peru, enticed by the good pay for laboring on Mars, signs up for a five-year stint there.  He is fully aware that eventually he will probably lose his ability to breathe on his own and become permanently dependent on oxygen directly supplied by a machine to his bloodstream, but he struggles in vain against what increasingly seems inevitable.  And why are all of them working so hard anyway to dig up the strange substance from deep under the planet's surface?  Another Mars tale with an ultimately optimistic ending...but in this case to get to heaven you must first go through hell...

FOUR IN ONE by Damon Knight
One of my all-time favorite sci-fi stories, Four In One takes place far into a future when the entire human-settled galaxy is locked in the throes of a civil war between two implacable factions. On a hasty project to claim an previously unexplored-but-strategic planet for one side in the conflict, a biologist and three others in his team accidently fall into a mass of strange protoplasm...which proceeds to digest their bodies, leaving only their brains, eyes, and nervous systems intact within the mottled mass.  How protagonist George Meister assesses and adapts to his unique situation and how he deals with the others sharing his predicament form the flow of this fascinating and singular tale.  And the ending definitely provides food for thought...

Next week: more reviews of good 1953 sci-fi short stories...

A Little Rant About Introverts and Extroverts

I have more than once heard it stated that people more oriented to introverted personalities are fundamentally different from their extroverted counterparts in one very significant way: while an extrovert will feel emotionally and spiritually energized from social interactions and deliberately seek them out...the more people and the louder the better...it is precisely this type of situation that drains introverts, who relish solitude to replenish themselves.  Being such an introvert, I really don't need around me any extroverts who think it is part of their mission in life to change me into a more "social" creature and impose their view of social interaction on me: I've seen extroverts in action and oftentimes it isn't very pretty, what with all of the backbiting, gossip, grandstanding, verbal aggression and manipulation I hear...

Speaking from my own experience...and not necessarily yours...it is complicated enough for my feeble mind to figure out where someone else is coming from in simple one-on-one conversations, much less to sit at a table or in a room where most of the people there are simultaneously assessing and judging each other while in conversation and spewing out stuff about others who are not present.  I remember even back to the first grade when the teacher would simply walk out of the classroom for a couple of minutes and the entire class would erupt into spontaneous, loud chatter...I would just sit there overcome and immobilized by it all.  But school is where extroverts get the automatic upper hand over introverts and the latter are often psychologically beaten down over the years to the point where...well, it all seems pointless.  Introverts are not incomplete or insecure people who need to be brought out of their "shells"...Lord knows, I've encountered some extroverts who have to rank among the most insulated and insecure I've experienced...

Most of us are mixes of introverted and extroverted personalities, seeking a kind of balance whenever we're either too isolated or too crowded.  Although without a doubt pretty far down the introverted scale, I still enjoy my family and associating with others, as well as being interested in what goes on around me...I just don't want to be swept off into oblivion by the masses...or even a small group...

My 500 All-Time Favorite Songs: #410-401

Here we go with my reactions to ten more songs on my 500 all-time favorites list.  And with it go the first hundred songs...after this only 400 to go...

410 SIMPLE LIFE...Elton John
I liked of lot of Elton John's songs from the early-to-mid 1970s...and then suddenly just when it seemed he was at his peak stardom, I didn't like his output.  Since then he came out with some four songs that I really like, among them this long 1992 single that got a lot of airplay on adult contemporary radio.  Although Elton is more of a piano man, it is the harmonica on Simple Life that makes it special...

409 LORDS OF THE BOARDS...Guano Apes
A German rock band singing about snowboarding?  An unlikely combination to make the airwaves, yet Rock 104 in Gainesville played this song in their regular rotation during 2000.  Female lead vocal, heavy guitar riffs, and over-the-top screaming made this one ultimately my favorite song of the year...and no, I never snowboarded and probably never will...

408 TICKET TO RIDE...the Beatles
Before he bought the band's Help! album containing Ticket to Ride, my father, in 1965 decidedly a Beatles fan, recorded this song off the radio on his big tape deck and then played it and replayed it over and over.  I thought...and still do...that it was one of their very best songs, but I heard it so much back then that I tired of it, not recovering until relatively recently...

407 SOMETHING IN THE AIR...Thunderclap Newman
This is a late sixties song marked by a high-pitched male lead singer, lush accompanying strings, and a unique ragtime piano instrumental break in its middle..."we've got to get together sooner or later, because the revolution's here and you know it's right."  A piece that sounds like it was promoting itself as the anthem of those counterculture times. The Who's Pete Townshend was the creative force in both forming the band and intricately producing the record...

406 ORINOCO FLOW...Enya
Orinoco Flow, referring to a long South American river, gives that place a sense of mystery and anticipation, and Enya's singing is wonderful. Plus, I think the video she made for it will greatly enhance your enjoyment of this 1988 hit as it did for me. Very dreamy, just let it all go and fall back into this musical and lyrical adventure...

405 WICHITA LINEMAN...Glen Campbell
I used to hear this a lot on the radio during my DXing hobby phase in the late 1960s: this consisted of trying to pick up as many different AM radio stations from across the country as I could...I ended up with a little more than 500 from 31 different states plus several other countries using an ordinary cheap radio we picked up from Walgreens.  The song is what I call "thoughtful country", an introspective look from a man missing his love and whose job at times makes him feel a bit alienated and cut off...

404 POLICY OF TRUTH...Depeche Mode
Michael Corleone would definitely dig the lyrics of this song off Depeche Mode's 1989 Violator album, which in my opinion was easily their finest work.  Great dance tune and wicked synthesizer licks, along with lines like "Things could be so different now, it used to be so civilized, you will always wonder how it would have been if you'd only lied".   There's a cynical kind of wisdom here that I find lacking elsewhere, which makes Policy of Truth stand out to me...

403 ONE WAY OR ANOTHER...Blondie
Back in the early 1980s, New York-based Blondie was the premier New Wave band with a female lead singer...followed closely by Missing Persons from Los Angeles.  Deborah Harry sang so expressively and put a lot of humor into her craft...this song is a case in point.  Such personality and presence...too bad they didn't last longer than they did after one of their founding members fell chronically ill and Harry left the business to care for him...

402 RASPBERRY BERET...Prince
Prince was one of those confounding musical artists who was so talented and creative, but tended to choose musical styles that steered me away from him instead of following him.  In 1985, though, he seemed to be turning in a different, more listenable direction...but didn't go there in the end.  Still, I always have his singles hit Raspberry Beret, in a style more reminiscent of the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper era than of his own catalogue of recordings...

401 MAKE ME BAD...Korn
This is a peculiar example of a wild and crazy hard/metal rock song packaged in such a slick way that at moments it seems like a lounge act.  I heard it for a couple of years around the turn of the century on the radio until they finally told me who did it...of course, it had to be Korn, with Jonathan Davis screeching his demented heart out...one of the catchiest songs of that time while hard-hitting and not a little bit bizarre...

Next week: #400-391...

Trump's Idolizers and Haters

The phenomenon-turned-president known as Donald Trump has certainly by far been the headline news item going on now for more than four years, with most of the country's voting-age population pitted against each other, steeped either in irrational adulation or hatred for the man.  No doubt Trump himself has greatly instigated this stoked-up passion about himself since he has to be one of the most narcissistic egomaniacs I've ever seen...no matter what the story, it always has to be about him, in his private Trump-centered universe.  I never did like him ever since the role he played as a big-spending team owner in the demise of the United States Football League, a pro league in the mid-eighties I then had high hopes for.  Then, after Obama was elected president, Trump latched on to the birther movement claiming that this president wasn't really born in the U.S. and as such wasn't legally the president after all.  I watched live on TV when he declared his own candidacy for the high office and was impressed with his oratorical skills...and apparently so did a lot of others since the Republicans made him their nominee in 2016 and he ultimately won the general election later that year...

So right up front I'll state it...I dislike Donald Trump, yet he still has some positive aspects to his personality...including his lifelong personal example against drug abuse...and takes positions on some issues that I support.  I thought the Republicans made a mistake in 2016 rejecting stalwart conservative candidate Ted Cruz, one of the smartest senators in my opinion, and that Cruz could have also beaten Hillary Clinton in the election.  But whereas I found many of Trump's comments and Tweets to be offensive and insulting...especially the name-calling and derision he heaped on any perceived opponent or critic, including "Lyin' Ted"...I noticed that his haters were often calling him racist on a number of things that were clearly taken out of context and distorted.  And through all these years and up to the present, I find myself taken aback at some of Trump's actions and words while at the same time rejecting a lot of the criticism coming from the never-Trumpers...I could list specific examples but I don't really need anyone from either camp barraging me with links and emotion-laden reactions...

I tend to form my judgments about the politicians I see and hear on TV and radio from my own impressions, and not from the highly-spun interpretations that pass for news analysis these days.  But for those irrational folks who either think Trump can do no right or no wrong, they tend to insulate themselves within their own feedback loop bubbles of TV channels, radio talk shows, and Internet sites that promote and reinforce their own preconceptions and do not entertain the notion that you can support (or oppose) someone while at times finding things about them that you disagree (or agree) with.  That Donald Trump never admits to making a mistake and is always doubling down against any criticism of him doesn't mean that you or I have to engage in the same intellectually dishonest folly.  After all, we the people are supposed to be the bosses, aren't we...not the politicians and not the often biased and lazy media talking heads trying to convince us that up is down, war is peace, liberty is bigotry, prosperity is privilege, compromise is betrayal, and so on.  In discussing politics with others I've gotten into the habit, once I discover someone supports a particular politician, of asking them to share with me something...anything...that they dislike about the politician or his or her stance on some issue.  And if they can't find even one thing, then I tend to suspect that they are idolizers, not independent thinkers...and it's fruitless trying to discuss anything with such types. In every presidential election I voted in since 1976 I saw good and bad in both major candidates and had to thoughtfully weigh which one would make a better president before I made my decision...and that includes the last election.  Why not join me and do the same this time around and leave the idolizers and haters to wallow in their own comfortable self-imposed bubbles...

Our Visit to Pine Mountain, Georgia

The Pine Mountain/Warm Springs area of west-central Georgia is probably best known for where President Franklin D. Roosevelt spent much of his presidency in the Little White House at Warm Springs, where the spring water there seemed to help him with the aftermath of his polio affliction that immobilized him in his later years.  Melissa and I visited here last week for a couple of days, lodging at a place about halfway between Pine Mountain (on the west) and Warm Springs (on the east)...Picture #1 shows a field on the property where they hold outdoor weddings.  It is very hilly here...mountainous, especially by Florida's standards...and the scenery is beautiful.  Although the spot had great historical significance due to FDR's legacy we focused on just relaxing, partaking of the area's shops and eateries, and hiking on the Pine Mountain Trail...which snakes through the woods, across streams, and up and down hills through several miles.  Thursday morning we entered the Trail at its start, situated next to a TV tower on the west side of ALT-US 27 just north of SR 190...see the map, Picture #2.  On the trail Melissa fashioned her own walking stick from a branch lying nearby and we trudged down (and up) the very uneven path, with large roots, stones, and abrupt drops and rises forcing us to look down while we walked.  We met several different parties of hikers along the way...this Pine Mountain Trail is very popular, and some hardy souls chose to pack up and camp more deeply along the trail.  We eventually decided to turn back in order to get out before dusk set in...Pictures #3 and #4 show the trail, with the latter displaying a stream crossing on unstable rocks...

In Warm Springs we ate at the Bulloch House, a famous restaurant where Roosevelt ate and which showed many historic pictures, one of the President smilingly about to cut into a large roast turkey and my favorite showing him actually standing up, on the rear car of a train at the Warm Springs station.  They still have a railway there...albeit probably now just freight...while in Pine Mountain to the west they got rid of theirs in favor of a walking-biking trail.  We shopped and ate in Warm Springs on Thursday, supping at Mac's Barbeque behind Bulloch and did the same the next day in Pine Mountain, breakfasting at Eddie Mae's Country Kitchen and trying out UniquExpressions Coffee Shop...Melissa's in Picture #5 in front on one of their Main Street shops.  Then we headed on back homeward.  I recommend this part of Georgia to those, especially from Florida, who just want to get away for a little while but don't feel like having to navigate through and past Atlanta to get to the northern Georgia mountains...that last picture was taken off the side of SR 190 where they offered a place to pull off the road to see the scenic view.  There wasn't a person we met anywhere there who wasn't overly friendly and helpful...can't beat that!  I'd like to return someday and extensively check out the Little White House and the nearby Callaway Gardens.  Still, it's good to be back home again...

Quote of the Week...from William Arthur Ward

Three enemies of personal peace: regret over yesterday's mistakes, anxiety over tomorrow's problems, and ingratitude for today's blessings.                       ---William Arthur Ward

William Arthur Ward was a Christian Wesleyan/Methodist leader in the last century who wrote many philosophical maxims about how one can live the most effectively.  I picked the above quote to discuss because its wisdom is so self-evident...yet how many of us ignore its clear message? For all of us, our lives take place in the "now", not the past or future, yet how much do we spend in terms of time and energy focusing our attention on anything but what's actually going on around us?  Sure, like just about everyone else I can harbor all kinds of second-guessing and resentment about things I should have (or not) done in the past or the way other people treated me...but while all that is going on in my head I'm letting my real life...happening right now...go by the wayside.  And about tomorrow...what I do while focused on what is going on now will take care of that abstraction of time as it slips into the present "today".  And Ward's last part, about the need to take notice of the many blessings in my present life, is the solution to the problem of dwelling too much in the past or future: after all, if my temporal home in the present is so attractive with its many blessings, then why direct my attention "anytime" else?

John "Maddog" Wallace, Marathon Runner

When I was just getting into my middle-age fascination with distance running early in 2010, I happened across an interesting ongoing blog titled Maddog Marathon...click on the title link to access it.  It featured very detailed accounts of John "Maddog" Wallace, twelve years my senior, who had run hundreds of marathons and held the world record for most countries run in a marathon.  I always got a kick out of his often blunt and colorful writing, including his critiques of the events he ran in Gainesville and Ocala...especially describing those BAHs (bad-ass hills) on my hometown's stretch of NW16th Avenue between 34th and 13th Streets.  I might have even unknowingly seen him at the Ocala event, which I was also running that year but at the half-marathon distance.  Sadly, right after I began to follow Maddog's exploits he began to come down with one health problem after another and his running...along with his enjoyment of it...drastically suffered.  Two years ago he ran probably his final marathon, in the tiny Pacific country of Palau: Wallace ran a total of 383 marathons in 132 different countries.  After his retirement from marathons, he wrote a book about his experiences, titled Global Runner...here's a link to his webpage where you can read further [John Wallace]…

I suspect that John Wallace had more than just running marathons as a goal: it was a context in which he could extensively travel...and I'm sure that unlike most of us he had at his disposal deep financial resources that he could draw upon.  My goals are much more modest than Maddog's...but I like to think that some more running and traveling adventures are in store for me as well, albeit on a smaller scale, to be sure...

Weekly Short Stories: 1952 Science Fiction, Part 4

I conclude my look back at the year in quality science fiction short stories with my reactions to the final five entries from the anthology Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SG Stories 14 (1952). Here they are...

THE MARTIAN WAY by Isaac Asimov
Mars in in the early years of becoming settled and a demagogic politician on Earth uses its consumption of water to scapegoat it and rise in political prominence...Asimov meant the story as an analogy to Senator McCarthy's then-red baiting tactics against others to enhance his own national political stature.  The settlers come up with their own solution to Earth's embargo on water, and it involves a bold adventure...

THE IMPACTED MAN by Robert Sheckley
Super-entities are responsible...by working on awarded contracts...for designing the various elements of the cosmos, including our own galaxy.  Its designer accidentally leaves a glitch on one of its planets...naturally Earth...in which a man finds himself slipping into the past or future depending on whether he walks down or up.  This is a satirical look at how our government does its own business handing out contracts to various companies..

WHAT'S IT LIKE OUT THERE? by Edmond Hamilton
Whereas the first story in this group painted an optimistic picture of settling Mars, this one goes in the other direction describing the various horrors inflicted on the second expedition there, as a survivor finds himself back on Earth wearily visiting the bereaved families of his buddies who didn't make it and trying to comfort them without fully explaining what really happened there...

SAIL ON! SAIL ON! by Philip José Farmer
It seems like the 1492 Columbus expedition to the Americas, but the priest on board communicates by radio in code to his counterpart on the Canaries...and soon it becomes clear that this is an alternate universe where certain historical events went different ways than in our own, creating interesting scenarios.  And, it seems, there are a few other significant differences as evidenced by the story's ending...

COST OF LIVING by Robert Sheckley
The notion of endless and effortless credit, to be passed on from one generation to another, is the theme of this prescient tale as a man and woman at some time in the not-so-distant future cannot bring themselves to say "enough" and stop buying their costly and often unused labor-saving devices on credit. It's all in how one defines a "need" vs. a "want"...and if something is deemed a need, then is it really necessarily to always buy the more luxurious and expensive model?  This story accurately illustrates how easily-available credit can distort people from making realistic economic choices in their lives based on their priorities and ability to pay for them.  Both editors expressed a analogy between Cost of Living and how our government runs up its own debt, to be paid back with interest by future generations...

Next week I'll begin a look at the year 1953 in science fiction short stories...