My 500 All-Time Favorite Songs: #340-331

With today's ten songs, this list is now a third of the way through...so there's a lot more good music to come.  It's interesting that the digital era we are now enjoying in 2019 affords us the opportunity to deeply investigate different artists' collective output from decades past when such an undertaking during their time of stardom would have been daunting.  Here are my takes on the next ten songs on my all-time favorites list...

340 MUSIC...John Miles
John Miles is one of those accomplished musical artists who achieved much more success in Britain and Europe than in America.  This 1976 song got a lot of album-rock radio airplay then (I used to listen to Miami's "Zeta-4" on 94.9).  It has an epic sound to it, and the lyrics are limited but poignant: "To live without my music would be impossible to do, in this world of troubles my music pulls me through".  It also has some pretty cool orchestrated instrumental breaks in it.  I associate Music with that great year in my life, especially the summer...it's one of two songs with that title on this 500 favorites list: can you guess who did the other one?

339 NO TIME...the Guess Who
While I was living through the Guess Who's mass popularity from 1969-71, I caught on late to their high quality music, becoming a fan of this Canadian band in '71 and catching up on their earlier works, of which this is one.  The Guess Who could have been like their similarly-named British counterpart the Who and lasted longer, but alas, some groups simply do not have the inner chemistry that invites long-term collaboration...the Animals and Creedence Clearwater Revival were other examples of stupendous acts that broke up too early. No Time has a double meaning: the singer is fed up with whom he's singing to and is ready to move on...but also, it's a general complaint about simply not having enough time, period...

338 A MATTER OF TRUST...Billy Joel
I didn't care for Billy Joel's later music that he produced, starting with his An Innocent Man album in 1983...except for this one 1986 song, which has a strong rock element to it.  He's all relational as he coaxes his listener to hang in there, it's all gonna be okay: "The closer you get to the fire the more you get burned, but that won't happen to us cause it's always been a matter of trust"...

337 I'LL CRY INSTEAD...the Beatles
Appearing on both the Beatles' 1964 A Hard Day's Night and Something New albums, this song is extremely short at less than 1:50, but both musically and lyrically I've always liked it...and time seems to have aged it quite well.  I'll Cry Instead is a John Lennon song and hints at his increasing disillusionment about the band's fame and mounting pressures, as expressed in subsequent songs of his over the next two years...

336 NOT FADE AWAY...the Rolling Stones
One of the Rolling Stones' early singles, this is another very short song from 1964...written by Buddy Holly and using the renowned Bo Diddley beat.  You can clearly hear multi-instrumentalist Brian Jones' influence on this song as his harmonica and guitar virtuosity meshes well with Mick Jagger's rough-edged singing.  Jones had played a major role in bringing the Stones together and choosing their early successful cover hits. Unfortunately, he either couldn't or was unwilling to write his own songs and Jagger and Keith Richards...who did...eventually took over control of the band...

335 AUTOBAHN...Kraftwerk
Autobahn is the first of three "mega" songs revealed on this list of my all-time favorites, taking up an entire (vinyl) album side at 22+ minutes of duration.  The band and song's lyrics are both German and describe travelling down the German Autobahn, in one section even mimicking the Doppler Effect of traffic passing in the opposite direction.  The recurring melody with the lyrics "Wir fahren, fahren, fahren auf der Autobahn" reminded me of Mussorgsky's classical masterpiece Pictures at an Exhibition and how its Promenade theme would wind its way around the other elements of the piece.  Autobahn is probably the greatest product of the techno genre of music...I recently discovered it's also great to listen to while running...

334 BAKER STREET...Gerry Rafferty
Gerry Rafferty, the lead singer from his earlier band Stealers Wheel, exploded on the music scene in 1978 as a solo artist with his album City to City, from which Baker Street was released as a single.  Rafferty's mellow singing voice contrasted sharply with the heavy saxophone and guitar riffs on this big hit.  And that wild, weeping guitar ending...whew.  When I think of the summer of 1978, this great song inevitably comes to mind.  And more than forty years later I keep hearing it played on a number of radio stations. Rafferty himself was ambivalent about his musical stardom and eschewed performing in concerts...

333 BLACK MIRROR...Arcade Fire
Black Mirror is the opening track from the alternative rock band Arcade Fire's brilliant Neon Bible album from 2007.  It's also the first song I heard and identified with this band...and motivated me to check out some other of their songs, some of which I'll discuss later on this list of mine.  I heard it played on Gainesville's WHHZ/100.5 "The Buzz" just before they decided to steer their programming format to acts like (shudder) Nickelback, Offspring and Shinedown and away from the more indie-oriented music I had grown to follow...

332 YESTERDAY'S GONE...Chad and Jeremy
With a beat that bears similarity to the Beatles' I'll Cry Instead (#337), Yesterday's Gone predates that song by a couple of years.  It was released in the USA in June of 1964 but my Miami radio station WQAM wouldn't play it...later on it was recognized as a "golden oldie", and well-deserved at that.  The music and lyrics impart a feeling of wistfulness and a sense of closure about a relationship that had run its course.  I ended up buying the single in 1976...

331 YOU WERE ON MY MIND...We Five was a one-hit-wonder American band that produced this hit song in 1965...they broke up a couple of years later but eventually reunited, probably seeing the lucrativeness of trading off on their established name.  I think they're still together.  Lead singer Beverly Bivens sang this tune with such feeling that I had to take note...it's a song that I've only increased in appreciation over the years...

Next week: songs #330-321...

Enjoying Watching Mr. Bean Reruns

Mr. Bean was a British sitcom series that originally aired from 1990 to 1995, comprising 15 total episodes.  It starred comedian Rowan Atkinson as the title character, a man who finds himself in all sorts of predicaments involving everyday living and who never talks while coming up with novel ways to get around the "system".  It's all in the great old tradition of slapstick comedy from the silent films of the 1920s...Buster Keaton comes to mind as one of that era's biggest stars.  Somehow Facebook decided that I needed to watch some clips of Mr. Bean and put it on my newsfeed...that's how I got hooked on the series.  YouTube has several of the episodes as well, although each episode is actually a composite of several smaller stories that stand well on their own.  The latest clip I saw has Mr. Bean getting on a roller coaster ride, hogging the front seat all to himself and then finding, while the ride is going on, that the screaming passengers behind him are annoying and it's all so boring...he falls asleep and has to be roused after it's over: hilarious...

Apparently a cartoon spinoff series about Mr. Bean was also made, as well as two feature-length films.  But for the time being, I now have something else worth watching on TV after I get off from work late at night besides reruns of The Prisoner...what is it about those old British series, anyway...Fawlty Towers, Dave Allen at Large, and Benny Hill were also classics...

Just Finished Reading Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo

The novel Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo, which was just published a couple of months ago, is a fantasy/horror story that focuses on the eight so-called "secret" societies of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut that have housed some famous people including the two George Bushes and John Kerry.  The title refers to Lethe, the house that the others have set up over the years to monitor their activities and ensure that their magic doesn't get abused...oh, yeah, this story assumes that the hocus-pocus BS behind the different groups' rituals is real and that each of the houses stands on a "nexus" of magic that empowers them.  Galaxy Stern, or "Alex", is in that ninth house largely because of her special gift: she can see the ghosts...or "greys" as they are called here...around her without having to drink a highly toxic potion that the others in her house must resort to.  Alex had a troubled youth and is coming off surviving a traumatic multiple homicide: her unlikely entrance to Yale is an opportunity for her to begin her life afresh...or is it?  Darlington, her main colleague (and love interest) at Lethe, figures heavily into the story's flow as the murder of a young woman who was a "towner" (not a Yale student) casts suspicion on the different houses.  Alex plays the detective in trying to find the guilty party and soon uncovers a wide assortment of depravity and likely culprits.  The story worked for me, although it does have some pretty dark themes and a lot of violence...definitely not for the squeamish...

Ninth House for me inevitably brings up comparisons with two fantasy series I've read: J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter and Lev Grossman's The Magicians, both of which involved magic at schools.  But unlike those two "fantastic" series, Yale is a real place in a real city, New Haven.  The author attended Yale herself and actually was a member of one of the secret houses.  Whereas with Rowling and Grossman's scenarios the magical world was one of wonders fraught with some danger, Bardugo's vision is overwhelmingly dark and foreboding...not anything that the reader would be liable to fall into a daydream about being a part of.  And the notions of privelige, ambition, and elitism pervade the author's negative portrayal of student life at Yale: it's as if everyone here were a Slytherin! By the way, without giving away the ending it did seem apparent to me that this may be only the first book in yet another fantasy magic/school series. Should that be the case, count me in for the duration...but if you can't handle horror fiction I'd steer clear of it all...

Quote of the Week...from Robert Pirsig

To live only for some future goal is shallow.  It's the sides of the mountain that sustain life, not the top.                                                        ...Robert Pirsig

Robert Pirsig, who passed away in 2017 at age 88, was a modern-era American philosopher who concerned himself with the interrelationship between the concepts of Truth, Quality, and Good...among other things.  He is most known for his best-selling 1974 philosophical novel Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, which I read during my work breaks in 1990.  The above quote of his resonated with me, although the single word only in the first sentence is crucial to its truth.  I think it's very important to have a whole series of goals in different areas of my life...some folks sadly become so single-minded about one in particular and then, regardless whether it is actually achieved or not, they will often suffer deflation, disappointment, and disillusionment.  Didn't Peggy Lee once sing "Is that all there is" when she recounted the experiences she had once looked so forward to but which...as expressed in the book of Ecclesiastes...turned out to be nothing more than a "chasing after the wind".  But, as Pirsig intimated, if I elevate the process as well as the result of my endeavors...starting from the moment that I envision a goal and begin to set out to its accomplishment, then my life will be enriched in each and every day I strive to better myself.  Back in 2010 I trained hard and long to build up my endurance to run a marathon race early the next year.  The final result was a setback: although I finished the actual race, I had suffered a leg strain injury and had to walk the last 7 miles of the 26.2 mile distance.  But my training over the span of several weeks was very meaningful and enjoyable to me...I'd go up and down many roads in a wildly convoluted course and enjoyed experiencing the sights and sounds around me, not to mention a wide variety of weather conditions.  And I'd listen to some fantastic music as well off my mp3 while running.  The upshot was that I have fond memories of that adventurous time and no regrets about not reaching the "mountaintop" in the way I had wanted...

While elevating the process of endeavor in my mind is akin to Pirsig's notion of thriving on the mountainside, I think that it can also be fruitful to design my goals in such a way that their accomplishment will lead to further endeavors to accomplish future goals, many of which may not even be in my mind at the present time.  I think it's important to strive for things...it's a positive part of our human nature...and going through the triumphs and trials in doing that makes life a lot more interesting...

Here Comes a Nameable Decade and New Opportunities

It looks like we're finally approaching a time...it's been twenty years...in which people can once again comfortably refer to the decade that they're living through.  After the twenties, thirties, forties, fifties, sixties, seventies, eighties, and nineties of the last century, we ran into the "units", "zeros" or "aughts" of the early 2000s and then the never-used "teens" of the ten-year span we're almost through with...I noticed that CNN stopped their shows about the past decades after the "nineties"...if you can't name something, then how can you talk about it?  And while we're at it, can we finally stop saying "two thousand twenty" and starting calling the years like we did in the good old days as combinations of two-digit numbers? . "Twenty twenty" sounds good to me, but so does twenty nineteen, for that matter...in spite of folks still saying "two thousand nineteen"...

In anticipation of entering a decade that actually has a name, I think that here is an opportunity for personal reflection as to what I want to accomplish, not just in the year to come but also during the approaching twenties.  Getting rid of bad personal habits, instilling good ones, learning new things, experiencing adventures, being responsible with the health and prosperity I've been blessed with, enriching my relationships with my loved ones...all are worthwhile ventures.  But with time inevitably come trials and setbacks...developing the character and compassion to deal with my own and those of others is going to be a crucial element of the coming years, I am sure.  One thing I am certain of: change does not come in the future but rather in the present moment as I live though my life, one day at a time...

Hey, whaddya know, CNN has actually been reviewing the first two decades of this century...they just call it the 2000s without designating either of the two decades we've gone through...

Weekly Short Stories: 1954 Science Fiction, Part 3

Here are my reactions to four more science fiction stories from the year 1954, as they appeared in the anthology Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 16 (1954).  To be perfectly honest, I wasn't all that thrilled with the first three below...sometimes when you're reading anthologies and collections, though, you have to cross some deserts of dry literature in order to access fertile lands of imagination and insight...

LETTERS FROM LAURA by Mildred Clingerman
I think this brief story may have been considered back in 1954 to have been a little provocative, which then enabled it to gain some notoriety...you'll have to read it to know what I'm talking about.  Anyway, a young woman writes a series of letters...first to her mother and then to a friend...about her time travel experience: in her time in the future, they have time travel tour companies.  Her trip is to ancient Crete, where a certain monster is reputed to dwell...

TRANSFORMER by Chad Oliver
Another story that reads more like a Twilight Zone episode...I'm thinking mostly of that Five Characters in Search of an Exit episode...Transformer is told from the perspective of a toy figurine woman stuck in a bratty boy's model train setup.  She describes the abuse he inflicts on the other "inhabitants" there...actually, this sounds more like Toy Story, doesn't it?  The gimmick to this tale is laid out in the beginning, so I'm not giving anything away.  It just didn't work for me...

THE MUSIC MASTER OF BABYLON by Edgar Pangborn
It's toward the end of the 21st century and, after nuclear Armageddon and the resulting overwhelming depopulation of Earth and breakup of social structures, a man finds himself spending the final decades of his life in solitude on the northern edge of what used to be New York City...and has sole access to a great old museum there, one that features a grand room with a piano.  A player himself, he wants to properly play a piece that a latter-day composer had composed a century earlier when the world was beginning to come apart.  One day in the museum he discovers he isn't alone...this story is more a somber post-apocalyptic mood piece, something you're either going to like a lot or not at all...

THE END OF SUMMER by Algis Budrys
I have to admit I was struggling through most of this story about gained immortality and the need to continually reinstate memories until I got near the end...and then what a revelation that was!  After reading it I understand that absolute immortality carries with it some pretty serious flaws...but if biological research and medical applications continue to advance our life spans, along with a higher quality of life in those later years, I'm all for it...

Next week I'll finish my look back at short science fiction from 1954...

Just Finished Reading Alaska by James A. Michener

A very, very long book, James A. Michener's 1988 historical/geographical novel Alaska may take a while to read through, but I think you'll like it should you have the available time for this undertaking...a friend from high school recommended it to me.  It's my fourth Michener novel so far, following Space, Centennial, and Poland.  Like Centennial, which concerned itself with a fictional Colorado county just east of the Rockies and north of Denver, Michener goes back millions of years at the start of his Alaska saga, describing the geological origins of the area in terms of continental drift, as well as revealing something I didn't know: because of its relatively dry climate, in spite of its far northern location most of Alaska wasn't subjected to the glaciation that ran rampant across the rest of the North American continent.  That's important, because during much of the early history of humanity's crossing over from Asia to Alaska the glaciers served as an effective barrier to immigration to the rest of the continent...one notable exception: the Athabascans, which populated Alaska along with other native groups like the Tlingit, Aleuts, and Eskimos, actually had a split-off group that did make it further south to form the Navaho nation.  Before the author deals with these groups...and the expansionist Russians' brutal treatment of them (especially the Aleuts) starting in the 18th century...he discusses mastodons and then mammoths as early inhabitants of the area...

One common trait, it seems, of Michener novels is the mixture of fictional characters and locations with actual historical events...Alaska was more difficult for me to distinguish the real from imaginary since I was generally pretty unfamiliar to begin with about its geography and famous historical figures.  One common thread through the years that he exposes is the prejudice of the supposedly more "civilized" European cultures against the native people and their exploitation of them.  From the Russians with their sea otter hunting and plans to stamp out native religions in favor of Orthodox Christianity on to the early mismanagement by the United States after they acquired Alaska from the Russians in 1867, Michener presents the historical trends through the eyes of his own fictional characters as those actually living in Alaska find themselves in an essentially lawless place, unable even to legally buy the land they live on. Another theme is unrepresentative rule of Alaska from the outside, be it from St. Petersburg or Seattle. The Gold Rush in the Klondike and at Nome around the turn of the century, political and judicial corruption, the salmon industry, World War II in the Aleutians against the Japanese, the discovery of oil at Prudhoe Bay, big game hunting, bush plane flying, the push for statehood, mountain climbing, reform efforts to help the native peoples in the late 20th century...all receive their fair share of treatment in this book.  My favorite part was an exploit that a fictional character performed which mirrored the same accomplishment of the very real Max Hirshberg in 1900: a 1000+ mile bicycle ride in sub-zero conditions on the frozen Yukon River!  I also loved the great detail in which Michener describes the tumultuous life cycle of the salmon...from the fish's point of view! And I've left out so much...

Alaska is, to be sure, very lengthy...but it's a worthwhile read.  I'll probably be looking into another of Michener's forty novels in the near future.  For some reason I've had trouble finding them in bookstores, either new or used, so I've been checking them out from the library instead.  Still, even there I'm having difficulty coming across some of his books I want, such as The Source, which another friend recommended.  I might have to order some of them from Amazon...

My 500 All-Time Favorite Songs: #350-341

What a joy it is listening to these great old songs...and old most of them are.  Even the two most recent ones from todays' entries are 14-15 years old...man, does time pass quickly or what? Well, here are my comments about the next ten from my top 500 favorites..

350 MY WIFE...the Who
The Who's bass guitarist John Entwistle usually contributed a song or two for each of their albums...in this respect he was like the Beatles' George Harrison, although Harrison's music was by far consistently better.  Entwistle's songs usually had lyrical themes that were a little off-center, like for example Boris the Spider and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. In My Wife the singer finds himself in trouble with his better half after he drank too much one night and got thrown into jail...and now she's coming after him!  A little sad and very funny...Entwistle not only played bass and sang on it but also performed the piano and horn parts: definitely his best work ever...you can hear it on their 1971 Who's Next album.  Sadly, John passed away in 2002...

349 ROCKIN' IN THE FREE WORLD... Neil Young
This was one of my favorite songs in 1989, the year after George Bush (before needing to add "H.W." to his name) won a bitterly fought election for president against Michael Dukakis.  I think the dirtiness of the campaign must have angered Young, who co-opted two of Bush's campaign slogans as well as his war service record in the song's line, "We got a thousand points of light for the homeless man, we got a kinder, gentler machine gun hand".  Since I had wanted Dukakis to win, I flowed with the lyrics...later I discovered that, at least in the media, America only seemed to have a terrible homeless problem whenever a "heartless" Republican happened to be president...

348 WALKING WITH A GHOST...Tegan and Sara
In 2004 my music listening was narrowly defined and clear: alternative rock, for which I got my share by listening to my local station WHHZ/100.5 "The Buzz".  Strong in its rotation during this time was Walking With a Ghost, a very catchy tune with limited lyrics and a strong feeling of abruptness about it ...Tegan and Sara are identical twins who made a string of successful albums together.  Their songs seem to be largely about relationships and the problems arising from them...this song was about one that went to "ghost" stage...

347 SOMEONE SAVED MY LIFE TONIGHT...Elton John
It takes a great deal of skill to record a very slow song and get away with it...perhaps the slowest one of all time (that was worth listening to, that is) was Led Zeppelin's The Rain Song.  Elton John put a lot of feeling into this piece, which came out in 1975 but which for some reason I didn't really get into until the following year...so I tend to associate it with what was going on with my life down in South Florida during 1976, mostly pretty good stuff...

346 I CAN'T GO FOR THAT...Hall and Oates
Without getting into the details, I was in a very positive, constructive stage of my life during the closing months of 1981 and when this awesome song by Hall and Oates was released as a single during that period I quickly bonded with it...it's a song about boundaries and being reasonable with others without letting them walk all over you.  The whole song, with the instrumentation, lyrics, and lead and backup singing clicks together as a masterpiece of pop music production.  I still dig it 38 years later...

345 THE BOXER...Simon and Garfunkel
Although The Boxer, from Simon and Garfunkel's great and final album Bridge Over Troubled Waters, came out in 1969, it was the following year when I grew to fully appreciate what a beautiful song it was...the summer of 1970 always brings sweet memories and feelings to me and since we owned the album it was easy to just slide it out of its sleeve and lay the phonograph needle on this wonderful track over and over again.  My favorite line? "Still a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest"...

344 DECATUR...Sufjan Stevens
Sufjan Stevens' 2005 album Illinois is, in my humble opinion, one of the greatest albums of the 21st century...heck, let's just say of all time.  It was the follow-up to his excellent 2003 Michigan album...Stevens had resided in both states and decided to pay tribute to them with songs about their locales and history while filtering through them autobiographical and spiritual themes.  Decatur is about a city in Illinois and you get a little history lesson listening to it...but it's also about the singer's childhood and serves at the end as a praise song.  Sufjan Stevens is a multi-instrumentalist and featured banjo and harmonica on this folksy, clever song...

343 I GET BY WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM BY FRIENDS...the Beatles
I got used to listening to this second track from the Fab Four's 1967 Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album as combined with the opening song, titled after the album...it's logical since that track's ending introduces this song, with Ringo Starr as "the one and only Billy Shears".  Starr then delivers a stunning lead vocal, alternating his lines with the other Beatles harmonically posing him questions: "Do you need anybody? I need somebody to love.  Could it be anybody? I want somebody to love."  Although Ringo sang less on the Beatles' songs than the other three, I find that his voice tended to more resemble other rock singers than did Paul, John, or George...

342 THE GREEN DOOR...Jim Lowe
Although The Green Door was originally a hit back in my birth year of 1956, its popularity endured and I often heard it played in the 1960s on my local Miami rock station 560/WQAM.  The piano work on it is upbeat, jazzy, and a little ragtime...apparently meant to mimic the music played in the illegal "speakeasies" during the Prohibition era where alcohol...and partying...was furnished but only to those who could gain admission.  The singer here is annoyed by all the noise going on next to his room, but when he bangs on their "green" door, they won't let him in.  Good, we got a great song out of his rejection.  Jim Lowe probably had a lot of good music in his catalog...maybe I should check it out...

341 WHAT A FOOL BELIEVES...the Doobie Brothers
This song was a big hit throughout 1979 and rightfully won the Grammy Award for best song the following year...and it was my own personal "song of the year" for 1979 as I lived through it, not one of the most pleasant of years for me, to put it lightly.  Since by this time Michael McDonald had pretty much transformed this resilient and talented band, it's hard to connect his songs with their output from the early-to-mid 1970s.  But to me they're all good, and while enjoying McDonald's singing on What a Fool Believes I also dug the lyrics: "What a fool believes, the wise man has the power to reason away" is brilliant...

Next week: #340-331...

College Football Playoff and Bowl Games Now Lined Up

After yesterday's conference championship games in the SEC, ACC, Big 12 and Big Ten, we're finally ready to take a look at the major college football playoff seedings and schedule as well as the overall matchups for the many postseason bowl games.  For the championship playoffs, the pairings for the two December 28 games (the Fiesta and Peach Bowls)...along with the seedings...are LSU (1) vs. Oklahoma (4) and Ohio State (2) vs. Clemson (3).  Although due to their supposedly easier regular season opponents, defending national champion Clemson was only ranked #3 in spite of their impressive undefeated record, but neither LSU nor Ohio State wanted to have to play them in the first round...I get it, I think the Tigers (Clemson, that is) are going to repeat this year as champs.  But the Buckeyes were less impressive yesterday against Wisconsin, whom they spotted a two-touchdown halftime lead, while the (other) Tigers of LSU pretty much demolished Georgia in their game.  One-loss Oklahoma slipped into the #4 spot after edging Baylor in overtime...

As for the bowl games, it seems that there is something called a "New Year's Day" bowl that teams unable to make the playoffs were clamoring for the honor of playing in.  Florida got one, the Orange Bowl against Virginia, although that contest is scheduled for December 30, not New Year's Day.  Meanwhile, two other SEC teams that didn't get a "New Year's Day" bowl, Auburn and Alabama, actually will be playing on January 1, Auburn against Minnesota in the Outback Bowl and Alabama against Michigan in the Citrus Bowl.   The Cotton Bowl has Memphis vs. Penn State, the Rose Bowl has Wisconsin against Oregon, and the Sugar Bowl will pit Georgia against Baylor.  Other Florida schools got bowl games, too: Florida Atlantic vs. SMU in the Boca Raton Bowl (Dec. 21), Florida International vs. Arkansas State in the Camelia Bowl (Dec. 21), UCF vs. Marshall in the Gasparilla Bowl (Dec. 23), Miami vs. Louisiana Tech in the Independence Bowl (Dec. 26), and Florida State vs. Arizona State in the Sun Bowl (Dec. 31)...

For the most part my interest in all these games boils down to how the Gators do in their Orange Bowl game, which I will mostly miss since I'll be at work that Monday evening, and the playoffs.  The championship game will be held on January 13 on yet another Monday evening...at least I should be able to watch the two Saturday first-round games on December 28.  As for the playoffs, I think Clemson is the best team but I'm not rooting for any of the contestants in particular or against any of them.  Sometimes it's actually more fun to watch a game when you're not emotionally involved in the outcome: I just finished watching such a contest in the NFL between the San Francisco 49ers and the New Orleans Saints, one of the league's best so far this year...

Ran the 2019 Seasons of Hope 15K This Morning

Last year in early December I ran the Seasons of Hope 15K, held for the purpose of increasing awareness and funding for research and treatment of dystonia, a debilitating neurological disorder.  That race, which took place on Hawthorne Trail in SE Gainesville with Boulware Springs Park as the starting and finishing point, was overflowing with participants...largely I think because one or more local elementary schools were involved.  This morning I tried my hand at it again, but made sure I drove down to Boulware Springs Park in plenty of time to ensure myself a parking spot.  I need not have been concerned, though, because it seems there were much fewer racers this morning...and not a whole lot of kids, either.  The event is split into two races, the 15K (9.3 miles) and the 5K (3.1)...the latter naturally tends to draw more runners, as well as walkers (an activity I'm appreciating more and more as I age).  This morning it was in the low 50s with about 90% humidity at the start of the race at 9:00...by the end it was 63 with 72% humidity.  The earlier forecast indicating rain thankfully was wrong...it was partly cloudy (and now overcast).  Since they stagger the starts for the 15K and 5K races, I enjoyed the unusual situation at the beginning of not struggling to avoid tripping over other runners...especially the ones who would suddenly stop running while directly in front of me.  I kept at a sustainable pace while pushing myself the whole way...I finished with a time of 1:35:48, better than last year's Seasons of Hope time but slower than I've run other past 15K races.  The stretch of the Hawthorne Trail that this race (as well as last month's Tom Walker Memorial Half-Marathon) uses has a section with a lot of slopes and a couple of small hills...much different from the relatively flat courses I run around my neighborhood while training.  Still, I stayed running for the entire race, chugging up the hills when necessary (but not liking it a bit).  When I finally finished the race, I was spent...a good sign indicating that I was honest with my pace.  The event's volunteers as well as other runners were very supportive, shouting out encouragement when I passed by.  And as usual they had water/Gatorade stations along the route every couple of miles.  The only problem I had was my smartphone losing its internet connection at points along the course...I had been running while listening to classical music from WQXR/New York.  I'm writing this a couple of hours after the race and seem to be recovering well from it...other than some residual leg soreness I seem good to go.  Here's a link to the official results: [2019 Seasons of Hope].  For the immediate future, I don't plan to run any races in December unless I decide on a Saturday morning to run one of those free weekly 5K races at Depot Park in Gainesville.  In January I want to run the Ocala Half-Marathon on the 12th and the Newnan's Lake 15K on the 25th...I've experienced both of them before, even tackling the marathon distance in the Ocala event back in 2011.  In the meantime I'll keep on running...

Quote of the Week...from Tana French

Psychopaths have very low anxiety levels...she fits the clinical definition: no conscience, no empathy, pathological liar, manipulative, charming, intuitive, attention-seeking, easily bored, narcissistic...turns very nasty when she's thwarted in any way.     ---Tana French

The above quote I took from Tana French's crime novel In the Woods, which I just read and reviewed on 12/1.  The character speaking the quote is Cassie Maddox, an Irish police detective who speaks from her own past personal experience with a psychopath and is well-versed on the subject: the "she" in the quote is a teenage girl currently being investigated.  Now I have to be careful about attributing a character's quote to a story's author: sometimes the message is antithetical to the writer's actual beliefs...so I had to use my discernment here and concluded that Maddox is clearly the most reasonable character in the book and generally reflects French's views...I've seen this done on sites like BrainyQuotes where an author will often be quoted from one of his or her fictional works...

Being socially-oriented creatures as we humans are...even someone like myself who is introverted and pretty reclusive...it's very difficult to believe that there are people walking the planet with absolutely no social consciousness or empathy and who lie with impunity about what others may have said or done without it ever causing the slightest feeling of guilt.  But I know they're out there and I feel I've been victimized by psychopaths in the past when out of the blue I seem to be ostracized by others when I haven't done anything to merit any scorn.  I look back on these times and note the presence of certain individuals who I realized were casual liars and enjoyed working up people in conversation while backbiting about others.  Psychopaths will simply fabricate slander about their chosen victim and claim that he or she told them horrible things and committed horrible acts...and accomplish this with the full emotional expression that almost all of us would associate with someone being truthful.  I've concluded that there isn't a lot I can do whenever I suspect someone like that is around, other than avoid the hell out of them and pity the poor suckers who buy into their fiction. Can you think of anyone in the news who fits the above expressed description of a psychopath?  It's easy to look at people like Jim Jones, Ted Bundy and Charles Manson and see them in hindsight for what they were.  But while the deceit and manipulation is going on, it's not so easy...especially if they're acting like they're on your side and they have succeeded in getting you emotionally invested in them...

The Structure and Snares of Our Politics

If you tune in to one of the major cable news channels these days, chances are you're either going to be deluged either by commercials or a longstanding verbal melee between the Republican and Democratic parties that dominates our political landscape...I'm starting to prefer the commercials.  Nowadays with this dead-end impeachment adventure going through the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives and Republicans scurrying to create counter-narratives to accuse the accusers, all that we as Americans are getting is a horizontal, us-vs-them squabble instead of getting a fair, pro-and-con treatment of the many important issues we face and really care about.  This is easier to see when I watch C-Span2 when the U.S. Senate is in session and speakers from each party talk on the floor about various issues that they deem to be important. Although it gets little treatment in the mainstream media, the immediate concern in the Senate is next year's appropriations funding bill that the two parties are having a major spat about, each accusing the other of deliberately holding it up and being anti-military.  The major bone of contention about this bill, which the two parties had both signed off on this past summer but which afterward the Republicans allotted a diversion of funds for a border security wall that President Trump wants, is never expressed by GOP senators like Minority Whip John Thune, who repeatedly in his speeches hammers the erroneous point that his colleagues on the other side of the aisle are against pay raises for those serving in the military and want to hold up military aid to Ukraine.  This kind of sideways bickering and grandstanding is going on from both parties with plenty of blame to go around, and issues are being placed on the backburner while the rhetoric just keeps getting turned up.

So I've decided to divide how to look at politics into two basic components: vertical politics and horizontal politics.  Vertical politics is issue and philosophy-based, while horizontal politics is the "us-against-them" perpetual battle transpiring between the two major political parties for power and influence in the next election (and there's always a next election)...turn on the cable news channels and chances are you'll see a lot more of the latter than the former, about which I think more Americans ultimately care the most. It doesn't automatically follow that each of us will go along with our own chosen party's positions on every issue...I look at each one on its own merits and then look at how the politicians are aligning themselves on it, not the other way around.  So in this I am primarily a vertical political follower, not a horizontal one who tends to first emotionally bond with his or her "side" and leaders and denigrates the character and intentions of the "enemy" side while seeing the different issues and their treatment as only secondary factors in their own party gaining, keeping, or losing control.  So if you're horizontally oriented in favor of the Democrats you might speak in outrage over the Senate Republicans blocking the advancement of some 250+ bills they have passed in the House since gaining voting control in that body following the 2018 midterm elections.  The Republicans just as horizontally reply that it's the House Democrats' fault for passing partisan legislation that they know in advance has no chance of either passing the Senate or getting the President's signature.  And so they whine and bicker...

If politics in Washington, DC were run in a vertical manner, you would see...even in divided governments where regarding the Presidency, Senate, and House of Representatives each party controls at least one branch...issues advanced through Congressional committees, continual contact between the Executive and Legislative branches to see what the President would be willing (or unwilling) to sign, and a spirit of compromise.  In divided governments the final legislative products on some more contentious issues might not address some important aspects that the two sides couldn't agree on, but the issue would still be advanced on the points in which they had common ground...until in a later Congress it is readdressed.  But what we see now is horizontal politics: the Democratic House passes its own bills according to its own ideology without regard to whether the Republican-controlled Senate will be able to approve a reconciliable bill in that body or whether the President will sign it into law.  Now I'm not picking on the Democrats per se...during Obama's tenure as president the Republican house did likewise, passing a slew of measures they knew had no chance of advancing through the Senate, much less into law.  But words like "compromise", "deals", and "collaboration" have become taboo in a toxic political environment where those who dare to reach across the aisle to the other party to forge consensus legislation are in danger of finding themselves targeted for "primarying" by their own party in the next election...I see this more on the political right than on the left as talk show hosts like Limbaugh, Hannity, and Levin regularly denounce Republican lawmakers who they see departing from the "script": just look at how the conservative GOP governor of Georgia is currently undergoing their wrath just because he is appointing as retiring senator Johnny Isakson's replacement somebody who isn't enough of a partisan warrior for them.  I sadly see no end in sight to this present trend, just worsening...

Weekly Short Stories: 1954 Science Fiction, Part 2

Here are my reactions to four more entries from the anthology Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 16 (1954).  By the way, after starting with the year 1939, I have it covered through 1990 with annual "year's best" anthologies of this genre of fiction...this blog feature is destined to be long-lasting...

THE HUNTING LODGE by Randall Garrett
In a somewhat dystopian future dominated by robots and surveillance, a small number of people rendered immortal and who are desperately clinging to that status and their accumulated power and wealth, face violent opposition within their own government.  One of the agencies sends out an assassin...under hypnosis and with an assumed identity...to get rid of one of the worst of them.  Does he survive his assignment and is he successful?  Read it and find out.  I have a problem with stories like this because it implies that there's something inherently wrong with long life...as if outlasting everybody else somehow means you're being unfair to the masses: what nonsense. I'm opposed to any literature that pushes the notion that old people have already had their "chance" and now need to step aside and make room for others...

THE LYSENKO MAZE by Donald A. Wollheim
Trofin Denisovich Lysenko was a Soviet-era biologist who postulated the notion that an organism can genetically pass its environmentally-acquired characteristics down to future generations.  Dictator Stalin made his theories official state science, but virtually all of the rest of the scientific community denounced Lysenko as a charlatan.  Wollheim's story centers around a scientist who believes Lysenko was right and who sets up an experiment...using mice and a large, complicated maze...to prove himself to his skeptical colleagues.  This story seems to end one way...until you read the last paragraph.  By the way, Donald A. Wollheim is the publisher of the Isaac Asimov Presents series and himself edited another, which I may be referencing at some future time...

FONDLY FAHRENHEIT by Alfred Bester
The idea that psychosis is a disease that someone can "catch" from another is essential to this story of a planet-hopping man and his android robot...the latter seems to go into an insane murderous rage whenever the temperature around it rises beyond a certain point.  But the owner seems to be experiencing trouble separating his own identity from that of his android.  The story can be very confusing as it is alternately presented in the first person from the android's viewpoint, then from that of the owner, and then in the third person...sometimes even changing the perspective within the same sentence...

THE COLD EQUATIONS by Tom Godwin
On a rescue mission in the interstellar frontier to an endangered small party on a remote planet, the pilot of his small, efficiently-designed spacecraft discovers a stowaway.  But the craft's weight requirements are rigid and pre-planned for no extra weight, otherwise the increased gravity on descent will cause it to expend its fuel early and cause it to crash.  The policy is clear-cut...the intruder must be jettisoned into space for the sake of the mission, but the compassionate pilot and his unwelcome guest must first come to grips with this unsolvable predicament. A real heartbreaking story...

Next week: more from 1954 in the world of short science fiction...

Season of Hope 15K Race Coming This Saturday

When I first glanced at the month of December this year on the running race calendar, I was only looking at half-marathons scheduled in my vicinity.  But I missed on a race I ran a year ago: the Season of Hope 15K race, which benefits research and treatment about the debilitating disease of dystonia and other neurological disorders.  The race will be held this Saturday morning (the 8th) on the Hawthorne Trail, with the parking, registration, start, and finish to be at Boulware Springs Park on SE 15th Street in Gainesville.  Starting time is 9:00 for both the 5K and 15K events...you can read about my experiences last year by clicking on the following link: ['18 Season of Hope].  Since at this early time the weather prognosticators are giving about a 30-40% chance of rain on Saturday, I'll wait until later in the week before deciding whether to run in it.  It's funny...on the same day at 7:30 am the free weekly Depot Park 5K will take place at that site off Main Street and SE Depot Avenue...if I had the wherewithal I could run that one and then scoot down the road to tackle the 15K.  After all, I did plan to go on a long run this coming weekend.  But no, better stick to the 15K if the weather's okay. Then again, if it's raining maybe there won't be such an annoying number of people cramming the parking lot and race course: I know, I know...I shouldn't think like that since it's all going to a good cause. Still, I've never run a race in the pouring rain before...

My 500 All-Time Favorite Songs: #360-351

As I continue unraveling my list of my 500 all-time favorite songs...from bottom to top in groups of ten...I think it's important to say that before writing my reviews I listen once again to each and every one of them.  One of the great blessings of having grown up during the years that I did was to be exposed to some incredibly wonderful music...and it's still being produced, if you know where to look...

360 THE WAYWARD WIND....Gogi Grant
Nostalgia radio is something that began in the 1970s, and it was on one of those stations that I first heard...and instantly fell in love with...Gogi Grant's epic, mournful ballad The Wayward Wind.  It was a huge hit in 1956 and reportedly knocked Elvis Presley's Heartbreak Hotel off the top of the charts...yet my local rock stations in the 1960s, WQAM and WFUN, apparently didn't think it qualified to be on their playlist of "golden oldies" alongside Presley's classic hits.  Now, well over forty years after I first heard it, I still think very highly of this song...Gogi Grant passed away three years ago at age 91...

359 ROAD TO NOWHERE...Talking Heads
The rat-a-tat-tat percussion beat defines this song of cynicism, as usual...like other Talking Heads songs...delivered with a strongly humorous bent by their lead vocalist and creative force David Byrne.  The video is also something you don't want to miss...very, very imaginative and funny.  The opening chorus-sung lyrics express people's ideals and rationales, which Byrne then proceeds to utterly deflate.  It came out in 1985 and is yet another song that makes me wonder why it didn't become a major top ten hit: maybe it was just a little too cerebral...

358 MERCHANTS OF SOUL...Spoon
Speaking of songs with a rat-a-tat-tat beat, here's another, and this one actually makes a non-dancer like myself want to get up and move around on the floor...it's that catchy.  Merchants of Soul is from the Austin, Texas alternative rock band's remarkable 2005 Gimme Fiction album, maybe their best.  Spoon is one of the more creative and listenable musical acts today, headlined by singer/songwriter Britt Daniel and drummer Jim Eno...I'm not usually interested in attending concerts but I'd like to see Spoon perform live: now that's an endorsement!

357 BICYCLE RACE...Queen
The line "Jaws was never my thing and I don't like Star Wars!" deeply endeared me to this counter-mass-culture anthem by Queen...I never was a big fan of either movie and couldn't see what the big fuss was about them.  Also, from the mid-1970s to the early 1990s I was pretty heavily into (cheap) bicycle riding (not racing) as an alternative to motoring, something that I think provided me with a healthy perspective on mass conformity and the rat race...Bicycle Race celebrates more than anything the notion of individuality and that it's totally cool to find oneself out of step with the "times"...

356 ALLENTOWN...Billy Joel
Allentown, from what I deem to be Billy Joel's final masterpiece album, 1982's Nylon Curtain, is a searing, gut-wrenching song of the times, back during the time of its release when a deep recession, coupled with competition from abroad, saw many great factories of America's midwestern and eastern manufacturing base closing down one after another, devastating local economies and putting untold numbers of career workers on unemployment while painting a bleak future for the aspiring young in those areas.  Although the economy was once again "booming" by 1984, I don't think the U.S. ever got completely over those traumatic years of the early 80s...the "Big Company" used to be seen as one of our nation's features of stability: now you never know what they'll do from one year to the next...

355 MAGIC...Olivia Newton-John
Although technically a "disco" song from the soundtrack of a roller-skate-disco movie (Xanadu), 1980's Magic to me was simply a great ballad beautifully sung by Olivia Newton-John, one of my favorite singers of the 1970s and early 80s...it has a kind of mesmerizing effect.  It also has an empowering nature to it: "You have to believe we are magic, nothing can stand in our way"...

354 I AM THE WALRUS...the Beatles
Back in July I read John Lennon's 1964 book In His Own Write, in which he did a lot of play on words, often to comedic effect.  The Beatles' great continued his verbal antics on this song with lines like "Semolina Pilchard climbing up the Eiffel Tower, elementary penguin singing Hare Krishna, man you should have seen them kicking Edgar Allen Poe".  The closing track on their wonderful Magical Mystery Tour album, it's also a piece that figured in the fabricated "Paul is dead" conspiracy theory that erupted in late 1969 and is still believed in some quarters to this day.  Naturally, I had to listen to it repeatedly back then for the "clue" near its end...

353 SAILING...Christopher Cross
Hitting the airwaves during the summer of 1980, about the same time as song #355, I loved the overall peacefulness of Sailing...a real tension dissipater.  Cross had such a promising beginning to his career...I wonder why it dropped off after his Theme from Arthur.  I don't know if the actual process of sailing a boat is all that peaceful, though...looks like a lot of stress and hard work if you ask me...

352 INTERGALACTIC PLANETARY...the Beastie Boys
I'll say it up front: I'm not a fan of hip-hip/rap music, but this summer-of-1998 hit by the rap trio Beastie Boys...originally a standard rock act with a female member...stands out because it's so humorously campy about its science fiction message and uses some unusual instrumental accompaniment as well as a strange key change about two thirds of the way through it.  I associate it with where I was at the time on my job and what I was doing then...

351 WONDERWALL...Oasis
Another song I associate with where I was at work when it was popular in 1996, this is a somber, reflective song that combines lead singer Liam Gallagher's plaintive delivery (his brother Noel wrote it) with brilliant acoustic guitar, piano, and strings accompaniment.  From it the recurring line "I don't believe that anybody feels the way I do about you now" resounds.  Oasis was a promising 1990s British band that unfortunately seemed to spend more time and effort fighting among themselves and insulting others than focusing on putting out the music that I believe they were capable of...

Next week: songs #350-341...

Just Finished Reading In the Woods by Tana French

In the Woods, written by Tana French and published in 2007, is a psychological crime novel set in Ireland...with the emphasis on "psychological".  Adam Ryan, going now by the name "Rob", is a police detective working on the Dublin Murder Squad.  When he was a boy Adam went out in the woods outside his rural Irish hometown with two friends...something terrible and unknown attacked them with only Adam returning with a blocked memory, clothes ripped with someone else's blood all over them.  The disappearances were never solved...Adam later joined the police and changed his name to Rob in order not to bring attention to his earlier crisis.  And now there is a new crisis in almost the exact same location: a teenage girl has been found brutally murdered and on what looks like an ancient sacrificial stone in the area.  Ryan, along with fellow detectives Cassie Maddox and Sam O'Neill, are assigned the case...which reignites all of the old suppressed memories that he had from the earlier experience, while Cassie expresses her views on the nature of psychopaths.  The story is told from Ryan's viewpoint, who is brutally honest with his mistakes and character flaws as he stumbles his way through this case and his relationships with others...

In the Woods is one of those stories that seem to be about one thing in the beginning and then morph into something entirely different...I kind of like this paradigm-shifting in fiction.  But if you're intrigued from the early part of the book into reading on to the resolution at the end, you may find yourself bitterly disappointed: it's an entirely different kind of resolution! An important outgrowth of the story is that angle on psychopathic personality types, a topic I plan to explore in a few days on this blog.  Tana French is clearly a talented fiction writer and I'm going to read more of her works, especially this Dublin Murder Squad series for which In the Woods was the first book...

My November 2019 Running Report

In November I ran a total of 120 miles, missing three days and with 13.1 miles being my single longest run of the month.  I ran two races: the Tom Walker Memorial Half-Marathon (on the Hawthorne Trail) on the 10th and the Gainesville Turkey Trot 10K (at Tacachale) on the 28th. In the half-marathon I ran a slow pace while the 10K was a bit faster.  In the middle of the month I had to take a break from running for three days, as I was undergoing some kind of allergic/inflammatory general attack on my body, which hits me from time to time and makes me feel pretty crappy.  But I recovered and feel good...

I'd like to continue with my established pattern of training, especially with those long weekend runs.  I don't see any particular races coming up for me in December, but in January there is the Ocala Half-Marathon...an event that I've run twice before and has a great course south of the city in horse country.  I still wonder to myself whether I might not again try to tackle the 26.2 mile marathon distance in a future race...for now, I'll just take it from week to week and see how I do with my progress...

Quote of the Week...from Melody Beattie

Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow.
                                                                                 ---Melody Beattie

Melody Beattie is an author of self-help books with a focus on codependency...I first discovered her above quote before I found out anything else about her.  But sometimes the message has such a universal, obvious application that it doesn't matter who said it...unless, of course, the speaker was a real scoundrel.  Yesterday was Thanksgiving and my wife Melissa and our two grown-up children Will and Rebecca enjoyed it together with a fantastic home-prepared meal.  What a blessing for us!  I believe that it's important to instill within oneself a habit of looking gratefully at the good things that life provides...health, good relationships, prosperity...these are things we seek and should not withhold our thanks when God blesses us with them.  I think a lot of us look back with regret at our own pasts, both for our mistakes and missed opportunities as well as with anger at the bad things we perceive that others did to us...but if we temper that negativity with some acknowledgment that there were also good...even wonderful...things going on as well as good people who cared about us, then as Ms. Beattie pointed out, such gratitude does make better sense of our past.  From time to time as I go through my daily life with its many demands, frustrations, and worries, it's also important for me to realistically assess my situation...and that involves taking into account the good things currently going on in my life and being thankful for it all.  It also can be said that even with defeats and failures, gratitude is in order since from those experiences much can be learned. And regarding the future, knowing that I've enjoyed great blessings in the past as well as the present, I can see a future in which more for which I will be grateful is sure to come...let's all plan on a blessed future!

Ran Gainesville's 2019 Turkey Trot 10K This Morning

This morning I drove over to Tacachale, a local residential and care community for the developmentally disadvantaged, and ran their annual Thanksgiving Turkey Trot race.  I've run it  three times before...this year they gave the choice of going 5K (3.1 miles) or 10K (6.2 miles): I stuck with the 10K distance.  After my deliberately slow half-marathon race earlier this month I decided to try running at a more honest pace and finished with a time of 1:02:18, at a 10 minute/mile pace.  The course was pretty crowded...679 5K finishers and 207 for the 10K, but the organizers did manage to stagger the two distances' starting times by about five minutes and varied the course early on, preventing everybody from tripping over each other.  The 10K course took us down paths of asphalt, dirt, woods, and fields...pretty fun!  The parking for the many contestants was well-directed and hassle-free, hydration stations were provided, spaced along the course for thirsty runners, and there was bathroom access near the starting line.  Following the race they had water, Gatorade, bananas, bagels, and cookies.  I thought the whole atmosphere was very positive and encouraging...I enjoyed the experience.  Also, none of the problems I had experienced in runs gone by happened...no cramping or deep coughing and my energy level stayed strong to the end.  The skies were clear and the temperatures stayed in the 60s throughout the run with around 60% humidity...great conditions.  Looking forward to continuing my training...

Here are the results of the Turkey Trot...just click on the following link: [results].

Weekly Short Stories: 1954 Science Fiction, Part 1

Today I begin looking at 1954's short science fiction, as published in the anthology Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 16 (1954).

THE TEST by Richard Matheson
Richard Matheson wrote a few of the old Twilight Zone episodes and this tale reminds me a bit of them.  It's in the future...not too far off...and the law decrees that old people, every few years, undergo tests to ascertain their viability in society.  And if they don't pass they're killed...sounds like a terrible fate, yet in more primitive cultures the elderly...especially women...were often abandoned to death because their role as contributors fell behind their dependency.  In a family where the aging father has one of these tests looming ahead  to decide whether he lives or not, his son sees...as he coaches him through practice sessions...that he'll probably fail.  A warning tale...to those reading it...not to let our own "real" society to debase itself to this level...

ANACHRON by Damon Knight
Two eccentric brothers live on an obscure island off the coast of Italy.  One collects art and the other tinkers with technology.  The latter accidentally creates a portal in time through a bubble...and so the time travel paradoxes ensue to the point where the author's narrative and all the various "rules" he espouses confused me to the point where at times I lost his train of reasoning.  I was able to follow the story's general parameters, though...but I'm getting pretty weary about this time travel subgenre of sci-fi stories...

BLACK CHARLIE by Gordon R. Dickson
In the future during a time when interstellar travel and settlement takes place, an art trader and assessor is given a tip that a great treasure exists on an obscure planet.  Going there he finds the place inhospitable and swampy...a man presents him a small box and the sculpture inside looks like anything but art.  Surprised and saddened by the trader's rejection, the man leads him through the swamp to the piece's creator, which turns out to be an intelligent, indigenous being...jet-black and resembling an otter.  The creature learns that his art needs improvement and...why not read the rest of the story for yourself. I think that the message of this story is that art comes from the inner self and for one to truly appreciate it he or she needs to understand the perspective of the artist and not simply judge the work on its external merits according to a set of rules.  A story about prejudgment and enlightenment...

DOWN AMONG THE DEAD MEN by William Tenn
Our Solar System...and hence the Earth...is being threatened by an alien race of insect-like invaders...the intense war has been going on for years and battle lines fluctuate between Jupiter and Saturn.  The human population has been so depleted by the conflict that a method of recycling and constructing whole, living bodies from the protoplasm of killed soldiers has been devised, creating in essence a "zombie" armed forces.  A human commander is set to meet a group of these new soldiers that will be working under him and suddenly has to revise his notions of who is accorded the designation...and dignity...of being regarded as truly human.  A very allegorical tale, another one about prejudice...

Next week: more 1954 science fiction short stories...