Second Try Today to Launch 1st U.S. Manned Space Flight Since 2011

After a weather-caused delay of last Wednesday afternoon's scheduled launch of the Crew Dragon mission to the International Space Station, another attempt is ongoing today, planned liftoff at 3:22 pm from Cape Canaveral, Florida.  Unfortunately, the first manned space launch from the United States since 2011 has for today a high possibility of being scrubbed as well, the meteorologists predicting stormy conditions at the site, Pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center.  Should the launch, carrying American astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken in the SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule and powered by the company's Falcon 9 rocket, be delayed once more it will take place on Sunday...weather conditions should be much improved by then.  I'm not sure which stations will carry the event other than C-Span and The Weather Channel...I've picked the latter since the weather is definitely the overriding factor determining a liftoff this afternoon.  C-Span's coverage will start at 11 this morning and The Weather Channel at 1 pm...CNN has an hour-long window scheduled at 3.  I think I'll check out C-Span when their programming kicks in and then switch over to The Weather Channel a couple hours later.  I've been able in the past to see nighttime Space Shuttle launches from here in Gainesville, but I'm not sure about the Falcon 9's visibility over such a large distance and during the day...still, I'll go outside and check it out whenever they do finally decide to give it the final countdown, assuming of course it's not storming here as well...

Quote of the Week...from Charles Swindoll

Life is 10 percent what happens to me and 90 percent of how I react to it.      ---Charles Swindoll.

Charles Swindoll, a well-known pastor and author of many inspirational books, is someone I greatly respect within the evangelical Christian community.  His above quote struck me early this morning as I see the escalating division, rage...and even hatred enveloping around me in a time of pandemic, politically motivated disinformation and scapegoating, violent racial injustice...and an electoral process, along with irresponsible leaders, gone completely awry.  I have come to the conclusion that no matter how I conduct my life, there will be somebody around to take offense at me and my decisions...even if what I do has no bearing whatsoever on their own lives.  I am thoroughly dismayed at the breakdown of rationality among so many people that I had befriended and thought to be level-headed and emotionally stable...what has happened to them?  All of the things going on around me are bigger than me, and I can only use what mind God has given me to determine how I should best live each day as it comes.  I can't change others' thinking...especially since there seems to be strong, deeply rooted elements of fear and denial involved there.  If there ever was a time to pray for the mental and spiritual health of our people, it is now.  And I will continue to seek God's guidance and comfort as I walk through an ever-darkening valley...

Two Named Tropical Storms Before Atlantic Hurricane Season Even Begins

Yesterday, just after being named as the second tropical storm before the 2020 Atlantic hurricane season even begins on June 1, Bertha slammed into South Carolina dumping lots of rain and then progressed into the heart of the eastern United States...this morning the remnants passed through the Cleveland, Ohio area.  So now in just a short span we've had Arthur and Bertha...and it's still May!  The meteorologists specializing in hurricane season forecasting have predicted a very active season this year...no El Niño effect that would normally restrain tropical development...with as many as 20 named storms and 10 hurricanes.  Now exactly where the storms will go is a good question...with they mostly run out their "lives" in the Atlantic ocean or will some or many of them hit land?  We'll have to see.  Usually when June 1 rolls around each year we still have a respite from threatening tropical storms for a few weeks...I have a creeping suspicion, though, that this might be a year for the record books...

Weekly Short Stories: 1959 Science Fiction, Part 1

Today I begin discussing science fiction short stories I read from the anthology Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 21 (1959).   They're all good, but I'm partial to the second and fourth ones below as they possess a special depth beyond the stories themselves...

MAKE A PRISON by Lawrence Block
This rather short tale is a case in point regarding the concept of "thinking outside the box" when attacking problems.  A prisoner, apparently from another world, had murdered several of the planet's inhabitants.  In line with their principles forbidding capital punishment, they have erected a very high tower, at the very top of which their prisoner will be sent via pneumatic tube to live the rest of his years, cared for with food and water but totally isolated from the rest of the world.  A real "duh" moment at the end...

THE WIND PEOPLE by Marion Zimmer Bradley
An exploratory ship with a coed crew is on a stopover for several months to find fuel on an idyllically green planet, apparently uninhabited by sentient life.  One of the women finds herself pregnant and gives birth to a boy...she remains behind on this world with her infant baby since the ship's takeoff would have killed him.  The two of them survive for years there...but the mother is in a complete state of denial about the translucent people around them, whispering like the wind.  This is a tragic tale about a number of things, possibly chief among them the tendency for people to deny that which is unknown and over which they have little or no control: a lesson for the times we live in...

NO, NO, NOT ROGOV! by Cordwainer Smith
1959 was a peak year in the Cold War between the West and the Soviet Bloc countries...this story goes back to the Stalin years as a Russian scientist and his wife have hit upon the ultimate weapon to defeat the capitalists by getting into their minds and manipulating them.  Rogov insists on having a crucial mind-control experiment performed on himself...which predictably goes haywire with some major unforeseen consequences...

WHAT ROUGH BEAST by Damon Knight
My favorite story of the bunch, it is about an unassuming man who has a gift...or maybe it's a curse...to reach into alternative universes and replace something in ours with something from one of the others.  In this way he works miracles around him, but must keep it all secret.  Unfortunately one day he gets careless, people discover his gifting, and it all starts snowballing downhill.  A searing commentary about base human nature and how people quickly adapt to unexpected blessings and make their continuation into entitlements instead of feeling and showing gratitude and contentment for what they had been given...

Next week I will continue my look back at the year 1959 in science fiction short stories...

Watching Old Sports Classics, Looking Forward to Resuming Play

I've been watching some of the old sports games on TV during this hiatus in ongoing competition caused by the COVID-19 pandemic...Monday night ESPN was showing a 2015 regular season contest between Pittsburgh and San Diego.  I like watching the old NBA and Major League Baseball games from years gone by as well, especially those classic decisive World Series games that were so tense in the late innings...that Game Six of the 1986 World Series between the New York Mets and Boston Red Sox was something I totally missed (as well as the rest of that series) the first time around back then.  In the process I have been brushing up on the year-by-year champions in the different leagues...it seems in retrospect that the last ten years have flown by too rapidly.  I also reflected on when I began to follow various sports during my childhood...

The earliest spectator sport I began to follow was baseball during the World Series of 1965 between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Minnesota Twins, one of the great classics...I was just turning nine at the time.  The next year, though, is a blank with me as far as baseball was concerned although in 1967 I resumed my interest as the Red Sox fought with the St. Louis Cardinals in another tight series.  But I didn't start following the sport's regular season until 1969, the year the New York Mets had their "miracle" season.  In football I started watching NFL games late in 1967 and college games the following year..."my" teams were the Baltimore Colts, Miami Dolphins, Florida State Seminoles, Miami Hurricanes and Florida Gators.  In professional basketball, the fledgling American Basketball Association began its second year of existence in 1968 when its Minnesota Muskies franchise moved to Miami to be renamed the Floridians.  They didn't broadcast any of their games on TV but I avidly followed the play-by-play all year long on a weak Miami AM radio station, WOCN/1450.  I didn't follow the NBA that season until the playoffs, when I rooted in vain against the Boston Celtics, eventual champions once again.  As for college basketball, when towering Artis Gilmore played for Jacksonville University and their seemingly unstoppable fast break dominated that sport in 1969-70 (until they played against UCLA for the national championship, that is), this is what first drew my attention to college hoops...

It's fun to follow the great old sports leagues...and since 2014 I have also been following some of the pro soccer leagues as well.  I've tried to cultivate an interest in the National Hockey League but it's only worked for me during the Stanley Cup Playoffs. I will be very happy when sports resume in whatever form they take...until then I guess I'll keep watching the old classics...

My 500 All-Time Favorite Songs: #110-101

I imagine you've probably heard most of the ten songs on this list if you've been around as long as me...I'm not so sure about # 105 and 106, though.  The songs span many years and diverse genres...a piece of music done well in any genre can become one of my favorites if it resonates with me.  I think next week, as I begin to go through my top 100 songs, I'll be discussing five songs at a time instead of ten...maybe I'll thus be able to drag out this enjoyable blog project of mine a little longer...

110 CAN YOU FEEL THE LOVE TONIGHT?...Elton John
This 1994 theme from the Disney animated movie The Lion King was, to me, the final great Elton John song of his career...may he continue to live long and prosper.  I never did care all that much for the movie, but was quickly swept away by this song, to me maybe his greatest single singing accomplishment.  Elton's got a couple more masterpieces higher up on my list...

109 GOOD NIGHT...the Beatles
After the nightmarish...but strangely compelling...chaos of the 1968 White Album's penultimate track Revolution 9 comes this mellow, very sweet closing piece, sung by Ringo as one of the greatest all-time rock n' roll lullabies. It wasn't until much later, though, when I heard it for the first time...in September 1972 along with the associated personal memories of what was going on in my life at the time...

108 THAT'S MY JOB...Conway Twitty
When I first got on at the Gainesville post office in 1987 as a letter-sorting machine clerk, they allowed us to bring headset radios for listening while we worked...my first one was a cheap brand that only picked up the very powerful local country station GC-101.  Hence for a few months I was strongly into the ongoing country and western scene, and they often played this hit song by Conway Twitty from that year.  It's about growing up and the bond between a father and his son...if this song doesn't make you shed a few tears, then you just ain't got no heart...

107 DAZED AND CONFUSED...Led Zeppelin
I remember hating this song for years whenever my local album rock radio station played it, and then in late 1990 everything changed and I began to listen to this classic British hard rock band through a different filter.  Eventually I would make Dazed and Confused my favorite song of 1992 as I lived through it...even though it's originally from 1968.  The entire song is great, one of Robert Plant's best singing performances, but my favorite section is the middle where it all breaks down into a psychedelic desolation and wild Jimmy Page guitar jam...

106 TO BINGE...Gorillaz
Plastic Beach, from 2010, was in my opinion the alternative act Gorillaz's best album, a great collaborative effort between songwriter and singer Damon Albarn and animator Jamie Hewlett, along with many contributing artists.  To Binge is a duet between Albarn and Yukimi Nagano as the two alternately bemoan a romance gone astray...it's sad but at the same time very catchy and danceable.  There was a period during the summer of 2011 when I focused on Gorillaz, listening to a shuffle of their tracks from their first four albums on my MP3 while on training runs around the neighborhood in the heat of day.  Try them out if you haven't yet...although you might find a lot to dislike you'll also get to know a few songs that work well for you...

105 ARE YOU SITTING COMFORTABLY?...the Moody Blues
The Moody Blues' 1969 On the Threshold of a Dream album is one of my favorites, especially Side Two on which the songs merge together...Are You Sitting Comfortably? is a wistful, mystical piece, a collaboration of singer John Lodge and flutist Ray Thomas, that harkens back to the mythical time of Camelot and Merlin and leads into the album's climactic finale.  This song stands well on its own but comes off better if you listen to the surrounding tracks together...

104 RUN LIKE HELL...Pink Floyd
Sounding a bit like a dystopian nightmare future, Run Like Hell was my favorite track off their 1979 The Wall double album.  While more of a "run from your pursuers" than a "run for self-fulfillment and exercise" kind of song, I still naturally tie it to my own running...although frankly, its ending sounds more like an indoor basketball game in progress.  Roger Waters wrote the lyrics and sang lead here while David Gilmour wrote the music and did backup vocals.  It's a scary-but-energizing song, always one of my favorites...

103 THE ONE THING...INXS
It was early 1983 when I first heard this debut hit from Australian rockers INXS...a strong recurring guitar riff, keyboards, saxophone, and the soulful singing of Michael Hutchence dominate this song that I regarded for months as my favorite for that year.  INXS was one of many acts felled by the death of one of its members, in this case Hutchence in 1997...such a recurring tragedy, be it by drug overdose, or, in the talented INXS singer/lyricist's case, suicide.  Makes part of me wish they had never achieved their fame and fortune...some people just can't handle it all, including the almost inevitable decline in mass popularity...

102 PLEASANT VALLEY SUNDAY...the Monkees
A big summer hit at the peak of "Monkeemania" here in the USA during the so-called Summer of Love in 1967, back then it was just one of many Monkees tunes I loved, being a big fan of their ongoing comedy television series and even a Monkees card collector (hey, I was just a kid at the time).  In subsequent years I grew to feel that Pleasant Valley Sunday may have been one of the underappreciated instigators of the Counterculture Movement with its rejection of rat race values prevalent in suburban America: "Creature comfort goals, they only numb my soul and make it hard for me to see".  Gerry Coffin and Carole King cowrote this iconic song that Mickey Dolenz nailed with his singing...

101 ANOTHER ONE BITES THE DUST...Queen
The story I heard is that the members of British rock group Queen in 1980 wanted to know which track from their new album The Game they should release and promote as the next single...Michael Jackson dropped by, listened to it, and picked Another One Bites the Dust.  And the rest is history, a great, funky, fun song that makes you want to get up and start moving when you hear it.  At that year's end I picked it as my "song of the year" over some other considerably high-quality songs.  I still love it...

Next week: #100-96...

On This Memorial Day Weekend, 2020

On this Memorial Day weekend in 2020 I'd like to express my deepest appreciation for those who, over the course of our country's history, paid the ultimate price in defending our freedoms and way of life.  In America we have our cherished rights and sometimes emphasize them far out of proportion to the concomitant responsibilities we bear as citizens of the greatest nation on Earth.  Those who have defended us in wartime are great heroes and of them, the ones who died in service deserve the highest honor possible.  Sometimes society makes demands on its free citizens as a necessary price for that freedom...in times of national emergency, be it war, natural disaster, or pandemic, the heroes rise to the top and do their part to save the day without whining about phantom rights being violated.  You don't necessarily have to give up your life, as did the many we honor on this solemn holiday, to be a hero...just do your own little part to help the others around you get through the crisis at hand...

Just Finished Reading The Gods Themselves by Isaac Asimov

I recently checked out the late science fiction writer Isaac Asimov's 1972 novel The Gods Themselves from my library online on audiobook...later I discovered that it can be read straight off the Web from a number of sites.  The title derives from a quote in a play by Friedrich Schiller, translated into English as "Against stupidity the Gods themselves contend in vain".  And stupidity, expressed here as denial of reality in favor of convenience and personal career advancement, does play a major role in the story's development.  It is the year 2100 and Hallam, a physicist, has built his career and worldwide reputation on the backs of the works of others...including entities from a parallel universe who have instituted something called the Electron Pump that provides free energy to our own universe while adjusting both universes' physical laws to an eventual equilibrium state far down the road.  But is it all really free and what is the "other" side up to?  Colleagues blacklisted by Hallam for opposing him are on to the Pump's dangers but are thwarted at every turn from stopping him...finally they turn to try to communicate surreptitiously with those in the "para-Universe" to urge them to break off their project, only to eventually come to a very unsettling conclusion about the other side's agenda. The second part of the novel presents life from the view of those others on a small planet, the "soft" ones able to permeate matter and divided into three forms...rational, emotional, and paternal...and the "hard" ones who, more like ourselves completely integrated personalities, seem to be running the show.  I thought Asimov displayed a lot of brilliant creativity here in presenting the various characters of the para-Universe and their alien society.  The book's final section takes place on the moon, where one of Hallam's professional enemies opposing the Electron Pump emigrates there, discovering...along with the various physical adjustments necessary for life there...a romance as well as intrigue concerning the inhabitants' desire to break away from Earth rule.  The story is clearly resolved at the end and the topic was interesting enough, but what I valued the most...and typically from most of Asimov's writings...is that he wrote in a plain narrative style and let his characters clearly reveal themselves through their dialog and...especially in the case of the "other" beings...their inner thoughts.  The Gods Themselves is not a part of Asimov's general universe of science fiction that includes the Foundation, Empire, and Robot series...but it raises some important issues that carry some relevance today, especially of the tension that exists between popular will for personal convenience and comfort versus science-originated warnings to change our direction and behavior.  There is a lot of physics discussed here, but don't worry...even Asimov, a scientist in his own right, later mentioned that with this novel he was writing over his head: just flow with the story and you'll be all right...

Quote of the Week...from Max Ehrmann

As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons.     Max Ehrmann, Desiderata

The above is the second line in American businessman Max Ehrmann's famous 1920s prose poem Desiderata, nothing less than a guide to living.  Line number one, which I've discussed three years ago on this blog, leads directly into it: "Go placidly amid the noise and the haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence."  In today's stressful and divided era of pandemic, economic crisis, social injustice and fractured electoral politics these opening lines are more relevant than ever.  I'm not here to preach them to others but instead bring them up primarily to remind myself where my priorities need to be.  It's easy for me to watch the news, gather the information and mentally process it all to come up with what I think are the correct solutions and reactions. However, other people behave and speak in ways that I find indicative of denial and false narrative...how could they be so selfish and foolish?!  Yet I stand in community with many of them and should, as Ehrmann stressed, work to maintain...without sacrificing my beliefs and personal responses...their good will in the face of stark differences between us.  I'm finding this increasingly difficult to do...it seems as if a creeping madness is settling over our society and that too many of us have decided to let a select few do our own reasoning for us...

Starting to Use Phone Apps to Study Nature Around Me

Being someone accustomed since I was seven to look up at the clear night sky and readily identify all the constellations and brighter stars, I noticed that there are smartphone apps that do the same thing for users.  Well, I'm challenged in a completely different area: plant identification...they all look pretty much the same to me.  But I've discovered that there are also free phone apps (usually with a premium option) in which I can take a photo of a plant and they'll come up with the identification...or at least a list of the most likely matches.  I downloaded one such app and it identified one of the weedy bushes in my yard.  Maybe I'll become a plant enthusiast the way I like to look at the stars...since they're all around me it seems like it might be fun to become an expert on identifying them.  Also, since insects are all around as well why not get one of those bug-identifying apps and expand my foray into nature study...after all, we're about to enter "beetle" season in Florida.  Oh, and I see that there's an app that identifies birds from their songs...my "birding" experience was strong as a kid in South Florida some fifty years ago, but there are some different species up here in Gainesville where I now live.  And I do regularly hear strange songs without being able to see who's producing them.  Plants, insects, birds...well, that's a starter...

Weekly Short Stories: 1958 Science Fiction, Part 3

As I kept reading through the "year's best" anthology Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 20 (1958), the quality of the entries continued to impress me.  The last four, which I will discuss below, are especially good...my favorite is the one by MacLean.  Here are my reactions to them...

THE BURNING OF THE BRAIN by Cordwainer Smith
In Cordwainer Smith's future universe of interconnected stories focusing on exploring and settling the cosmos, telepathy plays a big role as humanity struggles to conquer the deadly hazards encountered while in deep space travel.  One such ship is on a voyage and gets lost...while the ship's navigation charts are wiped out by accident, leaving only the patterns within the captain's own brain as a possible source for finding their location and avoiding a horrible death in the remotes of space.  But at what cost to telepathically retrieve the buried information?

THE YELLOW PILL by Rog Phillips
A psychiatrist has on his daily office schedule a special visit an by apparently delusional young man in police custody who has just shot and killed six people.  But to Gerald Bocek, Dr. Cedric Elton is no psychiatrist, but rather Gar Castle, his shipmate in the middle of a space voyage.  Elton wonders how to shake Bocek from his delusion, knowing that a certain yellow pill will do the job.  This brief tale twists in one direction that the reader might have anticipated...but not its ending, which I thought was brilliant...

UNHUMAN SACRIFICE by Katherine MacLean
The idea of imposing one's own culturally-biased religious beliefs on others in unknown, alien settings is the theme of this story about a mission on an unexplored planet with such a preacher determined to convert the population without any knowledge of their society or even biology.  The ending is a shocker and ultimately justifies what everyone in the visiting party, not just the preacher, regards as an inhumane practice upon the natives with its own...

THE IMMORTALS by James E. Gunn
The idea of achieved immortality being a privilege only available to the wealthy elite isn't a new idea in science fiction, but this story really gets under the surface of it all, exposing the ugliness of an economy dominated by organ harvesting and medical cannibalization of the weak and disadvantaged with the general society disintegrating all around.  One of the most glaring and disturbing dystopian stories I've ever read, and I've gone through a few.  The ending gives an unexpectedly new perspective on the title...

Next week I begin my look back at old science fiction short stories from the year 1959...

Just Finished Reading The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel

The Glass Hotel, by Emily St. John Mandel, just came out two months ago...I'm not sure how I came across it but I managed to check it out and have just finished reading it.  It uses the theme of the fraudulent Ponzi scheme that financier Bernie Madoff built to rip off his investors to the tune of billions of dollars, financially ruining them when it finally all crashed.  In this novel, the fictional culprit...caught at about the same time, 2008...is Jonathan Alkaitis.  But although it covers his experiences, the story jumps around in a helter-skelter fashion back and forward in time between a number of characters, chief among them half-siblings Paul and Vincent (a woman), young Canadians each with their own peculiar personalities and hangups.  The story brings the aforementioned three...along with a handful of other characters whose lives are featured...together one night at a remote, very fancy hotel owned by Alkaitis on a British Columbia island: the Caiette.  It is the threatening graffiti, brutally drawn with acid on the hotel lobby window, that ties the story and characters together...but it takes some patient reading to discover this.  If you're looking for a linear plot development and a clear resolution at the end, you're bound to be disappointed in The Glass Hotel.  But if character development and study of people's inner motivations and narratives attracts you in a story, then I think you'll be pleased.  At a certain point in the novel I realized that the latter would be the case here and I flowed with it, adjusting my expectations accordingly.  It's not for everyone, but it was intriguing enough for me...you might agree...

My 500 All-Time Favorite Songs: #120-111

When I first started out with this list of my personal top 500 favorite songs, it seemed like it would take forever to present it, ten songs per week.  Yet here we are nearing the point where I'll be discussing the top 100.  Here are the next ten on my list...

120 SKY PILOT...Eric Burdon and the Animals
In my listening experience the ultimate antiwar song, this was a very long, epic piece that unfortunately was severely cut to size as a singles release in 1968...but it's the lengthy middle part that stands out: it vividly depicts the intensity of a terrible battle, with the bagpipe at the end creating a chilling effect.  Burdon's heartfelt singing is heartbreaking throughout...but especially at the song's close...as he describes a day during the war of a "sky pilot", who is the chaplain to the troops that are about to go out and kill and die.  This was from the "Animals" group that Burdon reformulated around himself after the original band broke up...

119 SOUL MEETS BODY...Death Cab for Cutie
Back in 2005 I was at the peak of a rediscovered affection for alternative rock, and listened avidly to my local station that provided that format: 100.5/WHHZ "The Buzz".  Soul Meets Body was a big hit in the indie genre back then...its lyrics speak of commitment throughout life, which is a kind of voyage : "And I do believe it's true that there are roads left in both of our shoes, but if the silence takes you I hope it takes me too".  Death Cab for Cutie was the brain child of composer/singer Ben Gibbard...its name derives from the title of an old sixties song.  Back in 2005 I made Soul Meets Body my "song of the year"...

118 COME AS YOU ARE..Nirvana
When Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit first came out in 1991 I didn't like it and wondered what all the hullabaloo was about this grunge subgenre of rock originating from western Washington state.  But after subsequent songs from their album Nevermind like this one and Lithium began to get airplay, I realized there was much more depth to this band than I had realized.  Come As You Are has a sinister, foreboding aspect to it as Cobain sings his lyrics to a friend...or is it his enemy?

117 TEST  TRANSMISSION...Kasabian
Off this British alternative group's first, self-titled album from 2004, I didn't get around to hearing Test Transmission until I obtained their first four albums six years later and went on training runs with their tracks shuffled on my MP3.  I'm not sure exactly what the cryptic lyrics mean, but the overall mood of the song is positive, I loved the melody...especially that of the chorus section...and thought the ending was especially good, reminding me a little of the old-time Beatles songs...

116 TELL ME BABY...the Red Hot Chili Peppers
The LA-based rock band Red Hot Chili Peppers were/are masters at fusing different types of popular music all into one song...here they combine funk, hard rock, rap and melodic ballad without missing a beat: who else could pull this off?  Tell Me Baby was a singles release from their 2006 double album Stadium Arcadium...as far as I can tell they're still together and producing music that matters.  Who would have guessed it...I sure didn't after seeing their initial video True Men Don't Kill Coyotes way back in 1986...

115 LEAVE IT...Yes
When Yes supposedly reunited to record their successful comeback album 90125 in 1983, it was South African rock composer/singer/guitarist Trevor Rabin's band he was going to call Cinema, as well as this album.  They invited former Yes front man Jon Anderson to their studio and he contributed his vocals to the already-recorded tracks...eventually he became part of the band and they decided to run with the Yes label since other former Yes members were part of Rabin's group. Leave It is one of the tracks and is one of the best examples of perfect harmony in a song.. in 1984 it was my "song of the year"...

114 CAN'T GET IT OUT OF MY HEAD...Electric Light Orchestra
I first heard this breakthrough American hit from the British symphonic rock band ELO late in December, 1974 while working late at night as a clerk in a Miami Shores traffic management firm...WSHE/103.5 played it, I recorded it and listened many times.  That it has a Beatles Sgt. Pepper kind of sound to it was no accident...the band's front man Jeffrey Lynne was an open admirer of the Fab Four and years later would collaborate extensively with George Harrison...

113 NAKED EYE...Luscious Jackson
Naked Eye, from 1997, is another example of a song typified by extraordinary harmony (see Song #115)...as well as of a successful fusing of two genres within one song (see Song #114), this case being rap and alternative rock.  In Gainesville during that time we had an alternative rock station on 97.7...regrettably (for me, not others) the following spring it would shut down, change its frequency to 97.3, and become the standard conservative talk radio station for the area.  It wouldn't be another four years before I noticed a new station in Gainesville playing my kind of music.  Luscious Jackson, a female band of the nineties, had their one big hit in Naked Eye, which in '97 I picked as my "song of the year"...

112 ONCE IN A LIFETIME...Talking Heads
Back in the early eighties in Gainesville, our cable TV company was University City Cable, and on their "home" channel they would inexplicably keep playing this queer song...it took me years to discover the title and artist.  Later, Once in a Lifetime's strangeness would only be enhanced when I got around to seeing the video.  Yet it all clicked with me and I took the song as a commentary about how weird life really is...and how circumstances can sometimes snowball to the point where you openly wonder to yourself exactly how did you get to where you are today...

111 MOTORCADE...Beck
When I first obtained a copy of alternative artist Beck's 2006 The Information album I largely ignored this deep track on it...but it grew on me both musically and lyrically.  Now I think that if I ever came out with an album of my own, this is the kind of song I would like to lead it off with.  And those lyrics are beyond bizarre but possess a kind of poetic beauty: "Skyscraper standing in the desert alone, a helicopter searchlight is searching for no one".  I can tell Beck must have had a lot of fun in the studio putting this track together...

Next week: #110-101...

My Ten-Mile Muggy-Morning Fun Run

I'm not sure what to think lately about the weather forecasters in my area...for both yesterday and today they had pointed to showers in the afternoon but nothing materialized: it's 5 pm and the skies are clear and sunny.  Still, I decided to get in my weekend long training run in earlier, in spite of the extremely high humidity.  When I started out it was a moderate 74 degrees but a very, very muggy 87% humidity...by the time I finished my ten mile run it was 79 with a still pretty high 73% humidity.  Usually this high humidity is something I have little tolerance for with my running, but as it turned out I felt strong enough throughout that not only did I reduce my interspersed walking breaks, but I extended my planned run from 7.2 miles to 10 with no ill effects and plenty of energy left at the end.  After 10:30 am when I started out, the very unpleasantly muggy air might at least partially explain why I saw no one on my residential subdivision course, either on the street or in their yards, for most of the first hour.  Then, suddenly, as if they got some kind of signal, everyone seemed to come outside and I found myself repeatedly crossing the street in order to avoid other walkers and joggers  And the conditions did seem to get better, including a pleasant little breeze whenever I was running northward...

Right now it's 88 degrees and only 49% humidity, conditions that I prefer when running.  With today's run I was sweating profusely...I looked when I got back home as if I had just climbed out of someone's swimming pool.  So I was being a bit facetious with this article's title depicted it as a "fun" run: anything but.  Yet it was a confidence builder in that it demonstrated to me my growing ability to handle a wider variety of weather situations...in years gone by high humidity coupled with even only moderately warm temperatures affected me adversely with my running.  Looking forward to seeing what happens next weekend...

Miscellaneous Ramblings about the Weather, Comet and Beach

The last couple of Saturdays have seen the weather acting up in Gainesville after a week of generally clear skies...we're expecting some rain and storm later on while at this writing in the morning the sky is clouding up and it seems kind of muggy outside.  So I'm going to put off my "long run" in the neighborhood until tomorrow with hopes of improved weather...

This past Thursday morning I got up at 4:30 to see Comet Swan, which was located just east of Pisces and next to Aries, reportedly just barely visible to the naked eye at 5.5 magnitude...I had a pair of binoculars to aid me.  Unfortunately it was too low in the eastern sky for me to see, although the last quarter moon, along with two nearby planets, provided a visual spectacle.  So, I went back inside and, seeing that sunrise would be at 6:36, set my alarm for 6 thinking that the comet would then be high enough in the sky for observation.  But alas, when I went out then the sun hadn't yet risen but the sky had lightened enough anyway to blot out all the stars and planets, with the only the moon left visible.  I've seen comets before, the most spectacular one being Comet West, which streaked very brightly across the predawn sky early in 1976 while being virtually ignored by the press and people at large.  Usually, though, they've been very faint and sometimes I needed binoculars to see them.  Oh well, Swan is too close to the sun now...better luck with the next comet...

A couple of Saturdays ago Melissa and I drove over to St. Augustine Beach in the morning...specifically Vilano Beach...to walk up and down it and return home.  It wasn't overly crowded and I thought most everyone there was conscientious about distancing because of the coronavirus.  But at our stop in the nearby Publix, although the workers all wore masks as well as the two of us, most customers did not and did not practice distancing.  I know the false narrative and am tired of it: "it's my own body"...but in truth, what they are doing is messing with everyone else's bodies since anyone can be infected even without symptoms...

So maybe I'll go out and run tomorrow...looks like there's a tropical system offshore that might become Arthur, our first named storm of the year.  But it's veering away from us in Florida and headed toward the Carolinas...

---Later in the same afternoon: it never did rain up here in northern Gainesville, but the humidity has remained high...I'll see if maybe I can't get out to run some tomorrow...

 

Quote of the Week...from Stephen King

Talent is cheaper than table salt.  What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work.                                                ---Stephen King.

Since I reviewed Stephen King's latest book yesterday, I thought it would be natural to dig up one of his quotes and expand upon it.  And if there is anyone who understands the importance of hard work it's this terrific, durable and prolific writer.  I have a copy of King's book On Writing, in which he gives his knowledgeable input on what it takes to be successful in that craft.  First, he admits that a raw, innate talent is essential to becoming a great writer, but most of us can become good writers if we're willing to invest the needed time and properly-directed effort.  Like the late science fiction writer Isaac Asimov, King sets aside a daily time and place to write his stories and would "just do it", much like anyone punching in on a clock would set themselves in "work mode" for the duration of their shift.  On top of this, Stephen King deems extensive reading as essential to being a success in writing...so now we're talking "overtime".  Asimov for his part, even when he wasn't sitting in front of a typewriter, claimed to write in his head and was always on the alert for new ideas. Unfortunately, unlike the sci-fi great, when I get an idea I'd better quickly write it down lest I forget it...and even when I do, sometimes I later have forgotten the point of the idea in the first place...

Stephen King's quote about hard work applies to any endeavor requiring a kernel of talent: its successful development depends on tenaciously sweating it out and putting in the needed hours...there's no way around it...

Just Finished Reading If It Bleeds by Stephen King

I just finished reading Stephen King's latest book, a four-novella collection called If It Bleeds...which happens to be the title of one of its stories.  I like them all, some more than others...but why not examine each one along with me and see whether you might not want to pick up a copy for yourself...

MR. HARRIGAN'S PHONE
A ruthless elderly tycoon quietly retires to Stephen King's fictional small-town Maine where a local boy earns a little money by reading to him.  During special days like his birthday or Christmas, Mr. Harrigan gives him lottery tickets.  One time he wins thousands of dollars and decides to give the old man, digitally and Internet-ignorant,  a smartphone. After Harrigan's initial skepticism, he becomes fascinated and ultimately inseparable from the phone, claiming all sort of possibilities for it while bemoaning its adverse effects on society.  This story reminded me of a couple of Twilight Zone episodes where a phone provided an eerie sort of nexus...

LIFE OF CHUCKY
The most brilliant and original of this book's stories, Life of Chucky takes place in three acts, going backward in time covering parts of a young accountant's life...and the startling effect he has on others.  It's also a ghost story and delves into the philosophical idea of solipsism...look it up if you don't know what it means.  Also, King gets to weigh in on his love of dancing, reminding me a bit of his masterpiece novel 11/22/63...

IF IT BLEEDS
Shape-shifting and psychic vampire monsters have evidently been on Stephen King's mind, at least a couple of his more recent novels...Doctor Sleep and The Outsider.  Also he seems to enjoy continuing a series he began with Mister Mercedes as private investigator Holly Gibney, after her traumatic experience in The Outsider, suspects the existence of yet another shape-shifter who feeds on despair and suffering.  Since I like Holly and the other "good guys" in this series, I enjoyed it but also felt that it seemed to be little more than a sequel to that book.  Also, once it's established that an author wants to write a string of tales about a group of characters like Holly and Jerome Robinson, I get the feeling while reading them that these characters' lives are all protected no matter what dire peril they may find themselves in...

RAT
A teacher of creative writing himself has a severe writer's block when it comes to composing a novel.  One day he envisions the perfect story, though, and takes off for the family's remote cabin out in the woods to write it...much to his wife's skepticism and concern.  After picking up the flu from a careless, sick clerk at the local store he finds himself alternately fighting off his own illness and the major winter storm sweeping through the area.  Yes, a rat has something to do with this story, especially the writer's ability to complete his book...and the unacceptable price tag that goes with it.  My least favorite of the four stories...

So I enjoyed reading all four stories in If It Bleeds, but two were pretty derivative and one was simply a continuance in a previous series...leaving Life of Chucky as the standout.  You might have different impressions, though, should you find yourself checking it out...

Weekly Short Stories: 1958 Science Fiction, Part 2

I have to say that these four 1958 science fiction short stories I'm discussing today from the anthology Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 20 (1958) are all among the better ones ever written...especially that last one below which I regard as a masterpiece of the genre.  Here's what I thought about each of them...

THE PRIZE OF PERIL by Robert Sheckley
The idea of placing people in dangerous situations, even possibly fatal, for the entertainment of the masses has become more commonplace in literature, television and movies...The Running Man and The Hunger Games stand out in this subgenre of science fiction.  But it all may have started with this short story by Robert Sheckley in which, also in a dystopian future, contestants in a no-holds-barred game show try to buck the odds and survive a set number of hours out in the world while assassins close in for the kill.  I felt this was a pretty exciting story, and sadly on target as to the direction we're heading in...the vicarious attraction of watching violence and others' suffering has become an epidemic in our culture...

OR ALL THE SEAS WITH OYSTERS by Avram Davidson
This brief tale mixes together our mass production technology, the tendency for things like paperclips and clothes hangers to either be mysteriously misplaced or suddenly seem to be in too great a quantity, and the biological concept of mimicry as a survival form of camouflage.  Sounds strange? That's because it is strange, a quirky story that reminded me of Donald Wollheim's 1942 brilliant Mimic.  The notion of some kind of malevolent sentience being behind everyday items suddenly missing is probably more commonplace than many would like to admit...I sometimes even joke that the "elves" must be at work when I keep coming up short of socks...

TWO DOOMS by Cyril Kornbluth
This is one of the better alternative history stories out there.  An American scientist during World War II working in the Manhattan Project has just received the results of his assignment: an atomic bomb is scientifically possible.  But before he decides to relay this crucial information to his superior...knowing in advance all the lives that will probably be lost because of it...he goes out and visits an old Navaho friend who introduces him to a special mushroom concoction.  The resulting "trip" sends him 150 years into a future America dominated by the warlord Japanese and Nazi Germans...

THE BIG FRONT YARD by Clifford Simak
One of my all-time favorite short stories...close to novella length...I first read it as a kid going through some of my father's old paperback anthologies.  A practical, honest rural handyman discovers one day that his basement ceiling has been changed to an impermeable, glass-like barrier...and his dog seems to think there's something out the woods that needs scrutiny.  The upshot to all this is soon revealed when he opens his front door to another world.  To me as a kid...and still to this day...the notion of traveling vast distances by simply stepping through a door greatly intrigued me.  I was also totally sold on protagonist Hiram Taine's pragmatic and contented personality in the face of the commotion going on around him...

Next week I conclude my look at science fiction short stories from 1958...

Follow-Up on Friday's Barry Farber Article

This past Friday I quoted Barry Farber, New York City's great WOR Radio conservative talk show host...he just passed away and I wanted to honor him.  However, he shares his name with a younger man who has built a career on motivational self-help programs and I fear that it may have been one of his quotes that I used.  Never mind, it's still a good quote, regardless who said it: risk is indeed often an essential element involved in making progress.  I've also been thinking more about the elder Farber's fascination about learning foreign languages and his imploring to take advantage of every opportunity to practice them.  Since I live in a predominantly English-speaking country, I don't have the benefit of immersion to quickly attain fluency...and maybe I don't need to become fluent in another language, anyway.  The other day Melissa and I were delivering Mother's Day gifts for our church to different members at their homes...we found ourselves conversing with a family from Iran and I could have taken advantage of this opportunity to speak greetings to them in Persian...I do know this one sentence pretty well...but I didn't.  Then, later, we stopped over for a dinner takeout from a downtown Cambodian restaurant...once again I know the same greeting in that language and could have spoken it to the owner but refrained.  I'm not studying Persian or Cambodian (Khmer) right now, but since I know people from those backgrounds and I like to study foreign languages, it seems appropriate to take a little time aside and learn a few phrases and practice conversing with them.  Now I am (off and on) studying Chinese and Spanish and do have opportunities with talk with native speakers...but of course when I do I'm going to pronounce things wrong, use the wrong words and make grammatical mistakes left and right.  But you can't make progress learning new skills without exposing yourself to the risk of screwing up, right?  Back nearly forty years ago I used to work at a Chinese restaurant in town and had several Vietnamese immigrants as coworkers...they welcomed me learning and practicing their language with them, but it's been a while since I've ever spoken it with anyone.  Well, I'm not getting any younger and recent events have shown that there's no telling what will happen in the future, so why not enrich my life by reaching out and practice foreign languages with others...

My 500 All-Time Favorite Songs: #130-121

Here's another segment of my all-time 500 favorite songs list that spans several decades...most of the songs are pretty well known but a couple are hidden treasures on their respective albums.  I naturally think they're all fantastic and urge you to give them a listen.  And now, the next ten...

130 PRODIGAL SON...the Rolling Stones
Although the album Beggars Banquet, on which this track appeared, came out in 1968, I didn't hear it until the mid-nineties when I examined the Stones' collected works. Prodigal Son was originally composed by blues artist Reverend Richard Wilkins some forty-odd years earlier. It would be a great song to play on Christian radio stations, but I'm not holding my breath waiting for that to happen since the singer is, after all, Mick Jagger.  I loved Jagger's subdued, blues-soaked style here...my estimation of this song has only increased over the years...

129 SPACE ODDITY...David Bowie
To me, for most of David Bowie's career Space Oddity was his great, defining song with its cosmic overtones and sense of alienation and isolation...then I realized that I liked another of his early works more.  Although Space Oddity was first released in 1969 and I heard it while straining my ears one night to hear it played on a weak AM station that was fading in and out, for some reason it was rereleased as a single in early 1973 and my local station WQAM/560 played it in their regular rotation.  It's very loosely based, in my opinion, on the celebrated 1967 movie 2001: A Space Odyssey as astronaut David Bowman finds himself on his own special trip out in the cosmos, cut off from humanity...

128 LAZY EYE...Silversun Pickups
I liked this 2006 indie hit back then when it was played on my local Gainesville alternative rock station, but years later...in 2018...for some reason I really picked up on it and would make it my favorite song of that year.  Lead singer Brian Aubert sounds like he's trying to imitate the Smashing Pumpkins' front man Billy Corgan, and that can get to be a little irritating.  But he delivers a great performance here...and the guitar play is outstanding on a number of levels.  It's really quite a brilliant song...

127 SUICIDE BLONDE....INXS
This song by the Australian band came out in 1990 and was a moderate hit...to me this lead song from their X album was superior to any of the hits they had produced from their previous breakthrough album Kick.  This is a great, hard-rocking piece with a piercing riff and singer Michael Hutchence, one of the great voices of his age, more than able to keep up with the torrid guitar pace.  I was also pretty impressed with the video...

126 IMITATION OF LIFE...R.E.M.
From their 2001 surprisingly good Reveal album, Imitation of Life was its initial singles release.  It has a somber, yet whimsical mood to it as the band by this time has clearly moved away from guitar-based alternative rock to a more studio-arranged sound.  Michael Stipe's lyrics are typical of his nonsensical stream-of-consciousness style: "Charades pop skill, water hyacinth, named by a poet imitation of life" yet he sings it as if it were the most important message he could relate.  The verse section's melody is compelling...the chorus, which dominates the song's second half, has a children's sing-song aspect to it that bothered me a little at first, but I came to like it as well...

125 I WILL FOLLOW...U2
This song kicked off the Irish rock band's 1980 debut album Boy and is U2 at its best...sometimes that's the way it is: an act starts out with an artistic rawness to it that over the years gets compromised bit by little bit.  Lead guitarist The Edge dominates I Will Follow with his relentless trademark riff from the very beginning and Bono has maybe his best singing performance in a song full of spiritual overtones.  It didn't become known in America until 1983 when their hit song New Year's Day introduced this iconic band to the country...

124 GOING TO CALIFORNIA...Led Zeppelin
Possibly the greatest album side of all time...Led Zeppelin "IV" Side Two, when there actually used to be album sides...Going to California is Robert Plant's plaintive ballad about looking for a love that he can't find...and then realizes probably never ever existed.  Jimmy Page offers my favorite acoustic guitar accompaniment to a Led Zeppelin song, although Friends from their previous album was pretty awesome as well.  Every song on this album side is on my "top 500" list, two already covered and two more to go...

123 THE TWO OF US...the Beatles
The leadoff track on the Beatles' final studio album Let It Be, which was ironically described on its jacket as "a new phase Beatles album", The Two of Us was one of my favorites during my angst-ridden existence as a thirteen-year-old eighth-grader early in 1970.  A further irony is that this song features Paul and John in one of their greatest performing collaborations while in reality "the two of them" were bitterly feuding with each other over the band's management and musical direction.  I wish they'd come up with a few more like this folksy tune reminiscent of their earlier Rubber Soul period...

122 NIGHTS IN WHITE SATIN...the Moody Blues
This closing track from the revamped Moody Blues' 1967 Days of Future Passed album was unknown to me until album rock radio began playing it in conjunction with the release of their 1972 Seventh Sojourn album...it's a fitting close to an album guiding the listener through the various parts of the day.  The "night" here is gloomy and somber as the singer expresses his inner troubles...the concluding spoken poem, composed and read by drummer Graham Nash, is often cut from radio play but is the best part of the song, in my opinion: "Breathe deep the gathering gloom, watch lights fade from every room.  Bedsitter people look back and lament another day's useless energy spent".  It was a favorite of mine during a period of deep introspection I was going through at the time...

121 JACKSONVILLE...Sufjan Stevens
On his tremendous 2005 Illinois album, Stevens included this slow-moving ode to the Underground Railroad of the mid-1800s that aided blacks from the South escaping slavery to their eventual freedom in Canada...Jacksonville, Illinois was a "way station" in this secret network.  I loved the entire album, but Jacksonville stands out with Stevens' understated singing, banjo picking and strong presence of strings in the background orchestration.  It irks me that a great song like this one doesn't even rate a separate Wikipedia article...I'd like to read how the artist put everything together to come out with such a singular product.  Although it was released in '05 I didn't first hear it until four years later when I discovered Sufjan Stevens while listening to an online alternative music channel...

Next week: #120-111...