Starbucks, Masks, and Narratives

Back on June 28th I wrote about sitting in my nearby Starbucks and enjoying the resumption of an old tradition of mine, sipping on an iced coffee with my laptop and writing and studying.  At the time I wondered whether, with this resurgence of the coronavirus in my home state of Florida and others in the country, Starbucks might close its indoors areas again.  But I've been in here a number of times since and have always found the dining room relatively empty with no trouble finding a "distant" place to sit.  Although it's acceptable to take off my mask once I'm seated, I find it more comfortable to keep it on and momentarily lift it while taking a sip...I've noticed some other fellow customers likewise keeping theirs on as well.  One day a young couple that had been sitting across the store from me without masks (which was fine with me) turned toward me as they were walking out with bug-eyed, hostile stares...no doubt directed at me for wearing a mask: they were complete strangers and I was doing nothing to them, yet they felt somehow justified at throwing civility out the window over this one issue. I keep seeing Facebook posts by deniers who act offended if others expect them to wear a mask around them and who NEVER acknowledge that their usefulness is not so much to protect themselves from others but rather to protect others from themselves.  These people have doubtless heard this point repeatedly but simply refuse to receive it because it doesn't fit their bias and narrative. So instead they keep pushing this bogus "it's my body and I'll do what I want with it" victim-complex argument which avoids the fact that they are in truth demonstrating callous disregard for the health of others around them.  But I've discovered a major truth, which is that once people get a particular narrative stuck in their brains, then no amount of facts, logic, or mitigating input will ever convince them to either dispose of it or even to expand upon it a little: they'll accept information, no matter how spurious, that props it up...and either reject or ignore anything broadening or contradicting it...

Weekly Short Stories: 1960 Science Fiction, Part 3

Here I conclude my look at science fiction short stories from 1960 as they appeared in the anthology Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 22 (1960).  Two were very brief and two were pretty long...I preferred the former although the longer ones did each make me reflect a little on the nature of our reality.  Here are my reactions to these four stories...

CHIEF by Henry Slesar
In this very short tale, a party of "whites" following a nuclear war land on a isolated, primitive society's shores, hopeful that here they can escape the dire effects of the holocaust...as well as impress the native population with their "superiority", as expressed by the strange machine they display that emits many clicking sounds when held up to themselves. (but not the natives).  You just know this tactic is going to backfire, but the last sentence makes it all worth reading anyway...

MIND PARTNER by Christopher Anvil
This is one of those stories that play with the reader's sense of what is real and what isn't...at its conclusion I still wasn't clear.  There is a new drug floating around that gives makes its users strongly dependent...but the addiction isn't for new heightened experiences but rather to forget them.  Intrigued?  A man is hired to infiltrate the gang pushing the drug from their mansion...and right off the bat the illusions ensue.  Hold onto your hat with this story: it's quite a ride...

THE HANDLER by Damon Knight
The Handler is also very short, but like Chief its message packs a big punch...and in today's world of shallow, narcissistic celebrities and politicians that millions idolize it is also very relevant.  One of those shallow celebrities has just finished a performance and is backstage congratulating the various people responsible for propping him up...and everyone around thinks he is the greatest.  Then he mentions his Handler...and the absurdity begins.  The message here is that even when people know someone is a complete phony, they'll still uncritically hinge on every word he or she says: you don't have to look very far on the news or Twitter to see this...

THE VOICES OF TIME by J.G. Ballard
Powers is a research neurologist in the not-too-distant future...life is running down, with terminal sleeping comas increasingly affecting the population: his own waking hours are dwindling down as the days rush by and he tries to finish his business before the end.  An associate leads him to the underlying reason for the sped-up entropy pervading the world: the entire universe is dying, and much quickly than ever thought.  In a story where there's not much to be done, instead the author lays it out differently, creating a mood piece that accentuates the hopelessness and resignation.  It makes reading it more challenging, and I'm not sure it couldn't have been just as effective if written in a more plain style...but that's just my opinion for what it's worth...

Next week I begin my look back at the year 1961 in short science fiction...

Just Finished Reading The Pearl by John Steinbeck

It was either late 1970 or early 1971 when my ninth grade high school English teacher Mrs. Hagadorn assigned us to read John Steinbeck's 1947 novel The Pearl...I dutifully went down to my school's tiny bookstore at the southwest corner of campus and purchased a copy: it was pretty small and looked like a quick, easy read.  Unfortunately, the story itself was so overwhelmingly negative that I found the reading experience exceedingly unpleasant...to the point where I "studiously" avoided reading anything else by Steinbeck for decades.  Well, after three relatively recent positive reactions to three of his novels...Of Mice and Men, The Grapes of Wrath, and Cannery Row...I decided to take on The Pearl once more to see if the passing years might not have blunted some of my critical attitude about it.  Nope, turns out that I wasn't reading it back then with an immature mind...I found it just as distasteful as before, but nevertheless came out of it all with some reflections...

As in Grapes of Wrath from eight years before, society is depicted in The Pearl as dog-eat-dog and full of bigotry and racially-based class distinction...if you happen to be born into the "wrong" group then you can just forget about getting a fair shake in life.  A poor fisherman living on the Baja Mexico peninsula with his wife and infant makes a paltry income diving for pearls...one day he finds the ultimate prize, a giant beautiful specimen...and foolishly lets the news spread like wildfire.  Because he now possesses "wealth", Kino believes that he will be able to move up the social ladder and partake of the benefits that society offers to those with financial means.  Instead he is despised by his own people, swindled by the doctor and purchasers, and attacked for the pearl...ultimately becoming a hunted outcast.  It's a tragic tale...but which is evil, the pearl or the disease of covetousness infecting all the people who encounter it?  Kino himself gets carried away by his discovery and his dreams of capitalizing on it...ultimately, the "solution" is not to change others but his own attitude about material wealth. But if you're very poor and are struggling just to feed and shelter your own family, you have to grab on to anything that can guarantee at least some semblance of a future, so I was disappointed in how the story ended.  Maybe you'll arrive at a different reaction: The Pearl is "0 for 2" as far as my readings of it are concerned: I'm done with it...with a bit more respect for my old ninth grade ability of discernment...

My 500 All-Time Favorite Songs: #75-71

Here are my reactions to five more songs on my 500 all-time favorites list as it gradually approaches the very best...these here, though, are all "champions" as far as I am concerned...

75 EIGHT MILES HIGH...the Byrds
By early 1966 I already knew of the Byrds from the previous year with their big hits Hey Mister Tambourine Man and Turn Turn Turn that they performed on the Ed Sullivan show and which my local station WQAM would play...still, I kind of felt, even back then in my nine-year old mind, that they seemed too preachy.  But then Eight Miles High came out with its out-of-this-world guitar jamming and spaced-out lyrics and I was pleased to finally come across something of theirs I liked a lot.  Looking back, this was one of the very earliest psychedelic songs to come out, a year before the movement took off with the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper album and the ensuing Summer of Love.  But although imitators of this genre now sound stale, Eight Miles High is the "real McCoy" and is as fresh today as it was 54 years ago...

74 TAKE THE LONG WAY HOME...Supertramp
This song of personal desolation appropriately was popular at the exact time of my own personal desolation: late in 1979, the worst part of the worst year in my life...sometimes you go through valleys, and then there are trenches.  It's from their wonderful Breakfast in America album and features Roger Hodgson's high-pitched, plaintive lead vocals and a killer harmonica and piano interaction.  The intro and closing to Take the Long Way Home are among the best ever that I've heard, and the lyrics tear at the heart: "When the day comes to settle down, who's to blame if you're not around...you took the long way home"...a truly chilling song...

73 STRANGLEHOLD...Ted Nugent
No, I don't dig Ted Nugent's politics...if others do then good for them, leave me out of it all.  Stranglehold, from 1974, is Nugent's signature masterpiece...although while the guitar magician works numerous wonders on it the lead singer is Derek St. Holmes.  Still, Nugent contributes his own singing as well in the unforgettable line near the end: "Sometimes you want to get higher, and sometimes you gotta start low...some people think they're gonna die someday: I got news, you never got to go".  When Stranglehold first came out I didn't like it...only years later did I learn to appreciate how it built up musically...

72 AMERICA...Simon and Garfunkel
In retrospect, Simon and Garfunkel's 1968 album Bookends to me was their best and one of the greatest in history...although at the time I knew little of it.  It wouldn't be until seven years later that I really took to America, one of its tracks.  The lyrics describe a Greyhound trip a young man and his girlfriend are taking cross-country, my favorite line being "Laughing on the bus, playing games with the faces, she said the man in the gabardine suit was a spy.  I said be careful, his bowtie is really a camera". Although it came out years earlier, I closely associate S&G's America with what was going on with my life in late 1975...

71 BE GOOD JOHNNY...Men at Work
Men at Work was a talented Australian band from the early 1980s who came out with funny hits like Who Can It Be Now? and Down Under and even goofier videos to accompany them.  Be Good Johnny was a minor hit between their bigger ones, and although they also hammed it up here both in the song and video, it contained an underlying theme that strongly resonated with me then and still does: we're all different and each of us has a right to our own individuality...and furthermore it's up to each to us to assert that individuality without having to wait for anyone else's permission.  Pretty heady for a group that at the time was often derided as being too shallow.  Be Good Johnny's music was pretty awesome, too...

Next week: #70-66...

Lookin Forward to Resumed Pro Sports...If That Happens

I've enjoyed this Fourth of July weekend, but I'm getting a little tired of listening to sports talk or watching reruns of ancient games as substitutes for watching live major league sporting events.  Sure, there's still premier professional soccer going on in Europe and Mexico, and sometimes that's fun to watch...I got into yesterday's English Premier League match between Chelsea and Watford, peculiar in that although the Chelsea home stadium was empty of fans, they piped in recorded spectator noise to give the audio illusion that it was packed.  But not seeing anyone in the stands doesn't detract in the least from my enjoyment of a game...just bring it on!  On July 8th, America's Major League Soccer is planning to start action with all 26 league teams in a format similar to the World Cup...a few early matches followed by knockout elimination rounds until a champion is crowned.  But whether I follow them or not depends on whether I get to see their matches on TV.  Major League Baseball is supposedly going to begin a much-curtailed, 60-game regular season starting on July 23rd or 24th with games taking place at the various cities' home fields although they, too, will be empty of fans.  The National Basketball Association on July 30th is set to try and close its 2019-2020 season with some 22 teams playing for the final playoff lineup with the playoffs following...while everyone involved plays and resides within an isolation bubble at World Disney World near Orlando: good luck with that.  Similarly, the National Hockey League plans to hold its season-ending playoffs with the teams playing in centralized locations away from their home towns...both basketball and hockey will be playing to empty arenas.  And the National Football League plans to start its 2020 season on September 10th, although the number of scheduled preseason exhibition games has dwindled from four to two...and may be zero before we get there.  And there's no telling what will happen with college football, as decentralized as the sport is with certain conferences and states holding a relatively high degree of decision power here...

I like watching soccer, baseball, basketball, and football when the games count...even ice hockey when it's the Stanley Cup playoffs.  I don't want to see packed stadiums and arenas anytime soon, and some of the reports about different teams' players testing positive for COVID-19 don't sound encouraging.  The recent resurgence of coronavirus in many states...especially Texas, California, Arizona and my Florida...has thrown a monkey wrench into the various plans for reopening the different leagues.  As of now, they're still planning to resume play on the indicated dates, but we all know that things can drastically change over the course of just a few hours...

Just Finished Reading Cannery Row by John Steinbeck

As I continued on my personal tour of some of American writer John Steinbeck's more famous works, I came across his 1945 Cannery Row, a lighter story than his usual deep social commentary.  It's about a street...hence the title...in Monterrey, California, a location intimately known by the author.  Sardine canning companies line it, and other residents live there: Lee Chong, the parsimonious local grocer, community-minded Dora and her brothel, a group of derelict men led by Mack...and then there's Doc, a marine biologist running his own business and who collects and sells samples of the local Pacific fauna from his laboratory there.  It's the interaction between these various characters that dictates the story's flow, highlighted by Mack's desire to do something nice for Doc and the mischief that follows this initial burst of good will.  Mack reminded me with his philosophy of life of Eliza Doolittle's vagrant father in My Fair Lady, the movie adaptation of George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion.  Initially when I read Cannery Row I felt that Steinbeck wrote Doc's character based on himself, but later I discovered that he based it on a friend who also had a biological laboratory there.  There is some drama in the story, but it's mostly a tale about many clearly-flawed, very different individuals bound together within a community by their affection for one another and sense of belonging...and that's not so bad, is it?  I remember back in the early 1980s a Cannery Row movie starring Nick Nolte and Deborah Winger but I never got around to seeing it.  Cannery Row hops from character to character...the temptation is for me to crown Doc as the story's protagonist, but this novel really wasn't constructed that way: it was more a portrayal of this quirky, special town at a snapshot in history.  I thought it was pretty good reading...

Quote of the Week...from Les Brown

 You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.                 ---Les Brown

Les Brown is an American motivational speaker who has appeared in the past on Public Television fundraising drives...that's how I got impressed with his rhetorical skills.  Being in my sixties, I'm not getting any younger but still need to believe in progress and self-improvement.  It's important to look at the future and see possibilities and opportunities for personal advancement and new experiences.  I want to continue to learn foreign languages, learn to play a musical instrument or two (or more), write a book or two (or more), travel a bit, keep up my health even to the point of continuing running races for years to come, and develop my interpersonal communications skills...the area I probably need work on the most.  And I want to do this all while encouraging my wonderful wife Melissa to do likewise with her goals and dreams, the two of us sharing our joys and experiences...the same goes for our children Will and Rebecca as they stake out their respective futures as young adults...

Just Finished Reading The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

The Grapes of Wrath is one of those books that I should have been assigned during high school English class...how I missed it is beyond me.  In the ninth grade, I did get assigned The Pearl, another novel by John Steinbeck, one I intensely disliked at the time and which kept me from approaching this great author's other works for many, many years.  But a few years ago I read his Of Mice and Men, a brilliant work, and just now finally tackled what is probably his most famous novel, which came out in 1939 and just the following year was made into a classic movie starring Henry Fonda.  Fonda's character, a young man named Tom Joad, has just been released from prison and is returning home to his family of tenant farmers in rural Oklahoma...only to discover upon arriving that they have had "their" farm seized by the bank after Dust Bowl failures in crop yield had placed them behind in payments.  Many of the Joads' neighbors are likewise pulling up stakes and heading to California, where handbills flooding their area are proclaiming jobs abounding in that state's diverse agricultural community.  It is the ordeal of the Joads...with Tom's blunt, common sense take on the proceedings, that defines this story of greedy exploitation by the wealthy, irrational prejudice by those feeling threatened by the incoming "Okies", and the bonds that develop among the poor families desperately searching for work to feed and shelter themselves.  The Grapes of Wrath is an exposé story of this dark period in our country's history...I haven't yet seen the movie but plan to soon: I've read nothing but good things about it, although I suspect that some of the book's rawness may have been smoothed over for the big screen.  But first I recommend you read the book: Steinbeck makes you feel like you're right there with the Joad family, alternately suffering and rejoicing with them along their troubled journey.  As for other John Steinbeck novels, I'm currently reading his more lighthearted Cannery Row and look forward to East of Eden and a hopefully more mature rereading of The Pearl...

Weekly Short Stories: 1960 Science Fiction, Part 2

Here are four more science fiction short stories from the anthology Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 22 (1960).  This paperback anthology series, compiled during the 1980s and early 90s up to Asimov's sad death from kidney failure in 1992, covered the years 1939-63 in the genre.  For 1964 through 1990, I've also collected the ongoing "year's best" science fiction short story series edited by Donald Wollheim...so you see I've got a long way to go just to get to thirty years ago...

MINE OWN WAYS by Richard McKenna
This is a story of allegory, as are many science fiction tales, about how one's own cultural centeredness can cause judgmental conclusions about another society and its norms and laws.  Set on another planet, Earth travelers are repelled by the killing they see within an indigenous humanoid society there...their eyes are opened when the "priest" in charge of the barbaric rituals reveals his true identity and the underlying cause of the "tests" the young initiates are required to perform...with violent death as the penalty for failure.  An interesting theory contained within about the origins of our own humanity...

MAKE MINE...HOMOGENIZED by Rick Raphael
A deliberately funny and satirical take on the arms race, nuclear testing, and genetic manipulation as a hokey ranch woman living near one of those western testing sites discovers one day that one of her cows' milk is high-powered fuel of a kind no one has remotely developed...and that her rooster produces golden eggs with equally strong detonator powder inside.  Of course, the secret gets out and the author has fun describing the reactions not only of the defense bigwigs, press, and politicians, but also of the Soviet Union with its propensity for ridiculous propaganda.  A long story, but enjoyable with a very silly, campy pun stuck at the very end (in our age it would be called a "dad" joke)...

THE LADY WHO SAILED THE SOUL by Cordwainer Smith
Cordwainer Smith was the pen name of Paul Linebarger, a college professor who as his alter ego created a special, unique future history of space exploration...my favorite story of his is The Game of Cat and Dragon from 1954. The Lady Who Sailed The Soul is a sci-fi love story about Cordwainer's imagined space pioneering vision of star-travelers on spaceships powered by vast light-sensitive sails, the passengers in suspended animation and the pilots medically modified to stay always awake with their sense of time passage drastically slowed. On such a voyage to "New Earth" light years distant the pilot perceives that one month has passed but physically ages forty years.  A woman and man, the former about to pilot her first mission and the latter, physically old but mentally still young, have a romantic affair but then part company...and then she embarks on her own piloting assignment on a ship called The Soul.  I liked the story, but preferred others by this author...

I REMEMBER BABYLON by Arthur C. Clarke
Clarke is best know for his 2001: A Space Odyssey movie that he co-created with Stanley Kubrick in 1967 and later wrote a four-part book series about.  In 1945 he predicted the rise of communications satellites stationed in stationary spots around the Earth...twelve years before Sputnik, the first satellite, was ever launched! I Remember Babylon is a semi-fictional essay in which Clarke encounters a man working for America's adversaries...and their new satellites will broadcast unrestricted pornography and violence into American homes 24/7 (to supposedly weaken the population) interspersed with propaganda while our government will be able to do nothing about it.  In 1991, when the anthology's editors picked this "story" for inclusion, they were glad that Clarke's vision didn't come about. Unfortunately, they were clueless about the soon-to-be advent of the Internet, which produced the exact same effect as warned in this story...

Next week I conclude my look back at the year 1960 in short science fiction...

My June 2020 Running Report

In June my total running mileage dropped down to 128 miles...substantially lower than the previous two months' figures but overall higher than before.  My longest single run was 5 miles, accomplished on a number of days.  The very muggy, rainy...and this past weekend, dusty conditions...kept me from my planned weekend "long" runs, as well as a couple of occasions in which I simply did not feel well and rested: I skipped running two days in June.  As for July, my main obstacle with going out on longer training runs will be the weather as the temperatures continue to surge and the typical humidity for this part of the country remains high...as well as possible rain.  If I do go out on a long venture, I plan to mix my running with walking breaks, as marathon guru Jeff Galloway has taught...a strategy that has worked well for me in the past.  As I age (I'm 63), I'll probably be increasing my walking-to-running ratio but would still want to participate in races like half-marathons and 10Ks and 15Ks, assuming we ever get around to holding them again.  I'm hoping that by November 11th, conditions with this pandemic will have alleviated enough for the Tom Walker Memorial Half-Marathon to take place here in Gainesville, but I'm prepared to wait until next year for a race if it's canceled.  In any event, staying healthy and fit is my main goal for the immediate future...

My 500 All-Time Favorite Songs: #80-76

Here are my reactions to five more songs from my 500 all-time favorites list.  As with other segments, there is a diversity of musical styles here...one of them is actually an arrangement of a classical work.  I naturally recommend them all, although one of them I'm reasonably sure you've never heard, two you might have heard, and two were big singles hits in their time...

80 CASIMIR PULASKI DAY...Sufjan Stevens
Have you ever heard of Sufjan Stevens?  Probably not, so in all likelihood you don't know of this very talented and inspired artist's outstanding 2005 album Illinois, ostensibly a tribute to this midwestern state in which he lived for a time but actually a much more introspective and spiritual work. Casimir Pulaski Day exemplifies this: the title refers to an Illinois state holiday at the beginning of March commemorating the Polish military officer who joined the American Revolutionary War efforts against the Brits.  But the song's narrative is really about a teenage girl who is dying of bone cancer, and the struggles with faith that Stevens, overtly Christian in his beliefs and songwriting, undergoes here.  My favorite song of 2009 when I first heard it, this is real Christian music that you'll never hear played on "Christian" radio because, well, as I said before it deals frankly with real struggles that Christians go through regarding their faith...

79 FLY AWAY...Lenny Kravitz
For most of 1998 I thought it was a very good year in music, with many great songs to choose from to crown my "song of the year"...and then Fly Away came along in the fall and blew them all away with its energy and wistfulness.  This song makes me want to yell along with Lenny, pump my fist into the air, and slam into that air guitar of mine...and fly away, too...don't forget that.  "Let's go and see the stars, the Milky Way or even Mars...where it could just be ours"...YEAH!  I think that, along with the other Fly Away on this favorites list of mine (by John Denver and Olivia Newton John) you couldn't come up with two more different-sounding songs with the same title and same general theme, each beautiful in its own way...

78 TOMORROW NEVER KNOWS...the Beatles
When my parents heard this closing track from the Beatles' greatest (in my opinion) album, their 1966 Revolver, I think that was when they began to drift away from being fans of the Fab Four (the Strawberry Fields Forever video on the Ed Sullivan Show didn't help either)...Tomorrow Never Knows is about as spacey as it gets.  I, on the other hand, couldn't get enough of listening to it, funny bird/animal sounds notwithstanding.  And the opening words..."Turn off your mind, relax and float downstream, it is not dying" through "But listen to the color of your dreams, it is not living" reveal some pretty deep, cryptically expressed philosophical stuff...not my parents' "cup of tea" but definitely mine...

77 DEBUSSY'S ARABESQUE NO. 1...Isao Tomita
Back in late 1974 my local Ft. Lauderdale progressive rock station, WSHE/103.5, began regularly playing this track from Isao Tomita's Snowflakes Are Dancing album, comprised of a number of instrumental songs written by French classical composer Claude Debussy (1862-1918) and arranged and produced completely electronically.  I bought the album and for weeks was entranced by its music...Arabesque No. 1, which in Tomita's version (not the original Debussy score) contains segments of eerie, bizarre "whistling" and "singing", you may recognize as the long-time theme music for the late Jack Horkheimer's weekly five-minute PBS Star Hustler TV show that provided timely skygazing information and brief teachings on astronomy. But listen to Isao's whole album...it's stupendous!

76 SUNSHINE ON MY SHOULDERS...John Denver
This is one of those songs that I associate with a specific personal memory...in this case one morning in February, 1974 I decided to leave the house early and walk the 5½ miles through back roads to my high school.  I had been listening to this then-new release by John Denver and played it in my mind the whole way...ever since then whenever I hear it I recall the very pleasant experience and wish I had walked to and from school more often: the distance wasn't that far and I'd already run much longer distances.  I think this song was Denver's best singing performance...it always amazes me whenever a singer can hold notes as long as he repeatedly did with this hit.  He referred back to Sunshine on My Shoulders in a later song, Back Home Again...

Next week: #75-71...

Another Strange Starbucks Experience

It's mid-Sunday morning and I'm sitting here...perhaps for the last time in a while...in my northern Gainesville Starbucks with my iced coffee and two other dine-in customers sitting across the large room.  Looks like they've cut down further on the available seating, which isn't surprising considering the sharp upward spike in reported coronavirus cases both in the state of Florida at large and in my home Alachua County.  The population seems to be reacting to the upsurge by shunning reopened places like this in favor of drive-through ordering...this is ironically why I'm sitting here now: fewer people to contend with as well as my previously stated hunch that I may be avoiding sitting in here until things clear up, whenever that might be.  It also looks as if my church, which had been holding in-person services for the past three weeks along with careful measures taken with distancing and face covering, may be considering going back to online services as it considers the COVID-19 resurgence in our area.  As for me, I'm wearing my mask in here, only lifting it momentarily to sip my coffee. Stay safe and please follow the local mask ordinance if only out of consideration for others, even if you don't care about your own health or think this is all a political hoax: I won't tell the president you idolize unquestioningly that you're wearing one, it'll be our secret...

Watching CNN 1968 Documentary, Evoking Personal Memories

I'm watching right now a documentary show on CNN about the year 1968...were you alive back then and if so, do you have your own memories of that turbulent year in our country's history?  I was eleven going on twelve, and the year was divided between my last year in the sixth grade at Nova Elementary School in Davie, Florida and the start of the seventh just across the field at Nova High...quite a culture shock in more ways than one.  They're trying to stress similarities between 1968 and our own current troubled year of 2020...in my own personal life I missed the final, glorious days of elementary school in June 1968 with a severe case of the flu.  I followed the news that year, and '68 was the first presidential election campaign I ever paid attention to...I remember my mom being a strong Eugene McCarthy fan and being disappointed that neither of my parents were voters.  While riding home on the school bus just before the November election I discovered a few of my friends were behind George Wallace's independent bid...I bet most of them are ardent supporters of Trump now.  While watching CNN's presentation, I realized that there are different histories going on here: the society's history and my own personal one.  You can take notes from the TV broadcast and look up interesting topics on the Internet and learn a lot, but with personal memories digging them out of the past can be much more challenging.  I am 63 going on 64 in October...I'm thinking of starting something I call "Life Memory Project" in which, like an archaeologist digging up fragmentary clues from a culture's past, I try to assemble my own personal relics from the vast recesses of my tangled memories.  I get the fact that with many people the idea of digging back into their own pasts can be a traumatic experience...to each his or her own, I say: maybe this is something you'd like to undertake for yourself, though.  I'm also thinking of rehashing years and topics of my past on this blog at times, although what the exact format will be I'm not sure of right now.  One idea that might work is for "memory" articles to be written in a stream-of-consciousness style.  Yes, 1968 was an interesting, memorable year both in the nation, the world...and my own life.  But even with this documentary I can see that they're glossing over some important stories, but you can't cram an entire, very eventful year into a four-hour documentary...

Quote of the Week...from Gandalf in Lord of the Rings

All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.            
                                               ---Gandalf the Grey from J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings.

In J.R.R. Tolkien's Fellowship of the Ring, the first volume of his Lord of the Rings fantasy series from the 1950s, protagonist Frodo is bemoaning the horrible succession of events after his uncle Bilbo Baggins gave him the "Ring of Power".  The good wizard Gandalf's reply is sympathetic, and he concludes it with the above quote.  Storms and trials will always be with us and at times will seem turbulent and painful.  But through all of them...as well as the good times...each of us has the authority, as well as responsibility, to be stewards of the time allotted to us in our respective lives.  I think of some tough times I've gone through in years gone by and have come to the conclusion that it wasn't the difficulty of the crises I passed through that I had grounds to grieve over, but rather my responses to them.  All of these things currently going on around me in the news are bigger than me, and I am just one person.  Granted this fact, I still live in these times and have the authority to act in a positive, constructive way that...at a future time looking back...I will not be ashamed of.  May I just humbly suggest that others take this advice to heart as well for themselves?

Sat in a Starbucks for First Time in Three Months

I recently got an email notice from Starbucks stating that if I don't use up my bonus points I've amassed from them by July, they'll start taking them away...I thought that was a bit shabby of them, to say the least.  Still, a free drink is a free drink and last Friday before work I went in the drive-through at my nearest (and favorite) Starbucks here in far-northern Gainesville to pick up a "free" iced coffee.  I'd tried a few days before to sit inside the store with my coffee like I was used to, only to be informed that the dining room was still closed and they didn't know when it would open again.  Yet Friday the barista at the window told me that they had opened the indoors area the day before and I made a mental note to try it out. So the day before yesterday I went there...again before work, around 12:30 pm, and sat down in a Starbucks with my laptop for the first time in more than three months.  The big rectangular table I like to sit at by the entrance was closed off, the cashier/pickup area separated employees from the rest of the public by extensive plexiglass, and there were confusing arrows on the floor pointing this way and that. There were about 6-7 of us customers in there...the maximum stated occupancy at this Starbucks is now 15...and the useless (to me) seats by the window were removed, along with some tables in the interior as well.  The outside seating area seemed the same as before...I would have gone out there but the sun at the time was beating down: difficult to see the computer screen like that.  I'm glad I could sit out in a Starbucks for a few minutes...gives me a sense, delusional or not, that at least in some places there's a return to normality.  Let's see whether it lasts or poofs out in a cloud of resurgent coronavirus.  By the way, speaking of that scourge, our state governor as well as our dubious president want to claim that the current spike in cases is due to more testing...but the increase in hospital visits and admissions indicate otherwise...

Weekly Short Stories: 1960 Science Fiction, Part 1

I begin my look back at the year 1960 in short science fiction with the first three stories from the anthology Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 22 (1960).  During that year I was three going on four and spent almost the entire year living in an apartment with my mother, father and sister in Opa-Locka, a suburb northwest of Miami with a One Thousand Nights theme of oriental architecture and street names (we lived on Dunad Avenue).  Of course back then I wasn't aware it was "1960" or that Eisenhower was president...or what a president was for that matter.  But I do remember lots of things that went on that year, including the scary time when what I would later learn was Hurricane Donna swept through.  Anyway, here are those first three stories...

MARIANA by Fritz Leiber
A young woman living out on some far off planet one day begins to question the nature of her reality when she discovers in her own home a control box with labeled switches.  This very brief story reminds me of the scene in the Beatles movie Yellow Submarine when they are in the Sea of Green and encounter a sea monster that sucks in everything around...including, ultimately, itself...

THE DAY THE ICICLE WORKS CLOSED by Frederik Pohl
A planet whose economy depends totally on its one commodity, its unique natually multi-colored snow high in demand across the settled universe, falls into depression when an engineer elsewhere is reported to have copied the process, enabling anyone to produce it and consequently crashing the planet's economy.  Now the only way for the population to earn substantial money is the abhorrent practice of renting out their bodies to tourists who briefly inhabit them telepathically.  A lawyer uncovers something seedy going on when he defends some youths who had kidnapped the mayor's child for ransom.  This story has a similar theme to The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, which I am currently reading...

THE FELLOW WHO MARRIED THE MAXILL GIRL by Ward Moore
A rather wayward man is left the only surviving parent of six girls in a backwoods farm...one of them discovers in the nearby country a young man who cannot speak but only hum, has four fingers and toes instead of five, and possesses a remarkable ability to heal the sick and make plants grow and yield abundantly: he's obviously of another world.  Nan, one of the older girls, falls in love with him and eventually the two can converse and...well, you already know the story's title.  Once again here is a tale about someone whose extraordinary abilities, once know to certain parties, can place his freedom...and even life...in jeopardy...

Next week: more in science fiction short stories from 1960...

About Constellations

A few days ago on this blog I began a monthly feature highlighting one of the 88 officially recognized constellations in the celestial realm...Boötes started it off for June.  One thing that's important to note about constellations is that, while they are best learned and observed as patterns of the brighter stars within them that are visible to the naked eye, they are in essence sectors of three-dimensional space projected outward from Earth, so the moon, only about 239,000 miles from us, might one night be "in" one of the zodiac constellations, while elsewhere "in" it in lie billions of galaxies untold light-years distant.  The constellations also vary in size, with smaller ones more predominant in the Southern Hemisphere.  Boötes does not lie on the ecliptic, home of the twelve zodiac constellations, so therefore the sun, moon, and planets on that plane in our solar system do not pass through it...but just south of it is the constellation Libra where they do.  Sometimes the patterns you get from "connecting the dots" of a constellation's stars resemble its description...Scorpius truly looks like a scorpion...while some do not, as is the case of Corvus, supposedly a crow but coming across more as an irregular quadrilateral in the May evening sky.  The more precise way to locate a celestial object in the sky is by its declination and right ascension, corresponding respectively to Earth's latitude and longitude...the right ascension is expressed in hours, minutes and seconds with one celestial hour representing 15 degrees east or west.  But to me it's easier to locate something based on its constellation, just as on Earth it's easier to do likewise if you know the country.  I'm looking forward to discussing all this further next month when I select a new constellation...

My 500 All-Time Favorite Songs: #85-81 (and #240-231)

A funny thing happened regarding this "500 all-time favorite songs" weekly project of mine back in late February: I inadvertently passed over ten of the songs...the other day I thought, hey, Diary by Bread should have been on my list but I didn't discuss it and presto, there it was in the missing section.  "My bad"...here are the songs in that segment I accidently skipped four months ago:

240 RIDE...Twenty One Pilots...favorite song of 2017 with reggae sound mixed with rap, good current act
239 HURRICANE...Bob Dylan...passionate plea from '75 for justice about wrongly convicted boxer
238 DIARY...Bread...bittersweet, but ultimately gracious ode of a love interest who loves another, from 1972
237 THE GYPSY DAVEY...Arlo Guthrie...in '73 sings one of his dad Woody's great old pieces
236 THE GHOST OF YOU LINGERS...Spoon...sharp rhythmic piano highlights it, from 2007
235 SCAR TISSUE...Red Hot Chili Peppers...favorite song of 1999, great lead guitar play
234 WHAT HAVE I DONE TO DESERVE THIS?...Pet Shop Boys/Dusty Springfield...Dusty's 1988 return to top forty hit parade with a resounding performance
233 THIS FIRE...Franz Ferdinand...from 2004, great rocking piece, guitar riffs abound
232 TIRED OF WAITING FOR YOU...the Kinks...guitar intro was unforgettable in this 1965 song
231 GET IT RIGHT NEXT TIME...Gerry Rafferty...the stage-shy artist's best song but just a minor hit, from '79

And below I continue the next five on my list, after double-checking to make sure I didn't skip any...

85 NO MILK TODAY...Herman's Hermits
An unusually moody song from Herman's Hermits, a group usually perceived as a cleaner, more proper alternative to the Rolling Stones or Beatles during the 60's British Invasion.  No Milk Today bemoans a love who moved away as the milkman, whom singer Peter Noone portrays, gets all dark and gloomy over it.  I loved the orchestral background production on this very minor late-1966 hit as the band found itself sinking into a popularity decline in America...

84 ONE STEP INTO THE LIGHT...the Moody Blues
When the Moody Blues reunited to record Octave in 1978, six years after they broke up to pursue solo projects, there were great expectations, largely deflated by the more mediocre content on it than with their previous works.  Mediocre until the album's final two tracks, that is: I've previously discussed the closing The Day We Meet Again, composed and sung by Justin Haywood...immediately preceding it is this song by founding member Mike Pinder, who gets about as spiritual as one can get in a song without being theological.  One Step Into the Light can sound a bit New Age, but you don't have to follow that movement to see the beauty in the lyrics: a wonderful song.  Mike left the band after Octave...I think he should get a lot of credit for their earlier great music...

83 NEVER GOING BACK AGAIN...Fleetwood Mac
One of the great solo guitar pieces of all time, Lindsay Buckingham sings and plays this often overlooked track from the band's celebrated 1977 Rumors album.  Once I timed its beat to running steps and calculated that with a specific length of stride while running to the music I could pull off a pretty damned fast marathon...but that was back in 1978 when I wasn't thinking too clearly.  Still, the subliminal connection to running remains with this song...

82 MAGIC BUS...the Who
To be honest I didn't care for this 1968 singles hit when it came out, but by the late 80s I thought of it as my all-time favorite song.  It has a unique sound among the thousands of songs I've heard. There's a curious mixture of rawness, virtuosity and good old rock and roll...as well as a thinly-veiled tribute to the Beatles' Magical Mystery Tour BBC-TV movie from 1967.  I still love it, although there's another Who song now much higher on my list...

81 TINY DANCER...Elton John
Back in early 1972 Tiny Dancer was the first Elton John song ever that I took to, and I have loved it ever since.  Apparently, it has only increased in stature over the years with the listening public as I'm always hearing stations playing it, although back in the day my local Miami pop music station WQAM/560 refused to play it...I had to switch over to Ft. Lauderdale's WSRF/1580 to hear it.  Elton would follow up on Tiny Dancer with Rocket Man, which all the stations would play.  Like with song #82, I'm not finished with Elton John on this list, either...

Next week: #80-76...

Enjoyed Father's Day With My Family

I enjoyed a blessed, fun Father's Day at home today with my wonderful wife Melissa and our two grown children, Will and Rebecca.  Will visited for a while in the afternoon and the rest of us enjoyed watching our extended-version DVD of Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring together this evening...after eating a scrumptious meal that Rebecca prepared herself.  I love my family and thank them for such a great day...

Herd Instinct Trumps Common Sense and Responsibility

People are social creatures, and they tend to pattern their behavior...and even beliefs...on how the groups they are most intimately identified with around them come down on what to do or think.  They can watch the TV and get all the pertinent facts on any issue, form their own initial independent opinions, and then go back to work or their circle of buddies and find out that the group in question is coming down completely differently from they've been informed...yet their social instincts will lead them away from sound judgment in the face of possible rejection from the group.  And groups themselves tend to be dominated and manipulated by aggressive "Alpha" personality types that have achieved what they want the most...to have people around them cowed and fearful of their disapproval and scorn.  I've seen this tendency in many scenarios throughout my life...from kids at high school bus stops pandering to the bullies among them to today's situation in which wearing a mask in public situations to fight the spread of COVID-19 is often regarded as taboo.  Well, I've never been one to strive for others' approval and at this stage in my life I'm not about to start.  But I do understand how most others are wired and pity them for feeling that they are so subject to pressure from peers...especially their aggressive peers...that they fear expressing their own thoughts or acting in a rational, socially responsible way.  I've heard during the past recent months about "herd immunity" regarding the ultimate decline of an invading pathogen.  But what I'm talking about here is "herd instinct"...which seems to be trumping common sense and responsibility...