With NewsNation WGN TV Provides Viable Alternative to Cable News Channels

If you're into watching TV during the prime time hours sometimes you'll find yourself wanting to check in to see what the news is...traditionally when I grew up in the 1960's and 70's we got all that in a half-hour span on one of the three network news shows, nowadays usually airing at 6:30 pm: my parents preferred Cronkite on CBS.  Now, if you wait a little later to 8:00 then you can tune in to WGN/Chicago which, in my hometown of Gainesville, Cox Cable provides on Channel 14.  At that time they present a great three-hour-long news show called NewsNation that covers the news straight and much more comprehensively with a wider variety of stories than do CNN, FoxNews, and MSNBC...and it's on seven days a week.  From 11 to 2 they repeat the earlier evening show, which is great for someone like me who gets off from work at 10 pm.  I am so utterly fed up with the out-of-control spin and manipulation on those aforementioned three channels that I'd rather forego the news than spend any appreciable amount of time watching them.  But now we have NewsNation, which only began its run just a month and a half ago.  Try it out and see if you agree with me that here is a more reliable news source.  I also recommend the more obscure Newsy channel, which in Gainesville is Channel 276 on Cox Cable.  That station presents news around-the-clock and genuinely tries to present the facts without drowning the viewer in the announcers' own opinions.  Newsy and WGN's NewsNation: two welcome alternatives to the mind-numbing, slanted crap we're getting elsewhere.  Of course, in our very polarized, emotionally-extreme electoral season simply watching the news...especially with regard to politics...might pose a mental health hazard to viewers, even without the spin...  

My #10 All-Time Favorite Song: Living for the City by Stevie Wonder

MY #10 ALL-TIME FAVORITE SONG: LIVING FOR THE CITY...Stevie Wonder

Back in the early 1970s I used to listen a bit to album rock radio...in South Florida my radio station of choice was 103.5/WSHE.  In late 1973, after I had just turned 17, they kept playing a lengthy epic about a young black man's nightmare experiences with racial discrimination, first in Mississippi where he grew up and then on the streets of New York City and the unfair justice system...the narrative was gripping, the music top-notch, and the singer...Stevie Wonder?  I didn't recall anything by Wonder...or other soul stars for that matter...getting air time on album rock radio: for me it was long overdue.  I strongly encourage you to hear out the song for yourself...not the cut-down singles version but the complete 7:25 album track: you have to hear it for yourself to get the full impact.  The album it's on is Innervisions, which is widely critically considered to be one of the greatest albums ever made and which also contains the hits Higher Ground and Don't You Worry 'bout a Thing.  Stevie Wonder, blessed with a beautiful, versatile singing voice, is perhaps unmatched in this performance as he switches character roles and at one point holds a single note for what seems like forever.  As the doomed protagonist steps off the bus in New York, the song breaks into an eerie scene of city sounds as his fate becomes sealed by prejudice and injustice before Wonder breaks back in with a much rougher voice.  I believe that Living for the City is a song of transformation...anyone with a semblance of a conscience cannot help having their eyes open and their perspective permanently altered by this significant piece of art, truly Stevie Wonder's greatest single work in my opinion...

Next week: my #9 all-time favorite song from my list of 500...

About COVID, Coffee Shop, and Gator Coach Mullen

At this writing I'm sitting midday at the nearest Starbucks...outside, because they are now operating at full capacity seating and a lot more customers than I'm comfortable with are seated inside although they're mostly wearing masks.  Blessed with the tempting but generally useless gift of hindsight, I'm becoming more of the opinion that it's a shame that back in February they couldn't have drastically stepped up emergency production and distribution of masks and pushed much harder on universal compliance instead of completely shutting down businesses and schools the following month and mandating people to stay at home: I believe those draconian measures contributed a lot to people irrationally rebelling against mask use and social distancing later on.  But here we are and, despite the coronavirus pandemic showing no sign of retreat, more and more people are acting as if they're so fed up with it all that they want to pretend it's no longer there.  After the University of Florida's 41-38 loss to Texas A&M at College Station, Gator head coach Dan Mullen commented that he wanted to see Florida's home stadium packed with fans for the following week's game against LSU.  That statement caused a firestorm of criticism against him and deservedly so, but the University's president reiterated that the stadium would only be operating at 25% capacity.  Mullen seemed to blame his team's loss to the Aggies for what he perceived to be a noisy crowd there, but I think he needs to get his head on straight on two counts: (1) the Gators defense this year is mediocre at best with the team giving up 100 points in their first three games and (2) football is a game played for entertainment and people's lives are at stake with this pandemic: he needs to seriously sort out his priorities.  A few days later, as it was revealed that some 21 players plus staff on his team had tested positive for COVID-19 and that the LSU game was postponed until December 12th, Mullen claimed that he never meant for the stadium to be full of fans...but that's not what he said the previous Saturday afternoon.  And yesterday he announced that he himself has tested positive.  I have mixed feelings about leaders who trivialize this disease that has killed around 220,000 Americans during the past seven months and then come down with it themselves...they deserve some rebuke but my hopes and prayers are for their full recovery...

Bean Counting Motivates Everything in Washington

Bean counting is what politics in Washington is all about, whether we're talking about amassing enough Electoral College votes to swing a presidential election, manipulating the U.S. Supreme Court nomination and confirmation process to gain or enhance a like-minded majority, passing legislation to address either emergencies or the ideological interests of one's own party, or getting enough senators or representatives elected on one's own side in Congress to assure their party's control of the Senate or House, respectively.  I have been watching snippets of Amy Coney Barrett's Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing as she aspires to replace Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg as a justice on the high court, just as I've observed similar proceedings with the nominations of current justices Kavanaugh, Gorsuch, Alito and Roberts in recent years.  It's obvious that the underlying motivation, both in the nomination process from the view of the President as well as those of the Republicans and Democratic senators considering them in through advice and consent, is primarily a matter of selecting someone whose expressed ideology and judicial record will help to tip or maintain the Court's voting numbers in their party's favor on key political issues.  In our current world it's issues like the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), the 1973 Roe vs. Wade decision legalizing abortion nationwide, gun regulation laws, LGBT rights, environmental legislation, voting rights and the limits and extent of allowable presidential and congressional authority that motivate the bean counters as they look at the new nominee.  But during the hearing all we've basically seen is Barrett sitting there batting back question after question as if she were in some kind of verbal tennis match, with the objective of avoiding transmitting the least bit of information as possible about her judicial temperament or philosophy, much less anything about specific issues...in a similar way that the four previous nominees performed.  Maybe the hearings serve an educational and political purpose for the voting public by allowing the different senators on the committee a forum to express their own opinions, but as far as enlightening anyone as to what kind of Supreme Court justice Amy Coney Barrett will be, I think we'd be better informed by a journalist or announcer just sitting there reading verbatim the nominee's previous statements from earlier times.  Of course, this hearing is a charade: the Republicans have enough votes to confirm and will do so in plenty of time for Barrett to sit in on next month's case as the deciding "bean" on Obamacare's fate.  And since it is clear that Republican Senate Majority Leader McConnell's actions are only designed to enhance his own party's power through partisan bean counting, the Democrats had better regain control of the Senate if Biden gets elected, otherwise few if any of his cabinet, judicial, or other nominations will ever see the light of day... 

Quote of the Week...from a Local Hazardous Waste Center Employee

When in doubt, bring it out!                     --Alachua County Hazardous Waste Center Employee

Having accumulated assorted old bottles of cleaning agents, paint cans, other caustic agents...as well as a couple of useless old push lawn mowers, I decided to unload them and discovered that here in Alachua County we have an excellent one-stop center for doing just that.  Called the Alachua County Hazardous Waste Center, its at 5125 NE 63rd Avenue, which you get to going north on Waldo Road a little past the NE 53rd Avenue light and turning right just past the green roadside sign advertising the site.  Then go down a little and follow the sign on the right and you're there.  Earlier this week I somehow managed to cram the two cruddy old mowers into my two-door Honda Civic and drove down there and then to the drop-off spot the helpful gentleman working at the site directed for me.  After that I mentioned some other items I might bring on another day and he bestowed the above perfect quote on me.  I recognize that this waste center is a bit of a drive for many, but it has the convenience of being available when you want to use it (weekdays and Saturdays), instead of having to wait for specified times of the year for drop-off.  Here's their webpage, which lists the various items that they will receive: [Waste Center].  Hopefully, if you live in a different area, your own community provides a similarly convenient service...

Constellation of the Month: Pegasus (the Winged Horse)

 

For the month of October I've selected Pegasus as my Constellation of the Month, a feature I've been doing on this blog since June.  The other night it was finally clear and dry and the stars shone bright, even in my semi-urban sky of far northern Gainesville.  Pegasus, representing the winged horse in the Perseus mythological family of autumn constellations, was practically overhead around 10:30 EDT, with its trademark "square" just east of the zenith.  In a season when the evening skies are marked by fainter constellations, at least Pegasus has its share of clearly visible second and third magnitude stars.  To discern the rough semblance of a horse you need to invert the above drawing I made...the star Enif, whose meaning from Arabic (all the brighter stars have Arabic names) is "nose", should set you right.  My main beef about Pegasus is how its hind legs are actually the constellation Andromeda, and Alpheratz, one of the "square" stars, is actually a part of that separate constellation...I tend to see Andromeda instead as part of the Great Horse.  Monday evening I showed Pegasus to Melissa and then pointed down from it eastward to a stupendously bright star...except that it wasn't a star but rather the planet Mars, considerably brighter because it is currently much, much closer than usual to Earth in the two planets' orbital cycles while in a position to reflect the Sun more fully to us.  Way back in 1964 we went through what seemed weeks of overcast evening skies in south Florida during the fall. Since that was the first year ever that I was observing stars and constellations in the night sky, as a kid just turning eight, the long delay seemed to go on forever...I wasn't all that impressed with the fall sky when I finally did get around to viewing it.  Pegasus is one of two standout October constellations, in my opinion...a year from now we'll see about the other one.  Now although the general region of the sky where Pegasus resides doesn't have bright stars, you can still look to the west where the Summer Triangle asterism of first-magnitude stars Vega, Deneb and Altair dominates that section of the sky.  And, at least now in 2020, Jupiter and Saturn are still bright in the low southwestern sky at my latitude during the early evening hours...

Weekly Short Stories: 1964 Science Fiction, Part 3

Here are my reviews of three more stories deemed by editors Robert Silverberg and Martin H. Greenberg to be among the best from 1964, as they appeared in their anthology Robert Silverberg Presents The Great SF Stories (1964).  Of them I was the most impressed with the relatively short first story below, demonstrating that filling a lot of pages with writing doesn't necessarily mean that the story's better...although in the end the writer probably got paid more.  I thought that Silverberg and Greenberg put too many novellas into this book, but technically its title doesn't really say "short stories only"...

THE LAST LONELY MAN by John Brunner

It's off in the future and a "great" discovery has been made: Contact, whereby people can arrange with others...usually close family and friends...to have their mental patterns imprinted upon themselves so that upon someone's death, their minds and identity will immediate flee their own deceased bodies and then inhabit the bodies of whom they have made "Contact" agreements.  In the narrative, a man with a lousy personality and no friends and family...hence no Contacts...desperately seeks out the protagonist for one connection to save him after he dies.  The whole thing seems like a very scary concept to me...and then I look at how people nowadays appraise themselves and others based on their relative popularity on social media...

SOLDIER, ASK NOT by Gordon R. Dickson

Sometimes an author can get so involved with his or her own fictional "universe", with its various societies, rules and history, that an individual story can suffer without the context of the other stories propping it up. Such is the case, I fear, with this novella that examines how, as humanity explores and settles the cosmos, it might be advisable for the different groups to separate and develop specialization ...and then later work to reintegrate themselves back together.  A news reporter is on a distant world where an armed conflict is going on between such groups.  Instead of seeing the bigger picture that others see...including the warring sides themselves...he lets his emotions and desire for revenge cloud his judgment.  I vaguely felt here that Dickson's idea of manipulating the march of history as a kind of philosophy was a bit derivative of Isaac Asimov's science of psychohistory that was a crucial element of his Foundation series of novels...

A MAN OF THE RENAISSANCE by Wyman Guin

On yet another waterlogged planet with a human population (see The Kragen from a couple of weeks ago), the title character...truly a "man of the renaissance" with his Da Vinci-like talents for art, architecture, invention and understanding of science and history...struggles within the intrigues of a low-tech system of royal principalities as he seeks through a revolt to tie three small islands together to form a more viable political and economic entity.  Although the author goes into the protagonist's mind as he works on various scientific and technical problems facing him and explains the nature of the islands in terms of volcanic activity, the genre to me was much more like the fantasy fiction of Robert Jordan or Brandon Sanderson than science fiction.  Since I'm currently rereading George R.R. Martin's fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire I could almost imagine this tale, with its very similar sociopolitical structure, on the other side of the planet from Martin's Westeros, a side covered with sea and floating islands.  This novella should have been in a "year's best" fantasy fiction anthology instead...

Next week I discuss more science fiction short stories from the year 1964...

Just Finished Reading Danny, the Champion of the World by Roald Dahl

Danny, the Champion of the World is a short 1975 children's novel by Roald Dahl, which I just finished reading and which is my fourth Dahl story, following Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, James and the Giant Peach, and The BFG.  As with these other stories, the setting is England and once again a poor child is the protagonist...in this one it's nine-year-old Danny who lives with his widowed father behind their filling station in a Gypsy caravan (also called a varno).  His father is a great mechanic as well as an amateur naturalist and storyteller...the bond between father and son is very strong.  One night Danny awakens to find his father is gone...turns out he was poaching wild pheasants on a wealthy landowner's property a few miles away.  It also turns out that poaching the pheasants was a family tradition...not only did dad's ancestors do it, but also Danny's mother.  The landowner is painted as being arrogant with his wealth and treats practically everyone in the village with contempt...especially Danny and his father.  The plot progresses around the poaching and the two's adventures...and misadventures.  And then the rest of  the town weighs in on what's going on, and eventually I realized that the author had written a story about unjust class divisions, with the "people" in a continual struggle against the "elite" and the rules that unfairly favor the latter.  I enjoyed this novel, in which Dahl presented a reasonable, positive philosophy of living...although I wouldn't recommend poaching to anyone.  I'm still trying to create a mental picture of that stroller scene at the end...must have been an awfully big stroller, that's all I have to say.  At this point in my personal tour of Roald Dahl's writings, Danny, the Champion of the World is my favorite...but I'm still reading on.  I think the story has been adapted to the screen although I don't plan to check it out: you'd probably be better served to read it before watching a TV version...

My 500 All-Time Favorite Songs: #13-11

All three of the songs listed below are pretty recognizable...and the British acts who wrote and performed them are even more so...you can't get much more famous than the Beatles and Led Zeppelin when it comes to classic rock.  And they are all from a condensed time period when a lot of great music came out: the late 60s and early 70s...

13 GOLDEN SLUMBERS/CARRY THAT WEIGHT/THE END...the Beatles

Although this medley appeared at the close of the Beatles' Abbey Road album and was released in 1969 I didn't hear it in its entirety until two years later...it was a favorite of mine early in 1971.  Every part is special: Paul McCartney's sweet, sad lullaby at the start, the eerie Carry That Weight chorus in the middle, and then the classic drum solo/guitar jam toward the end.  During the Beatles' early years I generally kept up with their music as it was being released in America, but with their last five studio albums I didn't get into the deeper tracks until after the band had broken up in 1970.  Too bad they couldn't reconcile themselves to be primarily four solo acts who got together every two or three years to churn out a quick collaborative album and then afterwards go merrily off on their respective ways until the next meeting, with producer George Martin always around to piece everything together as he did with this entry on my favorites list...

12 #9 DREAM...John Lennon

It was the fall of 1974 when I kept hearing this song on album rock radio.  That was a great year in music with many good songs like Jim Croce's Time in a Bottle, BTO's You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet, George McCrae's Rock Your Baby, and John Denver's Sunshine on My Shoulders.  But this mystical, dreamy piece by Lennon ended up surpassing them as as my "song of the year" and has always been one of my all-time favorites ever since.  It sounds like Lennon's old production partner Phil Spector was back at the helm in the studio with this song, what with the wall of sound so characteristic of his work...but, no, it was the former Beatle himself who put it all together.  It's from his Walls and Bridges album of the same year, which also contains Lennon's collaboration with Elton John Whatever Gets You Thru the Night...  

11 MISTY MOUNTAIN HOP...Led Zeppelin 

During the 70s and 80s I would hear this song from time to time on album rock radio and thought the lyrics were funny: "Crowds of people sittin' on the grass with flowers in their headsets"...only it turned out to be "flowers in their hair said": I thought my version beat Robert Plant's to hell and back for sarcasm and social commentary.  Still, I moderately liked it until Led Zeppelin's box set came out in late 1990 and I listened more intently and seriously...ever since it's been one of my favorites.  It has a strange beat and arrangement with a menacing lead guitar, and the cycling lyrical crescendo, one syllable at a time, is quite unique.  And Plant's reference to Tolkien's Middle Earth from his Lord of the Rings/Hobbit books capped it all for me.  Misty Mountain Hop is on Led Zeppelin's fourth "Untitled" album from 1971, one of the supremely great rock n' roll works of all time...and I'm not yet finished with it on my all-time favorite songs list...

Next week: my #10 all-time favorite song...

Just Finished Reading The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

The Haunting of Hill House is a gothic horror novel by American writer Shirley Jackson (1916-65) from 1959, the first of her novels I've read although I went through a collection of short stories by her a few years ago...her most famous one is probably The Lottery.  As you might suspect from the book's title, it is about an alleged haunted house, this one off in the woods at an undisclosed location, as a paranormal investigator recruits another man and two women to reside a few days there with him and experience and note the house themselves.  Along with Dr. Montague is Luke, who stands to eventually inherit the property, Theodora, a more or less free-spirited artist, and Eleanor, an introverted woman easily intimidated by others.  The story is generally presented from Eleanor's viewpoint, although it's made clear from the beginning that Montague has selected his fellow guests partially because of paranormal phenomena they experienced earlier in their lives...Eleanor seemed to have encountered a poltergeist event back in her childhood.  Now as a reader, the good doctor's intentions immediately seemed suspect to me: if he were investigating something basic to the nature of the house itself, wouldn't he instead want entirely rational people wedded to scientific reality to team up with instead of people who would be looking for anything to call "haunted"?  My reservations seemed to be affirmed as the story progressed, for things...even pretty frightful...do happen at this forsaken place but it's not clear as to what or who is causing them, the house or the people visiting there.  But that's Shirley Jackson for you...from where does evil arise, outside sources or within people's own hearts?  And that's the disturbing question that will plague the reader after finishing this most disturbing story...

Although I personally wasn't too thrilled with the book, Stephen King considers The Haunting of Hill House as a great inspiration to his own writing career, and there is a spinoff television series going on...although after reading the written novel I wonder how much it would have to diverge from Jackson's original narrative.  In spite of the story's doom and gloom, there is actually room for humor here...especially with regard to the cantankerous, stubborn old couple taking care of the property and Montague's hilarious, contrarian spiritualist wife, who enters the story later on.  I guess a one-line reaction I could make from this reading experience is "while looking for the darkness without, one finds the darkness within"...

Surprised by Florida Pro Teams' Success in This Pandemic Year

Nearly two weeks ago the National Hockey League's Stanley Cup went to the Tampa Bay Lightning, arguably the best team in the league but with a fresh memory of being shut out in the first round of the playoffs last year by Columbus...this time they handled the Dallas Stars in six games during the final round after a long postponement in the season due to the coronavirus pandemic.  Major League Soccer decided to begin their delayed season with a tournament...Orlando City, which had never even made the playoffs before, found themselves surging and made the final match before bowing to Portland...now in the regular season they're still surging.  In Major League Baseball, the Miami Marlins and Tampa Bay Rays have gone beyond expectations with both making the playoffs and the latter accumulating the best record in the American League during this attenuated 60-game regular season.  Miami even won their first round in the playoffs against the Cubs before falling to the Atlanta Braves...the Rays have gone farther, first knocking out Toronto and then defeating the New York Yankees last night in their series' deciding game on an eight-inning homer. And in the National Basketball Association the Miami Heat, led by Jimmy Butler...one of my favorite players, who has a penchant for turning average teams into contenders...has defied the odds and is playing competitively against the heavily favored Los Angeles Lakers for the league title.  They won a close contest last night and have narrowed their Lebron James-led opponent's lead to three games to two.  I'd like to report that this trend is extending to pro football as well, but alas, the three Florida teams are floundering as usual though the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, with their "new" quarterback Tom Brady, are at least supporting a winning record and are (barely) in front of their division.  But Brady seems out of it and even lost count of the down he was on during a decisive late-game possession against Chicago last Sunday.  Still, the other sports seem to be shining on the Sunshine State and there's still time for the Bucs, Jaguars, and Dolphins to straighten out and fly right...

Quote of the Week...from Prince

 Technology is cool, but you've got to use it as opposed to letting it use you.          ---Prince

A few weeks ago I wrote that I was about to embark on a project whereby I would listen to each and every one of Prince's 39 studio albums he released from 1978 to his tragic, untimely death in 2016...so far I've covered 16 and can confidently state that there's not a bad album among them.  Now as with every other musical act I like, some tracks are better than others, and a few I'd just as soon avoid in the future.  But once you know where the artist is coming from then it's easier to embrace his music and flow with it.  Prince tended to go for an upbeat sound, danceable and fun...and oftentimes very, very funny: I always leave a Prince album feeling pretty doggone good although the lyrics can be over the top in places. So the dude was clearly inspired and professional with his craft, and I thought checking out some of his quotes was in order: the above one was in sync with my own feelings on the subject, so I chose it...

I believe that Prince's meaning with his quote centered around how recording can be enhanced and made easier in the studio with the ever burgeoning digital technology that enables just about any kind of sound to become available and minutely edited, but since I'm not a musical recording artist like he was I see it more in terms of my own experiences.  Take cell phones, for example.  It's clear that having a phone with me when I leave my house...especially while driving...adds a big element of security as I can call for help should anything go wrong.  The problem is the corresponding feeling of insecurity when I'm separated from it, yet I've lived most of my life with telephones hardwired to the wall at home.  The same goes for the incredible braking and warning technology embedded with newer models of cars: drivers have these added features of security but when they find themselves behind the wheels of an earlier model then will they feel like it's much more dangerous...and even possibly forget that the car they're driving won't compensate for their dependence on the later models' protection systems?  And I've written a bit recently about the dangers of letting social media get the best of its users...I certainly use it myself but I don't live there.  Companies like Facebook, Twitter, Google, Apple, and Microsoft want us to derive so much meaning from their products that we become dependent on them and feel incomplete when we go for any substantial length of time without accessing them.  I used to go running with my smartphone in my hand while listening to music from it...lately, though, I've found it personally liberating to just get out there on the road and leave the phone and even my MP3 player at home.  Maybe it would be a good idea for each of us to schedule time away from our little gadgets and reacquaint ourselves with the world as it really is.  I like the new technology and appreciate its uses the more because I vividly remember a time when it wasn't available...that to me is an advantage I have over younger people who have always had it and may not be as adaptable when it's absent...

Online Newspaper Archives a Source of Interesting Material

In Stephen King's fantastic 2011 time travel novel 11/22/63 protagonist Jake Epping repeatedly finds himself investigating newspaper archives on the Internet...I'm familiar with that because I used to do the same at the University of Florida Library West microfilm room back in the 1980s, years before it became possible to access old newspapers online.  A couple of weeks ago I subscribed to such a service being provided by a genealogy company and have been exploring them once again...guess I don't need to go back to UF anytime soon after all.  With archived newspapers you get a great glimpse at the ongoing news and sports stories...as well as the opinions and assumptions that people entertained back then.  Often it's the editorial page and the regular columns that provide the greatest insight, but sometimes you can get a lot by simply reading advertisements and comics.  And speaking of comics, delving back into the past is a definite trip down memory lane for me as I reexperience the old strips like L'il Abner, Nancy, Calvin & Hobbes, Herman, Henry, Pogo, Miss Peach, They'll Do It Every Time, Zippy, The Far Side, Bloom County, Cathy, and so on.  And it's also very easy to clip and print various puzzles I see, to do later and elsewhere at my own convenience. Unfortunately, the particular service I'm using isn't up to date with my local Gainesville Sun, although it does feature several papers...including my favorite Miami Herald going back to 1911...and Ft. Lauderdale is covered by its own paper throughout my school years in south Florida.  As for the Gainesville Sun, Google has its own free archive service providing coverage from 1981 to 2007. From time to time on this blog I may be discussing some finds I make as I browse through the past.  Seeing how we are approaching yet another presidential election, I'm thinking of looking back at some from the past and how the papers with their editorial pages assessed them just before they took place...

Weekly Short Stories: 1964 Science Fiction, Part 2

 Here are my reactions to three more science fiction short stories from the anthology Robert Silverberg Presents The Great SF Stories (1964).  For some reason I found the writing style in each of them a little cumbersome to read...maybe it's because I've recently been reading some of Kurt Vonnegut's works and he deliberately writes in a plain, clear manner.  Still, I plowed through the below stories of Smith, Zelazny and Brackett and have nothing but high respect for each of these wonderful writers...

THE CRIME AND THE GLORY OF COMMANDER SUZDAL by Cordwainer Smith

Commander Suzdal is alone on his spaceship exploring the deep regions of the galaxy when he encounters a distress signal from an unknown group, the Arachosians.  He learns of their history just as they are about to take over the ship. This group of humans who left Earth many generations before had encountered disaster on their chosen world and had changed, and now see themselves as humanity's enemy: how can he stop them?  The remarkable ending, the Arachosians' story, and Suzdal's ultimate fate are mysteries for the reader to discover.  It's a little hard for me to describe my objection to this story directly because I'd be spoiling the story for you if I did...let's just say that the author overdid it a bit with his aversion to exactly how the Arachosians had changed...

THE GRAVEYARD HEART by Roger Zelazny

Set primarily in our own times and the immediate future decades, Moore, a young engineer, finds himself falling for a pretty woman (Leota) who is a member of the Set, an exclusive, select society of people who jump through time by sleeping in frozen states for years and then reviving for short stretches, during which they attend extravagant parties and see how the world has changed.  Moore has a rival for Leota's affections, the cynical poet Unger, and the story gravitates about how these three interact and how they come to experience and understand the strange subculture and effects of the Set.  Zelazny wrote in a very ornate style that was a little challenging for me to follow...some readers (including a few literary critics) dig that way of writing, but it seemed to interfere with the story as far I was concerned...

PURPLE PRIESTESS OF THE MAD MOON by Leigh Brackett

Reminding me peculiarly of the bizarre video to David Bowie's 2016 song Blackstar, it is Mars in the near future after humanity has begun to settle it and the native Martians have their own culture and history.  Seldon, who has studied Martian history while on Earth, visits the Red Planet to see things firsthand and finds himself suddenly abducted and taken to a hidden site where a secret Martian sect is holding a special ritual.  This very ominous tale...which has overtones of horror à la Stephen King...also brought to my mind one of the scariest tales I have ever read: The Whimper of Whipped Dogs by Harlan Ellison.  In other words, readers prone to nightmares should skip this one.  By the way, Leigh Brackett wrote the screenplay to the Star Wars movie The Empire Strikes Back...

Next week I continue my look at the year 1964 in short science fiction...

Thanks to All for Birthday Wishes

Thank you to everyone wishing me a happy birthday this past weekend on Facebook.  I've been on this social media site going on for some ten years but it was only recently that Melissa checked my settings and made my birthday public...I'm a real klutz with computers in general and Facebook in particular.  Normally on Facebook I just focus on putting links to my daily blog articles for which I use Google's Blogger...and lately I've been putting links to them on Twitter as well.  While with Facebook I get familiar readers whom I know, Twitter expands the scope of readership to the more worldwide scene that I used to get before Facebook came along.  As for wishing others happy birthday on Facebook, I've been inconsistent about it but having such sweetness come my way about mine, I feel more a part of a caring community and think...in spite of some of my recently expressed reservations about social media...that others probably think the same way.  Again, thank you all for your wishes and may your lives be abundant, healthy and happy...

My 500 All-Time Favorite Songs: #16-14

 The following three songs on my list of 500 all-time favorites are all oldies, the most recent coming out 48 years ago.  They're so good you could put them on a loop and play them over and over again, but #15 is very short and #14 is very long, while #16 is just right...sounds like Goldilocks and the Three Bears, doesn't it?  They are all recording production masterpieces and display the three bands at their peaks when all the members collaborated in significant ways to the outcome...

16 IT'S ALL OVER NOW...the Rolling Stones

This is a Bobby Womack song from the summer of 1964 that the Stones promptly recorded after they heard it thanks to a DJ during their American tour.  As a seven-year old kid enthralled with all the British Invasion acts of the time, I loved this song back then and still do to this day...Jagger, Richards, and company put together a riveting performance that has only grown stronger through the lens of several decades.  It has a country flavor to it...especially in the chorus section...but also dips into the blues and has a great rock guitar jam.  And the somber instrumental closing is unforgettable.  Incidentally, Womack, who sadly died six years ago at age 70, delivered an impressive impromptu vocal performance on Gorillaz's 2010 song Stylo, which I have as #283 on my all-time favorite songs list...

15 ELEANOR RIGBY...the Beatles

With the orchestrated strings background and Paul McCartney's singing, this somber song about aging, isolation and death was an instant classic in 1966, appearing first on the Beatles' Revolver album and later in their animated film Yellow Submarine.  The characters Eleanor Rigby..."wearing a face that she keeps in a jar by the door" and Father McKenzie, "writing the words of a sermon that no one will hear",  live their forgotten, ignored lives to the bitter end as just two of "all the lonely people".  Although Paul sang lead and wrote the music and the lyrical theme, the other bandmembers substantially contributed to the lyrics and harmony and producer George Martin made it all work with his remarkable instrumental arrangement.  It's a sad, forlorn song about sad, forlorn people in a sad, forlorn world.  It's also a song that makes you want to stop what you're doing and just listen...

14 CLOSE TO THE EDGE...Yes

This monstrously long song, more than 18 minutes in duration, takes up the entire first side of the band's 1972 album, also titled Close to the Edge.  I didn't particularly like it when it first came out, especially the dissonant introductory instrumental guitar section, but starting in the early 1990s everything changed and it dawned on me what a masterpiece it was.  It's a wild ride with alternating singing and instrumental sections, keyboards, guitar, bass, fast and slow sections...my favorite parts are in the song's second half as singer Jon Anderson's slow "I get up, I get down" movement transitions into a torrid Rick Wakeman keyboard jam that boggles my mind every time I hear it.  Although it was originally popularized in 1973, I made it my "song of the year" for 1993.  Like Kraftwerk's great song Autobahn, you need to set aside some time to listen to it. And like the Beatles' Blackbird, it belongs to the class of songs recorded with animal sounds...

Next week: #13-11...

Just Finished Reading Welcome to the Monkey House by Kurt Vonnegut

A few days ago I saw a posting on Facebook by WKTK radio announcer Storm Roberts that quoted the late American writer Kurt Vonnegut...it got me interested in his works, and Storm himself recommended his short story collection Welcome to the Monkey House to me...I just finished reading it. Published in 1968, this collection contains 25 relatively brief tales spanning the years back to 1950, and in numerous genres including science fiction, romance, satire, human interest, and war.  My favorite stories were Tom Edison's Shaggy Dog, Deer in the Works, Unready to Wear, The Foster Portfolio, Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Who Am I This Time?...in that order.  My least favorite of the bunch was the futuristic dystopian story (and title of the collection) Welcome to the Monkey House which seemed to implicitly justify sexual assault...it seemed completely out of character with Vonnegut's other entries.  I also didn't care that much for Where I Live, Long Walk to Forever, and The Manned Missiles...but to each his own I say, you may think differently should you read them.  The stories originally appeared in various magazines, chief among them Collier's, the Saturday Evening Post, and Lady's Home Journal...the sex-obsessed title story naturally was first published in Playboy.  The book is an interesting assortment of diverse stories...I'm sure you'll find something here to like, as well as something not to like. Below I've listed each title followed by its original year of publication and a few words intended to refresh my own memory later on...

WHERE I LIVE (1964)...basically a travelogue on Cape Cod, Massachusetts that tries to be funny.

HARRISON BERGERON (1961)...later in the 21st century everyone is ludicrously forced into equality on every level.

WHO AM I THIS TIME? (1961)...a shy but highly talented community actor meets his match.

WELCOME TO THE MONKEY HOUSE (1968)...in a future, overpopulated dystopia a man rebels against its sex suppression laws with very questionable tactics.

LONG WALK TO FOREVER (1960)...an AWOL soldier makes one last try at romancing his love.

THE FOSTER PORTFOLIO (1951)...an investment pro is perplexed at his client's motivations.

 

MISS TEMPTATION (1956)...a pretty young woman is devastated by an embittered vet's public outburst.

ALL THE KING'S HORSES (1951)...a US envoy abroad and his family are kidnapped and forced by a warlord to play chess for keeps.

TOM EDISON'S SHAGGY DOG (1953)...an elderly man relates to another man about Edison's greatest invention and what it says about dogs.

NEW DICTIONARY (1966)...actually a short essay rather than a story, the author compares versions of dictionaries, praising the format while stressing their limitations.

NEXT DOOR (1955)...a little boy left alone at home one evening must deal with arguing couple next door.

MORE STATELY MANSIONS (1951)...Grace vividly imagines in detail how her home should look, one day her husband decides to make it real.

THE HYANNIS PORT STORY (1963?)...a wealthy man who despises the Kennedys lives next to the President's (JFK's) residential compound on Cape Cod and lights up the night with his Goldwater sign, until something changes it all.

D.P. (1953)...a young black boy in a postwar German orphanage thinks he found his father among US soldiers in the vicinity.

REPORT ON THE BARNHOUSE EFFECT (1950)...an unassuming man discovers how to manipulate reality and then discovers that others want to manipulate him.

THE EUPHIO QUESTION (1951)...certain radio waves are discovered to cause euphoria and the race is on to exploit it in spite of its danger.

GO BACK TO YOUR PRECIOUS WIFE AND SON (1962)...a famous actress leaves her husband as the narrator is trying to install a shower at their home.

DEER IN THE WORKS (1955)...a writer decides to get a better paying job at a big, noisy factory and experiences it all in a rush.

THE LIE (1962)...a boy en route to his private school for the first time cannot tell his parents the terrible secret about his entrance exam.

UNREADY TO WEAR (1953)...going amphibious is the rage in this very funny story about "wearing" bodies.

THE KID NOBODY COULD HANDLE (1955)...a sullen, disaffected teen orphan meets a school's music director.

THE MANNED MISSILES (1958)...in the intensity of the Cold War, Russian and US spacemen suffer a tragic meeting, recounted in letters.

EPICAC (1954)...poetically-challenged Romeo mathematician depends on a supercomputer to help him win his love object.

ADAM (1950)...contrasts the vastly different attitudes of two men at a hospital awaiting their children's births.

TOMORROW AND TOMORROW AND TOMORROW (1954)...the future is overcrowded, life has been greatly extended, and a couple is stuck living in granddad's hallway.

Yes, I generally enjoyed this book, maybe you will, too...

Mailed Off Ballot, Avoiding Political Stuff in Media

Today I decided to fill in my absentee ballot for the general election and mailed it off...good, glad to be done with it.  In a couple of days or so I'll track its progress online, until it's safely received at the Alachua County elections office.  I am confident in the ability of the United States Postal Service to process the mail-in vote for this election, but as you can see I didn't think that waiting any longer was called for...for the main races, with the presidential election obviously the most important...I had plenty, plenty of time and input over the past weeks, months, and years to make a clear decision.  And I'm a bit flustered as to why anyone at this late stage would still be undecided and dependent on what's going down in this final month before Election Day on November 3rd...such a voter is the prime target for late-hour shenanigans and manipulation that's going to plague the news and social media as the two sides jostle for advantages.  Justice Ginsburg dies, President Trump has coronavirus, looks like they're going to process a new Supreme Court justice...what else is going to happen before the "big event" 31 days from now?  Well, I proclaim myself to be out of the race as of now...if somebody wants my opinion or help I'll try to give it in an appropriate way, but I'm not going to allow myself to get pulled into the ugly, divisive political morass that is only growing and thickening. I'm happy that I can now watch sports on TV and tend to avoid the cable news channels with their "red meat" issues and spin intentionally designed to inflame the passions of viewers...you know, reading and listening to good music are also pretty good alternatives to the boob tube.  Oh, I'll still get my news and stay informed...I just think I'll stay away from others running everything into the ground with their analysis and dubious theories... 

Quote of the Week...from Neil deGrasse Tyson

 You can't use reason to convince anyone out of an argument that they didn't use reason to get into.

                                                                                      ---Neil deGrasse Tyson.

Neil deGrasse Tyson is a well-known American astrophysicist who has done a lot over the last few years to popularize science in our general culture...he wrote and narrated for the revamped Cosmos series for which Carl Sagan was initially responsible.  I follow him on Twitter...his wit is not designed to hurt others but rather to educate: the above quote is a case in point.  He's not dividing the world into reasonable vs. unreasonable people, but instead is taking the irrationality embedded to varying degrees within each of us and recognizing that many of the beliefs we adhere to and often promulgate are not based rationally but are rather products of our fears or anger on the negative side and idealized or excessively abstract thinking on the positive.  The trick with dealing with individual people as opposed to reading arguments pro and con about an issue or belief system is that with the individuals it's necessary to be able to discern how much of their beliefs are based on reason and how much derives from emotion or the desire to fit in with their peers.  If it's the latter then I'm wasting my time trying to discuss the point in question with them...they have underlying issues that they won't reveal.  People like to present an unreasonably idealized and typically more abstract picture of their dearly cherished notions while using ad hominem attacks on their "opponents" (they're evil, stupid, ignorant, gullible) and make unbalanced assessments of anecdotal events that support or contradict their positions.  Also, I think that many times folks will employ a kind of "smoke screen" argument to cover up that irrationality within themselves...often involving an excessive focus on symbols instead of substance...motivating them to behave or believe as they do.  And once someone is comfortable with their own narrative about the way things are in today's world of social media, bubbles and feedback loops it is only too easy to surround themselves with likeminded people who share their perspective and ignore or deny evidence to the contrary.  Brave new world: humanity has always had its lack of reason, but the communications technology revolution going on today is amplifying the effects considerably...

My September 2020 Running Report

In September my health and running rebounded considerably as I ran on all but one of the days, amassing 160 total miles for the month with a 7-mile run last Saturday being my longest single run.  Yesterday the weather turned comfortably cooler and dryer...I'm looking forward to some good, long runs for this coming month.  As for races, I don't see any local ones planned for anytime soon...understandable because of the COVID-19 pandemic.  Is the Tom Walker Memorial Half-Marathon, originally slated for next month here, cancelled or not?  I checked the Florida Track Club's website...they are the event's organizers...and I received no information whatsoever as to this pertinent question: guess I'll email them without necessarily expecting a reply.  And I'd like to try and run the Five Points of Life half-marathon held annually in Gainesville during mid-February: what's going to happen with that one?  Guess I'll have to wait to find out.  If both races are cancelled then fine, as far as I see it: I like to run in races from time to time, but my main focus is always my personal daily training...