Game of the Week: Bowling

I am hardly an avid bowler...probably has something to do with the fact that I'm not very good at it.  The first time I went to a bowling alley was back in 1968, with my seventh-grade physical education class.  Although I received little instruction on how to play the game, I did learn the arcane method of scoring in bowling.  My first game had me bowl a 33...I believe before those school outings ended I got my score up into the upper 70s.  As an adult I've bowled on a number of occasions around Gainesville and Leesburg, the latter with its shorted-out neon sign "LEESBURG OWL" being the site of my personal high game: 177, back around thirty years ago.  Since 2017 when I suffered some nerve damage interfering with the bending of my right thumb, I haven't tried the sport...who knows, maybe my impediment wouldn't affect my game.  Easily the most annoying thing about bowling is the requirement to rent out old shoes that others have worn...and worn...and worn.  This must be the only situation in life where you actually shell out money in order to put on strange, smelly used shoes.  Regarding the actual aiming and release of the ball, I know that the better bowlers put a good spin on it and make it follow a curved path, hitting the head pin at an angle and causing a cascade of falling pins that often leads to strikes...but I've only been slightly successful with my own efforts.  Instead, although I do spin the bowl a little my focus is aiming it at the pins...with predictably mixed results.  Oh well, although I have seen others bowl by themselves, for me it's a social activity that I have shared with classmates, friends, and family... and that has made it worthwhile, crappy shoes and all...

Nearby Starbucks (Again) Reopens Indoor Seating

This past Thursday I went to my favorite Starbucks in northern Gainesville, only to discover that they had reopened the indoor seating...awesome.  I went up to the counter, picked up my decaf iced caffè americano that I had ordered online...and then proceeded outdoors to sit.  Although I've had both Covid Pfizer vaccines earlier in the year and my booster shot a week ago (along with my annual flu vaccine), I'm still a little uncomfortable in cramped public spaces... but I think it'll get better in time.  I'm still confounded by the widespread refusal of millions to get vaccinated and greatly dismayed by supposed role models Kyrie Irving and Eric Clapton for steadfastly opposing it in a public way...I'm not surprised that Ted Nugent is also on the wrong side of the issue. It looks like, though, that the coronavirus's Delta variant has run most of its course through the unvaccinated "community", killing and debilitating so, so many: what a tragic, COMPLETELY AVOIDABLE waste! Well, humanity is never short of foolish beliefs and behavior...what kind of idiocy will we see next? I don't imagine the wait will be long...

Great Old TV Episodes...from the Avengers

DEATH'S DOOR, from the British spy/sleuth series The Avengers...starring Patrick Macnee (playing John Steed) and Diana Rigg (Emma Peel)...first aired in October, 1967 and I was right there, watching it in our living room that evening. A high-level, crucial conference with international implications is about to be held, but the man responsible for hosting it and holding the various parties together panics and flees as he approaches the conference door just before it begins.  Steed and Peel are enlisted to investigate the trouble, and it appears that the man has had a prophetic dream of the day at hand, with numerous small incidents coinciding with both dream and actual occurrence.  At the end of the dream, he is grabbed and forced through the conference door (see above picture) and, once entering, is killed by a falling chandelier...hence the panic in real life.  Of course, our heroes figure out the mystery, catch the bad guys and set everything straight...in their typically elegant, clever and witty fashion.  What stood out to me in this episode was the dream sequence, very reminiscent of that experienced by Gregory Peck's character in the classic 1948 thriller Spellbound.  But when I first saw Death's Door, I had only just turned eleven and it wouldn't be for a few more years before I got around to seeing the earlier movie. For special effects alone with the dream sequence I recommend this episode, but then again Macnee and Rigg were fantastic in every one of the Avengers episodes during this period.  I should know: I ended up buying their entire box set on DVD...

Major League Baseball League Championship Series Underway

In Major League Baseball I was greatly disappointed that the Tampa Bay Rays lost their opening-round series against Boston three games to one, with two very close games at the end deciding it.  Now the Red Sox have begun their American League Championship Series against the Houston Astros...I'm rooting for Boston now but yesterday they lost their opening game 5-4.  This afternoon that series will continue, shown on FoxSports1 (Gainesville Cox Channel 62), while in the evening TBS (Channel 67) will show the opening contest of the National League Championship Series between the Atlanta Braves and Los Angeles Dodgers.  Although I was happy to see Atlanta defeat the Milwaukee Brewers in their series to get this far, it was tough seeing how poor umpiring wrecked any chances of the San Francisco Giants, down 2-1 with a runner on base and two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning in the final deciding game against Los Angeles.  The batter, already with two strikes, clearly checked his swing on a ball outside the strike zone...but the first base umpire called him out, prematurely ending the game and the series.  That's not to say the batter wouldn't have failed on the next pitch or the Giants would have come back to win the game, but it shouldn't have been shut down that way.  In any event, I'm pulling for the Braves to upset the Dodgers...a little strange since Atlanta will have the home field advantage because they won their own division (with an 88-73 record) and Los Angeles qualified as a wild card team (at 106-56).  The worst World Series scenario I see is also the most probable: Houston (groan) with their tarnished legacy of cheating vs. Los Angeles.  If that happens I'm rooting for LA, but Atlanta is now my number one team, followed by Boston...

Quote of the Week...from Alan Watts

Muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone.                             ---Alan Watts

The above quote I've seen countless times on my Music Choice Soundscapes channel, which rotates a number of sayings from various diverse sources.  The source of this one is Alan Watts (1915-73), a seeker who started out as an Episcopalian priest and later delved into Eastern religions and philosophy, one of the "gurus" of the counterculture movement of the late 60s and early 70s.  His quote is figurative: the applied meaning is that in many occasions it's best not to draw out conflicts and troublesome situations by overanalyzing and bringing them up over and over again with other people...once the different parties know where each of them stand and are fully informed of the situation, better to back off and let the matter rest.  That doesn't mean that I don't have my own strongly held opinions on different issues, and I use this blog as a forum to express them...others are free and welcome to do likewise, as setting up a blog like this one is free and easy, even for the Internet-challenged person that I am. Also, although I think that it's useful to go back into my own memories and see where I went wrong at times...as well as when others went wrong...continually replaying past offenses and failures in the present can only magnify their importance.  A good strategy in this regard is, when remembering something negative in my past, for me to stop and write down what I learned from it and then what specific positive change in my current life I can make as a result.  And then walk away and let the muddy waters grow still and clear...

Constellation of the Month: Piscis Austrinus (the Southern Fish)

 

The constellation Piscis Austrinus...Latin for the Southern Fish...is easily visible in the southern sky for those of us in northern latitudes in mid-evening during October. The constellation's one claim to fame is its first-magnitude star Fomalhaut, which also happens to be the only star this bright in the autumn evening sky...once you get past Deneb in Cygnus. The rest of Piscis Austrinus' "prominent" stars, i.e. the ones that make up the connecting dots of the constellation, are of 4th magnitude or fainter. If you go out on a clear night anytime soon around 10 and look south, you'll see a rather flat triangle there of bright stars: two of them, the ones on the right are the planets Jupiter (in the middle) and Saturn (on the right/west)...Fomalhaut is its left/eastern point.  And if you go out tonight or tomorrow (10/14,15), you'll see the bright moon in the midst of them, just past first quarter phase. Fomalhaut is relatively near, as stars go...only about 25 light-years distant.  It's also been the locale in a number of science fiction tales as well. Even if you discount Fomalhaut's presence, in spite of the other relatively dim stars in it, Piscis Austrinus is easier to pick out of the sky than the Zodiac constellations Aquarius to its north and Pisces to its northeast...

Next month: another constellation...

Weekly Short Stories: 1977 Science Fiction, Part 3

Below are my reactions to two more 1977 science fiction short stories, as they appeared in the anthology The 1978 Annual World's Best SF, edited by Donald A. Wollheim and featuring his selections of the best in that genre the previous year.  As I've mentioned before, 1977 was a year of transition as I moved from Hollywood in South Florida to Gainesville in the northern part of the state. Having lived in the same house since I was four and having done very little traveling during my childhood, the change was challenging if not a bit traumatic for me.  Still, the roommates with me in my dormitory were friendly and responsible...greatly putting my concerns at rest...and I managed to finished my first semester at college with decent marks.  And here are my reviews of those two stories...

JEFFTY IS FIVE by Harlan Ellison

The title character to this story is a twenty-two-year old, the same age as the narrator who knew and played with him when they were both five. But Jeffty is very different: in essence he is STILL five years old, never having grown physically or mentally.  But the fact that he still listens to old shows off his radio that had ended years before makes his story all the more chilling. The author makes the point that the barrier between the ongoing present and the past is fragile and can be easily upset...as if the present wants to consume the past.  I can't help but think that this tale is also a sort of analogy about how people hold their own versions of the past close to the vest and can be defensive about it if someone calls on them to live in the present...

THE SCREWFLY SOLUTION by Raccoona Sheldon

Not very far into the future a scientist working in Colombia has hit upon the solution to eliminating the disease-carrying screwfly by interfering with its reproductive process.  Meanwhile, across the world there is a quasi-religious cult growing whereby men attack and kill women after they are promised that God would provide a cleaner, holier means of reproduction.  Realizing he is "infected" and won't be able to control his own homicidal urges, he warns his wife in time for her to escape...at story's end she discovers the ominous cause of it all.  The connection between the scientist's work and the cult phenomenon couldn't be more obvious...  

Next week I conclude my look at short science fiction from 1977... 

Game of the Week: Pro Football

Back in March I wrote an article on flag football...click HERE to read my own personal experiences playing the game.  As for tackle football, including obviously the professional National Football League version, I never played it...so my experiences are purely vicarious with this form of the sport through watching on TV or listening to play-by-play on the radio.  Although as a little kid I had some football cards in my collection...showing the strange spacemen-like outfits the players wore...I didn't actually watch a game until the fall of 1966 when, fiddling around the TV channel knob, I landed upon a contest between the Los Angeles Rams and the San Francisco 49ers.  Not that I knew anything about the game's rules then, but I liked LA because of their cool ram helmets...and they won!  The next year my mother was avidly following the Johnny Unitas-led Baltimore Colts and I joined her enthusiasm, finally picking up on the rules but dismayed when the Colts lost their final regular season game to their arch-rival Rams and thereby missed the playoffs.  The next year in '68, although Unitas was injured early on, Earl Morrall capably filled in as quarterback and led the Colts to the Super Bowl, where they disastrously fell to the New York Jets.  That year also saw me become a fan of the third-year expansion team Miami Dolphins...nobody else in my family considered them yet worth rooting for.  In 1970, Baltimore's head coach Don Shula jumped ship and joined Miami, leading them to three early Super Bowl appearances, two championships including a perfect season in 1972 (with Morrall returning to fill in for injured Bob Griese for most of it), two more appearances in the '80s, and only two losing seasons from 1970 to 1995, when Shula finally retired.  In the 80's the Dolphins' first Super Bowl appearance in more than a decade featured a team dominated by defense (the "Killer Bees") with a mediocre offense...just two years later when they returned to the Big Game it was the defense that was weak while the offense, now explosive, was led by second-year sensation Dan Marino.  Miami sported some good teams afterwards but always seemed to have one team above them that was good enough to keep them from ever returning to the Super Bowl.  Statewide, Florida would receive two new more expansion teams in Tampa Bay and Jacksonville...I cheered the Bucs on as they won two Super Bowls in their own right...but I always considered the Miami Dolphins as my favorite team...even after I moved to Gainesville in the northern part of the state. This century Miami's fortunes have flagged with 2007 being their low point, going 1-15.  In recent years I've enjoyed out-of-state teams, notably the Seattle Seahawks and the New York Giants, the latter for whom I was grateful after twice beating Miami's divisional rival New England in the Super Bowl.  Nowadays I still root for the Dolphins but have favorites in each of the other seven NFL divisions...they are all listed below:

MIAMI DOLPHINS (American Conference East)

JACKSONVILLE JAGUARS (South)

BALTIMORE RAVENS (North)

KANSAS CITY CHIEFS (West)

PHILADELPHIA EAGLES and NEW YORK GIANTS (National Conference East)

TAMPA BAY BUCCANEERS (South)

GREEN BAY PACKERS (North)

SEATTLE SEAHAWKS (West)

Of the above only Baltimore, Tampa Bay and Green Bay seem to be doing reasonably well after five weeks in 2021. But I still enjoy watching the different teams play, win or lose...

Political Toxicity Mushrooming

Politics has become so toxic nowadays that I'm hesitant to write articles about it, especially since what I express is often bound to sound toxic in itself.  On January 6th Donald Trump attempted to overthrow democracy and install himself as unelected dictator through his flunkies...I'm not talking about the loser Capitol building rioters but rather the elected representatives who chose to vote to overturn the election...some two thirds of the Republicans in the House of Representatives and seven in the Senate (including my own representative and one of my senators). In my next-day article I called them all fascists, and explained why, bringing up the term's commonly accepted definition.  I don't believe hardly any of those politicians who voted to overturn the 2020 presidential election actually believed that the election was stolen, but they were taking their cues from Trump...the biggest fascist of them all...who seems to have a Jim-Jones-like hold on millions of adoring Americans who apparently have long pined for an authoritarian strongman to affirm their own talking points and smash down the Enemy (i.e. those who disagree with them). HBO host/comedian/egghead Bill Maher recently warned that the 2024 election may well portend the end of democratically-elected representative government if Trump runs and loses a close election again. The former president has already begun to call for a civil war, and several state legislatures have passed new laws giving themselves carte blanche authority to arbitrarily decide elections held in their own states...even the presidential vote...based on any "trumped"-up phony fraud claims.  In such an environment I don't know how one cannot feel toxic about our political situation here. The only reason Donald Trump has any political influence is because a large segment of our adult voting population has relinquished their own responsibility to discern the character of their leaders and has decided to accept any foul or deceitful thing coming from their chosen idol's mouth.  No, I don't always agree with Maher, but I think he's got it right this time.  As someone who often agrees with the conservative take on issues, I am dismayed by today's extremely toxic Trump phenomenon that precludes me from supporting any Republican candidate...

Also referring back to political toxicity, I am dismayed to see moderate elected Democrats who represent more conservative constituencies being raked over the coals for the crime of having a backbone when legislation is foisted upon them to support that they feel is excessive, either in terms of spending or government overreach.  The "progressive" Democrats who attack these public servants to me are incredibly short-sighted as well as ignorant: short-sighted because without the moderates in the Senate and the House, their own party would be in the minority and powerless to introduce legislation or confirm (or reject) federal judges and Supreme Court justices...and ignorant because historically the only stable legislation that doesn't tend to be undone when the other party comes to power is that passed with at least some semblance of bipartisan support as the result of negotiation and compromise...

Great Old TV Episodes...from The Twilight Zone

 

AND WHEN THE SKY WAS OPENED was a chilling Season One episode of the original Twilight Zone series, first aired in December, 1959...I was only three at the time and wouldn't see it until years later. This is television that is pinpointed in history, a speculation about what might happen should humans endeavor to go into space...a little more than a year before that actually happened with the Soviet Union's Yuri Gagarin in April of 1961.  In this episode, a three-man astronaut crew fly an experimental space plane some 900 miles above Earth...but during its flight radio contact is broken for several hours and the plane is found crash-landed in the desert, all hands on board alive with one crewman, Gart, suffering a broken leg.  In the hospital the expedition leader Forbes, played by Rod Taylor (who would star in the original Time Machine movie the following year), tries to convince his bedridden colleague that there were THREE of them on the mission...but even the newspaper shows only two. Taylor then recounts what happened to the other man, Harrington, an old friend, as they both left that same room the day before with the paper (pictured above) showing all three of them.  But at a nearby bar with Forbes something happens to Harrington's thinking...as if he didn't belong there...and he vanishes.  Distraught over his buddy's disappearance, Forbes finishes his story to Gart and then starts to feel the same way as Harrington.  The ending was unexpected and ingenious...

When this episode first came out, no human had ever ventured into space and returned.  So it was intriguing to consider whether "something or somebody out there" didn't want us to ever leave our home planet and might take measures to prevent it. And then there's the notion that maybe the worse thing to no longer existing is to never have existed at all.  And When the Sky Was Opened is my all-time favorite episode of one of my all-time favorite TV series...

Reading Lev Grossman's Fantasy Series The Magicians for the 3rd Time

For the third time I am undertaking reading Lev Grossman's excellent fantasy trilogy The Magicians, which I consider as my favorite in that genre of fiction.  I've just finished reading (again) the first book, also titled The Magicians.  The protagonist, Quentin Coldwater, is a highly introverted, genius high school graduate on his way to a college interview in New York City with his friends Steve and Julia...the latter for whom Quentin has held a long, futile crush. Events cascade, leading to Quentin mysteriously passing through some bushes in the city to suddenly find himself in upstate New York on the grounds of Brakebills Academy, a secret school of magic to train magicians at a college level. They consider him a prospective student, but first he must pass the entry examination...he gets through it and is admitted.  Meanwhile, Julia has also been there taking the exam...but is rejected.  The series progresses through Quentin's relationships and training at Brakebills and Julia's attempts to find the hidden academy while learning more of the craft among peers outside "official" magical society.  Interwoven through it all is the fantasy (or is it real?) alternative world of Fillory, the setting of several novels from the early twentieth century that bear an uncanny resemblance to C.S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia series.  Grossman put a lot of insight and development into his characters, of whom the Brakebills student Penny was the most interesting to me.  Unfortunately, the television adaption of The Magicians, running for five season on the SyFy Channel from 2015 to 2020, changed the book version way too much...including making its "Penny" character virtually unrecognizable from the books'.  Initially, when the TV series first aired I tried to follow it but quickly became "disenchanted"...sometimes I think the producers of screen adaptations bring in the original author as consultant not to make sure they conform to his or her intent but rather to lend a false sense of endorsement as they make wholesale changes in the plot and characters: I've seen this happen with other TV and movie adaptations as well.  In any event, I'm now into the second book, titled The Magician King...it goes deeper into Julia's efforts to develop her magical powers and be accepted by the magical establishment.  Yet I also recognize that The Magicians television version had good acting even if it did diverge too much from Grossman's novels. I'm giving it a second chance after I discovered that Netflix had it, but I sadly expect that neither its tone nor story line will conform in any significant degree to Lev Grossman's memorable and compelling literary epic...

Quote of the Week...from Mark Twain

Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of Congress, but I repeat myself.

                                                                                  ---Mark Twain

Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) lived from 1835 to 1910, so his above words...whatever year he made them...refer to the state of politics in his own time, well over a century ago.  In a way, they're reassuring, reminding us that regardless of the tomfoolery and deceit that seem to dominate Congressional politics today, this has pretty much always been the case in Washington.  On the other hand, the "idiots" in Congress, both in Twain's day and ours, tend to be reelected over and over again...so what does that make us, the general population that keeps sending them back for term after term?  Personally, I don't believe that those serving in Congress, be they in the Senate or the House of Representatives, are idiots...even the ones who at times make idiotic statements.  But they ARE perverting the intent of our founding fathers when they established this representative republic.  It all comes down to the concept of "primarying" in which a populist...even demagogic...element of a politician's own party boasts of enough fanatical voters to topple them in the next primary if they don't tow the line to their peculiar ideology.  The result is that the more extreme elements of each party tend to either control who gets their nomination, or...much more prevalently...control the behavior of those already in office, who are afraid of getting on their bad side.  Sometime in the future I plan to write an article about the "rabble", that is the masses of people in any society who tend to be more autocratic, hung up on symbols, and less educated in the civics of how our government is supposed to function.  They are easily manipulated, as recently we have seen mass hysteria about the COVID-19 pandemic...particularly in the areas of masks and vaccines, Trump worship, and widespread denial that Biden won the 2020 election fair and square.  For elected politicians to kowtow to the basest of the "base" reveals them not to be idiots, but rather as lacking in personal standards of ethics and integrity.  And I'm not giving the Democrats a free pass, either...too many of  the rank and file seem to be imbued with the notion that mass protest marches are somehow "democracy at work" while regularly skipping election after election in which there's no emotionally-gripping candidate or issue on the ballot...resulting in state legislatures across the country being dominated by Republicans, even in several "blue" states.  And what's happening nowadays with the put-downs of moderate Democrats is completely unacceptable to me...

Just Finished Reading The City by Dean Koontz

The City is a 2014 novel written by Dean Koontz, more known for horror/suspense stories dominated by deranged killers.  Although suspense abounds here as well, along with the presence of murderous villains, this book deals more with the life of its protagonist, Jonah Kirk, a 9-10 year- old black boy growing up in New York City...specifically Manhattan...during 1966-67 when protests against the Vietnam War abounded and bombs started going off. Told from the vantage point of Jonah as a 57-year-old he recounts how he discovered he had a musical talent for playing piano and picking up tunes from just hearing them...he's taken after his grandfather Teddy, a renowned player in his own right.  And Jonah's mother (his father abandoned the two) completes the family's musical bent as a talented singer.  Add to the mix Mister Yoshioka, a neighbor with sad memories of himself and his family in a World War II Japanese internment camp, Malcolm, a talented horn player about Jonah's age living across the street, and Malcom's pretty and wise older sister Amalia, and Jonah seems to have a pretty good life...except that this IS a Dean Koontz novel and you just know a lot is going to go down.  Aside from fears that Jonah's father will kidnap him, a mysterious woman Pearl, calling herself "The Spirit of the City", has warned Jonah through his dreams about a couple of vicious criminals...he inadvertently reveals his presence to them and is consequently a target, along with his family and friends.  What are the bad guys up to...at least we know Jonah will survive intact up to the present.  But do we really know that...after all, this IS a Dean Koontz novel.  I enjoyed The City as a welcome departure in tone from other books by Koontz and appreciated the author placing in relationship characters of different races and ethnicities across multiple generations, showing through many of them a vision of how people should get along with one another.  It's also a story of good vs. evil and Koontz, like his contemporary Stephen King, is a bit of a moralist with his writing...but also like King isn't overbearing about it.  And I loved all the popular music references, too. Two thumbs up from me for The City...

Weekly Short Stories: 1977 Science Fiction, Part 2

Here are two more of my reviews of science fiction short stories appearing in the anthology The 1978 Annual World's Best SF, edited by Donald A. Wollheim and featuring his picks for the best from 1977.  In that year I started attending the University of Florida here in Gainesville.  Aside from academic life and a culture of partying, the big crazes at this time were tennis and disco dancing/music.  The John Travolta movie and Bee Gees album Saturday Night Fever were the rage and my dormitory's offering of disco lessons was filled to the brim with eager residents (but not me).  Likewise, the tennis courts just across the street from my dorm room seemed to be perpetually occupied with players (but not me) noisily hitting the ball back and forth, day and night. Kind of a weird time, looking back on it now, was 1977.  And here's my feedback from a couple of that kooky year's stories...   

PARTICLE THEORY by Edward Bryant

A highly knowledgeable science writer with deep connections in that field finds himself both struck with prostate cancer as well as witness to an inexplicable chain of supernovas happening in quick succession in the night sky. His dreams do not portend well, but he manages to live his life out on both tracks, trying to save himself from his own highly personal doom while helpless to affect the larger impending disaster.  I have to admit that I didn't quite get this story, although I liked how the author talked quite a bit about subatomic physics and the cause of novas...

THE TASTE OF THE DISH AND THE SAVOR OF THE DAY by John Brunner

This story pokes fun at the gourmet culture while posing the question: What are you willing to give up in order to attain immortality? The narrator, a sci-fi writer visiting Paris for a convention of his trade, meets up with a man, called the Baron, who is attending the funeral of a distant aunt.  The Baron is one of those unapologetic gourmets and shows it out on the town.  A year later the two get together again...but the Baron refuses to touch the food or drink the great wine.  They go to his home where Gregoire, a relative of that deceased aunt and now the Baron's cook, prepares a special dish for the Baron (who quickly eats it) and narrator, who is taken by the food's extremely attractive aroma and taste.  What follows goes down that pathway regarding immortality, this time through a special concoction known only to one individual.  I liked the story for its humor and humanity...  

Next week there will be more discussion on science fiction short stories from 1977...

Game of the Week: War (Cards)

 

When I was growing up, we had our family games...one of them was a card game we called "Battle"...later on I found out that, to the world in general, it was "War".  Not a game of skill, each side is dealt out of the 52-card deck until it's spent...then they each put out a card from top of their own pile and the largest value wins all cards (Ace is high card), to be placed face up on their discard pile. The game is played until one side runs out of cards. If the two cards placed are the same, then a "war" (or battle in our version) ensues, with each player laying three of their cards face down and placing the next one face up...the highest value wins all the cards in play.  War can go on and on and on...in one game as a kid I recorded 93 battles.  Melissa and I were playing it a few days ago and it looked headed the same way...finally we agreed to play 15 more minutes and whoever had the most cards at that point won (it was Melissa, naturally).  I've read that some dude said that War wasn't really a game since it involved no decision-making on the part of the player.  But all the games I watch on TV, no matter which sport, ARE games as well with me playing no volitional role (other than to switch the channel)...I'm just playing the vicarious role of the spectator.  Still, I think the next time I pull out the card deck we'll be playing Rummy instead (which Melissa also usually wins)... 

Marking Time by Age or Calendar Year

Normally, I don't mark time by my age and birthdays...but yesterday's was a big deal because I turned 65, which seems to be a major dividing line in how my society separates people, depending on what side of that magic number they're on.  Aside from all the questions about signing up for the various Medicare plans, there has recently been a major distinction regarding vaccinations between those below or beyond the 65 year threshold.  Even before the Covid vaccine first came out several months ago, there was a special, fortified flu vaccine designed to protect the elderly...starting with those age 65 or above.  Now the booster shots for Covid are currently unavailable to the general population age 64 and below...a group to which I belonged just two days ago.  I plan to get both of these shots in the next few days, although I don't enjoy being stuck with a needle anymore than anyone else.  As for my opening comment about marking time, after I began elementary school I was primarily noting the passage of years by either my grade or the calendar year, not so much my age...although attaining 18 was significant as I was then eligible to vote.  As for the military draft, I miraculously managed to fall within the exact time period of President Nixon abolishing it and Jimmy Carter reinstituting registration...so my age didn't mean as much with that as it would were I just a few years older and concerned about being drafted for Vietnam. I now wonder whether I'm going to start thinking more of my physical age as a year marker now that I've passed the 65-year hurdle...

Great Old TV Episodes...from the Beverly Hillbillies

DUKE BECOMES A FATHER was from Season 1 of the Beverly Hillbillies CBS comedy series, first shown in April, 1963.  There are two interwoven story lines.  Mademoiselle Denise is a beautiful young French woman who is visiting Beverly Hills with her purebred dog and snobby Mrs. Drysdale thinks her own poodle is the father of the new litter...but as the episode's title reveals, it's Jed's bloodhound Duke with the honors.  Meanwhile, Mlle. Denise has entranced Jed and since she cannot speak English, he enlists the aid of Miss Hathaway to give him a lesson speaking French. It's his expectation that after one hour he will be able to completely understand his new-found love that reminded me of how so many apps and language learning courses nowadays make similar claims when becoming fluent in another tongue is much more involved and usually necessitates a degree of immersion in its home environment, surrounded by its speakers.  Jed sits and stumbles through Miss Hathaway's language lesson and, perplexed when it is almost over with very little progress made, says "Them last five minutes must be doozies!".  Granny and Jethro both shine in this episode, and Jed makes his recurring comment about his cousin Pearl's son, "One of these days I'm gonna have to have a l-o-o-n-g talk with that boy!"... 

Congrats to 100-Game Winner Tampa Bay Rays

Congratulations to the 2021 Tampa Bay Rays baseball team for not only winning the highly competitive American League East Division for the second straight year and qualifying for the postseason playoffs for the third straight, but also for amassing the very difficult milestone of winning 100 games in a season...they did this with today's 12-2 rout over the New York Yankees on the road.  The Yanks, Boston, Toronto, and Seattle are currently in an extremely tight finishing run to see which two of them will make the playoffs...looks like it will come down to tomorrow, the final day of the regular season.  Managed by Kevin Cash, this year's Rays feature strengths in every category: consistent hitting, power hitters, great fielding, and excellent pitching...both by starters and the bullpen.  And Tampa Bay has also been exceptionally well in the second half of the season in 2021 while establishing themselves as a clutch, come-from behind team in those late innings.  It's not a team of superstars, but I feel that some future greats will come from this outfit...keep your eyes open for Brandon Lowe (39 home runs, including 3 today), Randy Arozarena (team batting average leader), Austin Meadows (RBI leader), Mike 
Zunino (32 homers), Wander Franco (20-year-old rookie hitting sensation), Shane McClanahan (starting pitcher) and Andrew Kittredge (reliever).  The Rays, who made it to the World Series last year only to be bested by the Los Angeles Dodgers in six games, begin their playoff run at home this Thursday against the American League wildcard winner.  Unfortunately, since I'm returning to my afternoon/evening job this Monday, I won't be able to watch the baseball playoffs except for the weekend games...but the Tampa Bay Rays have certainly been entertaining for me thus far...  

Quote of the Week...from Bob Dylan

Take care of all your memories.  For you cannot relive them.              ---Bob Dylan

There's a corollary verse to the Bard of Our Time's above quote, this one by another noted popular lyricist: Bruce Springsteen, from his 1985 hit song: "Well, time slips away and leaves you nothing, mister, but boring stories of Glory Days".  I bring that second quote up to reinforce Dylan's conclusions: if you're stuck in your adolescent past...even to the point where you pigeonhole the same people with whom you went to school, based on decades-old relationships and refuse to recognize that we all change over the years, then you are suffering from a delusional way of thinking.  You indeed cannot relive your memories...but you can treasure them while keeping your feet planted in the present moment.  Speaking for my own experiences back then in those "non-glory days" of junior and senior high school, I felt a bit victimized during that period by many classmates and teachers around me, both groups then largely (but not exclusively) in my mind consisting of bullies, fickle "friends", and snobs.  Yet I also knew fellow students (but sadly too few teachers) who displayed genuine character and integrity and who took an active interest in others...regardless of popularity...and patiently listened to them, with the implicit belief that everyone had their own story to tell.  At the time, as possibly the most introverted individual of my era, the thought of actively seeking out peers and displaying a respectful interest in their lives and opinions never occurred to me...it was a form of behavior that eventually arose into my consciousness with maturity and is still something I'm working on after all this time.  But it does no good now reliving those old memories, since what happened to me...as well as my response to it all...belongs to my distant youth.  Still, I can draw the appropriate lessons from those experiences and apply them now...with the circle of  family, friends and acquaintances present in my ongoing life.  I graduated from high school in 1974, and no doubt a fifty-year reunion will be in the works before long.  But without discounting the value and significance of my old schoolmates and their lives, I wonder whether attending such a get-together wouldn't be beside the point...those relationships (or lack of relationship) were based on who I was and who they were, and I'm not the same person anymore and neither are they.  Only if I am allowed to play that "active listener" role around these fellow travelers in life from my distant past would going there be worthwhile, and this would involve who I am now, not as I was fifty years ago...which as I see it might be a difficult obstacle to surmount if enough folks attending there are stuck trying to relive their memories.  There's yet a third saying here to draw upon: "Let bygones be bygones"...

My September 2021 Running and Walking Report

During the month of September I was still recovering from my July 15th open-heart surgery to replace a defective heart valve and repair an aortic aneurysm. Once sternal precautions, which limited my upper body and arm movements, ended on September 9th, my physical therapist began a regimen of stretching exercises for me designed to strengthen and restore my previous range of movements.  But before that, I was encouraged to walk...in September I recorded some 60 miles covered, and the figure is probably considerably higher if you include mileage I didn't count.  I also ran some on a limited basis, recognizing that it may take a bit longer to match my pre-operation level in that activity. I've also resumed using daily my home's exercise bike as well as practicing my therapist's earlier prescribed workout for my legs and lower body. Starting next month I plan to record and report on my running mileage, longest single run, and days run as I had in previous months. But for now, I'll just report that I'm encouraged and progress is being made.  As for future races, I feel it's a little too early to look at specific upcoming events as I'm focused on listening to my body as I run and allowing myself ample opportunity to progress at a rate that is safe and lasting.  But so far things are looking good...