The 100 Days, As Seen by Rob Dial

On his podcast show The Mindset Mentor, Rob Dial presents various ways to look at self-motivation and success.  Some of his angles work for me and some I have a little difficulty with.  I liked one idea he presented on his December 10th show in which he proposed that I decide what it is I want to take action on and do it for 100 consecutive days...no excuses.  This transforms whatever action goal I have into an established habit that I have internalized...I've heard that it takes fewer days to accomplish this, however. The point of making a big deal about "100 days" is that, sometime down the line, I'm going to be tempted to forego the designated activity because of my feelings or time constraints.  But having that rule already in plan will help me keep true to whatever I had made a commitment.  Dial says that success comes from consistency and failure from giving up...a lot of his presentation comes from notions that we all generally already know and accept, but he repackages and expresses them in a way that can be inspiring.  So step number one is to reflect on and write down what it is I want to incorporate into my life, and then with step number two set out on those 100 days.  Obviously it has to be something already within the scope of my ability to accomplish, at least at a basic level from the beginning: traveling to a new country or running a marathon each day wouldn't cut it!  It's also an invitation to be a little creative about myself: a reinvention of sorts...

Constellation of the Month: Eridanus (the River)

 

Eridanus is a large constellation in the southern evening December sky, starting at its northeastern end with its "beta" star Cursa near the star Rigel of the prominent constellation Orion and winding around, ending up much further south with the first-magnitude "alpha" star Achernar.  In spite of its size, Eridanus is rather devoid of bright stars besides Achernar, the rest being of third magnitude or dimmer.  Achernar, some 7 times the mass of our sun, is about 140 light-years away. Although technically it should be visible just above the southern horizon here in Gainesville when it crosses the meridian, in reality I cannot see it from this latitude because of trees and buildings almost inevitably blocking my view.  But growing up in south Florida...Hollywood to be exact...I was about 4 degrees further south and could see Achernar back then.  I don't recall having ever experienced a clear enough night when city lights or the moon didn't render Eridanus difficult to observe, but its occupation of a relatively large swath of the celestial sky qualifies it as my constellation of the month for December. The above drawing should make it clear why it represents a river...

Quarreling Among the Beatles in Get Back Movie

I'm about halfway through watching the first of three parts of the Peter Jackson-produced Beatles documentary Get Back, now airing on the Disney Plus channel.  In early January, 1969, they're a few days into rehearsing material at their makeshift studio for a new album (eventually becoming Let It Be) and a planned concert, place and time undetermined.  After Paul and George have a brief, rough-but-polite exchange, the four meet up the next morning...except John is late.  In the meantime, Paul, with George and Ringo backing him up, concocts the core elements of the future blockbuster hit song Get Back.  Later on John shows up, gamely trying to participate on a positive level with the band but appearing confused and out of it...something was definitely going on with him.  After some jamming, they sit around facing each other...along with the assistants...and Paul starts off on a lecture of sorts about how he doesn't want to be the leader of the band but seems to be forced into that role.  In both this scene and in the previous day's exchange with George, I felt that Paul was acting a bit like a drama queen and treating others with a patronizing attitude...and why not: every reality show...and this one certainly qualifies for that designation...seems to have someone who acts out on the others like this.  I just expected that John would have been the prima donna here...if Paul had just guarded his tongue and simply stuck with the incredible music he was producing, I think things would have gone a lot smoother in these sessions, as well most likely in the months to follow that culminated in John quitting the Beatles in September.  The documentary is already very, very long, but still had to selectively edit the Beatle's weeks-long sessions, each of which lasted all day for days on end each week: very, very grueling as I have said before.  I felt that George came into the studio with a great amount of enthusiasm and songs of his own to contribute, gradually becoming disillusioned about how he was being treated by both Paul and John.  Just a couple of days later he would walk out of the band with the other three trying to coax him back into rejoining during the ensuing two weeks.  As for the eventual final product, that Let It Be album, which was finally released in the summer of 1970 after McCartney had announced the Beatles' breakup, contained some very good songs like Get Back, The Two of Us, For You Blue, Across the Universe, The Long and Winding Road, and I've Got a Feeling (I never did care for the title song Let It Be)...pretty impressive coming from what I've seen and heard so far on this documentary movie.  So the Beatles quarreled among themselves...but this had probably been going on throughout their existence.  The idea of filming and recording their conflicts in January of 1969 may be informative and entertaining for us today in looking back on it all, but the rolling cameras themselves were active participants in shaping the individual bandmates' attitudes and behavior toward one another... 

Quote of the Week...from Noel Coward

Work is much more fun than fun.                             ---Noel Coward

The late playwright Noel Coward had it right, although he was probably a lot more fanatical about his work than I am about mine.  Although I enjoy unwinding and relaxing, what apparently many people think of as fun....social gatherings like parties, concerts and get-togethers...don't do anything for me. If anything, they cause me a lot of anxiety and I would rather be in a structured work setting...even one where the tasks are relatively menial and repetitive.  I like my personal projects like running, reading, studying, and writing this blog, all of which can be seen in more of a "work" perspective than "fun".  I know folks who are into gardening, cooking, knitting/crocheting, home improvement, musical performance, auto mechanics, charitable service and other pastimes that don't fit into the category of "fun" that you might see on beer commercials where the men and women are soaking in the enjoyment of their social throngs. I like to sit back and watch TV and listen to music, but it's more fun to be working on something, whether it's at my job for pay or rather as an activity I have consciously adopted for myself to pursue. One type of work I could do without, though...but know that I will need to do more and more in the future as I age: medical/dental appointments.  And I have one this afternoon, sad to say...

Miami Dolphins Still in Running for Playoff Spot

I tend to follow the National Football League...sometimes I wonder why with some of the controversy surrounding the sport in recent years.  But it's been a solid tradition for me since 1968, when I began rooting for my then-hometown team, the Miami Dolphins, in their third season of existence.  Since then I've ridden the roller-coaster of great-to-awful seasons this franchise has produced including their undefeated 1972 season and that awful year in 2007 when they went 1-15.  Currently, under third-year head coach Brian Flores after a near-playoff surprise 10-6 season in 2020, this year they got off to a horrible start at 1-7, culminating in a humiliating loss to lowly Jacksonville in a game played in London, England.  No, I don't know either why the NFL keeps staging games in a country where virtually nobody plays the game, much less demonstrating any degree of interest in watching it.  That said, the Dolphins under this inspiring coach never said die and has now won five games in a row to bring their regular season record to 6-7...and back into the playoff discussion.  This Sunday they play at home against their divisional rival New York and should beat the last-place Jets.  If they accomplish this they will have already merited special mention for coming back from so far to a .500 record.  Now I'm more keenly interested in how teams in the AFC with slightly better records in the Dolphins fare, creating the unusual situation where I'm pulling for hated New England to beat the Indianapolis Colts in their upcoming contest Sunday night...the Patriots are already too far ahead of Miami in the standings with just four games to go in the new 17-game regular season and the Colts sport a 7-6 record, making them one of the teams the Dolphins will need to hurdle over to get to the playoffs.  Of course, should Miami fail against the Jets then, oh well, that's how it goes sometimes.  But I've been impressed with this team coming together both on defense and offense, the latter highlighted by the marked improvement of their second-year quarterback Tua Tagovailoa.  I'm not one of those sports fans who expect their team to win the championship every year or it's all a disaster...just get me to this point in the season and if they're still in the hunt, that's all I ask for.  Go Dolphins!

Weekly Short Stories: 1979 Science Fiction, Part 4

Today I've reached the end of the science fiction anthology The 1980 Annual World's Best SF, edited by Donald A. Wollheim and featuring his selections from 1979. That was the year that the fledgling Tampa Bay Buccaneers of the NFL, after losing their first 26 games as a franchise in 1976-77, made it to their conference's championship game, bowing out to the L.A. Rams 9-0.  The Pittsburgh Pirates, with their theme of "Family" after Sister Sledge's ongoing hit We are Family, came from behind in that year's world series against the favored Baltimore Orioles for the second time in eight years.  President Jimmy Carter decided to boycott the 1980 Moscow Olympics after the U.S.S.R. invaded Afghanistan.  And the Florida Gators football team, under first-year coach Charley Pell, went 0-9-1.  That's sports...here are my reactions to those final three stories...

OUT THERE WHERE THE BIG SHIPS GO by Richard Cowper

The notion of humanity going out and conquering the galaxy gets a rude awakening here as an exploratory mission encounters an advanced alien culture already entrenched throughout it...and their unifying thread is in a special board game played throughout the stars.  Back on Earth at a Caribbean resort a boy notices the returning astronaut who has introduced the game to his home planet, where it has become the premier cultural attraction. Using games as devices for peaceful interaction and education among disparate societies reminded me of the ideals behind the resurrection of the Olympic Games in 1896...before they became nationalist propaganda tools and then completely professionalized...

CAN THESE BONES LIVE? by Ted Reynolds

A young woman on a future Earth when humanity has become extinct owes her own resurrection to an alien race that returns one specimen on from intelligent species on each planet to life, allowing them to plead the case for their own species' revival.  The woman struggles to justify why mankind should be given another chance...and then she discovers the answer.  And that alien race itself gets taught a lesson in humility and perspective...

THE EXTRAORDINARY VOYAGES OF AMÉLIE BERTRAND by Joanna Russ

The idea of a portal in reality that leads to other places and times isn't new.  Recently Stephen King has used this device in novels like 11/22/63 and The Talisman (with Peter Straub), Philip Pullman with the His Dark Materials series, and of course J.K. Rowling's Platform 9¾ from Harry Potter.  In this tale a traveler in France encounters such a portal at a train station, and the woman there who rescues him from accidentally falling through it tells her strange story about her exciting and exotic adventures.  This story was meant as a tribute to the great French science fiction writer Jules Verne...

Next week I begin looking at the year 1980 in short science fiction...

The Hierarchical Mindset: You Can't Take It With You

One morning about ten years ago I was sitting at the nearest Starbucks to my house, a small establishment at the end of a Publix strip mall...years later it would be relocated down the road in order to install a drive-through.  My table was at the front window just on the inside, putting me near customers standing in line.  At the time I was reviewing my old basic Vietnamese language vocabulary I had learned many years earlier while working at a local Chinese restaurant with several Vietnamese refugees when a church acquaintance whom I distantly knew walked into the store.  She turned, noticed me and my book, and asked me what I was studying...to which I replied.  Then, without missing a beat, she derisively asked "What are you going to do with it?"  Sounds on the surface like a reasonable question, but the fact that this was the one she chose to pose revealed something important about her personality makeup. She could have asked questions like how long I have been studying Vietnamese, what my background was with it, or more pertinently, what I thought about this east Asian language.  For some reason, though, when someone reveals they are pursuing any kind of academic endeavor they often get this "What's it for?" kind of response as if learning anything new must be justified in terms of material gain or climbing a social hierarchy...I call this type of person "hierarchical".  People who in their youth always had to be the star athlete or musician or have the teacher's favor and get straight A's or be at the top of a social circle grew up with a hierarchical attitude, a lot of it having to do with the fact that as humans we organize ourselves socially in packs like wolves, vying for who will be the "alpha" and continually sorting out our standing further down the line: this was especially prevalent at my bus stop with the biggest bully reigning as "top dog" and the most picked-upon and verbally abused kids stuck at the bottom. A few years ago, before the pandemic hit, I attended a monthly Saturday morning men's breakfast at my church, intending to establish a new, positive routine in my life and develop a little more sociability in my introverted existence.  It didn't take long for me to discover that too many of those attending were steeped in hierarchy, verbally jostling with one another about their academic, career and business credentials and accomplishments, all while comically feigning humility and spirituality...this was the single reason I finally gave up going to those meetings.  I am not hierarchical and as such find those deeply engrossed in the rat race and social standing to be tedious and boring to be around...but I also realize that each of them, too, has their own story and dignity, deserving respect and grace but instead too often expecting obeisance and servility, which ruins everything for me.  I study things because they are interesting to me...whose knows, maybe I'll find some material or social use for them later. But if you want to engage me in conversation about a project I'm pursuing then how about, at least temporarily, step down from your imaginary social ladder and ask me about the content of what I'm doing...or at least how I came about to it...instead of treating me like the low dog in a pack who has to justify himself.  No, I'm not judging people with a hierarchical mindset...I'm just sick and tired of them judging me.  The play You Can't Take It With You...I prefer the 1984 PBS Great Performances version starring Jason Robards...vividly illustrates what I've just been talking about...

About Rob Dial's 8 Things Successful People Do

Last Monday on this blog I referenced Rob Dial, a motivational podcaster whose almost daily 20-minute programs, titled Mindset Mentor, are very convenient to hear and insert into my daily routine. On one recent show he lists and discusses eight different things that successful people do:

1-Get up early and have an established morning routine.

2-Read regularly, preferably daily.

3-Exercise consistently.

4-Write goals down consistently.

5-Use mentors.

6-Engage in positive self-talk, avoid the negative.

7-Don't worry about failure, rather learn from it and move on.

8-Just don't ever stop...keep advancing.

Dial is a big advocate of reading, especially in one's field of endeavor, and is generous with crediting others before him for many of the ideas he promotes.  On some of his above suggestions for success I do pretty well, but others...not so much.  I get up mornings usually between 8 and 9...but that's largely due to the fact that my work shift ends at 10 pm...and I'm pretty faithful to my morning routines. I read quite a bit, although of late I've been starting a string of different books and then putting them down for various reasons. I did find one on mathematics that seems to hold my interest, though. I exercise daily, that's good. Sometimes I write down my goals, but probably not to the extent that Rob Dial wants.  I have never had mentors except for the distanced, impersonal kind in the media and on the Internet such as podcasts like this with no opportunity for dialogue.  I could use a lot more positive self-talk than I'm accustomed to, that's for sure.  And I'm definitely sensitive to failure, tending to use it to judge myself negatively instead of letting it instruct me toward better outcomes.  Not stopping, the final point, is something I do well in some areas and not so well in others. This most probably has a lot to do with a topic that Rob Dial presents in another podcast, and which I'll discuss next week...seems like Mondays on this blog are turning into "Rob Dial Podcast Discussion Day", at least for a while...

Starbucks, Running and Math

Today promises to be pretty dreary weatherwise here in Gainesville...I'm sitting here inside the Starbucks in northern Gainesville on 43rd Street for the first time since early in the year.  Some Starbucks have a more intimate, welcoming quality to them, but this one is more like a mall food court with noises amplified by the acoustics of the spacious room...that's all right, the other Starbucks I usually frequent was off-line for my order and I've had it with standing in line anymore.  Once again I'm sitting along one side facing the electric substation just south of Talbot Elementary School...connected by a walking path I would traverse during my marathon training phase back in 2010-11 while on one of my many long runs back then: ah, those were the days!  I'd like to return to that wonderful era, and yesterday's measured run around my house totaling 14.4 miles was a good step in that direction.  There is a specific type of lifestyle that I am seeking which mixes family, a small number of friends, learning, occasional travel, and running/walking into a pleasant-yet-challenging routine combining interaction, growth, and new memories.  Part of it I am already living...much more is yet to come.  I have been stepping out tentatively into the vast, wild ocean of mathematics by watching special programming and reading books on the subject...my goal is to be in deep waters by this spring and then see where it all takes me.  The book I'm currently reading, The Ten Equations That Rule the World, by mathematician David Sumpter, illustrates the conundrum I find myself in whenever such an expert in the field introduces various concepts.  It starts out quite clearly as he lays out the basics, but then suddenly it's as if he has taken off with his discussion and left me lost, standing on land while he is frolicking way out there, far offshore.  This also happens with the Great Courses DVD set The Joy of Mathematics as Arthur Benjamin takes on the role there as teacher.  I don't blame either Sumpter or Benjamin for me falling behind their respective narratives, but rather see this as a challenge that is similar to that which getting back to running imposed itself on me in the weeks following my July surgery: at first progress is slow and I can clearly see my own inadequacy in the area and where I want to go for improvement, anticipating a breakthrough down the line if only I just stick with my efforts.  For me, whether it's running or mathematics or any other area, this is fun stuff to pursue...

Yoko Ono: the Woman in the Room

As I continue to watch the Peter Jackson recompilation of the Beatles' Let It Be sessions from January 1969...which he renamed Get Back and is showing on the Disney+ channel...I am puzzled by the so-called controversy and division that Yoko Ono, then John Lennon's girlfriend and soon-to-be wife, was causing: she was supposedly breaking up the band if you believe the numerous accounts and analyses.  Yet I just see her quietly sitting next to John, being supportive of him as well as respectful of the other Beatles.  She's not making any kind of waves or acting like the kind of diva you would expect to see on any of these nauseating reality series that nowadays plague the TV dial.  Often she's just reading a book or magazine. I did see her pat John's back and smile at him, and being pleasant and encouraging toward his bandmates....OH MY GOD SHE'S BREAKING UP THE BEATLES! And even though the other Beatles have had their own girlfriends in the studio before, Yoko's presence there at John's behest has been regarded as violating some kind of sacred "men only" arbitrary protocol in the recording studio that the Beatles maintained (when it was convenient for them, that is).  I see nothing in any of this but extreme male chauvinism, and without going into details in order to protect another individual, I am personally keenly aware of the nasty, irrational and patronizing behavior that men can exhibit when their expected all-male group finds itself graced with the presence of just one woman...regardless of her demeanor or behavior. And, sadly, scapegoating her as being divisive instead of them taking responsibility for their own sorry-ass behavior toward each other is one of the results.  Yoko, you're not the only woman who has had to go through this, and I'm afraid it's just going to continue...

Quote of the Week...from Bob Dole

I just consider myself a Republican, none of this hyphenated stuff.  I was a mainstream conservative Republican, and most people are in that category.                    ---Robert Dole

Robert Dole, former U.S. Senate Majority Leader and a vice-presidential and presidential candidate, died this past Sunday at the age of 98 from lung cancer, having survived prostate cancer from thirty years earlier after undergoing surgery to remove it from his body.  Earlier on I was a skeptic about the Kansas senator, thinking he was a bit snide and derisive as President Gerald Ford's running mate during his 1976 campaign against Jimmy Carter and Walter Mondale.  But over the ensuing years I came to greatly respect this man, who was gravely injured during World War II for his bravery in combat in Italy.  By 1996, while Dole was leading the Senate during Bill Clinton's first term as president, his stature had risen to the point where he decided to run against the incumbent...and I supported him, very happy to vote for this decent and principled man.  Dole, sadly, lost...I wonder how American history would have unfolded had he won: no Bush vs. Gore, and the series of dynamics leading to 9/11 would most probably have drastically changed as well...but I acknowledge my hindsight reasoning here.  Bob Dole was an advocate for reaching across the aisle and making deals with the Democrats when he believed the country's better interests...and he was a patriot in the highest sense of the word...could be served this way.  And while at times he would take a stand and risk political gridlock, he didn't base his decisions primarily on how his party would gain or lose as the current Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell has repeatedly and cynically demonstrated.  It's a shame that Dole's legacy hasn't survived the Trump onslaught of recent years...to be a Republican as he described himself is no longer mainstream today, as his cherished party has devolved into one lamentably supporting fascism and a personality cult... 

James, My Friend and Brother, Has Passed On

It is with deep sadness that I mark the passing yesterday evening of a friend and brother: James, the husband of Melissa's sister Krista.  He passed away at their Kentucky home yesterday evening while recovering from a serious medical operation.  James was devoted to his wife and family and was full of good humor and grace.  He worked very hard all his life to provide for his loved ones, and the news of his sudden passing is devastating to all of us.  My prayers and thoughts go out to Krista, Amy, Tabitha, James's relatives, friends, coworkers, Melissa, Keith, Will and Rebecca...all who, as did I, experienced this wonderful man's presence and influence at different times of their lives.  I will miss him dearly...

Weekly Short Stories: 1979 Science Fiction, Part 3

Today I continue reviewing short science fiction from way back in the year 1979, as they appeared in the anthology The 1980 Annual World's Best SF, featuring editor Donald A. Wollheim's selections from the previous year.  I remember 1979 as a musically transitional year as a resoundingly hard rock song, My Sharona by the Knack, took over the top of the charts that summer and the disco era that had dominated popular music for years thankfully began to wane. The new wave, punk...and even rap... movements began to rise up, as well as the presence of music videos.  I had pretty much had it with all the dance music...even the Rolling Stones with their Miss You and Emotional Rescue hits were selling out to disco, as well as the Grateful Dead (Shakedown Street).  Whew, glad that's all over...wait, I haven't been consistently listening to pop music radio since the early 1990s so who knows what passes for music nowadays.  Anyway, here are my reactions to the next three stories in Wollheim's book...

DAISY, IN THE SUN by Connie Willis

Daisy is a girl who finds herself sometimes in her grandmother's house watching her put up kitchen curtains, with her brother on the floor reading a book...then the setting will suddenly shift and they'll be on a train, and then back again.  And who are all these apathetic-looking people milling around, anyway?  A teenage boy she doesn't like approaches her and eventually explains it all...along with introducing the notion that what comprises our sense of personal identity can continue within settings that would normally not be able to sustain life.  It all concerns our sun...and apocalypse...

THE LOCUSTS by Larry Niven and Steve Barnes

This is a profound tale about the fundamental parameters of what makes us human, told in the context of a new settlement on a habitable planet in a nearby star system.  Everything seems to be growing well on it, with their plants and animals thriving.  But then the settlers' new children are all born genetically changed to a human form going back millions of years in its evolution.  How do the grown settlers deal with their offspring other than see it all as a failure and that their line will now die out with them?  Only the settlement's doctor has a different perspective on the children and their humanity...this story's ending is brilliant, and it does tie in with the title and the nature of locusts...

THE THAW by Tanith Lee

Cryogenics, the freezing of bodies to prolong them into a future when medical advances can fix whatever problems they have, is the theme of this story, written from the vantage point in the late 22nd century by a young woman who witnesses the resuscitation of her grandmother of distant generations from the "deep sleep".  Only what comes back to life seems to be somebody with a completely different personality...with special, ominous abilities.  This tale reminded me of a line from David Bowie's masterpiece (and equally ominous) song Blackstar: "Something happened on the day he died, spirit rose a meter and stepped aside, somebody else took his place and bravely cried, 'I'm a Blackstar'"....need I say more about where this story is heading?  

Next week I conclude my examination of selected sci-fi short stories from 1979...

Eighty Years Ago Today: Pearl Harbor

On the morning of Sunday, December 7th, 1941...eighty years ago...the United States was openly attacked by Japanese bombers at their naval base in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.  The attack was intended to destroy the American fleet in advance of a Japanese strategy to forcibly take over much of the Pacific, but crucial American aircraft carriers and other boats were at sea when it happened and escaped to fight another day.  President Franklin D. Roosevelt promptly had Congress declare war on Japan, which was followed by both Japan and Germany in turn declaring war on the United States: American open participation in World War II combat had begun, more than two years and two months after hostilities began following Hitler's invasion of Poland on September 1st, 1939.  The number of people who remember the Pearl Harbor attack when it happened is dwindling rapidly as are those who served the country during the perilous years to follow, both as soldiers and civilians.  I salute the brave men and women who stood up for freedom and put their lives on the line for future generations...God bless them all!

New Endeavors Can be Slow and Arduous at Start

Rob Dial is a young man who has an ongoing podcast, titled Mindset Mentor, that he puts out several times a week and on which he discusses various topics concerning motivation and self-improvement.  I've been listening to him off and on for the past few weeks...sometimes he seems on-target with his message and sometimes he's a little off, in my opinion.  One of his messages I did resonate with was when he said that starting something new from scratch usually doesn't yield much significant fruit for some time...sometimes a few months will elapse before there are encouraging results.  To that I might add that often at the start of a new self-improvement project...losing weight, for example...there can be a false sense of great progress at the start followed by a more sobering degree of improvement if not stagnation for a while.  Being a runner, after my surgery this past July 15th I wanted to return to that activity, actually running in place a minute or two on August 18th.  Even though in the previous 11 years I had run 12 half-marathons and many more races of middle-to-long distance, starting again from zero has been a slow and arduous process...I wasn't able to simply run around my home neighborhood block (.7 mile) without needing to take walking breaks until October 20th, three months later.  But a little more than a month after that I accomplished a 10-mile slow training run and this past Saturday I finished my first race, a 5K event.  But those initial weeks were slow and often discouraging for me and I still have a long way to go.  I write this not so much about running per se, but about any endeavor that I or you or anyone else might be interested in, with the ultimate aim of achieving competency or even possibly excellence in it.  At the beginning the going can be rough and it might not seem like you're up to the task with any progress being slow and positive feedback in short supply.  But then a day will come when the hard work you have put into it for weeks or even months will result in a breakthrough...there aren't many things in life that beat that.  I have a new endeavor I'm tackling and expect the same slow, humbling initial apparent lack of progress...and also expect that breakthrough down the line in a few weeks.  The trick is in faithfully sticking with it during this challenging time...

An Upcoming Personal Project for 2022

I've been watching the Beatles' Get Back movie on Disney+, which depicts its members going through a series of grueling all-day sessions of song creation, rehearsing and jamming. My initial reaction was to question why anyone would subject themselves to this kind of regimen. Then it occurred to me that for Paul, John, George and Ringo this was their great love, where their skills and interests coincided and they were the most accomplished and recognized: that's why it worked for them (although they still quarreled).  The question I ask is for myself is what in my life is comparable to that which the Beatles experienced back in January, 1969 when they embarked on that project?  And I think I got the answer...

Engaging in cognitive reverie...which is what Russell Crowe's character, mathematician John Nash, often does in the movie A Beautiful Mind...is something I often find myself doing as well.  Sometimes it takes the form of regretful, retroactive daydreaming when I think of times in my distant past and wish that I had adopted different priorities and habits.  One of these areas involves my studying in high school...my attention to homework assignments was atrocious, especially with regard to mathematics.  This is lamentable since every standardized test I ever took showed an exceptional ability in the area...I even scored a perfect 800 in it on my SAT.  Well, they say folks shouldn't bury themselves in their pasts, and I agree...but with an important caveat.  If what I'm regretting can neither be resurrected or made relevant to the present, then I should let it go.  But if there is a way in which I can learn from my past experiences and apply those lessons to the current setting, then this kind of cognitive reverie can be useful and a positive force in my life, here and now.  To this extent I've decided to make the upcoming year 2022 as one themed with intense study of mathematics...I can definitely think of an application or two for the years to come. Much will be simple review and much will be a reexamination in greater depth of what I have earlier covered, but only shallowly.  I have to credit a birthday present I received a few weeks ago: The Great Courses DVD pack of The Joy of Mathematics, authored and presented by Arthur Benjamin...wish I'd had him as a teacher!  Of course, I'll keep all ya'll updated on my progress with my upcoming math adventures...to that end I think it's time to load up my computer with some basic mathematics software...

Ran Gainesville's Depot Parkrun 5K This Morning

When I stepped outside my front door around 6:30 this morning I already knew it would be foggy, but not to the extent that the fog was loud. The moisture was so thick that it was interacting with all the surrounding tree leaves to present the audio illusion of rain, yet I felt no drops falling on me.  Normally at this time of the morning...especially on Saturdays...I am safely tucked away in my bed sound asleep, but today I had somewhere to go.  In Gainesville we are blessed with a free weekly 5K racing opportunity on Saturdays at 7:30 am, the location always being Depot Park just south of downtown.  I had run the Depot Parkrun four times in the past starting in January 2019, the last time being on June 20th this year, four weeks before I underwent open heart surgery to replace a defective valve and repair an aortic aneurism.  Today's adventure was my first race since the operation, but going by my recent running training I was confident that I would be OK...the hardest part of it all was driving back and forth across town in the thick fog.  You couldn't ask for friendlier people among those volunteering to hold this event...if I make it a more regular activity, I'll be volunteering as well.  We were all cautioned just before the race that the fog (humidity 100% at 54 degrees) was causing the pathway to be a bit slick...good advice!  For about two thirds of the race I ran at a reasonably slow pace and then "put the pedal to the metal" the rest of the way, finishing with a time of 33:03, 3 seconds faster than my June race.  Over the years my speed has slowed (I'm 65 now), but I'm taking it all "in stride" and emphasizing covering the distance...hopefully in future years I'll continue to be fully mobile, with my running adventures eventually transforming into walking adventures (actually I'm already having a few of those).  Today's experience was very encouraging...

Quote of the Week...from Albert Camus

The modern mind is in complete disarray.  Knowledge has stretched itself to the point where neither the world nor our intelligence can find any foot-hold.  It is a fact that we are suffering from nihilism.

                                                          ---Albert Camus

Albert Camus, a renowned philosopher, essayist and novelist, passed away in 1960...long before the Internet, talk radio and slanted TV news networks fed into and bolstered people's belief systems based on their own presumptions and prejudices.  But today we've gone beyond formulating our diverse values and priorities according to the facts of the world.  Instead, it's our diverse values and priorities that seem to be formulating our own versions of the facts of the world around us: that is a nihilistic world view, which posits the notion that truth isn't absolute but rather relative to the purposes we have in using it.  Welcome to today's alternative facts, "fake news", bonkers conspiracy theories and knee-jerk accusations of "hoaxes" whenever someone presents a truth that someone else doesn't want to hear.  If the modern mind is a composite of how the masses today think and form their belief systems, then Albert Camus was spot-on in describing it as being in complete disarray...and it is only going to get worse, I suspect.  Well, I can at least take care of my own mental health by staying rooted in reality, which necessarily entails keeping those nihilistic thinkers around me at arm's length, both in person and in the social and mass media.  Go ahead and be conservative or liberal, I dig that...but as John Lennon once sang, "Gimme some truth"...

Following the Beatles' Get Back Documentary on Disney Plus

I have been pleasantly surprised by the Disney+ premium streaming channel since subscribing to it.  Being a stalwart Winnie the Pooh fan, I had missed the old movies as well as the television series The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, which aired in the 1990s and coincided with Will and Rebecca's early childhood...Disney+ carries it all.  The other day we sat down and watched the Broadway production of Hamilton on this channel...what an experience! And now Peter Jackson's project of Get Back, as he has reedited the material used for the 1970 movie Let It Be, has been on it since Thanksgiving...I've been watching just a few minutes at a time because of its intensity.  It's very strange seeing John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr, all still alive, young and sitting around together (with Yoko Ono naturally at John's side), joking, eating, jamming, and arguing as if it's all going on right now in the present.  And, knowing the eventual fate of these sessions, filmed and recorded in January 1969, that would ultimately produce their final album release, Let It Be, I find it intriguing as to how the four interacted with one another...I'm starting to form my own opinions. So far I've noticed that it wasn't all doom and gloom in the studio as I had been led to believe: there was a lot of positive musical energy here.  But the brief time I have watched it has also been typified by a frantic, chaotic procession of one song after another with no discernible direction or coherency.  Hopefully, Disney+ will keep Get Back on their lineup at least long enough for me to get through it all as I take in bite-sized portions on more or less a daily basis.  As for this blog, I plan to devote a day each week discussing it, along with other things Beatles: stay tuned...

Weekly Short Stories: 1979 Science Fiction, Part 2

Today I continue my look at science fiction short stories from 1979 as they appeared in the anthology The 1980 Annual World's Best SF, edited by Donald A. Wollheim and featuring his selections from the previous year. 1979 represented a special year in my life in which I decided to break away from the drifting college experience I was undergoing to just spend some time on my own supporting myself and living frugally within my means while working at a humble job.  To this purpose I was hired as a cook in a local Chinese restaurant, a position I would continue working at for a while as I sorted things out. In some ways '79 was a very difficult year to live through and in others it was a glorious time of personal growth and independence, depending on how you look at it. But I couldn't imagine how the rest of my life would how turned out if I hadn't lived through it as I did...most of the alternatives were decidedly negative. In the science fiction universe good stories abounded, and here are my comments about two from the book that weren't exactly my favorites...

UNACCOMPANIED SONATA by Orson Scott Card

In a future world claiming itself as a utopia allowing people to play the roles for which they are best suited, a young musical prodigy is selected as a "Maker" and as such subjected to abusive social isolation in order to enhance his senses for picking out music from the surrounding nature...and to avoid the unforgivable sin of derivation.  One day, though, a Listener traveling through hears his music and slips him a recording of Bach...the society's monitors, the Watchers, become aware of it and punish the Maker by removing him from his environment and forbidding him to create any more music.  The story spirals downward from there and I thought this was some hell of a utopia. The ending, which I guess was supposed to be happy, only left me puzzled...

THE STORY WRITER by Richard Wilson

This confusing story portrays a retired successful pulp fiction writer who discovers a second career in writing when he buys a second-hand typewriter at a rural northeastern flea market sale.  He uses it to write stories for the customers stopping by...including a peculiar soul who turns out to be an alien representing his race from another star system and which is planning to settle Earth, albeit primarily in another dimension.  The story gets further muddled when the writer, considered by the aliens to be a prophet whose writings always come true, finds himself in a copied world in the aliens' home dimension (but still on Earth): get lost yet?  The ending made little sense, either...the saving grace in this tale was the insertion of some elementary Polish language greetings and phrases, reminding me of that Polish class I took during the spring of 1978.  Yes, it's all very weird...

Next week: more from the year 1979 in short science fiction...