Podcaster's Not-So-Secret Ingredient for Success: Rest

In one of his Mindset Mentor podcasts last week, personal development coach Rob Dial stressed the need for rest as an essential element of successful endeavor.  Well, I've always felt the same way...whether you are learning something new, working out at a sport, or tackling projects, taking breaks is an important part of consolidating gains and building the body and mind back up.  Dial claims that there is evidence that the brain uses these periods of nonactivity to prioritize what matters most and build the necessary neural networks...sounds right to me.  But in advocating rest, he emphasizes that crashing out in front of the TV or getting hooked for hours on social media or video games doesn't fill the criteria he means for refreshing, reinvigorating rest.  Better to find a quiet, pleasant place to sit or lie and either let the mind focus on the immediate surroundings or give it a positive theme to think about...no point in trying to turn off the thinking since your brain always thinks, just as your heart always beats and your lungs always breathe...but you do have a degree of control over what you're thinking about.  As for me, I find at work that just sitting down for a few seconds at times, taking some slow, deep breaths and looking at the wall facing me...temporarily putting my immediate work out of my thoughts...helps to greatly reduce built-up anxiety and makes me sharper as I return to my tasks while helping to interrupt any negative thinking that I had been engaging in.  On a broader scale, it's also fun to take a day or two off every now and then and either hang out at the house or travel to a pleasant location, which is what Melissa and I just did the last couple of days with our trip to the beach...

The Movie You Can't Take It With You

You Can't Take It with You, which I watched on DVD yesterday, was a successful Broadway play, adapted to screen in 1938 and directed by Frank Capra.  It starred Lionel Barrymore, Jimmy Stewart, and Jean Arthur and garnered the Best Picture Academy Award for that year.  The setting is Manhattan in New York with two families, the rich banking Kirbys and the eccentric Vanderhofs...headed by elderly Martin Vanderhof (Barrymore)...vying for control of a small, strategically located city block.  The Kirby firm's young vice-president Tony (Stewart) has fallen in love with his secretary Alice (Arthur), who happens to be Martin's granddaughter and lives with him in their big house, along with her other sister (and her husband), her mother and father, and two friends invited to stay with them.  Each resident is encouraged to engage in their own personally fulfilling projects, no matter how silly they seem or how much (or little talent) they have...a direct challenge to the "push-push-push" mindset characteristic of the dominant rat-race culture exemplified by the Kirbys.  A culture clash between the two families in inevitable and it unfolds in great comedic form.  It's clear that the Vanderhof way of life is the preferred way and that folks like the Kirbys need to just pick up a harmonica and play along, abandoning their pointless pursuit of worldly wealth: after all, you "can't take it with you".  Although the Vanderhof philosophy of "doing your own thing" is tempting...and I follow it to an extent...I also believe in paying my taxes and see going to work in itself as good, too.  Even Martin Vanderhof employed a couple for housekeeping and cooking at their home: these two weren't in a position to just stay at home and collect stamps.  I thought the movie was great, but I first saw You Can't Take It with You on TV in a PBS Great Performances Broadway show in the 1980s starring Jason Robards as Martin Vanderhof...he was remarkable.  As for Frank Capra, who directed several memorable movies of that bygone era, my first exposure to his work curiously wasn't with feature length movies, but with the Bell Science films we used to watch in elementary school during the late 1960s...my favorite one that Capra directed was The Strange Case of the Cosmic Ray.  Going back to You Can't Take It with You, I guess the main thing I got from it is that you have to be true to yourself and not let your life become submerged and dominated by others... 

Enjoying Watching Televised Kentucky Derby Coverage This Afternoon

I've been sitting here at home today watching the afternoon's buildup to the annual Kentucky Derby, three-year-old thoroughbred horse racing's first jewel in the Triple Crown.  Last year Medina Spirit, trained by Bob Baffert, won a close race over Mandaloun but was eventually disqualified over the failure of a post-race drug test while Baffert was suspended...technically, he is barred from active participation in any of this year's Triple Crown events although he has trained two of the more favored horses in the field of twenty, Taiba and Messier up to six weeks before race time.  Other favorites in 2022 are Zandon, Epicenter, White Abarrio and Mo Donegal.  I like Baffert and miss his presence...seems at least to me like the violation was a kind of "gotcha" thing that some in racing authority wanted to hang on him...well, that's just my own take.  Still, I'll be rooting for both Messier and Taiba to do well when the race goes off, planned starting time around 6:57 pm...I also like White Abarrio.  The event at Churchill Downs in Louisville, Kentucky is always a big fashion event with outrageously colored outfits worn by both women and men as well as heavily ornate hats...if you're into that sort of thing.  NBC's ongoing coverage is showing other races on the program at Churchill Downs leading up to the headline Derby...it's fun picking a horse and seeing how it runs.  If I were into horse racing more, I would be following earlier qualifying races in other locations such as the Florida Derby, Blue Grass, Wood Memorial, Santa Anita, Louisiana and Arkansas...I'm sure it would make what happens later today more meaningful.  I just hope that whichever horse wins the Derby this year won't have the victory later snatched away...

*********

Afterward...wow, in one of the greatest upsets in the history of horse racing, 80-1 longshot Rich Strike came from behind at the end, edging race favorite Epicenter for the victory. This horse, a couple of days ago, wasn't even in the field of twenty but only got entered at the last minute when another horse was scratched. UNBELIEVABLE!

Quote of the Week...from Eleanor Roosevelt

If life were predictable it would cease to be life, and be without flavor.   ---Eleanor Roosevelt

Eleanor Roosevelt, America's First Lady during her husband Franklin Delano's tenure in office from 1933 until his death in 1945, has several good quotes...this one I picked up off my Music Choice Soundscapes channel.  I personally dislike breaks in the continuity of my routine existence, but unpredictable "stuff" happens and I'm sometimes forced to deal with unfortunate events and their consequences.  A discouraging medical diagnosis, auto accident, one of my loved ones having employment or financial issues...these things and more can cause one to feel as if life is throwing a curve ball at them.  But as Eleanor Roosevelt said, it's the unpredictability in life that gives it its flavor...well, some of the flavor at least, and that flavor isn't always palatable.  When a hurricane strikes...or a pandemic or war...those are not exactly desirable things to have to endure, not to mention demagogic fascist politicians and their throngs of brainless worshipers rising out of the general population like the living dead.  But they do make life more interesting, although the flavor is sometimes nauseating.  For me, though, I can come up with my own projects to challenge me, thank you, and can do without such unwelcome intrusions...still, I try to maintain a sense of perspective about it all.  What hurts me, though, is when those I care most about and deeply love are adversely affected by unanticipated reversals and are unfairly suffering the consequences, especially when those causing the trouble are walking around acting so high and holy...if there's no accountability for these lowlifes in this world then perhaps there will be in the world beyond...

Just Finished Rereading Wizard and Glass by Stephen King

Wizard and Glass is the fourth novel in Stephen King's seven-part fantasy/science fiction series The Dark Tower, published a year before the renowned popular writer was nearly killed when he was run over by a van while walking down a country Maine road...that incident would greatly influence how he concluded this series five years later.  In Wizard and Glass, protagonist gunslinger Roland Deschain and his "ka-tet" of fellow quest travelers Eddie, Susannah, Jake and Oy have just survived riding on a maniacal train named Blaine, which has deposited them in an area very much like Kansas but different in various aspects.  While they recover there, Roland relates his promised story about what had earlier happened in his life at the Barony of Mejis, in which he and two friends, Cuthbert and Alain, discover evidence of insurrection by John Farson, enemy of the established order and general destroyer of civilized society.  It's all a part of the mystery surrounding the Dark Tower, which seems to hold all of reality together and which is under siege from a sinister power...this is Roland's quest, to find the Tower and restore order.  In Mejis he encounters Susan Delgado, a young woman already promised to bear an heir to the town's mayor ...Roland and she fall in love, and the story is divided between their relationship and the simmering clandestine rebellion known to many of the area's residents.  It's a tragic tale but very exciting, with the evil Rhea the Crone as a kind of witch with possession of an equally evil glass through which she can view others...very much like that globe the Wicked Witch of the West uses in The Wizard of Oz.  Wizard and Glass is the most coherent of the seven main Dark Tower novels, and this alone makes it stand out.  But you really need to read the first three in the series in order to know what's going on.  I first read this series more than a decade ago...it's fun to reacquaint myself with its remarkable characters and vistas... 

Weekly Short Stories: 1984 Science Fiction, Part 1

Today I advance a year in my reviewing of old science fiction short stories to the year 1984 and return for a while to Donald A. Wollheim's anthology series, this volume titled The 1985 Annual World's Best SF, presenting stories he selected from the previous year.  In '84 I was single, living a frugal existence in southwest Gainesville in a studio apartment across the field on Windmeadows Boulevard from my workplace, where I worked as a cook in a Chinese restaurant.  I had moved to this area because it seemed quieter...exactly the opposite of what it is like today.  But back to those stories...

THE PICTURE MAN by John Dalmas

The protagonist/scientist (a good way to quickly identify a story as science fiction) one night discovers a vagrant rummaging through his garbage.  On impulse he invites him in, feeds him and lets him clean up, providing him with fresh, clean clothes.  In gratitude the man, identifying himself as a handyman with a Finnish background, asks his generous host to take a Polaroid picture of him.  The resulting photos are of different scenes that Jaakko Savimaki's mind unconsciously projects onto film.  When he's recommended to the college's scientists for an interview, the stakes grow to the point where there is a danger of his exploitation or worse. I thought the author could have done better with this interesting idea, but he did make the characters' respective personalities stand out well... 

CASH CROP by Connie Willis

In a future of interstellar travel and settlement, one planet's settlement cannot grow like the others because of the constantly mutating scarlet fever variety there that keeps the population sick and dying.  One little girl seems resistant to it...or is she? A story about how distant settlements might be unfairly treated by the main suppliers, a possible analogy to how in our day wealthy nations treat the poor ones, taking advantage of their natural resources while keeping the population in a precarious state of dependence...

WE REMEMBER BABYLON by Ian Watson

Alexander and Deborah...from different backgrounds in the story's future America...visit a newly resurrected Babylon in the Arizona desert, specially built and designed to recreate as much as possible about this ancient city in order to possibly glean some insight to help humanity get through the future.  The setting is Alexander the Great's final days of sickness in his empire's capital city.  The two visitors get to know the city and its culture...Deborah even goes up the Tower of Babel, which I thought was only mythical.  Alexander has a conversation with his perpetually dying namesake (or should I say the actor who portrays him).  I'm not sure what the point of this story was other than try to give a sense of what Babylon may have been like...which seems like a pretty sorry, miserable place if you ask me.  But to derive some insight from its re-creation with folks from the present filling the various roles seems like an exercise in folly...

WHAT MAKES US HUMAN by Stephen R. Donaldson

It is the future and humanity has travelled the stars, albeit slowly, staying well under the barrier of the speed of light.  One settlement, on the planet Aster, after earlier losing its knowledge of technology, has rebuilt it and is on its own interstellar voyage with all but two of its passengers in deep sleep.  The couple that is awake takes turns with the others in maintaining the ship...on this shift trouble comes in an alien robot ship that has them tagged for destruction.  The story's ending demonstrates the wily boldness that exemplifies humanity at its greatest,...probably what the author had in mind with its title...

Next week: more from 1984 and Donald A. Wollheim's sci-fi anthology...

Three Good Teachers on Teacher Appreciation Day

Today is National Teacher Appreciation Day...I discovered that this morning while watching The Weather Channel...my main source of news this days.  Although I've been critical in general of the educational system I lived through during my childhood and early adult years, there were three teachers who stood out at different stages.  When I first went to school in September, 1962 at Boulevard Heights Elementary School in West Hollywood, Florida, I had skipped the kindergarten year that seems to be such a heavily-stressed requirement for kids nowadays. No problem, for Mrs. Parsons, my first-grade teacher, made sure that we kids covered the basics of reading, writing, counting and elementary arithmetic.  There's no doubt in my mind that I was fortunate to be blessed with this great teacher who got everyone on the right track in their educational "careers".  Years later, in my senior year of high school at Nova in 1973-74, I had what in retrospect was my only truly effective math teacher since the early elementary school years, Mr. Buttles, who introduced us to calculus.  For some reason, schools...at least the ones I went to...had a major problem with teaching mathematics on any level.  In some classes they just sat you down and you went through the textbooks on your own with teachers present only if you needed special help with a problem or concepts while others had the teacher standing up front...not actually teaching anything...letting the students pretty much run the class: these were the so-called "advance level" math classes I regret ever having taken.  But Mr. Buttles stuck to the good old traditional way of teaching, going chapter by chapter and writing on the chalkboard each new concept and patiently explaining them to us...sometimes good teaching is being simple and plain with the presentation.  Finally, in my first year at Broward Community College the very next year, Mr. Hill was the teacher lecturing in general chemistry.  Much of the material we covered there I had already studied in high school, but he presented things in such an organized, deliberate manner that I was able to pick up things that I missed in the previous years.  He was very respectful of the students, pausing several times each lecture to allow for students' questions, which he strongly encouraged.  To this day I hold Mr. Hill as the supreme model of how a teacher should conduct a class and relate to the students...

Parsons, Buttles, and Hill...I appreciate you and remember you for standing out high above the often-mediocre teachers I had to suffer throughout my school years.  I know, that doesn't sound very much like a ringing endorsement of teachers in general, but I do know a good teacher when I see one.  By the way, I never saw any teacher as a replacement for my own parents...even in the first grade...and in turn they never acted like they were personally involved in my welfare (nor did I ever expect them to).  Yet the best of the best conducted themselves in a professional manner and actually taught...

Podcaster Rob Dial Talks about Our Amazing Lives and Gratitude

In his Friday Mindset Mentor podcast last week, personal development coach Rob Dial focused on how life is amazing and how gratitude is an effective tool to turn one's mind to what is truly important in it.  He cites a couple of examples, the first being how people tend to complain about being delayed during their airplane flights instead of stopping to think how amazing that it is traveling this way, especially considering how people used to get from one place to another over the span of our collective existence: imagine, you're actually sitting on a chair in the sky!  The other example he gives was how people either take their smartphones for granted or regard it as a bad thing.  Dial counters that a cell phone is just a piece of technology, neither good nor bad.  Yet it has tremendous power as he lists the myriad uses available from it...including the ability to access a huge portion of humanity's knowledge.  I suppose that the younger you are the less impressed you are by the digital technology that pervades our lives, just as only a few decades ago there were people whose idea of traveling to Europe or other continents was to get on a boat for weeks, instead of hours by jet that we're accustomed to.  Staying within a state of gratitude and aware of the amazing things in our lives, Rob Dial concludes, makes us more readily able to confront challenging situations with a sense of proper perspective while keeping us in a more positive and constructive attitude.  This all sounds totally self-evident to me, but I admit to getting caught up in the stress of day-to-day living and losing sight at times of the remarkable things we have around us today... 

Enjoying Watching Televised Sports This Weekend

This weekend I've been enjoying watching various sports on TV...baseball, golf, soccer and basketball to be specific.  The resurrected United States Football League, a second-tier professional league, has eight teams, each one using the nicknames of those in the old eighties' version of the USFL.  The stadiums where the games are played are essentially empty: this is a purely televised venture.  Although Tampa Bay is represented, again as the Bandits, I have difficulty getting into the games. I think the overriding reason is that these secondary leagues have a dismal survival rate and how the teams do in the standings and playoffs won't matter a whit as, most likely, no one will even remember the league in a few years, much less what happens in 2022...

  

They've been showing the Philadelphia Phillies on TV recently and I've gotten to know the team better...my favorite player of theirs so far is outfielder Kyle Schwarber.  In an earlier game against Milwaukee the plate umpire was way off, calling strikes on many pitches out of the strike zone...at the end of the game Shwarber was called out on strikes from an obviously outside pitch and he lost it, heatedly lecturing the umpire on the parameters of the strike zone and, of course, getting thrown out of the game.  He's a clutch hitter to match his passion for the game...tonight after New York Mets ace Max Scherzer struck out the first five Phillies batters, Schwarber came to the plate and, after Scherzer throw a high inside brushback fastball, knocked the next pitch out of the park.  He then proceeded to hit another homer the next time up...these are the kinds of players who cause me to root for their teams...  

In pro golf, I was watching the PGA Mexico Open tournament this weekend, held at a resort city in Baja California.  Jon Rahm pulled off a one-stroke victory over three other contenders, with several golfers still in contention on Sunday afternoon.  Other than Rahm and Kurt Kitayama, who was one of the three just behind the winner, I didn't recognize the names of the top finishers...definitely a problem I have with this sport.  Still, I enjoyed watching the players work their way through the course...

In soccer my focus was on the Mexican premier league (Liga MX) as they completed their regular season today.  In Liga MX they have two completely distinct seasons per year...this one, called Clausura, will begin the preliminary playoffs among the 5-12 finishers to determine who gets to play in the "real" playoffs, called Liguilla.  In this, Liga MX is like what the National Basketball Association is now doing with its gimmick of having the 7-10 finishers in each conference undergo a "play-in" series to finalize the playoff lineup.  My favorite Mexican team, UANL-Tigres, finished 2nd in the regular season and I have high hopes for them in the Liguilla...

Speaking of the NBA playoffs, the second round has begun with clear personal preferences for each of the four series: Boston over Milwaukee, Miami over Philadelphia, Phoenix over Dallas and Golden State over Memphis...that's how I want it to happen, anyway.  Boston didn't do well in their first game against the Bucks, but the Warriors managed an exciting one-point road win against the Grizzlies...

Now back to that Phillies-Mets game, entering the late innings with home team New York ahead 6-4...

My April, 2022 Running and Walking Report

Let's just cut to the chase and say that I walked a lot in April and ran much, much more, doing both on all the days of the month and running the Florida Track Club's Headwaters 5K race on the 9th here in northern Gainesville.  With walking I'm not intentionally doing anything other than accumulate mileage on my Fitbit...most of it comes from my workplace, which is a nice-sized warehouse that demands a lot of steps over the course of a shift.  The running I have to purposefully set out to accomplish, mostly during the morning, but seem to be increasing my distances and endurance quite well...no adverse effects that I can detect.  Unfortunately, the seasonal change here where I live in northern Florida spells out an immediate future of hot weather for several months...inhospitable for outdoor distance training and no distance races (10K or longer) in sight until October.  So, in all likelihood I will probably taper my running a little and intentionally walk more.  Also, since Gainesville's free 5K Depot Parkrun takes place every Saturday morning, I'll try to get in at least one race in May.  There is supposedly the Mayday Glow Run 5K scheduled in Jonesville (just west of Gainesville) on Saturday, the 7th, but I plan to be out of town then and, besides, this race's organizers don't seem to be too interested in providing needed information about its scheduled time and registration.  Oh well, maybe they'll figure it all out in time, good luck with that...  

Quote of the Week...from Frank Zappa

 Without deviation progress is not possible.                             ---Frank Zappa

The late Frank Zappa, whose avant-garde music stretched the limits of the art and was fervent in his campaign against censorship, made the above quote which I find pertinent.  Rush's drummer and lyricist Neil Peart, who sadly has also left us, explored it more deeply in his band's important Moving Pictures final track Vital Signs: "Everybody got mixed feelings about the function and the form: everybody got to deviate from the norm".  Although as sentient creatures we tend to fill out a normal statistical bell curve, clumped together in conformity with the general population in specific areas, it is the combination of how we see and do things that often make us stand out against the flow of society and incur notice and even opposition. You can be a Republican or Democrat with much mutual agreement within your own caucus yet pointedly disagree with your own party's stand on certain issues...your expression of opinion can elicit anger from those usually politically aligned with you. Look at the flack that conservative Liz Cheney and liberal Bill Maher have attracted, the former for accepting that Biden legitimately defeated Trump in the 2020 election and the latter after his several statements critical of the "woke" culture on the political left...that's deviation but also an invitation to openly discuss an issue on its own merits...a sign of progress...instead of clinging in fear with same-minded individuals and ostracizing those who stray.  The little boy in the story The Emperor's New Clothes did not practice conformity for conformity's sake, and because he called it the way he saw it and "exposed" the emperor's nakedness after everyone before him had timidly pretended their ruler was immaculately dressed, it was possible to return to reality while at the same time providing a lesson about going overboard trying to fit in with others.  Zappa made deviation a career, but also recognized that others can be different from himself.  I say use the mind that you were given to discern truth and express that truth in your art, writing, speech, and deportment around others, not necessarily trying to be different but recognizing that deviation in itself is neither good nor bad but rather that its quality and truth value are...  

About Marginalization

The other day I wrote a long blog article about feeling marginalized...and refrained from posting it.  After reading it a couple of times, I had felt it had a kind of whiny sound to it...as if I were bemoaning being a kind of victim.  Well, I guess that factors into it all a little, but truth be told I don't particularly enjoy being the center of attention with the spotlight trained on me...better to be a little off to the side of the picture...while still being in it.  And if that inclination of mine communicates to others that marginalization is their best option in dealing with me then I suppose I bear some responsibility in that.  But in situations where no one knows me, or over long periods of time in the same place, there should be a least some kind of acknowledgement of my existence if not participation.  Let me give a couple of personal examples regarding photographs.  If you've read this blog over its existence, you'll know that I'm into distance running...going back to 2007 when I resurrected this activity after a hiatus of 31 years. I've engaged in many races over that period, my finishing times unspectacular-but-fulfilling experiences.  Since we now live in the Internet age, almost all of the races I've run in have had websites with posted results...and some of them show pictures taken during the race of the different runners.  In all the years I've engaged in these races, I have seen myself in only two pictures, both as an unrecognizable figure among many others, one with me partially hidden and the other showing my back from a distance.  Yet over and over again, while running different races, I see folks who I know are volunteers or officials standing there snapping photo after photo of runners passing by, including of me...yet my picture is consistently rejected when it comes to posting it with the others online.  Now go back much further in time, to the six-year period when I attended my junior/senior high school.  Each year they came out with a yearbook, featuring the perfunctory individual studio shots for each class year, arranged in alphabetical order.  But sprinkled throughout each yearbook's pages are also assorted cameo shots of different students.  You'd think that the law of averages alone would dictate that I'd be in at least a handful of them, considering the many photos displayed over a six-year span.  But of course, you probably already guessed it...no photos of me anywhere, even though like with the running races I would see yearbook staff from time to time taking pictures that I knew I'd be in. It all seems a bit whiny of me, doesn't it?  Oh well, we all have areas in our lives to complain about and in the grand scheme of things, griping about being marginalized around others is probably a relatively minor issue, especially considering that I'm an introvert to begin with.  On the other hand, I'm often pressed upon to engage in community relationships with others, but when in those situations, discover that they don't particularly want to engage in community relationships with me...

Before writing this article, I checked the Internet to see if others were like me in feeling unduly marginalized, only to discover that the term "marginalized" had been coopted by the PC/Woke crowd to designate people belonging to demographic groups from which I am excluded...great, even the marginalized marginalize me!

Weekly Short Stories: 1983 Science Fiction, Part 8

Here are my reactions to the four remaining stories from the late Gardnois Dozois' anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction, First Annual Collection, which spotlighted the editor's picks from 1983.  I generally like the stories in this book, although they tended to cross over at times into other genres such as fantasy, horror and even historical fiction...I welcome it all.  So, without further ado, let's discuss these works of short fiction...

HEARTS DO NOT IN EYES SHINE by John Kessel

In a future society in which marriages are a much looser contractual arrangement, Connie leaves Harry after discovering that he's repeatedly lied to her.  But Harry suggests that the two of them go to one of the companies that can selectively wipe out those pesky memories of betrayal and dishonesty from both their minds.  Connie reluctantly consents, and they begin their "cleansed" life together anew.  What happens next...guess you'll have to read it to find out.  Let me just say that this tale has a bit more psychological depth to it than I had expected...

CARRION COMFORT by Dan Simmons

Three telepathic psychic vampires who maintain their youth by entering the minds of others to perform murder by proxy are "friends" and meet one day in one of their hometowns...Charleston, South Carolina...to compare notes and renew their ties.  But one of them has decided to give up her lifestyle and has begun to noticeably age...leading to her fears that the other two might come after her.  I have recently visited Charleston and could visualize their boat tour to Fort Sumter, as well as the streets of the Old City.  I wonder if Stephen King got the premise for his novel Doctor Sleep from this story...

GEMSTONE by Vernor Vinge

You get a good sense of the geography of woody northern California from this story of a girl staying one summer there at her widowed grandmother's house.  It seems haunted, especially a strange skull-sized smooth stone with regular markings.  A violent burglary precipitates the story's climax, which I thought was pretty "cool" in spite of the heat.  Also, Antarctic exploration figures strangely in this tale, which reminded me of a certain 1982 blockbuster hit movie directed by Steven Spielberg...

BLACK AIR by Kim Stanley Robinson

Dozois regarded this story as his favorite of the anthology, yet I failed to discover anything science fiction about it...the fifth one in the book that, in my opinion, strays from the genre.  On the Spanish Armada in the late sixteenth century, a boy from a Franciscan monastery, impressed into sailor duty on one of the fighting ships destined to England, has spiritual experiences that directly affect his fate and that of his shipmates.  A great story...I agree with Gardner on that...but sci-fi?  Still, I got more knowledge about ships to add to what I picked up (and mostly forgot) from reading Moby Dick a few years ago...

Next week I move on to the year 1984 with my science fiction short story reviews, returning to Donald A. Wollheim's anthology series...

Need Patience at Start of New Projects (or Resumption of Old Ones)

After my operation last July, in which my sternum was cut apart to allow the surgeon access to my heart, I had a necessarily slow recovery to allow for the rib cage to fuse back together. Physical therapy for my lower body could proceed sooner while my upper body was healing. I was walking the day after surgery and a month later began light running in place. I was assigned certain body stretches to perform with my legs while waiting for the sternum restriction protocol to be lifted, afterwards allowing me once again to stretch my arms and upper body...that last stage didn't begin until September.  Being a runner, I was interested in seeing what my prospects in this area were...my surgeon, a runner himself, had given me every indication that once I had recovered from the surgery to repair my aortic aneurism and replace a congenitally defective heart valve, I would be able to resume this activity. The block I live on is relatively long...seven tenths of a mile, but short from a distance runner's perspective. In my weeks of recovery I would regularly attempt to run the whole lap around the block but would rarely make it to the halfway point before needing to stop and walk.  It wasn't until three months after surgery that I was able to run the complete circuit nonstop...and from that point my progress drastically improved.  I ran a 5K race in December and two months ago, a half-marathon followed by a ten-mile race in March. This article seems to be all about running but it can apply to anything I'm undertaking, either for the first time or after a period of interruption or decline.  It may seem at first to take forever to make any progress, and the temptation will be to throw in the towel and give up. That's why the standards at this stage have to be easier and gradual.  Getting started and not giving up are instrumental here...I need to cut myself a little slack when it comes to starting something new that I really want to accomplish. I'm embarking on an ambitious new intellectual project that eventually stands to dwarf my running, but right now I'm taking those slow and easy steps...

Discussion of Standards on Podcast

Standards was the topic on today's Mindset Mentor podcast, hosted by Rob Dial...I thought it was one of his better shows.  Instead of listing X-amount of pointers to better living in some specific area, he gave more of an impromptu monologue on how the quality of people's lives depend on the standards they set for themselves...and how they live up to them.  As I see it, on a collective level there are legal standards we need to meet in order not to get in trouble.  At work there are workplace standards, as is the case at school or for any other social institution.  Families collectively have standards, the crossing of which by different members not wanting to follow them probably causes the most inner turmoil.  But Dial was referring here to one's own personal standards for living, and they break down to numerous specific behaviors regularly performed (or not) over the course of time...and all which involve personal choice.  Do I prepare little things for the next day the night before, what time to I get up in the morning, do I always leave the house in a state of tidiness, do I exercise, read, write, engage with others, account for my money, etcetera.  Standards, habit, and goals intertwine, as setting a standard is a goal in itself to be fulfilled by the inculcation of a new habit, using baby steps to accomplish this.  This all fits in nicely with James Clear's notion of "atomic habits", based on his book with the same title.  The key here in improving one's standards and getting to adhere to them is to be as specific as possible while changing habits a little at a time...over time.  Good episode.  By the way, there are probably a number of ways you can pick up Rob Dial's podcast...on my Android I get it through Tune-In Radio while on my television I use Roku to listen to it on the My Tuner channel. Each episode, put out on Mondays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays, only lasts about twenty minutes and the host has a friendly, conversational and practical presentation style...

Went to Alachua County Friends of the Library Sale Today

 

For the first time in years I was able to attend the Alachua County Friends of the Library book sale, which takes place at their warehouse in the 400 block of North Main Street in Gainesville.  As usual I parked a few blocks east of the place and crossed Main Street with police stopping traffic for us bookworms.  Once there, I was dismayed to see a long line of people waiting to get in...looks like they were wisely limiting the number of customers inside at one time.  Within twenty minutes, though, I was among the familiar tables loaded with cheap, used books.  I had a specific agenda, heading straight to the mathematics section, and quickly chose several excellent books, their prices ranging from 50 cents to $1.50.  Then I hit the express line, paid, and got back to the car.  The volunteers there wore masks, but nearly all the customers did not...I wore one, though: it ain't quite over yet, folks.  Still, I'm glad to see this great old hometown tradition back and I hope it won't be interrupted again anytime soon.  Because of the pandemic the sale was cancelled in 2020 and April, 2021, resuming in October.  Although I didn't like having to wait in line to go in, I think this is a better system...pandemic or not...as in the past it was way too crowded and sometimes I found it very difficult to maneuver around everyone as I tried to browse the sections.  The sale lasts through Wednesday, opening each day at noon and closing 6 pm...

Too Many Key Injuries in Pro Sports

I have been watching the National Basketball Association playoffs off and on so far during their first round and find the games usually competitive and interesting.  There is one problem, though, that starkly stands out: the tendency for there to be too many injuries, especially of star players.  I can't keep up with it anymore, and there's no telling how a series will go when a favored team, successful largely on the backs of its greatest talents and achievers, falls victim to their injuries during a series with an obviously inferior team.  This has been going on for years, but now it seems that we have the most fragile athletes ever.  The sport of basketball and others...not just football but also even tennis and golf...are played on such an extremely high level in our era with very little margin for error: everything has to be done all-out...every possession, down, point or swing...depending on the sport...must be tackled with the athlete expending all the energy they can produce and straining their bodies to the limit and beyond to avoid being beaten by the opposition.  Name me a series or tournament in which its complexion hasn't been drastically altered due to several key injuries...no, getting hurt is now the rule rather than the exception.  Although the games themselves may still be close and exciting to watch, the ultimate champion...due to the many injuries we're seeing...is often a team or athlete that essentially prevailed by default.  The result, I think, is a general cheapening of the sports and their championships... 

Quote of the Week...from Pearl S. Buck

The secret of joy in work is contained in one word: excellence. To know how to do something well is to enjoy it.

--Pearl S. Buck

American writer Pearl S. Buck, probably best known for her 1931 novel about China titled The Good Earth (click HERE for my review of it from 2015), made the above quote about excellence in work.  I understand the truth contained within it...but like Melissa, who noted it on TV yesterday morning while we were eating lunch together, I don't completely agree with it either. Sure, it sounds reasonable that if you're really good at something then that fact should contribute to your enjoying it...after all, it's a self-esteem experience.  But there are a lot of jobs out there that people perform with the utmost excellence...I can offhand think of teaching, nursing, air traffic control and law enforcement...but by their nature and the demands and stress put on these workers, they often burn out quickly and suffer greatly in spite of their excellence.  Conversely, to identify oneself with a field of work does not automatically imply that they are highly skilled in it, but the process of getting to that stage...even at the start...can definitely be joyous.  And besides, it's probably a good idea not to get hung up on the word "excellence" anyway, although I frequently use it to compliment others on this blog.  I can be an excellent math student in one high school class...that is, until I get transferred to another class that is on a much more advanced level and then my skill level may suddenly seem to be seriously lacking. Be careful about basing your enjoyment of something largely on how excellent or not you think you are in it...you're liable to be susceptible to others' criticisms, right or wrong... 

Old July, 1965 Newspaper Articles Revealing about Vietnam War

The other day I got on my Newspapers.com site to see...through the Fort Lauderdale News, which was my home Broward County's main newspaper back in the 1960s when I was growing up there...whether any mention was made of the new Nova elementary school that was to open in August of 1965.  I switched from Boulevard Heights to Nova that year when I entered the fourth grade...my sister Anita was already going to Nova Junior High, situated right across the field from the new elementary school in Davie on the site of a converted airfield (along with Broward Junior College).  I began by putting on my screen the front page of the paper's July 1, 1965 Main Edition, on which most of the stories were about the escalating Vietnam War with the U.S. increasing its presence in that troubled southeastern Asia country with armed soldiers on the ground increasing from around three thousand in March of '65 to two hundred thousand by year's end.  On July 1 the paper was reporting Viet Cong attacks against the American base in Da Nang, opposition in Congress to President Johnson's war policies, and  there was a piece describing how the Viet Cong operate in guerilla warfare.  In the Senate, Senator Wayne Morse, of the President's own Democratic Party but one of the two voting against his Gulf of Tonkin Resolution the previous August that authorized troop buildup in Vietnam, urged Johnson to end the war and instead go to the United Nations and build up collaborative relationships with other countries to bring about peace.  On the Republican side in the House, their leader, future president Gerald Ford, proposed that the President remove the ground troops and restrict the fighting there to heavy aerial bombardment in strategic locations...needless to say Lyndon Johnson passed on both of these, precipitating one of the most traumatic, divisive periods in our nation's history.  Malcolm W. Browne's article about Viet Cong guerilla warfare was haunting in its prescience as he describes one such warrior, stationed within an echo chamber in a hole in the ground, enabling him to detect distant helicopter sounds before any others: "The man, wriggling through a short tunnel to the surface, can yell an alarm.  Instantly, shadowy men lounging or cooking at the bases of the tall trees are on their feet and moving fast.  The heavy equipment from last night's battle has been stowed for future use in deep, camouflaged holes.  The bodies have been buried.  The men move rapidly, scattering in many directions in twos and threes.  This is their base area, and they know every feature of the dense jungle in the area...the hidden trails, the camouflaged bunkers and tunnels, the gun emplacements, the mines and booby traps."  You can easily see the wisdom from hindsight in reading this article and others and think of what might have been if information in plain sight, as well as alternative options, were taken more seriously by those with the power and authority to properly understand and use them...think of all the lives that could have been spared.  But hindsight it is, and in 1965 the American public was strongly behind Lyndon Johnson's Vietnam escalation policy...I wonder what information today, also in plain view as was the material in July of 1965, is warning us about where we're going...but of course nowadays we have to sift through all the false crap floating around.  As for my then-new little Nova school, I'm continuing to search for any reference to it...

Weekly Short Stories: 1983 Science Fiction, Part 7

Today I continue examining short science fiction from 1983 that were selected by the late Gardner Dozois to be in his anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: First Annual Collection, published in 1984.  While reading it so far, I have found a number of tales...admittedly very good stories...that nonetheless don't seem to fit within the genre of science fiction.  I think Dozois may have included some of them on the science fiction-writing merits of their respective authors...the story below by George R.R. Martin is an example of this, although I also believe that Gardner was a little partial to fantasy fiction as well: Gene Wolfe's entry fits the bill with that.  The stories Blood Music by Greg Bear and Knight of Shallows by Rand B. Lee appeared in both this anthology and that of Donald A. Wollheim, which I already reviewed.  And now here are my takes on the next four stories from Dozois' book...

HER FURRY FACE by Leigh Kennedy

Douglas, a man with the duty of training orangutans to practice sign communications with humans on a sophisticated level, has gone a step further in his workplace, a special school to educate primates: his project, Annie, can write to the point where she has composed a book!  Unfortunately for Douglas, he is finding himself romantically smitten with her and starts to think and act like a complete dumbass...bad for him but good for the story and its very funny outcome...

THE CAT by Gene Wolfe

This story is an offshoot of Wolfe's Book of the New Sun fantasy series, so some of the characters and settings would be more familiar had I first read the four-volume series...which Dozois touted as possibly becoming as significant as Tolkien's Lord of the Rings (I don't know about that, Gardner).  Father Inire, a sinister, mysterious and powerful advisor to the ruler, one day befriends a young girl, who has her pet cat with her.  While displaying some of his magic to her, the cat accidentally gets caught up in it...leading to the story's subsequent events.  It's a good story but I'm sure it would have meant more to better know its context within Wolfe's fictional universe... 

THE MONKEY TREATMENT by George R.R. Martin

A thoroughly brilliant, readable and hilarious tale much more reminiscent of Stephen King's horror fiction than of anything science fiction, it makes the notion of a "monkey on your back" vividly unforgettable.  I haven't yet finished reading this anthology, but The Monkey Treatment is my favorite one so far as it deals with an obese overeater's errant strategy for kicking his food addiction...

NEARLY DEPARTED by Pat Cadigan

Another story based on the author's series, this one Pathosfinder, future psychoanalyst "Deadpan" Allie uses the age's technology to enter the minds of others and mentally interact with them.  In this story it's a bit more problematic since the person she's probing, Kitta Wren...a renowned poet...has just died.  Her assignment: go in and retrieve any unrealized works the deceased had conceived of.  A major obstacle: Wren had incorporated through drug therapy a psychotic personality she thought would aid her creativity...not something to look forward to dealing with, dead or alive...

Next week I conclude my look at 1983 sci-fi short stories appearing in the Dozois anthology...