My #29 All-Time Favorite Album: Let It Be by the Beatles

 #29 LET IT BE, by the Beatles, in the summer of 1970 was the final studio album released by them...although it was recorded in January of 1969 and followed by Abbey Road that summer.  It is famous for the two documentary movies made from the sessions...the earlier one focused on the conflicts between the four members John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr.  The track Get Back, featuring Paul and a wicked guitar riff, was released ahead of the album in 1969, becoming a major hit (and one of my favorites during that year).  The song Let It Be, another of Paul's and one that I didn't care for, came out as a single in the winter of '70.  Then came The Long and Winding Road along with the full album release later that year...yet another McCartney work although he strongly objected to how producer Phil Spector doctored up the track to include an orchestra and female choir.  I loved The Long and Winding Road, though...and still do.  The finished album contains several wonderful pieces...I remember hearing the first track, The Two of Us, featuring Paul and John in great harmony, way back then on the radio and thoroughly adoring it and its wistful spirit during a pretty gut-wrenching period in my life. John's mystical Across the Universe and George's catchy, light-hearted For You Blue were other album favorites as was the Lennon and McCartney collaboration I've Got a Feeling, Side Two's opening track.  They included on this album One After 909, an old Lennon/McCartney rocker from their earlier years.  Tracks that I grew to marginally like were Lennon's I Dig a Pony, Dig It, and Harrison's I Me Mine...but I never was able to make anything of Maggie Mae.  I'll never forget looking at the jacket of my then-new Let It Be album...bought after the Beatles had already broken up, and reading on it the words "This is a new phase Beatles album"...whatever the hell that was supposed to mean, I don't think the person who wrote it envisioned the band dissolving so soon.  Still, it was a great album for all the trouble that went into creating it...   

Last Public Phone in NYC Removed

I was watching Good Morning America this morning and saw that New York City's last public payphone station...the enclosed booths disappeared long ago...has been removed, to be placed in a museum.  I remember in the old Superman fifties TV series how the Man of Steel would use telephone booths as a convenient changing station from his alter ego Clark Kent whenever a need for his superhuman heroics arose.  Then, in the 1978 Superman movie starring Christopher Reeve the first time Kent needed a phone booth he looked at an open-air phone station...like the one they just removed...and realized that it just wasn't going to work.  The old movies are full of folks using those good old phone booths...Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest and The Birds, James Bond's Doctor No, and the classic spoof Airplane! instantly come to mind.  Oh, and the 2002 Colin Farrell thriller Phone Booth naturally puts the outmoded old structure center stage.  And there's that old Gomer Pyle episode where Jim Nabors tries to put coins back into the phone that had earlier released them all...and gets arrested for theft.  Just think, back in those primitive bygone years people used to actually go outside without any phones to serve as a lifeline to whatever services they might need to access...scary times, scary times.  I guess it's our era's version of the old cliché where the wise old man would tell the spoiled young'uns that, in his day, he used to have to walk five miles in the snow to school.  Sadly, a smartphone is nowadays often deemed so crucially essential that some even feel hesitant to leave it behind them when they go into another room in their own home.  It's the real-world version of Bilbo Baggin's "precious" ring when one day he realizes he misplaced it and goes into a panic...

Quote of the Week...from Jean Yoon

If every time men had sex, they risked death, physical disability, social shunning, a life altering interruption of their education or career, and the sudden life-long responsibility for another being, I think they'd expect a choice in the matter.                                    ---Jean Yoon

I only know of the above quote by American-born Canadian actress/writer Jean Yoon because I've seen it reposted on Facebook a number of times in recent days...I haven't seen anything she acted in or read her writings before.  But her statement concerning too many men's attitudes regarding a woman's right to make her own reproductive choices to me expresses their fundamental hypocrisy on the subject when they justify their pro-life/anti-choice stance on "principles".  Principles, I might add, that don't apply to them since, as expressed in Yoon's quote, they aren't subject to the physical, social and economic consequences of pregnancy that the woman must endure, "chosen" or not. I recognize that this is a very sensitive issue and that well-meaning people, men and women both, have wide-ranging and often very passionate opinions about it.  But as I have stated before in earlier blog articles, it would be a good thing for everyone concerned if each of us showed a little compassion toward those with whom we disagree and at least tried to empathetically see things from their viewpoints...Jean's quote stresses this point.  But I see where our society is going right now and sadly doubt that my suggestion will be widely practiced anytime soon...

Taking in Daisy as Our Newest Family Addition

 

Back in 2019 our family dog Freckles, a mixed-breed rescue dog we adopted as a puppy, passed away after 14 years with us.  It's been a while, but the Saturday before last, PetSmart on Archer Road here in Gainesville was holding a pet adoption fair through one of the non-profits and we went...and little Daisy was the result.  She is also a mixed breed rescue dog, two months old and very motivated to bond with us while establishing her supremacy throughout the house.  Naturally, the first few weeks are a bit tedious, with us laying down the rules and (trying to) train her to wait to do her "business" outside...crate training seems to be helping with this although she tends to whine and howl sporadically as you would expect.  As for me personally, although everyone else in my childhood and adult nuclear families are very keen on pet ownership, I have never felt the inner urge to go out and get some critter to hang out with and give me some kind of psychological lift.  Not criticizing those who "have it"...just about everyone in my family is crazy about dogs and cats.  I like them, too, but in all the years I was single and on my own I never once had the remotest urge to take in one as a pet.  Still, I love other people and through them I bond with the pesky little animals.  Daisy is a real sweetie, no doubt about it... 

Weekly Short Stories: 1984 Science Fiction, Part 4

Today I start reviewing 1984 science fiction short stories I read from the Gardner Dozois anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction, Second Annual Collection. Among the first seven stories in the book are three from Donald Wollheim's series that I already read and discussed: Salvador by Lucius Shepard, Bloodchild by Octavia E. Butler and Press Enter by Varley.  Each of them is remarkable and unforgettable in its own way...don't forget to read them.  Of the other first four stories, here are my reactions...

PROMISES TO KEEP by Jack McDevitt

Set in probably our own times (sci-fi writers tended to be wildly optimistic about our space progress), a group of astronauts...along with a journalist...are on Callisto, one of Jupiter's moons.  Humanity is out here exploring while enthusiasm at home on Earth has dwindled with funding for future missions and innovation seriously in doubt.  As the group's lander ship makes a rendezvous with the main ship before returning home, a crisis happens...this story reminded me a lot of those I read from the 1940s and 50s, especially the ones penned by the great Robert Heinlein...  

BLUED MOON by Connie Willis

When I discovered the gimmick in this story early on, I just groaned to myself, sucked it up and read on to the end. Out in the western desert a company is testing whether hydrocarbon wastes launched into a strategic part of the atmospheric would have a beneficial effect on protecting and restoring the crucial ozone layer.  When folks discover that the moon has turned blue, then all sorts of hijinks result (along with my groaning).  I take it as nothing more than a light-hearted tale capitalizing on a worn-out cliche...

A MESSAGE TO THE KING OF BROBDINGNAG by Richard Cowper

An altruistic agricultural scientist has discovered the means for a crop plant to generate its own fertilizer, giving it independence from the soil in which it is nurtured. The test sites for his project involve one in Australia, which he visits and which occupies the story's ominous, nightmare ending...one that I fear could actually happen.  What a shockingly scary and effective story!

THE AFFAIR by Robert Silverberg

In this story telepaths exist, and it's possible for them to communicate over long distances with each other.  The problem for Chris, a secret telepath himself, is that he discovers that most of them are insane.  But one day in his mental wanderings he encounters a woman, living hundreds of miles away...and she is very, very sane.  The two, both married, begin to develop a telepathic romantic affair...eventually Chris insists on a personal meeting.  They go back and forth about the guilt of seeing one another...how it resolves itself is up to you, the reader, to find out. Of course, things like telepathy, time travel, and faster than light speed travel are staples of so-called "science" fiction...but I think this story of Silverberg does lend itself to non-telepathic analogies...  

Next week: more from Dozois' anthology....

About the Primary Results Last Tuesday

We're now thick into the 2022 election season now, albeit in the "preliminary" party primary phase.  This is when fringe candidates often snatch up nominations by attracting more fanatical voters than more traditional politicians, sometimes leaving poor choices on the November ballot.  I was interested particularly in the Pennsylvania seat of the US Senate being vacated next January by retiring Republican incumbent Pat Toomey.  Television doctor Mehmet Oz was running to replace him, with the full support of Donald Trump.  As the results started coming through that evening for last Tuesday's primary election, it became clear that it would be very close between Oz and Dave McCormick...at this writing a week later it is still undecided.  I deliberately chose to watch Newsmax and Fox News for the results for how their favored "guys" were doing in the spotlighted races. I found myself further resenting how dictator-wannabe Trump has managed to coopt conservative politics, some of which I'm in agreement with, to the point where it is little more than a personality cult where politicians compete to seen as the most loyal...not to the people they claim to want to represent...but rather to just one sorry, self-absorbed man. Pathetic. Georgia...along with Alabama and Arkansas...will be holding their primary elections today.  On the Republican side in my birth state of Georgia, football hero Herschel Walker, endorsed by Trump, is running for the U.S. Senate seat currently held by Democrat Raphael Warnock while incumbent governor Brian Kemp is facing a number of opponents in his party's primaries, including former U.S. senator David Perdue...Trump's stooge in this race. To align himself with the Orange Man after that earlier endorsement, Perdue had joined the crowd of 2020 presidential election deniers in order to curry his favor. Should be interesting to see the results from Georgia tonight: I think I'll just skip the propaganda channels, though (all of them, left or right-leaning) ...or at least mute the sound.  Better yet: skip the TV and get the results off my smartphone...

Personal Development Podcaster's Take on Technology Addiction

On one of his Mindset Mentor podcasts last week, life coach Rob Dial discussed how to get ahead of everyone else...quickly. It's not so complicated: while the population in general is becoming more and more dependent on their digital technology like smartphones, television and innovations like virtual reality and the Metaverse, he's decided to take a different path, trading in the time and effort put into entertainment for education and action...in the real world.  Dial maintains that studies show that (not necessarily a good lead-in line) people over the past few decades have much shorter attention spans, and he attributes this to their excessive use of media and digital devices.  For himself, he says that being around his cellphone too much makes him less focused and more anxious, and deliberately puts it away in another room when he has other things planned to do.  Dial is not opposed to using smartphones, social media, Netflix or other manifestations of the modern digital era per se, but the question becomes, who is the master, yourself or the technology to which he claims many are addicted.  Where do I stand on all this?  I agree with Rob Dial's suggestion that we all read and learn more instead...yet I use my Android both as a Kindle device and an audiobook.  YouTube in itself is an incredible teaching device...I recently saved a "load" of money replacing a simple worn-out part in my dryer by following a video on that platform.  Still, I admit that while I'm not anywhere near as attached to Facebook, Twitter or other social media sites as many others I know (as well as probably Dial himself), I do tend to engage in some game playing on it...but not all that much when I think about it. Still, I can see how folks can become addicted to all this stuff...being 65 with a lifetime of sitting in front of a TV set, I think that's probably the closest I come to being "addicted" to a form of technology...and yet in recent times I've become more discriminating in what I watch, often switching to a music channel or just turning the confounded thing off. On the other hand, as I related in my recent Saturday article, I get a big kick out of watching sports on TV...that ain't changing.  My big problem with people stuck on their devices is that they tend to be on them while driving, and that poses a direct danger to myself and my loved ones...not to mention that it makes me skittish about ever again riding a bicycle outside my neighborhood when in bygone years I used to bike all over the place...

My #30 All-Time Favorite Album: On the Threshold of a Dream by the Moody Blues

ON THE THRESHOLD OF A DREAM, my #30 all-time favorite album, is the British rock band The Moody Blues' third studio album after they regrouped following the departure of their founding vocalist Denny Laine and bassist Clint Warwick.  With guitarist Justin Haywood and bassist John Lodge joining original members drummer Graeme Edge, flutist/guitarist Ray Thomas and keyboardist Mike Pinder, they embarked in 1967 on a string of concept-based albums with a classical music-sounding background highlighted by Pinder's mellotron...definitely a turn toward progressive rock.  On the Threshold of a Dream is themed on, well, dreaming...especially Side Two, in my opinion one of the greatest ever album sides, back when there used to be such a thing as album sides.  Recorded in London in January 1969, not far from where the Beatles were at the same time recording their Let It Be tracks, it was released that April...but I didn't hear any of its songs until much later, in the 1990s.  This album, as with the Moodies' others, is a full creatively collaborative effort, with everyone contributing tracks.  Two of them, the opening, quirky In the Beginning and the beautiful, haunting The Dream on the second side, feature Edge, well-known for his beautiful soliloquy at the close of their hit Nights in White Satin (from Days of Future Passed).  Then the album progresses to pleasant tracks by Haywood (Lovely to See You), Thomas (Dear Diary), Haywood & Lodge (Send Me No Wine), Lodge (To Share Our Love) and Pinder (So Deep Within You).  Although the tracks flow without interruption from one to the next on both sides, the songs on Side Two end up seeming like a coherent, complete work.  Never Comes the Day, by Haywood is a sad, sweet lead-in to one of my all-time favorite songs, Ray Thomas' Lazy Day...a curious combination of quaintness and the sinister.  This in turn leads to another personal favorite, John Lodge's Are You Sitting Comfortably, a wistful fantasy piece reminding me of (vicariously) hiking through Tolkien's Middle Earth.  Then comes that intense Edge piece The Dream, leading into the finale: a combination of the Haywood song Have You Heard and a psychedelic, orchestral-sounding instrumental The Voyage.  Yes, that Side Two is always a special listening experience for me...

Now that this weekly unraveling of my thirty personal all-time favorite albums has begun, you might be interested in how I break them down.  Well, it's overwhelmingly weighted in favor of well-known acts, mostly bands and many from Britain and many leaning toward hard and progressive rock with other more recent ones in the alternative/indie rock genre.  I'm sure that if you've been into classic and alternative/indie rock to any degree you're probably going to be familiar with many, if not most of my picks.  My biggest problem in compiling this list, as I mentioned a couple of days ago, was deciding which albums to leave out as there are so many great ones.  At this writing the full On a Threshold of a Dream album is available on YouTube: check it out if you can...

Watching Golf and Horse Racing on TV Today

As I await the pivotal third game in the NBA Eastern Conference championship series between the Boston Celtics and Miami Heat (go Al Horford and Jimmy Butler!) this evening, two more "minor" sporting events are going on this afternoon: the PGA Championship tournament (third round) in Tulsa, Oklahoma and the Preakness Stakes in Baltimore, Maryland.  If I told you that the temperature at one of these events was 57 degrees and for the other it was 91, you might think the golfers were sweating it out while the horse racing attendees would be wearing sleeves...not so, there's a record-setting heat wave going on right now in the American northeast, while the weather has been wreaking havoc with the golfers in Tulsa, for the first two days blasting hot air with strong winds from the south and today abruptly switching to cool, strong winds from the north...the wildly changing scores are reflecting the tumult. As expected, Tiger Woods...and I wish him the best...received an excessive amount of attention even though he just barely made Friday's cut and shot a 79 today to go into the final round, at this writing some 22 strokes off the lead.  I expect the leaderboard to change a bit leading into an exciting final round...at this writing a couple of relative unknowns (Zalatoris and Pereira) are leading it while more recognizable names like Justin Thomas, Bubba Watson and Cory McIlroy are right behind them.  As for the Preakness, the "second leg" of the annual Triple Crown of horse racing for three-year old thoroughbreds, Rick Strike...the surprise Kentucky Derby winner...won't be running in it.  Still, the race should be interesting with Derby runner-up Epicenter the strong favorite and Kentucky Oaks winner Secret Oath the second favorite.  The field has only nine horses...other than Epicenter, Simplification and Happy Jack the entrants did not run in the Kentucky Derby.  The media fanfare is also much less than with the Derby, NBC televised pre-race coverage slated to start at 4 pm Eastern Time, with the race to take place at 7:01.  I think I'll go for Secret Oath.  The PGA Championship is being televised on CBS...wonder what kind of weather they'll get tomorrow...

Quote of the Week...from Regina Spektor

There's an artist I listened to for the first time, and I really didn't like them.  I had some kind of adverse reaction, and later, it became my favorite thing.                     ---Regina Spektor

I can relate to Regina Spektor's above quote, because over the course of my listening to popular music... going all the way back to the early 1960s....there have been several acts that I initially disliked...well, some I even despised.  Yet, a few of them redeemed themselves to me and I now regard them as favorites...some of them have made great albums that I have included in my Top 30 Personal Favorite Albums list that I will begin going through each week, starting in a couple of days this Sunday.  And Regina, one of my favorite musical artists of this current century, figures to be on it.  When compiling my list, it pained me to leave out many very worthy albums, but had I not done so then this project would have been too long...thirty albums over thirty weeks sounded more reasonable.  Speaking of Regina Spektor, her new studio album, titled Home, Before and After, is set for release next month: I can hardly wait!

Constellation of the Month: Virgo (the Maiden)

 

Virgo, the maiden or virgin, is the zodiac sign between Leo and Libra as well the constellation on that celestial belt, prominent in the south in the May evening sky (from the perspective of northern latitudes).  I'm inclined to believe it's also the biggest of the zodiac constellations, taking up a large section of that sector of the sky.  Virgo has one bright, first-magnitude star in Spica, a binary star some 250 light years distant, and which stands out starkly to the naked eye against its relatively faint neighboring stars. A funny, trivial event about Spica occurred when I was in high school...if I still remember it I guess it wasn't so trivial, though.  I was in my senior year sitting in the math library doing homework when a kid a couple of years younger, who attended the same astronomy club meetings as myself, approached me holding a book.  He pointed to the star Spica and asked me how I pronounced it.  I replied "spike-uh" and he triumphally responded "You're wrong, it's "spee-kuh" and pointed to the book's pronunciation guide, which turned out to confirm my version, not his.  Flustered, he just walked away, defeated.  I think I remember that weird, random event because it exemplified the general smartass, know-it-all attitude I encountered among my classmates back then...even decades later, after I began this blog, I got hit with the same hypercompetitive type of petty one-upmanship from kids...now supposedly adults...with whom I attended that high school: I never gave a hoot about how you pronounced something as long as we both understood what we were talking about.  But back to Virgo: this constellation does contain several deep-space Messier objects in a region (see above map for the Virgo Cluster), all of them other galaxies: M49, 58, 59, 60, 61, 84, 86, 87, 89 and 90...whew, that's a lot! But then consider that not only does this cluster contain some 1300-2000 galaxies, but that astronomers regard it as being "small"...I don't know about you, but that makes me feel really, really small in the grand scheme of things...  

When I step outside this time of year to view the night sky, the first star I look for, facing east, is Arcturus in Boötes (the first constellation I wrote about, in June of 2020)...then I trace a line south and west (down and to the right) and there's my old, far-away friend Spica.  And with this article, I've now gone around the sky twice, covering 24 different interesting constellations. Next month I plan to begin Year Three...

Weekly Short Stories: 1984 Science Fiction, Part 3

Here are my reactions to the final three 1984 science fiction short stories appearing in Donald Wollheim's anthology The 1985 Annual World's Best SF, featuring choices from the year before. Let's see...1984 was a special year for me in spectator football: the University of Florida Gators, under head coach Charlie Pell, won their first Southeastern Conference championship ever, but wait: Pell violated some important rules, the championship taken away, and all we got was a new coach, Galen Hall.  The Miami Dolphins had a storybook year under second-year quarterback Dan Marino...it looked for a while as if they might go undefeated.  But their stellar defense from just two years earlier was depleted and they got kicked in the Super Bowl against Joe Montana's San Francisco 49ers.  And now, those stories...

BLOODCHILD by Octavia E. Butler

Not a story for the squeamish, Bloodchild exposes the adaptability of humans to one of the most extreme of conditions: complete subjugation by an alien race that reproduces by infesting their bodies with larvae.  Gross, utterly gross...and fascinating, especially all the rationalization going on from the humans' perspective: it seems that it's possible to develop a good-sounding doctrine for anything, good enough for folks to swallow hook, line and sinker...

THE COMING OF THE GOONGA by Garyl W. Shockley

Sometimes in science fiction stories the aliens are humanoid and very similar to ourselves...in this story they are vastly different, not only in chemistry and structure but how they view their own deaths.  A human exploratory party on such a planet goes into war mode after one of them is killed by a goonga, a native organism their sentient adversaries use as a weapon.  The story is unique, written by an alien after its death...reminds me of a hilarious old John Belushi Saturday Night Live skit where he's a demented sailing ship captain and ends with "Chapter 2: I Was Eaten by Sharks"....

MEDRA by Tanith Lee

Medra is a woman living in isolation on a distant planet, on the 89th floor of the hotel her father had built in a completely abandoned metropolis.  Her waking life is lonely, she being the only human left on this forsaken world, but her dreams liberate her to travel across the universe.  A man lands there on a paid mission to find a fabled weapon of universal destruction.  How she handles him, and what her own true mission is, comes out at the story's end.  It is a brief but beautiful and sad little tale...in a funny way it reminded me of Stephen King's Dark Tower series that I am now rereading...

Next week I start examining 1984 stories from the Gardner Dozois anthology...

NBA Conference Finals Set

Being off more than usual recently has enabled me to better follow what's been going on with the National Basketball Association playoffs, which Sunday entered the conference finals stage with Boston handily beating Milwaukee in their Game 7 and Dallas doing likewise to favored Phoenix.  Now it's Boston vs. Miami and Dallas vs. Golden State, the former starting their series tonight and the latter tomorrow, with subsequent games to be played on alternating evenings.  With the Celtics and Mavericks prevailing, I saw two teams overcoming their opponents' star talent by coalescing as a team and beating their foes to the ball, play after play...that was especially true with the final Dallas-Phoenix game, although the Mavs' Luka Doncic is a premier player, a star on anyone's team.  Three of the four series in this previous round went my way...Phoenix's disaster at home against Dallas was the exception.  But I like who's left in the playoffs and can live with any of them taking the title, although I'd still like to see the Heat face off against (and beat) the Warriors in the final series.  Well, at least through this coming weekend I should be able to watch some of the games until I need to return to work....

Podcaster Discusses Pervasive Brainwashing in Our Time

On one of his Mindset Mentor podcasts last week, motivational coach Rob Dial discusses how our modern society provides ample opportunity for brainwashing us.  To give an example as to how pervasive this is, he cites a Yale University study in which people were asked to read a short passage on an individual and then answer questions regarding him.  But on the way to the study, participants were escorted to the elevator by one of the hosts and then asked to briefly hold a cup of coffee while he tied his shoe...lasting only about 10-15 seconds.  Some participants were handed cups of cold coffee while with others it was hot.  With that being the only difference in how they were treated in the study, the results showed that those who handled the cold cup had a more unfavorable opinion of the story's character, ascribing traits to him like cold and unreliable...the ones with the hot cups answered more that he was engaging and strong.  The point Dial is making is that even with our carefulness about filtering through biased data from media, much more subtle, unconscious "brainwashing" is shaping our opinions.  Maybe we can't catch everything coming at us, but at least we can control to some extent what...and who...we expose ourselves to in order to avoid undue and unwelcome influence.  I don't know if there really exists a reliable news source that isn't trying to influence how I think...just the simple selection of a topic and the order and duration of its presentation send a lot of conscious and unconscious signals.  I'm trying to tone down my exposure to TV news with all the nonverbal cues that are given along with the "facts" that divide the stories into the good people and the bad...maybe the old-fashioned newspaper is due for a comeback, its own built-in bias notwithstanding: at least there the reader can skip over what the editor deems as most important to other more pertinent stories.  Dial also stresses that the very people we interact with, as well as the shows and movies we watch and the music we listen to, can cumulatively play a large role in shaping our opinions and outlook...although we may claim that they are only reflections and affirmations of what we already believe.  In the past few years, I've noted how people on a mass level are irrationally swayed by emotion-tinged issues and how they are presented on social and mass media.  Look, I can't even watch a random commercial anymore without the creepy feeling that I am being taught a lesson in social engineering.  And speaking of commercials, Rob Dial also mentioned them and the shift in advertising strategy over the past few decades from stressing the need for the promoted product or service in favor of creating an emotional desire to purchase it, often through associating it with positive, unrelated symbols and humor: get the suckers to feel better and they're more likely to open up their wallets...

Just Finished Rereading Wolves of the Calla by Stephen King

I first read Stephen King's novel Wolves of the Calla, the fifth installment of his seven-part The Dark Tower fantasy/sci-fi series, around 2008 if memory serves me correctly.  A pretty long book, it was published in 2003...with the series' last two volumes, also fat, released just the following year.  It shows how an accomplished writer like Stephen King could sit down and get stuff done, including finishing a long, drawn-out series, if he is really serious about it: understand, George R.R. Martin?  Wolves of the Calla, unlike the previous book Wizard and Glass, has several stories running concurrently and hops back and forth between them.  The main story, reflecting the book's title, is set on an alternate Earth and the town of Calla Bryn Sturgis, in which every generation or so is beset by what it calls "wolves" invading it and abducting one of every twin pair of children...twins for some reason predominate there.  The taken children are gone for some months and then return with their intelligence mostly gone, to live out the rest of their short existence as "roon".  One of the townsmen, his own children threatened as the robot Andy has forecast the wolves to be coming again soon, rallies the others to finally stand up and fight the wolves...the "priest", a Father Callahan, helps him by saying that there is a group of gunslingers approaching that may be able to help.  The group, or "ka-tet", is none other than series protagonists Roland, Eddie, Susannah, Jake and Oy.  What happens between them and the townsfolk and the eventual encounter with the so-called "wolves" form the basic skeleton of the book, but there are other important subplots including Father Callahan's story and his origin in an earlier Stephen King novel, Susannah's pregnancy and a new multiple personality, and the heroes' attempts to save a cryptic empty Manhattan lot from being bought by nefarious interests...this last story goes to the heart of their quest to find and rescue the Dark Tower, which holds all of reality together through beams that are being destroyed through the efforts of the villainous Crimson King.  Well written and easy to follow, I enjoyed going through this book once again and look forward to the next one, which I'll start reading as soon as I check it out from my library...

Full Lunar Eclipse for Sunday Night/Monday Morning

Melissa brought to my attention that this Sunday night we're having a full lunar eclipse, dubbed "Blood Moon" by apparently melodramatic folks, that should be visible in Gainesville, barring overcast skies or fog.  It is set to begin at 9:32 pm with the penumbral eclipse, progressing to partial eclipse starting at 10:27 and then on to the full eclipse starting at 11:29.  The eclipse reaches its maximum point at 12:11 am Monday morning.  Then the eclipse reverses, the full eclipse ending at 12:53, the partial at 1:55, and the penumbral at 2:50.  A lunar eclipse is different from a solar in that in the latter the effect is caused by the moon blocking the sun while in the former the moon is on the opposite side of Earth from the sun, entering our planet's shadow (or penumbra) to cause the eclipse.  This particular eclipse should be visible for most of North America and South America, but not for the rest of the world.  I'm looking forward to watching it...

Quote of the Week...from Corrie ten Boom

Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow.  It empties today of its strength. 

                                     ---Corrie ten Boom

Corrie ten Boom was a resistance fighter for the Dutch against Hitler during World War II.  Other than that, it's all I know of her...her above quote is another one I lifted from the Music Choice Soundscapes channel I get on my Cox Cable TV service.  Regarding the future, I can't blindfold myself and pretend it's not there and that some things aren't coming my way that I need to address.  No, being aware of the future is different from worrying about it, though.  Only in the "now" can one deal with what's on the way, and if no action is necessary or available then there's no point in dwelling on it, is there?  Besides, a lot of stuff that folks worry about never happens, and if it does then it's more likely than not to be less severe than anticipated.  Still, if a pandemic hits us I want to be prepared for it by following the recommended (and sometimes mandated) measures put forth by the medical community...but sitting around deploring what might happen doesn't do anyone any good.  I say, do what you can to meet future challenges...and then be at peace with it...

People Magnets

Some people are like walking Facebook accounts, attracting "likes" and real-life emojis everywhere they go.  I call them "people magnets" as a general term, although the reasons for their popularity are usually more specific.  It's hard for me to criticize any of them for this alone...it's the people hanging all over them that bother me.  Yet, if for the sake of argument at school or my job I was assigned to tutor or train, say, famous pro basketball jock Kevin Durant or rock legend Mick Jagger, in a subject or my assignment for two or three days while in a public setting, I doubt that I could get very much done because of the clear distraction that their presence would cause with others continually dropping by to chime in with them and pour out their affection.  Yet although I actually like both Durant and Jagger, I would be stuck in a situation where I was yoked with someone open to distraction and still being expected to perform my job duties in the middle of it all while both being thoroughly marginalized and thrown completely out of my normal work routine.  But one doesn't need to be a famous athlete or entertainment celebrity to be a people magnet...people attractive to the opposite sex, as well as certain individuals with underground connections and influence, can fulfill this role and, I imagine, are much more likely to plague my humble existence.  But the result is the same: instead of being able to function at work in a respectable manner I would have to endure the repeated encroachment of other people on what I am being forced to do along with being demeaned throughout the process. The only solace is that the "people magnets" tend eventually to move on to other conquests and leave me alone...

Weekly Short Stories: 1984 Science Fiction, Part 2

Below are my reviews of three more science fiction short stories from the year 1984 as they appeared in Donald A. Wollheim's anthology The 1985 Annual World's Best SF, presenting his choices from the preceding year.  Seems like I watched a lot a CNN in '84 as the presidential campaign heated up, incumbent Ronald Reagan suddenly enjoying the benefits of the country's big economic turnaround from recession to boom...the Democrats had a vigorous primary season with candidates like former vice-president Walter "Fritz" Mondale, civil rights activist Jesse Jackson, and upstart Colorado senator Gary Hart.  I thought Mondale, who won his party's nomination, did very well in the debates against Reagan...didn't help him, though, in the general November election that year when Reagan swept to reelection in a landslide.  Oh well, I liked Walter, who passed away just three weeks ago, and thought he would have been a good president.  But back to those stories...

SALVADOR by Lucius Shepard

Sent into a Vietnam-like jungle quagmire of a guerrilla war, this time in Central America, a young soldier has to survive not only the enemy and his own platoon's sadistic leader, but the jungle as well when its own consciousness arises against the carnage inflicted on its people.  Except for the supernatural element, this story reminded me greatly of the movie Platoon in a number of ways.  It also reflected ongoing concerns among many in the 1980s that the U.S. would soon be fighting down there against the leftists...

PRESS ENTER by John Varley

In one of the greatest stories from the 1980s, long before the Internet revolution with all of its ramifications...both for good and for evil...Varley depicts a world wide web with hackers and software algorithms that seem to be able to exert control over the user's mind to the point of brainwashing...any of this remind you of our own day and age, 38 years later?  Chilling: if you already have paranoid tendencies, maybe you should pass on this novella as Big Brother is freaking scary...

THE ALIENS WHO KNEW, I MEAN, EVERYTHING by George Alex Effinger

Human-like aliens land on Earth to help us all...and to tell us what's good and what isn't, even to the point of which movies to watch or music to listen to.  They are solving all our major problems like hunger and war, even providing us with interstellar travel technology.  That's great, but no one can stand them with their superior, critical attitude.  A very funny story that made me wonder if it had anything to do with how others in our real, present world think of Americans...

Next week I conclude my look at Wollheim's book of short science fiction from 1984 before moving on to the Gardner Dozois anthology covering the same year...

Rough Ocean Reminds Me of Upcoming Hurricane Season

Yesterday at Daytona Beach Melissa noted to me that the ocean seemed "angry", with lots of choppiness and medium-to-large waves...the color tended to be greyish-green, kind of stormy looking in spite of the clear skies.  It was very windy as well...must be something brewing offshore.  I was watching The Weather Channel this morning and Stephanie Abrams was discussing a big Atlantic coastal storm, centered off the North Carolina coast and causing problems on their shoreline. The whole storm thing reminded me that we're coming up on the start of the 2022 Atlantic hurricane season, officially beginning on June 1st.  Normally talking about tropical storms this early would seem a bit premature, but in recent years we've seen quite a few named storms in the first couple of months of hurricane season...and even earlier.  In any event, here are the names for 2022...at least through the letter "W": Alex, Bonnie, Colin, Danielle, Earl, Fiona, Gaston, Hermine, Ian, Julia, Karl, Lisa, Martin, Nicole, Owen, Paula, Richard, Shary, Tobias, Virginie, Walter.  In case some of these names seem familiar to you, they're all recycled from 2016...except for M and O (Matthew and Otto were bad enough six years ago to retire).  The general forecasts are for a slightly more active than usual season, so I imagine I'll be tuning in to TWC even more often than usual.  Of course, my favorite scene is of one of their meteorologists "roughing it up" on a threatened beach while pedestrians are casually walking by in the background...I'm sure I'll be watching a few of those this summer/fall...