Paul McCartney's Final Three Wings Albums

From 1976 to 1979 former Beatle Paul McCartney made and released his final three albums with himself, wife Linda and their band Wings: Wings at the Speed of Sound (1976), London Town (1978) and Back to the Egg (1979).  Since I don't actually own these albums, I checked them out on YouTube...which in itself was a bit confusing, since later CD editions of them tended to be enhanced with all sorts of extra tracks not on the original vinyl albums.  So, I went back to Wikipedia and determined the basic songs to listen to.  Of course, I was already familiar with singles hits from the three LPS like Let 'Em In, Silly Love Songs and With a Little Luck.  I listened to all three albums and came away from the experience slightly pleased, but at the same time disappointed...with one very notable exception.  I appreciated that McCartney had the good sense to mix his ballads, rockers, and "middling" tracks to sustain listener interest, and the music was for the most part fun, light stuff...nothing to write home about, though, and just occasionally there would be a stinker like Old Siam, Sir (off Back to the Egg).  My immediate impressions were that I liked Beware My Love and San Ferry Anne from Wings at the Speed of Sound, Backwards Traveller and I've Had Enough from London Town, and Getting Closer, We're Open Tonight, Spin It On and Baby's Request on Back to the Egg...that last mentioned track reminded me a bit of Paul's Honey Pie on the Beatles' White Album.  But the greatest song by far from these three albums...and one that I've not been able to stop playing in my head, was his Speed of Sound love ballad Warm and Beautiful.  To me, it's the best thing I've heard Paul McCartney do since the Beatles and would have been a dominant track on any of their albums had it appeared on them.  After Back to the Egg, McCartney disbanded Wings and went back to "solo" work...but I think that in my next article about his post-Beatles musical career I'll discuss the non-album singles he recorded over the span of the 1970s...

Action Before Self-Belief is a Recurring Podcaster's Theme

Rob Dial is a 36-year old podcaster who specializes in personal development coaching, residing in my sister's home town of Austin, Texas.  Sometimes he gets a little...no, a lot...more materialistic than me about his presentation, showing off the millions he's made and the numerous places to which he's travelled.  Yet he also recognizes that each of us are constituted differently with our own values and sense of what direction we want our lives to go.  So that makes him something more than a multilevel marketing huckster trying to shame me into leaving my steady employment to make it on my own like him, and I respect him for that.  I also appreciate his different approaches to self-improvement, which he cycles back through over the course of weeks, reinforcing a few basic principles.  One of these, from a recent show, is that you don't start anything challenging by having to first believe in yourself...but if you already have that self-confidence that's cool, too.  No, instead, you figure out what you want in as much detail as possible, plan it out in likewise fashion, and then take action...even if you fear failure.  You most like will fail some, and then learn from your mistakes and get better.  And then as you get better, you will begin to believe in yourself.  Determining what you want, how you will get it, acting on it...and finally, the feelings...are the order that Dial presents for getting stuff done...sounds reasonable to me.  I just have to figure out what I want to do...

Just Finished Reading I Am the Cheese by Robert Cormier

A couple of weeks ago while in Lexington, Kentucky we paid a visit to their Peddler's Market, a regional chain of flea markets presented on a higher, more customer-friendly level.  I found there an old paperback book, I Am the Cheese, by Robert Cormier, read the back accolade (School Library Journal Best Book of the Year, 1977) and picked it up, having just finished reading it.  It belongs to the "young adult" genre of fiction, and vividly reminded me of what was in vogue in film during that era.  We're talking about films and books full of devious government "deep state" secret and ruthless organizations preying upon innocent Americans, depriving them of their civil rights and even killing them should a decision come down from the top...The Parallax View, Marathon Man and Three Days of the Condor immediately come to my mind.  In I Am the Cheese, a teenage boy, Adam Farmer, finds himself desperately riding his bicycle down treacherous roads in rural Massachusetts to find his father, who he thinks is confined somewhere in southern Vermont.  Interspersed with the narrative of his adventures are sessions of him as a sort of patient/inmate being interviewed by a man calling himself Brint and being fed drugs whenever he gets too anxious as he describes his life, families, friends, enemies, and the special circumstances that had resulted in him being here.  The author presents it all as a mystery...one which is resolved at the book's end.  The question is whether an ordinary citizen can live a life of integrity and decency and, when presented with a tough decision, be able to rely on his government to back him up.  The answer in this story by Cormier, known to have written some pretty depressing books, is a resounding NO...which shouldn't surprise anyone recalling the culture of suspicion and conspiracies popularized in the kinds of movies I mentioned earlier. Somebody I know talked to me about this book many, many years ago but I forgot who...I just know that it came out after I finished high school.  But it's clearly the kind of reading I suspect many, many school kids from that time were assigned in English classes.  I'm not knocking the story per se, but the narrative here...along with the stuff coming out from other sources...fed into what I think eventually caused a groundswell of popular cynicism about government and its intentions: demagogic political outsiders, I believe, like Ross Perot and Donald Trump, would later manipulate that negative feeling to their advantage...

My March 2023 Running and Walking Report

In March I ran enough, about 310 miles, although less than the previous few months because of the week's vacation that saw me traveling through Georgia, Tennesse and Kentucky.  I ran in two of Gainesville's local Depot Parkrun 5K's, on the 11th and 25th, doing these public races more or less for the sake of consistency.  I successfully tried wider, more thickly padded running shoes to protect my toes, but now I have another, better pair that I began wearing yesterday.  As for walking, I didn't do anything extra besides my regular daily routine, which piles up mileage at my warehouse-size facility over the course of my workday. If you've read some of my running posts on this blog, you may already know of marathoner and running popularizer Jeff Galloway, who devised a clever "walk-run" strategy to get people through long-distance races like half-marathons and marathons: alternate "x" minutes of running with "y' minutes of walking...back in 2010 I made a lot of progress training on long outings with a 6:1 running-to-walking ratio.  But now I'm thinking of turning Galloway's strategy on its head and alternating a lot of (fast-paced) walking with short running spikes thrown in. I especially think that this would suit the upcoming (very) hot summer season here in northern Florida...should be interesting to see how it works.  In April, on Saturday the 8th, a race is taking place in Hawthorne at the very place I ran a half-marathon back in January.  I had even considered entering their marathon distance race but have retreated to the half-marathon as my distance, should I choose to run in it...I'm going to check the weather forecast for Saturday before deciding.  On the same morning the Florida Track Club is holding a 5K race, originally slated to be at a park near my home but just recently moved way the hell over to the other side of town.  Well, if I have to go that far then I might as well just keep on driving all the way to Hawthorne for the other race. A couple of days ago I wrote about how three full videos of the New York City Marathon from the perspectives of fast, medium and slow finishers were posted on YouTube...I suggest you watch them, clicking on my links within that article to the three videos.  I'm thinking that with long-distance races my future rests in that third, slowest, video and the strategies I saw in it, especially concerning those walking breaks interspersed throughout the run...   

Quote of the Week...from Clint Eastwood

Baxters over there, Rojos there...me right smack in the middle.  

                                                      ---Clint Eastwood, from the movie A Fistful of Dollars

Akira Kurosawa's 1961 Japanese movie Yojimbo, where a roaming samurai serves as the nameless character Clint Eastwood portrays and the plots of both movies tend to intertwine, culminated in a successful lawsuit by the Japanese filmmaker...but 1964's A Fistful of Dollars is much more widely known and launched Eastwood into superstardom.  Eastwood's unnamed character, a roamer as well, rides into a small western border area town bedeviled by two rival crime families: the liquor traders Rojos and the gun merchants Baxters.  Standing between the two families' houses, out on the balcony with the local bar owner Silvanito (played by José Calvo), Eastwood makes the above remark gesturing first toward the left and then to the right, anticipating what he will do to take advantage of the conflict between the two gangs as he manipulates them to violence against each other.  As for me, I'm not bent on messing with anyone...much less organized criminals...but sometimes I, too, feel as if I am "right smack in the middle" between two polarized groups of people.  Take running, for example.  Ever since I could run as a little kid, I discovered that I could usually do it faster than almost anyone else...for short sprints. I really wanted to be able to sustain that speed in longer runs, but as I went through high school, I discovered that my abilities in that department plateaued at a relatively uncompetitive level on varsity teams.  But distance running as an open social activity began to explode in popularity during the 1970s...still, from 1976 up to 2008 I avoided racing.  Since then, I've participated in about 100 events ranging from 5K (3.1) miles to marathon (26.2 miles) and usually in a pretty decent shape of training and fitness, putting me "right smack in the middle" as good ol' Clint would say, gesturing toward the left at the elite athletes and toward the right at the bottom-finishers (instead of the cinematic Baxters and Rojos). I can further extend this "right smack in the middle" notion to interaction with a number of families either obviously wealthier than me or much poorer. I don't know whether it is me or them with our respective attitudes, but although I am pretty much in the middle, average as far as my material wealth is concerned, I'm either perceived as being poor or rich to these others...with a resulting slant in how I'm seen and judged: but I'm just me, the same person!   I'm a materialist, too, but beyond a certain point with it I've grown to see that ostentatiously flaunting "stuff" and wealth...or, on the other extreme, deploring the material state I'm in and getting defiant and bitter about it...as exercises in futility.  Fortunately, I also know some people, with whom I've had the pleasure to spend time with recently, who either have substantially more material wealth than I or substantially less, and they...God bless them...don't make an issue of the disparity as if I've done anything wrong.  I don't tie my sense of self-worth in with my economic status (and I lived a spartan, monk-like existence for a number of years in my young adult life) and don't appreciate others trying to impose their judgements on me. But maybe that's just me setting my own identity as well "in the middle": move over, Clint...

Three NYC Marathon Full Videos on YouTube

I noticed that YouTube has full-length marathon runs, taken from a runner's vantage point.  I focused on the New York City Marathon and three videos from it, based on three widely different finishing times. (click on each of the following to watch them...I don't know how long they'll be up): (1) 3 hours 13 minutes, (2) 4 hours 46 minutes, and (3) 6 hours 6 minutes  The New York City Marathon is on the first Sunday in November and takes entrants through all five boroughs, starting with Staten Island and passing through Brooklyn (for a long time), Queens, Manhattan, the Bronx and then Manhattan again before ending in the southwestern corner of Central Park.  The first (and fastest) video was taken in 2019 by a Chinese-speaking runner with plenty of friends to chat with along the course of the race...that was pretty cool.  In this video most everyone (but not all) were relatively young and clearly in good shape with similar strides and running styles.  The second and third videos were from this past November's race and, to me are the most interesting because they represent approximations of where I was twelve years ago...let me explain.  By the time 2011 rolled around, I was 54 and seriously training for an attempt at a marathon, for the first time in my life.  A couple of times in the previous weeks I had surmounted 20 miles in neighborhood training runs but soon thereafter would hit that fabled "runner's wall" when the energy level would suddenly plummet.  Then, on January 15, 2011, I pulled it off: a 26.6 mile run in 4 hours 23 minutes.  I thought then that I was more than ready for a go at the Ocala Marathon scheduled for Sunday the 23rd...but I developed an IT-band injury near my knee that manifested in the form of pain after about ten miles of running.  I rested myself to get better before the actual race and was fine for the first ten miles again...and then the pain began to reappear and intensify to the point where, until reaching Mile 19, I alternated brief painful runs with walks, which were painless as long as I didn't run.  But for the last 7 miles of the race I had to walk...and slowly at that.  It was a big blow to me because not only would my finishing time be lousy, but I would have to spend weeks healing, meaning that I wouldn't be able to run in Gainesville's Five Points of Life Marathon the following month.  I hobbled over the finishing line at 6 hours 4 minutes...with hardly a soul there to greet me...and after being unceremoniously instructed to get on the sidewalk because traffic was being opened up again.  This experience was totally different in the NYC marathon where boisterous crowds shouted encouragement and congratulations to even the slowest of runners as they approached the end. I enjoyed how the three videos kept showing, naturally, the same landmarks that the runners (and walkers) passed by...kind of reminded me of the movie Groundhog Day as "I" kept running past the 7/11 on 4th and 89th in Brooklyn, down the pretty stretch on Lafayette Avenue with all its trees and crossing the Ed Koch Queensboro Bridge from Queens to Manhattan.  If you sometimes run in your own home as I do, watching marathon videos like this is a fun way to at least pretend you're part of the action...but I hear it can be pretty hard getting into some of the more popular marathons since so many apply for them...  

Weekly Short Stories: 1990 Science Fiction, Part 2

Once again here we are, looking at short science fiction from the year 1990 as they appeared in the Gardner Dozois anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction, Eighth Annual Collection.  For me, 1990 was very special as it was the year that our son Will was born...I'll never forget him looking up at me as I held him right after birth and he nonchalantly yawned as if it were all just one more day at the office...ho-hum. Melissa had a string of medical issues that year as well, thankfully recovering well from all of them...the hospital was definitely a recurring setting that year.  But back to those stories...

A BRAVER THING by Charles Sheffield

One of the snags about making a significant scientific discovery or invention is the potential harm that people could use it for.  And the one making that discovery must draw upon his or her own sense of morality, which is...as this story reveals...quite subjective and different from person to person.  The protagonist is a young man in England who in boyhood befriends a nearby wealthy family with another boy, a brilliant loner.  It traces their parallel educational paths and diverging friendship to a climactic point that eventually has Nobel Prize implications.  This story has a lot to say and left me thinking about it long afterwards, especially the meaning of its title...

WE SEE THINGS DIFFERENTLY by Bruce Sterling

In a tale set around our current time but written in a year that saw the First Persian Gulf War, a young Muslim man from the newly created Arab Caliphate spanning the Middle West flies in to a morally and financially bankrupt America to interview its leading and dangerously charismatic rock star, Tom Boston.  Written from Sayyid's perspective, he intersperses his ongoing narrative with his justifications for his own faith and his fears of charismatic figures (he points out Khomeini, Hitler and Stalin) steering entire populations toward destruction and calamity.  I might have dug this story more had I not lived through the years of Bin Laden's Al Qaeda with its 9/11 attack and the subsequent formation of ISIS with its own charismatic leaders and calls for such a caliphate.  Still an intriguing story...

AND THE ANGELS SING by Kate Wilhelm

A misunderstood but ultimately kindhearted newspaper editor in a northern city encounters a figure lying by the road on a cold rainy night.  Taking it home...the body is unconscious but shivering...he first thinks it is a girl or young woman but then discovers the bizarre nature of her/its body.  Bringing in a woman reporter/photographer coworker to document his discovery, the story progresses to her assessment of him and his life, which turns out to be "spot on" when he makes an important decision at the end...

PAST MAGIC by Ian R. MacLeod

Set in a future Britain where society has broken down to criminal gangs and the ultra-wealthy live sheltered lives in luxury, a man with a declining writing career returns to his old home on the Isle of man where his wealthy former wife introduces him to "their" little daughter...only that child had died ten years earlier in a tragic accident.  The man knows who she really is, though...what he doesn't know is his ex's intentions toward him. With a surprise ending, this story shows the lengths some people will go to enforce their will on others...and God help them if they have the money to do it...

BEARS DISCOVER FIRE by Terry Bisson

A remarkable, sweet and sad tale with an absurd premise embedded within its title.  So, bears discover fire, and you can see the flames as they camp out at night on bushy interstate highway medians where the peculiar berries that they like to eat grow the most.  A man lives bordering a stretch of the interstate and sees them firsthand...but the story is really what happens when his ailing old mother, unhappy in her nursing home, makes an escape.  The imagery presented at the end here is special and unforgettable...

Next week: more about sci-fi short stories from 1990...

Just Finished Reading The Secret, Book and Scone Society by Ellery Adams

Ellery Adams is the pen name of Jennifer Stanley, a prolific writer of mystery novels in the "cozy" subgenre.  I'd already read three of her books, which she tends to divide into ongoing series, and decided to try out a new series: The Secret, Book and Scone Society with Book #1 bearing the same title.  Nora Pennington has very visible burn scars on her face and body from a past traumatic accident that thoroughly traumatized her.  She lives in the small western North Carolina town of Miracle Springs and loves books to the point that she opened her own bookstore there.  Along with other women in town they form a tight circle of self-support as they reveal the secrets of their personal pains to one another.  This ties into the book's title, for Nora and her friend who runs a nearby bakery respectively offer people a book and a scone to draw them in to help alleviate and resolve their personal pains.  But an Ellery Adams novel would not be so without a murder, and a realtor approaches Nora for help.  Before they can meet, though, he dies in an apparent accident...or is it an accident?  Events and clues begin to tie together and soon a real estate company engaged in developing a new subdivision in the area comes under the women's suspicion...and so progresses the story.  I like this series of Adams...at least this first volume of it...better than the previous ones, as well as its very likeable and admirable lead character of Nora.  I should have known that, sooner or later, I would find the right Ellery Adams cozy mystery series for me.  Now on to the next book, although I plan to first make a couple of detours with other books...

About Paul McCartney (and Wings) and His Three Albums from '73-'75

Last week I discussed my impressions of Paul McCartney's first three solo albums after leaving the Beatles in 1970.  I had heard his first two back in that general era, but once he began with his group Wings I lost interest.  My loss, for Wild Life is pretty good in spite of the know-it-all critics running it down...come to think of it, they panned his first two works McCartney and Ram as well, and I especially liked the latter.  It's now so many decades later and I'm just getting around to listening to this extraordinary musical artist's catalog of albums, in their chronological order of release.  This week I listened to Red Rose Speedway (1973), Band on the Run (1974) and Venus and Mars (1975), all recorded under the moniker Wings, but in fact dominated by the former Beatle with the major other contributors being Paul's wife Linda and former Moody Blues front man Denny Laine.  The first of these features his singles hit My Love, which I thoroughly hated them but at least benignly tolerate now. Other than the lively opening track Big Barn Bed, which includes a line from McCartney's Ram (Reprise) track two years earlier, the rest of the tunes on the album are light ballads...even the closing eleven-minute medley.  Now I'm not against ballads, but I don't have to be George Martin to know that you mix the fast and slow tempos on LPs in order to sustain the listener's interest...this always had worked for the Beatles.  The next album, Band on the Run, spotlights the title track as well as Jet (about Paul and Linda's pet dog), both favorite singles releases of mine.  This time he puts in more lively music...I particularly like Side One's Mrs. Vanderbilt and the closing track Nineteen Hundred and Eighty-Five.  As for Venus and Mars, I was more or less blown away by its high quality and energy...plus that almost mystical sense of something special taking place.  I felt this the strongest with the opening tracks for both sides: the Venus and Mars theme song.  It's a shame McCartney didn't expand it into a longer piece, for it has that special kind of old-time Beatles mood that I had been expecting from its members after their disbanding.  I was also taken by the songs Rock Star and Magneto and Titanium Man, both rousing and funny pieces sounding like a tribute to David Bowie's then-ongoing Ziggy Stardust glam rock alter ego.  The slower Love in Song would have fit in quite well on Rubber Soul...in fact, I feel that it is better than several of the songs on that remarkable Beatles album. And then there is Listen to What the Man Says, the album's big single that I enjoyed way back when I lived through '75.  Although I thought that Red Rose Speedway is good, I thought that Venus and Mars' songs are all better.  And Band in the Run is excellent as well.  Next week I'll take a listen to the final three studio albums Paul McCartney recorded with his group Wings...

NCCA Men's March Madness Hoops Now Down to Final Four

With the completion of today's two games, the NCAA men's basketball championship "March Madness" tournament has now come down to the vaunted Final Four, a great milestone in itself for many schools.  Among them are the Florida Atlantic University Owls, based in south Florida in Boca Raton where my beloved father spent his last days in 2013.  This was their last year in Conference USA...they're jumping later this year to the American Athletic Conference.  Neither conference gets much national attention or respect, so it surprised many to see this team, seeded only #9 in their region, win it to advance to next Saturday's semifinal round with a very close and exciting game against Kansas State, 79-76.  Although I was rooting for the Owls, I don't understand why the Wildcats, down by only three points in the game's closing seconds, had two different possessions but didn't shoot for a three-pointer...that must have really frustrated their fans.  Along with FAU, Connecticut advanced to the final showdown with a complete thrashing of Gonzaga, 82-54...their pinpoint passing and positioning on offense is amazing to behold.  The Huskies to me are the strongest team in this year's tournament although they were only seeded #5 in their region...not remotely even one close game so far in the six they've won to get to this point.  Those were Saturday's games.  Today's contests pitted San Diego State against Creighton and Miami against Texas.  By the way, you might take note that all of the top seeds were eliminated in earlier rounds and Texas was the only #2 seed left with this weekend's games...none of the brackets filled out at the tournament's start came close to predicting this scenario!  In today's games San Diego State somehow managed to outlast Creighton 57-56 although neither seemed to shoot very well. In the other "my" Miami Hurricanes were 13 points well into the second half and didn't seem to have an answer to the Longhorns' offense, but they managed to storm back and win it 88-81.  So half the Final Four is from South Florida.  Florida Atlantic plays San Diego State in one game and it's Miami vs. Connecticut in the other.  Whoever wins that latter contest should be the favorite to win the championship game. I'm looking forward to following the two semifinal games next Saturday, but I'll be at work when the championship game takes place Monday evening.  At this juncture, to me Connecticut should be the strong favorite to win it all, but my heart lies with the Florida teams.  CBS is covering the games on TV...

Ran Gainesville's Depot Parkrun 5K This Morning

Having inculcated the "atomic" habit of getting up earlier in the morning, I decided to use it today to run the Depot Parkrun 5K.  This Gainesville running event takes place every Saturday morning at 7:30 at the city's Depot Park, just south of downtown.  It's free...you only need to register at their site online and they will give you some barcodes to print out.  Take one of them to the race for them to scan along with the plastic token they hand you right when you finish, and they will scan both to record and later post your times.  I signed up early in 2019 and have now run twelve races there...my times, though, have never approached my best 5K finishes in other races from earlier years: hey, I'm getting older, for crying out loud!  You know you're getting along in years when you look at the race results and try to figure out how far you are from being the oldest finisher. Today I knew it was going to be a bit challenging since I was wearing my heavier (but more thickly padded) Air Monarch shoes while the combination of 69 degrees and 94% humidity mimicked the awful conditions last October when I struggled through the Tom Walker Memorial Half-Marathon then.  I decided to try a faster pace than the previous Parkrun earlier this month but wasn't interested in setting any personal records...just maintain some continuity to keep in touch with public racing.  The going was rough, but as in most of my other races I ended up running negative splits, gradually picking up my pace while at the same time I was gradually feeling crappier under the conditions.  I finished with a time of 33:19, far from my best but quite satisfactory and 43 seconds faster than two weeks ago here.  On Saturday, April 8 there are two different races being held in the area: a 5K close to my neighborhood and a half-marathon starting and ending in Hawthorne.  I'll either run one, the other, or neither...no clue yet as to which one of these options I'll take.  Click HERE for today's Depot Parkrun 5K results,,.

Quote of the Week...from Alan Watts

 You're under no obligation to be the same person you were five minutes ago.

               ---Alan Watts

Alan Watts was a twentieth century English philosopher, with a multitude of relevant quotes that we can use for ourselves in our daily lives. I think each of us has a personal responsibility for conducting how we live.  That having been said, the time of childhood and adolescence, a long span in which much of our eventual place in the adult world is determined...either through family life, economic level, or school performance...is marked by a scientifically recognized immaturity in our brain growth, interfering with our ability to form sound judgments and act on them accordingly.  Yet we are unfairly judged anyway...no matter.  What has happened before is gone...maybe the effects of the past linger, but I can make my own decisions...not just today, but at this very moment.  But I've also heard that relationships are supposed to be so very crucial to one's happiness and fulfillment.  Some of those who are the most familiar with me and think they "know" me, I believe, are the most resistant to accepting any change I consciously make in my life, even for the better.  It reminds me of the Joni Mitchell song Both Sides Now, which Judy Collins made into a big hit "But now old friends, they're acting strange. They shake their heads, they say I've changed.  Well, something's lost but something's gained in living every day." As for me, I find the idea of changing myself wholesale in a matter of minutes akin to jumping to the top of a tall building...and I'm no Superman.  No problem: I can change little habits without abandoning whatever virtues I've built up over the years.  Besides, once folks get over the notion that I'm going to change anyway, they can them accustom themselves to me as "The Changer"...

Constellation of the Week: Cancer (the Crab)

 

Cancer, the springtime evening Zodiac constellation east of Gemini and west of Leo...and representing a crab...is perhaps the faintest of the Twelve.  As a matter of fact, because of the dimness of even its brightest stars, the best way to locate Cancer is to find the gap in the sky between its Zodiac neighbors and going straight north from the more visible head of Hydra.  I guess in a completely dark sky away from city lights you can make it out, but I have never seen for myself the constellation other than on star maps.  It does feature two deep-space Messier objects. M44 "Praesepe" or the Beehive, is an open star cluster relatively close to us at 590 light years, located in the constellation's center. M67, in the south of Cancer, is another open cluster.  I think I'll make a promise to myself and one clear night in the next week or so pull out my binoculars and check it out...lugging that big old telescope out from the back is too much trouble and, besides, I never could figure out how to pinpoint stars with it. Hey, maybe that can be my next project after I see Cancer with the field glasses...

Next month I'll try to dish up another constellation to discuss...

Weekly Short Stories: 1990 Science Fiction, Part 1

Today I begin my look at the year 1990 in short science fiction, as presented in the Gardner Dozois anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction, Eighth Annual Collection.  At the time I was in my fourth year at the Gainesville post office, working the late night/early morning shift processing mail on the LSM (letter sorting machine) and FSM (flat sorting machine).  Since then, pretty much everything has been automatized, but I was fortunate to be able to work during the last years of "mechanization".  Yet even in 1990 an OCR (optical character reader) was installed in our already overcrowded downtown facility....we wouldn't move to the newly built warehouse-size building near I-75 until June, 1991.  Anyway, here are my thoughts about the first three stories in the Dozois anthology...

MR. BOY by James Patrick Kelly

It is the year 2096 and the filthy rich are beyond filthy as they flaunt their wealth and alter their own genes to cut back to their youth, as the protagonist Peter, "Mr. Boy", goes from 25 to 10 years physical age.  Or drastically alter their bodies' structure and appearance: Peter's friend Stenni resembles a dinosaur and his own mother the Statue of Liberty...inside which he himself lives!  The rich kids still interact...just like today...with the unrich, the "stiffs" (like us) who age normally: Peter is so sensitive to them that he can smell the "stink" in their age.  But he encounters a teenage "stiff" girl Tree who introduces him to a side of life his pampered existence has shielded him from.  In the process he confronts an adversary in the form of a software bot trying to reprogram his own robot servant.  Written from the spoiled rich kid's perspective, it reminded me of another privileged, snotty rich kid I went to college with and who constantly reminded everyone around him of his perceived superiority...ugh...

THE SHOBIES' STORY by Ursula K. Le Guin

In a humanity many thousands of years into the future, people have dispersed into space, settling worlds many light-years away and genetically changing to the point where offspring can become both male and female at the same time.  But travel is still barred from going past the speed of light, slowing things down considerably and presenting a strong barrier between star systems.  That is until now, when a new method is invented that seems to transcend physics and delves into the metaphysical world of relationships and consciousness.  A close-knit group of ten people ranging from adults to little children have been selected to test the new method, and their cohesion...and its shortfalls...are starkly exposed when they make the instantaneous jump to a planet far, far away...

THE CARESS by Charles Sheffield

A police investigator in 2060 discovers a woman murdered in her home...and then goes into the basement to find, to his horror and amazement, a comatose woman...or is she a leopard: human head on a cat's body.  His efforts to solve the murder and explain this bizarre entity lead him to an old painting and what is behind it all.  The notion of being so rich and powerful as to be untouchable by the law is a theme here...as, sadly, we're already seeing around us...

Next week I continue with the next science fiction short stories from 1990...

Something Buc-ee's This Way Comes

This article's title is deliberately derivative, doubly so in fact: it comes from a South Park episode titled Something Wall-Mart This Way Comes, a play upon the outstanding Ray Bradbury novel Something Wicked This Way Comes.  Well, Buc-ee's is neither Walmart (South Park's spelling is different) nor wicked...although I imagine that from some people's perspective the comparisons are close.  Buc-ee's is a chain of humongous convenient stores usually located at interstate highway exits, providing very clean bathroom facilities, rows upon rows of gas pumps and an enormous store with fresh-made sandwiches (they tout their beef brisket), salads, fruit, coffee and beverages, and many other items...including the pictured coffee mug and cap featuring the Buc-ee the Beaver logo.  The company was founded in a Texas town in 1982 by Arch "Beaver" Aplin III, but he wouldn't expand it out of that state until 2018, when it grew explosively to many surrounding parts, primarily in the U.S. southeast.  Never having heard of it before our vacation drive to Kentucky last week, we stopped off at Buc-ee's in Georgia during the outing in two different locations, Warner Robins and Calhoun.  It's a bit intimidating going in there as it seems the whole world has descended on the place.  I found the employees...and they hire many people...to be professional, friendly and enthusiastic: the check-out lines went fast and smoothly.  The bathrooms are gigantic and, as advertised, clean, while the number of gas pumps is breathtaking.  Buc-ee's doesn't permit large trucks on their facilities...tough for the drivers but great for the rest of us.  Buc-ee's subscribes to the oft-promoted notion that bigger is better...Walmart would agree...but this tends to bring criticism that such a presence can negatively influence a local economy by unfair competition against smaller businesses in the area.  Right now, the trend seems to be to have these mega-convenient stores out on interstate exits, not in the middle of town...and they do employ a lot of people.  I first heard of the "new wave" of large convenience stores with the advent of Wawa in the Gainesville area just a few years ago, although that company has been in existence since 1804.  But they are nowhere near the size of the crazy Buc-ee's stores I visited.  And apparently, with Buc-ee's already in St. Augustine and Ormond Beach, construction for the third Florida store is set for Exit 358 on I-75 north of Ocala.  In the Calhoun facility I even saw Buc-ee himself walking around...dang it, I missed out on the opportunity to add yet another picture of me standing next to a complete stranger in mascot garb...

Paul McCartney's First Three Solo Albums

In the spring of 1970, it was already a turmoil-filled, depressing time in my life, at the time thirteen years old and suffering the pangs of early adolescence. I certainly didn't need to hear that my favorite band, the Beatles, were breaking up...but they did, with Paul McCartney releasing his self-titled first solo album and declaring their end.  Even though the Fab Four would still release their Let It Be album (ironically dubbing it as a "new phase Beatles album"), there would be no more new, highly anticipated material produced.  Instead, John, Paul, George and Ringo would be producing stuff on their own...although they would still be getting by "with a little help from their friends".  It took me a while to get a copy of McCartney...my first solo album of his was his 1971 second album Ram.  It had been foreshadowed for weeks by the radio play of one of its tracks Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey, a rambling light-hearted childlike medley of Paul singing with his wife Linda.  I listened to Ram repeatedly and got to seriously like it, with tracks like Too Many People, Ram On, Smile Away and Eat at Home becoming my favorites on it...even today some 52 years later.  Back then I just had a phonograph in my room with no earphones, so I probably drove others in my house crazy...especially my mother...as I cranked up the volume.  Other notable tracks on Ram are Heart of the Country, Dear Boy, Long Haired Lady (a favorite of my sister) and Back Seat of My Car...Monkberry Moon Delight, on the other hand, was (and still is) utterly horrendous.  Later I would pick up a copy of the debut 1970 album McCartney and, while not liking it as much as Ram, I did gravitate to the songs That Would be Something and Every Night, the latter I already knew from radio play as well as Maybe I'm Amazed, Paul's ode to Linda.  Paul recorded McCartney by multitracking his own instrument play (he played all of them) with Linda's singing being his only collaboration with others.  By the time in late 1971 he came out with his third non-Beatles album, Wild Life, he had formed a subservient band Wings around himself and his wife...but Paul McCartney was always the boss pure and simple, and the backing crew either followed his lead or they left.  Back in 1971, although I had liked Ram, something within me had changed and I didn't even want to give Wild Life a listen...it wouldn't be until just recently in 2023 when I listened to the album, largely panned by critics, in its entirety.  I would hear over the years radio play of two of its Side One tracks: Love is Strange (a cover of an old Mickey and Sylvia hit) and the title track, in which McCartney wails and loses his composure...not very pretty.  Now I kind of like the whole album, including the two aforementioned songs that I used to hate.  My favorite tracks are Bip-Bop...which Paul himself has later criticized...and the opening, rousing piece Mumbo.  I also like Side Two's Tomorrow a lot.  It's funny what a half century of living in the intervening years can do with one's musical tastes...I'm looking forward to hearing the next three Paul McCartney albums he did with Linda and his band Wings back in the early-to-mid 1970s.  For the purposes of this blog, I will refer to everything McCartney did under the name "Wings" as solo work, since after all he was the one running the show...

Back Home After Week's Travel and Visits in Kentucky, Tennessee and Georgia

It's good to be back in Gainesville after a week of car travel in which we went first to Kentucky to visit with Melissa's sister and then to Tennessee to stay a couple of nights with a friend from her elementary school years.  Naturally, I've come up with a few items for discussion here on this blog and will, from time to time, address them.  I will make one observation up front: the weather seems to have anticipated our journey by misbehaving on the road...and at our destinations...in some of the worst ways possible.  I don't suppose it was reasonable to expect blue skies and temperate temperatures for this brief time...the weather hasn't exactly been very cooperative the rest of 2023, either, with regard to my participation in local scheduled running races.  Much of the drive to and from...mostly on 1-75...was spent in the rain, with an ugly two-hour (very) slow crawl on Day One just after we crossed the Florida-Georgia line.  Then, the morning after our first night in a bed-and-breakfast in Lexington, Kentucky saw a light deposit of powdery snow everywhere outside...the coldness would prevail until we got into Nashville later in the week.  We got one good, rainless day there with reasonable temperatures and took advantage of it...more on that later.  But Friday morning when we set out on the road homeward, the rain took off again and kept us company to varying degrees all the way back.  And it's definitely good to be back...

Podcaster Suggests Alter Egos Can Help Create a Greater Self

Mindset Mentor podcaster Rob Dial recently had a show in which he said that it's a good idea to develop an alter ego type of personality, explaining that with celebrities like Kobe Bryant and Beyoncé, their own "superhero" alternate selves (Black Mamba and Sasha Fierce, respectively) enabled them to drastically overcome their own shyness and lack of confidence.  I get what he's saying, but I can't help laughing anyway...I keep picturing the South Park cartoon character of Butters, a timid little boy who's had enough of being grounded by his parents and humiliated by his friends, creating...complete with an aluminum foil costume and mask, the archvillain Professor Chaos. Professor Chaos does bold, brash things little Butters would never dare do, such as secretly switching orders at restaurants, hiding his teacher's blackboard eraser, threatening mass flooding on Earth by turning on his home's outdoor hose faucet and destroying the ozone layer after buying up several aerosol cans and spraying them in the air one by one.  So, while Dial may be onto something with this alter ego "Clark Kent changes to Superman" notion, it's also true that any of us could do this while at the same time not actually stepping out into that kind of effective boldness he advocates.  Do you...or have you ever had...alter egos into which you transformed yourself to project a different kind of persona to the world and for your projects?  In an informal way I have, and I suspect that to a degree most of us do, when for example we put on ourselves a "public" or "at work" personality that is at variance with our private selves.  Still, I'm not sure that's exactly what this podcaster meant on this episode that suggested listeners create their greater selves...

Taking a Vacation Break from Blog

For the next few days, I'll be skipping this blog since I'm on vacation, looking forward to resuming it...

NCAA March Madness Basketball Tourney Starts Tomorrow

I just glanced at the men's NCAA Basketball Tournament bracket, and I wasn't surprised or disappointed, for a change.  Naturally, "my" Florida Gators (I think they're 16-16) didn't make it, nor did North Carolina, the other team I tend to follow.  Florida State had a poor showing this year, but Miami is one of the favorites to possibly get to the Final Four and I guess they're my "main" team.  Duke, Houston, Alabama, Gonzaga, UCLA, Marquette, Purdue, Arizona, Texas...and my third "favorite", Kansas...all figure into the upcoming action.  Starting with 68 teams in the field that includes several weaker smaller college champions, two games will be held Tuesday and Wednesday while the real first round starts Thursday...by Sunday night we'll be down to the Sweet Sixteen. CBS, TBS, TNT and TruTV will carry the games, many of which in the early going I'll miss.  Looking forward to see who makes it past Sunday...