Quote of the Week...from Mark Twain

I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had suffered not the slightest inconvenience from it.                                ---Mark Twain

I read the above quote from the beloved American writer Mark Twain (aka Samuel Clemons) a few weeks ago on a Facebook reposting...that app does occasionally have some use in spite of its serious drawbacks.  Of course, religious doctrine fueled some of the reactions of the comment section, distinguishing between pre- and post-physical life.  Believe what you want about that and stay in your own cognitive/metaphysical bubble if that comforts you...no judgment from me.  What Twain was talking about was the absence of the physical, breathing, animated life and consciousness that people experience within their lifespans on Earth.  Fear of death is a sweeping, important survival trait of anyone and contributes to people not only being careful about how they take care of themselves, but also how they treat others...the cornerstone of civilized society.  Do unto others as you would have them do unto you, I believe is how the saying from Jesus goes.  Yet physical nonexistence as a living organism is something preceding my conception and birth for eons upon eons, and my body will return to ashes at some future time.  We can draw comfort from the assurance of an eternal spiritual life beyond that, but I also believe that there is comfort in Twain's truth regarding the past...

Doubling Down and Gaslighting

I'm sure that manipulative, controlling people have been around ever since, well, people have been around. But lately I've been hearing a lot of two different terms describing what seems to me to be essentially the same thing.  They are "doubling down" and "gaslighting". When someone espousing something false is confronted with the truth, hopefully...with the caveat that the truth-speaker is tactful...the recipient will receive the message and process it in a rational manner, perhaps changing their viewpoint if reason dictates or maintaining their position if that is called for.  But too often nowadays, I see folks take contradictory input as a personal attack on themselves, and their ego takes over as they even more vehemently reiterate their obviously flawed perspectives.  That's "doubling down" and is also indicative of "gaslighting", which is when someone tries to alter your perception of reality by preying upon your own fears and self-image, bringing whatever is discussed down to a contest for domination instead of truth-seeking.  Even if not precisely the same, I see the two tactics as being intimately interwoven, and I am becoming increasingly adept at noticing them when practiced on me...

Weekly Short Stories: 1998 Science Fiction, Part 1

Today marks the transition to the year 1998 in my retrospective look at sci-fi short stories and novellas, using the Gardner Dozois anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction, Sixteenth Annual Collection and featuring his selections published that year from numerous authors in the genre.  1998 saw me with Melissa and my two kids...Will turned eight that year and Rebecca three.  I worked...as I do now (but not for long) at my local post office processing plant...that I had switched back over to working on their flat sorter machine on the (Tour I) graveyard shift.  Let's see...I was 41 turning 42 then.  But enough of me...how about that book...

OCEANIC by Greg Egan

This drawn-out novella (Dozois seemed to love these) is an overly obvious allegory of today's evangelical Christian movement, full of the language of the soul-saving deity (with us it's Jesus, the story: Beatrice) being internalized within the believer/saved individual and causing all sorts of ecstatic feelings...as well as a missionary spirit binding them to others in their world while at the same time feeling apart from them and superior.  Egan transplanted this all to the distant human future on a distant planet, appropriately called Convenant.  According to the theology there, Angels had settled the place in the ancient past and created the life forms there, including the people themselves.  A young man on this ocean-bound planet is a new follower of Beatrice, and he makes a discovery that casts doubt on his faith while isolating him from his co-believers.  I understood the author's drift but still found it all tedious.  One innovation that I thought interesting was the concept of the "bridge" that would go back and forth between partners during sexual encounters...maybe that alone might get you through this frustrating tale.  For me, I was just eager to get on to the next story...

Next week, I'll hopefully find some stories more to my liking from 1997 to review...

2024 Testing Me on a Number of Fronts

In this year of personal family health issues and tragedy, I am now confronted with my own special medical circumstances, the exact nature of which I plan to share at some future time.  The truth is that my situation is still in the stage of testing and diagnosis, and while I am reasonably certain what it will be, I am equally uncertain as to the degree of that diagnosis. This is going on in spite of the fact that I feel physically very well, even to the point that I regard myself as a seniors athlete.  But maybe that athleticism could be of help in the weeks ahead, we'll see...

More and More Bummed Out on Politics

In a recent article I compared the frenzied fervor of so many people's campaigns for elected "public service" in this year's election cycle to the nefarious Rings of Power in J.R.R. Tolkien's epic trilogy Lord of the Rings.  Maybe the nine evil power-craving Nazgul don't line up with candidates you see as being oh-so caring, principled and selfless...as opposed to those jerks on the "other" side.  But I at least...even if you don't...see that craving for control everywhere, and quite frankly, I'm having a bit of difficulty "liking" anyone who's running. This is especially true regarding the two main candidates for President this year...I can't remember disliking both major party nominees since Nixon ran for reelection against McGovern in 1972...that was the last election I was too young to vote in.  Yet one of them is a 34-count convicted felon who is on audio persuading, while president, a swing state's election official to manufacture eleven thousand nonexistent votes to throw that state's election in his favor.   The other candidate, whose main attraction is that she isn't the crook she's running against, wins my vote by default without even trying.  But like I said before, it all comes down in the end to the last-minute, emotionally-motivated undecided voters who doubtless will be swayed by some contrived nonsense to determine the next president.  So when people approach me in ANY setting with politics as if it were some sacred institution, I am getting increasingly hostile...and properly so...

Decision Made to Retire

I've reached a decision that was inevitable in coming: I am going to retire from the USPS, where in September I had worked continuously for 37 years.  With my advancing age (turned 68 earlier this month) and the stark difference, in these times of family medical issues and tragedy, between staying at home and going off to work, I decided that it just isn't any good anymore going out there day after day for long stretches. I am fortunate and blessed to have had a job I generally enjoyed and allowed me to be myself and keep myself intellectually and physically fit, and I know I'll miss my coworkers once I'm gone.  But the time has come, and I'll be going through the process in the weeks ahead.  I have already sent in my paperwork and notified Human Resources as to my last day at work, which is scheduled to be at the end of November...

My Depot Parkrun 5K Today

This morning at race time for the weekly, free Depot Parkrun 5K in Gainesville, it was 59 degrees with 84% humidity (dew point at 54 degrees), markedly cooler and more pleasant than in previous weeks.  I decided to run it again, now that my intended race, the 10K Tom Walker Preview on the Hawthorne Trail, had been cancelled...ostensibly due to Hurricane Milton, which only lightly touched upon this area.  Melissa accompanied me and walked some, as well as cheering me on.  The course was crowded, no doubt with some runners who like myself had planned on running in the other event...but also because the weather was so nice.  There was also another 5K race in the same park, scheduled to start at 8:30, an hour after the Parkrun.  So there were a lot of folks out there today, no problem.  I just ran my usual pace, pushing hard through to the end, and finished with my second best Parkrun time at 26:58...click HERE to view the posted race results.  On a side note, during this warm and muggy summer and early fall mornings at Depot Park I had noticed that the usual red-winged blackbird songs serenading us on the park's south side had disappeared...they were back in force today!  I guess my avian friends like the cooler temperatures as well...

Quote of the Week...from Rob Dial

Environmental psychology shows that physical spaces influence the way that you think, the way that you feel, and the way you behave.  And so here's how you want to do it: you want to create a deep work environment.  Find a quiet place, a comfortable place, a place that you can be undisturbed.  

     ---Rob Dial

This quote is from Rob Dial's personal development podcast The Mindset Mentor...today's episode dealt with enhancing one's mental focus on tasks.  He brought up this point to underscore the importance of one's surroundings in effectively focusing on work. You don't sit down to work in a place that is in the middle of a traffic lane that invites distractions from others, nor do you allow distractions like the TV or your phone to be readily available for interruption or temptation.  Besides finding a relatively isolated location to do your focused work, it's important to respectfully notify others there that for the stated period of time you're going to be concentrating on your task and to please hold their thoughts...unless of course there's an emergency.  Sounds good to me, now onward to finding such a place...

In Milton's Aftermath

Today I'm writing this late in the evening, in the aftermath of Hurricane Milton's attack on the Florida peninsula. It's effects were primarily felt on the west-central part of the state, in the area spanning Clearwater to Naples...and points inland as the storm, 120 mph landfall intensity, made its way eastward through Wednesday night and this morning, now weakened in the Atlantic. Although spin-off tornadoes were expected, the 126 we got...overwhelmingly making landfall in southeastern Florida...were astonishing.  In Gainesville conditions were mild...we got rain and wind, but nothing like a couple of weeks ago with Helene.  Still, my Florida Track Club decided to cancel its upcoming Saturday morning race...although the Depot Parkrun seems to be a go.  The hotels here in town are still packed with the evacuees from further south, and the congestion on I-75 is reversed, clogged with southbound traffic now.  I feel blessed to have skirted this storm, but also feel sympathy toward those returning home to less fortunate circumstances...

Weekly Short Stories: 1997 Science Fiction, Part 14

Here I finally conclude my prolonged look at short science fiction from the year 1997 as it appeared in the Gardner Dozois anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Fifteenth Annual Collection.  The final story is a novella, and one written in the good old tradition of "hard" science fiction, celebrating extraterrestrial exploration in our near future...

A COLD, DRY CRADLE by Gregory Benford and Elisabeth Malartre

A privately funded team of four has gone to Mars to claim a prize for being "the first" there...and to bring back to Earth their discoveries.  This story predicts the privatization of space travel as the first President Bush's 1989 goal of going to Mars in thirty years hits a major snag when the "astronomical" price of the venture is revealed.  Instead, a much smaller prize is offered in a competition to see who can get there (and back) before others.  The protagonist is Ann, a biologist married to Piotr, the mission's captain.  Her discoveries underneath the Martian surface, as well as the technical aspects of running and repairing the damaged ship along with various facts thrown in about astrophysics, makes this an interesting fictional lesson in science...especially with regard to biology on a number of levels.  Also, the authors gave no doubt about how they felt about how the sensationalist news media has fed into the public's perception of space travel.  I felt that this tale was more in line with what I would deem to be "classical" science fiction, along the lines of how Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke and Robert Heinlein treated the genre...

The next time around in my short story reviews I plan to look at the year 1998 in science fiction...

New Hurricane Milton Threatening Central Florida and Possibly Gainesville

Ever since Hurricane Helene passed through Florida and points north in late September...causing calamitous destruction and death, especially in North Carolina...the meteorologists have been pointed to a low-pressure area in Helene's general zone of origin in the western Caribbean.  The prognosis was always the same: 40% chance of development over a period of several days.  But a couple of days ago the message abruptly changed, as a Pacific tropical storm passed through Mexico into the far western Gulf of Mexico and formed the core of a dangerous new tropical disturbance.  It has since rapidly strengthened and been named Milton, at this writing a full-fledged hurricane with maximum sustained winds of 85 mph.  Milton is predicted to reach Category 4 strength as it crosses the Gulf toward a rendezvous with the west coast of central Florida around Tampa.  Before hitting land, though, it is also expected to weaken a little.  But statewide we're already being saturated with much rain...more water in the ground is the last thing anyone needs.  Milton is expected to arrive on Wednesday and cut across the state, subjecting my Gainesville area once again to strong tropical storm winds and placing people and property in peril as well as almost certainly causing widespread power outages.  This storm is said to be smaller than Helene was...I guess I should be thankful for any good news...

My Depot Parkrun 5K Run This Morning

This morning I resumed my participation in Gainesville's weekly free 5K run/walk, the Depot Parkrun at Depot Park, a few blocks south of the city's downtown area.  To get your finishing time recorded and posted, you can sign up on their website and they will provide a printable barcode for you to take to the race for them to scan...all free of charge.  As with previous weeks, the weather was warm and (ugh) muggy, 72 degrees with 100% humidity, at the 7:30 race time.  I had decided to run it and admittedly struggled some amid the humidity.  Still, I had a reasonable finishing time at 27:28...click HERE to view the posted results.  October promises some good race opportunities, yet I also have upcoming medical procedures that may interfere with me entering them...I'll just have to flow with what happens.  In any event, I was happy to get out there again this morning and circle the park a few times...

Quote of the Week...from Captain Walker Keel

Damn it, Jean-Luc, I tell you that Star Fleet's top command people are changing! This could affect the very core of our organization.  Officers I've known for years are bluffing their way through talk of old times. 

   ---Captain Walker Keel from Star Trek: The Next Generation

Walker Keel is a guest character appearing in the first season episode Conspiracy in the science fiction television series Star Trek: The Next Generation.  He is the captain of the starship USS Horatio and has called Captain Picard of the Enterprise, along with two other starship captains, to an isolated abandoned planet to discuss what he sees as an insidious conspiracy overtaking the United Federation of Planets leadership.  It's a great episode, my favorite in the series...I highly recommend it!  Yet conspiracy isn't why I quoted this fictional character.  Rather it's what Keel says about "bluffing their way through talk of old times" that reminded me of some strange experiences I've had with people...some of them close to me...over the years and recently as well.  In each case I'll bring up some anecdote they were involved with, to which they deny everything and sometimes even come up with an alternate reality version of events.  And there's no compelling reason for them to lie or conceal anything...these are all harmless memories.  With one person I might say they are deluded with the memory in question, but when I see it with others then I wonder whether their memories are truly intact and that, over the years, they might have rolled over with their identities and conscious memories into another reality.  It reminds me of another sci-fi experience, the end of the Matrix Reloaded movie when Neo meets the Architect and sees all these different versions of himself on the above screens.  Are people just naturally slipping over time from one state into another?  Or perhaps maybe I myself am deluded.  Anyway, it's fun to speculate while going on with life as it is (or seems)...

Love and Miss My Parents

It's easy to see both my mother and my father's personality makeup within myself...for better or for worse.  Each of them had their own individual strengths and frailties.  My mother died in 2002 and my father in 2013...both had their lives shortened from extensive cigarette smoking over the course of decades...back when it was customary for teenagers to smoke and little kids (like me) could walk a few blocks to a convenience store and buy a pack for their mommy.  Although smoking is something I've never done and thankfully don't have to consider the consequences from it, I...like each of us...have my own unique physical makeup.  That made for the necessity to have a congenitally defective heart valve replaced and aortic aneurysm repaired three years ago...and to undergo current procedures to either rule out or confirm cancer elsewhere.  But there's only so much I have control over...beyond that I'm at peace with where my health is taking me.  As for my parents' personalities, my mother enjoyed routine, simplicity, and the enjoyment and appreciation of what was going on around her...she loved her crocheting and TV shows.  My father was much more goal-driven and loved the adventure of pursuing new skills and experiences...like his mastery of the unicycle and the piano keyboard in his senior years, for example.  Mama, on the down side, could get depressed while daddy was prone to anger and impatience...especially when around others.  I'd like to think I got all the good stuff from them, but we adult offspring know that it's often a package deal and you get some of it all, the good and the bad.  But I dearly love and miss them both...

Weekly Short Stories: 1997 Science Fiction, Part 13

Somehow I managed to read a couple more 1997 stories from the Gardner Dozois anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction, Fifteenth Annual Collection.  There's just one novella left after this, and then I get to move on to the next year.   But first things first...

THE MASQUE OF AGAMEMNON, by Sean Williams and Simon Brown

In the distant future, I don't suppose that it's a surprise that nanotechnology has combined with artificial intelligence to produce a vastly transformed technology...much to humanity's benefit, I'm sure.  But from time to time things backfire, as this tale of a predatory warship manned by mythical characters from ancient Greece demonstrates.  I couldn't help thinking of that horrible first Star Trek movie about a space probe gone awry.  This story's final line makes an assumption about the reader having read a memorable first line in an equally memorable novel...

GULLIVER AT HOME by John Kessel

It helps to have already read Gulliver's Travels before starting out in this tale surmising what it might have been like for the protagonist's family and home life between and after his illustrious adventures.  Having read it myself, I fully comprehend how ridiculous his affection for horses was, based on the super-intelligent and wise ones he encountered (and their equally ridiculous names).  A funny story, though maybe you should first read Jonathan Swift's novel...

Next week (hopefully) I'll conclude this protracted look at 1997 in the realm of science fiction with my take on the final story...a novella...in Dozois' anthology...

My September 2024 Running and Walking Report

In September I exercised daily, keeping my running and walking fitness level at a satisfactory level.  On the 7th I ran the "Is It Fall" 4-mile race organized by the Florida Track Club at Squirrel Ridge Park off Williston Road.  Then, I returned to Depot Park to speed-walk the weekly Depot Parkrun.  Those were the only races I participated in for the month, with general aching over my body and Hurricane Helene's effects mitigating against races at September's end.  In October I intend to step up my racing...the FTC is holding a 10K race in mid-month along the Hawthorne Trail and I'm walking a breast cancer fundraising event on the 26th with Melissa.  Otherwise I plan to do the Depot Parkrun.  Looking forward to it all...

Carolinas Suffering Calamity from Atlantic Storms

It's a sad time for the Carolinas, what with "PTC-8" slamming their eastern sides and remains of Hurricane Helene wiping out entire communities on the hilly/mountainous west, killing many and causing catastrophic damage.  And I see that they're talking about a new possible system forming in Helene's old spawning area of the western Caribbean.  After Debby gave us here in Gainesville a close call back in July, we'd had quite a lull in this Atlantic hurricane season, which had been predicted to be very active.  Now, after Helene we've had Isaac, Joyce and Kirk, all three eastern Atlantic storms posing danger to only maritime interests there.  Yet just the wrong combination of factors...as was the case with Helene...can cause a monumental disaster.  My own household only suffered a seven-hour power outage and we had a few fallen branches in our yard...no structural damage, thankfully...

As For Watching Sports

In watching sports...and following them in general...I have become rather detached about which athlete or team I want to win.  My tendency now is to follow the process and appreciate what is involved in whichever sport that happens to be before me.  I've noticed that there is one aspect to it all that I have come to oppose, and that is the tedious, overdone commentary often accompanying the action.  More and more, I mute the volume on my TV set and find that this doesn't detract in the least from my enjoyment of the sport.  It's interesting that I have never played American tackle football (only the flag variant) or baseball (only the softball variant), yet I still enjoy watching others play them.  With basketball, I played it a bit in my youth and likewise enjoy it as a spectator...the same goes for soccer.  Ice hockey?  Never played and don't like to watch it.  With more individual-oriented sports like tennis and golf, I have played very little with the former and only the miniature version of the the latter...yet I have come to be a fan of the pro tournaments in both sports.  Swimming I'm not good at but enjoy watching races.  The sports I do engage in...running and speed-walking...I ironically don't like to watch, unless it's one of those virtual races on YouTube...

No Racing This Weekend

I was planning to go to my local Albert Massey "Westside" Park this morning to participate in the US Road Running racing event scheduled on the fourth Saturday each month...I was going to do the 10K race, which I did there a month ago.  In the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, which brought down a lot of branches if not whole trees even in Gainesville, not in its direct path, the Depot Parkrun, held in that city park, was canceled for today at the request of the Gainesville authorities who expressed the need for time to clear it of debris.  I'm imagining that the same conditions exist at Westside as well, and besides when I woke up this morning it was raining and soggy...yuck.  So, instead I'll exercise some indoors today and make the best of what's around me.  I think I got a little spoiled anyway with that Depot Parkrun being held every week...a little break from public races, as with other things, can be a healthy thing...

Quote of the Week...from Geladriel in Tolkien's Lord of the Rings

And nine, nine rings were gifted to the race of Men, who above all else desire power.     ---Geladriel 

In J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, Geladriel...played in the film version by Cate Blanchett...is the "Lady" of the Woods, the great Elf-queen of Lothlorien.  She gives a preamble to the epic, explaining the origins of the different rings bestowed upon the various humanoid groups of Middle Earth by the scheming Sauron, deviously seeking to bind them all under his control with the Ring of Power.  As for men, the above quote explains their rings and their motivations...they themselves seek power, even if it means ultimately bowing down and surrendering all of the values they claim to hold dear.  Rings are pretty to behold...as is the notion of free and open elections in our "real" present times.  Both are attractive features of society, yet in the final analysis our politics point to Geladriel's message, which is that with politics as with most anything else, people seek power over others.  In our 2024 election cycle, all those smiling faces and resumes and family backgrounds and staunchly held "principles" are like rings masking the true aim of aspirants to political office: the attainment of a position enabling them to tell others what to do and how to live. When I see a political ad, whether on TV or social media or in my mailbox, I don't see potential public servants but rather power-grabbers. Sorry to be the one to bring you these sober tidings...no, I'm not, actually I'm quite happy to do so, thank you...