My Jigsaw Puzzle of Stature of Liberty with Manhattan Background

The above image is yet another jigsaw puzzle I've recently assembled, this one a view of the Statue of Liberty in the Hudson River with Lower Manhattan...highlighted by the New World Trade Center skyscraper in the background.  I've been to New York City only once, back in 2010 with Melissa and Rebecca, and that time was very special to us.  We focused on Manhattan with our visit, staying at the Marriott Marquis hotel on Times Square, touring the whole area and building wonderful memories of the place.  Of course, back then the World Trade Center site was closed off to the public, with construction of the new building just in its fledgling stages.  If you go back on this blog to April of 2010 you'll find a few articles and photos pertaining to that four-day stay.  Some time in the future I'd like to go back, but then again there are also other places I'm looking forward to seeing in person...

Happy Groundhog Day, If You Can Get Past It

Well, at least according to the media treatment I've seen, it looks like Groundhog Day is rapidly achieving a greater status of recognition as a holiday.  No doubt the Bill Murray comedy with the same name has contributed much of the enthusiasm, but that movie came out way back in 1993...something else must be generating it as well.  We have been experiencing some pretty nutty winter weather as of late...especially down south with all the snow...maybe folks are more interested in the weather patterns.  Then, maybe people have decided to actually believe that animals like groundhogs really can predict the weather...judging from the recent presidential election result, they seem to be more susceptible to all kinds of bullshit, no matter how ridiculous.  For me, the movie, with Murray's Phil Connors character having to live the same day over and over again with no end in sight, carries with it not only the promise of a queer kind of immortality, but also the security of knowing exactly what will happen next in life and being able to learn how to be the best in just about anything.  Well, I'm reasonably confident that when I wake up after going to bed tonight, it will be the next day, February the 3rd...no immortality guaranteed, at least in this fleshy body, but it's still a reset if I let it happen.  Each day a new beginning...that sounds like a good formula to me, good weather or bad...  

Speed-Walked the Depot Parkrun 5K in Gainesville This Morning

In Gainesville this morning, unlike for the previous two weekends, extreme weather was not a factor in my racing.  For today's Depot Parkrun 5K, held at that park a little ways south of downtown, the temperature was a pleasant 57 degrees at 7:30 race time although the humidity was a little bit heavy at 93%.  I decided to speed-walk the 3.1 miles, seeing that it had been a while since the last time and I do like the idea of walking fast instead of running on at least one 5K per month.  There were a lot of runners and walkers this morning...later on at 11 am there was another race in the area that drew several hundred entrants.  I enjoyed pushing myself on this walk, but as before it seems that I've hit a wall when it comes to making a breakthrough with my time.  I want to get my speed-walking best time below 38 minutes for a 5K, but today I crossed the finish line at 39:15.  I wonder whether the slightly slippery asphalt surface...due to earlier showers...had anything to do with slowing me down.  I enjoyed the event, though...click HERE to view the results.  Next week the Florida Track Club is staging their annual Micanopy 10-Mile run, and I've already signed up for it.  I'm hoping the weather remains reasonable for that race as well, but there's no telling what it will be like from week to week...

Quote of the Week...from Albert Einstein

We are slowed down sound and light waves, a walking bundle of frequencies turned into the cosmos.  We are souls dressed up in sacred biochemical garments and our bodies are the instruments through which our souls play their music.                                    ---Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein here sounds a bit like the late Carl Sagan, who once on his Cosmos TV series proclaimed that we were made of "star stuff".  Without referring to dogmatic religious ideology handed down from generation to generation and often enforced through state-sponsored coercion, I like to speculate from time to time on our fundamental natures and the relationship between our perceived subjective identities and the objective reality of the world around us.  I think Einstein pretty much put it down accurately, beyond the quote's poetic quality.  I think that those of us who experience the grief involved in surviving the loss of a loved one...and ultimately that is a fate for each of us who are "survivors"...have to come to grips with the real value and significance of that departed person's life as they lived out their life span.  Each of us has our own "end" as well, but until then may my soul sing songs of gratitude and love through my own biochemical garments...

My January 2025 Running, Walking and Swimming Report

On this next-to-last day of the month, I thought it was close enough to the end to discuss January regarding my running, walking and swimming.  Let's eliminate swimming up front: it didn't happen in January, primarily because of colder-than-usual weather.  With walking...at least speed-walking...I still practiced it at home but didn't do it in any of my races.  I'm considering speed-walking the Depot Parkrun 5K this coming Saturday morning, but that's in a new month.  Now with running, there's a lot to report.  On New Year's Day I ran my first officially timed mile since college in the fall of 1974 (I did a passable 5:25 then at age 18).  It was the Frank Shorter Mile, organized by the Florida Track Club, and I enjoyed the experience although I was much slower than decades ago at 8:25.  In mid-January the same group held the Mary Andrews Half-Marathon, which I completed under adversely cold weather conditions after it was delayed a day because of thunderstorms.  A week later I did the Newnan's Lake 15K in similarly freezing conditions.  The rest of January saw me finish four Depot Parkrun 5Ks, three of them all-out runs and one a walk with Melissa through the course.  At home I practiced running daily, and added some resistance training, regularly and incrementally doing push-ups and dead hangs.  In January my date for prostate removal surgery was set in early March, and I've been cleared to continue with my running and other athletic activities.  I already signed up to run the Micanopy Ten-Miler race on the 8th...it will be my third time with this event.  Otherwise, I plan to go to Depot Park and run or walk their Saturday morning 5K race.   I feel completely well and energetic, which as I've written before doesn't exactly mesh with my recent prostate cancer diagnosis.  Oh well, looking forward to new adventures, athletic or medical...a little travel at some point would be cool, too...

Weekly Short Stories: 1999 Science Fiction, Part 1

Today I begin reviewing stories from the year 1999 as they appeared in the Gardner Dozois anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction, Seventeenth Annual Collection.  I remember that year...besides Prince's 1983 anthem heralding its coming...as being full of uncertainty about the coming Y2K, that is the year 2000, and the feared shutdown of computer-based society that was supposed to descend on us after the calendar changed at midnight.  Of course, nothing came of that...I wonder, though, about this acceleration in the development and implementation of Artificial Intelligence and ask myself whether maybe folks weren't worrying about the wrong thing.  In any event, below is my discussion of the one story I've being reading for the past week. Once again, it's a novella: Dozois sure loved "long" short stories...

THE WEDDING ALBUM by David Marusek

The anthology's editor, in his preface to this tale, referred back to an earlier story by Marusek titled We Were Out of Our Minds with Joy.  Both of them take place in the not-too-distant future, when biological and digital advances have brought into question the meaning of what it means to be alive and possess identity.  Told from the shifting perspectives of "sims", that is animated, life-size copies of real people that can freely be altered or even deleted at the "real" owners' discretion, the author seems to be forwarding the notion that artificially-constructed intelligence deserves some recognition for its own rights and interests.  In a world being overtaken in the 2020's by rapidly accelerating advances in AI, this to me portends something likewise that may be on our horizon.  That said, the story was hard for me to follow as the narrative had a tendency to confuse what is real with what isn't...

Next week I'm forging ahead with more stories from 1999 (hope they're easier to follow)...

My Songs of the Month for January 2025

Since I now have on my Amazon account unfettered access to music, I've decided to make more of an effort to keep up with the current songs out there.  Not any kind of music though: I'm partial to indie/alternative rock.  They have a channel called Indie-Rock, so in the past few days I've checked out what's coming out.  Back in the early 1970's, when I was in my mid-to-late teens, I used to decide my own personal "song of the month" according to my likes...I'm thinking of resuming that.  Let's see, what are my top songs of January 2025?

1 Everyone Out...by DIIV (pronounced "dive")

2 The Narcissist...by Blur

3 Starburster...by Fontaines DC

4 Zero Sum...by the Smile

All of the above are in the indie-alternative-rock genre of popular music...you can listen to them/watch their videos on YouTube, too.  There's another song I've heard from time to time that I like, but don't know how to find out who did it or its title...maybe it'll resurface sometime...

Recent NFL Playoffs, Tennis and Golf

This past weekend saw me following three different sports, and each of their time circumstances made a difference.  The Australian Open tennis tournament, one of the year's four Grand Slam events, takes place on the other side of the world, so it wasn't surprising that the men's final match between Jannik Sinner and Alexander Zverev took place live at 3:30 AM Eastern Time.  Wanting to watch it later without knowing in advance who won, I went on YouTube to see if they had a prerecording of the championship match. But the finale's result was all over the site and I didn't stand a chance of not knowing that Sinner had won.  Oh well...

There was a PGA golf tournament this weekend as well, the Farmers Insurance Open out on the California coast.  The four rounds were each moved ahead a day in order for the final round to take place on Saturday and not compete for network TV coverage with the NFL conference championships games on Sunday.  I enjoyed the close finish of the Farmers as Harris English calmly parred hole after hole to win it by a single stroke...

The National Football League conference championships, held on Sunday, both went the way I wanted as Philadelphia convincingly beat Washington 55-23 and Kansas City barely squeaked by Buffalo 32-29. Controversy seems destined to follow the Chiefs, who have been accused on social media of being unfairly favored by questionable officiating.  A couple of the calls by Sunday's officiating crew were crucial to the game's outcome: an apparent fourth down conversion late in the game by the Bills was called to be short and a Chief receiver's called reception on a deep pass was shown on replay to touch the ground.  I thought Buffalo played well enough to win, but so did Kansas City.  Now it's on to the Super Bowl a couple of weeks from now as KC and Philly meet in the Big Game for the second time in three years...

My Cloud Gate, Chicago Jigsaw Puzzle

 

Cloud Gate, or as it is commonly known, the "Bean", is situated at the northern end of Chicago's Millennium Park.  Made from stainless steel to resemble mercury, it was designed by sculptor Anish Kapoor and completed in 2006.  Melissa, Will and I visited it in 2019...click HERE for a link to that article on this blog.  I recently enjoyed putting together this jigsaw puzzle, not only for the beautiful work of art it shows as well as the background of Chicago, but also for the personal memories of being together with our son as we enjoyed the sights of the Windy City... 

Ran This Morning's Newnan's Lake 15K East of Gainesville

Anticipating sub-thirty temperatures this morning as I set out to run, for the fourth time, the Newnan's Lake 15K...just a short distance east of Gainesville off Hawthorne Road...I planned in advance for the event with two layers of wicking long-sleeved shirts and full-length running pants.  Melissa lent me her gloves to fend off the cold on my sensitive hands, and I was good to go.  The last time I ran Newnan's Lake was 2018: there were noticeably fewer entrants this time around, and I had no trouble finding a parking spot.  No need for porta-potties, either: the fishing ramp park from which this race is staged has its own restroom facilities.  When the race began at 8:30, it was around 28 degrees, no wind to speak of, and around 80% humidity.  The race course went a bit down the side of Hawthorne Road westward until it turned right at Lake Shore Drive.  Then we ran for a while down that road, with marshy Newnan's Lake on our right.  The road eventually transformed into East University Avenue, which we went down with some small detours as we turned around after 4.65 miles, going back the way we came.  The first part of the run seemed for me to be mostly upwardly sloped, so returning down it the other way was a bit of a relief.  I had to unzip my outer shirt/jacket as the day (and my body) heated up, along with shedding those gloves that were so helpful early on.  Lately on these longer-distance races I've tended to exceed my intended pace...happened again!  But although I felt sore and part of me wanted to take a walking break, I kept general pace with the runners in front of me and finished with a time of 1 hour 25 minutes 22 seconds, which turns out to be my third highest 15K finish ever (of nine).  You can view today's results by clicking HERE.  My recovery from today's race is going fine...

Quote of the Week...from W.C. Fields

It ain't a fit night out for man nor beast.                          W.C. Fields

Early twentieth century comedy legend W.C. Fields wrote and starred in a short film in 1933 titled The Fatal Glass of Beer.  His character, Pa Snavely, lives in a cabin in the frigid Yukon cold.  Without getting into the story's plot, the one thing that stuck with me so many years later was Fields opening up the cabin's door, loudly proclaiming the above quote, and then receiving a blast of fake snow in his face...this happened a number of times, each one hilarious.  I've grown to use Fields' quote whenever the weather is sub-par, especially if it's stormy or cold.  Lately I've been signing up for distance running races that would fit that description, the last one being the off-and-then-on half-marathon I ran this past Monday morning.  That one started out being too stormy to stage, and then ended up exceeding cold (for my admittedly wimpy Florida standards) after being delayed one day.  Tomorrow morning is going to be another one of those "ain't a fit night out" instances as the temperature has been forecast to bottom out at 26 degrees.  Remember, I'm a Floridian and a lifelong one at that: 26 degrees ain't fit for much of anything...

Physical Therapy, 15K Race Slated for Next Two Days

In this clearly bizarre period in my life, tomorrow I have an appointment at the UF Medical Plaza with a physical therapist who will almost certainly introduce me to the Kegel exercises for my lower pelvic floor muscles that are supposed to help me recover the appropriate bodily functions following scheduled surgery in early March to remove my cancerous prostate.  Then, Saturday morning I'm signed up to run a 9.3 mile race, the Newnan's Lake 15K, which I've done three times before although the last time was in 2018.  I'm physically feeling fine and even athletic, yet medically I'm in a rough state...my physicians, however, have been encouraging to me about my continued physical activity. Following the operation, of course, that's going to change drastically in intensity as my body's healing takes priority.  In a life where uncertainty is an elemental feature, I'm at a state of peace about all this.  Still, not having to deal with the medical issues would have been much more welcome...

Weekly Short Stories: 1998 Science Fiction, Part 13

Today I finally reach the end of my look at the year 1998 in the genre of short science fiction, presented in the Gardner Dozois anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction, Sixteenth Annual Collection.  I say "short", although several of this series' stories are actually of novella length, including the one I'm reviewing below...

THE SUMMER ISLES by Ian R. MacLeod

Here is an alternate history tale, set in England, an England that lost World War I instead of Germany, enduring the sanctions, international humiliation and rise of fascism in its politics.  Set in 1940, it looks as if England's fascist (called "Modernist" here) prime minister John Arthur is about to go to war against his old European rivals, a mirror of what Hitler in Germany did in "our" reality.  The story's narrator is an Oxford professor, Griffin Brooke, who knows all about Arthur and his mysterious past. The fascist movement in Britain is also bent on scapegoating groups like Jews and homosexuals.  With the former, whole families are secretly swept away, to supposedly live out their lives away from everyone else on the Summer Isles north of Scotland...but what's really happening? And with the homosexuals...count Griffin Brooke among their number...the ones without Brooke's social standing are sent to the Isle of Man for conversion treatment.  This novella hops back and forth in time, and paints a bleak picture of how a fascist movement gains momentum through populism and scapegoating other groups for the people's problems.  It also suggests that fascist governments can vary to the degree that their brutality and oppression are exercised, depending on the already existing social institutions.  I am concerned about the future of my country in the face of a rising populist fascist movement...it's almost as if I'm living out a highly improbable alternate history with this current regime being happily voted into power by a plurality of the electorate with all the information they had, doing so with eyes wide open...

Next week I'll be starting on a new book featuring science fiction stories from the year 1999...

Wilmot Botanical Gardens...and Will

 

Our dearly beloved son Will tragically left us for heaven last July...we miss him so much.  He was employed by the University of Florida and worked with their IT section.  In honor of him, they placed a brick bearing his name, alongside others honoring departed UF employees, on the walkway of their beautiful Wilmot Botanical Gardens.  This place, under the management of UF Medicine, is situated just north of their Medical Plaza off Archer Road.  I have been there a bit recently with radiology and physician consults, and Melissa and I gladly took advantage of these visits to stroll and sit here.  It was kind and thoughtful of those at the University of Florida to accord this honor to my son.  Wilmot Botanical Gardens has a number of different-themed gardens within it...Will's memorial brick is accessible through the Japanese Maple Tree Garden...

Ran the Florida Track Club Mary Andrews Half-Marathon This Morning

Named in honor of local distance runner Mary Andrews, who passed away a few years ago from cancer, the Florida Track Club has been holding an annual combination marathon/half-marathon event on the eastern end of the Hawthorne Trail here in Alachua County some 15-20 miles southeast of Gainesville.  I've run their half-marathon the previous two years there, and covered the exact same course (doubled over) for the full marathon last November with a different organizing group.  I had considered signing up for the marathon this year, but decided with my ongoing medical issues to play it more conservatively and settle for a 13.1 mile run.  Only one problem, though: right after I signed up for the race, severe weather forecasts began to abound about race day morning: it was going to be a very wet, rainy affair unless thunderstorms canceled it outright.  The Florida Track Club organizers began to e-mail us updates concerning Sunday morning, when the race was scheduled, and about what they would do about the bad weather.  I woke up that morning intending to just skip it all and let it go for another year when I received their e-mail stating that they had moved everything to this morning instead.  I was happy about that, and headed down there to run my half-marathon, starting at 8 am with the rain and thunder long gone, replaced by painfully (for me) cold conditions: 35 degrees, 75% humidity.  I somehow managed to get everything in place for the race's start, and my strategy was simple: I wouldn't try to set any personal best, but rather just run through it all and try to follow just behind the slowest pacer they provided, which was stated in their guide at 2 hours 20 minutes.  At the start I was near the back of the pack and searched ahead for my pacer...never found him/her for the simple reason that they didn't have any pacers.  By the time I realized that, I found myself running a much faster pace than planned, stumbling my way at the end to a chip time of 2:05:13...some two-and-a-half minutes faster than last year's finishing time and my fastest half-marathon since February 2015.   You can view the results by clicking HERE. Because the race had been delayed a day, there were fewer participants and, as a result, I was eligible to get a very attractive lavender running jacket with the Mary Andrews logo, along with a similarly-decorated coffee mug and some electrolyte-infused coffee.  So this extended weekend saw me running two races, a 5K on Saturday and a half-marathon today.  I doubt I'll be doing that again, and with my upcoming surgery in March it doesn't look like another half-marathon is within the immediate future for me either.  I'm glad I ran today's race...I didn't experience any leg cramps like I did after last November's marathon.  Then again, I went heavy on electrolytes before the race...

Recent Done Jigsaw Puzzle of Washington Monument

Here's another recent jigsaw puzzle I've put together...this one depicts the Washington Monument off in the distance in our nation's capital, from the vantage point of the Lincoln Memorial looking over the pool at the west end of the Mall. Melissa and I visited there back in October, 2018.  We saw a couple of Smithsonian museums, the Capitol (sitting in both the Senate and House chambers), Library of Congress, Lincoln Memorial, Martin Luther King Memorial, Vietnam Memorial and Arlington Cemetery.  It was a memorable visit, and I put this puzzle out on my blog since not only is tomorrow Martin Luther King, Jr, Day, but it's also the day that our next presidential inauguration takes place.  Because of the frigid cold weather, this ceremony has been moved indoors, to the Capitol Rotunda. But I'm only going to be celebrating the legacy of our late civil rights leader, not the return to power of the convicted felon...

Ran Gainesville's Depot Parkrun 5K This Morning

Right after I signed up for a half-marathon race that's supposed to happen tomorrow morning in Hawthorne, I began to see weather alerts pointing to severe storms from a strong winter front that is to span much of the weekend, beginning Saturday (today) evening and dropping extensive rain on our area into Sunday afternoon.  That sucks...probably wouldn't have signed up had I known that.  But it is what it is...didn't Donald Trump once say that...and here I am with a soaking-sucking weekend ahead of me.  I'm skeptical that I'll show up in Hawthorne early tomorrow morning, but I'll leave that decision up to the "me" that experiences that time when it comes around.  Instead, I got up early this morning...after a rare bout with insomnia...and hauled myself out to Depot Park, a few blocks south of downtown Gainesville, to see what I could salvage today before the buckets start pouring down.  For today's Depot Parkrun 5K, it was still dry (although humid at 87%) with a bearable 53 degrees at 7:30 race time.  I felt a little stiff and out of sorts from lack of sleep, but I went out on the run pushing myself, despite feeling that this race was going to be a slow one.  It turned out, though, that while I felt I was struggling a bit, I had a better-than-expected final time at 27:45...not my personal best for a Parkrun, but still better than last Saturday's: click HERE to view today's race results.  As for tomorrow's race, the organizers e-mailed me an update yesterday stating that they were considering delaying the 8 am start if the rain was falling too hard.  But I'd rather know that was going to happen before I go down there and find myself stuck, waiting around in the rain: tell me your decision sometime today, please, if you're gonna do that.  I don't mind getting a little wet, but I'm guessing that the grounds are going to be thoroughly saturated, with a lot of puddles to run through on the paved course.  So at least I got in a nice little run this morning, even if I end up (as I'm currently inclined) skipping tomorrow's event...

Quote of the Week...from Jim Carrey

I think everybody should get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of so they can see that it's not the answer.                                          ---Jim Carrey

I've always thought that comedic actor Jim Carrey was very talented, although truth be told I sometimes felt that he had a tendency to ham it up just a little too much in his movies.  But his characters in the 90's comedy series In Living Color were hilarious.  Carrey has turned out later in his life to be quite a philosopher, a thoughtful individual.  His above quote appealed to me not because I think there's anything wrong in being rich and famous and doing everything I ever dreamed of, but because I think that too many of us stumble through life believing in those goals and feeling that anything less than their fulfillment is the sign of a failed life.  I like material well-being without necessarily being rich.  I like recognition from others for achievements I've attained without me attaining those achievements in order to receive recognition.  I like to fulfill some of my dreams as well.  But I also believe that there is such a thing as "enough", and once I've reached a level in some area then I'm (hopefully) content enough to explore other areas as well.  I think Carrey was hinting that community and the helping of others as part of a deeper, more spiritual outlook should also be a part of the "answer". As for me, let me take this day and just see what I can do with it.  Then, when and if tomorrow comes, I'll take that day on its own terms, and so on.  And if along the way there are some things I'd like to have and some things I'd like to do, then that's cool, too...

Jigsaw Puzzle of St. Louis' Gateway Arch

I've never been to St. Louis, but I always liked its Gateway Arch.  A few weeks ago Melissa and I went to Daytona Beach and while there visited their Marshalls store off A1A.  There I got a box loaded with jigsaw puzzles depicting various famous American scenes.  I think that from time to time I'll show one of them that I've put together...

Weekly Short Stories: 1998 Science Fiction, Part 12

I'm getting closer to the end of the Gardner Dozois anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction, Sixteenth Annual Collection, which covers the editor's picks of short stories and novellas from the year 1998. I've been doing this more-or less weekly sci-fi review Wednesday series for a few years, starting with stories first published in 1939...I'm planning to eventually bring it all up to the present.  But first a couple more from '98...

FREE IN ASVEROTH by Jim Grimsley

On a distant world, the narrator recounts her experience of breaking out of captivity one day with two of her kind, and their struggle against the "two legs" to stay free as they are relentlessly pursued.  It's no mystery who those pursuers are, either: human settlers...well, invaders...who have brutally fought the indigenous intelligent life, demeaning them as savages and destroying their society and freedom.  No doubt this is a direct analogy to all those times in our "two leg" history when one conquering group regarding itself as "superior" did the same upon encountering another more "primitive" group, such as the American Indians or Australian aborigines.  I sincerely hope our flawed humanity will have outgrown this tendency before we settle the cosmos, should that ever occur...

THE DANCING FLOOR by Cherry Wilder

An asteroid has been terraformed and transformed into a paradise, only to be evacuated and abandoned due to mismanagement and overreaction to some life support malfunctions.  There are some hangers-on hiding on this tiny artificial world constructed by a wealthy, eccentric magnate, though, and they resist contact and interaction with the "outsiders", which is pretty much everyone else.  And they especially despise the androids sent to their world.  The "Dancing Floor" in the story's title is the main reason one of the visiting team's members is there: it seems of alien construction, although its function is a mystery. Here's a tale that leads the reader in one direction with secondary characters inserted in the plot, only to find those secondary characters at the end to be of primary significance. My only problem with this short story was trying to keep up with the many named characters the author introduced: finally I just wrote each new name down as they appeared... 

Next week I'll hopefully get around to reviewing the final tale in this anthology, once again appearing to be one of those long, drawn-out novellas of which Dozois was so fond...