Just Finished Reading Wish You Were Here by Rita Mae Brown

A few days ago I decided to head down to my local public library to see about possibly replacing my old worn out library card.  After they told me it could still scan, I instead just went browsing and checked out a couple of books, one a mystery novel and the other science fiction.  I managed to select...from what was offered...the very first in a long series of books by Rita Mae Brown...with partial credit given to her cat Sneaky Pie Brown...called the Mrs. Murphy Mysteries.  Wish You Were Here introduces protagonist Mary Minor Haristeen, or more simply "Harry", who lives in the western Virgina town of Crozet with her cat Mrs. Murphy and corgi dog Tee Tucker.  This inaugural mystery centers around brutal murders of townspeople, preceded by the victims receiving in the mail cryptic postcards depicting gravestones with the phrase "Wish You Were Here" on the flip side.  Harry, who manages the local post office, is in the perfect location to see this unfold as the cards begin to arrive.  But she's not the only sleuth around. Mrs. Murphy and Tucker, who know everything and everyone around and who can talk fluently with each other and their other animal friends, are the main detectives: they just have trouble getting their ideas across to the often dense humans.  It's a funny book, and I appreciated how it featured a list of characters that I repeatedly referred back to as I read along.  Wish You Were Here is light, escapist reading (284 pages paperback) for folks who have an affinity (as I do) for cats and dogs. It first came out in 1990, and some twenty-odd other Mrs. Murphy novels have followed...I'm ready to get started on Book Two.  But first I think I'll tackle that sci-fi novel I also checked out...

Weekly Short Stories: 1999 Science Fiction, Part 11

Today I discuss two well-written stories from 1999 that appear in the Gardner Dozois anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction, Seventeenth Annual Collection.  I always like to see Robert Silverberg's presence in these anthologies, and Paul J. McAuley likewise contributed a thought-provoking entry.  Here's my take on them...

A HERO OF THE EMPIRE by Robert Silverberg

Close to novella-length, this is an alternative history tale that speculates on how history may have progressed had the Western Roman Empire remained as a powerful entity into the seventh-century, AD.  A member of the Emperor Justinian's court has been sent, ostensibly in disgrace but in reality to be a spy, to the stark desert land of Arabia where he not only befriends the Eastern Empire's representative there, but also meets up with a local charismatic fanatic who simultaneously enthralls and scares him with his convictions.  I wonder, given the violent touchiness certain world religions have toward those who they feel are taking liberties with their ideology, if Silverberg's 1999 story might have had a different fate were it submitted for publishing following 9/11 only a couple of years later.  Not that it contains anything offensive, but that ending might have been just a bit too unsettling to an intolerantly true believer...

HOW WE LOST THE MOON, A TRUE STORY BY FRANK W. ALLEN by Paul J. McAuley

Here's a truly "hard" science fiction story, that is, one with scientific viability playing a key role in its plot and outcome.  Here the reader gets a crash course...without the advanced mathematics...on black holes and the degree of threat that they might pose if close to Earth.  "Frank W. Allen" in the title is apparently the first-person fictional character relating the events that, in a near-future scenario, indeed determine the fate of our moon.  Along with his physicist colleague, working on the moon to fix problems at various research sites, the two arrive at a somber conclusion after an accident at a base on the Far Side.  You might gather from this that Earth and its life would be in peril...yet astonishingly, this doesn't seem to be the case.  An intriguing story that makes me wonder whether something like this could actually occur...

Next week I continue looking at the year 1999 in short science fiction...

Happy Earth Day...If Your "Truth" Allows It

So today is officially Earth Day...are we still interested in it?  After all, it's only the one planet we know that can sustain life in our universe.  But then again, that pesky former vice-president Al Gore did come out, a little more than a couple of decades ago, with his An Inconvenient Truth book that presented the widely-held view among climatologists that the world is warming at an alarming rate, due to man-made forces.  Ever since then, the issue has been divided on political lines with the Democrats generally supporting measures to counteract climate change and the Republicans in a "convenient" state of denial as they go full speed ahead with fossil fuels.  I remember back in April 1970 when another Republican, president Richard Nixon, was there at the inauguration of Earth Day.  In spite of his flaws, this was a president who understood the fragility of our home planet and supported environmental regulation.  It's sad to see much of this fall by the wayside as people nowadays choose their own "truths" and condemn the "other side" as enemies...

Saw Physical Therapist Again Today

Today I went on my appointment to see the physical therapist assigned me regarding my recovery from prostatectomy surgery on March 6th.  Although it has indeed been more than six weeks since that time and the general guidelines for resuming running allow for it after that interval, my therapist seems a bit more cautious about it, handing me a paper with some preconditions for returning to running that, frankly, I find a little unreasonable.  Oh well, I'm the one who has to make the decisions about that, and I think I'm being cautious enough.  In any event, I have four new exercises to work on daily, and then next month I'll have a follow-up p.t. appointment.  My physical therapist is also a runner, she does marathons, and is recovering from a leg injury probably caused by overtraining...I have to take this into consideration when taking her advice.  Some of the paper's criteria about running, interestingly, don't seem to matter when discussing simple walking.  Being someone whose sensibilities about health indicate that between active and sedentary, the former is usually the best road taken, and taking into account that I won't be doing any races anyway that are longer than 5K until October at the earliest because of the hot spring and summer here in northern Florida, I'm inclined to stick to what I've been doing.  Which is cautiously incrementally challenging my body...alternating with resting it well...as I continue to heal...

Easter Celebrated with Family

I hope all of you who celebrate Easter have enjoyed this holiday today.  You have to be something of an astronomer to determine, on your own, on which date this honoring of Jesus' resurrection falls within each calendar year.  The formula is: Easter (as celebrated in the West, not in the Eastern Orthodox churches) lies on the first Sunday following the first full moon following the first day of spring...for some reason it goes that way, maybe you can enlighten me on why.  Melissa and I spent it at home, with various folks in our family stopping by to enjoy lunch with us...what a blessing.  Later on in the day I watched the conclusion of the ongoing PGA golf tournament, the Heritage Classic held in Hilton Head, South Carolina.  Justin Thomas held on in sudden death to win his first tourney in some years...good for him, I guess.  I'm not a golfer...the irony is that were I one, I probably wouldn't have any interest in rooting for one over another in these tournaments.  After all, I'm a runner and I absolutely could not care less about the premier runners in the world or this country...or even in my own home town of Gainesville, for that matter.  That's another thing that maybe you can enlighten me on why...  

Just Did Gainesville's Depot Parkrun 5K This Morning

It's been a little more than six weeks following my surgery, and going by their guidelines about when I can resume running, I decided for today's Depot Parkrun 5K...held weekly at that park just south of downtown Gainesville...to mix in some running with the speed-walking I had been doing for the previous three weeks.  So, for the first three (of four) laps, I would walk the front side and run the back side.  On the last lap I ran most of it...finishing with a hybrid walk/run mix time of 34:51.  It was obviously more tiring to add in the running, but at this writing it's a little more than two hours since my finish and I feel fine...no pain or soreness.  Melissa went with me today...always encouraging...and she gamely walked half the event: keep it up, Sweetheart! It was a reasonable 60 degrees at 7:30 am race time...the humidity was a muggy 94%. You can view today's results by clicking HERE.  Depot Parkrun is just one of the Parkrun organization's hundreds of events held worldwide.  It's free, and you register online to receive a printable barcode that you take to be scanned after the race...then your results are posted online.  It's been a good habit for me for the past few years, especially regarding my recovery from my two surgeries.  

Chicken Family Jigsaw Puzzle

 

I just finished another jigsaw puzzle.  This one, a 300-piece depiction of a chicken family complete with rooster, hens and chicks, is a painting by Linda Picken titled "Farm Friends"...she has her own country property out west with lots of different animals on it.  I picked it up a few days ago at a chain crafts store on Newberry Road here in Gainesville.  I liked the combination of all the different colors and shapes in her picture...as well as the bigger individual pieces...

Six Weeks Now After Surgery

With today it is six weeks since I was operated on (six hours duration) to remove my cancerous prostate.  In spite of that and staying overnight in the hospital, I was never officially admitted there and was released the following day around noon as an outpatient.  That I didn't stay longer, though, was okay with me as I don't entirely relish hospital stays...my guess is that you probably don't, either. My progress after the surgery, beginning with an 11-day cathetorization of my bladder and a degree of pain and difficulty with sleep, has continued to the present day, with the predicted incontinence gradually lightening up...although I always had a substantial degree of control over my bladder from the moment the despised catheter was finally removed.  Aside from another "predicted" issue that may or may not be resolved during the next few months of healing, the only thing now concerning me with this unwanted medical episode in my life is next month's PSA (protein-specific antigen) blood test to determine the probability (or improbability) that the cancer had remained on a microscopic level in my body.  My urologist/surgeon expressed to me his confidence that there is a 65% chance that I was cleared of it, but I still have a month before I find out.  Regardless, my provider seems to have it all worked out with future treatment (or lack thereof), whatever the test results reveal.  In the meantime, life goes on and I intend to live it to the fullest...

Weekly Short Stories: 1999 Science Fiction, Part 10

Here we are again, with another week gone by as I delve further into the Gardner Dozois anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction, Seventeenth Annual Collection, featuring tales published in 1999.  The two short stories I'm discussing below go in two opposite directions, the first deep into the distant past and the second far ahead in the future.  But ultimately both deal in some fashion with the question of what is consciousness, and what forms can it take...  

BORDER GUARDS by Greg Egan

A "young" man wakes up out of his "death" to resume living among his peers in a manufactured world, thousands of years into the future (and in his own life).  He is essentially immortal, due to an invention from late in our own 21st century.  As he encounters a certain woman, he learns lessons about the value of life...and death as well.  This story bothered me in that it assumes that consciousness is completely independent of the brain and that a durable machine can serve as its replacement home.  Then again, I never accepted the "transporter" idea in Star Trek, either.  Sure, the individual materializing on the other end is a carbon copy of the original, but didn't that original person that got "beamed" disintegrate into death? 

SCHERZO WITH TYRANNOSAUR by Michael Swanwick

This is one of those annoying time travel stories that I thought writers like Robert Heinlein had pretty well written into the ground concerning all the potential paradoxes involved, particularly in traveling into the past. This "time" a business is thriving late in the Cretaceous period just a few thousand years from the meteor strike that would cause extinction to the dinosaurs.  One of the employees observes a raptor dinosaur show, resembling in a way Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park, but in this case it's the human tourists traveling back in time, not the dinosaurs transported to the present.  The paradoxical scenarios presented here keep accumulating until in the end the reader is tempted to just say to hell with it all.  Guess you might infer that I'm a bit skeptical about this sub-genre of science fiction...

Next week I'll see if I can't comment on further stories from the Dozois anthology covering the year 1999...

Happy Income Tax Deadline Day

April 15, Tax Day, has come and is about to end for 2025.  Having worked for the post office here in Gainesville for 37 years before last year's retirement, I am well acquainted with the extraordinary measures they would take on this day, with SW 34th Street traffic backed up from the main processing plant's entrance as folks would wait to the last minute to file their taxes, and then dump off their returns at night to get them postmarked "in time" before midnight.  Nowadays, of course, we have software to do most of the tedious work and calculations while payments can come electronically out of our bank accounts or refunds likewise deposited into them.  Melissa and I, because of the tragic circumstances in 2024 with our family, had more difficulty than usual with our filing, but we somehow managed to get it all finished with several days to spare.  I remember back in Trump's first term when he was pushing his own vision of tax "reform" through Congress and Ted Cruz opined that filing one's income tax should be simple enough to do on the back of a postcard.  To which I would offer one of my rare "thumbs up" to the junior senator from Texas.  In any event, it's over for another year...

Congratulations to Masters Golf Tournament Champ Rory McIlroy

I watched a bit of the Masters Tournament this past weekend...yesterday Rory McIlroy managed to pull off a sudden death victory over Justin Rose to win his first Masters, completing what the golf world calls the "Grand Slam" of victories in all of the pro sport's major tourneys.  Congratulations, dude. The sports announcers were all full of sympathy and concern about McIlroy's failures in the past to get this one last tournament title, and wasn't it great that he finally pulled it off.  Rory, who has been coddled and guided since early childhood when he was discovered to have an aptitude for the game, has of course long been a very rich multimillionaire with worldwide name and face recognition.  So no, I'm not on board with the emotions spilled out on his behalf.  On the other hand, the social media seemed overly concerned about his relationship with his wife and her degree of support after the tournament...really, as if that's anybody's business.  Yet unlike with other sports, in professional golf you're expected to make a big show of being with your spouse and kids after knocking down the ball on the last hole.  I'm okay with everyone coming together at the end, sure, but this does sort of open up the athletes' private lives to unwelcome media scrutiny.  I've known a kid who grew up in a family where his own father was a coach in a certain sport, and he was groomed from early on to become a star player in it.  Everyone around sucked up to this kid for being such a big-shot player and he gained a lot of popularity...and I think it all went straight to his head.  I hope he's enjoyed a good life since leaving his "glory days" behind at my high school, but like McIlroy, if I hear of him having done well in that sport since then, there's really nothing for me to say beyond those simple congratulations... 

Another Jigsaw Puzzle...and Melissa Takes Her Sister to the Beach

 

Recently Melissa bought me a new jigsaw puzzle, a humorous 1000-piece painting of Yellowstone National Park with its Old Faithful geyser...I just completed it about an hour ago.  Meanwhile, she has taken her sister Krista for an overnight stay at Ormond Beach...that's them out on the balcony.  I'm glad Krista got this chance to get out on an excursion with Melissa...she has endured quite an ordeal with medical issues in the past two months and we are all praying for her recovery and a happy, healthy life.  So here I am at home, being babysat by my dog Daisy.  I hope that things are going well for you as well...

Speed-Walked This Morning's Depot Parkrun 5K

In the past on April 12th I would remember my late father, who passed away at age 87 in 2013, for today is his birthday.  Very sadly, I must add my son Will to the observance, for not only is today his birthday as well, but he tragically died last July...he would have been only 35 today, with his whole life in front of him.  I don't know that I will ever get over his passing...I just know that I miss him so, so much.  With this in mind as I got up early this morning, I remembered going on a Depot Parkrun walk with him and Melissa last May.  Will had been recovering from some back surgery a few weeks before and was making good progress...he gamely joined us in covering the four-lap, 3.1 mile course.  Today I walked it as I am, too, recovering from my own surgery, prostatectomy, and still adhering to the recommended walking instead of running: so I speed-walked it, enjoying the 51 degree weather at race time (85% humidity) and pushing myself to a final time of 41:23.  Click HERE to view today's results...

Hailstorm and Mini-Tornado (?)

Early this evening, while Melissa and I were eating out with a couple of dear old friends, Gainesville experienced a freak hailstorm that tore through much of the city.  We observed the spectacle from the restaurant window as pellets of ice bounced off the parked vehicles.  On the drive home the streets were strewn with the green branches and leaves torn from surrounding trees when the ice ripped through them.  The ice when we finally pulled up in front of our home was big enough to have come out of our freezer...pretty impressive, the most widespread hailstorm I can remember.  But to top that off, a couple of hours before we left, one of our big shade umbrellas on our back porch was suddenly lifted straight up from its basin...either by an extremely strong gust of wind or a small tornado...and transported through the air above our house and deposited in our neighbor's front yard near the mailboxes by the street.  We've had umbrellas blown down before, but never to that extent...

The Masters Golf Tournament Has Begun

Earlier today the Masters Tournament, the first of the professional golfing four "majors" of the year, began in Augusta, Georgia.  Justin Rose finished the first round at 7 under par, a three-stroke lead over defending Masters champion Scottie Scheffler.  I watched much of the TV coverage, which was carried on ESPN.  It was fun to recognize most of the golfers, and I was a little surprised by Rory McIlroy, who looked as if he might challenge Rose for the first round lead, only to experience some bad holes late on the "back nine" and find himself far back in the field.  For this major tournament, the LIV tour, the established PGA's rival in golfing, contributed its own star golfers that I usually don't get to see, like Bryson DeChambeau, Jon Rahm and Sergio Garcia...nice to see them out there all competing together with the PGA's own.  Frankly, after watching some of the LIV "action" in some of their tournaments, I was disappointed, not only in this league's overemphasis on team golf, but also in the televised coverage that focused way too heavily on putting and over-hyping its biggest names.  Now that some of them are back "down to earth" with the rest of the pros, let's see how they do.  For one, I'd like to see Bryson do well: he's just one stroke behind Scheffler...

Weekly Short Stories: 1999 Science Fiction, Part 9

It's Wednesday and time once again to address what I've been reading in the realm of short science fiction.  The book I'm going through is an anthology, edited by the late Gardner Dozois: The Year's Best Science Fiction, Seventeenth Annual Collection...covering short stories and novellas published in the year 1999. The tale I'm about to discuss might be termed a novella, and maybe just a long short story (or a short long story).  In any event, here's my reaction to it...

MOUNT OLYMPUS by Ben Bova

Ben Bova is one of those old-school hard science fiction writers who, like Robert Heinlein before him, envisioned what the emerging travel-to and exploration-of neighboring worlds in our solar system would be like in the years ahead of us.  You can learn a lot about astronomy and space travel from this particular story, which presents a fictional scenario about what it would be like to be on Mars, fly a specially-designed plane onto the surface of its massive, long-dormant volcano Olympus Mons, and then set out down into its caldera.  The story, written in plain language without some of those obnoxious literary pretensions I see in other writers, also seeks to be inclusive with the mission's crew, from different parts of the world and with their own special stories, motivations and concerns.  I found myself liking these people and rooting for them, much in the way I would for a Star Trek episode and its characters.  I wonder if Bova included some of those appearing in this story in any other material he wrote.  I liked Mount Olympus and wish there were more stories in the anthology like it...

Next week: more about short science fiction from '99...

Taking Physical Recovery a Day at a Time

I'm continuing to gradually make progress in my recovery from my March 6 prostatectomy surgery that removed a cancerous prostate.  It's a day-by-day process in which I have to be careful between resting enough to allow my body to heal and challenging it in small increments to recover its previous strength and functionality.  While this is going on, I have upcoming appointments, the first one in a couple of weeks with my physical therapist, and then...following a blood test to assess my PSA (protein-specific antigen) level that might indicate some residual cancer remaining in the body...a late-May meeting with my urologist/surgeon to determine my future path of treatment (if necessary).  But there's no point in me being concerned about any of this: through it all I plan to take each day as it comes and do my best with the time allotted me...sounds a bit like Gandalf's advice to Frodo, doesn't it...

UF Wins Men's Basketball National Championship

Congratulations to the University of Florida men's basketball team for winning the NCAA Championship Tournament tonight with an exciting come-from-behind 65-63 win over Houston.  The Gators were trailing at half-time and fell further behind early in the second half, at one time twelve points in back of the Cougars.  Yet as was the case in their previous two tournament contests, they mounted a comeback and squeaked it out in the end.  This is UF's third basketball national title and the first under coach Todd Golden.  Yet it isn't the same kind of feeling I had when Billy Donovan piloted the Gators to championships in 2006 and 2007.  It's a completely different world in college sports, what with the transfer portal enabling schools to take in established players from other colleges...this version of Florida hoops is full of such transfers, especially their star, Walter Clayton Jr..  And their coach Golden had Title IX allegations investigated earlier in the season...and then suddenly dropped without comment.  A lot of us aren't sure what that all means, except that they had something to do with women accusing the Gator coach of stalking.  That being said, Florida won a hard-fought, close and exciting tournament... 

Transformational Progress in Language Learning a Possibility for Me Now

Earlier today I set out as a goal to investigate how to enhance my ability to acquire new vocabulary in the languages I'm studying...with Russian and Spanish the primary focus.  I think I may have hit upon something transformational that provides me all the comprehensible input I require to make the progress I know I am capable of.  Now I just need to stick to a regimen that allows me to attain that progress.  I'll get back to you in a few weeks about this journey, which suddenly has become much more promising.  I give the Canadian polyglot (and my senior by more than a decade) Steve Kaufmann much of the credit for steering me in the right direction...he has a lot of good advice on his YouTube channel...

Walked Today's Depot Parkrun 5K

This morning I returned to Gainesville's Depot Park, a few blocks south of downtown, to participate in their weekly Saturday morning 5K Parkrun.  This event is free...you just need to sign up online to get your barcode so that your results can be posted.  Still cautious about returning to running just four weeks following my prostatectomy surgery, I heeded my doctor's advice and stuck with walking...albeit doing it quickly.  The weather at 7:30 race time more resembled that of June than early April...66 degrees with 95% humidity. But my walk went quite well with me barely perspiring and suffering no discernible loss of energy...I finished at 42:28: click HERE to view the posted results.  Next week I'm hoping Melissa walks the 5K with me...I always enjoy walking with her.  And then, in subsequent weeks, maybe I'll begin to mix in some running as I continue to recover...